Libraries, Wired and Reborn. I really like the computers we have in our public library, thanks to the Gates Foundation, however technology without staff training and staff funding only reinforces the “computers are hard” myth at our rural-ish public library. [thanks all]
Category: ‘puters
The nature of meaning in the age of Google
“The nature of meaning in the age of Google” a paper by my former professor, Terry Brooks.
“Google may index billions of Web pages, but it will never exhaust the store of meaning of the Web. The reason is that Google’s aggregation strategy is only one of many different strategies that could be applied to the semantic objects in public Web space. Hidden in the ‘dogs’ retrieval set of 14.5 million are special, singular, obscure, unpopular, etc., Web pages that await a different aggregation strategy that would expose their special meanings. To charge that Google has a bias against obscure websites… is to expect Google to be something other than Google. Google finds the common meanings. Many other meanings exist on the Web and await their aggregators.”
free stuff for national library week
National Library Week starts tomorrow. Gale is making 24 of its databases free for the whole week.
another acronym you need to know: RFID
Another terribly useful library blog: RFID in libraries.
koha 2.0, no joke
Koha, the free Open Source library system just released their 2.0 version complete with a fully templated web interface and full integration with MARC. Take a test drive and tell me it isn’t better looking and easier to use than whatever you are currently overpaying your vendors for. [catalogablog]