Group items tagged

A fairly complete review on the new Kindle Fire HD, notable that most of the improvement was done with faster and better hardware and not in the interface. Notable is the upcoming 8.9 inch Kindle is the device with cellular connectivity, the Fire HD still uses wireless ethernet. Also notable is the primary competitor is not Apple's iPad but Google's Nexus 7 which in shape and general performance is similar but uses Google's Play store.

Print dies: Newsweek to go all-digital. The magazine will be subscription-based and available on e-readers.

An interesting article that may spell bad news for makers of e-readers and particular E Ink. I would tend to agree with the assessment that dedicate e-readers are transition devices--much the same as electronic PDA's have been almost entirely replaced by smartphones. However, I would go further and say it's a format issue; people would tend to devices that are multifunction more often than one dedicated to a single purpose.

A positive article about how library use has increased for the public library of Burlington, Iowa. Much of the increase has been attributed to a new building with a single floor for books, several meeting spaces, and in general more programs and events as a result of the heavier patron count.

Harvard also had an Oxford style debate about the future or purpose of libraries. While interesting it didn't really cover anything new:

I couldn't find a way to link directly to presentations or their materials. Probably the most interesting sessions I attended were: Solving the Complexities of Ebook Record Management in Millennium INN-Reach: Implementing Peer to Peer Functionality Between two INN-Reach Systems The Ebooks presentation was about checking for duplication, quality control, and making sure all the records an institution paid for are present and have valid links. There were a lot of good techniques that could be relayed to our members as a group of best practices. The Peer-To-Peer INN-Reach is a new product that allows two INN-Reach systems to share materials as if they were one. It was a done in Ohio as a response after one consortium added two public libraries and began to see their single INN-Reach server overwhelmed. From what I could tell it works well, with each INN-Reach server able to retain it's own loan rules and identity, but did require all the libraries and pickup locations to be added to both servers, which quickly would present patrons with a very long list of libraries to choose from. I wasn't very clear where the super-union webpac resided; whether on it's own server or produced from both of them. The users that were present seemed happy with it.

I love the idea of automatically pushing to production after a new commit is made to master.

This is similar to a problem I'd heard about regarding non-copyrighted books, namely repackaging what could be had for free and charging for it when there's little to no added value. Now books with titles similar to popular offerings but otherwise having nothing in common are coming up in the hopes that buyers not paying attention will click on them. Examples are "I am the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" and "Twilight New Moon." This is also a very old trick, as I've heard for years of knock-off electronics being sold under brand names like Panasoanic and JCV.

Jay Leno demonstrates how a 3D printer is used to create new parts from scans of original car parts that would have been exorbitantly expensive to manufacture. Some libraries have looked at getting these, in particular MST, as while expensive they would provide a product and service not readily accessible for engineering and technical students.

Way to go Yahoo! At a time when most people have already forgotten your company still exists... release a security problem. Any press is good press, right?

Suck it Oracle.

Google has a new site called Google Search Education with different lesson plans for picking the right search terms, understanding search results, narrowing a search, and evaluating credibility of sources.

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...

"Everyone's buzzing about Pinterest, a new social media tool that connects people through the things they like-but for a growing number of users in classrooms and media centers, it's fast becoming a powerful resource where teachers and students share images, store lesson plans, read about current events, watch video clips, and collect their favorite apps."

An interesting observation by a British librarian that the new, incoming model of cataloging done and stored in the cloud by vendors will cause some shifting in practices.   Namely, vendors' records will be seen as "master records."  Also, the sheer number of different people using the same "master record" will result on an easing of standards, while at the same time a governing structure will have to be set up in order for libraries to determine which standards to loosen and which to adhere to.

For those of you that enjoy TED videos...

So awesome. I'm not sure I'll pay $3 for many of these, but it's cool just the same. I'm actually kinda surprised they are directly monetizing their old content.

"You're not familiar with the Incunabula? Are you a librarian?"" If not, that's okay. "Our profession's new demands require librarians who can write regular expressions, tweak stylesheets, and manage databases."

A blog, appears largely inactive, about the Digital Public Library of America and other topics. Notable as it was co-found by Tom Peters, the new Dean of University Libraries at MSU.