Dublin's building boom damages library stock

Dublin's building boom puts priceless books in danger
The recent prosperity and development of the capital of Ireland is causing major problems for one of the city's most venerable institutions, the library of Trinity College, Dublin. The university has discovered to its dismay that a quarter of a million books, many of them irreplaceable and dating from the earliest days of print, have been damaged by building dust. 

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Librarian of the Year

Rivkah Sass—Librarian of the Year 2006
Risk taker, change agent, library true believer  

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Information Literacy - questions to ask

INFORMATION LITERACY: FOOD FOR THOUGHT
 by Marylaine Block  Students sometimes seem to have a kind of magical view of the net, without a great deal of understanding of the information landscape on it and beyond it. The invisible net (and the visible library) remain largely invisible to them, because they appear to believe everything they need to know is available for free with a simple Google search -- and, if they don't find it there, that it doesn't exist at all.   My guess, though, is that, if absolutely forced to think about it, they'd readily admit this is not the case. So I'm offering here a few leading questions to ask at the start of information literacy sessions that might force students to examine their assumptions.  
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Libraries Australia

Libraries Australia is a modern Internet-based service for Australian libraries and their users. It provides access to the national database of material held in Australian libraries, known as the Australian National Bibliographic Database. You can search for any item and locate which library in Australia holds it. Gateways to other major library databases are also provided. It is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Light weight protocols and open source tools in digital library collections

Exploiting "Light-weight" Protocols and Open Source Tools to Implement Digital Library Collections and Services
Xiaorong Xiang and Eric Lease Morgan This article describes the design and implementation of two digital library collections and services using a number of "light-weight" protocols and open source tools. These protocols and tools include OAI-PMH (Open Archives Initiative-Protocol for Metadata Harvesting), SRU (Search/Retrieve via URL), Perl, MyLibrary, Swish-e, Plucene, ASPELL, and WordNet. More specifically, we describe how these protocols and tools are employed in the Ockham Alerting service and MyLibrary@Ockham. The services are illustrative examples of how the library community can actively contribute to the scholarly communications process by systematically and programmatically collecting, organizing, archiving, and disseminating information freely available on the Internet. Using the same techniques described here, other libraries could expose their own particular content for their specific needs and audiences.  

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Do libraries matter?

Do libraries matter? The rise of Library 2.0
http://www.talis.com/downloads/white_papers/DoLibrariesMatter.pdfA white paper by Ken Chad and Paul Miller.

Directory of Open Access Journals

The Directory of Open Access Journals covers free, full text, quality controlled scientific and scholarly journals. It now has 2000 journals of which 495 are searchable at article level.

The future of Wikipedia

Can Wikipedia Survive Its Own Success?
It's not easy being Wikipedia, a free web encyclopedia created and edited by anonymous contributors. Just ask founder Jimmy Wales, who has seen his creation come under fire in only a few short months as the site fends off vandalism and charges of inaccurate entries. But Wikipedia, founded in 2001 as a non-profit organization, has become a big enough presence that it raises a number of interesting questions, including: Just how accurate is free content, given recent events at Wikipedia? Does the aggregate 'wisdom of the crowd' trump the expertise of knowledgeable individuals? Does Wikipedia's policing mechanism work? And does the controversy over Wikipedia merely reflect further tension between old and new media? Wharton experts, along with Wales, offer some answers.
http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/1361.cfm

Searching for online articles

Finding Articles Online
Most researchers are familiar with the value-added online services such as Dialog and Factiva; I also covered Yahoo's Search Subscriptions service which lets you search a number of the fee-based online services without a subscription. See my July 2005 Search Tip of the Month for more details.
But there are other options for conducting preliminary research, particularly in the academic, scholarly and sci-tech areas, that aren't as consistently available in full text through the fee-based online services. The following is a list of some of the services I have found useful, particularly for more obscure topics.  
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Flickr and the library pictures

Flickr and the library pictures
More interesting work from the National Library of Australia.
Now FlickR and the National Library of Australia are embarking on an exciting initiative to offer individuals the opportunity to include their images of contemporary Australia in the PictureAustralia service through FlickR. By adding images to this group, individuals are able to, for the first time, contribute to and enrich a valuable collection which has so far been the sole domain of large collecting institutions. This is done by collecting the metadata and thumbnails from this group and loading them into PictureAustralia each week

. [Flickr: PictureAustralia: Australia Day]

Google books online

Google mulls online book future
Google has suggested it may consider setting up an online book store. Google CEO Eric Schmidt told reporters at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas that this would depend on permission from copyright holders.  
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Anatomy of a book?

Some of nation's best libraries have books bound in human skin
PROVIDENCE, R.I. --Brown University's library boasts an unusual anatomy book. Tanned and polished to a smooth golden brown, its cover looks and feels no different from any other fine leather.But here's its secret: the book is bound in human skin.A number of prestigious libraries -- including Harvard University's -- have such books in their collections.  

