The Distant Librarian

Thoughts on textbook use in distance education

Rebecca has a good post with lots of links and thoughts about whether textbooks are the best way to go in higher education.

Useful Tools - blog software comparison and file sharing

Lifehacker points to these two useful posts today.  The first is a blog software comparison chart from the Online Journalism Review.  If you're thinking about starting a blog as your New Year's resolution, this chart may be helpful in deciding which software to use.  One thing it doesn't include is the cost though, so you'll have to do some additional research on that front.  I guess you won't have to do much research though, as the chart accompanies an article that does include pricing and additional useful information.

The second post looks at 50(!) free file sharing services.  Long ago I looked at YouSendIt, which can be used to send very large files (poor-man's electronic document delivery) to other people w/o breaking an email inbox.  Turns out there are at least 50 of these services, and they're all free!  This list comes from the CreativeGuy, who notes, "Today, I have a list of 50 similar services that are absolutely free and require no e-mail registration to use. Included in the list are file size limits, download limits and the amount of time the file remains on the server for download."

Excellent - definately keeping this one tucked away for future reference.

As an aside, I'm posting this using Performancing for the first time - it's pretty darn slick!  The only thing I don't see here is the ability to trackback, so I may have to enter with the native interface to plug those in...

Technorati Tags: blogsoftware, filesending

Busy Day for Digital Books: News from Amazon and Google

Search Engine Watch reports that Amazon will begin allowing customers to purchase individual pages from certain books: Busy Day for Digital Books: News from Amazon and Google.  Another press release had a great quote showing to whom this is going to be of interest (hint - it's our students):

"For scholars and people who are only interested in specific information, that is probably is a market in the near- to mid-term," she said. "For other people, it's going to be take a while longer. ... Downloading a chapter of a mystery novel doesn't cut it."

Journal Cost-Effectiveness Search

Hmm, here's an interesting tool for those of you with any collection development responsibilities... Journal Cost-Effectiveness Search.

New Interlibrary Loan Feature for WilsonWeb 2.5

I don't see this feature in our version of WilsonWeb, so it obviously needs to be "switched on", which makes sense since it would need to be married to your local ILL system.  We're eventually going to offer one-click ILL through our SFX menu, but if you don't have SFX or similar, and if you allow your distance patrons to use your ILL forms, this might be a nice option.

Read all about it on their press release.

Canadian Electronic Reserves

A new blog with the following tagline: A forum for librarians implementing E-reserves in academic libraries across Canada: Canadian Electronic Reserves.

The Case of the Missing Dissertation

The U of Calgary has the full-meal-deal with ProQuest Digital Dissertations, or I guess it's now called "ProQuest Dissertations and Theses - Full Text".  That means we're supposed to have full access in PDF to pretty much everying in the database from 1997 to present.  Yes, it is nice :-)

The other day though, my colleague Marvel (great name, eh?) found a recent citation that didn't include the PDF, so she placed an order for it through ILL.  They came back and told her it was in fact online, but they found it through the old interface to the product, which they had bookmarked.

Ok, so if it's online in the old interface (you may recall that "online" meant you had to enter an email address and they'd email you a link to download it), why isn't it there in the new?!?  Turns out it is, but there are two hoops that we needed to jump through.

Enough typing - watch this for the full story.

As an aside, I originally tried to use Camtasia Studio to do this screencast, but I could not for the life of me get the audio to work.  I'll write more about that experience later :-(

Amazon.ca Launches "Search Inside"

Amazon.ca Launches "Search Inside" Amazon.ca today announced the launch of its Search Inside! feature which allows consumers to find and discover books by searching the full text inside them, not just matches to author or title keywords.

