Open Access journals get impressive impact factors- Journals published by BioMed Central have again received impact factors that compare well with equivalent subscription titles, with five titles in the top five of their specialty. The high impact factors for these journals affirm that they are respected by researchers, and are fast becoming the place [...]

I’m lying on a table in the ER, both in pain and drugged to the gills and the tech drawing my blood wants to know if we a have a particular book in the library.

Get Tooled Up:’Evaluating Web Sites for Accessibility with Firefox’, Ariadne Issue 44

Often developers lack time or training and simply rely on one of the many automated testing tools such as WebXACT [5], Cynthia [6] or Wave [7]. But even those mechanical checks need to be supplemented (and, to avoid false positives, counter-checked) by manual checks.
Based [...]

Web based IMing with Meebo
Basically, it’s a webpage where y0u can log into several instant messaging services simultaneously without having to download anything. Good for users and librarians with locked-down computers. Now if they would add Google Talk support.

Carnival Time.
The carnival has been good for me. It gives me a reason to write more essay type posts even though I’m really busy at work.

I [Magnus Enger] have created colLib – a prototype of a system for organizing and finding documents that are available in Open Access repositories:

Harvesting and tagging of open access library and information science articles, complete with a meta-search function!

I’m pretty sure I come off as a permanent early adopter, the first to use anything new and shiny. But that’s only true to a point. Blogs? Instant understanding and adoration. (Online, Roll-Playing, MMOR) Games? Didn’t touch one till I was in my 20s and my roomate played them constantly. Wikis. I’ve always understood the [...]

Update- more information.
ongoing · Massachusetts XML
This is a really smart move by Massachusetts… Because this way, they maximize the chances that the data is re-usable by lots of different programs, and not just office suites. Because they are entirely 100% free of legal entanglements. Because they maximize the chances that the data will still be [...]

Boing Boing: UK Criminologist: National ID cards don’t fight crime
The more we try to fix ID on one person, the more information we demand from each person to identify them. But the more personal information that is available, the more vulnerable it is to being appropriated by fraudsters, she says.

EFF layperson’s guide to crippling DRM in music services
EFF has just published an amazing, plain-language guide to the ways that online music services take away your rights — this is perfect for giving to your non-geek friends (directors, patrons, Friends, etc.) to explain the dangers of buying DRM-crippled music. Included are Microsoft Plays For [...]

Massachusetts set to switch off Microsoft
[Massachusetts] said on Wednesday that all electronic documents “created and saved” by state employees would have to be based on open formats, with the switch to start at the beginning of 2007.
Documents created using Microsoft’s Office software are produced in formats that are controlled by the Microsoft, making them [...]