Archives
Tuesday, March 30, 2004
Business Blogs
BEST BUSINESS BLOG EXAMPLES AND WHY IT’S HIGH TIME TO THINK ABOUT A BLOG FOR YOUR COMPANY
While many businesses are still getting used to the idea of having any kind of Web presence, forward-thinking companies are looking to blogs as simple, self-sustaining Web sites and Intranets. If you’re not thinking about how to use blogs in your business, you’re missing a big opportunity.
Blogging can be a remarkably effective marketing tool. It’s also an excellent way to stay in touch with customers and hear concerns that can be an early warning system of potential problems.
One of the problems with libraries and librarians is that they are pretty invisible most of the time. We have a lot to offer to the public but we don’t tell them about it. Blogs can be a good way to interact with them and create a constant presence in their lives.
Blogging — laura
File-sharing Effect
Copyfight: New UNC Study Finds File-sharing Has No Effect on CD Sales
Copyright — laura
Digital Information Librarian
The Future Of News: The Digital Information Librarian - Robin Good’ Sharewood Tidings
The Digital Information Librarian is one of the emerging professional roles that is best qualified to ride and leverage to its best advantage the revolution about to sweep the information management, search, retrieval and independent news publishing industries.
Career Info — laura
Monday, March 29, 2004
Price of Research
Open Access — laura
Friday, March 26, 2004
Price of OA
Nature web focus: Access to the literature: the debate continues
An overview of the pricing issues involved in electronic publications. Odlyzko asks some questions that he doesn’t answer so I thought I would 
And is it fair to shift costs of publishing from libraries to the authors themselves? Are the authors the main beneficiaries of publications, or their readers? Should part of the public grants used to pay for research be used to cover the costs of publishing the findings of that research?
Open Access — laura
DOAJ
The Directory of Open Access Journals now lists 1149 journals. Currently 316 journals are searchable on article level. 58551 articles are included
Open Access — laura
Wednesday, March 24, 2004
Broadcast Flag
Cites & Insights: Crawford at Large
April’s Cites & Insights is devoted to the Broadcast Flag.
Copyright — laura
OSI Grants
Open Access News (Formerly: FOS News)
The Information Program of the Open Society Institute (OSI) is now making grants to support institutional memberships in the Public Library of Science.
Copyright — laura
LWDRM
Wired News: Pay Once, Share Often With LWDRM
The institute, which developed the MP3 format in the first place and is therefore partly responsible for the digital-rights controversy, has conceived a new technology called Light Weight Digital Rights Management. LWDRM has the potential to end the conflict between the people and Big Music by putting the consumer and the artist first, while not hurting the rights of the industry.
LWDRM gives consumers more freedom. Like any other digital-rights system, it starts with a payment that gives consumers the right to use the song or video clip on their PC. But with LWDRM, from that point on consumers decide what may be done with it. They can copy the clip to another device like an MP3 player or distribute the file to a limited number of friends and relatives.
I’m not a fan of digital rights management in general but I do understand the need to safeguard the rights of the creators. I just don’t think parties on either side of the issue are ready for a compromise.
Copyright — laura
Monday, March 22, 2004
Independents Fine
Wired News: Record Stores: We’re Fine, Thanks
The independent music shops that are thriving have built a close connection to their communities and deliver personal service that so-called big box stores like Wal-Mart and Best Buy can’t match, the panelists said.
Imagine, service customized to the community…
Copyright — laura
Friday, March 19, 2004
Peer-Review
Open Access News (Formerly: FOS News)
One of the claims made by traditional publishers is that the peer review process might be harmed if open access business models and practices were adopted. But as this editorial in the BMJ shows, peer review is too important to be left to publishers to manage. Formal training and academic recognition are necessary to improve the quality of peer reviewing. The former is unlikely to be provided by publishers; the latter is something over which they have little influence.
Working in a health sciences academic library, peer-review is far too important to both academics and researchers for them to let it go. And most (if not all) of the open-access archives I’ve seen provide for review anyway.
