Monthly Archives: December 2006

Why Can’t a Wiki Be More Like a Blog?

Thoughts on new blog/wiki hybrids from the Library 2.0 blog.

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Requirements for mass digitization projects

Joseph J. Esposito has a post on the liblicense-l list at Yale wherein he makes some points worth bearing in mind: My concern is a practical one: Some projects are incomplete in their design, which will likely result in their … Continue reading

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Under the tree

My wife just gave me a copy of John Maeda’s The Laws of Simplicity, a book I’ve been wanting to read for a while. Maeda, whom I heard once at an ACH-ALLC meeting in Georgia, ranks on my top-three list … Continue reading

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Gotta separate the wheat from the chaff

George Will, criticizing Time magazine’s choice of Person of the Year, notes that “Most bloggers have the private purpose of expressing themselves for their own satisfaction.” No doubt that’s a true statement, strictly speaking, but even a few notable counter-examples … Continue reading

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Archimedes, again

Yet another piece on the the Archimedes palimpsest, this one in the L. A. Times. “The team made progress on a few pages, but it may take decades — or longer — before technologies are developed that can unveil all … Continue reading

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Grassroots book-scanning for uncompromising OA

As complaints multiply about quality control in the Google book scanning initiative, this sort of approach begun by Nicholas Hodson looks increasingly promising to me.  (Had to laugh about the blue and the pink coding, though!)

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Our Cultural Commonwealth

From the ACLS: The ACLS is pleased to announce that “Our Cultural Commonwealth: The final report of the American Council of Learned Societies Commission on Cyberinfrastructure for the Humanities & Social Sciences” was released December 13, 2006. In 2004, ACLS … Continue reading

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Response to APA/AIA statement

A joint APA-AIA Task Force on Electronic Publication has issued a call for comments on its statement. (There’s also a draft summary of issues and possible recommendations.) Greg Crane (Editor in Chief of the Perseus Digital Library) has offered a … Continue reading

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3D and Museum Exhibitions

From Current Cites: Entlich, Richard. “The Missing Dimension in Web-based Museum Exhibitions: Obstacles to Adding Depth to Digital Data” RLG DigiNews 10(6)(15 December 2006). – This “FAQ” feature in RLG DigiNews “provides a brief discussion about the development of 3D … Continue reading

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Mass digitization of books

From Current Cites: Coyle, Karen. “Mass Digitization of Books” The Journal of Academic Librarianship 32(6)(November 2006): 641-645. – A very well done overview of mass and near-mass digitization of books by Google, the Open Content Alliance, Microsoft, Project Gutenberg, and … Continue reading

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Greg Crane on CNN

From Google library: Open culture? The University of California, which also belongs to the Open Content Alliance, has no regrets about allowing Google to scan at least 2.5 million of the books in its libraries. “We felt like we could … Continue reading

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Response to APA/AIA

A joint APA-AIA Task Force on Electronic Publication has issued a call for comments on its statement. (There’s also a a draft summary of issues and possible recommendations. Greg Crane (Editor in Chief of the Perseus Digital Library) has offered … Continue reading

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Intel developing electronic Qur’an

from Engadget: The device, known as the E-Quran, is a handheld, low-power computer … which contains the full text of the Islamic holy book along with audio versions in 40 languages and interactive, interpretive material.

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New technologies for Euclid’s Elements

Greg Crane points out a new paper by Mark J. Schiefsky: The specific purpose of this paper is to describe a set of new software tools and some of their applications to the study of Euclid’s Elements. More generally, it … Continue reading

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Threats to Preservation

Jill Hurst-Wahl at Digitization 101 lists some Bad Things That Can Happen Media failure Hardware failure Software failure Network failure Obsolescence Natural Disaster Operator error Internal Attack External Attack Organization Failure Economic Failure and she notes that LOCKSS is one … Continue reading

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