Vast Active Library and Information Science blog. From a recent library science graduate in Wellington, New Zealand. A focus on reference and current awareness tools and issues, especially free, web-based resources.

 
My classmates might remember the Berkeley School of Information Management and Systems' project 'How Much Information?', which attempted to quantify the amount of new information produced each year (measured in bytes). It records what format the information takes (film paper, hard disk drive, IM, email, phone call), where it is produced, and how much is produced per person. They've just issued an update to the original (2000) report, which claims that the volume of information in the world has doubled in the last three years.

| posted by Simon at 1:07 pm

 
Seen on The Resource Shelf (and a few other places besides). Amazon has a new search function that lets users search the full text of over 120, 000 titles.

Gary mentions that "Searching for phrases can be imprecise. I ran a search for "sports broadcaster" and received many false drops." and no advanced search features are possible. Still, this seems like a potentially good idea. Once again, a commercial operator is way ahead of the services libraries are offering. What would we give for a catalogue that works like amazon's site does?

[edit] Testing the search with a few incredibly well known phrases ("it was the best of times, it was the worst of times" and "Call me Ishmael") produced some odd results - plenty of references to Dickens' and Melville's novels, but not the novels themselves (Cliff's Notes, Maya Angelou citing A Tale of Two Cities, but not the work itself.) Which suggests that this project only goes back so far, and classic (but out of copyright) works just aren't represented.

| posted by Simon at 11:49 am

 
Report from Pew Internet that's been cited on Slashdot among other places. Quoting the Slashdot post:

About a third of people responded to a spam, seeking more information. And 7 percent actually bought a product or service.

Who are these people? Why are they doing this to us? (On the incredibly rare occasions I get a spam that might, just might, be relevant, I go to their website direct, rather than replying to the email. Don't want to encourage the spam).

[edit] In the half minute I spent typing this post, I received two spam emails.[/edit]

| posted by Simon at 11:45 am

 
This is a great idea. A database of songs that have been inspired by novels, poetry, short stories. The idea being to use people's interest in the songs to inspire them to read the originals. From my own experience, I'd say this could work - I read one of the plays on the list (Shelagh Delaney's A Taste of Honey purely because Morrissey had mentioned it repeatedly in interviews.

Definitely a few references in there that I hadn't picked up on (Radiohead's My Iron Lung inspired by one of my favourite books, Thomas Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49 (stop reading this, and go buy/borrow or steal that book. Now. Trust me). There's also a lot that they've missed (plenty more Smiths songs, and the Manic Street Preachers should probably be mentioned a few times). Soon as I can get to my CD collection, I'm submitting them a list of suggestions.

| posted by Simon at 11:40 am

 
Text Mining is the discovery by computer of new, previously unknown information, by automatically extracting information from different written resources. A key element is the linking together of the extracted information together to form new facts or new hypotheses to be explored further by more conventional means of experimentation.

By Marti Hearst at UC Berkeley. Read more.

I must admit to being pretty much ignorant of text mining, so this is a worthwhile read for me.

| posted by Simon at 3:19 pm

 
A report of the Australian senate, that "provides a wonderful endorsement of libraries". (Via the NZ-Libs mailing list).

| posted by Simon at 3:09 pm

 
My absence for the past two weeks is down to encroaching deadlines and so forth. I have finally managed to finish the various assignments I've been working on (change management plan for a library, essay on issues in electronic publishing, and the design of an electronic journal as part of a group project). The latter included learning (more) about HTML, and learning how to use Cascading Style Sheets. I really enjoyed it. Weirdly, writing mark-up language code is the only thing I seem able to concentrate on for hours at a time.

Maybe that's my true vocation. Or, alternatively, I can just become tech-geek library boy. There must be a market for that, surely? ;-)

(The e-journal is up here for anyone who's interested. (As who wouldn't be?).

| posted by Simon at 5:29 pm

 
"Libraries are brothels for the mind. Which means that librarians are the madams, greeting punters, understanding their strange tastes and needs, and pimping their books. That's rubbish, of course, but it does wonders for the image of librarians."

From The Guardian. (Perhaps not entirely serious).

Steven saw this one too, but I promise faithfully that I saw it on my Google News alert, and didn't just rip him off.

| posted by Simon at 5:26 pm

 
This is a neat little tool. It enables you to input the date you start working on an assignment, the date it is due, and the assignment subject, and it spits out a schedule for you - giving you a day-to-day plan for constructing a research strategy, searching library catalogues and other resources, and actually writing the thing. You can even sign up for email reminders.

From the University of Minnesota, seen on Neat New Stuff I Found on the Web.

| posted by Simon at 8:44 am

 
Published by the Wellcome Trust, this report "provides a comprehensive analysis of an industry that generates some �22 billion annually."

"The report has been published to support constructive dialogue between key players in the scientific publishing field - publishers, researchers, academic institutions and funders. The ultimate aim of this dialogue would be to develop a publishing system that meets the needs of all groups, and best promotes the public good of scientific work - that is, disseminates research outputs to all who have an interest in them."

Of great relevance to my Electronic Publishing course, I think. I'm off to download the full report (PDF 1300kb) now.

| posted by Simon at 8:37 am

 
Google on Tuesday announced it acquired Kaltix, a three-month old search technology startup at work on improving search results relevance through personalization.

Financial details of the deal were not disclosed. A Google representative said the Mountain View, Calif., company gains three engineers and all technologies Kaltix developed. The representative declined to go into detail about how Google would use Kaltix's search advancements, citing competitive reasons.

Silicon Valley Internet.

| posted by Simon at 8:30 am