Open Access — laura
Wednesday, March 17, 2004
Digital Preservation
The Right to Preserve: The Rights Issues of Digital Preservation
The flip side of moving to digital collections. They are far more useful in the present but what about the future?
Copyright — laura
Sunday, March 14, 2004
Stranglehold Loosens
The Observer | Business | Black arts of the science mags
How’s this for a winning publishing formula? A university funds scientific research; the research is turned into a paper by an author, who pays a colour illustration and reprint charge - say, £1,000 - and surrenders the copyright for the privilege of publishing his findings in a specialised journal. Peers review the work for free, then the publisher prints the article - and sells it back for a hefty fee to the institution where the work was carried out in the first place.
Welcome to scientific publishing. As the production and potential value of scientific knowledge mushrooms, so too has the small-circulation, high-price formula pioneered by Robert Maxwell’s Pergamon Press to disseminate it. Science is the fastest-growing media sub-sector of the past 15 years, says Morgan Stanley.
… Open-access publishers say the important thing is not who nominally pays the costs - in the end it all comes from the same, usually publicly-funded, pot - but how the research is used. ‘Everyone should have access to publicly-funded science,’ PLoS’s Harold Varmuss told the Select Committee. The impact of open access comes from the combination of instant access and searchability. ‘It’s about a fundamental change in the way scientific findings are recorded and used,’ added Tracz.
Open Access — laura
Friday, March 12, 2004
Responses to Journal Crisis
Open Access News (Formerly: FOS News)
Nowick and Jenda summarize library responses to the crisis in scholarly publishing costs and cite what they deem most useful approaches. They point how unsustainable costs limit scientists’ access to each other’s work.
Library and scholar educational efforts, such as informing scholars about copyright alternatives and principles outlined in, for example, SPARC’s Create Change, are highly touted. Nevertheless, the authors call for changes in the tenure and promotion system and a general change in librarian and scholar attitudes towards the publishing system from passive roles to active ones.
Open Access — laura
Wednesday, March 10, 2004
ISP Spam Fighting
Comcast cutting off spam zombies
Internet service provider Comcast Corp. is cutting off Internet service for some customers whose Windows computers are being used to relay spam messages, according to a company spokeswoman.
The biggest problem with infected machines seems to be that the owners don’t know their infected and most of the unlucky recipients don’t know how to find out who the sick computer belongs to. Virus protection is going to have to be seen as a major responsibility associated with connecting to the Internet for real spam control.
Computing News — laura
Saturday, March 6, 2004
Spam Test
TechnoBiblio: CAN-SPAM PUT TO THE TEST
An ISP in California is taking a spammer to court claiming they forged header information and neglected to include contact info in about 100 email messages they sent through its service.
Computing News — laura
Friday, March 5, 2004
Library Article
New Seattle Central Library is on the cutting edge of technological advances
Libraries have always been in the information business, but technology has expanded the definition of what “information” means — and exploded the list of what people expected from their libraries even just 18 years ago, when Central got its first computer. (It was a single donated Apple IIe.)
To Coulter, the shift in what libraries provide is only an extension of the institution’s historic role of providing information to those who can’t otherwise afford it, and to provide the services patrons want.
A library staffer is developing software that will provide a floor map diagramming each book’s location, so the catalog will tell you a book’s call number and show you exactly where to find it.
My library could use this.
Library Links — laura
Dissatisfaction Spreading
Serials Crisis: Up and Out of the Library
There is increasing solidarity among the libraries whose budgets are in the middle of the crisis, the faculties whose members contribute the content, and the university administrators who wind up paying the bills. They are taking action to regain control over the millions they spend on content, even at the short-term cost of disrupted consortial deals. Whether or not open access ultimately gains ground as an alternative, it’s clear that the current model is breaking up.
Open Access — laura
Library sued over copiers
Open Access News:Canadian Supreme Court rules for plaintiff in copyright case
The Canadian Supreme Court upheld the appeal of the Law Society of Upper Canada which was sued by several legal publishers for having photocopiers in its research library and maintaining a photocopy distribution service “in person, by mail or by facsimile transmission” for the society’s members.
Wouldn’t this fit every library in the world? At least on the continent.
Copyright — laura
