Pomerantz

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JCDL 2006 Call for Volunteers

Posted on 2 August 2005

I’m the Student Volunteers Chair for the JCDL 2006 conference, which will be held here in sunny, scenic Chapel Hill, in the very pleasant middle of June. I just posted to the first call for volunteers to a bunch of listservs, and here it is. Any students out there among My Beloved Audience interested in working at the conference, please apply. Any faculty, librarians, and whatnot out there, please encourage.. Read More

PLoS Bio impact factor

Posted on 1 August 2005

PLoS Biology finally has an impact factor! Measures of Impact, from PLoS Biology …why did anyone submit great work to a journal that didn’t even exist yet, from a publisher with no established reputation? The answer is that it was on the strength of promises made by our in-house editors and academic editorial board to uphold high standards and rigorous peer review, to launch an open-access alternative to the best.. Read More

Zoia Horn

Posted on 31 July 2005

I wrote on Friday that maybe some librarian somewhere would be willing to go to jail to defend patron privacy. Well, K.G. Schneider points out what I did not know, that this has already happened: One of the ironies about Gorman’s comment that he wouldn’t go to jail on behalf of the Patriot Act because he’s an academic librarian (and 64 years old–not that much older than Judith Miller) is.. Read More

Michael Gorman, Judith Miller

Posted on 29 July 2005

US library leader questions Patriot Act, from Reuters Gorman said he would be reluctant to go to jail to defend the implicit trusted relationship between librarians and readers. “To be perfectly honest, I’m a 64-year-old academic librarian,” he said. “I’m not going to go to prison over that kind of stuff.” Now, I certainly don’t want to suggest that I think Gorman should go to jail, or even that he.. Read More

IFLA meeting on Virtual Reference

Posted on 29 July 2005

This announcement was posted to the Dig_Ref list yesterday: Think globally… Ask locally. Building national and international co-operative virtual reference networks. If you will be attending the IFLA general conference in Oslo, Norway (August 14-18, 2005), we invite you to participate in a discussion with your colleagues around the world as we explore the possibilities for the next level of international co-operation, across and between national virtual reference services. Coordinators.. Read More

Paul’s new job

Posted on 28 July 2005

Library To Expand Digital Collections Duke Libraries is expanding its collection of digital images, books, articles, videos and recordings. Leading this Digital Asset Initiatives effort is Paul Conway, who recently was promoted to the newly created position of director of digital asset initiatives. He previously was the director of information technology services at Perkins Library.

Microsoft Research Memex RFP

Posted on 27 July 2005

Coinciding with the 60th anniversary of Vannevar Bush’s article As We May Think, Microsoft Research has put out an RFP the new Digital Memories (Memex) program: the Digital Memories (Memex) research kit gives a jump-start to perform research around storing all of an individual’s lifetime information, novel capture methods (for example, Bush’s head-worn stereo camera), linking of information, and use of meta-data. … We invite all proposals that deal with.. Read More

Blogs & Dig Ref

Posted on 24 July 2005

The latest news out of the IIS is that they’re working on linking WordPress to QABuilder (QABuilder is the IIS’ web-based dig ref app), as a project for AskNSDL. They’re calling this “Story Starters.” The idea of a reference blog is of course something that Fred and I have been thinking about for a while now. But Story Starters has an interesting twist that we never considered. Fred and I.. Read More

Fictional chickens

Posted on 23 July 2005

For reasons far too complex and weird to go into, I just now stumbled across what has to be one of the more unlikely categories in Wikipedia: Fictional chickens. There are actually a lot more of these than one might expect.

The memex

Posted on 23 July 2005

Others have already noted that it was recently the 60th anniversary of Vannevar Bush’s article As We May Think. This post is really just an excuse to use this image of the memex. But while I’m on the subject, let me make this comment: I’ve always believed that Bush believed that someone would come up with a better name for his proposed device eventually. That if this device was ever.. Read More