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

Searching handwritten manuscripts and Google

Earlier this month, I had reported on a new way to search handwritten manuscripts that was developed by the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Today, the New York Times has…

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Anyways…

On a much lighter note, you have to check out this funny Fox Trot comic strip about Google's digitization announcement. [From Bibliofuture at LISNews]

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What we have…

I don't know what I could say that hasn't already been said about the disaster in southeast Asia on Sunday. It is a tragedy beyond my comprehension -- easily the…

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Salinas

The New York Times today has a story about the closing of the Salinas Public Library. What a sad situation. In a community comprised of many migrant and blue collar…

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New Cites & Insights and Simpsons puzzle

Hi! The newest issue (Jan '05) of Cites and Insights is out with some commentary on conference blogging, blogging ethics, and a bit on Google Print. Walt Crawford brings up…

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Happy Holidays

This will be my last post before Christmas. My posts may be a bit sporadic until Tuesday as my adorable niece and nephew are coming down for a visit with…

library school our digital future

D-Lib has an article about a new grant-funded partnership between the library and information studies departments at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Indiana University at Bloomington to develop…

our digital future

Digitization’s long-term implications

The Librarian in Black pointed the way to a fabulous tutorial on digital preservation. Anyone interested in the subject should take a look at Digital Preservation Management: Implementing Short-term Strategies…

intellectual freedom libraries

A Net Nanny with an MLS

Wow! In an age of shrinking budgets and shrinking staffs, the Phoenix Public Libraries has secured $175,000 to hire one full time professional librarian and three paraprofessionals to police their…

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Eyes on the prize (money?)

Here is a disappointing story about the licensing and intellectual property rights . The award-winning documentary, Eyes on the Prize, about the civil rights movement, can no longer be aired…

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The sound of silence

I'm not one of those people who really notices the sound my computer makes. All through college I practically slept with my laptop on the bed next to me (how…

libraries our digital future

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…

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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…

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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…