Being innovative
Being innovative in using technology with little money and staff is not a difficult thing. Keywords: TechEssence; innovation; Source: This essay was originally published on TechEssence at...
View ArticleOhio Valley Group of Technical Services Librarian Annual Meeting
This essay documents some of my experiences at the Ohio Valley Group of Technical Services Librarian Annual Meeting, Bloomington (Indiana), May 11 & 12, 2006. In a sentence, I believe I saw in this...
View Articlefirst monday on a tuesday: a travel log
This is a brief travel log documenting my experiences at the First Monday Conference "FM10 Openness: Code, science, and content" (May 15-17, 2006). In a sentence, the day I attended (Tuesday, May 16)...
View ArticleWhat is SRW/U?
SRW/U is an acronym for Search/Retrieve via the Web or URL and you might want to think of it as Sonne of Z39.50 sans the federated searching.Keywords: TechEssence; SRU (Search/Retrieve URL Service);...
View ArticleNext generation library catalog
This text outlines an idea for a next generation library catalog. In two sentences, this catalog is not really a catalog at all but more like a tool designed to make it easier for students to learn,...
View ArticleTop Tech Trends for ALA 2006; "Sum" pontifications
This is a list of top technology trends in libraries my very small and cloudy crystal ball shows to me.Keywords: librarianship; Top Tech Trends; Source: This was originally a blog posting on the LITA...
View ArticleRethink the role of the library catalog
It is time to rethink the role of the library catalog.Keywords: next generation library catalogs; TechEssence; Source: This essay was originally published on TechEssence at...
View ArticleJoint Conference on Digital Libraries, 2006
This text outlines my experiences at the Joint Conference on Digital Libraries Annual Conference in Chapel Hill (North Carolina), June 12-14, 2006. In a sentence, the Conference was a nice mix of...
View ArticleAmerican Library Association Annual Meeting, 2006
The American Library Association Annual Meeting of 2007 took place in New Orleans (June 23-27), and this is my travel log.Keywords: New Orleans; ALA (American Library Association); travel log; Source:...
View ArticleInstitute on Scholarly Communication: A travel log
This travel log documents my experiences at the first Institute on Scholarly Communication (July 12-14, 2006) facilitated by both ARL and ACRL. In a sentence, the Institute was a workshop aimed at...
View ArticleBuilding the "next generation" library catalog
How will we, the library profession, build the "next generation" library catalog, and to what degree will the process include vendor support and open source software?Keywords: next generation library...
View ArticleECDL 2006: A Travel log
This travel log documents my experiences that the 10th European Conference on Digital Libraries, Alicante (Spain), September 18-20, 2006. In a sentence, the conference did not present very many...
View ArticleMyLibrary 3.x and a Next Generation Library Catalogue
This, the tiniest of essays, first outlines the fundamental structure of MyLibrary 3.x. It then describes how a database like MyLibrary could be used as a part of a "next generation" library catalogue,...
View ArticleThinking outside the books: A Travel log
This travel log outlines some of my experiences at a conference in Harrisburg (Pennsylvania) entitled Think outside the books: Creating the customer-driven library hosted by PALINET in conjunction with...
View ArticleWhirlwind in Windsor surrounding integrated library systems: My symposium notes
On November 15 Rob Fox and I attended a symposium at the University of Windsor on the topic of integrated library systems. This text documents my experiences, and in a sentence, the symposium...
View ArticleUnordered list of "top tech trends"
This is an unordered list of "top tech trends" from Library Land.Keywords: Top Tech Trends; librarianship; Source: This was originally a blog posting on the LITA Blog at...
View ArticleOpen Repositories, 2007: A Travelogue
This text documents my experiences at the Open Repositories 2007 conference, January 22-26, San Antonio (Texas). In a sentence I learned two things: 1) institutional repository software such as Fedora,...
View ArticleTrip to Rochester to Learn about XC
On February 8-9, 2007 I had the opportunity to visit the University of Rochester River Campus and meet with a number of very smart people to discuss a thing called XC (eXtensible Catalog,...
View ArticleWise crowds with long tails
It is almost trite to be quoted as saying, "The Internet has fundamentally changed the ways libraries do business", but these changes are still manifesting themselves in ways we still do not fully...
View ArticleLeading a large group
The other day someone asked me about how we here at Notre Dame managed a team of 28+ members in regards to our one-year institutional digital repository pilot project (www.library.nd.edu/idr). I did my...
View ArticleSum Top Tech Trends for the Summer of 2007
Listed here are "sum" trends I see Library Land. They are presented in no particular order.Keywords: Top Tech Trends; librarianship; Source: This was a blog posting for the Top Tech Trends panel...
View ArticleOriginal MyLibrary
In the news recently has been talk about Google's "my library", well, don't hesitate to visit the "original" MyLibrary, now hosted at http://mylibrary.library.nd.edu.Keywords: MyLibrary; Source: This...
View ArticleOpen source software at the Montana State University Libraries Symposium
This one-page essay outlines what open source software (OSS) is and how it can be applied to some of the computer-related problems facing libraries. In short, it characterizes open source software as a...
View ArticleCatalog Collectivism: XC and the Future of Library Search
Collections without services are useless, and services without collections are empty. The future of library search lies between these two statements. It is about making search smarter and putting...
