Texas Universities Join to Create a Digital Library for Scholars and the Public, from the Chronicle Four Texas university systems and Rice University will collaborate on a digital repository whose goal is to offer online resources, such as teaching aids, dissertations, and practical information, although not books. The repository will be called the Texas Digital Library, but it will not resemble the California Digital Library — not initially, at least… Read More
Google lowers the bar for GIS
Google Maps Make Demographics Come Alive, from AP Geeks, tinkerers and innovators are crashing the Google party, having discovered how to tinker with the search engine’s mapping service to graphically illustrate vital information that might otherwise be ignored, overlooked or not perceived as clearly. …Google charts each point on its maps by latitude and longitude – that’s how Google can produce driving directions to practically anywhere in the nation. Seasoned.. Read More
Reference Extract
This post from Dig_Ref announces the IIS’ launch of Reference Extract: Reference Extract is a targeted web search engine. It is built from the expertise of over 60 AskA services geared to the education audience. The Virtual Reference Desk team has identified high-quality archives of FAQ’s and previously asked questions. These sites were then indexed, and the result is an easy to use, quality oriented search engine: Reference Extract. Some.. Read More
Whitman archive at Duke
New Online Archive Offers Rich Details of Walt Whitman’s Works, from Duke News Contemporary scholars are painstakingly creating a comprehensive new annotated internet archive to enable poet Walt Whitman’s works to reach 21st-century readers in a way not possible before, according to Matt Cohen, assistant professor of English at Duke University and an editor of the Walt Whitman Archive. This is a seriously cool digital library. I call it a.. Read More
Bibliocasting listserv
This post to the Dig_Ref listserv announces the launch of the Bibliocasting listserv, “dedicated to a discussion of streaming media in the library environment.” Brought to you, natch, by the good people at the Information Institute of Syracuse. In an interesting experiment, you can subscribe to the list either by email or as a podcast, thanks to some text-to-speech app. I’ll be interested to see how sig blocks are handled;.. Read More
Grafedia
In teaching my undergrads to use literature databases, I use the analogy that bibliographies are a primitive form of hypertext: they’re a way for one document to reference related documents. Also, like hypertext, they’re uni-directional. This is actually a way for me to introduce students to Web of Science: bibliographies allow you to move backwards in time, but how do you move forwards in time? I get considerable mileage with.. Read More
The Core
I tried to post a comment on Scott’s blog about this, but it seems to have gotten lost in the ether. Probably because I’m not a LiveJournal user. Damn proprietary applications… 😡 Scott posted about an article in Library Journal by Carol Tenopir, in which Carol writes about a recent article of Scott’s (how meta). This article of Scott’s is a study of the readings used in library school courses.. Read More
Googlewhacking Is Good For You
Googlewhackers: Two Words, One Hit, reprinted here from the Boston Globe Crazy as it sounds, Googlewhacking may be good for your mental health. “It’s excellent exercise for many brain centers,” says Allen D. Bragdon, founding editor of Games magazine and author of a number of books on enhancing brain function, including “Exercises for the Whole Brain.” “It requires a high order of a cognitive skill called ‘theory of mind,’ ”.. Read More
Google & Wikimedia
According to this post on SearchEngineWatch, Google has offered to donate servers and bandwidth to the Wikimedia Foundation. This is old news apparently; the first post on Slashdot on this was Feb 10. Slashdot has a link to a very brief unofficial statement from Wikimedia on this. The terms of the offer are currently being discussed by the board… …this agreement does not mean there is any requirement for us.. Read More
The Evil Empire vs. Don’t Be Evil
Microsoft releases Google rival, from CNN Because, as the author of this article from Technology Review, wrote: “Microsoft doesn’t innovate, they just steal other people’s ideas and turn them into mediocre products.” Though this does sound useful: One new capability that Microsoft will be introducing with Monday’s launch is the ability to create RSS, or Really Simple Syndication, feeds that allows users to track search results through an incoming data.. Read More