1851 & 1861 Scottish Census

In celebration of St Andrew's Day, Ancestry.co.uk
has announced the arrival of a double 1851 & 1861 census special for Scotland. This follows the release earlier this year of the first Scottish census for 1841

2007 ALA Annual Poster Sessions

The 2007 ALA Annual Poster Sessions will be held in Washington, DC, June 23, 24, and 25th. Proposals are due on or before January 31, 2007

Librarians' Internet Index New This Week

Librarians' Internet Index New This Week - November 30, 2006 now available

The Advocacy Institute - Midwinter 2006

The Advocacy Institute - Midwinter 2006: "Learn how to become an effective library advocate and develop an action plan that you can use in your community or on campus! This three-part program consists of message development and coalition-building techniques; a lunchtime panel discussion featuring Noted young adult author and trainer Patrick Jones on nurturing advocates through school, young adult and academic phases; and afternoon breakout sessions on topics including increasing library funding, maintaining budgets, and crisis communications" - January 19, 2007 - Seattle, Washington

YBP Library Services to distribute EBL to academic libraries

YBP Library Services has announced plans to market a comprehensive collection of ebooks in partnership with EBL. Slated for launch in the first half of 2007, the deal will make EBL's growing list of over 40,000 ebook titles available to YBP's library customers around the world

Information: Interactions and Impact - early-bird registration

Information: Interactions and Impact - preliminary announcement of a conference to be held at The Department of Information Management, The Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen, UK in June 2007. This conference is concerned with the interaction between people and information and how this interaction can bring about change in individuals, organisations, communities and society. Early-bird registration now available

Royal Mail Award for Scottish Children's Books 2006

The winners of the Royal Mail Award for Scottish Children's Books 2006 have been announced

The Costa Book Awards 2006 shortlist

The Costa Book Awards 2006 shortlist has been announced. The Costa Book Awards were originally established in 1971 by Whitbread Plc

First Monday - 6 November 2006

First Monday - Volume 11, Number 11 - 6 November 2006 now available

Free access to passenger lists at Ancestry.com extended

Ancestry.com has announced that free access to its passenger lists collection that covers the years 1820 to 1960 now ends December 31, 2006

Carnival of the Infosciences #60

Carnival of the Infosciences #60 hosted by woodyevans.com. Previous Carnivals can be found here

IEEE Technical Committee on Digital Libraries Bulletin

IEEE Technical Committee on Digital Libraries Bulletin - Volume 3 Issue 1 is now available

Bush Library Courts "Wealthy Heiresses, Arab Nations, Captains of Industry" to "Polish" History

The New York Daily News reports, "President Bush and his truest believers are about to launch their final campaign - an eye-popping, half-billion-dollar drive for the Bush presidential library." Bush is attempting to raise $500 million to build his library and a think tank at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. Bush fund-raisers hope to get approximately $250 million from what they call "megadonations" of $10 million to $20 million each. From Think Progress

DailyMed from the National Library of Medicine

DailyMed - Provides high quality information about marketed drugs in the U.S., including FDA-approved labels. From the National Library of Medicine - Provides high quality information about marketed drugs in the U.S., including FDA-approved labels. From the National Library of Medicine

Springer eBook Collection webinar

Springer will be offering product presentations on the new Springer eBook Collection via a live online webinar

Xrefer adopts new COUNTER standard for measuring usage of online reference works

Xrefer recently adopted the new COUNTER Code of Practice for Books and Reference Works for their Xreferplus online reference library. Xrefer was one of the first reference providers to achieve compliance of the standard since its initial publication in March 2006

Oxford Journals new agreement with the National Library of Medicine

Oxford Journals has announced a new agreement with the National Library of Medicine that will allow all content published as open access under its Oxford Open model to be available from PubMed Central. The agreement makes it easier for authors publishing with Oxford Journals to meet the requirements of their funding bodies, including the National Institutes of Health, who request all NIH-funded content to be deposited into PubMed Central within 12 months of online publication

SwetsWise Searcher

"Swets, continuing its commitment to simplify the complexities of e-resource access, acquisition and management, announces the launch of the SwetsWise Searcher hosted service. It is the result of a strategic alliance between Swets and MuseGlobal, Inc. The latest addition to the SwetsWise platform, the new SwetsWise Searcher extends the offering to two versions: SwetsWise Searcher hosted version, which provides an economical federated search option for organizations that prefer off-site implementation and SwetsWise Searcher Enterprise, the existing version that is implemented locally on the customer's servers"

