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Sharla Lair

The Launch of Scholrly: new search engine seeks to change the way people find research ... - 0 views

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    Scholr.ly looks like a very interesting tool. They describe it as "Making Academic Search Social". Here is a description of the search engine: "Undergraduate physicists and comparative literature postdocs have very different search needs. We're building an academic search engine that takes these individual differences into account. The more we know about what you do, the better we can tailor our results to fit your needs. Sometimes, though, it's good to look at a problem from another perspective. Maybe you're doing research in an area you aren't familiar with and want an insider's view. Maybe you're doing interdisciplinary work, or want to better understand your colleague's work. To address these cases, Scholr.ly offers you the opportunity to search as another author- literally. You can search as your professor, a famous linguist, or the highly cited scholar in the department next door- and get the same results they would." It's a very interesting idea...
Scott Peterson

Your Ebook is reading you - 0 views

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    On the one hand this is nothing new, several entertainment industries are using deep analytics to see how customers use their products. However, many Ebook readers may not be aware that how long they take to read a book or what they read is being tracked. Customers may avoid books on controversial or personal subjects out of privacy concerns, and publishing may being taking a by-the-numbers approach where they depend more on analytics than market experience and become less willing to try new ideas and authors.
Scott Peterson

The Slap-Your-Head-Simple Secret for Selling More Books - 0 views

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    An interesting article about drumming up interest and using a response and feedback to refine a book before it is published, a process that libraries could help authors with.
Scott Peterson

Hill may freeze THOMAS in digital past - 0 views

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    THOMAS is the website the Library of Congress uses for keeping an online record of bills. As the author notes it's not easy to get a picture of what Congress is working on by looking at one bill at a time. It's possible to get a more overall picture by downloading the data and number crunching it, but it looks like the site will not allow bulk downloads of data, only scraping information by way of scripts.
Scott Peterson

No More Gatekeepers | From the Bell Tower - 0 views

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    This was a fairly interesting article about how, Amazon's Jeff Bezos wants to eliminate the "gatekeepers" by empowering as now anyone can become a publisher, producer, or editor of content. Ultimately I agree with the article's assertion that librarian's should be opening doors and resources, but feel that is essentially what the role has been the whole time. A "gatekeeper" is not so much a barrier to people but a barrier to wasted time and effort, and serves as a resource and authority to what people are searching for.
Scott Peterson

Espresso Book Machines: Should Libraries Offer On Demand Publishing? - 0 views

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    A fairly brief article that cites the benefits of on-site book publishing (supporting independent and creative authors), formatting and self-publishing academic material, and supporting in a limited manner a patron driven acquisitions model, offset by the machine's high price of $125-$150,000. I think it would be interesting to see numbers on printing volume and overall operating costs, as well as whether any leasing options are available for the book machine.
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    I'm glad to see the Espresso is starting to get press. It's been around for awhile, and has the potential to be very useful.
Scott Peterson

Who will preserve the past for future generations? - 0 views

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    This is a highly critical but reasoned examination of the state of the Library and Archives Canada. The author feels that the national library is losing focus by breaking up parts of it's collection, putting undigitized materials into remote storage where they are harder to access, cutting hours, and reducing staff by up to 20 percent--all of which contribute to the dissolution of the country's past and heritage. What he doesn't offer is an examination of what brought the national library to this state (unavoidable funding cuts or bad decisions to streamline or both) and what can be done to fix it.
Jennifer Parsons

OverDrive alternative: How a savvy Colorado library system owns e-books for real, saves... - 0 views

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    A heartening story about how the libraries of Douglas County, CO are bucking the current trend of leasing music from services like OverDrive.  As a result, they negotiate directly with publishers, actually own their electronic books, and are able to display said electronic books directly in their catalog, not just in a ebook-only ghetto (a source of irritation to me).  The author suggests this could start a new trend that might culminate in a loosely-organized, nation-wide system that allows smaller libraries to benefit from the expertise and work from larger systems with more resources, like Douglas County.
Scott Peterson

The murky world of literary libel - 0 views

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    Some of the examples of how literary fiction can end up as libel cases; three of the aspects for libel is the statement has to cause harm to someone, it should be obvious to the reader who it is, and the statement need to be untrue. The examples include people who resemble someone in a story, either intentionally or in the case of one author someone he'd met only briefly and likely the character similarities were unintentional. Several questions are raised, especially in how much a real person can be portrayed in fiction, specially if that portrayal is one interpretation of that person, and what to do if the resemblances are coincidental.
Scott Peterson

Crunching Literary Numbers - 0 views

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    An interesting article on analyzing the use of keywords in American novels. The author acknowledges that the "American English" subset only examines reading materials middle readers would typically purchase, but I also note context is completely missing, and only so much can be inferred from the existence of words as opposed to how they're used.
Scott Peterson

