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Library Usability Links 6/29/09

29-Jun-09

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CDL Introduction to E-books

25-Jun-09

Here’s a bookmark to a good introduction to e-books by Jane Lee (via Charles Bailey):

E-books: Understanding the Basics

I especially like the bibliography, which I’m partially reprinting here:

Recommended Reading

Johnson, S. (Apr 20, 2009). How the E-Book Will Change the Way We Read and Write. WSJ.com. Retrieved Apr 21, 2009, from http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123980920727621353.html

Lynch, C. (Jun 4, 2001). The Battle to Define the Future of the Book in the Digital World. First Monday, Volume 6, Number 6 – 4 June 2001. Retrieved Jan 8, 2009, from http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/864/773

Pogue, D. (Oct 17, 2006). It’s the Latest in Breakthrough Technology: The BOOK – Pogue’s Posts Blog. NYTimes.com. Retrieved Mar 10, 2009, from http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2006/10/17/17pogues-posts2/?scp=48&sq=ebooks&st=cse

Rosso, S. (Mar 4, 2009). A Guide to Ebooks for Read an Ebook Week. When I Have Time. Retrieved Apr 14, 2009, from http://www.whenihavetime.com/a-guide-to-ebooks-for-read-an-ebook-week/

Siracusa, J. (Feb 1, 2009). The once and future e-book: on reading in the digital age. Ars Technica. Retrieved Feb 3, 2009, from http://arstechnica.com/features/2009/02/the-once-and-future-e-book.ars

