Wednesday 24 June 2009

Kathryn Greenhill - Why learning about Emerging Technologies is part of every librarian's Job

In the context of librarians and Web 2.0, Kathryn Greenhill's name has popped up a number of times recently. My interest piqued, I decided to look into her work.

This particular presentation is very straightforward and concise, presenting solutions to the challenges the library and information profession faces in the digital age. Without being simplistic, Greenhill presents practical suggestions to issues such as finding time to investigate Web 2.0 technologies and why this is an imperative facet of our professional development obligations.

Entertaining, informative, and well worth setting aside 1/2 an hour to watch.

http://www.slideshare.net/sirexkat/why-learning-about-emerging-technologies-is-part-of-every-librarians-job

Tuesday 16 June 2009

Future of Bibliographic Control

Research Information Network (www.rin.ac.uk) has just published a report about current UK cataloguing practices Creating catalogues: bibliographic records in a networked world. They point to a need to partner more effectively with other organisations in the 'supply chain' to make the bibliographic data in library catalogues more relevant to users in the age of Google. One interesting proposition was a union catalogue for all UK higher education institutions with enormous cost saving benefits and streamlined access for users.

Last year the Library of Congress published their own take on the subject of bibliographic control. I haven't read it but here is the link-
On the Record: Report of the Library of Congress Working Group on the Future of Bibliographic Control

Scopus expand coverage of Arts and Humanities

Scopus claim to have expanded their coverage of Arts and Humanities by up to a whopping 50%! Which has to be good news for academic libraries - especially since there is no extra charge for current subscribers. Perhaps they got wind of our cancellation project and thought they'd better pull out all the stops?!

Thursday 11 June 2009

For your amusement 8 bookstore cats

here


RJ

Most twits won't tweet twice: study

Web 2.0 update!

It seems that Twitter usage still lags far behind that of other social networking sites (I think we know which ones they're referring to). According to this Harvard Business School report "...just 10 per cent of twitterers account for more than 90 per cent of tweets".

For more information, see: http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/06/10/2593997.htm

Wednesday 3 June 2009

Where email is heading

Have you heard about Google Wave? The new "real-time communication platform"

See http://mashable.com/2009/05/28/google-wave-guide/

If you think about it, email as we know it is based on the old model of postal communication in a real sense - you send something, someone replies - Google Wave will allow you to see what someone is writing in real time, it will be more like having a conversation than "mailing" something - impressive range of functionality including working on shared documents, dragging applications in, viewing versions.

Monday 1 June 2009

Melbourne library's cater to their users in style

On my recent trip to Melbourne I indulged my professional curiosity (admittedly in a very slack way) and checked out the libraries I stumbled across....

City Library in inner city Melbourne was a veritable rabbit warren filled with hovering computer hopefuls, the smell of stale sweat (I will never complain about our refrigerated air on level 2 again), and not one but two Wii stations. The decor was also very Melbourne cool and the place was packed!

Mornington Library was reminiscent of Kingston library but had a cafe with tables (spaced well apart for prams) encircling the little children's area. I know this is probably not on every ones radar and doesn't have much direct relevance to academic libraries, but for me it was like finding the Shangri-la of child/parent friendly library spaces and quite a nice example of looking after all sorts of users.

Just a site I stumbled upon about eBooks (classics)

You all probably have seen this before but thought a link might be useful someday.

http://www.stumbleupon.com/toolbar/#topic=Literature&url=http%253A%252F%252Fwww.planetebook.com%252F

Robyn J.