Inspiration can strike anywhere - on a stalled train, in a crowded cafeteria, even at the video store. Eight portraits of unlikely location where Wired pioneers felt the touch of genius.
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Archive for March, 2008
Photo Essay: Unlikely Places Where Wired Pioneers Had Their Eureka! Moments
Published by March 29th, 2008
in innovation and technology.
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What librarians do when they are bored. No library books were harmed in this production. These are discarded books.
Fostering Innovation Culture in an Unpredictable Economy
Published by March 29th, 2008
in innovation and economics.
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With the looming threat of recessionary times ahead and predictions that 70 percent of today’s revenue generating products will be obsolete by 2012, 2008 brings some unwelcome challenges to business. While many companies are hunkering down to weather the storm, global leaders understand that in economically challenging times it is critical to drive the market, instead of being driven down by it. This understanding is stimulating renewed discussion among executives on how to establish a culture that drives sustainable innovation to build value in lean times. Yet, executive commitment to an innovation culture does not necessarily translate into high performance execution of the innovation agenda. Surveys from leading consultancies and analyst firms also confirm that most companies are lacking in leadership or tools to innovate successfully and consistently.
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Virtual Museum of Cataloging & Acquisitions Artifacts
Published by March 29th, 2008
in web sites, museums, digital, collections and cataloging.
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This virtual museum is for the new generation of librarians who may not be familiar with the tools and methods used before technology and the digitization of library catalogs stepped in. It is also for those experienced librarians who have been in the profession for many years; perhaps the museum will bring back a bit of nostalgia. This site provides a look inside the history of libraries and librarianship. Librarians have always worked hard to adapt to the constantly changing technology that is meant to make libraries more efficient. The changes vary from the methods used to catalog items to the tools used to catalog them. Within these pages can be seen the transition, innovation, and the differences from one method or tool to the next.
Virtual Museum of Cataloging & Acquisitions Artifacts web site
If it Quacks Like a Librarian…
Published by March 29th, 2008
in librarians/information professionals and MSL.
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Rachel Singer Gordon writes: “I’ve been disturbed for some time about the vehemence with which we emphasize the divide between MLS librarians and everyone else working in libraries. Dean Giustini’s recent post on the Google Scholar Blog decrying Library Journal’s decision to honor paraprofessionals with Movers & Shakers awards and asserting they don’t have the right to call themselves librarians simply reinforced what I hear when talking to groups of paraprofessionals or when surveying people for my books: Many non-MLS library workers are unappreciated, undervalued, and ignored.”
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Widgets and Widgetry for Librarians: Copy, Paste, and Relax
Published by March 29th, 2008
in libraries, librarians/information professionals and library 2.0.
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Aaron Schmidt writes: “You don’t need a spell from Hogwarts to make exciting multimedia appear on your website. It isn’t magic—it’s RSS and JavaScript. Thanks to the power of Web 2.0, we don’t need to understand the intricacies of these two fabulous and geeky topics. The Web has sorted all of it out and made it easy for us to use. All you need to know to use the tools listed here is that after some (easy to do) customization, you’ll see a little bit of code to copy and paste into your website, blog post, or blog’s sidebar.”
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NextGet: What’s Your Role?
Published by March 29th, 2008
in librarians/information professionals.
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Jane Madison has it pretty rough. Not only does she have to wear Colonial garb in an effort to promote her library’s special collections, she has to serve as a barista, too. Jane Madison may be fictional, but her problems—making lattes in a mobcap while wishing she could be a reference librarian again—are all too familiar for many. Klasky, meanwhile, is a real librarian—and a shrewd one at that. In her novel, she raises a major question for the next generation of librarians: Who are we, really, and what are we doing?
