I wear a lot of hats — some might say too many and they would not be far off. But be that as it may, one of the hats I wear is the Editor of Current Cites. Current Cites is a monthly current awareness newsletter that we (the Cites team, a set of volunteer reviewers) […]
Overdrive Debuts New Datasets
By on February 28, 2013
OverDrive is in the initial stage of rolling out more robust data and reporting tools that company officials say will allow libraries to improve their services.
Of Mashups and Makers
By on February 13, 2013
I’m afraid I must interrupt my series of posts on “Being Different”, which begins here, for this important message. Yesterday I participated in a panel that I arranged, and that my employer (OCLC) sponsored, on linked open data at the ALIA Information Online Conference in Brisbane, Australia. The drawing in this post was created by […]
Palo Alto Library Makes Data Available Via an Open Platform
By on February 12, 2013
The Palo Alto City Library has made its statistical data available to the public via an open data platform recently implemented by the city. The city partnered with the cloud-based Junar Open Data Platform in order to increase public access to high value, machine-readable datasets generated by various service areas and departments, including the library. […]
Saving Kids from Sneaky Online Marketing
By on February 7, 2013
It’s oh so easy to overlook what’s happening online—and if librarians, educators, and parents don’t notice it, why on Earth should kids?
An Alternative Search Tool for Your Tablet
By on February 4, 2013
A new app for the iPad and Android devices uses a highly visual format to provide a different search experience for the tablet user. More than just a pretty interface, Izik—which debuted last month as the top reference app in iTunes—is based on Blekko, the search engine that boasts higher quality results based on human curation.
Edge Coalition Releases Tech Benchmarks for Public Libraries
By on January 28, 2013
The Edge Initiative released earlier this month the initial version of the benchmarks that it hopes libraries across the country will use to evaluate and measure their public access technology services. The group’s efforts were the subject of a panel at the ALA Midwinter meeting in Seattle on Saturday. The Edge Benchmarks Version 1,0 , […]
Boston University Libraries Pushing Forward With Alma Platform
By on January 28, 2013
Roger Brisson, the head of metadata services at Boston University (BU) Libraries, has been deeply immersed in the cloud-based library services platform Alma from Ex Libris for the better part of two years. BU went live with Alma in November, one of the early adopters, and Brisson, as part of the ALA Midwinter Conference, explained […]
EBSCO Focuses on Discovery and Partnerships
By on January 14, 2013
In recent months, EBSCO Publishing has been deepening and extending partnerships with major vendors of library management systems around the world so that it can remain focused on what it considers a core competency—discovery. To that end, the company is planning in 2013 to implement ILS integrations (first announced in June 2012) with OCLC, SirsiDynix, […]