2006 William Hill Sports Book Of The Year

Unforgivable Blackness, the fascinating biography of Jack Johnson, the world's first black heavyweight champion, has been announced as the winner of the 2006 William Hill Sports Book of the Year. Author Geoffrey C. Ward was named the winner at an awards ceremony at Waterstone's Piccadilly on November 27. Ward's previous books include The Civil War and Jazz. Currently living in New York, he is a former winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award

IDPF introduces public forum

The International Digital Publishing Forum has created of a Web forum for public discussion of e-book standards

2nd International Digital Curation Conference presentations

Presentations from the 2nd International Digital Curation Conference: Digital Data Curation in Practice - 21-22 November 2006 - Glasgow, Scotland - are now available online

HighWire Press launches its 1000th journal site

HighWire Press celebrates the launch of its 1000th journal site, the Proceedings of the London Mathematical Society. The Society has been publishing mathematical research papers since 1865, now with the assistance of Oxford Journals, a division of Oxford University Press, one of HighWire's premier publishing partners. "Reaching 1000 journals on HighWire is an exciting achievement. Beginning with several high-impact science and medicine journals in 1995, we now offer an affordable and customizable online home to journals from all disciplines," said John Sack, Director of HighWire Press

Copac: New Interface Trial

There is a new Copac interface available for testing on the experimental Copac v3. Note that the interface is still under development and not all the usual features are available. The colour of the interface will change before the live version is released

The Internet Archive receives Microsoft Education Award

The Internet Archive has received the Microsoft Education Award from the San Jose Tech Museum's Tech Award program

OCLC Members Council discusses values of the cooperative

OCLC Members Council discussed the history of cooperatives and how OCLC and its member libraries share values that have strengthened each individual institution and the organization as a whole after nearly 40 years in a radically changing environment. Following the three-day meeting, many delegates participated in an event to celebrate the life and accomplishments of Frederick G. Kilgour, founder of the OCLC cooperative, who died July 31

Using Metadata to organise an online collection

Using Metadata to organise an online collection - David Bruce describes a classic information science project to filter, classify and tag the contents for three different categories of user

London: A Life in Maps

From 24 November visitors to the British Library at St Pancras will be able to see London as they have never seen it before. The Library's major winter exhibition, London : A Life in Maps (24 November 2006-4 March 2007) uses historic maps, both iconic and obscure, to reveal the driving passions behind the development of the city over 2000 years. Beginning with a gold coin from 310 depicting the walled Roman settlement of 'Londinium' and progressing through the ever larger, more detailed and spectacular depictions of the Tudor and Stuart eras, to the improvements and squalor of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth centuries and, finally, renderings of the city's Olympic and post-Olympic future, London : A Life in Maps traces an epic visual journey

Dawkins takes fight against religion into the classroom

Richard Dawkins, the Oxford geneticist, best-selling author and campaigning atheist, is to take his battle against God into Britain's schools after setting up a foundation to counter the religious indoctrination of young people. The Richard Dawkins Foundation for Science and Reason will subsidise books, pamphlets and DVDs for teachers to fight the "educational scandal" that has seen the growth in popularity of "pseudo science" and "irrational" ideas - The Independent

Information Today is blogging Online Information 2006

Information Today is blogging Online Information 2006 from London, UK

Journal Watch Oncology and Hematology

The Massachusetts Medical Society has announced that Journal Watch Oncology and Hematology is now available online. Journal Watch Oncology and Hematology summarizes important medical journal articles about a wide variety of oncology and hematology topics, including leukemia, anemia, lymphoma, thrombosis, and hemochromatosis

Information World Review to blog Online Information conference

Information World Review will be blogging live from the Online Information conference. The blog also has an RSS feed

CyberWatcher

CyberWatcher has launched a new search engine developed specifically for the news industry. An automated rating of news combined with a patented crawler enables a fully personalized news service

CAB Abstracts Plus has been released

CAB Abstracts Plus is designed to provide users with access to thousands of additional documents that are considered difficult to obtain, yet are central to a researcher's knowledge needs. These include a range of rare material from journals and conference proceedings to distribution maps of plant pests and diseases and are linked directly from the CAB Abstracts database

LibWorm

LibWorm is intended to be a search engine, a professional development tool, and a current awareness tool for people who work in libraries or care about libraries. LibWorm collects updates from about 1400 RSS feeds (and growing). The contents of these feeds are then available for searching, and search results can themselves be output as an RSS feed that the user can subscribe to either in his/her favourite aggregator or in LibWorm's built-in aggregator

