Information Wants To Be Free – Page 44 – A librarian, writer and educator reflecting on the profession and the tools we use to serve our patrons

Google’s Herculean task

Here's an interesting article from the San Francisco Gate about how Google has so far undertaken their Herculean digitization task. According to the article, at the rate they're going at…

libraries random

Teens in the library

Since I was up for a teen librarian position (which I did not get, sigh…) I’ve been thinking a lot about what libraries do for teens. The library I was…

intellectual freedom

Satellite radio safe… for now

According to the Curmudgeony Librarian, the FCC has declined a request by a Saul Levine -- a California radio station owner -- to apply the same standards to satellite radio…

libraries our digital future

Michael Gorman on Google

The ALA president-elect, Michael Gorman, has expressed his opinion on Google print and book digitization in an op-ed piece in today's Newsday. He essentially thinks that the Google deal is…

our digital future random

Discretely blogging

I don’t always agree with everything Free Range Librarian writes, but I think she is pretty darn right in her entry today about confidentiality and discretion. We librarians are all…

intellectual freedom open source our digital future

Where Google leads…

Here is an interesting article I found via Resource Shelf. The Open Archive Initiative (OAI) and Google Scholar by Nick Luft looks at one positive effect Google (and specifically Google…

libraries our digital future

Digital libraries: Full of promise or full of foreboding?

The New York Times has a quite interesting piece today about what we lose and what we gain with the growth of digital libraries. In Questions and Praise for Google…

libraries our digital future search

Lost in the shuffle

This is also huge digital library news, but, with the Google frenzy, they've really been the victim of bad timing. International Libraries and the Internet Archive collaborate to build Open-Access…

libraries our digital future search

Google and the “great digitization”

I’ve been quietly reading about the Google deal with the libraries of Stanford, University of Michigan, Harvard, Oxford, and New York City, and the resultant debates/rants on various blogs. I…

open source

Linux more secure? Look at the statistics.

According to Wired, a four-year study of the 2.6 Linux production kernel by Stanford University researchers has determined that there are 985 bugs in the 5.7 million lines of code.…

our digital future

Oh those creative cable execs! “Transitional fair use”

Apparently, an executive at Time Warner has been shopping around a new idea of fair use that would benefit the television industry. It’s called “transitional fair use.” According to Rick…

our digital future

More on A-list bloggers and why we blog

There has been some blogging about blog popularity this week. Blake of LISNews looked at the popularity of library blogs – within the entire blogosphere and versus other library blogs.…

random

Art by children’s book illustrators for charity

I just found this lovely site with snowflakes created by children's book illustrators. Each snowflake will be auctioned off (on Ebay) to support the Dana Farber Cancer Institute. I'm sure…

libraries our digital future

Can’t see the trees for the forest

Chris Jowaisas of TechnoBiblio brought up an important point about implementing Wi-Fi in libraries (or anywhere for that matter): the need for power. Sure, it's great to have Wi-Fi, but…

Words we can’t use anymore: Add “scholar” to the list

According to Slashdot, the American Chemical Society is suing Google over their use of the title Google Scholar. The American Chemical Society has a product called SciFinder Scholar, and they…

libraries random

Denmark

When I looked at my page stats (which this time actually told me that someone other than my husband was reading my blog – woo hoo!) I found that people…

job search libraries library school our digital future

Graduating today, but still have a lot to learn

Wow, so today is the day I graduate. Being that my whole library educational experience was virtual (except for my internship and a trip to the ALA conference in June)…

our digital future random

Do blogs need a code of ethics?

Karen Schneider of Free Range Librarian has written a thought-provoking piece about blogging ethics. She says that librarian bloggers need a code of ethics because “too many of us want…

open source

Linux vulnerabilities? What vulnerabilities?

I know we always hear about how superior Linux is to Windows in terms of security, but most things I read primarily talk about what is wrong with Microsoft and…

open source

Firefox and its way cool extensions

Are you using Firefox yet? Well, why not? It is has so many advantages over Mozilla. Newsforge has an article about many of Firefox's features including, improved speed, improved security…