Monthly Archives: December 2005
Top infotech stories
More light holiday posting … Technology Review has published its list of top ‘infotech’ stories for 2005. They note: Municipal Wi-Fi. “Now there are more than 300 U.S. cities considering municipal Wi-Fi, which would provide inexpensive wireless Internet access anywhere, for anyone: in a park, library, home, or car.” Silicon photonics Social machines. Yep … … Continue reading Top infotech stories
Everything is data
An interesting perspective on Wikipedia is provided by Dan Cohen who notes that the current discussion about authority does not engage with the full potential significance of Wikipedia. He describes how a large, openly available knowledge base like Wikipedia is a valuable resource for emerging data mining and search technologies. Let me provide a brief … Continue reading Everything is data
Top posts
I don’t normally pay too close attention to the detail of my blog logs, concentrating on general trends. However, given that it is a time of year for retrospection, I have just spent a little time looking at actual December traffic and was interested to see the following list of posts, most read first. I … Continue reading Top posts
The loss of innocence and Web 3.0
I spent a little while looking at the Norad and Google Earth Santa tracking features with my seven year old son on Christmas Eve. To my suprise his main question to each in turn was “How does this site make money”. I did not know whether I should laugh or cry 😉 His question reminded … Continue reading The loss of innocence and Web 3.0
A catalog with service
Dave Pattern left a comment below noting that the ‘people who borrowed this also borrowed …’ feature on the University of Huddersfield catalogue is now live. I had mentioned it in the context of greater use of ‘intentional’ data in our services, that is data which records choices or intentions. Examples are holdings, circulation and … Continue reading A catalog with service
Systemwide discovery and delivery
Judith Pearce of the National Library of Australia has written a really good paper on the emerging shape of resource discovery and delivery, with some contribution from my OCLC Pica colleague Janifer Gatenby. It takes a systemwide perspective: so the focus is on what we somtimes call resource sharing. I find this especially interesting as … Continue reading Systemwide discovery and delivery
QOTD: stuck inside the box
From Babsonknowledge.org, the blog by Tom Davenport, Larry Prusak, and Don Cohen: But maybe my least favorite phrase is “think outside the box.” It bothers me partly because I’ve heard it used 11,580 times in the past 10 years. (I’m exaggerating, but I’ve heard it a lot.) Also because people who talk about “thinking outside … Continue reading QOTD: stuck inside the box
Public libraries and gaming
Andrew Lewis of the Library and Information Services at the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead sent me a note about a couple of reports exploring library responses to games and gaming. The first is an account of experiences in a particular project in the library. The second is a review of literature. Review of … Continue reading Public libraries and gaming
Structured blogging and coins
When I saw the discussion about structured blogging I thought of Coins among other things. And, hey, now I read this.
International collaborations
There are several international research University alliances. Universitas 21 and WUN are probably the most visible. WUN has an elearning section on its website. Universitas 21 refers to university museums, an initiative to pilot the creation of e-books, and also has an information services group. Library collaboration does not appear to be a leading feature … Continue reading International collaborations