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When Frederick G. Kilgour founded OCLC in 1967, he saw libraries across the U.S. doing the same, repetitive tasks in cataloging—rooms full of typists entering the same information on catalog cards. The OCLC online union catalog (now called WorldCat) and shared cataloging system dramatically reduced these inefficiencies by making it unnecessary for more than one library to originally catalog an item. Records in the online union catalog could be shared and used by others to produce catalog cards. When Frederick G. Kilgour founded OCLC in 1967, he saw libraries across the U.S. doing the same, repetitive tasks in cataloging—rooms full of typists entering the same information on catalog cards. The OCLC online union catalog (now called WorldCat) and shared cataloging system dramatically reduced these inefficiencies by making it unnecessary for more than one library to originally catalog an item. Records in the online union catalog could be shared and used by others to produce catalog cards.
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Vanderbilt University Optimizes Web Site for iPhone
Published by March 29th, 2008
in web sites, Apple and iPhone.
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Vanderbilt University has released a version of its homepage designed for the Apple iPhone. The site was created by the Vanderbilt News Service’s Office of Web Communications, which is working to optimize the university Web site for other mobile devices.
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Vanderbilt University Library Unveils Next-Generation Research Tool
Published by March 29th, 2008
in libraries and cataloging.
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Vanderbilt University Library users can locate and access more quickly an expanding variety of resources – print, digital and electronic – thanks to the new online service DiscoverLibrary. Over the past two years Vanderbilt partnered with Ex Libris, a leading vendor of library automation and systems software; the University of Minnesota and Denmark’s Electronic Research Library to develop Primo, which powers DiscoverLibrary. “DiscoverLibrary goes well beyond the current concept of the library catalog,” said Jody Combs, assistant university librarian for information technology. “It contains all of the records from Acorn, the library’s current online card catalog, as well as records from the Television News Archive, the library’s largest digital collection. DiscoverLibrary can grow to contain information about all of the library’s resources, and, eventually, even campus resources that are not traditionally associated with the library catalog.” He also said that the new system is designed to be fast and intuitive with features that Web-savvy users have come to expect.
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The Librarian’s World… From Paperbacks to Electronic Sources
Published by March 29th, 2008
in librarians/information professionals and library services.
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The traditional image of a librarian is that of a person (usually a woman) who is concerned with organizing collections of books and related materials, usually in paper form, in libraries, and servicing users with these resources. But with the coming of the information age, the career of library studies has evolved to include accessing materials from a range of electronic sources, such as CD roms, DVDs, and of course, that unfathomable frontier of information, the Internet. Career & Education recently visited the Department of Library and Information Studies at the University of the West Indies, where we learned of the new developments in this interesting career. On hand to share with us were head of the department Professor Fay Durrant, lecturer Barbara Gordon, departmental librarian Mark-Shane Scale, and fieldwork coordinator Eppie Edwards.
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Girl Scouts Help Establish Library for North Kentucky Inmates
Published by March 29th, 2008
in libraries and library services.
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Inmates at a northern Kentucky jail have a library of books to read thanks to the efforts of two Girl Scouts. Shelby Haggard and Kristin Jackson of Girl Scout Troop 157 were instrumental in making the books available to inmates at the Mason County Detention Center. Mason County Jailer Gerald Curtis says the program has been a boost for the facility. “These books eliminate a lot of boredom and isolation inmates feel while incarcerated,” Curtis said. “This program has provided an opportunity for these guys to expand their minds instead of sitting and continually thinking about their situation. It gives a different perspective on life other than the one provided by the streets to the inmates.”
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Libraries to Create Shakespeare Web Resource
Published by March 29th, 2008
in libraries, digital and collections.
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The Bodleian Library in Oxford and the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington DC are to put all 75 editions of William Shakespeare’s plays from before 1641 online. The quartos are the earliest printed editions of the plays and are the closest to what Shakespeare actually wrote still in existence. The project is intended to give the public greater access to the plays and downloading of the quartos will begin next month.
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The Mac Guru of Damascus in the Case of the Missing Laptops
Published by March 29th, 2008
in Apple.