View ArticleSuccess of Open Source by Steven Weber: A book review
Using Linux as its primary example, The Success of Open Source by Steven Weber details the history, process, motivations, and possible long-term effects of open source software (OSS). This scholarly...
View ArticleNext Generation Library Catalogs in Fifteen Minutes
A "next generation" library catalog starts with the idea of traditional library catalog and expands it meet the changing expectations of library patrons.Keywords: next-generation library catalogs;...
View ArticleDr. Strangelove, or How we learned to live with Google
On October 26, 2007 the University Libraries of Notre Dame sponsored a "mini-symposium" entitled Dr. Strangelove, or How We Learned to Live with Google. The purpose of the symposium was to discuss...
View ArticleToday's digital information landscape
The main point of this lecture is to bring home a single idea, namely, the what of library and information science has not changed so much as the how. Libraries are still about the processes of...
View ArticleOpen Library Developer's Meeting: One Web Page for Every Book Ever Published
I attended an Open Library Developers Meeting on Friday, February 29, 2008 in San Franciscos Presidio, and this travel log outlines my experiences there. In a sentence, it was one of the more inspiring...
View ArticleNext Generation Data Format
In the United States library catalogs traditionally use the MARC standard for bibliographic records. Many questions revolve around the future of MARC and how it interacts with other metadata standards...
View ArticleIntroduction to the Catholic Research Resources Alliance
This short essay describes the Catholic Research Resources Alliance (CRRA), its purpose, its goals, its functionality, its vision for the future, and some of its existing challenges.Keywords: Catholic...
View ArticleMyLibrary: A digital library framework & toolkit
This article describes a digital library framework and toolkit called MyLibrary. At its heart, MyLibrary is designed to create relationships between information resources and people. To this end,...
View ArticleNext-Generation Library Catalogues: A Presentation at Libraries Australia
The environment of globally networked and commodity priced computers has significantly altered the information landscape. Libraries, once a central player in this environment, have seen their "market...
View ArticleOpen Source Software in Libraries: Opportunities and Expenses
Open source software (OSS) is not a panacea; it will not cure all problems computer. On the other hand, it does provide the library profession with enumerable opportunities as long as we are willing to...
View ArticleTechnology Trends and Libraries: So many opportunities
In the current environment where computers are almost ubiquitously connected to each other and people's expectations regarding access to data and information are increasing, the opportunities for the...
View Article"Next-Generation" Library Catalogs
This presentation outlines some of the possibilities for "next-generation" library catalogs. Specifically it describes the technology behind these applications, enumerates ways they can exploit sets of...
View ArticleOpen source software: Controlling your computing environment
Open source software (OSS) -- free to use, reuse, study, modify, and distribute -- is quickly being adopted by libraries today. From office productivity suites such as OpenOffice to library-specific...
View ArticleImplementing user-centered experiences in a networked environment
In this environment where disintermediation seems to be increasingly common, it is ironic people also expect personalized service. Libraries are experiencing dilemma when it comes to providing many of...
View ArticleMass digitization and opportunities for librarianship in 15 minutes
Assume 51% of your library collections were locally available as full-text. How would such a thing change the processes of librarianship? We have only just begun to explore the possibilities for our...
View ArticleWeb-scale discovery indexes and "next generation" library catalogs
This essay outlines a definition of "Web-scale" discovery indexes and describes how they are interrelated with the ideas of "next generation" library catalogs. It was originally created for webcast...
View ArticleA few possibilities for librarianship by 2015
The library profession is at a cross roads. Computer technology coupled with the Internet have changed the way content is created, maintained, evaluated, and distributed. While the core principles of...
View ArticleIndexing and abstracting
This presentation outlines sets of alternative processes for traditional library indexing and abstracting practices. To do this it first describes the apparent goal of indexing and abstracting. It then...
View ArticleOpen source software and libraries: A current SWOT analysis
After more than ten years of listening and watching the library-related open source software, a number of things have changed. This presentation outlines some of those changes as well as outlines some...
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My integrated development environment (IDE)
My integrated development environment (IDE) consists of three items: 1) a terminal application (Mac OS X Terminal), 2) a text editor (Barebones's BBEdit), and 3) a file transfer application (Panic's...
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Cool hack with wget and xmllint
I'm rather proud of a cool hack I created through the combined use of the venerable utilities wget and xmllint. Eye Candy by Eric A few weeks ago I quit WordPress because it was too expensive, and...
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TEI Toolbox, or "How a geeky librarian reads Horace"
tldnr; By marking up documents in XML/TEI, you create sets of well-structured narrative data, and consequently, this enables you to "read" the documents in new & different ways. Horace, notWho was...
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How to write in a book
There are two files attached to this blog posting, and together they outline and demonstrate how to write in a book. The first file -- a thumbnail of which is displayed below -- is a one-page handout...
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The Works of Horace, Bound
The other day I bound the (almost) complete works of Horace. For whatever reason, I decided to learn about bit about Horace, a Roman poet who lived between 65 and 8 BC. To commence upon this goal I...
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Reading texts through the use of network graphs
You shall know a word by the company it keeps. --John Rupert Firth I am finally getting my brain around the process of reading texts through the use of network graphs. Words in-and-of themselves do...
View ArticleMass digitization (again)
I recently attended a symposium surrounding the topic of mass digitization, and this blog entry summarizes my person observations from the event. On the topic of mass digitization I have a number of...
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