Category: 2005

Digital Searching to Digital Reading Speaker: Michael Lesk author of Understanding Digital Libraries Are people really going to read books online? Do they want to? These are the opening questions that Michael Lesk posed to the audience. People want things electronically, but they do not necessarily want to read it online. Many do not take digitization and digital delivery of books very seriously, but there is a history of people not taking seriously the things which we now hold in places of honor. Lesk talked about Shakespeare, talking films, and languages. In my head I think about the world being flat and the sun revolving around the earth. Are digital libraries useful? Few evaluations have been made of current digital libraries. Lesk did a quick comparison of Google and some common scholarly digital resources by doing some sample searches. He found that Google does give more general things, but an…

Total registration for this conference is over 25,596–about 5,000 more than Orlando (last year’s annual conference). ALA staff are looking up stats to see if this is the record.

I was intrigued by the opening questions Michael Lesk posed in the LITA President’s Program. “Notwithstanding technical, economic, or legal obstacles, how much will people want to read online? And what will it mean to them?” Yet as I sat in the front row I struggled to stay awake. My adrenaline level had fallen down, down, down, my metabolism bottoming out on a serious post-presentation sag from the effort and stress of being on the Top Tech Trends panel, and though Lesk was lively and funny, I drifted in and out of sleep, my head occasionally bumping the shoulder of the ITAL editor. Every once in a while I would jerk awake long enough to catch a bon mot or acute observation. Regarding the truism that monkeys on a keyboard could eventually produce the works of Shakespeare, Lesk drily noted, “The web has proven that this is not true.” His…

The digital imaging with JPEG2000 (jp2) session was essentially divided into four sections: an introduction to jp2, a description of the standard and its uses, product demonstrations from vendors, and a panel of practitioners. Unfortunately there was some mix up with the busing from McCormick (one bus didn’t take anyone (maybe it was having mechnical problems)) and I missed Peter Murray’s introduction. When I walked into the session, Robert Buckley from Xerox Labs was describing the standard and its uses. The standard is complicated and Robert Buckley’s description was very technical. He did a good job, though, explaining a complex open standard. The take away point about JP2 is that it uses an arrangement of packets to allow much greater flexibility in how images are used. For instance, when a thumbnail is desired, an image processor only needs to select a small group of packets in the jp2 file to…

Siva Vaidhyanathan. Need I say more? Great, thought provoking, and sufficiently interesting to make for disjointed notes (and post) due to intense cogitation.

ALA WO OITP Inaugurated the L. Ray Patterson Award (for defesne of user rights) this year. The Inaugural Recipient is: Kenneth Crews of IUPUI.

Saturday morning RUSA MARS program, Do You Trust Your IT Staff? Do They Trust You?

Implementing a Federated Search Tool Speakers: Peter Webster, St. Mary’s University Marvin Pollard, California State University Robert Sathrum, Humboldt State University Joseph Fisher, Boston Public Library Peter Webster led off the panel with an overview of the basics of federated searching. First he defined the concept: Too @#& many interfaces “One stop shopping” “Google like searching” Silo busting Cross-file searching He reminded us that cross-file searching isn’t really a new idea. Remember Dialog? And think of Ovid and FirstSearch. If you buy all your databases from one aggregator, you have it now. Next he listed the current array of tools: WebFeat “the original federated search” and patent holder Muse Global “the World’s leading federated search tool” claim they began the company in 1997, predating WebFeat CSA Multisearch Serials Solutions Central Search Ovid Search Solver (Muse Global) Most ILS’s now offer a federated search tool: Ex Libris Metalib Sirsi Single search…

Joe Janes said that if your reference librarians will not get out from behind the desk to “rove through the reference area offering assistance whenever possible,” as prescribed in Guidelines for Behavioral Performances of Reference and Information Service Providers, telling you that roving is unprofessional, you should fire them. His response to a question from the audience was the most electric moment of the two hour program Reference Interactions in the Digital Age: Revising the RUSA Behavioral Guidelines. This program was a discussion of the updated RUSA Guidelines by a panel consisting of Joe Janes (associate professor at the University of Washington iSchool), Jana Ronan (librarian at the George A. Smathers Libraries at the University of Florida), Dave Tyckoson (librarian at California State University – Fresno Libraries), and Jo Bell Whitlatch (associate dean of San Jose State University Library). The panel discussed remote reference, staff training, and staff evaluation implications…

New! Pictures! In which the library bloggers meet each other FTF at OCLC’s Blue Suite.