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Behaviour Management Library style

Library bars kids with no adult chaperone
WICKLIFFE - Libraries have tried monitors, private guards and even Bach and Beethoven to control crowds of rowdy kids. Now one Northeast Ohio library is insisting that children be accompanied by an adult during after-school hours.  

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Information Highways Conference

Information Highways Conference
Information Highways, Canada's premier e-content industry conference is preparing for another successful event. Produced by the e-Content Institute since 1989, the Information Highways Conference and Showcase is the pre-eminent learning and networking vehicle for Canadian strategic thinkers, decision makers, business managers and professionals in the areas of digital content, knowledge, information and document management, information services, e-learning, collaboration and business intelligence. Held annually, the conference has an established reputation for creating high quality, market responsive and strategic programming aimed at the organizations and professionals, who buy, use, manage and create e-content and digital media solutions.

Library and Information Industry trends

"Wrapping Up 2005; Looking  Forward"
http://www.infotoday.com/newsbreaks/nb060102-1.shtml
“2005 was quite a momentous year, by almost any measure-devastating hurricanes, earthquakes, floods, the ongoing war in Iraq, worldwide terrorist attacks, a new pope, changes in the Supreme Court, political wrangling, data thefts, scandals, and more. Possibly the biggest headlinesfor the year in our world-the library community and the informationindustry-centered on the various content digitization efforts, particularlyGoogle's book scanning project, and the reactions of publishers andlibraries. The biggest drivers of the news were not traditional informationindustry companies but "GYM"-Google, Yahoo!, and Microsoft. Of the 88NewsBreaks posted this year on the http://www.infotoday.com site, 24 (or 27percent) covered news from these three or another Internet search company,such as Ask Jeeves, AOL, blinkx, or Amazon. Another 12 articles coveredcontent/service offerings from startups or ot her companies not consideredto be "traditional" content providers, including companies like Newstex,Healthline, Inform.com, Answers.com, and PubSub.”  Article continues
(You can review the full list of NewsBreaks at http://www.infotoday.com/newsbreaks.)

Movie script database

Motion Picture Scripts Database “The Motion Picture Scripts Database provides a searchable interface to the film script holdings of six Los Angeles-area collections: the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the American Film Institute, the Frances Howard Goldwyn Hollywood Regional Library, the University of California at Los Angeles, the University of Southern California, and the Writers Guild Foundation.  This database is limited almost exclusively to the screenplays of produced films; that is, films which were actually made.  The only exception is the inclusion of a few published scripts of unproduced films.” 

Patrons as technical advisors

Technology advisory boards for libraries
“One of the ways that libraries can engage their patrons in the process of building out the technical infrastructure inside library buildings and in online services is to create volunteer technology advisory boards which convene on occasion to give tech staff a chance to meet with and talk to techie patrons in the community.
This process can be as simple as networking from your staff and board and Friends of the Library to find the people they know who have tech expertise, and can be extended out in larger cities and bigger organizations to reach out to executives in tech companies in the area.”  Post continues

The Open Library website

The Open Library website was created by the Internet Archive to demonstrate a way that books can be represented online.
The vision is to create free web access to important book collections from around the world.Books are scanned and then offered in an easy-to-use interface for free reading online. If they're in the public domain, the books can be downloaded, shared and printed for free. They can also be printed for a nominal fee by a third party, who will bind and mail the book to you. The books are always FREE to read at the Open Library website.
The Internet ArchiveThe Internet Archive offers all media: text, audio, moving images, web content and even software for public use. The content ranges from fantastic to obscure. Please have a look.

Bookgroup for kids

Talk it Up!
Starting a bookgroup for kids? This is a great place to start. Talk it Up! provides information about how to start and run a bookgroup and over 150 discussion guides to use with specific books.
Need more ideas?
We've prepared many booklists for kids to help you make your reading selections.

American rhetoric

Online Speech Bank
“Index to and growing database of 5000+ full text, audio and video (streaming) versions of public speeches, sermons, legal proceedings, lectures, debates, interviews, other recorded media events, and a declaration or two.”The website can be searched by subject, such as Christian rhetoric, movie speeches and 9-11 speeches.  There are  over “200 short audio clips illustrating stylistic figures of speech ranging from alliteration to synecdoche. Clips are taken from speeches, movies, sermons, and sensational media events and delivered by politicians, actors, preachers, athletes, and other notable personalities.”  Check out the “100 most significant American political speeches of the 20th century, according to 137 leading scholars of American public address… Find out who made the cut and experience the power of rhetorical eloquence in this provocative list of "who's who" in American public address.”

And the most demanded out of print book is ...

Thanks Gary and Resourceshelf for this one.  The list of  Top 10 out of print books of 2005 is headed by …. Of course  ….  Sex  by Madonna.