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This summary paragraph is quoted directly from the article: "This Review is structured as follows (see also Figure 1): the section Digital Libraries, DOIs, and URIs starts by looking at the range of information in digital libraries, and how resources are identified using URIs on the Web. In the section Problems with Digital Libraries, we consider a fairly standard workflow that serves to highlight some problems with using these libraries. The following section, Some Tools for Defrosting Libraries, examines what Web-based tools are currently available to defrost the digital library and how they are making libraries more personal, sociable, and integrated places. Finally, the section A Future with Warmer Libraries looks at the obstacles to future progress, recommends some best practices for digital publishing, and draws conclusions."

Argues that scholars must shape development of tools. On Stanford Library plan: "The Stanford faculty recommendations are telling for several reasons, which is why I've bothered to begin my discussion there (or, here, as I enjoy the hospitality of the Stanford Humanities Center as a digital humanities fellow). The faculty committee has made a series of highly reasonable and well-argued proposals. Guiding them is a belief, correct in my opinion and that of most humanists, that books aren't going away, we need them and shall continue to do so for a long time to come, and we cannot pit digital tools against book culture. We must accept the hybrid world of scholarly work and earnestly endeavor to support it."

As anyone who has worked in optimization recently knows, stripping the randomness out of a computing system is a bad idea. Harnessing randomness is what optimization is all about today. (Even algorithms designed for convergence make extensive use of randomness, and it is clear that library research in particular thrives on it.) But it is evident that much of the technologization of libraries is destroying huge swaths of randomness. First, the reduction of access to a relatively small number of search engines, with fairly simple-minded indexing systems -- most typically concordance indexing (not keywords, which are assigned by humans) -- has meant a vast decrease in the randomness of retrieval. Everybody who asks the same questions of the same sources gets the same answers. The centralization and simplification of access tools thus has major and dangerous consequences. This comes even through reduction of temporal randomness. In major indexes without cumulations - the Readers Guide, for example - substantial randomness was introduced by the fact that researchers in different periods tended to see different references. With complete cumulations, that variation is gone.

Planets, Preservation and Long-term Access through Networked Services, is a four-year project co-funded by the European Union under the Sixth Framework Programme to address core digital preservation challenges. The primary goal for Planets is to build practical services and tools to help ensure long-term access to our digital cultural and scientific assets. Planets started on 1st June 2006. This website makes available project documentations and deliverables as Planets progresses so that these can be shared with the libraries, archives and digital preservation community.

"Andrew Savikas is one of today's most prominent writers, speakers, and thinkers about digital publishing and the e-book revolution. As Vice President of Digital Initiatives at O'Reilly Media and Program Chair of O'Reilly's annual Tools of Change for Publishing conference-a massive three-day industry powwow about publishing technology and business strategy, held last month here in New York City-he keeps his finger pressed steadily to the ever-racing pulse of the digital media world"

Summary of the 2009 Tools of Change conference

Libraries already act like Google in many ways. Or I should say instead, Google acts like libraries. It is the mission of both to organize the world's information, to make it openly accessible, to find and present the most authoritative (by many definitions) sources, to instill an ethic of information use in the public, to act as a platform for communities of information, to encourage creation. So how could libraries, in turn, think like Google? Some libraries act as platforms for community content creation (one of my first efforts in hyperlocal community journalism, GoSkokie.net, made with the Medill School of Journalism, is now run by the library). In how many ways could a library act as a platform for the community to inform itself by providing tools and training for content creation? How can libraries collect the wisdom of the crowd that is their communities (e.g., creating collaborative town wikis and maps made by the community)? Librarians and their expert patrons could curate the web and create topic pages that would rise in Google search as valuable resources for the world (if your library is in Florida, it could maintain the best collections of sources for information on manatees or sunburns). What I'd really like to do is brainstorm this question with your readers on my blog: How could they be Googlier?

"This site from JISC Collections aims to help libraries to make informed decisions about future subscriptions to bibliographic and full text databases. More information about the site's data sourcing and comparison method is available on the 'About' page."

Collection of essays about ebooks, publishing shift

It includes writing from TOC speakers: * Sara Lloyd * Bob Stein * Kate Eltham * Kassia Krozser * Peter Brantley ... and more from around the Web, like John Siracusa.

How an online application could change research communication.