[via Digital Home Canada]

Wow, this has been available so long (since 2003) on the main Amazon.com site I guess I didn't even realize it was missing from Amazon.ca!  Of course this is a really useful feature for distance students (and their librarians).  Just last week I had a student in Pennsylvania request a book from us; unfortunately because of border delays we don't send books to students outside the country.  I was able to find the TOC on Amazon.com and was able to search for relevant content inside the book.  She then identified one chapter that was really relevant to her needs, and we faxed a photocopy of that off to her - border problem solved!  Surely you've used this tool too?

Canada Library Mail Rate update

Yes, I've been on vacation for the past two weeks - was actually completely offline for at least a week, which is the longest I've gone for 5 years - whew!  It really wasn't so bad  :-)

Here's some document delivery-related news from the Canadian Library Association - there's been some worry that we were going to lose our library book  rate in the near future, but now there's this:

On Friday, July 22, 2005 Minister of National Revenue John McCallum announced the Library Mail Rate would be extended past its scheduled March 31, 2006 expiry. This followed extensive media coverage on Canada Post’s decision to end the Rate. Canada Post had assured CLA that it would not act unilaterally to end the Program but there had been no guarantees of continuity.

CLA President Barbara Clubb is pleased with the Minister’s announcement but noted there are no details on what the Rate will be, how it will be set, nor how the Program will be funded. A series of postings are available on the CLA Web site:

• http://www.cla.ca/issues/lmr_update_july_22_2005_2.htm
• http://www.cla.ca/issues/lmr_update_july_22_2005.htm
• http://www.cla.ca/issues/lbr_update_july_20_2005.htm

Between July 19 and 22, CLA Executive Director Don Butcher did 18 interviews on the Book Rate and its impact on library users with local, regional and national media from coast-to-coast, including CBC Radio, the Globe and Mail, and the Canwest group of newspapers.

CLA and ASTED are continuing to work with Canada Post on the development of an online shipping tool for the Book Rate.

Library clips :: Document Delivery with Furl :: July :: 2005

Library Clips presents an interesting idea to use Furl to track document delivery requests.  In the end the idea is discarded, but I like the thought process. Link: Library clips :: Document Delivery with Furl :: July :: 2005.

Call for contributors #2 - J. of Lib & Info Services in Distance Learning

It's that time again - what may become my quarterly call to see if any gentle readers would like to contribute to the eServices in Libraries column for the Journal of Library & Information Services in Distance Learning.

I have several ideas for topics, but am also interested in you bringing your own ideas to the column.  It's a quarterly publication, which gives us a challenge in that whatever we write about won't hit print for several months.

Information about the journal can be found here, and the last three tables of contents (PDF), which show what was covered in this column in those issues, can be found here, here, and here.  Just to give you a flavor for what's already been covered...

Are you interested?  If so, please drop me an email at ppival@ucalgary.ca

Thanks,  hope to hear from you!

Google Scholar continues to expand (and listen to librarians, it seems)

Gary Price has a great writup called Direct Links to Articles: Be It Resolved that Google Scholar is Now Open to More Libraries on Resource Shelf today.  Really exciting stuff.  In a nutshell, now any library with link resolver software can now ensure that links to their content will appear along with Google Scholar results. 

Google Scholar is also extending the generation of OpenURL links beyond the initial scope of the pilot, which included OpenURLs only for items which had DOIs and PubMed IDs.  Google Scholar will now offer OpenURL links also based on Journal Titles.  This means more results will have links to your link resolver.

Gary mentions that on the results page, "The link will now found directly next to the title of the article or book and in some cases made even more visible by appearing in a different color than other parts of the result entry."  I don't see this happening for U of C results, but we haven't yet given Google our specific holdings, which appears to be a new requirement. 

I'm also noticing a fair bit of new content (dissertations and theses, and content from dSpace, for instance) that I hadn't noticed before in the results.

Something else Greg didn't point out is that Google is inviting folks to include a Google Scholar search box on their own pages.  Not sure if this is working though - I entered the requested information and was returned to the same place after hitting the submit button...

Now I wish for world peace.

Amazon indexing and selling articles?

