From today’s “Morning Edition”:
Residents of Hamden, Mass., vote to close the library and the senior center because they say they just can’t pay the additional property taxes needed to keep the centers operating.
Complete story (Real Audio required).
Canton, MI librarian Rebecca Havenstein-Coughlin is profiled in this week’s entry in
the Detroit News’ “Good Deeds: Celebrating Unsung Heroes” series:
As the Canton Public Library celebrates its 25th year anniversary this year, so does Havenstein-Coughlin. She is now head of adult services and continues to serve the library with the same excitement as she did 25 years ago.
“It’s easy because I love the place so much,” said Havenstein-Coughlin.
New on Péter’s Digital Reference Shelf:
Google Scholar has to be looked at with this background: Even in its disappointing incarnation it is an asset for those scholars whose university or research institute cannot afford WoS or Scopus. Those who just need a few good papers and Web sites might as well be satisfied with the regular Google or Yahoo search engines. Those who need a comprehensive set of papers that includes the most respected (and hence most-cited) articles, books and conference papers are advised to treat the hits — and citedness scores — in Google Scholar with much reservation …
From today’s Morning Edition, a story about one northwestern Washington library system’s grappling with PATRIOT:
Congress is considering whether to renew parts of the USA Patriot Act that are due to expire soon, including a provision that allows library records to be turned over to law enforcement. As part of our continuing coverage of the Patriot Act, Larry Abramson has this report on a library system in northwestern Washington state that had its ethics tested when the FBI came to call.
Complete story (Real Audio required). A related story discusses the use of library records in the investigation of the Unabomber case.
From Library Journal:
Janet Webster first noticed that the U.S. News & World Report rankings for LIS education were years out-of-date one year ago. Webster, head librarian at the Hatfield Marine Science Center at Oregon State University, is one of the librarians behind a draft resolution floated recently on the American Library Association (ALA) Council electronic discussion list that would have ALA urge U.S. News & World Report to update its library school rankings, dated 1999. Thus far the resolution has been received coolly—mostly owing to Council members’ dismissal of the rankings in general—but Webster wonders if it is unwise to ignore the rankings and assume librarian-like research abilities among those who are only beginning to consider library school …
Lawrence Lessig and Richard A. Epstein debate the ownership of ideas in the new issue of Technology Review (via Metafilter).
Joseph V. Nash’s vast collection of materials on the history of African-American dance may be
broken up and sold following his death without a will:
Nash was born on Oct. 5, 1919, to a butler and a housewife who lived at 27 West 99th Street in Manhattan. As a young man, Mr. Nash performed with pioneering black dancers like Pearl Primus, and knew Katherine Dunham, another important early figure. He choreographed. But it was his energetic, determined collecting of papers, books, playbills and other items that made him so important. He amassed his archive over decades, and many of the items found a home in an array of institutions …
Now, because Mr. Nash had no heirs – and apparently left no will – the city has changed the locks on his apartment door and seized his property, in preparation for auctioning it off. Archivists, dance lovers and Mr. Nash’s friends are appalled by the possibility that the collection could be scattered to the winds.
Complete article from the New York Times (registration required).
FromThe Register:
Scientists from all major Dutch universities officially launched a website on Tuesday where all their research material can be accessed for free. Interested parties can get hold of a total of 47,000 digital documents from 16 institutions the Digital Academic Repositories. No other nation in the world offers such easy access to its complete academic research output in digital form, the researchers claim. Obviously, commercial publishers are not amused …
From the new issue of First Monday:
The University of Tasmania decided to explore using a unified digital library for all its research output: journal articles, conference papers, higher degree theses, and other types. This decision is in advance of the state of the Australian national indexing systems. The digital library also uses OAI–PMH protocols for harvesting, which one of the national repositories does not as yet. The paper describes the context, reasons for the University’s decision, consequences and outcomes, and the development of software to talk to the Australian Digital Theses Program.
According to the New York Times, organizing data by tagging it is now “all the rage among the digerati”:
Here’s how we tend to organize our digital photos: We stick them into a folder on our computer and label it ”Hawaii trip,” or whatever. Here’s a new way: Forget folders or albums. Just ”tag” the photos based on what’s actually in each frame. Now, extrapolate this concept to the ideas, images, videos — and people — you meet or wish to find online. If they’re properly tagged, they’re far easier to find …
Tagging has the potential to change how we keep track of and discover things digital — even whom we meet online. Several startups are banking their futures on it.
Complete article (registration required).
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