The Distant Librarian

Ultimate Guide to the Invisible Web

Continuing on the vein of their Research Beyond Google page, the Online Education Database has recently posted The Ultimate Guide to the Invisible Web, which looks like a really good resource.  There you will find background on the concept of the invisible web, 9 reasons a web page is invisible, 10 ways to make invisible content visible, and how to access and search for invisible content.  Good stuff!


Technorati Tags: research, invisible_web, deep_web

Speeling in Higher Ed

Speeling.jpg
Originally uploaded by ppival.

Happened to be walking past the vending machines in the library this AM and snapped this loverly picture with my laptop's camera.

5 things

Well it's been a while since I played, and I think I ignored his last tag, so I daren't do it again.  D'Arcy has tagged me with the 5 things you probably don't know about me meme.  Now I could cop out, since pretty much none of you really know anything personal about me, but I'll be good :-)

1. I have lived in every time zone in the continental USA plus SE Alaska, and that includes 8 States and 1 Province.
2. I once caught a salmon with my bare hands.  That was, of course, while in SE Alaska, and the less impressive part is that it was a spawning salmon, nearly dead, and I didn't know until later that I shouldn't have been in the stream at all, let alone screwing around with spawning salmon!
3. I played Zuma until after midnight last night.  Curse you, Tod Maffin, for the introduction!
4. My wife and I met at a library conference and the story has been captured forever in a book (not a whole book, just a brief entry).
   
5. My fingerprints are on file with the FBI.  (related to #1?)

Not going to tag anyone this time - feel free to play if you want :-)

Google offers to digitize journal back runs!

Well this is interesting, and if you're not a journal aggregator, good news. According to Peter Suber, Google is offering to digitize and provide OA to the back runs of scholarly journals!  Peter's got all the details on his site, but I'll jump right to one of his comments towards the bottom that says, "I don't see a downside for journal that doesn't already have a digitized back run.  Google will charge nothing to do the job, the contract is non-exclusive, and it needn't include current issues.  The only journals that might hesitate are those already selling online access to their back runs and happy with the revenue."

Off to forward this information to several professors on campus who are involved with journals...

(originally found via Michael Geist's blog)

Update: Dorothea Salo's not very pleased with what's known about this project.  You can read her post here, and Peter's followup here (Dorothea doesn't allow comments on her blog)  (nor does Peter, for that matter).

Technorati Tags: Google, Digitization, Journals

Embedding Flash in a wiki

Chad at Library Voice posts about an extension for MediaWiki that allows Flash to be embedded.  He was originally looking for a way to embed a MeeboMe widget, but after I asked he determined that it could just as easily be used to embed a screencast.  Cool, thanks Chad!


Technorati Tags: Flash, MediaWiki, Screencasts

ebooks vs pbooks

In a meeting this AM one of my colleagues wondered aloud how close we were to having a majority of books available online.  The consensus was not very close yet, and Walt Crawford happened to offer some statistics today to corroborate that.  And in a segue that would only happen in my mind, BoingBoing also offers a reason why pbooks aren't going away immediately.


Technorati Tags: books, ebooks

CFP: Journal of Access Services

I'm on the board of editors for the Journal of Access Services, and one of my roles is of course to drum up business.  There's a special issue coming up you might want to consider: Best Practices in Access Services.  Laurie the Librarian has all the details.  Deadline is Feb 1, 2007.


Technorati Tags: JAS

Synchronous Learning Expert Online Program

Even though it's steeply discounted, this one's too expensive for me, but if you've got no other way to get up to speed on teaching in an online environment, this is probably a really good way to go. 

Synchronous Learning Expert Online Program
Description: WebJunction and Insync Training Present a professional development program in e-learning for library professionals who wish to master the design and facilitation of live, online training.

Who should enroll?
The curriculum is appropriate
for anyone who has a need to deliver and/or design synchronous online
events, whether these are formal training or presentations. You may
individually enroll in either the Synchronous Facilitation Certificate or the Synchronous Design Certificate, if you don’t wish to commit to completing the entire program at this time.

Technorati Tags: Webjunction, Training, Librarians, Distance_Education

They blog from the Land Down Under...

