MOBIUS Libraries

Interesting graphic on ebook usage in the US.

I couldn't find any samples, unfortunately-- the link has some screenshots, but they're not very helpful.

I've signed up for the beta. Once I get the invite I'll create accounts for everyone to play with.

I think this is more of what I was hoping to learn about in the "facilitating meetings" webinar. This is a nice surface-level description of what is required to facilitate engagement. 

Here is another article that touches on topics that can help one better facilitate meetings. It is a little pie-in-the-sky, but one thing I've learned in my albeit very short professional life: genuine enthusiasm can take you and your ideas a long way.

We're at the dawn of the tablet era now. Earlier this month, Apple sold 3 million of its new iPad during the opening weekend, with some analysts expecting over 60 million of the tablets to be sold worldwide. What's more, e-book readers are selling even more briskly than tablets.

I heard today that after the Govmn't sued Apple and 5 ebook publishers for colluding to keep pricing favorable, 3 of the 5 publishers have already settled out of court. I wonder if Apple thinks they have a strong enough case...

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.

Good tips on learning transfer. Teach for transfer!

Open Source Bridge is a conference for developers working with open source technologies and for people interested in learning the open source way.

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.

More changes possibly coming? MSU and FIPP talking about a merger.

Even better than LittleBits (IMHO). The main board plugs right into an Arduino and they have much more interesting bits. Still, at this point of circuit design it seems like you may as well just build it on the breadboard.

Publishes critical reviews of online resources for libraries.

I'm going to use it also.

Great!

It's not work related, but since we're all friends here and most of us have kids I wanted to share it here. You all know where I'm at when it comes to food and health but after watching this I'm compelled to go talk to the principal at Grant, share this video, and see if there's anything I can do to help.

Also, there's quite a few other really great TED talks about food, and food as it related to kids.

Like this one: http://www.ted.com/talks/ann_cooper_talks_school_lunches.html

Review of Google's new Knowledge Graph search.

I think this is a cool and worthwhile improvement, but where the article makes a comparison to Wolfram Alpha I have to disagree. Google's knowledge engine is exactly the type of thing you get to do with the semantic web - and it's awesome - but it's not a *computational* knowledge engine like WA. If you google "The moon" you get some useful information about it including it's distance. But the distance there is just some number pulled from some resource. WA /calculates/ the distance to the moon at the exact moment of your search. Not to say WA is better - it's just different. WA has an entry for Leonardo da Vinci, and has a lot of the same facts as Google does - but it doesn't really have much of a capacity to show you anything related to him. Anyway, cool new feature that I'd noticed and used already but hadn't actually heard mention of. One of those things that Google just kinda slipped in that works.

Hmm.  Justin, you're our R&D person.  What say you?

Completely agree.

This is in Hardy's bookmarks, so I thought I'd give these papers a read.

OH THANK GOODNESS

I admit that between the title and Justin's response, I laughed.

A federal judge released a 350 page ruling that largely vindicated Georgia State University's use of materials in an Electronic Reserves system called ERES. at issue was how full chapters of books were made available among other material. In 74 cases of alleged infringement only 5 were proven valid as GSU did not place any limit on the amount copied or provided guidance to professors. Provided the ruling stands and is not appealed this could be a landmark decision in fair use. I found it interesting the suit was financially backed by not only the Association of American Publisher but also the Copyright Clearance Center, which provides authorization to use copyrighted materials in electronic reserves, among other things.

Just FYI, another name change MAY be coming down the pipe. Sounds like it could be a while, but it will be interesting to see if they actually do it.

Well, that's interesting. I was not aware that UMKC was originally the University of Kansas City.