Open Source software can save your library money. Two great posts, one by Meredith at Information wants to be Free, and one by Karen at Library Web Chic — two smart women using open source blogging software — about what open source software they use. Links galore!
Category: ‘puters
how popular are podcasts really?
The Pew Internet survey says that 6 million people have downloaded podcasts. Here’s some discussion about why that number is probably somewhat, or even very, overstated. [rc3]
DRM – why do libraries care?
From the DRM Blog: Rent, Lease, or Buy – Which Model Is Right For You? No one is saying there’s something wrong with any case, but you don’t want to think your library is buying something when you’re really just renting the right to use it.
I have half a dozen songs from one service and three songs from another service and about 100 songs from a subscription service. I try the services because I cannot give my readers good advice if I do not try the various schemes for selling/renting digital content. But, because I am no longer paying the monthly subscription, I do not have access to those 100 songs I downloaded. The other songs have to be played through “authorized” players and so again I feel constrained. I have some open source software that I like for playing music but cannot use it with any of the content I downloaded.
the quest for the perfect filter
What do you do when you’re using CIPA-approved filters in your library and patrons or politicians want you to use filters that will block ALL pornography? In this case, in Pennsylvania, it looks like the local paper gets it right.
article: Allegheny County Councilman Vince Gastgeb, R-Bethel Park, hopes libraries across the county will adopt even stricter measures to prevent similar incidents. He wants the eiNetwork, the computer network that links the 44 public library systems of the Allegheny County Library Association, to use filters capable of blocking all pornographic or inappropriate material found on the Web.
editorial: With such an alarm sounded, someone might think libraries in the county are hotbeds of vice. In reality, they are centers of serious learning and improvement presided over by librarians, who rank among the most respectable members of society. It would be hard to find any group of people more dedicated and less inclined to tolerate those who would pollute their sanctum.
[thanks megan]
learn more about DRM
Teleread makes the assertion that it’s not writers [or some writers] who are pushing DRM for e-books, it’s publishers. No surprise there. If you want, contrast these three “What is DRM?” pages: wikipedia, Microsoft, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation to get a very odd amalgam of ideas of what people think it is.
…my own thinking is that without DRM the e-book business would be at least ten times its present size, now a miserable $50 million or less in annual global sales. But forget about that. Let’s just carry the clueless authors’ paranoia to its logical conclusion. Maybe books should appear only on stone tablets. To guard against piracy, Famous Writers can specify that their precious masterpieces be chiseled only on tablets above a certain weight.