Recommended Reading
Johnson, S. (Apr 20, 2009). How the E-Book Will Change the Way We Read and Write.
WSJ.com. Retrieved Apr 21, 2009, from
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123980920727621353.html
Lynch, C. (Jun 4, 2001). The Battle to Define the Future of the Book in the Digital World. First
Monday, Volume 6, Number 6 – 4 June 2001. Retrieved Jan 8, 2009, from
http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/864/773
Pogue, D. (Oct 17, 2006). It’s the Latest in Breakthrough Technology: The BOOK – Pogue’s Posts
Blog. NYTimes.com. Retrieved Mar 10, 2009, from
http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2006/10/17/17pogues-posts2/?scp=48&sq=ebooks&st=cse
Rosso, S. (Mar 4, 2009). A Guide to Ebooks for Read an Ebook Week. When I Have Time.
Retrieved Apr 14, 2009, from http://www.whenihavetime.com/a-guide-to-ebooks-for-read-anebook-
week/
Siracusa, J. (Feb 1, 2009). The once and future e-book: on reading in the digital age. Ars
Technica. Retrieved Feb 3, 2009, from http://arstechnica.com/features/2009/02/the-once-andfuture-
e-book.ars
Additional Articles Consulted
Baty, S. (Jul 26, 2008). Doc Holds Fourth: What I want from an e-book reader…. Retrieved
Jan 8, 2009, from http://docholdsfourth.blogspot.com/2008/07/what-i-want-from-e-bookreader.
html
CIBER SuperBook project. Retrieved Jan 8, 2009, from
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/infostudies/research/ciber/superbook/
Cox, J. (Oct 2004). E-Books: Challenges and Opportunities. D-Lib Magazine. Retrieved
Mar 10, 2009, from http://www.dlib.org/dlib/october04/cox/10cox.html
eBook Glossary of Terms 1.0 – Planet eBook. Retrieved Mar 10, 2009, from
http://www.planetebook.com/mainpage.asp?webpageid=70
Epublishers Weekly. (Jan 28, 2008) 30 Benefits of Ebooks. Retrieved Mar 9, 2009, from
http://epublishersweekly.blogspot.com/2008/02/30-benefits-of-ebooks.html
Fallows, J. (Apr 11, 2009) It could have been the Kindle…. Retrieved Apr 14, 2009, from
http://jamesfallows.theatlantic.com/archives/2009/04/it_could_have_been_the_kindle.php
Hansell, S. (Aug 12, 2008). The Lessons From the Kindle’s Success – Bits Blog. NYTimes.com.
Retrieved Mar 10, 2009, from http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/08/12/the-lessons-from-thekindles-
success/?scp=45&sq=ebooks&st=cse
IT’s Academic: E-books: Princeton and Beyond. Retrieved Mar 9, 2009, from
http://blogs.princeton.edu/itsacademic/2008/12/ebooks_princeton_and_beyond.html
E-books: Understanding the Basics
- 7 -
Johnson, S. (Apr 20, 2009). eBooks in the WSJ. Retrieved Wed Apr 22, 2009, from
http://www.stevenberlinjohnson.com/
Kelly, K. (May 14, 2006). Scan This Book! – New York Times. Retrieved Wed Apr 22, 2009, from
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/14/magazine/14publishing.html
Marshall, J. (Mar 31, 2009). Talking Points Memo | Two More Quick Comments on Books.
Retrieved Mar 31, 2009, from
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/2009/03/two_more_quick_comments_on_books.
php
Marshall, J. (Mar 29, 2009). Talking Points Memo | Frightful Kindle. Retrieved Mar 31, 2009, from
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/2009/03/until_quite_recently_id_seen.php
MobileRead Wiki – E-book devices. Retrieved May 19, 2009, from
http://wiki.mobileread.com/wiki/E-book_devices
MobileRead Wiki – EBooks. Retrieved May 19, 2009, from http://wiki.mobileread.com/wiki/EBooks
Pogue, D. (Mar 5, 2009). Amazon’s E-Book Service – Pogue’s Posts Blog. NYTimes.com.
Retrieved Mar 10, 2009, from http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/05/amazons-e-bookservice/?
scp=8&sq=ebooks&st=cse
Pogue, D. (Feb 26, 2009). From the Desk of David Pogue – Sony PRS-700 – The Other e-Reader
- NYTimes.com. Retrieved Mar 10, 2009, from
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/26/technology/personaltech/26pogue-email.html
Pogue, D. (Feb 24, 2009). State of the Art – Amazon.com’s Kindle Goes From Good to Better.
NYTimes.com. Retrieved Mar 10, 2009, from
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/24/technology/personaltech/24pogue.html
Pogue, D. (Nov 22, 2007). An E-Book Reader That Just May Catch On – New York Times.
Retrieved May 22, 2009, from
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/22/technology/personaltech/22pogue.html
Stone, B. (Mar 19, 2009). Sony and Google Announcing E-Book Partnership. NYTimes.com.
Retrieved Mar 19, 2009, from http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/19/technology/19sony.html
Stone, B. & Rich, M. (May 6, 2009). Amazon Introduces Big-Screen Kindle. NYTimes.com.
Retrieved May 22 2009, from
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/07/technology/companies/07kindle.html
Stone, B. & Rich, M. (Dec 23, 2008). More Readers Are Picking Up Electronic Books.
NYTimes.com. Retrieved Mar 10, 2009, from
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/24/technology/24kindle.html
Survey of Current E-Readers. (Apr 22, 2009). Threepress: Digital tools for 21st
century publishing. Retrieved Wed Apr 22, 2009, from
http://blog.threepress.org/2009/04/22/video-posted-for-survey-of-current-e-readers/
Weisberg, J. (Mar 21, 2009). How the Kindle will change the world. Slate Magazine. Retrieved
Apr 14, 2009, from http://www.slate.com/id/2214243/

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Library Usability Links 6/22/09

22-Jun-09

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“social proof” and the young at heart

11-Jun-09

Fun video taken at the Sasquatch Festival this year which demonstrates a social proof timeline:

innovator > early adopters > mob

If you ever get a chance to see a show at the gorge in George, WA … do it.