Coffee's on, dusty books are out at UMass library

To its 3 million volumes of books, the personal papers of US Representative Silvio O. Conte, and the works of William Butler Yeats, the W.E.B. Du Bois Library at the University of Massachusetts has added more features: a café, a lounge, and cellphone isolation booths. With students shunning its 28 stories and opting to conduct research by mouse click, the library is on an outreach offensive, shelving once-forbidding rules and replacing an old circulation counter with a coffee bar, where hot drinks and soda are for sale and an assortment of pastries are on display behind the counter. Chicken wing deliveries are allowed, along with other previously banned activities, like cell phone chatter - Boston.com

Weblogs Compendium has a new home

Please note that the Weblogs Compendium has been moved to a new server. Please update your bookmarks

Organising Digital Information and Knowledge

Organising Digital Information and Knowledge - This one-day course covers all modern tools for organising information, focusing on taxonomies and thesauri, and gives participants the chance to construct an outline organisation of their own - 14 December 2006 - London, UK

British Book Design and Production Awards

Winners of the British Book Design and Production Awards have been announced

e-publications@Bond

e-publications@Bond is a repository of research and scholarly output of researchers at Bond University (Australia). The service is offered by the University Library. Faculty, researchers, and students associated with Bond University are invited to deposit digital materials for long-term preservation and world-wide electronic accessibility

CLA/3M Canada Award for Achievement in Technical Services

CLA/3M Canada Award for Achievement in Technical Services - To recognize achievement in technical services in order to encourage innovation and excellence; share new ideas or innovative approaches to technical services problems with other libraries so that they can incorporate them or build on them, as appropriate; foster high morale in technical services units; and raise the profile of technical services within individual libraries and across the Canadian library community

International Journal of Digital Curation

The International Journal of Digital Curation is a new peer-reviewed journal entirely devoted to papers, articles and news items on curation of digital objects and related issues. The journal is published in electronic form, twice a year

The Friday Brain-teaser from Xrefer

The Friday Brain-teaser from Xrefer - this week: General Knowledge. Answers here.

1. Which famous detective first appeared in the 1887 story "A Study in Scarlet"?
2. Who founded the Franciscan order of friars?
3. In which city is Karl Marx buried?
4. Is the River Limpopo in Africa, India or South America?
5. In the American flag, the Stars and Stripes, how many stripes are there?
6. Which famous Indian was assassinated by a Hindu nationalist in 1948?
7. What is the highest mountain in the Alps?
8. In which country was film actor Arnold Schwarzenegger born?
9. Who was prime minister of Britain from 1951 to 1955?
10. In the Scottish city of Edinburgh, there is a memorial to a dog who watched over the grave of his master from 1852 to 1872. By what name is the dog known?

Springer and AOCS in publishing partnership

Springer has announced a new publishing partnership with the American Oil Chemists' Society (AOCS). Beginning in January 2007, Springer will publish AOCS's three journals Journal of the American Oil Chemists' Society, Journal of Surfactants and Detergents, and Lipids. All three journals are peer-reviewed and edited by leading experts in the respective fields

Virtual Rules OK? Developing a Policy for the Digital Collection

UKeiG Course: Virtual Rules OK? Developing a Policy for the Digital Collection - 28 March, 2007 - The John Rylands University Library, University of Manchester. Course outline: One of the greatest responsibilities librarians have is that of developing and managing a pertinent and dynamic collection - indeed, it may be one of the fundamental arts of the librarian. Collection management comprises a series of complex activities and procedures which now encompass the virtual collection as well as the physical collection. These activities include selection, evaluation, acquisition, collection evaluation and review, preservation and promotion

Ingenta wraps up more publisher signings

Ingenta recently announced that a further 8 new publishers have contracted to include their content in the IngentaConnect scholarly research platform. "The company's increased stability and strengthened proposition has encouraged a total of 28 new publishers to partner with IngentaConnect thus far in 2006, a more than 50% increase on the number of publishers signed up in the whole of 2005"

LISU Annual Library Statistics 2006

LISU has just published the last in its long-running statistical series supported by the Museums Libraries & Archives Council and its predecessors, summarising activity in a broad range of library sectors, the Annual Library Statistics 2006

Biblio Tech Review - November 2006

Biblio Tech Review - November 2006 issue now available

Blawg.org relaunched as Blawg.com

Blawg.org, the source for Legal Blogs, Podcasts & News Feeds, has been relaunched as Blawg.com, with a new interface and features