The nominees for the 2006 Edublog awards have now been announced; voting closes on Saturday, December 16th, so look quick!  (it's not entirely clear to me, but I think you pop an email to [email protected] with your vote(s)).  Of the 5 nominees for Best Library/Librarian Blog, 3 are from Australia, one (bookseller) from Switzerland, and one from an elementary library information specialist in Tennessee.


Technorati Tags: Edublogs, Librarians, Awards

Tim says Book Search Should Work Like Web Search

Tim O'Reilly, long a proponent of Google Book Search, has a post in which he laments the fact that books housed in the different book scanning projects (Google Books, OCA, Amazon Search Inside) are not searchable by search engines other than those provided by their hosts.  Surely it will only be a matter of time before these databases are included in the link resolvers and their brethren?


Technorati Tags: Google, Books, Scanning, OpenURL, Umlaut

The greatest digital library Canada has ever seen!

 

This is a scan of a thank-you ad that appeared in this past weekend's local paper.  On Friday, December 8, it was announced that Don and Ruth Taylor had donated $25 million to what was until then known as the Campus Calgary Digital Library, and is now known as the Taylor Family Digital Library.  The announcement was handled really well, and Don was very heartfelt in his brief statement about why he donated the money to this project.

Neat stuff coming in Calgary!

Idea for Screencasting on YouTube

Well I couldn't get it to work in the 2 minutes I had left at the end of the day to play with it, but YouTube now allows you to record yourself from within YouTube, using your own webcam.  So what's the next obvious choice?  Allow you to record your own desktop directly to YouTube!  I wonder if this would take care of the problem folks have of fuzzy screencaptures after conversion?  Time will tell - I predict this feature will be made available in February '07.  Early February.  Maybe February 2nd.


Technorati Tags: Screencasting, YouTube

Your own personal repository

So you say you work at a smaller academic institution without an institutional repository, or even in a non-academic setting?  But you still publish work related to Library and Information Science?  Have I got a site for you!  I know I'm not the first to find it, but I haven't seen it mentioned as much as it should be.

The site is E-LIS, The Repository for E-prints in Library and Information Science.  In a nutshell it's an international full text open-access repository for material (papers, presentations, etc) related to library and info science.  The long "about E-LIS" story is here.

So what's so cool about it?  1) Full text material related to your area of interest/expertise; here are 47 items related to "distance education" (GASP!  There are distance librarians outside of North America!).  2) A place for other people to access your writings and presentations; deposit here and you'll be famous; crawled by Google AND Libworm!  3) Usage statistics; see how many folks are accessing your material, or material in general.  Holy cow, look at the usage statistics!

If you've published and are unsure whether you're allowed to post your material in a repository, check the SHERPA RoMEO Publisher copyright & self-archiving policies list.

Please give it a look, and please consider popping some of your material up.  Oh, and even if you DO have your own institutional repository, you can still duplicate your material here.


Technorati Tags: Open_Access, Library_Science, E-LIS, Scholarship

The Ubiquitous Librarian questions his ubiquitousness

Bummer of a week for the birthday boy (I know this from his Facebook account)!  Brian Mathews explains in his most recent post how everything he knew is wrong (or at least everything he's been suggesting you do with Facebook is wrong), but while he's down, he's not yet out.  Stay tuned to see where he pops up next.  Hang in there, Brian!


Technorati Tags: Facebook, Librarians

Get paid $100/hour to search Google

Wow, that really sounds like spam, doesn't it!  Hope I don't end up on blacklists for anyone receiving my posts via email...

Anyhoo, I don't know how to land such a choice gig, but Jon Udell has an interesting post about what goes on in his mind as he works through internet searches that are more complex than the average.  It starts with a brief anecdote about a friend who, as part of tech support for a software company, basically charges $100/hour to search Google.

But that's not the point of the post.  It's really interesting, as a librarian, to peek in on how Jon and his commenters modify their searches on the fly.  He does pretty much what we do w/o thinking.  But it's the fact that he's trying to break it down and think about why he's searching what he's searching that's interesting to me.  In one example he's trying to glean information from an audio file where the person's name was unclear.  In the comments is a classic reference question where only tiny bits of information are provided to the searcher.

Delicious seems to be down right now so I can't see exactly what he has in mind, but Jon plans to track his search thoughts there, and is asking for you to do the same.  Interesting exploration.


Technorati Tags: Search, Strategies, Librarians