Bigwood D (2010), Catalogablog, Texas, USA, viewed 3/4/2010
http://catalogablog.blogspot.com/
This blog is written by David Bigwood an Assistant Manager for Libary Services at Lunar and Planetary Institute, a research institute funded by NASA. It is recommended by several other blogs as an excellent site for finding out what is going on in the cataloging world. The blog commenced in 2002 and has been consistantly published since then.
The site has alot of articles dealing with the various aspects of cataloguing ie MARC, RDA, Semantic Markup of Bibliography. David provides a lot of links to current conferences and up and coming events in cataloguing.
Saturday, April 3, 2010
Friday, April 2, 2010
British Library Podcasts
British Library (2010),"Whats On" British Library Podcasts, London, U.K., viewed 3/4/2010 http://feeds.feedburner.com/BritishLibraryPodcasts
These Podcasts are produced by the British Library, which gives them great authority. They cover a wide range of subjects but mainly concentrate on British literature and history. There are three main categories to choose from -
The Curators Choice- the Curators best picks ie. "Messiah concert in the British Library", "Beowulf", "Untitled Beatles lyric found"
Exhibitions link takes you to podcasts related to present and past exhibitions at the British Library i.e. "Henry VIII", "Ramayana", "From Parchment to Pixel".
Talks, Discussions and Interviews takes you to interesting talks such as - "Book Makers: British Publishing in the Twentieth Century", "Essential Shakespeare Live Encore", "Cheryl Tipp introduces 'British Mammals'"
The Podcasts are of a high quality and are presented by a variety of well known and respected professionals. I highly recommend these podcasts as there is something of interest for just about anyone.
My personal favorite podcast was the "The Lady in the Tower: The fall of Anne Boleyn" by Alison Weir, one of Britain's most respected and read historians. This talk concerns her next book which is a detailed account of the controversial imprisonment and execution of Anne Boleyn.Great stuff.
These Podcasts are produced by the British Library, which gives them great authority. They cover a wide range of subjects but mainly concentrate on British literature and history. There are three main categories to choose from -
The Curators Choice- the Curators best picks ie. "Messiah concert in the British Library", "Beowulf", "Untitled Beatles lyric found"
Exhibitions link takes you to podcasts related to present and past exhibitions at the British Library i.e. "Henry VIII", "Ramayana", "From Parchment to Pixel".
Talks, Discussions and Interviews takes you to interesting talks such as - "Book Makers: British Publishing in the Twentieth Century", "Essential Shakespeare Live Encore", "Cheryl Tipp introduces 'British Mammals'"
The Podcasts are of a high quality and are presented by a variety of well known and respected professionals. I highly recommend these podcasts as there is something of interest for just about anyone.
My personal favorite podcast was the "The Lady in the Tower: The fall of Anne Boleyn" by Alison Weir, one of Britain's most respected and read historians. This talk concerns her next book which is a detailed account of the controversial imprisonment and execution of Anne Boleyn.Great stuff.
Sunday, March 28, 2010
Wiki
I have decided to use the LISwiki to do a critical evaluation on
Hubbard, J (2010), LISWIKI,USA, viewed 31/3/2010, http://liswiki.org/wiki/Main_Page
This Wiki is an attempt to copy Wikipedia but in the niche subject of Library related material. Its creator, John Hubbard, is a Librarian at the University of Wisconsin who has a keen interest in web 2.0 technologies applications in libraries. LISwiki stands for Libray and Information Science wiki. The concept is very good but the wiki seems to have had only a luke warm reception. It was begun in 2005 and still needs lots of work by library employees and knowledgeable contributors, since many of the articles are just “stubs”. Some of the better articles are found under the categories of Cataloging and Classification. Each has a link at the top of the page to the other, so once you’ve located one, it’s easy to find the other. Cataloging has 52 articles and 3 sub-categories (Authority Control, Cataloging Elements, and Catalogs) each with several articles of its own. Classification has 26 articles. Many articles have a link to the Wikipedia. Another particularly good article is "How to Apply for a Library Job"
Overall I think there is probably more complete and active wikis available than LISWIKI.
Hubbard, J (2010), LISWIKI,USA, viewed 31/3/2010, http://liswiki.org/wiki/Main_Page
This Wiki is an attempt to copy Wikipedia but in the niche subject of Library related material. Its creator, John Hubbard, is a Librarian at the University of Wisconsin who has a keen interest in web 2.0 technologies applications in libraries. LISwiki stands for Libray and Information Science wiki. The concept is very good but the wiki seems to have had only a luke warm reception. It was begun in 2005 and still needs lots of work by library employees and knowledgeable contributors, since many of the articles are just “stubs”. Some of the better articles are found under the categories of Cataloging and Classification. Each has a link at the top of the page to the other, so once you’ve located one, it’s easy to find the other. Cataloging has 52 articles and 3 sub-categories (Authority Control, Cataloging Elements, and Catalogs) each with several articles of its own. Classification has 26 articles. Many articles have a link to the Wikipedia. Another particularly good article is "How to Apply for a Library Job"
Overall I think there is probably more complete and active wikis available than LISWIKI.
