Tennant: Digital Libraries
Roy Tennant's news and views on digital libraries. Recent Posts
Recent Comments
Most Commented On
Archives
Posted by Roy Tennant on November 19, 2009
For some reason, we love to take quizzes. In fact, if the email I receive from Facebook is any indication, we are flat out crazy about taking quizzes. So I decided to create a quiz to help you figure out if you have what it takes to be a digital librarian. May the best librarian score high.
Industries: News & Features
Posted by Roy Tennant on November 16, 2009
Industries: News & Features
Posted by Roy Tennant on November 13, 2009
In two unrelated and yet similar moves, Google has released two very interesting software initiatives. The first is that they released a set of Javascript tools they are calling "Closure". These tools include:Closure Compiler...Read More Industries: News & Features
Posted by Roy Tennant on November 9, 2009
Within hours I will leave for Long Beach to participate in the Digital Library Federation Fall Forum. I don't say "participate" lightly. Although the event will only cover two days, with related events fore and aft, it will be a DLF Forum like no other. It will require the participation of all who attend if we will be successful in our goal of emerging from the meeting with a set of achievable goals related to the conference topic, "Strategies for Innovation." I wished to go prepared, so in my self-assigned homework I did a little reading on what others think about innovation. I want to highlight one such article, since I think it provides useful advice to any organization hoping to reach escape velocity from m...Read More Industries: News & Features
Posted by Roy Tennant on November 3, 2009
I've long been a fan of the writing of Meredith Farkas, as is true of many of my colleagues. She is perceptive, nuanced, and an excellent writer, which presents a triple threat against ignorance and obfuscation. Her latest post, "Shades of Gray", is no exception. I suppose this makes Meredith the anti-Annoyed-Librarian, to whom I will not link despite the fact that we share the same platform.Meredith uses her usual level-headedness to view some of the recent controversies of libraryland, where some have attempted to paint some controversial issues as either black or white. They are neither. Go read it, I'll wait. Let's be clear -- Libraries are in some very trying times. We are being assailed from...Read More Industries: News & Features
Posted by Roy Tennant on October 30, 2009
Not long ago I wrote about information on the Internet that should go away. Sure, there's the photo of you at that party that you sincerely wish would disappear, but I'm also talking about just plain outdated information, such as how to fix a software problem for a version of an application or operating system that is no longer used by anyone on this planet.So imagine my surprise when someone whose opinions actually matter happened to agree with me. He was interviewed on NPR's hit show "Talk of the Nation," no less. It turns out that this Viktor Mayer-Schonberger has even written a book on the topic: Delete: The Virtue of Forgetting in t...Read More Industries: News & Features
Posted by Roy Tennant on October 28, 2009
 After several months of hard work and preparation, the Library 101 video and web site debuted today to a roomful of rapt and engaged librarians at the Internet Librarian Conference. Spawned by the creative forces of Michael Porter and David Lee King of "Hi-Fi Sci-Fi Library" fame, this project combines a variety of techniques and technologies to get across the important message that libraries must both change a great deal and also get back to our root...Read More
Industries: News & Features
Posted by Roy Tennant on October 27, 2009
 In a post last week, I introduced the eScholarship redesign and refocus of mission on the publishing needs of faculty, with repository capture being a side benefit. With this second part, I seek to lift the hood of the technical infrastructure, which I'm doing with the help of Lisa Schiff of the technical team that worked for two years on this major refactoring of eScholarship. As Lisa said in part in an email to the Code4Lib and XML4Lib mailing lists:Some h...Read More Industries: News & Features
Posted by Roy Tennant on October 21, 2009
 This week, in honor of Open Access Week, the California Digital Library released a complete redesign of the eScholarship Repository. But what at first glance appears to be a gloss on one of the earliest and most successful institutional repositories is, in fact, much more. It is a major refocus of mission and goals toward the publishing needs of faculty, with the requisite changes in both messaging and tools to support them."There were three things we wanted to accomplish with this redesign," said Catherine Mitchell, CDL Publishing Group Director, in a phone interview, "1) ...Read More Industries: News & Features
Posted by Roy Tennant on October 16, 2009
 Whether it was the haiku I wrote to help justify my request for a Google Wave account, or the universe was just smiling on me, I entered the world of Google Wave this week. Boss, I have to admit, my output this week has suffered as I've worked to learn this new tool. I didn't mean for it to, but it did.Part of the issue is that it is just so different than anything you've ever interacted with before. Plus, it's an early beta and there are times when you are painfully reminded of that fact. If something doesn't seem to work like you think it should, part of the time it is because you're working with new paradigms and part of the time it's because it is si...Read More
Posted by Roy Tennant on October 14, 2009
MAchine Readable Cataloging (MARC), a carrier standard for bibliographic information used along with rules described by the Anglo American Cataloging Rules, Second Edition (AACR2), has not (yet) died, despite my plea that it do so, nearly 7 years ago to this very day in the pages of Library Journal. Although that screed was not completely on the mark (do with that pun what you will), it helped to spark a conversation about our bibliographic standards and where we need to go in the future. For what it's worth, I corrected and expanded on the ideas in that less-than-800-word column in an award-winning journal article not long thereafter.I was reminded about this in recent days by two independent and yet related events. One was the ...Read More
Posted by Roy Tennant on October 12, 2009
While surfing the blog/twitterverse I ran across this interesting post on linked data. In case the term "linked data" catches you flat, see this earlier post of mine where I identified linked data as the practical part of "the semantic web". A number of library organizations have been putting data sets up as linked data, including most notably the Library of Congress and OCLC (my employer, here and here).These first steps into the linked data world are necessary to begin to create an ecology of nodes (individual data points) that can be linked to ...Read More Industries: News & Features
Advertisement
|
Advertisements
|
|
|
|