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Eric Umansky in Wired writes, “Before my fiancée and I headed to Syria to study Arabic, we often heard there was one advantage to living in a police state: almost no crime. So it came as a surprise when Sara and I returned to our Damascus apartment one night after a dinner party to find splintered wood in the hallway — wood that had once been part of our front door. I made a beeline for the living room to check on our most valuable possessions: my MacBook and Sara’s MacBook Pro. Both gone. There’s no 911 in Damascus, so we called our landlord, who contacted the cops. Within an hour, a dozen police were on the scene. About half of them sat around fingering unlit cigarettes. (Pushy Americans, we had asked them not to smoke inside.) The others engaged in what could generously be called an investigation. They took fingerprints from the door. They dusted the fridge. “Maybe the robber was thirsty,” one said. They did not dust the coffee table where the laptops had been sitting.”
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Tattoo Parlors and Art Museums: Comparative Comfort
Published by March 29th, 2008
in museums.
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Which is more inclusive: the place where staff curse constantly or the place where they ignore you? Which has more social impact: the place frequented by educated art lovers or the one populated by blue collar joes? Which has more aesthetic value: the famous one-of-a-kind masterpieces or the images people love enough to put permanently on their bodies?
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Turst Me, Know Me, Love Me: Trust in the Participatory Age
Published by March 29th, 2008
in libraries, library services and museums.
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Museum 2.0 writes, “Here’s something to be proud of. Museums (and libraries) are trusted sources of information. In February 2001, AAM commissioned a study about the trustworthiness of museums and found that “Almost 9 out of 10 Americans (87%) find museums to be one of the most trustworthy or a trustworthy source of information among a wide range of choices. Books are a distant second at 61%, and a majority of Americans find print and broadcast media and the Internet to be not trustworthy.” Last month, the IMLS published a report on a survey of 1,700 people, with similar findings about trustworthiness of museums and libraries, and some great added information about how use of the internet benefits both museums (with higher in-person visitation) and visitors (with more ways to find information of interest). But here’s the problem. I don’t entirely trust these reports. They were both commissioned by organizations whose purpose is to support museums and libraries. Would you trust a survey report about consumer confidence in meat safety commissioned by the beef industry? And here’s the bigger problem. It’s great that museums are a trusted source of information. But is that really our mission? And more practically, is being a trusted source of information a key value proposition?”
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Library of Congress Launches Historic Baseball Resources Website
Published by March 29th, 2008
in web sites and Library of Congress.
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The rich holdings of the Library of Congress include many items that document the history of baseball and Americans’ fascination with the game. LC has just launched a new Historic Baseball Resources page that features player profiles, historical news and events, collection guides, and presentations. The LC Digital Reference Team will also host a web conference, “Batter Up! Baseball at the Library of Congress,” on April 4 at 2 p.m. Eastern time, through the Online Programming for All Libraries site
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Historic Baseball Resources web site
StoryTubes 2008 National Contest
Published by March 29th, 2008
in YouTube, video, children and books.
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Kids across the United States in Grades 1–6 are invited to participate in a national contest. They can make a two-minute video about their favorite book, upload it to YouTube, go to the StoryTubes website, and submit a link to the uploaded video using the contest entry form before April 20. The four winners in each genre category will win $500 in books and select a school, library, or educational association to receive $1,000 in books
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Online Writing Platforms Attract New Writers with Small Fees — and the Joy of Being Read
Published by March 29th, 2008
in publishing.
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In her spare time, away from her duties as a chemicals specialist in the Army, Angie Papple fires up her computer and writes an article about something close to her, like life in the military. Other times she’ll analyze a piece of software. Or she’ll churn out advice for travelers to Hawaii, where she lives, or Puerto Rico, where she’s never been. Some of these pieces bring her mere pocket change. The most lucrative ones earn about $40. Most of all, though, she’s thrilled to be considered a writer.
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Ten Web 2.0 Things You Can Do in Ten Minutes to Be a More Successful E-Learning Professional
Published by March 29th, 2008
in education.
