2007 October archive at Information Innovation Exchange

Archive for October, 2007

Paper: Information Ethics for 21st Century Library Professionals

Print/Share This Post

Email This Post

Published by rwatstein October 27th, 2007 in librarians/information professionals and ethics. 0 Comments

Abstract: Purpose: To provide an introduction to concepts and resources that will be useful to library professionals learning about information ethics. Methodology: This paper argues for the importance of information ethics to 21st century library professionals. It describes what various authors have said about how information ethics can be applied to the ethical dilemmas faced by library professionals.

Read the paper here

Library of Congress’s Materials Out of Place

Print/Share This Post

Email This Post

Published by rwatstein October 27th, 2007 in Library of Congress. 0 Comments

About one-sixth of the books, monographs and bound periodicals at the Library of Congress weren’t where they were supposed to be because of flaws in the systems for shelving and retrieving materials, according to a survey recently made public. Officials at the library say they believe most of the missing materials are misplaced, not stolen or lost.

Read full article here

Information R/evolution

Print/Share This Post

Email This Post

Published by rwatstein October 27th, 2007 in YouTube and information. 0 Comments

This video explores the changes in the way we find, store, create, critique, and share information. This video was created as a conversation starter, and works especially well when brainstorming with people about the near future and the skills needed in order to harness, evaluate, and create information effectively.

Knowledge Management Bloated?

Print/Share This Post

Email This Post

Published by rwatstein October 27th, 2007 in knowledge management. 0 Comments

After spending some time categorizing the elements of knowledge management, it became obvious that knowledge management actually consists of many rather disparate components. While it would be nice to think that these components always complement each other, it also seems apparent from this list that there is certainly an inordinate focus on technologies. So the obvious question that stems from these observations is: is knowledge management bloated?

Read the full article and related posts here

Propositions about Innovation and Change

Print/Share This Post

Email This Post

Published by rwatstein October 27th, 2007 in innovation. 0 Comments

At the beginning of January 2002 Jack Martin LeithI wrote down some of my recurring thoughts about innovation and change, and these became the set of propositions that you see in this article. By sharing the propositions with you, he hopes to stimulate your thinking, perhaps challenge some of your deeply-held beliefs, and maybe even generate some interest in my work, which is helping people think up ground-breaking ideas and bring them to life.

Read the full article here

A Spirit in the Stacks? Library Staff Mystified by Weird Wonders

Print/Share This Post

Email This Post

Published by rwatstein October 27th, 2007 in libraries. 0 Comments

There are strange things happening in the stacks of the Morehead City library in Charlotte, North Carolina. Large books inexplicably leave the shelves and wind up on the floor. A light bulb fell from a fixture and landed upright, unbroken. “It’s really interesting,” says Sandy Bell, director of the Webb Library and Civic Center. “None of the staff has felt threatened.” Bell has no explanation for the incidents, but she says the building “does have an aura.”

Read full article here

Causes of Search Engine Fatigue

Print/Share This Post

Email This Post

Published by rwatstein October 27th, 2007 in search. 0 Comments

A majority of US Internet users regularly experience search engine fatigue, according to a Kelton Research study commissioned by AutoByTel. Search fatigue was defined as impatience or frustration at not finding the exact relevant information a user looked for right away.

Read the full article here

Exhibitors Happy with Frankfurt Book Fair

Print/Share This Post

Email This Post

Published by rwatstein October 27th, 2007 in books. 0 Comments

The 59th Frankfurt Book Fair recently concluded with exhibitors expressing satisfaction with the response from the public. A record 7,448 exhibitors from 108 countries participated in the fair, which was attended by more than 283,293 people. There has been a particularly positive development in the amount of business initiated. Among international exhibitors, around 35 percent of those surveyed stated that they were able to negotiate a larger number of business deals this year
R
ead the full article here

What’s on the Internet Tonight?

Print/Share This Post

Email This Post

Published by rwatstein October 27th, 2007 in internet and television. 0 Comments

Americans have not abandoned their televisions, but some are moving their viewing to a different screen. About 16% of US Internet households watch TV broadcasts online, according to The Conference Board and TNS. Respondents said that TV on the Internet had replaced news programs as their most widely viewed online content.

