Superpatron - Friends of the Library, for the net

International Children's Digital Library

As noted by Tori Orr:

We are a library that provides free access to children's books from around the world. By ensuring access to books from many cultures and in diverse languages, we foster a love of reading, a readiness to learn, and a response to the challenges of world illiteracy.

Their target is 10,000 materials in 100 languges; the project is a good ways there. There are a lot of beautiful picture books in the collection worthwhile just to browse through for their illustrations even if you don't read the language. Check it out!

(this should go into my "children's libraries" category)

Technorati Tags: kids, library

Planning for library services based on % of patrons with broadband

When I was at the WiLSWorld 2006 conference in Madison, Wisconsin last month, I had an interesting conversation with someone who was looking at planning for library services with a question as to what fraction of their patron base had access to broadband services. This recent Bandwidth Report from Web Site Optimization LLC and Andy King has (some of) those answers:

New Jersey edged out Hawaii for the highest broadband penetration
rate in the US. 48.6% of New Jersey residents enjoy broadband,
well above the national average of 35.1%. Workplace broadband
broke 90% for the first time in July, while video and VOIP traffic
surged.

There is a lot of regional variation, with the low end of the national scale running at about half of the national average, and I'd bet that if you broke it down on a county by county basis there'd be even a wider disparity. I'd recommend the full report for more details to help you plan your use of services that can make use of broadband (downloadable movies, books, etc).

Technorati Tags: bandwidth, broadband

Rob Giampietro: On Arranging Books by Color - (The Design Observer)

The books by color idea goes forwards!

Questionable personal beliefs aside, I have never found the Dewey Decimal Classification system to be an accurate reflection of how books are organized in my own mind — or anybody else's for that matter. Certainly I understand the DDC's advantages when when it comes to large-scale collections, but if how we choose to organize our personal effects says something about who we are, then an arbitrary numeric system says very little about me. My library is, to borrow from Georges Perec, "a sum of books constituted by a non-professional reader for his own pleasure and daily use." Perec's definition comes from a wonderful essay of his titled, "Brief Notes on the Art and Manner of Arranging One's Books", and includes such other quoteables as "The problem of the library is shown to be towfold: a problem of space first of all, then a problem of order." I am well aware of both. ...

The more you look, the more you see an enthusiasm for color-coding in every corner of our culture. A cursory glance at Flickr does well at articulating the range. Users there are sharing photos of color-coding systems they've observed on everything from condiments to bike racks, from dress shoes to trash cans. In addition to books, I know a number of people who've organized their records by color, and this makes lots of sense too. The many moods of music seem well-suited to color-coding, as does the indescribably abstract quality of the artform itself.

So, will Pantone's numbers replace Dewey's decimals anytime soon? Probably not. But don't let that discourage you. To rearrange your books is to see them afresh and to investigage yourself in the process. Even if you make a terrible mess, Perec reminds us that "Disorder in a library is not serious in itself; it ranks with 'Which drawer did I put my socks in?'" and your sock drawer is probably color-coded already.

There's more on Perec's essay in a review in The Tactile Mind. Bookshelf photo credit to jessamyn.

Technorati Tags: booksbycolor, classification, ddc, perec

Iowa Radio Reading Information Service

From the IRIS web site:

Getting the daily news from Iowa newspapers is as easy as turning on the radio for the 50,000 plus Iowans who cannot read due to impaired vision or physical handicap. More than 260 volunteers around Iowa donate countless hours reading the news from Iowa newspapers, magazines and other publications. With programming from In Touch Network in New York and from Radio Talking Book in St. Paul, the Iowa Radio Reading Information Service (IRIS) operates 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

IRIS is a member of the International Association of Audio Information Services and is one of approximately 150 non-profit radio reading services for the blind and print handicapped in the United States. IRIS exists solely on contributions from individuals, foundations, corporations and special events. In addition to reading on the air, volunteers support IRIS by delivering radios to listeners and helping in outreach activities.

Listen to the Main IRIS Live Audio Stream
Special thanks to Real Networks for providing IRIS the ability to stream our broadcast services on the Internet.

Listen to Waterloo-Cedar Falls IRIS Stream
Special thanks to the University of Northern Iowa KUNI station and our affiliate KHKE for allowing us to stream this special version of our network.

This is similar to the internet-only Assistive Media service that I work with, which features magazine articles from Harpers, the New Yorker, and other literary and general interest publications.

AADL integrates Google Book Search into the catalog

John Blyberg's latest nifty catalog update at the Ann Arbor District Library adds links to Google Book Search when that service has images available for the book. He writes:

So the folks over at Google Books think they can go ahead and incorporate our catalogs into their search, do they?

Actually, that’s fine, I have no problem with that, which means… They should have no problem with me incorporating Google Books into our hit-list. Right?

Now when users search the AADL catalog, they will be given the option to peek inside the books on the hit-list–that is, if there is a record over at Google Books. Basically, the first time that record is displayed in the list, the middleware queries Google Books to see if it has that item in its database. If it does, the middleware makes note of that in a MySQL table so that the remote query doesn’t need to be run again. That way, future queries save time and bandwidth.

Nifty! And handy too, especially since GBS doesn't have subject-based searching.

Vernor Vinge, "Rainbows End"

One possible future end of mass digitization efforts is but one of the many twists and weaves in Vinge's latest. Library lovers will find plenty to enjoy in this fast paced book where the Geisel library on the UCSD campus is a main character.