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1..Listen to a conference presentation. When you run across conference presentations while reading your RSS feeds (EDUCAUSE Connect is a prime source, as is OLDaily), save the conference site as a bookmark and revisit it to hear a presentation. 2. Record a 10-minute presentation about something you are working on or learning about, either as audio (use Odeo) or video (use Ustream), and post it on your blog. 3. Do a search on the title of your most recent post or on the title of the most recent thing you’ve read or thought about. Don’t just use Google search, use Google Blog Search and Google Image Search, Amazon, del.icio.us, Technorati, Slideshare, or Youtube. Scan the results and if you find something interesting, save it in del.icio.us to read later.
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10 Tips for Introducing New Technology on Your Campus
Published by March 29th, 2008
in education and technology.
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Introducing new technologies to faculty members can be a challenge–they are often simply too busy or don’t see the point of mastering yet another tool. At San Diego State University, IT Services Director James Frazee and Associate Director of Instructional Technology Services Jim Julius have developed a number of techniques that their department has used to successfully bring new technology into SDSU learning environments.
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As teachers converge, One Laptop per Child takes a big leap from pilot program to large-scale national execution. This week, teachers from remote rural villages in Peru are gathering in several regional cities to learn how to do their jobs via One Laptop per Child (OLPC) machines distributed to their pupils. Peru is now engaging in the world’s most ambitious OLPC deployment: some 400,000 machines are headed to the Andean nation’s poorest and remotest schools–about 6,000 schools in all. The first 25,000 of these machines are now being inventoried in a Lima warehouse and are poised for shipment to the interior.
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WebJunction, Asociation for Rural and Small Libraries Join Forces to Advocate for Rural, Small Libraries
Published by March 29th, 2008
in libraries, library services and OCLC.
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When Stacey Buick noticed a 60 percent increase in circulation and a doubling of Wi-Fi usage at the Malvern Public Library in Malvern, Iowa, she knew it was no accident. Rather, it was the direct result of participating in a Rural Library Sustainability workshop sponsored by WebJunction and the Iowa State Library—one of nearly 300 workshops delivered across the country over the past two years as part of WebJunction’s Rural Library Sustainability Project. OCLC’s WebJunction and the Association for Rural and Small Libraries are building momentum and connecting librarians in a Community of Practice that provides information, resources and inspiration for rural and small libraries.
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Wikipedia Insiders Hotly Debate Future Fortunes
Published by March 29th, 2008
in economics and Wikipedia.
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Scroll the list of the 10 most popular Web sites in the U.S., and you’ll encounter the Internet’s richest corporate players — names like Yahoo, Amazon, News Corp., Microsoft and Google. Except for No. 7: Wikipedia. And there lies a delicate situation. With 2 million articles in English alone, the Internet encyclopedia “anyone can edit” stormed the Web’s top ranks through the work of unpaid volunteers and the assistance of donors. But that gives Wikipedia far less financial clout than its Web peers, and doing almost anything to improve that situation invites scrutiny from the same community that proudly generates the content.
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LinkedIn’s User Data Reveals Employee Trends
Published by March 29th, 2008
in demographics, social networking and LinkedIn.
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Yahoo employees tend to land at rival Google for their next job. The median age for Facebook employees is 27. And Hewlett-Packard draws as many graduates from India’s Bangalore University as it does from California’s San Jose State and Stanford. In a new feature introduced last week, LinkedIn, the Mountain View, Calif., professional social networking site, has produced 160,000 corporate profiles, from Microsoft Corp. to Apple Inc., detailing information such as common career paths, top schools and popular employees for each company.
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If you’ve ever wanted to know just exactly how much DNA you share with your ridiculously tall brother or doppelganger best friend, you’ll soon be able to find out. 23andMe, a personal genomics startup in Mountain View, CA, is about to unveil a new social-networking service that allows customers to compare their DNA. The company hopes that the new offering will encourage consumers to get DNA testing, potentially creating a novel research resource in the process.