Winners of 2006 John W. Kluge Prize for the Study of Humanity

John Hope Franklin, 91, and Yu Ying-shih, 76, have been named the recipients of the third John W. Kluge Prize for lifetime achievement in the study of humanity. Endowed by Library of Congress benefactor John W. Kluge, the Kluge Prize rewards lifetime achievement in the wide range of disciplines not covered by the Nobel prizes, including history, philosophy, politics, anthropology, sociology, religion, criticism in the arts and humanities, and linguistics. Each awardee will receive half of the $1 million prize

Free online journal issues from Blackwell Publishing

Blackwell Publishing is offering free online access to sample issues of leading literature journals. Articles are fully searchable and include hot-linked references to cited articles in other journals through CrossRef. There are also 'forward links' to citing articles, improving the quality of your research time

Netskills workshops

Netskills has announced its programme of workshops for November 2006 to July 2007

Elsevier/LIRG Research Award 2006/7

The Elsevier/LIRG research award is designed to promote research in library and information science. The aim of the award is to encourage and facilitate research by practitioners in the field. The closing date for applications is 28 February 2007

ACS Digital Library

The ACS Digital Library provides international quality, magazines, journal articles and conference papers, covering innovative research and practice in Information and Communications Technologies. This service is provided free to the ICT profession by the Australian Computer Society as part of its commitment to ensure the beneficial use of technology for the community

Librarians' Internet Index New This Week

Librarians' Internet Index New This Week - November 23, 2006 now available

CILIP Carnegie Greenaway Anniversary Panel announced

The CILIP Carnegie Kate Greenaway Anniversary Panel has been announced

New features for Google Book Search

Google has announced some new features for its Google Book Search service

Francisco Partners to acquire Endeavor Information Systems from Elsevier

Francisco Partners has announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement with Elsevier for the acquisition of 100% of the shares of Endeavor Information Systems, Inc., an Elsevier company. Endeavor will be merged with Ex Libris, which was acquired by Francisco Partners earlier this year. The combined entity will retain the Ex Libris Group name and be headed by Matti Shem Tov, president and chief executive officer of Ex Libris

CSA/Ulrich's Serials Librarianship Award

Presented by the ALCTS Serials Section, the CSA/Ulrich's Serials Librarianship Award consists of a citation and $1,500 donated by CSA. The awards are given for distinguished contributions to serials librarianship, including such activities as leadership in serials-related activities through participation in professional associations and/or library education programs; contributions to the body of serials literature; conduct of research in the area of serials; development of tools or methods to enhance access to or management of serials; and other advances leading to a better understanding of the field of serials. The deadline for nominations is December 15, 2006

2006 Carnegie medal nominations

The nominations for the 2006 Carnegie medal - the UK's most prestigious children's literary award - have been unveiled, and titles range from Jeanette Winterson's ideas-fuelled novel of time and space, Tanglewreck, to Conn and Hal Iggulden's attempt to get boys climbing trees and building go-carts, The Dangerous Book for Boys. From The Guardian

New NetLibrary Subject Sets now available

OCLC NetLibrary has announced the availability of 32 all-new Subject Sets. The Subject Sets are grouped by four general library types: Academic, Community College, Corporate & Government, and Public. Covering key topics including business, nursing, engineering, career development, information technology and much more, Subject Sets contain front list titles from leading publishers with no duplication from set to set

Music Library Association 2007 conference

The 2007 joint conference of the Music Library Association and the Society for American Music - February 28-March 4, 2007 - Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

MOLA 25th Annual Conference

Major Orchestra Librarians' Association 25th Annual Conference - April 13-16, 2007 - Chicago, IL

4th European Semantic Web Conference - ESWC 2007

ESWC 2007 will take place 3-7, June 2007 in the Tyrol region of Innsbruck, Austria. This year's event will host a variety of workshops, tutorials, demonstrations and posters dedicated to the most current trends in Semantic Web technologies. ESWC is hosted by the European Semantic Systems Initiative (ESSI), which is a cluster of major European research projects in the area of Semantic Web and Semantic Web Services

Boston Search Engine Meeting program available

The program for the 2007 Search Engine Meeting (April 2007, Boston) has just been released. Early-bird registration is also now open

Dymocks puts 200,000 books online

Australian owned book chain Dymocks has launched a new website which will allow customers to check out 200,000 book titles online. Pressure from amazon.com and other online sites was forcing Australian bookstores to develop a strong online presence to compete and survive, Dymocks CEO Don Grover said

IMLS launches new conservation initiative

Anne-Imelda M. Radice, Director of the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), has launched Connecting to Collections: The IMLS Conservation Initiative. In her keynote address to the annual meeting of Heritage Preservation, Dr. Radice described key components of the initiative, which will be the centerpiece of the Institute's tenth anniversary year

