As I do virtually every day, today I received an email in my box with the subject “Library Link of the Day”. Some years ago I signed up for this service and I haven’t regretted it since. As advertised, it is simply a link with a title or short description that I can either choose […]
Major Milestone for the Wayback Machine
By on January 10, 2013
I can’t begin to recall how many times I have relied on the Internet Archive’s “Wayback Machine” to fetch a file that I had inadvertently deleted without a backup. Or checked out how bad my web design was back in 1996. I mean, srsly. So I was delighted to see that the Wayback Machine had […]
Unglue.it is Back With 4 More Titles
By on November 28, 2012
I’ve noted before the efforts of the Gluejar team to “unglue” books by raising enough money to buy the permission of the copyright holder to put the book out in a special e-book edition in all sorts of formats for free. They freed their first book last June, just prior to the ALA Annual Conference. […]
A $1,500 DIY Robotic Book Scanner
By on November 16, 2012
Recently a Google engineer unveiled a do-it-yourself (DIY) robotic book scanner. As reported by The Verge, Dany Qumsiyeh and a team of colleagues constructed it out of sheet metal, scanner parts, and an ordinary vacuum cleaner to build a page-turning scanner that only requires human intervention to put a book on the device. Scans are automatically […]
Fostering Female Technology Leadership in Libraries
By on October 30, 2012
Last week I gave a talk at Internet Librarian for which I created a slide that highlighted the gender imbalances of various professions (see picture). I’ve worked in libraries my entire adult life, and yet I was still surprised by the gender imbalance in libraries — according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in 2011 […]
Coming Soon to a Library Near You: The Short-Form Monograph
By on October 20, 2012
Jennifer Howard has an interesting piece over on The Chronicle of Higher Education, in which she describes a number of academic efforts to publish short form ebooks instead of the usual weighty academic tome. You don’t have to have a PhD. to figure out how this could be a win-win situation for all involved. Shorter […]
Digital Content Is SO Broken
By on October 19, 2012
I don’t need to be a rocket scientist to know that the e-book market is A World of Hurt for libraries. I don’t even know where to begin in listing the litany of damage that the ebook market presents for librairies. I mean, srsly. But believe it or not, libraries are not the only ones […]
