The Distant Librarian

Unified Discovery Services

As we continue to charge towards the Taylor Family Digital Library here at the U of Calgary, the idea of unified discovery services is suddenly popping up frequently in casual (work) conversations and meetings.  This is especially relevant at the UofC as our umbrella organizational structure is called Libraries and Cultural Resources (LCR) and consists of the Library, Archives, Museum, and University Press.  We desperately want to be able to allow our users to search across all our collections, not just bibliographic. 

One of the products we're interested in is Summon, by Serials Solutions.  I just watched a 5-minute marketing video, and liked what I saw (though of course that's the purpose of a marketing video, eh?).  Primo is another example of this newish type of beast, and just earlier this week at the Code4Lib conference Bess Sadler of UVa presented Blacklight as a unified discovery platform (slides in PDF).  Holy cow, I just stumbled across Blacklight when trying to come up with any more examples for this post, and I think I'm in love! 

<post hijack>http://blacklight.rubyforge.org/

Blacklight is an open source OPAC (online public access catalog). That means libraries (or anyone else) can use it to allow people to search and browse their collections online. Blacklight uses Solr to index and search, and it has a highly configurable Ruby on Rails front-end. Currently, Blacklight can index, search, and provide faceted browsing for MaRC records and several kinds of XML documents, including TEI, EAD, and GDMS. Blacklight was developed at the University of Virginia Library and is made public under an Apache 2.0 license.

Try using Blacklight in a UVA Library experimental interface. Download the source code. And join the mailing list to stay updated on new developments and releases.</post hijack>

Ok, where was I going...  Crap, I got so sidetracked by Blacklight that I completely forgot where I was going with this post.

Well, I guess stay tuned.  There are some starter links for you to explore.  Are you guys coming along for this ride, or do you only care/need to search bibliographic records?

Second thoughts on Shortcovers

Yesterday I blogged about the new Shortcovers service. 

Last night I read a short  story and have the following observations.  I like how I can browse the website from my desktop, bookmark titles, and then have them appear on my iPhone for reading.  (I can also, of course, browse and bookmark from the iPhone). 

I don't like having to scroll down to read, then click next page, then repeat.  I'd much prefer something that would present a screen at a time, and advance each time I tap the screen, or something that would scroll the text at a pre-set speed or something. 

And finally, I really hate the overlay of bars at the top and bottom of the screen - those just have to be hidden while I'm reading.  Still got some potential here though, so far so good.

Shortcovers - mixing traditional and local publishing

I've only just started to play with it myself, but early today, Shortcovers.com opened for business.  Run by Canada's Chapters/Indigo book chain (though oddly not mentioned on their homepage), Shortcovers is the first solution for buying e-books on the go outside of the Kindle platform.  They have apps for the iPhone and BlackBerry, with Android in the works, and you can also read on their website.

The idea is to be able to buy either entire books to download to your mobile device, or in some cases a chapter at a time.  The first chapter is always free. 

You can upload content as well, though I haven't explored how that all works, or whether you can set the content to be free or charge whatever you want. 

I'm puzzled as to why books seem more expensive through Shortcovers than through traditional channels.  Outliers, for example, costs $17.04 on the Chapters/Indigo website, but $19.09 on Shortcovers (though only $15.50 on Amazon.ca, sigh).  I guess I'm paying for the convenience of getting it right now (though I don't know how long the book would take to download, or if I'd want to pay for it to arrive over the air as opposed to wifi).  I dunno, I think I would've launched with some sort of deep discount, or subscription plan maybe. 

They have options for subscribing to all content by a certain author, and lots of social networking sharing options, so it seems as though they're trying hard to build community around the product.  They've got a blog, and they tweet; doing all the Web 2.0 stuff right, but I don't like that overpricing...

My virtual buddy MCM has just posted his thoughts from the small author's point of view.

So I'll keep playing with it and let you know if it really grabs me.  I sure like the idea though!  If you're in the States, and if they're charging Cdn dollars, as it appears, it's gonna be a great deal for you folks in the US, so try it out from there, eh!

Not sure yet what, if any, implications there are for libraries yet, but if the booksellers can adapt to the mobile platform, surely we can too!  Maybe offer a digitization program where the content is optimized for mobile devices on the fly?

Anyhoo, check it out.

Is ProQuest missing the boat with mobile SafariBooksOnline?

Earlier this week, Safari Books Online launched a mobile interface to their product at http://m.safaribooksonline.com.  The University of Calgary has an institutional subscription to Safari Books Online via ProQuest, and I naively assumed after we threw this new URL into our ezproxy configuration I'd be able to access the new site via my iPhone. 

Nope.  When I get to the site I'm asked for a login and password.  I contacted ProQuest Technical Support and was told "The Mobile version of Safari Online is not available with an institutional account. I can send this on to the Product Manager as an enhancement but would not be able to give a time frame for when or even if it would be implemented."  Sigh.

So I've also sent a request to [email protected] and to [email protected].  This is something I'd like to use to promote the innovation that's going on in the library world to our techie users.   In fact I'm already on the agenda to present about this to our campus Information Technology Advisory Group (see naively assumed above).  Don't you think ProQuest would like to be able to advertise they're the first to offer a major database specifically formatted for the mobile platform?  Or maybe they're not - are you aware of any others?

