It’s the inevitable crisis of open-access publishing: sustainability. D-Lib Funding D-Lib has been suported by DARPA grant funding for the past 10 years, and now that funding has run out. As a result, our ability to continue to offer the magazine in anything like its current state without charge to either readers or authors may also be coming to an end. …at some point, we simply must find a way.. Read More
Cyberinfrastructure for the Humanities & Social Sciences
The American Council of Learned Societies Commission on Cyberinfrastructure for the Humanities & Social Sciences has released a report on, well, cyberinfrastructure for the humanities & social sciences. Conclusion We should place the world’s cultural heritage — its historical documentation, its literary and artistic achievements, its languages, beliefs, and practices — within the reach of every citizen. The value of building an infrastructure that gives all citizens access to the.. Read More
LISR rocks my world
And not just because I’m on the Editorial Board. Lili & I have a paper in press in LISR & they just sent me the proofs to correct. And lo and behold, you can make edits to the proofs right in the PDF file. Please note that proof corrections can now be annotated on-screen, which allows you to mark directly in the PDF file, and return the marked file as.. Read More
dLIST feeds my ego
I’ve recently discovered the joys of dLIST. This is particularly slow on the uptake of me, since Kristin has been telling me about it for over a year, & Scott is on the Advisory Board. Well, I’m slow but I get there eventually. Anyway I’ve started depositing preprints on dLIST. (See my author page.) Actually Scott beat me to it for the three papers we’ve co-authored. I mean, we know.. Read More
Dead End Street
Let’s hear it for local government! I live on a cul-de-sac in Chapel Hill. (I leave it as an exercise for the reader to determine which one. Extra credit for my Reference students in the Fall if you can find out when we bought the house & for how much.) Anyway, I live on a cul-de-sac. But until today there was no sign to indicate that it is a cul-de-sac… Read More
Google bei Gericht
Google Wins in Germany, from the Chronicle A German court has handed Google’s controversial book-scanning project a significant victory, encouraging a publishing company to drop its efforts to file a preliminary injunction against the search juggernaut. Legal victory for Google in library project, from the Guardian Google argued before the Hamburg court that the display of short snippets from in-copyright books does not infringe German copyright law. The copyright chamber.. Read More
The library as a forum for personal protest?
University Library Reinstates Its ‘New York Times’ Subscription, from the Chronicle In announcing on Friday that the subscription would be reinstated, Mr. Morgan said that he did not believe his use of the university library as a forum for personal protest was inappropriate… It’s amazing, there are so many ways in which I disagree with this statement. The library should not be anyone’s personal soapbox, not even the library director’s… Read More
Uncomplicated
Complexity causes 50% of product returns, from Computerworld Half of all malfunctioning products returned to stores are in full working order, but customers can’t figure out how to operate the devices… …the average consumer in the U.S. will struggle for 20 minutes to get a device working before giving up. This is absolutely the clearest statement for why user testing is important that I’ve seen in a long time. I.. Read More
Redefining the word eye-ball
This rather startling image appeared in today’s CNN World Cup-themed offbeat images: This remined me very much of the cover art from Jean Michel Jarre‘s album Les Chants Magnetiques: And then, free-associating, I thought of the ’80s fashion for which I have no name, but I could think of 3 examples: If eyes are the windows of the soul, I’m not sure what this says about World Cup fans. Or.. Read More
Tiny Bubbles
Actually 620 miles in diameter is not tiny at all. Unless you’re comparing it to the diameter of the Earth. Anyway, this is certainly the weirdest & most compelling headline I’ve seen in a long time. Earth Surrounded by Giant Fizzy Bubbles, from Space.com