At Aberystwyth University in the United Kingdom, users will soon have a novel means of consulting the catalog at the college’s Hugh Owen Library. Rather than typing their request, or asking a reference librarian, students can be led to the title they’re looking for by a robot with access to all of the library’s holdings.
About Ian Chant
Ian Chant is Associate News Editor of LJ.
No Such Thing As Too Many Cat Pictures: Q&A With Amanda Brennan | The Digital Shift 2013
By on October 30, 2013
Social media is becoming a more and more important way for libraries to interact with their patrons, and one ingredient of that is passing along interesting pieces of information about the library’s many programs and activities. Another very important part, though, is posting the occasional cat picture or funny video, or other piece of viral content, commonly known as memes. At The Digital Shift: Reinventing Libraries virtual event, held by Library Journal and School Library Journal on October 16, Know Your Meme’s resident librarian, Amanda Brennan, offered her thoughts on how libraries can use memes to engage their patrons and boost their followings on platforms like Twitter and Facebook. We revisited that presentation, and picked Brennan’s brain on some other points, in a Q&A that offers some pointers for beginners looking to make their library’s Facebook page a must read.
Reinventing Libraries Keynote Panel Looks into Industry’s Future | The Digital Shift 2013
By on October 21, 2013
Last week’s “The Digital Shift” virtual event, “Reinventing Libraries,” produced by Library Journal and School Library Journal, looked at the broad spectrum of ways in which libraries are remaking themselves and rethinking their missions—and how to accomplish them—in the digital age. Throughout the day, panelists gave presentations, took questions from honing new skills, developing new ones, and thinking ahead about what assets will make a successful library—and a successful librarian—in the future.
Perma.cc Aims to Bring Staying Power to Online Legal Citations
By on October 2, 2013
For all its use to researchers, the Internet can be an awfully ephemeral thing. Websites changes hands, services that were once free land behind paywalls, and servers go offline. Whatever the reason, the result is the same—all too often, a once-valid link no longer directs users to the information they need. For many of us, the familiar 404 message, indicating that a page can’t be found, is a common but inconsequential hassle of Internet use. For scholars and legal professionals, though, being unable to find a piece of information cited in a court case can be a costly and time-consuming hurdle. Now Perma.cc, a new service spearheaded by the Harvard Law School Library, is aiming to put a stop to disappearing links to citations in legal documents and court decisions by creating individual caches of content at the moment that authors and journal editors cite it.