C'mon ProQuest, take the lead on this one!  (my presentation is scheduled for April 17th - can you let me know before then please?)

Now THIS is how to promote your collaboration suite!

Wimba, one of several collaboration suites (like WebEx, DimDim, or Elluminate), may have just stumbled upon a winning way to get people to try their product: make it entertaining!  Their next open meeting is called What to Expect When We’re Exploding: Different Religions’ Beliefs about the End-Times

March 5, 2009 12:00 pm MST

Presenter: Rob Kutner, The Daily Show

The faithful getting a skybox to watch the ultimate Jesus-Satan grudge match. A “massive transformation” to take place in 2012. The Earth covered in a giant spiderweb and slammed with a great blue star. For every belief system in our world, there’s a belief how it will end. Can only one be right and more importantly, have you subscribed to it? Rob Kutner, author of Apocalypse How, tells you everything you need to prepare for the ultimate “told ya so!”

Rob Kutner is an Emmy-award-winning writer for The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, and a contributor to America: The Book. He has written humor and feature pieces for the New York Times, LA Times, Washington Post, Esquire, and Maxim, and has a “go bag” at the ready in his New York apartment. 

Rob's book is for sale at: http://www.apocalypsehowthebook.com/

Enjoy this presentation as we take a slight departure from the regular subject matter of our program.

You can register for free at the link to the session above.

Mobile Drupal

Really excited to find the following post: An overview of Mobile modules for Drupal on Tom Deryckere's new blog, Making mobile web sites with Drupal.  Haven't really had a chance to go through it yet, but wanted to share :-) 

Wowbrary Notifies You of New Library Books, Movies or Music

Lifehacker points to a service called Wowbrary, which,

regularly informs you by email and/or RSS about your chosen public
library’s newest books, movies and music. We make it easy for you to
browse through the latest additions and place a hold on a new title.
This is a free user service supported by grants, donations,
sponsorships, book sale commissions and volunteers.

It's free to the end user, but not to libraries, which must sponsor Wowbrary.  Only available in the US, and geared towards Public Libraries.  Are any of you using this?

ScreenFlow 1.5 released

I'm still holding out for the Techsmith Camtasia offering for OSX, but it's getting harder and harder to resist purchasing ScreenFlow, by almost all accounts the best screencasting software for the Mac.  They've just released version 1.5, and The Unofficial Apple Weblog has an overview.

Dalhousie LibCasts - what you want to learn, when and where you want it

Wow, check out the Dalhouse University LibCasts page!  Too many to count, most available in multiple formats, with an RSS feed and a dedicated search engine.  Very nicely done!  Camtasia Studio seems to be the screencasting tool of choice.

Posted: m-libraries 2009 Program

The Program(me) for the 2009 m-libraries conference is up.  Not surprisingly, when you think about it, lots of international content (you know, from countries where they actually USE cell phones to do stuff).

"I want people to read my stuff"

I recently started reading the blog of the author (MCM) of The Pig and the Box (see my post from last week).  He sells that title as a printed book, and as an ebook, but he also makes it available for free to download as a PDF from his website.  Today he blogged about why his book is free, and it reminded me an awful lot of the conversation I had via email 3 years ago with author Simon Ings.

MCM (do catalogers hate it when authors don't go by last, first?) outlines not only his reasoning behind making this title free, but also talks about the experimentation he'll have with several of his upcoming projects.  1) The free version will be missing some of the inside humour, and 2) a book that will be delivered in a serialized release, unless you want to buy the whole thing right now. 

Go check out the post, and buy some of his stuff - this kind of experimentation needs to be rewarded!  Oh, and his new show, Rollbots, is cool too.

Call for Submissions: Journal of Library and Information Service for Distance Learning

The Journal of Library and Information Service for Distance Learning, a peer-reviewed journal published by Routledge/The Haworth Press, welcomes the submission of manuscripts.

The journal is devoted to the issues and concerns of librarians and information specialists involved with distance education and delivering library resources and services to this growing community of students.

Topics can include but are not limited to:

• Faculty/librarian cooperation and collaboration
• Information literacy
• Instructional service techniques
• Information delivery
• Reference services
• Document delivery
• Developing collections

If you are interested in submitting an article, send the manuscript directly to the Editor, Jodi Poe at [email protected] by March 27, 2009. Inquiries and questions are welcome. Instructions for authors are available at www.haworthpress.com or can be emailed to you directly.

U of Calgary DSpace - 73rd-ranked instutional repository in the world!

Hey this is pretty cool, our Institutional Repository, DSpace at the University of Calgary, is ranked #73 in the world (looking at the top 300 Repositories).  Yay us!

How to Embed Almost Anything in your Website

I've had this open on a tab to digest for exactly one month - time to pass it on.  :-)  Amit at Digital Inspiration writes about How to Embed Almost Anything in your Website.  Including RSS Feeds, High Quality or HD YouTube, mp3, Flickr, Picasa, Google Calendar, and more.

Serenity Now! - Library Lullaby

"iSerenity offers a relaxing web-based experience that delivers soothing sounds and images designed to reduce stress and calm nerves. Use iSerenity while at work or at home. You can even leave it running in the background while you work on your computer."

I just found Library Lullaby, which will provide background noise of, well, a library.  Does your library sound like this?  Nice pictures too!  There are other environments such as waterfalls, rain, and purring too!