Read the full article here

The Expanding European Web

Print/Share This Post

Email This Post

Published by rwatstein October 27th, 2007 in internet and Europe. 0 Comments

Taken as a whole, consumers from Western European nations such as France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom are among the world’s keenest users of the Web. But there are still differences in the rates of Internet usage and broadband penetration from country to country. Take the UK, for instance. ”Of the five major Western European nations, the United Kingdom has embraced the Internet most avidly — it was the first of these countries to see more than half its population online,” said Karin von Abrams, eMarketer senior analyst and author of the new report Western Europe: Internet Users and Usage. “Though the French, Germans and Italians were slower to respond to the Internet opportunity, all three have reached 50% penetration and even Spain is growing now.”

Read the full article here

China’s Internet Controls Tightened Ahead of Sensitive Political Congress

Print/Share This Post

Email This Post

Published by rwatstein October 27th, 2007 in China, internet and censorship. 0 Comments

At first, Liu Xiaoyuan just fumed when his online journal postings disappeared with no explanation. Then he decided to do something few if any of China’s censored bloggers had tried. He sued his service provider. Liu’s frustration is hardly unique. For China’s 162 million Web users, surfing the Internet can be like running an obstacle course with blocked Web sites, partial search results, and posts disappearing at every turn.

Read the full article here

Library of Congress Taps Xerox

Print/Share This Post

Email This Post

Published by rwatstein October 27th, 2007 in digital and Library of Congress. 0 Comments

Xerox Corp. has teamed up with the Library of Congress to develop better ways to store, preserve and access digital images from America’s heritage, including a panorama of San Francisco after the 1906 earthquake, a photograph of Abraham Lincoln taken four days before he was assassinated and a picture of the Wright brothers’ first flight at Kitty Hawk. The trial will include up to 1 million digitized public domain prints, photographs, maps and other content from the library’s collections. Scientists in the Xerox Innovation Group will work with these materials to create an image repository that they will use to develop and test approaches for the management of large image collections.

Read the full article here

British 19th Century Newspapers Go Digital

Print/Share This Post

Email This Post

Published by rwatstein October 27th, 2007 in digital. 0 Comments

One million pages of text from 19th century publications went online last night as part of a British Library project to digitise its journals. The British Library Newspapers website, launched in partnership with the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC), contains searchable text from 46 regional newspapers from around the UK, dating back to 1800. The online digital archive will be available free to lecturers and students in higher and further education institutions and to British Library visitors with reader passes, who can access it from the library’s reading rooms in London’s Kings Cross.

Read full article here

Web 2.0: Revitalizing the Net?

Print/Share This Post

Email This Post

Published by rwatstein October 27th, 2007 in web 2.0 and internet. 0 Comments

The emergence of the next generation of Internet technology and applications has led to the coining of the term Web 2.0 to indicate that the Internet now has more capabilities than ever before. The Internet media companies such as Google, News Corp, and Yahoo are just some of the leaders taking advantage of this with the introduction of new services and applications. This revival of the Internet has also led in part to the re-emergence of the Internet economy, and more specifically e-commerce. The increase in broadband connections is another factor that has led to this revival according to BuddeComm.

Read full article here

China Accused of Rerouting Search Traffic to Baidu

Print/Share This Post

Email This Post

Published by rwatstein October 27th, 2007 in China and search. 0 Comments

Reports have surfaced that China is redirecting traffic from foreign search engines operated by Google, Microsoft and Yahoo to homegrown Baidu.com. According to various reports online, some online users in China attempting to access Google.com, Microsoft’s Live.com and Yahoo.com search sites have been redirected to China-based Baidu.com. Blog site TechCrunch reported that Chinese traffic to Google’s blog search engine was being rerouted to Baidu. TechCrunch later published another article saying a similar situation was observed with the other two search giants.

