November 2011
61 posts
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Choose the Best Search for Your Information Need →
A tool to find information sources by how they can be used. I’ll have to try it the next time I’m floundering on a reference question. :)
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What's the difference between a cat and a comma?
blingostarr:
princessjullianna:
One has claws at the end of its paws and one is a pause at the end of a clause.
The pictures omfg I can’t
:’D
Hahaha… :-D
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Librarian by Day: 9 reasons Publishers should Stop... →
Libraries let people read your books.
Libraries introduce people to your books.
We celebrate books and authors everyday, all year long.
Archives
Publicity
We WANT to buy your books.
We love books too.
Who else is going to pay those ridiculously high database and journal prices?
Library users are your best customers.
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Centered Librarian: Kindle Fire review - I sent it... →
Conclusions - The Kindle Fire is very well constructed. It feels solid and substantial in my hand and is the perfect size to hold. Its display rivals the iPad and iPhone in quality - may even be better. At $199 it seems to be a great value for someone looking for a media device. The deal breaker for me was the clunky navigation, the limited movie offerings,the less than ideal magazine...
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IHE Blogs, Technology and Learning: Library... →
A perspective on ebook borrowing that compares the Kindle experience with Overdrive (I think you can guess which is easier for the library user…).
Why is the e-book borrowing experience with OverDrive so atrocious? How is it that Amazon is able to make the “Kindle Books from Your Local Library” so easy, while OverDrive makes the process so painful? Maybe I’m just not...
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MPAA Costs Hollywood More Than US BitTorrent... →
infoneer-pulse:
During the last year Netflix managed to outgrow BitTorrent in terms of the amount of US Internet traffic it generates. A promising finding for Hollywood as it shows that there’s an overwhelming interest for the legal movie streaming service. At TorrentFreak we wondered what might happen if all US BitTorrent users made the switch to Netflix, and the results of this exploration...
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Library Renewal: This Deal Is Getting Worse All... →
A second major publisher has altered the deal by which libraries can lend ebooks via libraryland über-vendor Overdrive. In February, the first publisher, Harper Collins, restricted the number of checkouts of its ebooks. Yesterday, word came down that Penguin Group USA is suspending libraries’ lending of the publishers’ new ebook titles. Given that with Kindle format ebooks, both new and...
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Librarians Face Patrons Unhappy With Penguin... →
infoneer-pulse:
The decision by Penguin Group (USA) to suspend library lending of its new ebook titles and to suspend Kindle accessibility for all Penguin titles has left librarians once again facing patron gripes and drawn condemnation from the president-elect of the American Library Association.
The change in policy, which Penguin justified because of “security concerns” in a statement...
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“I think a library, any kind of library, is also a statement about belonging and...”
– Pegasus Librarian, What does it mean to have a library?
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“Sharing and recommendation shouldn’t be passive. It should be conscious,...”
– CNET: How Facebook is ruining sharing
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Bibliosaurus Rex: Beyond 140 Characters:... →
librarianlauren:
The current economic situation is bumming me out to a degree I haven’t experienced since the Spice Girls broke up (shush, I was 10). Frankly, I’m just sick of hearing about it. I’m not the type to stick my head in the sand, yet I’m so tried of the news reports, tired of hearing about yet another library facing budget cuts or even closures, tired of watching my friends at...
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NYT: For Their Children, Many E-Book Fans Insist... →
Print books may be under siege from the rise of e-books, but they have a tenacious hold on a particular group: children and toddlers. Their parents are insisting this next generation of readers spend their early years with old-fashioned books.
[…]
And here is a question for a digital-era debate: is anything lost by taking a picture book and converting it to an e-book? Junko Yokota, a...
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“The dissolution of a library is unacceptable. Libraries serve as the cornerstone...”
– Proud to be a librarian today.
A statement from American Library Association (ALA) President Molly Raphael regarding the destruction of the People’s Library. (via libraryjournal)
YES!
(via walkyouhome)
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It's official: America a land of young, casual... →
infoneer-pulse:
A major new survey of American attitudes to online copyright infringement has found that 70 percent of all 18 to 29-year-olds have pirated music, TV shows, or movies. But almost no Americans are hardcore grog-swillers, and two-thirds of those who do acquire copyrighted material without permission also acquire content legally.
The new research comes courtesy of a forthcoming...
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Salem Press: The Library Grants Center →
Welcome to Salem’s Library Grants Center, a free web tool designed to help librarians everywhere—whatever their level of experience—navigate the world of library grants.
THE CHALLENGE At a time when the word “library” is inseparable from the phrase “budget cuts,” librarians need help finding help. So we scoured the web in search of free funding for libraries...
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OhMyGov!: Huge majority of young voters are social... →
A new report (PDF) from Scarborough Research suggests that the most social media savvy voters in the electorate, those between the ages of 18 and 24, make up a full 10% of all registered voters. And not only are these young voters more plugged in to social media than their more senior counterparts, they are more racially and ethnically diverse and cover a wider swath of the political spectrum....
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Pew Internet: New report: Why Americans use social... →
pewinternet:
Our latest report takes a quick but informative look at why Americans use social media:
Two-thirds of online adults (66%) use social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, MySpace or LinkedIn. These internet users say that connections with family members and friends (both new and old) are a primary consideration in their adoption of social media tools. Roughly two thirds...
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librarian.net: the Kindle lending experience from... →
My first experience at “borrowing a Kindle book from the library” has left me with a bad taste in my mouth. It did not feel like borrowing a book from a library. It felt like a salesperson had sold me a book with a “no-risk free home trial” and was pestering me to buy it at the end of the trial period.