Digiblog

ALCTS, the Association for Library Collections & Technical Services, is sponsoring Digiblog, a blog created initially in conjunction with the ALCTS Midwinter Symposium (2007), as a forum for dialogue on the critical issues facing our profession

National Library of Medicine Awards $75 Million for Informatics Research Training

Donald A.B. Lindberg, MD, Director of the National Library of Medicine (NLM) has announced that the NLM is awarding 18 five-year grants, totaling more than $75million, for research training in biomedical informatics, the discipline that seeks to apply computer and communications technology to the field of health

Openarchives.eu

Openarchives.eu is the European guide to OAI-PMH compliant digital repositories in the world. This is not a search engine to find metadata stored in the repositories but a searchable index of the repositories themselves

LLRX.com November 12, 2006 update

LLRX.com November 12, 2006 update is now online. LLRX.com is a unique, free Web journal dedicated to providing legal, library, IT/IS, marketing and administrative professionals with the most up-to-date information on a wide range of Internet research and technology-related issues, applications, resources and tools, since 1996

Open Doors - Strengthening community and library links

Open Doors - Strengthening community and library links - 25 January 2007 - Leeds Central Library, UK

LITA scholarships available in library and information science

The Library and Information Technology Association has announced that applications are being accepted for three scholarships as follows:
LITA/Christian Larew Memorial Scholarship (sponsored by Informata.com) for $3,000
LITA/LSSI Minority Scholarship for $2,500
LITA/OCLC Minority Scholarship for $3,000

LEADS from LAMA blog

LEADS from LAMA blog - LAMA news and information about ALA and other organizations of interest to LAMA members including awards, conferences, important dates and deadlines and other resources. The blog format will permit news to be published more rapidly and to be available through RSS feeds. Readers may comment on entries, and submit items for posting

National Workshop on LIS Teacher and the Digital Future

National Workshop on LIS Teacher and the Digital Future jointly organised by the Central Library of IIT Madras and IATLIS - 17-19 January, 2007

CLA Task Force on Open Access

In response to member interest, the Canadian Library Association has created a Task Force on Open Access. The mandate of this Task Force is to prepare a report for CLA Executive Council providing:
(1) a draft Policy Statement on Open Access in the Canadian Library Association
(2) recommendations on procedures and practices to implement the Policy should it be approved
(3) a draft CLA Position Statement on Open Access in Canadian libraries

Blackwell acquisition update

The Financial Times reports more details on Blackwell's acquisition by John Wiley & Sons: "Blackwell Publishing, which has been embroiled in a long-running feud between members of the controlling family, has agreed to be acquired by US publisher John Wiley & Sons for £572m in cash. The proposed deal is expected to net £100m for Nigel Blackwell, Blackwell Publishing's chairman and largest shareholder with a 45 per cent voting stake."

Royal Astronomical Society to publish books

A new series of books, primarily aimed at the academic market, but including history and popular titles for scientists and amateur astronomers, is to be launched by the Royal Astronomical Society. RAS President, Professor Michael Rowan-Robinson, explains: "We are aiming to publish books of a wide variety of types and levels, but all at the highest scientific standard. We are primarily interested in exploiting the Society’s assets – its members, its archives, its meetings – to advance our sciences through all kinds of book publishing". The books will be published by Springer

Journal of Veterinary Diagnostic Investigation free trial

The free trial period for the Journal of Veterinary Diagnostic Investigation will end on February 28, 2007

DigCCurr2007

DigCCurr2007 - An International Symposium on Digital Curation - Focus: "What Digital Curators Do and What They Need to Know?" - April 18-20, 2007 - Chapel Hill, North Carolina

Creating a positive media image for your service

Creating a positive media image for your service - In an increasingly media dominated world, funding and support often go to those who present the best image of themselves through the media, rather than the most deserving. Learn how to construct and present the best image for your service to ensure continuing support and encouragement at this one-day course - 10 January 2007 - London, UK

MuseGlobal and Berkeley Electronic Press

MuseGlobal Inc. will be adding Berkeley Electronic Press as the 200th participant in its Content Partner Program, now in its fourth year. Founded by professors committed to solving the scholarly communications crisis, the Berkeley Electronic Press ('bepress') publishes high quality peer-reviewed electronic journals in the social sciences, law, health and medicine, and science and technology at sustainable prices and with library-friendly policies

Internet Librarian 2006 presentations available

Links to presentations given at Internet Librarian 2006 - October 23-25, 2006 - Monterey, CA - are now available

Blatant Berry Blog

Blatant Berry Blog: New views of the library landscape - by Jonh Berry, Editor-at-large at Library Journal