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Google, MySpace, Yahoo Forge OpenSocial Foundation
Published by March 29th, 2008
in social networking, Google, Yahoo, MySpace and software.
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Google, MySpace , and Yahoo recently said they have agreed to form a non-profit group that would govern the development of a standard application programming interface that developers could use in building software for supporting online social networks. The three Internet companies expected the OpenSocial Foundation to launch in 90 days, and asked for others in the industry to rally behind the OpenSocial API, which was developed by Google to foster development across emerging social-network development platforms.
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After four years of intense study and research, Leslie Crutchfield and Heather McLeod Grant discovered six breakthrough practices that largely determine the impact a nonprofit organization can deliver. Can libraries apply these practices both individually and collectively to make a difference in the digital age?
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Google Invests in Chinese Social-Networking Firm
Published by March 29th, 2008
in China, social networking and Google.
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Google Inc. disclosed recently it has invested $1 million in Chinese online social-networking technology provider Comsenz Inc., a start-up originally backed by former Google board member and venture capitalist Michael Moritz. Google inc. said in a regulatory filing that it made its investment in Comsenz in July, as part of Series B round of funding for the closely held firm. Moritz, a general partner at venture capital firm Sequoia Capital who announced his resignation from Google’s board roughly one year ago, has a more than 10% interest in a Sequoia fund invested in Comsenz, Google said. Reports of Google’s investment in Comsenz surfaced in Chinese media last year, though the speculation had it that Google was putting roughly $5 million into the Beijing-based company.
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Music Fans Prefer Wikipedia to MySpace
Published by March 29th, 2008
in demographics, MySpace and Wikipedia.
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When we think of social networking Web sites like MySpace and Facebook, which have created a phenomenon of sorts over the years, we think their traditional competitors have no chance against them. With the younger generation finding its identity in these web 2.0 applications, one can easily think that they define and shape the thoughts of the users in every way. Not necessarily; the youngsters still prefer to use Wikipedia over MySpace when they want to search about their favorite music or band. While the artists and the bands think that a major share of their online popularity should be attributed to MySpace, there is another traditional web site, which is providing great services, probably even a tad better than that of MySpace.
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Lost in MySpace: How a Generation of UK Children is being Raised Online, Spending 20 Hours a Week on the Internet
Published by March 29th, 2008
in demographics, children, internet and MySpace.
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A generation of children are effectively being “raised online”, spending most of their free time on social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook, a report warns today. It says that many under-16s spend more than 20 hours a week glued to the internet, three times higher than official estimates. With millions left to surf the web on their own, 57 per cent of children have seen online pornography, most of it accidentally in the form of “pop-up” adverts.
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Start-up Askpedia: IAC Doesn’t Like Our Name
Published by March 29th, 2008
in search and Ask.
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Just how much does Ask.com own the word “Ask?” Enough to have a problem with a question-and-answer site called “Askpedia,” apparently. Representatives from the start-up Askpedia.com told CNET News.com that the search engine’s parent company, InterActiveCorp, sent a cease-and-desist letter earlier this month, citing intellectual property violations in the name “Askpedia.” “(This) is likely to cause consumer confusion, particularly inasmuch as Askpedia purports to provide online informational services that are substantially similar to those provided by Ask,” the letter dated March 13 reads. “In using and incorporating Ask’s intellectual property in this manner, Askpedia is falsely suggesting a connection between Ask and Askpedia, and thereby misappropriating the substantial good will associated with Ask’s trademarks.”
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New Research Uncovers How to Build and Maintain an Effective Competitive Intelligence Group
Published by March 29th, 2008
in corporations and competitive intelligence.
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A competitive intelligence head once noted that, “Competitive Intelligence is like oxygen. You have to have it, but the only time you realize you need it is when it is in short supply.” In today’s marketing space, most companies need competitive intelligence to effectively deal with a turbulent business environment, it is when the key insights are lacking that people begin to realize how critical competitive intelligence is in helping with:
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