This may be old news that I missed, but I just happened by Amazon today to attempt a "search inside the book" and the first result I got was actually to an article I could buy for $5.95! 

Here's some of the information that came along with the page:

Editorial Reviews
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

In April 1979, Medical Laboratory Observer published a paper by Dr. Charles H. Altshuler, describing Accessible Information for Diagnosis and Evaluation (AIDE), a microfiche-based system that provided "on-the-spot" education to physicians. AIDE was also used for giving competency examinations and for disseminating teaching materials to other professionals. With AIDE, educational materials were formatted to microfiche and then placed at reading stations within the hospital for ready reference at the time of need.

Book Description
This digital document is an article from Medical Laboratory Observer, published by Nelson Publishing on July 1, 2003. The length of the article is 2737 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Citation Details
Title: Deliver the lesson now: just-in-time training. (Lab Management).
Author: Argie Leach
Publication: Medical Laboratory Observer (Magazine/Journal)
Date: July 1, 2003
Publisher: Nelson Publishing
Volume: 35 Issue: 7 Page: 42(4)

 

Link: Amazon.com: e-Books & Docs: Deliver the lesson now: just-in-time training. (Lab Management). : An article from: Medical Laboratory Observer [HTML].

Orphan Works: Issues and Legislative Strategies

The Association of Research Libraries and the Medical Library Association are offering a free teleconference on Monday, May 2 that deals with orphaned works (details below and more in the link)

What do you do if you can't find the copyright holder of a work (say a photograph, article, or film clip) that you want to use in a book or a Web site? The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) and the Medical Library Association (MLA) are sponsoring an interactive teleconference on Orphan Works, Monday, May 2, 3:00-4:30 p.m. EDT. A panel of experts will discuss various options to address problems associated with and possible strategies for dealing with orphan works, copyrighted works whose owners are difficult or even impossible to locate. Teleconference participants will listen to commentary from each of the presenters--representing diverse constituencies--and have the opportunity to submit questions as part of the live discussion.

Link: ARL/OLMS Organizational Learning Services.

Legal Battle Brews Over Texts on Electronic Reserve at U. of California Libraries

Took me a couple of days to scare up a copy of this article (don't worry if you don't have a copy either, the interesting reading will come later when something actually happens as a result of this head-butting).  There was a quote in there though that raised my eyebrows.  Allan Adler, VP for legal and governmental affairs at the Association of American Publishers (the folks who are leaning on UC San Diego) said,

"he objects even to the notion of electronic reserves.  This is not the old days, he said, when one copy of a reading was at the library, and students had to hike there to read it." 

"We are talking about putting materials in digital form onto a library server, and then allowing students to have access to it as they choose, including in many instances the ability to download and print copies," he said.  "That's not the same thing as traditional reserves."

And of course you know why this quote bothers me, since traditional reserves just don't work for distance students.  And I'm sorry, but couldn't students always make photocopies of reserves material?  I know I did.

Here at the U of C we do ask for explicit permission to digitize every single thing that goes into our electronic reserves.  And we often pay for the privilege of digitizing.  Of course Canada also doesn't have "fair use"... 

Legal Battle Brews Over Texts on Electronic Reserve at U. of California Libraries The Chronicle Of Higher Ed Reports (sorry, subs only) Publishers are objecting to an electronic reserve system at the University of California in which libraries scan portions of books and journals and make them available free online to students. In recent months, lawyers for the Association of American Publishers have sent letters to the university that object to the use of electronic reserves on the San Diego campus. The publishers say that the use of electronic reserves is too extensive, violating the "fair use" doctrine of copyright law and depriving them of sales. "They clearly had a lawsuit in mind when they started contacting our office," said Mary MacDonald, a lawyer for the university system. "Their position was that the 'evidence' showed that we weren't following fair-use guidelines, that this was a national issue, and that the set of facts gave them a good platform from which to take legal action."

[via LISNews.com]