blyberg.net » If you build it… Our users are smart, clever, interesting, positive, intuitive, and social. They may not know it yet, but they’re waiting for their public libraries to be a catalyst for the community. There is something wonderfully special and intimate about shared experience–that is why Web 2.0 is so successful. When those [...]

Open Access News Tom Wilson, Open access and Weblogs – working together, Information Research Weblog, February 10, 2006. We’ve had occasional instances of the value of Weblogs in spreading news about papers in Information Research and we have another at the moment. Nahyun Kwon’s paper on virtual reference service has been noted in a number [...]

Boing Boing: Gamers are as good as bilinguals at solving mental problems Gamers are as good as bilinguals at solving mental problems Video gamers may have the same mental agility as bilingual people — an ability to swap out one task and bring another online quickly, which is useful in multitasking and is linked to [...]

Boing Boing: Only big companies’ PCs will play high-def DVDs Only big companies’ PCs will play high-def DVDs PCs with expensive video-cards won’t be able to play high-definition DVDs unless they’re built by big companies like Dell and Sony. PCs you build or upgrade yourself with “HDCP”-compatible high-end video cards will be locked out of [...]

K.I.S.S. But is simplicity what librarianship is all about? Is our job to present the complex world of information searching as something so simple a baby can do it? And, is doing so ultimately a good marketing strategy? I don’t think so.In fact, marketing in this way could harm the profession. After all, if we [...]

The Commons and Commerce in the Pull Economy It’s not widely appreciated that “Centralized Media” – broadcasting, cable television, films, recorded music – have a serious Achilles’ Heel. They have huge overhead costs. A small number of large companies are able to dominate their respective markets primarily because they control critical “choke points” of product [...]

New JISC project will feed tables of contents into library catalogues A new JISC project is developing an RSS news feed service that will automatically feed publisher and e-journal information into library catalogues.  … The open source software developed by the TOCRoSS project will be freely available to further and higher education establishments, publishers, and [...]

COPPUL Animated Tutorials Sharing Project Recognizing that creating and updating Tutorials for each online resource is a daunting task for any library to undertake on its own, librarians in COPPUL got together to find a way to share in their development. This project is an outgrowth of that initiative and our goal is to create [...]

Steve Lawson on Library 2.0 Steve and Michael do a great job of getting to the real point of the Library 2.0 ideal. It has nothing to do with the technology (That isn’t going to stop changing for a while.). It’s all about revising our attitudes towards ourselves, our patrons and our jobs.

Evaluating the Usability of Search Forms Using Eyetracking: A Practical Approach :: UXmatters Clearly label input fields. Doing so won’t bother pro users, but is a great help to your novice users. Drop-down lists are very eye catching form elements. You should always consider very carefully whether you should include a drop-down list in a [...]