Libworm
I cant help myself! I just found this site and I didn't want to lose it so I'll just do a quick post.
Dolan F, Rothman D (2006), Libworm, viewed 3/4/2010 http://www.libworm.com
LibWorm beta is intended for library employees and those interested in libraries. The site collects updates from over 1500 RSS feeds, including over 800 biblioblogs, LIS journal Table of contents and many other information sources. You are then able to search the contents of these feeds, and the search results can then be accessed as an RSS feed that the user can subscribe to either in his favourite feed reader or in LibWorm's built-in reader.
Some of the major subjects covered are:
Academic Libraries
Book Reviews
Government Libraries
Humor
Law Libraries
LIS Journals
Listservs and Groups
Medical Librarianship and Libraries
Personal Blogs
Podcasts : Academic Libraries, Government Libraries,Law Libraries, Librarianship,
Public Libraries, Special Libraries, Professional Associations, Public Libraries, School Libraries, Uncategorized Feeds, Vendors
Wikis
Users can submit their own feeds to be added. Other features include tag clouds, aggregate feeds by category, pre-set subject feeds and search operators that let the user drill down into exactly what she wants to see- then be notified any time LibWorm sees it.
This is a great RSS feed search engine that accesses authoritive sites. It is simple to use and navigate and takes a lot of the hard slog out of searching the bibliosphere for library related feeds.
Dolan F, Rothman D (2006), Libworm, viewed 3/4/2010 http://www.libworm.com
LibWorm beta is intended for library employees and those interested in libraries. The site collects updates from over 1500 RSS feeds, including over 800 biblioblogs, LIS journal Table of contents and many other information sources. You are then able to search the contents of these feeds, and the search results can then be accessed as an RSS feed that the user can subscribe to either in his favourite feed reader or in LibWorm's built-in reader.
Some of the major subjects covered are:
Academic Libraries
Book Reviews
Government Libraries
Humor
Law Libraries
LIS Journals
Listservs and Groups
Medical Librarianship and Libraries
Personal Blogs
Podcasts : Academic Libraries, Government Libraries,Law Libraries, Librarianship,
Public Libraries, Special Libraries, Professional Associations, Public Libraries, School Libraries, Uncategorized Feeds, Vendors
Wikis
Users can submit their own feeds to be added. Other features include tag clouds, aggregate feeds by category, pre-set subject feeds and search operators that let the user drill down into exactly what she wants to see- then be notified any time LibWorm sees it.
This is a great RSS feed search engine that accesses authoritive sites. It is simple to use and navigate and takes a lot of the hard slog out of searching the bibliosphere for library related feeds.
Using an Image Generator
I have just been exploring The Generator Blog. This is a really fun blog to explore and muck about with. It has lots of links down the right side to Image generator sites. I chose the animated Neon Sign - as you can see. I am getting a bit tired now so I will do a proper evaluation of the blog later. While not strictly Library related it is fun, so I thought I would sneak it in.
Saturday, March 27, 2010
iSpecies Mashup
Page R (2010), Ispecies, Glasgow, Scot., viewed 28 March 2010, http://ispecies.org/
This mashup was developed by Professor Roderick Page who works in the Faculty of Biomedical and Life Science at the University of Glasgow. iSpecies is a great example of a science "mashup" that uses various sites to make a separate information web page for each species. The data displayed is generated "on the fly" by querying other data sources. The main home page is very simple just a search field and a cloud of the last 20 species search terms.
For each query term iSpecies provides a definition from Wikipedia, genome information from NCBI (National Center for Biotechnology Information), up to five images from Yahoo, a species distribution map from GBIF (Global Biodiversity Information Facility), and relevant article links from Google Scholar. Where availbale the iSpecies will also give links to authoritive sites like
Catalog of Life
Encyclopedia of life
Animal Diversity Web
Mammal Species of the World
Integrated Taxonomic Information System
Arctos Specimen Database
Although this is a scientific site you can search using the common name or the Latin classification but there isn't any spell check or suggestion mode, so if you don't have the name exactly correct you won't come up with any results. This site makes a great starting point for anyone conducting research into any of the world’s species. You can retrieve a great deal of pertinent information about the species in question from the one site. Occaisionally the site will get tricked and an unrelated image will be displayed usually because of an amibiguous tag.