Review by Jon Lebkowsky.

Review by Stewart Brand.

Vernor Vinge dedicates his new novel, Rainbows End, "To the Internet-based cognitive tools that are changing our lives -- Wikipedia, Google, eBay, and the others of their kind, now and in the future." The book is an imagining of how those technologies might develop over the next two decades. But publication of Rainbows End is not only a literary event. The question arises, "Will Vinge influence the actual evolution of the technology?" He has done so before.

Review by Vicky Chase, Welles Library (Newingon, CT)

Your thoughts: READ THIS BOOK! It's fantastic. I loved the story but most of all I loved the imagination of the future the author predicts. It's scary. boy I am not sure i would want to be plugged in all the time but it's also interesting how collaboration has increased. The collaborative world he imagines encourages people to share information and to help each other solve problems.

(this should be in the Fiction about Libraries category)

Technorati Tags: books, fiction, library, review, ucsd, vinge

Bookmooch, used book trading site

If you have a pile of (non-library) books filling up your shelves that you have read and are perfectly good but you don't really feel a need to keep forever, you might be interested in Bookmooch. It's a book trading site that gives you points for uploading your inventory of tradeable books, and then lets you swap points for books (you "mooch" a book by requesting it from the site, which in turn notifies the book owner). Successful swaps beget more points, etc etc.

Point-based systems always have some tricky economics going on to make sure that you don't get too many points floating around or too few to match up with and encourage good behaviors. (See "Monetary Theory and the Great Capitol Hill Baby Sitting Co-op Crisis" for theory in action.) Otherwise this is set up very similar to la la (for CDs) in many ways.

On my wishlist for Bookmooch is some level of integration with Amazon or LibraryThing or any of the keep-my-wishlist sites that I know are out there - there's no particular reason to store that stuff twice.

Thanks to Jeff Ubois for pointing this out to me and introducing me to Bookmooch's John Buckman.

Technorati Tags: bookmooch

AADL / PatREST Google Gadget from John Blyberg for MUTL06

John Blyberg wrote a gadget for Google that lets you see new and hot books inside your custom home page. His blog entry has lots of details about it; here are a few screen shots.

This page shows what the section of your custom page looks like if you set it up to look for new knitting books. You can also configure it to look for new CDs or DVDs, to watch for hot books that have lots of holds at the library, and if you are so inclined you can put your current checkouts there as well.

Here's the corresponding configuration screen that goes with the knitting example. The "subject search" string has to be one of the subject terms used by the library, so pick your vocabulary carefully - books about fire fighting are listed under "fire extinction", and cookbooks are listed under "cookery". Knitting fortunately doesn't have any weird library-only word associated with it.

There are two libraries in the world that support this PatREST UI - Ann Arbor and the University of Huddersfield. My first round of testing didn't see that these work with Huddersfield, which seems to be missing a few necessary bits, but I didn't try all that hard. As I noted to John I'd love to see a "wall of books" style graphical version of this with book covers instead of text, & if I can decipher the Javascript he's using ...

This was an entry for Talis's Mashing Up the Library 2006 competition.

UPDATE 8/25/06: John tweaked the results and updated PatREST to make it easier to develop such services. I downloaded his code & made a few tiny changes in formatting (removing a few br/ tags) to come up with this "wall of books" style display.

Technorati Tags: aadl, annarbor, blyberg, google, innovation, MUTL06, patrest

for technorati

Technorati Profile
(move along, move along)

Jeff Ubois on the Google / U of California Library secret agreement

Jeff Ubois from archival.tv has an excellent analysis of the recent Google / UC library system agreement up at Google "Showtimes" the UC Library System

The University of California’s secret agreement with Google for book digitization promises to improve access to parts of its library collections, but the contractual restrictions UC has accepted may enrich Google’s shareholders at public expense.

Digitizing the world’s books, films, video, sound recordings, maps, and other cultural artifacts could, to quote Internet Archive founder Brewster Kahle, provide “universal access to all human knowledge, within our lifetime.” So it’s troubling to see public institutions transfer cultural assets, accumulated with public funds, into private hands without disclosing the terms of the transaction.

Jeff has a bunch of questions he (and I) would like to see answered about this deal.

* What more might UC be able to do if its scanning project were funded by the legislature or foundations, rather than by Google?
* UC says the “digitized books will be searchable through Google Book Search.” Can anyone else build services that access this data? Or is it another case of “Google can crawl everyone else’s data, no one can crawl Google’s data?”
* What quality assurances will Google provide? How can we ensure this won’t be a repeat of the microfilm experience?
* Will UC have copies of the full, high quality scans, or will certain information, such as image positioning data needed for searching, be kept by Google alone?
* What restrictions will be placed on UC’s use of those scans?
* What will be the different treatments for material in copyright, or orphaned, or in the public domain?
* Is it reasonable to ask the public to pay a second time (or watch ads) for material already purchased, simply because it’s now necessary to convert the format in which it is stored?
* Why haven’t the Regents appointed a panel of advisors on this matter?

UPDATE 8/25/2006: The Chronicle of Higher Education now has the agreement online thanks to FOIA; Jeff Ubois notes

The library community knows, or should know from the Showtime deal, that perpetual restrictions on the use digital copies are not in the public interest.

UPDATE: comments closed, they started to attract spam.

Technorati Tags: google