May 2014

http://motherboard.vice.com/read/brewster-kahle-the-librarian-of-404-billion-websites

An engineer who once studied artificial intelligence and co-founded web ranker Alexa, Kahle, 53, is armed with an obsession to collect everything. You’ll find part of the physical embodiment of his Alexandria-like collection in a former Christian Science church in San Francisco, where near-life-sized paper mâché dolls of the Archive’s friends and benefactors occupy the pews. There’s also a repository in Richmond, California, which is filled with a million books, and, to serve up the Wayback Machine—a historical backup of the web’s pages that launched in 2001 and recently passed the 400 billion mark—there’s a datacenter stored inside a shipping container that holds three petabytes (that’s one thousand terabytes) and can process 500 requests per second.

Peer Review as a Service: It’s not about the journal
http://theoj.org/
And that’s it. A journal with a nice web interface, an archive of the back and forth between reviewer and author, and a working peer review system. Simple. Beyond the lack of copyediting, everything you could want from a journal.

Dick Pfander has spent most of his life collecting and analyzing box scores from every NBA game since the league’s founding. He did most of his work in solitude, by hand, before the age of personal computers. And he did it simply for his own pleasure, surrounded by supportive family members who cared neither about basketball nor statistics, let alone their intersection.

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/05/the-library-of-congress-wants-to-destroy-your-old-cds-for-science/370804/
CD players have long since given up on most of the burned mixes I made in college. (In some cases, this is for the best.) And while most of the studio-manufactured albums I bought still play, there’s really no telling how much longer they will. My once-treasured CD collection—so carefully assembled over the course of about a decade beginning in 1994—isn’t just aging; it’s dying. And so is yours.

Atlanta, GA – May 13, 2014 – LYRASIS and The Galecia Group announce that LYRASIS will be managing and hosting the Open Source ILS Feature Comparison Tool under the LYRASIS FOSS4LIB project, beginning immediately. The move is part of the Open Source Decision Support Tools project, funded in part by a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The Open Source ILS Feature Comparison Tool, previously on galecia.com, is now available at http://ils.foss4lib.org/.

The Open Source ILS Feature Comparison tool compares more than 1,000 features between the Koha and Evergreen open source integrated library systems, and was designed to help libraries navigate open source software options and determine the best fit for their needs. The tool was created in 2012 by The Galecia Group with help from dozens of content contributors from the Koha and Evergreen communities. The project was funded through the Empowering Libraries with Open Source project, part of an Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) grant awarded to the King County Library System (WA).

This move is part of a wider enhancement effort on the FOSS4LIB site, with integration of the ILS feature comparison site with the main FOSS4LIB site, including unified logins and links between the two sites coming soon. The ability to compare other types of software packages in addition to integrated library systems will also be added in the coming months. After completing a registration process, librarians can create custom reports of just the features they need for their libraries. Those who have already registered can still use their login. New users can register at http://ils.foss4lib.org/user/register.

Atlanta, GA – May 13, 2014 – LYRASIS and The Galecia Group announce that LYRASIS will be managing and hosting the Open Source ILS Feature Comparison Tool under the LYRASIS FOSS4LIB project, beginning immediately. The move is part of the Open Source Decision Support Tools project, funded in part by a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The Open Source ILS Feature Comparison Tool, previously on galecia.com, is now available at http://ils.foss4lib.org/.

The Open Source ILS Feature Comparison tool compares more than 1,000 features between the Koha and Evergreen open source integrated library systems, and was designed to help libraries navigate open source software options and determine the best fit for their needs. The tool was created in 2012 by The Galecia Group with help from dozens of content contributors from the Koha and Evergreen communities. The project was funded through the Empowering Libraries with Open Source project, part of an Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) grant awarded to the King County Library System (WA).

This move is part of a wider enhancement effort on the FOSS4LIB site, with integration of the ILS feature comparison site with the main FOSS4LIB site, including unified logins and links between the two sites coming soon. The ability to compare other types of software packages in addition to integrated library systems will also be added in the coming months. After completing a registration process, librarians can create custom reports of just the features they need for their libraries. Those who have already registered can still use their login. New users can register at http://ils.foss4lib.org/user/register.

Peter Murray, LYRASIS Assistant Director of Technology Services Development, says of the move, “I’m grateful for the work that The Galecia Group and the Koha and Evergreen communities have put into creating this great tool for libraries considering open source software. It nicely complements the existing resources on FOSS4LIB.org.”

“I’m delighted to have found the perfect home for the work we did on the Features Comparison project. With the IMLS grant, we were able to get this useful resource under way and now it will be maintained going forward, and it will be easier for library users to find along with all the other great resources available on FOSS4LIB,” says Lori Bowen Ayre, Principal at The Galecia Group.
About LYRASIS
LYRASIS partners with member libraries and cultural heritage organizations to create, access and manage information with an emphasis on digital content, while building and sustaining collaboration, enhancing operations and technology, and increasing buying power. For more information, please visit www.lyrasis.org.

About The Galecia Group
The Galecia Group provides technology consulting by providing analysis, procurement, implementation, and change management services. We are deeply committed to open source software for libraries and have worked with the Koha and Evergreen communities for the last six years. We also provide website development services for libraries using the open source content management system, Drupal. Other areas of expertise are RFID, automated materials handling, self-service technologies, and workflow optimization. Visit galecia.com for more information.

In 2013, Maurice Shohet, an Iraqi Jew who now lives in Washington, D.C., received a surprising email from the National Archives. A librarian had recovered his elementary school record that was left behind nearly 40 years ago when he and his family fled Iraq. The record is part of a cache of thousands of personal documents and religious texts that were found at the start of the Iraq War, drowning in the cellar of a building run by one of the world’s most wanted men.

On a recent U.S. press tour for his bestselling book “Capital,” French economist Thomas Piketty spoke to standing-room-only crowds about his examination of growing, global economic inequality. Economics correspondent Paul Solman interviews Piketty for his take on why inequality of wealth has reverted to a lofty level last seen in 19th century Europe.

NPR piece discussing the reading habits of teens. The comments section has over 100 comments. Commentators point to parents, video games, and the lack of a great american novel as a cause for the decline in reading.

“In this tough economy many libraries are working with a lot less financial support but are holding their own,” said Valerie Osborne, a consultant for the Northeastern Maine Library District who works from the Bangor Public Library. “The budget season isn’t over yet, so I suspect we will hear of more cuts in the next six weeks,” she added.

http://www.slate.com/articles/life/education/2014/05/college_libraries_should_keep_their_books_in_the_stacks.html

This is, then, one way in which books are far from obsolete: They are the best intellectual chaperones money can buy, both the creators and the preservers of the contemplative space that every university needs if it’s not to turn fully into a strip mall with frats. Yes, it is expensive to house a robust, accessible collection of what will soon be a forgotten format. But it would be more expensive to come up with an adequate replacement that still had the same irreplaceable effect on students—so expensive and involved, in fact, that it wouldn’t be worth doing at all. Not when the boosters could pay good money to use that space on game day, for a 95-foot TV.