Found via the Washington University DLS blog, here’s an article from the NYT on the challenges faced by the National Archives when it comes to the massive data dump the Bush administration is about to unload. The archives invoked its emergency plan to deal with problems in transferring two types of electronic files: a huge [...]
Monthly Archives: December 2008
Preserving Data in a Hostile Environment
30-Dec-08Library Usability Links 12/20/08
20-Dec-08An article published in Code4Lib Journal called “User-Centered Design and Agile Development: Rebuilding the Swedish National Union Catalog“. “Finally, we would like to conclude that working with user-centred design in combination with iterative development is a better, faster and cheaper way of software development, compared to traditional models. Better – the product being released at [...]
ebook sales growth means new readers
19-Dec-08Found via PC World, a new ebook reader is coming out for only $230: Foxit eSlick. The new reader is identical to the Kindle and Sony readers aside from not being ready for wireless downloading. What caught my eye today is this memo from Random House saying their ebook sales have grown 400% in 2008. [...]
Reading a press release out of UCSD, this comment from the Blue Ribbon Task Force on Sustainable Digital Preservation and Access [pdf] caught my eye: A recent study by the International Data Corporation (IDC) said that in 2007, the amount of digital data began to exceed the amount of storage to retain it, and will [...]
Library Usability Links 12/11/08
12-Dec-08I’m a fan of user personas, but building personas for applications is an interesting idea. SocialStartup.com identifies five fundamental social patterns: Public Timeline Asymetrical Follow News Feed Re-blogging Social Proof Via the Scholarly Electronic Publishing Weblog: The Electronic Library 26, no. 6 (2008): Includes “A Metadata Manager’s Role in Collaborative Projects: The Rutgers University Libraries [...]
Song: All My Internet Friends
10-Dec-08All My Internet Friends This one is by internet friend Amanda French, inspired by Clay Shirky. Check out the lyrics at the link below. http://allmyinternetfriends.com/ Tweet
Building a Scanning Studio from Scratch
09-Dec-08I’ve been asked by a small-sized museum / special library to make a suggestion on what kind of equipment a start-up digitization studio would need while operating under a budget of approximately $3,200. This studio would need the cabability of digitizing photos, and possibly some text, post-processing the scans, hosting the images on an existing [...]
Library Usability Links 12/3/08
03-Dec-08James Robertson writes about Practical Ways to Assess CMS Usability including the following: 1. Vendor demo 2. Involve end-users 3. End-user training 4. Demo sites 5. Reference sites 6. Proof of concept 7. Usability testing Gizmoto review of Sony’s PRS-700 ebook reader: Unfortunately, the “improvements” have taken away the very essence of the Reader—the easy-on-the-eyes [...]