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.

 
Sony and Phillips look set to be launching an e-book reader capable of holding 500 books (downloadable from th' net), and displaying in a resolution of 170ppi (not incredible quality, but good enough), and able to be read in any light, from any angle. Just like paper. Battery-powered, with a life of 10, 000 page views. And at a very reasonable price.

Spotted on the Guardian's online blog.

| posted by Simon at 10:23 pm

 
Trying to overcome the problems inherent in natural-language searching, whereby if I search for "squash" I get dozens of irrelevant, to me, results for squash the vegetable, Google has launched a personalisation service in Beta.

"[U]sers fill out a personal preference profile and then provides search results based on interests.

For instance, users signifying an interest in music and searching for the word "bass" will receive listings on the instrument as opposed to receiving an outdoor enthusiasts' results on the fish, Google says. The degree of personalization can also be adjusted on a sliding scale, allowing users to receive results that stick close to their preferences or are more general in nature."

From Yahoo News

Having had a quick play with this, all I can say is, it has some way to go. But it's a great idea.

| posted by Simon at 8:55 am

 
Just a few links for myself seeing as this is what we're studying this week (and this is something that's likely to remain useful over time).

Criteria for evaluating information resources - simple checklist from the University of South Carolina.
Critically analyzing information resources - Cornell University.

| posted by Simon at 12:16 pm

 
This is great. Huge set of resources available free, many in full-text. As Gary Price points out, many of these will be familiar - Public Library of Science, Biomed Central, etc, but there are bound to be some new ones. And if even Gary is finding resources he didn't know existed, I'd imagine there would be something for absolutely everyone.

Bookmarked.

| posted by Simon at 9:54 am

 
Not an area I'm necessarily planning on getting into, but much of this is generalisable to any new librarian.

Top things a new ST librarian should know.

Originally on librarian.net

| posted by Simon at 3:29 pm

 
It's all right here - nicely arranged feeds for 20+ genres (each) of books, DVDs, music recordings, videos, toys and tech products. I'm being strong-willed and only subscribing to the sports, health, and science fiction feeds (two for work, one for pleasure). I could easily grab 10 or 15 of these feeds. This is, quite simply, great.

This info comes via The Shifted Librarian.

| posted by Simon at 5:58 pm

 
Enthusiasts Call Web Feed Next Big Thing.

"E-mail is crippled, concussed by an irrepressible spam stream. Web surfing can be equally confounding, a wobbly wade through bursts of pop-ups and loudmouthed video ads.

And that may explain the excitement these days over a somewhat crude but nifty software tool that automatically delivers updated information to your computer directly from your favorite Web sites.

Enthusiasts see these Web feeds as sketching the outline of the next Net revolution.

The technology behind them is called RSS...."

(mentions slashdot, Howard Dean, iTunes, Feedster, and MS probably incorporating RSS support in Longhorn. Claims RSS is hard to configure/implement for non-techies. Goes on to mention Bloglines as being popular because it's free, but doesn't mention how easy it is - which, for me, as a relative non-techie, is the huge advantage of Bloglines. I don't have to think about using it, it does it all for me. But a good article, overall).

| posted by Simon at 5:46 pm

 
Yahoo is moving to a system of paid inclusion, claiming that this will allow it to index the Deep/Invisible Web. The vast majority of sites will still be free listings, though. And it isn't charging non-profit sites for inclusion.

The positive side: National Public Radio and the Library of Congress will have material accessible via Yahoo.

The downside: some of the smartest people in this area don't like it:

"Yahoo's new system runs the risk of blurring the lines between the advertising and editorial sides of its search engine, said Chris Sherman," story via Associated Press.

"But Gary Price, a librarian and information research consultant who co-authored a book about the invisible Web, questioned the value of adding deep-Web databases to Yahoo's voluminous index, especially when people already can access the databases directly through other Web sites.

``Is it good? Sure, it's more content,'' Price said. ``But it also makes it harder to find. You're making an already large database even larger. . . . The information might be there, but if it's listing 100 in the search results, will anyone see it?''"
story via the Mercury News.

These stories were originally seen on LISNews.com and Metafilter respectively.


| posted by Simon at 5:39 pm

 
Queryster is a metasearch tool that will search one of ten major search engines. The neat feature is the ability to switch between engines quickly, using a graphical interface that sits on top of whichever search engine homepage you are looking at.

Trying out the obligatory vanity search produced some interesting results. Among all the other versions of me online there were a number of hits for myself, but which ones appeared in the top 10 varied quite considerably between search engines. Some dig out a diary entry I wrote 8 years ago for a music website. Others pick up on this blog, others on work-related blogs or posts. And others instead pick up more well-known sites that link to this one, or even just mention it, or my name.

Big lesson for myself: use more than one search engine.

This seen on an article on Search Engine Watch by Chris Sherman.

(And as an aside, Chris Sherman is giving two seminars in my town this month, along with Mary Ellen Bates. I'm eager to attend as long as someone else pays the registration fees. Now, how to call in yet another favour from my boss?).

| posted by Simon at 12:50 pm

 
Phil Bradley links to a great article on how to search the web more efficiently. It covers search engines, web directories, virtual libraries, search utilities and the invisible web. Most useful is the section on which tool to use when searching. Also includes sections on evaluating web content, how to narrow searches, and what to do when you get too few results.

A good summary, and accessible to the general reader.

| posted by Simon at 12:06 pm