It’s possible, though unlikely that you haven’t yet checked out Meredith’s Best Practices wiki where librarians can share their success stories. It’s filling with content slowly and remember, you can help. For those who are new to wiki culture, I added a tips page on how to get started off on the right foot.
Category: ‘puters
why the wikitorial didn’t work, and why we knew it wouldn’t
I like wikis, it’s no secret. I also like Wikipedia. That’s one of the reasons I winced at the Wikitorial project because I knew in my bones that it would 1) fail 2) bring with it the “see? wikis suck!” crowd. I like this post explaining why it didn’t work [upshot: poor planning, lack of vision, lack of wiki understanding to prdict problems]. For some crazy reason, this made me think of fingerprinting patrons in libraries, or maybe RFID. [web4lib]
Personal Digital Collections
I was talking about Google’s persistent cookies on my way home from the Sleater-Kinney show today. One of the things my law student boyfriend was wondering, was if there had been attempts to subpoena IP-linked cookie-enabled tracking information — from Google or elsewhere — in the course of law enforcement activities. I couldn’t point to a case. D-Lib has an article this month about Personal Digital Collections which is sort of a way of thinking about the digital information that people keep and create and present about themselves. The article explores how these digital trails are created and maintained, and what challenges they present for curators and archivists of the next generations.
silkworm: tantalizing ideas and a few tools
“In the age of Google, Amazon and MSN, why is content in the library domain still so difficult and expensive to discover, access and share?” Read this long and informative white paper on how we can strive to make users experiences in the library more like the interconnected interactive experiences in the rest of their daily lives. More links over at It’s All Good, Common Library Environment, and some summaries and excerpts from Science Library Pad including one that just makes me salivate in a “the world might become the way I want it” way. Right now we’re mostly riding on buzz and good ideas, but it’s good to see the tech community helping create tools with the library community, as if, in some way, we were all part of the same thing.
‘Project Silkworm is based on the concept that library vendors must now collaborate in order to begin to deliver better services. This focus on participation (of both vendors and users) permeates the whole project and is captured in four key values: [1] Sharing and community over duplication and isolation, [2] Reuse over reinvention, [3] Openness and interoperability over exclusivity, [4] Experimentation over certainty…
Google Print contract, available for the reading
If you’re curious just what libraries have agreed to with their Google Print arrangements, here’s one contract [pdf] that is available online [linked from here, which is linked from here, yes, I was surprised too]. In short, it outlines what can, can’t, and must be done with the Google Digital Copy and the University of Michigan’s Digital Copy of the scanned information. In short, the digital copies of public domain works are not public domain. I’m sure no one is suprised by this, but the phrase “land grab” does come to mind as I read this contract. Of particular note:
- UM needs to find a way to restrict automated access, downloading of its content, or others making its content available for commercial purposes. This is more restrictive than public domain.
- Further UM agrees to restrict use of its content to “persons having a need to access such materials” and makes particular mention to those materials not being “disseminated to the public at large” this m ay be nothing serious, or it may be
- Google is a third party beneficiary of any agreement UM enters into with regards to the UM Digital Copy and any cooperative web service agreement such as the Digital Library Federation
- Google agrees to always make searching and showing search results of the content free.
It’s fascinating reading. I am certainly not a lawyer or copyright expert, I would be very interested in what other people have to say about this.