Humphry/OCLC/Forest Press Award for International Librarianship

The American Library Association is accepting nominations for the 2006 John Ames Humphry/OCLC/Forest Press Award for International Librarianship. The deadline for nominations is December 1, 2006. The award consists of a prize of $1,000 and a certificate, which are presented at the International Relations Round Table Reception at the ALA Annual Conference. The award is given to a librarian or person who has made significant contributions to international librarianship

ALCTS announces 50th anniversary events

The Association for Library Collections and Technical Services has announced a stellar lineup of events to highlight the ALCTS 50th anniversary celebration, "Commemorating our Past, Celebrating our Present, Creating our Future." Highlights include Midwinter's Anniversary Year Kickoff Reception, the ALCTS National Conference, Gala Dinner Cruise and President's Program featuring Peter Morville, author of "Ambient Findability" and president of Semantic Studios. A special ALCTS Anniversary web site will publicize all events, link to registration and serve up photos, trivia, and other surprises

Wiley to acquire Blackwell Publishing (Holdings) Ltd

"John Wiley & Sons, Inc. announced today that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire the outstanding shares of Blackwell Publishing (Holdings) Ltd., one of the world's foremost academic and professional publishers. The purchase price of £572 million will be financed with a combination of debt and cash. Wiley has received irrevocable commitments from the principal Blackwell shareholders to sell their shares to Wiley. Additional details will be provided after the closing of the transaction, which is anticipated early in 2007"

The Friday Brain-teaser from Xrefer

The Friday Brain-teaser from Xrefer - this week: Place Names. Answers here.

1. Which American city in Pennsylvania was founded by William Penn, who gave it a name which, in Greek, means "the city of brotherly love"?
2. Which part of the Mediterranean coastline of northeast Spain has a name which, in Spanish, means "wild coast"?
3. What is the name of the largest city in India, which was named after the village of Kalikata?
4. Which city in Brazil has a name which, in Portuguese, means "river of January"?
5. Which urban settlement in South Africa got its name from being a township southwest of Johannesburg?
6. What is the capital of New Zealand, which was named after a duke called Arthur Wellesley?
7. Which old quarter of Paris, on the right bank of the Seine, has a name which is French for "swamp"?
8. Which state in Mexico is named from the Spanish words for "true cross"?
9. What is the state capital of Hawaii, which gets its name from a Hawaiian word that means "sheltered bay"?
10. How did the Languedoc province of southern France get its name?

Danny Sullivan's Search Engine Land launches December 11

Search Engine Land is a new search news blog launching December 11, 2006. Danny Sullivan, along with Chris Sherman and Barry Schwartz, will be providing information about search engine marketing and how search engines work in general, from a searcher's perspective

House of Commons Parliamentary Papers 1800 - 1901

ProQuest Information and Learning's digital House of Commons Parliamentary Papers 1800-1901 will be available to all Further Education (two year colleges) and Higher Education (four year universities) in the UK through funding from the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) and ProQuest. The online resource, comprising nearly 151,000 documents and more than 7 million pages, is among the richest and most detailed primary sources for the history of the 19th century and is considered vital to an understanding of the UK's modern development

Wiley InterScience Newsletter

Wiley InterScience Newsletter - Volume 2, Issue 7, November 2006 now available

Public Libraries are being challenged - Can partnerships help?

Public Libraries are being challenged - Can partnerships help? CILIP has joined up with consulting firm Tribal to produce a cutting-edge programme for its final Executive Briefing of 2006. It includes Case Studies and showcase presentations as well as in-depth briefings on today’s challenges. Places are limited and early booking is strongly advised - 8 December, 2006 - London, UK

New and improved SAGE Journals Online platform

SAGE has announced that its newly enhanced SAGE Journals Online platform is now available. The new and improved platform has been completely updated with many new features. The SAGE Journals Online platform, powered by HighWire Press, provides online access to more than 460 journals and their related backfiles, spanning a wide range of subject areas in business, humanities, social sciences, and science, technology, and medicine. The platform now encompasses a new look and feel, as well as improved navigation across the entire site, including an easy-to-locate, site-level quick search and improved advanced search options

Esther J. Piercy Award

The Esther J. Piercy Award was established by the Resources and Technical Services Division of the American Library Association in 1968 in memory of Esther J. Piercy, editor of Journal of Cataloging and Classification from 1950 to 1956 and of Library Resources & Technical Services from 1957 to 1967. The award consists of a citation and a $1,500 grant donated by YBP, Inc., which is presented at the membership meeting of the Association during the ALA Annual Conference. This award is given to recognize the contribution to those areas of librarianship included in library collections and technical services by a librarian with not more than 10 years of professional experience who has shown outstanding promise for continuing contribution and leadership. Deadline December 1, 2006

