Yay for Adrienne!
January 20, 2008 at 9:09 pm (Special Events)
Reality Check
January 13, 2008 at 9:36 pm (Food for Thought)
This morning, I stumbled upon this video interview with Saad Eskander, the Director of the Iraq National Library. Watch it and remember it the next time you are confronted with an argument that, on the surface, appears important but in the grand scheme of things is actually very insignificant.
Patty
Ownership Issues
January 5, 2008 at 5:18 am (Food for Thought, Technology)
Michael O’Connor Clarke has a great post over at Uninstalled about ownership of content posted inside what he calls “walled-garden” social networking sites like FaceBook and LinkedIn. I think there are mucho implications here for organizations like our libraries that are moving forward with all sorts of user-centric gizmos on these sites. For instance, how much of the nifty RIT Facebook app can Facebook lay claim to? How many people do you think even read the Terms of Service for any of these social networking sites?
Take a quick gander at it then come back here and let’s talk.
Patty
Emerging Tech Opportunity
January 3, 2008 at 1:49 am (emerging technology)
From Kathy Miller at RRLC. I’m going. Anyone else?
Patty
This is a reminder that there will be a meeting at RRLC on Friday, January 18 at 2:30 at RRLC to discuss the University of Rochester’s XC project and determine if there is interest in a regional project that would allow other libraries to participate. This project is of potential interest to all area libraries, including all academic and corporate libraries. The interface being created by the UR project goes well beyond “federated searching”, enabling Web 2.0 capabilities to search and combine a variety of resources. The interface utilizes Open Source software. The [following] memo gives more complete information. Please share the invitation as appropriate with your staff. I encourage you to attend or send a representative to this meeting.
You and members of your staff are invited to attend a meeting to discuss the creation of a collaboration that will allow regional libraries to benefit from new research and development being done at the River Campus Libraries University of Rochester on the eXtensible Catalog (XC). This exciting possibility will be discussed at a meeting on Friday, January 18, from 2:30 – 4:30 pm at the RRLC office. XC is an open-source product that sits on top of your ILS and allows the users to browse your catalog, subscription databases, reserves, institutional repositories and any other resources you designate, in a familiar and interactive Web 2.0 environment, returning a combined search result. The functionality and appearance can be customized for each participating library. With funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the River Campus Libraries at the University of Rochester has been working on this new face to the library “catalog”. Using open-source software applications, the eXtensible Catalog will “provide library patrons with a richer experience when accessing the libraries’ collections by offering them a variety of tools. Users will be able to navigate search results, and add user tags and reviews to documents, among other things.” [Ron Dow, Dean of River Campus Libraries]. A second Mellon grant, this one for $749,000 will allow the Libraries to further build and deploy XC. XC is just the kind of “discovery tool” that libraries need, according to the RRLC Committee on Information Technology (CITE) which recently met to “brainstorm” ideas for new regional projects. Stanley Wilder, Associate Dean at the River Campus Libraries and member of CITE, suggested that local libraries unable to deploy XC on their own might benefit through a collaboration under the auspices of RRLC. RRLC would like to ascertain interest among libraries in an RRLC Local Library XC Consortium, including the possibility of applying for a grant to fund this as a demonstration project. I hope you will be able to attend a meeting on Friday, January 18, 2:30 – 4:30 at RRLC to learn more about this potential regional project. To learn more about the XC project go to: http://www.extensiblecatalog.info/ RSVP to kmiller@rrlc.org, call 223-7570.Thank you
Kathy
