When I first looked at the new Phoenix Public Library (PPL) web site I thought: nice job�they probably outsourced everything. Why? Because the site feels like a high-end commercial site. We’ve all seen the bells and whistles before�when buying a book, tracking a shipment, or performing any number of other complicated transactions online. Finally, my [...]

New Media Musings: 7 Things RSS Is Good For is an excellent resource for explaining the usefullness for users. At the end is 5 Reasons Why Companies Should Publish an RSS feed, an equally convincing set of arguments for bosses.

Copyright Clearance Center, a licensing agent for text reproduction rights, has launched a Web-based resource for business professionals called The Guide to Copyright Compliance. The interactive guide is designed to assist companies in implementing corporate best practices for achieving compliance with copyright law and also helps organizations educate employees on how to lawfully use the [...]

As Steven Cohen points out, Weblogs: Do they belong in libraries? never really addresses that question. The author does a nice review of how they are already being used but doesn’t mention any reasons for or against. It wouldn’t take very long browsing through my archives to realize that my own answer is an unequivocal [...]

9-11 Commission Final Report The 9/11 Commission Report, Executive Summary (HTML) The 9/11 Commission Report (Full Index) Wired News: Techies Reshape 9/11 History

Assessing the accessibility of fifty United States government Web pages: Using Bobby to check on Uncle Sam by Jim Ellison This study evaluates the current accessibility of U.S. Government Web pages for people with disabilities. Several Federal laws, and specifically Section 508 of the U.S. Rehabilitation Act, require Web pages of government agencies to be [...]

If you’re reading this in a newsreader, you might want to switch to a browser to see the new design. I haven’t done anything to the underlying structure. Just polished the visuals and changed the right bar a bit. Hopefully it will be easier to browse as well as prettier. If you have any comments, [...]

As I’m sure you know, the online version of the New York Times is “hidden” behind a registration system. Access is free but that single impediment makes the site unlinkable, which makes it irrelevant for web-based conversation like blogs, emails, newsgroups, and message boards. According to Boing Boing, it also blocks the Google search engine, [...]

I recently came across two excellent examples of blogs published by libraries. Librarian Geek at the West Warwick Public Library UMN: Bio-Med Library – Public Health Librarian Geek lists monthly tips about technology in the library. The library where I work has had excellent results from publishing weekly tips, they remind patrons we’re there and [...]

Copyright Term and the Public Domain in the United States is a chart (html and pdf), that spells out length of term for various types of works.