AmbientLibrarian wiki

AmbientLibrarian wiki is dedicated to helping information professionals (librarians, MLIS students, and others) learn more about available web technologies. As a Wiki, anyone can read, discuss, and even contribute to the content on this site

ETD 2007 call for papers

Call for papers ETD2007 - 10th International Symposium on Electronic Theses and Dissertations - June 13-16, 2007 - Uppsala, Sweden

2007 New York Book Festival

The 2007 New York Book Festival has issued a call for entries to its annual program celebrating books that deserve greater recognition from the world's publishing capital. The 2007 New York Book Festival will consider published, self-published and independent publisher non-fiction, fiction, children's books, teenage, how-to, audio/spoken word, comics, e-books, wild card (anything goes!), science fiction, romance and biography/autobiography works

Metadata Standards and Applications Workshop

Metadata Standards and Applications Workshop sponsored by PALINET - This two-day workshop presents 21st century bibliographic control concepts, including metadata standards and applications. The goal of the workshop is to relate what library staff already know about library catalog metadata to digital library metadata, thereby preparing staff to apply their current knowledge to new areas - December 4-5, 2006 - Princeton University Library, New Jersey

Taylor & Francis Librarians' Newsletter

Taylor & Francis Librarians' Newsletter fifth issue now available

Cites & Insights 6:14

Cites & Insights 6:14 (December 2006) is now available for downloading

Moving to the network level

The cover story in the latest issue of NextSpace focuses on the architecture of the Web and how it is transforming the way systems are built and services delivered. Application development can now mean mixing data and functionality from several Web sites with your service to provide a unique and powerful user experience. What library services will move to the new network platform?

This Week in LibraryBlogLand

This Week in LibraryBlogLand - for the week ending November 13, 2006

Linking, Not Thinking by Roy Tennant

Linking, Not Thinking by Roy Tennant: "Though open URL resolvers are a major step forward in guiding users to the right copy of the item they seek, they are not the complete solution. Instead of putting yet another window up in front of the hapless user that is often chock-full of confusing choices, we need to convey users automatically to the full text if it's available, or to the next best thing. In other words, we should view most link resolver windows as a failure to give users what they want..." Library Journal, November 15, 2006

Librarians' Internet Index New This Week

Librarians' Internet Index New This Week - November 16, 2006 now available

D-Lib Magazine November 2006

D-Lib Magazine November 2006 is now available

Sara Jaffarian School Library Program Award For Exemplary Humanities Programming

The purpose of the Sara Jaffarian School Library Program Award is to recognize, promote and support excellence in humanities programming in elementary and middle school libraries that serve children K-8. To promote and encourage other school libraries interested in developing outstanding humanities programs, a professional development/training opportunity will be presented by the ALA Public Programs Office, in consultation with the Public and Cultural Programs Advisory Committee and the American Association of School Librarians

CLA/OCLC Canada Award for Resource Sharing Achievement

The CLA/OCLC Canada Award for Resource Sharing Achievement is an annual award consisting of $1,000 and a plaque recognizing and honoring an individual, an organization or a project team for outstanding professional achievement, leadership and contributions to library resource sharing in Canada. Deadline is February 2007

Neural Development launched

Professor Andrew Lumsden, FRS, Director of the MRC Centre for Developmental Neurobiology at King's College London, has launched a flagship online journal, Neural Development, giving scientists greater opportunity to publish and freely access research which explores the great mysteries surrounding the development of the nervous system

ACRL/ARL/SPARC joint Webcast on author rights

ACRL and ARL, through the Institute on Scholarly Communication, along with SPARC are sponsoring a special joint Webcast on author rights. Julia Blixrud, Assistant Director for Public Programs of SPARC, and Trisha Davis, Rights Management Coordinator of The Ohio State University Libraries, will discuss ways authors can amend publisher copyright transfer agreements to keep key rights to journal articles. Live Webcast December 14, 2006

University of Virginia joins Google Books Library Project

The University of Virginia and Google have announced U.Va. as the ninth partner in the international Google Books Library Project, joining Harvard, Stanford, Oxford, the University of Michigan, and other leading research libraries in the collaborative effort to make their vast resources more accessible

AIP Launches Biomicrofluidics

The American Institute of Physics has announced that it has launched a new online journal, Biomicrofluidics, which provides a novel forum for researchers from diverse fields, including engineering, physics, materials science, chemistry, and biology. Biomicrofluidics is an open access journal that distributes articles immediately to all scientists and engineers worldwide with no access charge