Read full article here

Engineers Create ‘Gesture Keyboard’ for PCs, Mobile Devices

Print/Share This Post

Email This Post

Published by rwatstein October 27th, 2007 in innovation and computer science. 0 Comments

Software engineers and researchers at the HP Labs in Bangalore, India are exploring more ways for people to interact with a computer without the need for keyboards. One of the proof-of-concepts shown to Southeast Asian media was called a “gesture keyboard.” Using an interactive pen and a graphic tablet connected to a computer, the gesture keyboard was designed to become an alternative to a regular keyboard that uses the popular “Qwerty” configuration. According to HP’s website, the gesture keyboard is a unique device for entering phonetic scripts. This pen-based innovation is being pushed as a low-cost device that can be used to input text other languages that are based on phonetic script.

Read the full article here

The Wood between the Worlds

Print/Share This Post

Email This Post

Published by rwatstein October 27th, 2007 in children, literacy and virtual worlds. 0 Comments

Virtual worlds have been attracting a huge amount of interest this year, driven by the success of Second Life, World of Warcraft, Habbo Hotel, Club Penguin and a host of others that have hit the headlines. When faced with something so shiny, baffling and new it is reassuring to see that imaginative artists have always intuitively understood both the charms and the dangers of leaving this world for another. Children’s writers in particular have made it their business to dramatise the process of imaginative escape into other worlds, and so children’s literature is full of that liminal moment when a child crosses the threshold and leaves the safe, ordered world they know for some strange new world in which everything is entirely different.

Read full article here

Innovation is Key to Increase Library Use

Print/Share This Post

Email This Post

Published by rwatstein October 27th, 2007 in libraries and innovation. 0 Comments

LAST week’s edition of the Times Higher Education Supplement featured an article with the headline “Student library visits fall 20 per cent in a decade”. The article went on to argue that universities will have to invest heavily in revamping their library facilities to reflect the changed ways in which students learn and study.

Read the full article here

Dr. Librarian: Physician Adds Literacy to Health Care Mix

Print/Share This Post

Email This Post

Published by rwatstein October 27th, 2007 in innovation and literacy. 0 Comments

Pediatric resident Dipesh Navsaria has a novel way of measuring his young patients’ development during checkups: He puts a book in their hands and watches their reaction. Navsaria, a resident at American Family Children’s Hospital, says the child’s response speaks volumes. If the patient shows interest and curiosity, he can tell if books are a natural part of their life. At a certain age, if the child holds the book right-side up, opens it and turns the pages, the doctor gets a quick read on motor skills.

Read full article here

Library of Congress Advances 2 Digital Projects Abroad

Print/Share This Post

Email This Post

Published by rwatstein October 27th, 2007 in digital and Library of Congress. 0 Comments

The Library of Congress recently announced an ambitious plan to digitize a collection of the world’s rare cultural materials — artifacts ranging from a photo collection of a 19th-century Brazilian empress to a crackly recording of the 101-year-old grandson of a slave.

Read full article here

Is Microsoft Headed Toward a Virtual World?

Print/Share This Post

Email This Post

Published by rwatstein October 27th, 2007 in virtual worlds and Microsoft. 0 Comments

Microsoft Corp. has been exploring the business of virtual worlds and social networking for months, and could launch its own entry into the realm of “Second Life” or “Ultima Online” within a year, a top Microsoft executive said. “By next year, you’ll probably know more about why I’m up here,” Daniel Schiappa, general manager of strategy for Microsoft’s entertainment and devices division told attendees at a virtual worlds conference in San Diego

Read full article here

U.S. and U.N. to Cooperate on Global Digital Library

Print/Share This Post

Email This Post

Published by rwatstein October 27th, 2007 in libraries, digital, Library of Congress and United Nations. 0 Comments

The Library of Congress and UNESCO will cooperate to develop a digital library of works from around the world, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization recently said. “The World Digital Library initiative will digitize unique and rare materials from libraries and other cultural institutions around the world and make them available free of charge on the Internet,” Paris-based UNESCO said in a statement.