I feel that Amazon’s commercial promotion is excessive, and imposes inappropriately on...
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Is Information Overload Making Us Depressed? →
infoneer-pulse:
Nearly 17% of Americans will experience major depression in their lifetimes, according to data from the National Institutes of Health. Weil believes that data overload may be largely to blame. Data is slim, he says, but notes that a 2005 Swedish study found heavy use of communications technology — your smartphone, your iPad, your computer — to be associated with feelings of...
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Kindle lending library mere "exercise of brute... →
infoneer-pulse:
Amazon attracts more customers to e-books, readers get free content, and publishers get paid. Everyone’s happy, right?
Wrong. The Authors Guild, which represents the interests of writers, blasted the program yesterday, saying that the lending library program is built on “nonsense” and a “tortured reading” of Amazon’s contracts with publishers.
“Amazon, in other words, appears...
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Library of Congress: Finding E-books: A Guide →
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Who Decides Who You Are Online? →
infoneer-pulse:
The writer Salman Rushdie hit Twitter on Monday morning with a flurry of exasperated posts. Facebook, he wrote, had deactivated his account, demanded proof of identity and then turned him into Ahmed Rushdie, which is how he is identified on his passport. He had never used his first name, Ahmed, he pointed out; the world knows him as Salman.
Would Facebook, he scoffed, have...
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Slate: Why Second Life Failed →
Interesting commentary on what is or isn’t likely to take off, based on the function it’s supposed to serve.
So when you evaluate the next big thing, ask the Christensen question: What job is it designed to do? Most successful innovations perform a clear duty. When we craved on-the-go access to our music collections, we hired the iPod. When we needed quick and effective searches,...
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Shattersnipe: Free eBooks, Piracy & Secondhanding →
Great, great post, and I love the last two paragraphs enough that I’m quoting them in full (yes, they’re kind of long):
Ultimately, I feel that the debate about ebook piracy has been stymied by the same sort of fearmongering that usually characterises debates about welfare cheats. Yes, some people will always abuse the system, and it’s only right that we have mechanisms in place...
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“Those moments when you don’t have anything to do, may be the most...”
– HuffPo: Technology Got Rid of Boredom, But It’s Killing Our Creativity
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MindShift: Why Aren’t Students Using E-Books? →
It’s not as though students aren’t interested in e-books. According to the eBrary survey, “the vast majority of students would choose electronic over print if it were available and if better tools along with fewer restrictions were offered.” Those latter points are key: better tools and fewer restrictions. Despite some of the improvements to note-taking in textbook apps like Inkling and...
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More Than 10 Percent of College Papers Plagiarize... →
infoneer-pulse:
Most high school teachers and college professors aren’t Wikipedia fans, but their students sure do love it. A new study about the sources students plagiarize analyzed over 9 million high school student papers and more than 24 million college student papers. Even though paper mills and cheating sites are popular, Wikipedia reigns supreme—especially for college students.
...
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Libraries = Socialism →
thelifeguardlibrarian:
Edward Mcclelland has his knickers in a twist.
I’m going to join some of the commenters on this article and hope that this is supposed to be tongue-in-cheek… because otherwise, I have no words for how speechless this makes me.
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Lifehacker: How To Load Up Your Ereader with... →
Short answer: your library! :)
While the Kindle Lending Library is a great addition to Amazon’s lineup of services for Amazon Prime members, it is a bit limited in that you only have access to about 5,000 books right now, and you can only check out a few books per Prime account, no matter how many Kindles, users, or even devices running the Kindle app there happen to be in your ...
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L.A. Times Opinion: Saving libraries but not... →
All but the most heady research can be performed by a Google, Google Books or Google Scholar search. Have a question about whether you should be paid overtime? Just Google “overtime pay California” without quotes, and the first result is a California government website with an answer to your question. Even many college students’ first — and often last — source...
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Wired Magazine: Clive Thompson on Why Kids Can't... →
Other studies have found the same thing: High school and college students may be “digital natives,” but they’re wretched at searching. In a recent experiment at Northwestern, when 102 undergraduates were asked to do some research online, none went to the trouble of checking the authors’ credentials. In 1955, we wondered why Johnny can’t read. Today the question is, why can’t Johnny search?
...
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Techdirt: Academic Publishing Profits Enough To... →
But those are just details; what really matters is the fact that collectively the top two or maybe three publishers take out of the academic world enough profits to pay for every research article in every discipline to be made freely available online for everyone to access using PLoS’s publishing fee approach.
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The Digital Shift: Major Medical Library Closing... →
The William H. Welch Medical Library at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, MD, will close its doors to patrons on January 1, 2012. But the library as an information resource is not closing; it is just moving completely online.
The transition, 10 years in the making, is an inevitable acknowledgment of the dwindling use of the 81-year-old library’s 45,000-square-foot building and its...
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CBCnews: Google brings its e-books to Canada →
The company says its new e-books store is distinctive because titles purchased there will be stored online and accessible on a variety of devices, including Android and Apple tablets as well as smartphones, PCs and compatible e-readers including the Kobo, Barnes & Noble’s Nook and Sony’s Reader.
Amazon’s Kindle, however, won’t be compatible with titles bought at...
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Publishers Weekly: Survey Says Library Users Are... →
Miller says LJ editors have been amazed by the strength of the findings so far—including the degree to which libraries are boosting book sales. “Our data show that over 50% of all library users report purchasing books by an author they were introduced to in the library,” Miller noted. “This debunks the myth that when a library buys a book the publisher loses future sales. Instead, it...
