I’ve been thinking a lot recently about marketing & PR for dig ref services. One of our findings from the NCknows evaluation was that they need to do more marketing to raise awareness of the service around the state & in specific communities. I suggested recently that one reason for the failure of the MIT libraries’ chat service is a disconnect between what the users think the service can offer.. 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
Google Scholar @ UNC, Part 2
Just a quick follow-up on my previous post about Google Scholar @ UNC: if you go to Google Scholar’s Preferences page, you can now select UNC-CH. On that note, there was an article in The Chronicle today about Google Scholar: More Than 100 Colleges Work With Google to Speed Campus Users to Library Resources
The Short Happy Life of a Dig Ref Service
Horowitz, L. R., Flanagan, P. A., & Helman, D. L. (2005). The Viability of Live Online Reference: An Assessment. portal: Libraries and the Academy, 5(2), 239-258. Abstract: The MIT Libraries enthusiastically implemented real-time online reference service in September 2001. After 15 months, Ask Us!-Live was suspended due to ongoing software problems. This article describes the four-part assessment of the service with recommendations for the future. Actually I’ve known 2 of.. Read More
IM apps as the front-end to a chat ref app
Stephen Francoeur asks: Wouldn’t it be cool if your patrons could use an IM client to chat with your web contact center software (such as the versions of eGain offered by Tutor.com and 24/7 Reference or Docutek’s VRLplus)? We know huge percentage of our users are already using instant messaging, but imagine if they could add your library’s chat reference service to their buddy list and then use their IM.. Read More
Certification of Digital Archives Project
RLG Expertise Tapped for Certification of Digital Archives Project The Center for Research Libraries, based in Chicago, has invited Robin Dale, RLG’s digital preservation expert, to be the director of a project that will test ways to audit and certify digital archives. Creating auditing procedures for digital repositories will help ensure the future integrity and accessibility of electronic journals and other scholarly materials. The 18-month Certification of Digital Archives Project.. 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
Moore’s Law, $10,000
1965 magazine edition a hot item, from The Herald-Sun Intel has offered $10,000 for a mint condition copy of Gordon Moore’s 1965 article in Electronics magazine, “Cramming More Components onto Integrated Circuits,” the article that proposed Moore’s Law. Librarians at both Carolina & Duke are quoted, & are handling this very intelligently. “It’s amazing how quickly this made the rounds. Everyone is in a twist over it,” said Linda Martinez,.. Read More
Copyright conundrum
A couple of days ago I got the copyright agreements in the mail for a paper I’ve had accepted to for journal publication. This journal has 2 different copyright agreements, & they let the author choose which to sign: I assign copyright to the publisher, & the publisher handles all reprint & other copyright requests, & maybe submits the article to database publishers & aggregators. I retain copyright, & the.. Read More
Wondir, corrected
Matt Koll wrote me an email this morning with a correction about my Wondir post, now removed from my blog. I wrote: …the really big issue I always had with Wondir is this, in their Terms of Service: The data, text, pictures, sound, graphics, logos, marks, symbols, video, software (whether in source code or object code form), tools, Content and any other materials or information incorporated into, used in conjunction.. Read More