Jeffrey Pomerantz

OCLC + RLG

RLG Proposal to Combine with OCLC–Frequently Asked Questions What’s the proposal? RLG‘s Board of Directors and OCLC‘s Board of Trustees have recommended that RLG be combined with OCLC, effective July 1, 2006. The RLG Board is asking the RLG membership to vote on and affirm this decision. How does the combining of RLG and OCLC further the two organizations’ goals? As RLG and OCLC have grown, a significant overlap has.. Read More

Congress vs. the Association of American Publishers?

Bill Seeks Access to Tax-Funded Research, from the WaPo A smoldering debate over whether taxpayers should have free access to the results of federally financed research intensified yesterday with the introduction of Senate legislation that would mandate that the information be posted on the Internet. The legislation, which would demand that most recipients of federal grants make their findings available free on the Web within six months after they are.. Read More

Charlotte Ada Pomerantz

For those of you who haven’t heard, allow me to introduce my daughter, 5 days old today: No, Charlotte isn’t a family name, & no we didn’t name her after Charlotte’s Web, much as we have always liked the book. The Ada is after Ada Lovelace. So, if I take a long time to get back to you by email these days, this is why. Good thing it’s almost the.. Read More

The Librarian Empire

I’ve been reading A Deepness in the Sky by Vernor Vinge as my bedtime reading recently. For those of you who have not read it, spoilers ahead. Pham Nuwen is a character in this novel, more or less the founding father of the Qeng Ho, a spacefaring trading semi-culture. Sort of an interstellar Merchant Marine, but if the Merchant Marine was not an arm of any government but its own.. Read More

Paleolimnology on Notice

Watching the Colbert Report now & he just did a bit where he put the Journal of Paleolimnology on notice. And he had Ric Ocasek on the show, groovily enough. Anyway, he referred to this article in the Journal of Paleolimnology: Nof, D., McKeague, I., & Paldor, N. (2006). Is There a Paleolimnological Explanation for ‘Walking on Water’ in the Sea of Galilee? Journal of Paleolimnology, 35(3), 417-439. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10933-005-1996-1. And.. Read More

LRRT Ingenta Award: Thwarted

I’m on the ALA Library Research Round Table. The LRRT offers the Ingenta Research Award every year, & the deadline for submitting proposals has just passed, on March 31. Yesterday I got an email from the LRRT Chair that included this: I regret to advise you that we cannot award an Ingenta grant this year. Unfortunately, no one applied for the Ingenta grant and it is clear that we need.. Read More

Submit

Submit a proposal quick, you only have 2 more days. Library Assessment Conference: Building Effective, Sustainable, Practical Assessment, in Charlottesville VA, September 25-27. Charlottesville is probably quite lovely in September, so I’m probably going to submit a proposal. Besides, they only require a 500-word abstract. I can barely clear my throat in 500 words; I’ll knock that sucker off today.

Microsoft Scholar just doesn’t portmanteau as well as Schoogle

Challenging Google, Microsoft Unveils a Search Tool for Online Scholarly Articles, from the Chronicle Microsoft is introducing a new search tool today that will help people find scholarly articles online. … The new free search tool, which should work on most browsers, is called Windows Live Academic Search. For now, it includes eight million articles from only a few disciplines — computer science, electrical engineering, and physics. … Among the.. Read More

Three More Years

Let me take a page out of Scott’s book (Scott’s blog, I suppose… Scott’s blook?), and write a bit about life on the tenure trail. I submitted my materials for my 3rd-year review back in September, and now the process is finally completed! On Friday I got my letter from the Chancellor making my reappointment official. Hooray! I feel the unbearable lightness of being. Ok, so I haven’t exactly been.. Read More