August 31st, 2010 Brian Herzog
Sometimes when I am working on a post, I wonder if another library blogger has already covered it - an am afraid I’ll look kind of dumb rehashing something.
So I thought, wouldn’t it be great to set up a Google custom search engine to search all library-related blogs? Before I did, I checked if anyone already created one, and it turned out Library Zen had - four years ago (I’m even further behind than I thought).
LISZEN Search searches over 500 library blogs, and has an accompanying wiki to keep track. If you write about the library world, add yourself.
Something related that would also be nice is a custom search of just library websites - so it would be easy to quickly see what other library’s policies are regarding ebooks, or circulating laptops, or how much they charge for printing, etc. But considering the breadth of libraries and the complexity of maintaining it, just using regular Google might be more realistic.
Tags: blog, blogs, co-op, cse, custom search engine, google, librarian, librarians, libraries, Library, liszen, public, search, Websites See Also
Posted under Library, Technology | 7 Comments »
August 28th, 2010 Brian Herzog
This was sort of a frustrating question, but in the end was fun - mainly because I get to tag this post “gonzo reference.”
A patron came rushing up to the desk (literally) and said he quickly needed to know John Philip Sousa’s religion. Since time was important, I gave the patron Encyclopedia Britannica and showed him how to find the John Philip Sousa article, while I searched Wikipedia. Neither identified his religion, so the next step was to grab the one Sousa biography we had on the shelf, and the patron looked through the index under “faith,” “religion,” etc., while I kept searching our databases and the internet.
Again, neither of us located anything quickly, except for a quote online attributed to Sousa:
My religion lies in my composition.
That didn’t exactly answer the patron’s question, but he felt Sousa must have meant that, regardless of what religion he was officially, he wasn’t himself a very religious person, and that was good enough for the patron. He thanked me and rushed out.
But I was still surprised that such an simple fact wouldn’t have been more readily available. I decided to keep searching until I found it, and then add the fact to Wikipedia - mainly because I can. I was already in the library’s catalog, so I requested a Sousa biography from another library (John Philip Sousa: American Phenomenon) that seemed likely to have the information.
When it arrived, I started flipping through it, then wondered if this had been scanned into Google Books - turns out, it had. I searched the content of the book for “religion” and found the answer I was looking for at the bottom of page 102.
I then composed a little paragraph and added it to Wikipedia:
Although Freemasonry is an organization influenced by religious beliefs, John Philip Sousa himself was not. He was an Episcopalian, and while tolerant of religious beliefs in general, he personally regarded music as providing more Divine inspiration for people than Sunday sermons.[13] He is also widely quoted saying, “My religion lies in my composition.”[14]
So I was feeling pretty good with myself for tracking down this information and contributing it to Wikipedia - with the logic of, “if you can’t find a reference, make a reference.” But then it occurred to me: if the book I found the information in is in Google Books, why didn’t show up in my initial internet search.
I don’t know if it did then and I just missed it, but now this book, linking directly to page 102, is showing up as the fourth result for a search on “john philips sousa religion.” Hmm. So despite my boasting last week, even information professionals can miss things. Oh, and by the way, he was Episcopalian.
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Posted under Library, Reference Question, Technology | 1 Comment »
August 7th, 2010 Brian Herzog
It’s been a busy week - lots of people on vacation, so we’re both short-staffed and busier than usual - and often I’ve been rushing from one patron to the next without much of a break in between. However, this patron’s question stopped me short:
Patron: Can you show me where to put my UTI?
I was almost convinced she couldn’t possibly mean a “urinary tract infection,” but she immediately turned around and walked off toward the public computers - curiosity (and customer service) got the better of me, so I followed her over.
When we got back to her computer, she pointed at the screen and said,
See, there’s no place for me to type in my web address UTI.
Okay - she meant URL (thank goodness). It’s an easy fix to turn back on the Navigation Toolbar in Firefox:
While doing that, I said something like, “there, now you can type your URL in the box.” When she heard me say “URL,” she replied,
Oh, that’s it, URL. I knew what I said didn’t sound right.
No, it did not.
Tags: browser, firefox, libraries, Library, menu, menus, public, Reference Question, toolbar, toolbars, url, web address See Also
Posted under Library, Reference Question, Technology | 2 Comments »
August 5th, 2010 Brian Herzog
I’m not entirely comfortable talking about something I haven’t used myself, but I really like the idea of this software - it automatically OCRs flat-scanned PDFs and creates text-searchable versions.
Alright, some of you might be saying, “it does what now?” From their description (and more on SlashDot), this is software you install on your server. Then, when one of those horrible originally-scanned-as-one-big-image PDF files gets saved to a “watched” directory, the software automatically converts it to a proper, search-the-text type PDF.
Since I haven’t tried it, I don’t know how well it works. It sounds like it’ll take a bit of tinkering to get operational, but it’d be worth it to make those scanned PDF more useful.
It would also be worth exploring hooking up a scanner directly with this software, to help speed the digitization of historical (and other) records. We looked at the Library Scan Station, which was pretty awesome itself, but was just too expensive for us. This might prove to be a lower-cost solution.
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August 3rd, 2010 Brian Herzog
I thought I’d pass this along in case anyone is interested - The American Physical Society is offering online access to their journals free to public libraries.
I haven’t decided if my library will take advantage of the offer, because these journals seem more academic that what our patrons are usually after, and also, it’s in-library access only. But on the plus side, it’s free, and this is a good direction for publishers to be headed.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
APS ONLINE JOURNALS AVAILABLE FREE IN U.S. PUBLIC LIBRARIES
Ridge, NY, 28 July 2010: The American Physical Society (APS) announces a new public access initiative that will give readers and researchers in public libraries in the United States full use of all online APS journals, from the most recent articles back to the first issue in 1893, a collection including over 400,000 scientific research papers. APS will provide this access at no cost to participating public libraries, as a contribution to public engagement with the ongoing development of scientific understanding.
APS Publisher Joseph Serene observed that “public libraries have long played a central role in our country’s intellectual life, and we hope that through this initiative they will become an important avenue for the general public to reach our research journals, which until now have been available only through the subscriptions at research institutions that currently cover the significant costs of peer review and online publication.”
Librarians can obtain access by accepting a simple online site license and providing valid IP addresses of public-use computers in their libraries (http://librarians.aps.org/account/public_access_new). The license requires that public library users must be in the library when they read the APS journals or download articles. Initially the program will be offered to U.S. public libraries, but it may include additional countries in the future.
“The Public Library program is entirely consistent with the APS objective to advance and diffuse the knowledge of physics,” said Gene Sprouse, APS Editor in Chief. “Our goal is to provide access to
everyone who wants and needs our journals and this shift in policy represents the first of several steps the APS is taking towards that goal.”
–Contact: Amy Halsted, Special Assistant to the Editor in Chief, halsted@aps.org, 631-591-4232
–About the APS: The American Physical Society is the world’s largest professional body of physicists, representing close to 48,000 physicists in academia and industry worldwide. It has offices in Ridge, NY; Washington, DC; and College Park, MD. For more information: www.aps.org.
Tags: access, american physical society, aps physics, database, databases, free, journal, journals, libraries, Library, online, public, resource, Resources See Also
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