Read the full article here

Canadian Feds Establish Web-based Library

Print/Share This Post

Email This Post

Published by rwatstein October 27th, 2007 in libraries and Canada. 0 Comments

The federal government is building a library and there’s more than mere books in it. Called the Architecture Library, it’s envisioned to be an online collaboration tool for government departments and agencies to share knowledge and learn from each other on anything from software tools and business process models to policies and standards, said Ken Cochrane, CIO of the Government of Canada.

Read full article here

Google Maintains US Search Lead

Print/Share This Post

Email This Post

Published by rwatstein October 27th, 2007 in search, Google and Yahoo. 0 Comments

Google maintained its position as top search property in September, garnering 54% of all searches conducted during the month, according to Nielsen Online, a service of Nielsen Co. Yahoo came in a distant second with a 19.5% share. Microsoft Corp.’s MSN/Windows Live Search came in third with a 12% share.

Read the full article here

Google Earth - How Google Maps the World

Print/Share This Post

Email This Post

Published by rwatstein October 27th, 2007 in Google. 0 Comments

Type “77 Massachusetts Avenue 02139″ into Google Earth, and you’ll see MIT’s Great Dome in all its glory. Click a button to zoom out, and soon you’ll see the state capitol, the celebrated Zakim Bridge, and maybe some other college up the river. (Watch a video demonstration.) These images, which are shared by Google Maps, are actually a combination of aerial photos and satellite imagery–and a lot of postprocessing. Technology Review interviewed engineers at Google and at DigitalGlobe, the company that supplies Google’s satellite photos, and did a little bit of reverse-engineering to figure out how it works.

Read the full article here

YouTube Allows Users to Map Videos on Google Earth

Print/Share This Post

Email This Post

Published by rwatstein October 27th, 2007 in YouTube and Google. 0 Comments

US search engine giant Google is bringing the world of online video and map-making closer together by letting users of Google Earth software to watch and hear YouTube videos mapped to specific locations and time zones. Google is offering a new YouTube video overlay on top of its Google Earth three-dimensional visualization software, which combines satellite images, maps, terrain and buildings of the world. By letting in YouTube creators to geographically locate their videos on a map of the world, Google lets Internet users zoom in on locations around the planet and watch YouTube tied to that place.

Read full article here

Library A Go Go to Come Soon

Print/Share This Post

Email This Post

Published by rwatstein October 27th, 2007 in libraries. 0 Comments

It might not be a full-fledged library, but Library A Go Go might just be the interim answer for a few Contra Costa communities that are currently libraryless. Contra Costa County (CCC) Library officials said that thanks to a grant, they are looking at putting Library A Go Go dispensing machines in Discovery Bay and in the Bay Point BART station.

Read full article here

Stuggling To Be Relevant: Old Media

Print/Share This Post

Email This Post

Published by rwatstein October 27th, 2007 in media and web 2.0. 0 Comments

Last year, most people said it wouldn’t happen. Now it is happening out of desperation. The people who social media participants and bloggers call “old media” are working as quickly as possible to change everything and become the, um, new new media. Last year, most people said it wouldn’t happen. Now it is happening out of desperation. The people who social media participants and bloggers call “old media” are working as quickly as possible to change everything and become the, um, new new media. Old media is not struggling; they are fighting for survival. According to Bloomberg, Business Week is doing everything possible to keep up. The magazine is undergoing a facelift and adding stories on new products and personal finance. It is updating its logo and typefaces.

Read full article here

A Librarian’s Guide to Creating 2.0 Subject Guides

Print/Share This Post

Email This Post

Published by rwatstein October 7th, 2007 in web 2.0, libraries and librarians/information professionals. 0 Comments

The New Web has brought with it some amazing tools for creating online subject guides. These tools offer the addition of multimedia and multi-format elements such as photos, videos, social bookmarks, RSS feeds, and widgets to traditional resource guides, as well as an interactive dimension which makes them particularly 2.0. Here are a few tools for creating your own 2.0 guides.

