May 25, 2013

Roy Tennant: Digital Libraries

Since 2008 the blog of Roy Tennant, a Senior Program Officer for OCLC Research. Among other things, he is the owner of the Web4Lib and XML4Lib electronic discussions, and the creator and editor of Current Cites, a current awareness newsletter published every month since 1990. Follow him on Twitter @rtennant.

I, For One, Welcome Our New Software Overlords

adobe

As reported by CNet and elsewhere, Adobe is make a dramatic move to “cloud-only” versions of its famous Creative Suite of software applications. Creative Suite includes such programs as Photoshop, InDesign, and Illustrator, among others. Suffice it to say that most creative professionals rely on Adobe software on a daily basis. And it’s quite possible [...]

“If Everything Goes As Planned”

accident

I ran into this the other day, someone was once again saying “If everything goes as planned.” We’ve all said it. But here’s the thing: it never does. So why don’t we spend just as much time learning what to do when things inevitably stray off our path as we do to create the plan [...]

Giving Up Your Friends

bing

Recently I’ve noticed a very disturbing trend of social networking sites that require you to throw your friends under the bus to get whatever goodness the given site is offering you. The latest entry in this social networking arms race is Bing, which recently presented me with this very scary dialog box:   So not [...]

The Strange Case of Edwin Mellen Press

daleaskeycom

By now, you’ve no doubt heard about the lawsuits that the Edwin Mellen Press brought against McMaster University librarian Dale Askey. One of those suits (which also named McMaster as a plaintiff) was subsequently dropped, but as far as I know at this writing the other (naming Askey alone) still stands. I’m not writing to [...]

The Coming Book Social Network Shakeout

Today’s news of Amazon acquiring the popular book social networking site GoodReads gives one pause. That is because Amazon already owns Shelfari, and also has a 40% stake in LibraryThing — arguably three sites that offer the same basic value proposition. Allow me to speculate. And let’s be clear, that’s all this is — speculation. Why [...]

On Being Weeded

crossing

It finally happened. Someone confessed on Twitter that they were weeding one of my books. It had to happen at some point, and likely already has but remained unconfessed. I mean, this book is ancient history. It talks about Gopher and WAIS for crying out loud. And the very first edition (finished in 1992) barely [...]