From the Tribune:
Proposed changes in the Patriot Act would set up safeguards for the nation’s library patrons and let librarians seek legal help if federal investigators demand patrons’ records, the head of Chicago’s library system and U.S. Sen. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) said Sunday.
Google has released a Google Maps API.
Google has officially launched the Google Earth beta. I’ve been playing with it for a little while and it’s an extremely cool application. 3D terrain, on-map roads, restaurants and hotels. It’s like Google Maps on steroids. Best of all, there’s a free version that basically does everything a normal user would […]
From CNN
In MGM v. Grokster, the high court unanimously overturned a ruling that had barred Hollywood and the music industry from suing Internet services used by consumers to swap songs and movies for free.
“One who distributes a device with the object of promoting its use to infringe copyright … is liable for the resulting acts […]
From WSJ
The Penguin Classics Library Complete Collection, consisting of 1,082 books. List price: $13,317.74. Discount price: $7,989.99. Never has a 40% discount seemed quite so weighty.
Speaking of weight, we’re talking about 700 pounds of books, according to Amazon, which offers some other stats in its editorial review: The books contain nearly half a million pages, […]
As you can probably tell I’ve been busy and vacationing, so thanks to Mark Leggott for pointing out a great couple of articles in the last Tech Review by Lessig and Epstein debating who owns ideas.
Bill Drew points to the WikiProject Librarians page at Wikipedia. Intro:
We librarians flatter ourselves that we know a thing or two about organizing information. It’s time we stepped up and contributed to Wikipedia: not just to its content but to its structures and technologies. This project page is intended to provide a rallying point […]
Google has updated the support for link resolvers and WorldCat in Google Scholar. From the new about page:
Support for Institutional Access
For libraries that make their resources available via a link resolver, we are now offering the option to include a link for their patrons to these resources as a part of the Google […]
The Encyclopedia of Chicago is now online. The Encyclopedia is a joint project between the Chicago Historical Society, Newberry Library and Northwestern University and has a hugely popular dead tree counterpart.
From Eric Hellman of Openly:
I think that libraries should consider returning to their historic roots that have nothing to do with “search”.Forget search- a billion dollars says that Google and Amazon will do search way better than any real library on the planet, and libraries can now leverage these searching capabilities in very real ways.
What […]
from the NYTimes:
By mid-July, the university says, almost all of the library’s 90,000 volumes will be dispersed to other university collections to clear space for a 24-hour electronic information commons, a fast-spreading phenomenon that is transforming research and study on campuses around the country.
This article came to my attention in a posting from a professor […]
Jakob Nielsen writes:
Summary:
Users now have precise expectations for the behavior of search. Designs that invoke this mental model but work differently are confusing.
Search is such a prominent part of the Web user experience that users have developed a firm mental model for how it’s supposed to […]
On Web4Lib list yesterday Bernie Sloan posted a March Library Journal article by WebFeat president Todd Miller on why libraries should be simple like Google. Tom Miller is eloquently saying what many other have also said: the library web tools aren’t working. Users don’t like them and don’t want to use them. […]
My Architect (IMDb) is the 2003 documentary on architect Louis Kahn created by his son, Nathaniel Kahn. A few of the buildings were spectacular, but the Exeter Library at the Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire stood out as particularly interesting. I’ll be up in the area next month and might visit […]
Old news in internet years (last week):
In a stand against a deal struck by five of the world’s top libraries and Google to digitize millions of books, 19 European libraries have agreed to back a similar European project to safeguard literature.
European Libraries Fight Google-ization
Deutsche-Well 4.27.5
New Scientist reports that Google has filed for patents related to adding authority as a factor in Google News rankings.
In the latest Cites & Insights, Joy Weese Moll put together a nice overview of a presentation on Google’s library-related endeavors given at the ACRL conference.
Boing Boing links to a short article discussing how DRMed audiobooks shut out affordable housing tenants for whom GNU/Linux machines have been set up to use.
Another story of copyright running amok. BB links to an article discussing a new Ghanian copyright bill that aims to collect royalties on commercial uses of folklore. Creepy.
Apparently we got one of these phone calls yesterday.
Bogus publishing companies and bill-collecting operations have college librarians across the country reading up on a new subject: financial scams.
Last July, the Federal Trade Commission filed a lawsuit against Pinacle Publishing and MDSC Publishing—two lucrative scamming operations—for using illegal telemarketing maneuvers against a number of institutions, including […]