World Digital Library Project Announced, Backed By Library Of Congress & Google; Social Bookmarking in the Workplace
Professional Reading Shelf
Digitization Projects
Source: SearchDay World Digital Library Project Announced, Backed By Library Of Congress & Google
Danny Sullivan and Gary have a fact-filled post up on SearchDay. Since LC will be looking for financial partnerships from many players, you've got to wonder if other web search companies (Yahoo, MSN, AJ, FAST, Vivisimo, etc.) and info industry players (Factiva, Thomson, EBSCO, Elsevier, etc.) will also become involved in the project either financially or with other resources? The post also looks at a couple of addtional digitization projects from LC. Btw, today's announcement is yet another brilliant pr move by Google. Being the first company to partner will once again reinforce the Google brand in the minds of millions.
See Also: NY Times Coverage
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Science--Web Search
Source: GCN Science.gov goes 3.0
"The newest version of the Science.gov search engine uses metadata to rank results, which should give users more accurate responses to queries, according to the Science.gov Alliance. 'We're trying to plow new ground with searches among multiple databases,' said Walter Warnick, director of the Department of Energy's Office of Scientific and Technical Information, which hosts the Science.gov site. Warnick said the new version of the search engine makes searches for obscure terms easier, thanks to the new technology."
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Online Books
Source: Information Today Books Online: The Fee versus Free Battle Begins
A new "must read" article by Barbara Quint.
Comment From ResourceShelf's Dale Copps responding to the following passage from Barbara's article: "As of now, Amazon does not have any plans to institute institutional access, e.g., to textbooks for a classroom of distance learning students or to librarians licensing content, but the representative expects the company to respond to all kinds of feedback from customers after the new paid access programs launch."
Dale comments: "Am I the only who thinks DRM and announcements such as the above are
frontal assaults on the institution of the public/academic/corporate library? If we are going to be constrained to remain in a paper world while the rest of the world goes digital, our institutions are in big trouble."
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Libraries--Privacy
Source: The New York Times Books for Lending, Data for Taking
"At the library at North Carolina State University, students and faculty will soon be able to sign up for an Internet-based service that will alert them when favorite journals are published, with links to the articles. They will also be able to create home pages with links to databases, books, journals, Web sites and other resources. The library is one of several around the country that are borrowing techniques from Amazon, Netflix and other Internet companies that keep information about their customers' purchases and preferences so they can better cater to their needs or tastes.... Yet for the libraries, privacy remains an important issue. The data such personalized programs store - information about what journals someone is reading, for example - could be sought by government agencies under laws like the USA Patriot Act."
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Social Bookmarking
Source: ACM Queue Social Bookmarking in the Enterprise
"Social bookmarking tools are taking off on the Web. Do they have a place within the enterprise, too?"
See Also: Socially Acceptable Behavior (via ACM Queue)
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Librarians--Awards
Source: Library Journal 27 Librarians Win New York Times Awards
"The New York Times Librarian Awards, in its the fifth year, has honored 27 librarians. This year's winners represent 13 states, including Arizona, California, Connecticut, Georgia, Idaho, Kentucky, Massachusetts, North Carolina, Ohio, New Jersey, New York, Texas, and Wyoming. Nominations from the general public were accepted from June through September and exceeded 1,200 with nominations coming from 48 states. The Times held a reception in honor of the winners on November 16, with author Alice Hoffman as guest speaker. Each winner received $2,500 and a commemorative plaque. A separate plaque featuring the winner's name and title will be sent to the library where each winner works."
A family of resources to help information workers be more effective, raise the value of information in their organisations and contribute to success. Read more »
Recently I have found myself cooing over visualisation maps (and heat maps) of health and well being resources. The content rich data is overlayed with mapping technologies, and some interesting themes and patterns are emerging.
A lot of the talk around social media in the last year has been around information overload. Social media has provided us with new and exciting ways to create content. But it has also meant learning new ways to manage and engage with social media tools. Are we teetering on the edge of an information overload precipice?
Information overload is a figment of your imagination. Or a failure of your filter. Or a symptom of your technological submissiveness. Depends on who you ask.
What if you had to sort through 3.5 million articles and social media posts a day and try to pull out the most relevant items for your organisation? What if you then had to cobble it all together into something readable for your top groups and executives in your organisation?
Alacra Compliance saves time by aggregating information from both free and fee-based sources and enabling users to conduct an accurate federated search across these sources (coined “simultaneous search” by Alacra).
FreePint Family
Quilting big data threads
The fallacy of information overload
Information overload: fact, fantasy or filter failure? 
