Posts Tagged ‘library services’

Licensing Digital Content

Tuesday, August 24th, 2010

book coverLicensing Digital Content – A Practical Guide for Librarians, Lesley Ellen Harris, American Library Association, 2009

Librarians need to read this. 150 pages.

Fundamentals of MARC

Wednesday, July 28th, 2010

book coverFundamentals of MARC 21 Bibliographic Format, Subarna K. Das, Ess Ess, 2009

Library electronic catalogs are backed by databases that use the MARC standard record. This book is for database programmers, and describes the MARC fields in detail. Hardcover, 400 pages.

The Case for Books

Wednesday, April 28th, 2010

book coverThe Case for Books : past, present, and future / Robert Darnton, PublicAffairs, 2009

This very readable book discusses copyright law as seen by the chief of Harvard’s library, who negotiated with Google on their book digitization project. Hard cover, 200 pages.

Librarians and Cybrarians

Wednesday, April 14th, 2010

book coverThis book is overdue! : how Librarians and Cybrarians can save us all / Johnson, Marilyn, Harper, 2010

This book will interest community leaders who need to know the great value of libraries as they transition to the internet era. It will also interest students who might choose a career as a librarian. The book is very readable, even motivational. Hard cover, 250 pages.

Library Mashups

Tuesday, February 9th, 2010

book coverLibrary Mashups : exploring new ways to deliver library data / edited by Nicole C. Engard, Information Today, 2009

This collection of articles conveys a new approach to library services and information architecture. 300 pages.

Information Literacy meets Library 2.0

Thursday, September 10th, 2009

book coverInformation Literacy meets Library 2.0 / edited by Peter Godwin, Facet Publishing, 2008

Here is an interesting discussion of how libraries need to change to meet the challenge of digital content and the semantic web. It is well written and concise at 175 pages, hardcover.

Licensing and Managing Electronic Resources

Tuesday, July 21st, 2009

Licensing and Managing Electronic Resources / Becky Albitz, Chandos, 2008

Here is legal help for librarians in charge of electronic resources, written by an American librarian. It is well written, 150 pages.

Managing technologies and automated library systems

Wednesday, May 6th, 2009

Managing technologies and automated library systems in developing countries : open source vs commercial options : proceedings of the IFLA pre-conference satellite meeting / edited by Bernard Dione, K.G. Saur, 2008

This funny little hardcover has academic papers on library automation in Africa. The book is partly in English, partly in French. It is not at Amazon, and that makes it rare! Read the paper by Norwegian students who used the open source Koha ILS in a Kenyan library. Maybe OPL should be using Koha because it is or will be better than Lirico/sirsidynix, so OPL can save money for more book purchases.

Safari Stopped

Wednesday, December 10th, 2008

Safari, O’Reilly’s online book access, has lots to offer.  It has lots of current tech books, it is searchable, and you can read books before they get to the stores.  However, you have to read books on your computer, which may be inconvenient, or you have to print out chapters, which is really inconvenient.  Oh, and Safari costs $20 or $40 per month. I discontinued my subscription to save money, then re-subscribed to search out a problem that I was having (in a threaded program in gnu c++, what are those large ‘arena’ anon mappings, that use relatively little resident memory, and why).  Safari helped where Google had not.  But I much prefer holding a book in my hands, and I have not visited Safari in a week.  YMMV.

The library used to have a Safari shared license so any three people could use Safari via the library site.  The service was stopped recently because it was not getting used much.  To bad.

A new building for the Ottawa Public Library?

Wednesday, August 6th, 2008

A new building for the Ottawa Public Library? Maybe, but let’s look at the options. They are asking for a big new public building in central Ottawa. But the way we use the library has changed; we place holds online and pick up the materials at the local branch. There is no longer a need for a downtown architectural monument. The large sum they are discussing could buy warehouse space near the 417 and stock it with Amazon’s ‘long tail’. Mark Sutcliffe, the Citizen columnist, writes about this option.