Here is an example of a search result for Sarcophilus harrisii (Tasmanian Devil).
This mashup was developed by Professor Roderick Page who works in the Faculty of Biomedical and Life Science at the University of Glasgow. iSpecies is a great example of a science "mashup" that uses various sites to make a separate information web page for each species. The data displayed is generated "on the fly" by querying other data sources. The main home page is very simple just a search field and a cloud of the last 20 species search terms.
For each query term iSpecies provides a definition from Wikipedia, genome information from NCBI (National Center for Biotechnology Information), up to five images from Yahoo, a species distribution map from GBIF (Global Biodiversity Information Facility), and relevant article links from Google Scholar. Where availbale the iSpecies will also give links to authoritive sites like
Catalog of Life
Encyclopedia of life
Animal Diversity Web
Mammal Species of the World
Integrated Taxonomic Information System
Arctos Specimen Database
Although this is a scientific site you can search using the common name or the Latin classification but there isn't any spell check or suggestion mode, so if you don't have the name exactly correct you won't come up with any results. This site makes a great starting point for anyone conducting research into any of the world’s species. You can retrieve a great deal of pertinent information about the species in question from the one site. Occaisionally the site will get tricked and an unrelated image will be displayed usually because of an amibiguous tag.
Here is an example of a search result for Sarcophilus harrisii (Tasmanian Devil).
Library-related Flickr Mashup
I have been desperately searching the net for an interesting Mashup involving Flickr and a library. Eventually I have settled on the State Library of New South Wales Flickr Mashup
Hagon P (2008), State Library of New South Wales Flickr Mashup, State Library New South Wales, viewed on 28 March 2010, http://www.paulhagon.com/blog/2008/10/01/state-library-of-new-south-wales-flickr-mashup/
Paul Hagon has developed a Mashup using historical images from Flickr commons and compares them with their modern day images on Google maps. He has worked for various National Museums and Libraries since 1999. At present Paul is a web develper who works at the National Library of Australia. The Library of New South Wales has joined the Flickr commons and Paul has developed this mashup for them. The website home page is fairly simple with a very brief description of what the site is about and some tabs at the top right of the page to home, blog, work, about and contact. By clicking on the "Check it Out" link you are taken to a new page which is divided into two halves. The left half is a Google map of New South Wales with little blue speech bubble links indicating which areas have archival photos.By clicking on one of these little links an archival picture of the place opens up, similtaneously a modern Googlemaps street view of the area will open up in the right half of the screen.
At present the number of areas covered is limited, as not a great number of photos have been geotagged. Paul states on his site anyone can go in and add tags so that eventually it will evolve into something useful over time. It is difficult to know how accurate the matching of the archival photos to the Google street view is. Some places have changed so completely that it is difficult to compare one photo to the other and there is no indication which direction the archival photo was taken from. A couple of Archival photos trialed had no corresponding modern street view.
Overall an interesting site to play around on but not particulary usable at the moment. I would be very interested to see the same mashup done by the State Library of Tasmania
Hagon P (2008), State Library of New South Wales Flickr Mashup, State Library New South Wales, viewed on 28 March 2010, http://www.paulhagon.com/blog/2008/10/01/state-library-of-new-south-wales-flickr-mashup/
Paul Hagon has developed a Mashup using historical images from Flickr commons and compares them with their modern day images on Google maps. He has worked for various National Museums and Libraries since 1999. At present Paul is a web develper who works at the National Library of Australia. The Library of New South Wales has joined the Flickr commons and Paul has developed this mashup for them. The website home page is fairly simple with a very brief description of what the site is about and some tabs at the top right of the page to home, blog, work, about and contact. By clicking on the "Check it Out" link you are taken to a new page which is divided into two halves. The left half is a Google map of New South Wales with little blue speech bubble links indicating which areas have archival photos.By clicking on one of these little links an archival picture of the place opens up, similtaneously a modern Googlemaps street view of the area will open up in the right half of the screen.
At present the number of areas covered is limited, as not a great number of photos have been geotagged. Paul states on his site anyone can go in and add tags so that eventually it will evolve into something useful over time. It is difficult to know how accurate the matching of the archival photos to the Google street view is. Some places have changed so completely that it is difficult to compare one photo to the other and there is no indication which direction the archival photo was taken from. A couple of Archival photos trialed had no corresponding modern street view.
Overall an interesting site to play around on but not particulary usable at the moment. I would be very interested to see the same mashup done by the State Library of Tasmania
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