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Library Usability Links 6/9/09

09-Jun-09

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The fading costs of content

09-Jun-09

The recent discussions about newspapers has got me thinking about the history, and costs, of information. Recently we just digitized a rather large collection of microfilm and are getting it ready to publish it on the library’s website. The below image is a letter to the “Department of Dakota” circa 1869 detailing Native American populations regarded as either “peacable” or “hostile”. Notice the first page of the letter says “copy” at the top. It was someone’s job to simply write out in longhand copies of these letters as they were sent to various officers. I knew this intellectually, but until seeing 28,000+ pages of these types of letters it really hit me how far we’ve come since then. At least from the standpoint of technology. [Full Text of Letter]

firstpage

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Creating a “Net Neutrality” Tracker with PostRank, Yahoo Pipes, and Twitter

04-Jun-09

Recently I was tasked to come up with a current awareness tool that tracks the ongoing debate surrounding Net Neutrality. The challenge for this project was to create something that wouldn’t just capture all activity for the keywords, but to filter out everything except for articles with the most social activity. The tools I used for this were PostRank, Yahoo Pipes, and TwitterFeed. The resulting feed comes in two flavors:

  1. RSS: http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.run?_id=4fb3b4ef2e272af1db49cb43c0a3d399&_render=rss
  2. Twitter: http://twitter.com/PRNetNeutrality

Goal:

Provide a current awareness feed that aggregates posts from the web which are the most “interacted-with”, but without swamping subscribers.

The sources used were Delicious, Digg, CircleID, Save the Internet Blog, and Google News

Methodology:

  1. Use PostRank to analyze the above feeds for engagement scoring. The raw results can be viewed under the PostRank topic net-neutrality
  2. Use Yahoo Pipes to filter out postings that have PostRank scores below 6.0 while combining the results into a single feed. After monitoring these feeds for a while, a score of 6.0 or higher seemed to be producing the best results.
  3. Convert that feed into a low-traffic twitter bot via TwitterFeed

The resulting format for each post is:

[PostRank score] [Post Title] [Post Date] [Post text & link]

Key findings:

  1. The resulting feed is low traffic and highly relevant, but not what you might call “breaking news”. Most results are a day old at least. I don’t think this is a bug, but a feature. If a person were to build a series of these, the result would be highly relevant postings which push out only the most active items. This would be good for monitoring topics that are interesting, but not an obsession. In a way, this is an example of a tool that makes use of the principles of “social proof“.
  2. The Google News source is a little disappointing because PostRank scores every article as “1.0″. I’m not quite sure why this is, but I’ve I’ve kept it in the source list in case things change.
  3. C0mbining social aggregators like Digg or Delicious with a tool like PostRank works out quite nicely.

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Social Proof article update

15-May-09

This link is meant to close the loop on an article I wrote for the wonderful blog In the Library with the Lead Pipe: Social Proof – A Tool for Determining Authority.

The question this article seeks to ask is: to what extent can the library website framework, with all of its catalogs, vendors, guides, etc., become recognized as an authority in the subject of research?

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Library Usability Links 5/12/09

12-May-09

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Review: Scanning Negatives and Slides

11-May-09

scannegSteinhoff, Sascha. Scanning Negatives and Slides: Digitizing your Photographic Archive, 2e. Rocky Nook.  2009. 240p. ISBN 978-1-933952-30-7. pap. $44.95

This book is a valuable addition to the field of digitizing negatives and slides. It covers a wide range of topics, including hardware considerations (from scanners and digital SLR cameras to flatbed and specialized film scanners); readers will also find a nice overview, with workflows, of image capture and editing software. The author goes beyond standard fare such as bit depth and dynamic ranges to explain various types of RAW formats, and includes a useful section on the recovery of images damaged by scratches and dust. Scanning Negatives and Slides is not intended as a stand-alone title for inexperienced readers, or for those without at least some familiarity with digitization issues; it will be most appropriate for photographers, professional archivists, and digital librarians. Recommended for medium to large libraries, museums, and archives with an active digitization program, as well as for special libraries that collect for photographers and/or art galleries.

Steve McCann is the Digital Projects Librarian at The Maureen and Mike Mansfield Library, The University of Montana.

This review is archived from The Tech Static

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