Washington DC is joining a growing number of public libraries making their catalog easily available to the growing number of hand-held device users.
This is the first library to create their own iPhone app.
Archive for the 'Craig Neilson' Category
For years the American Library Association has touted the imminent shortage of librarians. This hasn’t really proven to be the case, but the hard economic times make it more unlikely. A recent post on ACRLog provides good context for this issue in the academic community. There’s a backlog of library graduates and a group of graying librarians that are loathe to retire.
“We are far more likely to see large applicant pools chasing a reduced number of openings.”
With the economy in the toilet, and technology producing many options for getting together without getting together, are face to face meetings (a staple of the library world) doomed? Especially the long distance ones?
Are these meetings productive, with the networking, eating, drinking, touring, attending workshops, drinking, eating, touring, etc.
Do they provide an essential library perk?
A couple of folks from Palinet are debating the issue.
What do you think?
Two “tipping points” occurred in 2008. (h/t Stephen Abram) Both will affect the way libraries deliver service.
Ray Matthews says “Newspapers are in deep trouble” and he is right. Pew Research reports that for the first time more people get their news from the internet than from newspapers. (Of course, vastly more get their news from television). A good question would be how much of that internet traffic goes to online sites of traditional newspapers – and how much life there is left in traditional reportage. The internet is filled with “news” blogs and internet “news outlets”, like Worldnet Daily and NewsMax on the right, and Huffington Post and more traditional blogs on the left. Is there still room for traditional journalistic enterprises that at least evince an aura of impartial investigation and objectivity?
And this year, for the first time, shipments of Laptop computers exceeded those of desktops. The familiar desktop computer appears to be going away.
Google and Online Books
The lawyers have spoken the details about Google’s Online Book Project and the rights of authors is now available here.
from the release:
The Authors Guild, the Association of American Publishers, and Google announced the proposed settlement in late October 2008. The settlement, if Court-approved, will authorize Google to scan in-copyright Books and Inserts in the United States, maintain an electronic database of Books, and make various uses of the Books as specified in the settlement. For out-of-print Books and, if permitted by Rightsholders of in-print Books, Google will be able to sell access to individual Books and institutional subscriptions to the database, place advertisements on any page dedicated to a Book, and make other commercial uses of Books. At any time, Rightsholders can change instructions to Google regarding any of those uses. Through a Book Rights Registry (“Registry”) established by the settlement, Google will pay Rightsholders 63% of all revenues from these uses. The settlement also provides for cash payments to Rightsholders of Books and Inserts that Google scans prior to May 5, 2009.
h/t Digitization 101