BCU Library

FOSS4LIB (Free/Open Source Software for Libraries), a website dedicated to providing guidance about open source software for the library community.

Sara's favorite example of SirsiDynix OPAC, but with some features we don't need

Oh, I am so using this at some training event at some point in the future.

I thought this was a great little perspective from another librarian who has done (and will do) a lot of weeding. 

A library class for staff? No problem, we've done hundreds of those for students. How different can it be?" was our first reaction to a proposal to develop a library orientation class for university professional and administrative staff.

A way to turn off this annoying feature

Register & Read Beta is a new, experimental program to offer free, read-online access to individual scholars and researchers who register for a MyJSTOR account. Register & Read follows the release of the Early Journal Content as the next step in our efforts to find sustainable ways to extend access to JSTOR, specifically to those not affiliated with participating institutions. At launch, Register & Read will include approximately 70 journals from more than 30 publishers,

There are many more questions and results on this blog. This particular question just seemed worth pointing out. Have you ever suffered from "OPAC envy" when looking at someone else's OPAC?

"UC Berkeley - Search, Google, and Life - Guest Lecturers Sergey Brin, Bradley Horowitz, Jason Schultz, and more - This free course from the University of California at Berkeley gives you an opportunity to sit in on some of the greatest minds in modern technology as they discuss how their products, services, and companies play a major role in shaping the way we obtain information, process it, and view the world. They also discuss how they came to be involved in those technologies, and how search and search engines work and have changed the internet as we know it."

Ebook of research report from ACRL about how students use libraries. "we were interested in how students write their research papers and what services, resources, and facilities would be most useful to them"

Excellent discussion of discovery layers vs. OPACs, especially in small liberal arts schools. Should be read and seriously thought about.

One question I hear quite a bit is this: Don't we have to teach the basics of Boolean search to our students? The answer, from a Google perspective is this: We teach Boolean searching only for using traditional database systems.

The National Information Standards Organization (NISO) announces the availability of a draft update of SERU: A Shared Electronic Resource Understanding for public comment (NISO RP-7-201X) through February 19, 2012. SERU offers publishers and libraries the opportunity to save both the time and the costs associated with a negotiated and signed license agreement for e-resources by both content provider and customer agreeing to operate within a framework of shared understanding and good faith. The SERU framework provides a set of common understandings for parties to reference as an alternative to a formal license when conducting business.

The Research Works Act will prohibit federal agencies from unauthorized free public dissemination of journal articles that report on research which, to some degree, has been federally-funded but is produced and published by private sector publishers receiving no such funding. It would also prevent non-government authors from being required to agree to such free distribution of these works. Additionally, it would preempt federal agencies' planned funding, development and back-office administration of their own electronic repositories for such works, which would duplicate existing copyright-protected systems and unfairly compete with established university, society and commercial publishers.