A 5.4 (sometimes reported as 5.8) earthquake has hit Southern California.
We’ve learned that the city of Long Beach evacuated Cerritos Library, which had an estimated 800 to 1,000 people inside. Ceiling tiles rained down inside a Fullerton library ; twitterers are all a-twitter.
If you are located in Southern California, please give us an update on conditions where you are.
ATHENS, OH and BLACKSBURG, VA–July 29, 2008 -– LibLime, the leader in open source solutions for libraries and CARE Affiliates™ announced today that they have entered into a definitive agreement to sell select assets of CARE Affiliates to LibLime. The sale will include select products, related services and domain names along with associated service contracts. Final closing is scheduled for August 2008.
Carl Grant, President of CARE Affiliates will be taking a new position as president of Ex Libris, North America, effective immediately. “I’m delighted that LibLime has decided to acquire these assets,” said Carl. “This will ensure the continuation of these products/services well into the future. I look forward to seeing how LibLime grows these ideas. I also feel it’s important to say that this sale and my move is based primarily on personal reasons and is in no way a reflection on the open-source community or service providers serving libraries. Open source has a vibrant future in libraries and I’m pleased to say that Ex Libris is one of the proprietary vendors listening to this community as evidenced by their recent announcement about their new Open Platform strategy. I will continue to stay engaged with the library open-source community, albeit in a different role.”
“We’ve been proud to list CARE Affiliates as one of our strategic partners since they started supporting open source in 2007,” says Joshua Ferraro, CEO of LibLime. “This arrangement gives us increased capacity to deliver open-source and open architecture solutions for libraries in the strategic area of metasearching.””
LibLime’s acquisition of CARE again highlights one strength of open-source solutions — no vendor lock-in. CARE’s customers don’t need to worry about switching to new solutions. With open source, switching vendors doesn’t mean switching software.”
This is LibLime’s third acquisition since the company’s inception in 2005. Earlier acquisitions include Ohio-based Skemotah Solutions and Katipo Communications’ Koha division in New Zealand.
CARE Affiliates provides services and products based on open-source software to libraries and information centers around the world. These services include consulting, selection, packaging, integration, installation, support, hosting (SaaS), maintenance and continued development. Products include repositories, federated search tools, preservation and archiving solutions. Learn more about CARE at
http://www.care-affiliates.com
LibLime is the global leader in open-source solutions for libraries, with a mission to make open source accessible to libraries. Rather than sell software licenses for static, hard-to-customize software products, LibLime educates libraries about the benefits of open source, enabling them to make choices about how best to provide their communities and staff with better technology services. LibLime then facilitates implementation of open-source in libraries by providing outstanding development, customization, support and training solutions–solutions tailored to each library’s needs. For more information, see http://liblime.com.
Tina Burger
Vice President, Marketing LibLime
(888)Koha ILS (564-2457)
Here’s a fiction piece by George Dyson published by The Edge Foundation. Recommended by Robots.net…they describe it as “a fiction piece
that fiction magazines wouldn’t publish because it’s too technical and technical publications wouldn’t print because it’s too fictional. ”
The story contains some interesting observations such as, “This was the paradox of artificial intelligence: any system simple enough to be understandable will not be complicated enough to behave intelligently; and any system complicated enough to behave intelligently will not be simple enough to understand.” After you read it, you’ll be asking the same question the author does, “Are we searching Google, or is Google searching us?”.
A fire caused by lightening destroyed the Swan’s Island (ME) Library last week, and local booksellers, Patrick Reilley and Susanne Ward, are taking up collections to help them rebuild and restock. Their shop, Rock City Books and Coffee has joined other small businesses along the Maine coast to collect books and donations for the library.
The beloved little library was a favorite place of islanders to get together.
An account has been established at the Bar Harbor branch of The First bank. Checks could be made out to the Swans Island Library Fund and left at the Rock City cafe.
Another one from the Bay State.
Librarian Annette Janes made a career of finding books for people to read. Now she’s making a second vocation of writing them. Now retired, Janes recently had her second book published. Titled “Hamilton, Massachusetts: Myths, Legends and a Few Quirky Characters.”
This is her second book, and she promises more to come. Salem News.
The debate continues on the Dewey Decimal System. Read what commentators have to say in the NYTimes blog Papercuts and add your own two cents.
It seems there’s less “public” in public libraries these days.
Two years after Wellesley MA voters rejected public funding that would have allowed two branch libraries to remain open, both locations are now set to reopen their doors thanks to $240,000 raised by library trustees.
Boston Globe has the story and photo of the charming little branch library.
“because”… says Florida librarian David Serchay, whose trip to Comic-con was supported by funding from the Broward County Friends of the Library,
“… the numbers are clear: adding comic-book titles to the shelves puts circulation stats through the roof.”
More on librarians at Comic-Con at NPR.
While it may seem odd to note today compared to perhaps 1996 or 1997, a new search engine launched today. Cuil is a search engine focusing more on analyzing text relevance over ranking pages as might Google. Reactions seen on Twitter today were mixed such as those heard from Chad Haefele, Karin Dalziel, and Engadget’s soon to be Editor-at-Large Ryan Block.
CNET’s Rafe Needleman wrote at his WebWare site about the launch and how it was not the best. Needleman’s post showed screenshots of strange results returned by Cuil. Dalziel also linked to a screenshot she posted on Flickr.
Have you tried Cuil today? What is your reaction to the launch of this new search engine?
“Want to find your perfect novel? See page 69.” So said the dear departed guru of communications Marshall McLuhan.
And in her Guardian UK blog, Charlotte Stretch goes about trying to confirm McLuhan’s findings, from authors as diverse as Emily Bronte and Salman Rushdie. Check out her findings.
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