Mosman Library, NSW, is running a “Mosman Library vs That Search Engine” challenge where the library e-collection is pitted against Google and free e-resources. Each librarian has 45 minutes to research, then 45 minutes to write up their search strategy and answer; then the public can vote on who’s given the best answers (and explain why they made that choice). So far they’re on day 4 of 5 rounds.

S92A of the Copyright Act is coming back – the government will begin a review to amend the controversial section that was repealed earlier this year thanks to Creative Freedom NZ protests.

Mary Ellen Bates writes about resisting budget cuts:

“the next time the library budget was cut, the first thing I eliminated was the popular daily news digest. I announced to all the readers why it was being “suspended”, and asked for their comments on whether this service should be re-funded. Sure enough, it didn’t take long before I had the budget restored. It’s not a pretty process, but neither is eating into the behind-the-scenes budget and not allowing library clients to see the impact of the lost funding.”

Data.gov has been launched in the USA “to increase public access to high value, machine readable datasets generated by the Executive Branch of the Federal Government.”

VUW library and student association are holding a joint fundraiser for the library cat, which underwent expensive surgery for diabetes.

How Scholarly Is Google Scholar? A Comparison to Library Databases (pdf, requires ALA password so on second thoughts Q:\Deborah\stuffs\howland09.pdf will be quicker.)

“We found that Google Scholar is, on average, 17.6 percent more scholarly than materials found only in library databases and that there is no statistically significant difference between the scholarliness of materials found in Google Scholar across disciplines.”

Whiteboard paint to turn any wall into a whiteboard.

Results from usability testing of five next-gen library catalogues.

A motion to make Vancouver an “open city” (using open data, open standards and open source where possible) has passed.

Dorothea Salo has made her slides on Digital preservation and institutional repositories available for viewing online – it’s a really readable look at many of the issues involved.

Deborah

WolframAlpha has a list of example questions it can answer – including music, geography, astronomy, life sciences, various physical sciences, history, socioeconomic data, etc.

There’s also a couple of lists of ‘easter eggs’: here and here. 🙂

Deborah

NZ On Screen gives free online access to selected NZ On Air television. (They also won the Best Entertainment Site award at the 2009 Qantas Media Awards on Saturday.) The World Cinema Foundation has digitised a selection of international films.

Professor Peter Murray-Rust says “The bit of Wikipedia that I wrote is correct.“

Wolfram Alpha has gone live. This is a “computational knowledge engine” – meaning it’s intended to read and parse your question then search its index of facts and put them together to give you an answer (rather than Google which just gives you a bunch of pages which may or may not contain an answer). It’s early days so of course a lot of questions will confuse it, but it does well on things like “How old is Helen Clark?“, “Who directed Dangerous Liaisons?“, “What languages are spoken in India?“, and “What is the meaning of life?“

Christchurch City Libraries has their annual booksale this Friday/Saturday.

Deborah

Lav Notes: help for the stalled (pdf) is a one-side library newsletter posted in library bathroom stalls. A colleague of its author mentions a library which posted butcher paper in the bathroom stalls and invited temporary grafitti. Cheaper than repainting!

Finding Physical Properties of Chemicals: A Practical Guide for Scientists, Engineers, and Librarians (pdf)

From Twitter, “New Zealand music month + free performances = [Dunedin Public Library’s] YouTube channel http://bit.ly/7WgU0 enjoy!”

“University of Oregon Library[‘s] faculty unanimously passed a resolution requiring all library faculty-authored scholarly articles to be licensed CC BY-NC-ND.” That is, they retain copyright but authorise anyone to copy, share and use it so long as they attribute its source (BY), use it for non-commercial purposes only (NC), and don’t change it (non-derivative=ND).

Will UC Library be next? 🙂

Notes from a presentation “on the potential use of mobile devices and cell phones for providing library services and resources“.

More and more people have web-enabled cellphones. What would be the technical issues with creating a small mobile-optimised website? It could have eg library hours and locations, phone numbers and other basic info. A course code/keyword catalogue search and/or a link into My Library Account if the resulting interfaces won’t break the phone entirely (a css stylesheet that strips out the banners for mobile devices?); a link to the main website for the brave. Examples of libraries who’ve done this include:

• University of Virginia
• Ball State University
• Penn Libraries
• Yale Medical Library

Deborah

Sandra just emailed us that ENGR 101 students have a new assignment: “Amongst other things the students are being asked to calculate the volume of the Rutherford Building; and the volume of water passing under the bridge outside the Student union building – in one day.”

This is similar to an assignment last year – see the post I made about the information we had then.

Deborah

Elsevier published 6 fake journals. (Requires free registration to view which is a minor nuisance but more ethical than getting a password from Bugmenot.com. <looks shifty>)

Librarians have investigated the extent of the issue further here and here [Edit: and here], and talked about why librarians should be disturbed. There’s a short discussion about what ethical responsibilities libraries/library organisations might have.

For a bit of Friday Fun (particularly recommended for people who’ve worked with serials) also read discussion on “I think the LSW needs to get Elsevier to publish the Australasian Journal of Library Science.” (LSW is the Library Society of the World, an informal unorganisation, which has a Cod of Ethics and will soon be publishing a zine.)

Deborah

Lessons from the library booth at a local festival: or how not to engage customers”

A blog post on New Citation Rules in the 7th Edition of the MLA Handbook.

Merck makes phony peer-review journal to promote a drug, published by Elsevier.

Google Maps adds historical maps of Japan which turn out to accidentally facilitate discrimination.

A group of students have created a “UC Library needs a makeover” Facebook group.

UCOL tweets that: “UCOL Library now has over 20 wireless laptops students can use anywhere on campus. You can borrow a laptop for up to 3 hours.”

National Library explains Twitter – they compare it to Personal Items columns in early 20th century newspapers, describe the feedback and interaction they’ve had for their account, and talk about how they do it.

A handout on useful chat reference techniques from a workshop held in New York a couple of days ago.

OCLC is launching a new library system based on an extension of Worldcat Local. People are talking about it a lot and breaking down what it actually means.

National Library NZ have made a 4min YouTube video about their giant freeze-dry machine.

A thoughtful post by someone working on screencast database tutorials, talking about ways to make it more attractive to the user by approaching it from the user’s point of view.

Discussion on Friendfeed about: “Why should we go through so much effort and agony to teach undergraduate students to use library-provided subscription databases when the vast majority of them will never again have access to those databases once they graduate?”

What our users think of us:

• I have a search alert for twitter posts from NZ that mention the word “library”; recently someone wrote: “Even better the Macmillan Brown Library at UC has a copy–can show it to my students tomorrow :)”
• Someone in Christchurch, so they’re probably talking about our Law Library, writes: “Never underestimate the power of pointed stares in a silent law library when a phone rings. Looks can kill, along with deftly aimed pens.”

The World Digital Library, recently launched, “makes available on the Internet, free of charge and in multilingual format, significant primary materials from countries and cultures around the world.”

OCLC have released a report on Online Catalogs: What Users and Librarians Want.

A librarian has added links to up-to-date information about swine flu on her undergrad medical libguide – includes a Google Maps mashup, links to official sources, social sources, and news sources. University of Iowa have created a whole Swine Flu libguide.

Deborah