Read the full article here

25 Years of ‘Eureka’ Moments

Print/Share This Post

Email This Post

Published by rwatstein October 7th, 2007 in innovation. 0 Comments

We’re a nation of inventors in garages and corporate labs, creating new gadgets and services that delight us and occasionally drive us crazy. USA TODAY chose inventions that changed our lives since 1982.

Read the full article here

America’s Young Innovators in the Arts and Sciences

Print/Share This Post

Email This Post

Published by rwatstein October 7th, 2007 in innovation. 0 Comments

Smithsonian Magazine introduces you to 37 people under the age of 36 who are helping to shape the world. Those honored are scholars, singers, writers, scientists, musicians, painters and activists. Get a glimpse of each young innovator’s personal side with our “Last Word” interviews. Interact with many of the innovators and other readers on our special Innovations blog. Experience their work firsthand through book excerpts, audio files, videos and photographs.

Read the full article here

Top 100 Alternative Search Engines, October 2007

Print/Share This Post

Email This Post

Published by rwatstein October 7th, 2007 in search. 0 Comments

Every month on AltSearchEngines, we update our list of the Top 100 Alternative Search Engines (ASE). Out of the 100 finalists, we select one above all the others to be the Search Engine of the Month (SEM). We also name ten honorable mentions (hm) randomly because we know that no one can check out all 100 - so we encourage you to visit the SEM and the 10 hm. And if you don’t see a search engine that you like, please leave us a comment, but do remember that there are 900+ search engines that we know about that did not make the cut.

Read the full article here

ALA President Speaks About Future of American Library System

Print/Share This Post

Email This Post

Published by rwatstein October 7th, 2007 in libraries, librarians/information professionals and American Library Association. 0 Comments

Gender Week wrapped up recently Thursday with a lecture that shattered the stereotypical librarian image depicting a prudish, middle-aged, silence-loving white woman. Their historical look at the profession characterized modern librarians as a young and diverse crowd. The speaker, Loriene Roy, president of American Library Association (ALA) and director of the Center for Women’s and Gender Studies at University of Texas at Austin, cited a recent New York Times article to illustrate the modern librarian. The article, titled “A Hipper Crowd of Shushers,” documented a group of young male and female librarians whose behavior and attitudes have helped disperse the stereotypes.

Read the full article here

Business Intelligence Promise and Reality

Print/Share This Post

Email This Post

Published by rwatstein October 7th, 2007 in business intelligence. 0 Comments

Many information technology executives in the United States and the United Kingdom think business intelligence reports do not help them much, according to a SeeWhy Software-commissioned study by Dynamic Markets. More than three-quarters of IT executives surveyed found themselves forced into positions where they had to make decisions before all the information they needed was available. More than six in 10 respondents said that BI reports ended up being simply reference documents to justify decisions that had already been made.

Read the full article here

UC Berkeley Expands Online Content

Print/Share This Post

Email This Post

Published by rwatstein October 7th, 2007 in YouTube and education. 0 Comments

Move over “Leave Britney Alone Guy.” And all those cute kitten videos, too. The University of California, Berkeley, is posting course lectures and other campus happenings on YouTube. “To a teacher who has a passion for teaching, this is enormously exciting,” said physics professor Richard A. Muller, whose “Physics for Future Presidents,” is among courses available online. “My students are everywhere and I don’t have to give them exams.”

Read the full article here

Desktop Manufacturing for Consumers

Print/Share This Post

Email This Post

Published by rwatstein October 7th, 2007 in innovation. 0 Comments

New Zealand-based Ponoko is offering consumers a new way to turn their turn creative ideas into real-world objects. After uploading their design to the website (in EPS file format), users can choose from a variety of materials. Ponoko then runs the design through a laser cutter. Besides offering access to professional tools to manufacture products, Ponoko also helps users bring their products to market. Once they’re ready to sell, members add photos of their product to their profile page, together with a description, pricing information and descriptive tags. If a product needs to be assembled before being shipped to customers, Ponoko delivers the bits and pieces to the designer. If the product is self-assembly, Ponoko can ship directly to the end-customer.