HP MagCloud - 0 views

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    HP is offering a service to create magazines and other serial publications in the "cloud." What is interesting is both print and digital publishing is offered. Some of the publications listed do use an ISSN number, but it looks like it's up to the author to obtain it. Print options include worldwide shipping and direct mail, while it looks like the digital version requires a MagCloud account to read the material, although it is available as a downloadable PDF. What I find most interesting is how this service effectively replaces a traditional publisher altogether, although some of the features a publisher can offer--such as marketing and industry contacts, are missing. Digital prices to the consumer are substantially less than print, but I can't find anything about pricing to the user without signing up for an account.
adrienne_mobius

XKeyscore: NSA tool collects 'nearly everything a user does on the internet' | World ne... - 0 views

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    "A top secret National Security Agency program allows analysts to search with no prior authorization through vast databases containing emails, online chats and the browsing histories of millions of individuals, according to documents provided by whistleblower Edward Snowden."
Scott Peterson

How to Scuttle a Scholarly Communication Initiative - 0 views

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    Initially I thought this would be an informative article but it was essentially a long complaint about trying to get scholarly communication working, and I kept thinking if the author is aware of the problems beforehand then why not anticipate solutions?
Megan Durham

UK Government Report Released: Public Library Closures May be Unlawful, MPs Warn - 0 views

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    In a report released today, Tuesday 6 November 2012, the Commons Culture, Media and Sport Committee says that some local authorities, under considerable pressure to quickly find cost savings, have drawn up plans without taking proper account of local needs for library services and the variety of options available to provide them, and are therefore in danger of failing in their statutory duty to provide a 'comprehensive and efficient' library service. Other councils, however, have found innovative and cost-effective ways of continuing to supply - and in some cases improve - their library service.
Megan Durham

Banned Books Have Now Jumped the Shark - 0 views

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    This is not the first time Barnes & Noble has done this sort of "banning" as the author calls it. Last spring they pulled DC Comics because DC was making a deal to only work with Amazon. The comics eventually came back, but it made a pretty big statement. I don't think we've heard the end of this.
Jennifer Parsons

Wikidata - 0 views

  • Wikidata is a free knowledge base that can be read and edited by humans and machines alike. It is for data what Wikimedia Commons is for media files: it centralizes access and management of structured data, such as interwiki references and statistical information. Wikidata contains data in all languages for which there are Wikimedia projects
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    This is a cool idea-- basically, it's a way to link the data in Wikipedia across languages to cut down on redundancy and help the information flow across language barriers.
Jennifer Parsons

The Bedbug Bunk: How the New York Times Used Fear and Misinformation to Spread Public L... - 0 views

  • Brooke Borel, author of the forthcoming book Suck: The Tale of the Bed Bug, has also responded to Saint Louis’s article. She points out that Saint Young is outright wrong in declaring that bedbugs have only just “discovered a new way to hitchhike” through books. “This is an ancient pest, and it has been doing its thing for at least thousands of years. Probably far, far longer.” She also reiterates what entomologists have been telling me over the past two days. The risk is low. “You aren’t very likely to pick up bed bugs in these types of public spaces. The bugs are far more highly concentrated in residences, where they can breed and multiply in close proximity to their food source.”
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    Reports of bedbug demise have been greatly exaggerated, it seems.
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    That's a relief. I was itchy just thinking about that.
adrienne_mobius

Authors Of 'The New Digital Age' Say 'The Power of Information Is Underrated' - 0 views

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    Google executives Eric Schmidt and Jared Cohen recently returned from a trip to North Korea and discuss the role of the Internet in repressive countries.
Megan Durham

Espresso Book Machines tie self-publishing to Maker culture - 0 views

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    Really cool article that looks at : "Espresso Book Machines can offer two kinds of services: print-on-demand of any title available through the EspressNet database (which includes Google Books, the Internet Archive, all of Ingram's partnered publishers, and more) and self-­publishing services for authors and small publishers."
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    I sincerely love the idea of these book machines and have ever since they've become available. I don't know why every library doesn't have one (aside from cost).
Scott Peterson

Some big-six publishers refuse to sign new contracts with Amazon - 1 views

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    At least two of the big-six publishers are refusing to sign new annual contracts with Amazon. While that could result in their "buy" buttons being turned off, it is more likely that the feud will result in less promotion of big-six publishers' titles on the site.
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    No real surprise here. With Amazon trying to make deals directly with authors to avoid having to pay big money to these publishers it's no wonder. It's only a matter of time before these big publishers either go out of business or wise up and scale back.
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