Read the full article here

Ponoko website

Google Books Redesign

Print/Share This Post

Email This Post

Published by rwatstein October 7th, 2007 in books and Google. 1 Comment

The Google Books Search homepage just received a redesign. It now looks more like book shelf than straight-forward search engine; instead of the typical Google logo + input box, you’ll be seeing a couple of pre-selected covers as images, making for a more explorative approach.

Read the full article here

Google Books Search homepage

40+ Media Players That Aren’t iTunes

Print/Share This Post

Email This Post

Published by rwatstein October 7th, 2007 in media players. 0 Comments

iTunes is arguably the most popular media player for Mac & Windows, with a recent update for the iPhone…but is it the best? Check out the competition: 40 other popular media players.

Read the full article here

A History of Controversial Campus Speakers

Print/Share This Post

Email This Post

Published by rwatstein October 7th, 2007 in education. 0 Comments

U.S. News and World Reports looks at a history of controversial campus speakers from 2002 through the present.

Read the full article here

Consumer-Generated Media On the Rise

Print/Share This Post

Email This Post

Published by rwatstein October 7th, 2007 in web 2.0. 0 Comments

Between 46% and 83% of the online populations of France, the United States and the United Kingdom use consumer-generated media (CGM) at least monthly, according to Gartner. The percentage of CGM users depends on age and geography.

Read the full article here

Stony Brook Unveils Center for News Literacy

Print/Share This Post

Email This Post

Published by rwatstein October 7th, 2007 in education and literacy. 0 Comments

Stony Brook University says it will establish the nation’s first Center for News Literacy, designed to educate current and future news consumers on how to judge the credibility and reliability of news. The center also aims to be a resource for universities across the country, develop curriculum for high school instruction and secondary teacher training programs, design conferences, seminars, lectures and workshops that will bring journalists and scholars together to explore issues related to the reliability of news from print, broadcast and the Web.

Read the full article here

Cities Try Outsourcing Library Management

Print/Share This Post

Email This Post

Published by rwatstein October 7th, 2007 in libraries and outsourcing. 0 Comments

A big, red “Closed” sign has been plastered across the front door of the library in Medford since mid-April, when Jackson County ran out of money to keep its 15 branches open. In a few weeks, though, the sign will come down and the doors will be flung open again, now that the county has come up with an unusual cost-saving solution: outsourcing its libraries. The county will continue to own the buildings and all the books in them. But the libraries will be managed by an outside company for a profit. And the librarians will no longer be public employees and union members; they will be on the company’s payroll.

Read the full article here

Columbia Univeristy Libraries Upgrade with Tech Improvements

Print/Share This Post

Email This Post

Published by rwatstein October 7th, 2007 in libraries. 0 Comments

From the time of Herbert Dewey—the Columbia librarian who invented the organizational Dewey decimal system—Columbia University libraries have always been at the forefront of new technology. In keeping with this legacy, Columbia is currently undertaking many initiatives that are blazing the trails in defining what it means to be a library in the 21st century.

Read the full article here

Yahoo! Updates Search Engine

Print/Share This Post

Email This Post

Published by rwatstein October 7th, 2007 in search and Yahoo. 0 Comments

Yahoo! has unveiled a number of enhancements to its search engine. New features include Search Assist, which offers a drop down menu below the search box with suggestions for search terms related to the user’s subject of interest. Yahoo! has also integrated video, audio and photos into its search results, allowing users to access related multimedia content in search results without moving to a different page. The company said the new features aim to make web searching easier. While 99 percent of adults use search engines to find information online, only 15 percent find what they’re looking for on the first try, according to research by Harris Interactive for Yahoo!.

Read the full article here

Google Purges The Payola

Print/Share This Post

Email This Post

Published by rwatstein October 7th, 2007 in search and Google. 0 Comments

Googlers like to think of their company as the Web’s library. But as Web sites come up with more ways to wring profit from online advertising and sales–often using methods that Google opposes–a better analogy might be the Web’s watchdog. In recent months, that watchdog has barked at sites it accuses of shady practices–and it may be starting to bite.

Read the full article here

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 License