Richmond Daily Dispatch November 1860 through December 1865

The University of Richmond, in partnership with the Perseus Project and the Virginia Center for Digital History, has announced the availability of the American Civil War-era newspaper, the Richmond Daily Dispatch. While some features are still in development, the collection's content is ready for the public. Funded by a National Leadership grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services, the collection features full-text searching of all issues of the newspaper from November 1860 through December 1865

Call for entries for the third Digital Preservation Award

The Digital Preservation Coalition has announced the call for entries for the third Digital Preservation Award. Are you completing an exceptional digital preservation project? If so, why not apply for the Digital Preservation Award, worth 5000 pounds. This is the eleventh anniversary of the Conservation Awards, sponsored by Sir Paul McCartney, and is the third year to include the prestigious Digital Preservation Award, which recognises the many new initiatives being carried out by museums, libraries, galleries and archives in the challenging field of digital preservation. The Awards will be presented at the British Museum on the 27th of September 2007. Short-listed applicants attract significant publicity, and receive a certificate recognising their achievement at the presentation event

The CILIP Seal of Recognition

The CILIP Seal of Recognition acknowledges the important contribution made by the many excellent providers of Continuing Professional Development for the library and information community. The Seal of Recognition recognises high standards in the content and relevance of a wide range of training and development activities, and is awarded to CPD providers that directly address an element of CILIP's Body of Professional Knowledge

John Llewellyn Rhys prize shortlist

The shortlist for the John Llewellyn Rhys prize has been announced. The prize recognises and celebrates the best work of literature by a UK or Commonwealth writer aged 35 or under

Open Scholarship 2006 presentations

presentations now available from Open Scholarship 2006: New Challenges for Open Access Repositories - a companion European Conference to the OAI meetings at CERN in Geneva, and to the Nordic Scholarly Communication Conferences in Lund, Sweden. Aimed at Librarians, University Administrators, funders, academics and technical specialists - 18-20 October 2006 - University of Glasgow, Scotland

Carnival of the Infosciences #59

Carnival of the Infosciences #59 hosted by The Shifted Librarian. Previous Carnivals can be found here

Web creates new generation of travel writers

Gemma Bowes writes in The Observer: Internet technologies have created new forms of publishing that are making it possible for any wannabe travel writer to see their work in print. Online travel blogs and podcasts, which travellers produce on the move and upload on to the internet in the cyber cafes they visit during their journeys, are attracting audiences of thousands, and thanks to their success, small, independent publishing houses are now turning these amateur works into books

Book Group Expo 2007

Book Group Expo - June 9-10, 2007 - San Jose McEnery Convention Center, California

Universities move to hide work from U.S. eyes

From the Globe and Mail: "Concerned about the U.S. government's prying eyes, a number of Canadian universities are changing the way their professors and students conduct online research. Many university libraries subscribe to RefWorks, a popular U.S.-based Internet tool that allows academics and students to create personal accounts and store research information, as well as generate citations and bibliographies. But the Patriot Act — which grew out of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and which potentially allows U.S. authorities to sweep through databases such as RefWorks — has prompted Canadian postsecondary institutions to abandon the American server for one housed at the University of Toronto"

Free access to passenger lists at Ancestry.com

Ancestry.com has announced free access to its passenger lists collection that covers the years 1820 to 1960. Free access ends November 30, 2006

UTas ePrints

UTas ePrints is a digital archive that provides full-text access to publications by current University of Tasmania staff and higher degree students including journal articles, books, conference papers and theses. It is a growing collection providing free, searchable, open access to the research output of the University of Tasmania

EBSCOhost Electronic Journals Service

The latest list of journals available on the EBSCOhost Electronic Journals Service now covers 14286 titles

Cutting-edge Internet search techniques

Cutting-edge Internet search techniques - This course is designed to help you use the Internet as effectively and efficiently as possible when dealing with enquiries. During the day participants will look at the latest thinking on searching the Internet. Practical examples and "hands on" approaches will reveal the nature of the Internet, and help participants discover the most appropriate ways to find relevant materials. 9 January 2007, London; 4 June 2007, Birmingham; 1 November 2007, London

Enterprise Week at The British Library

Enterprise Week, 13-19 November 2006, is an annual UK-wide week of activities designed to promote an enterprising culture where people of all ages are inspired to make their ideas happen. "The British Library's Business & IP Centre, together with some of its partners, has put together an action-packed programme of events. We'd love you to take part. Book now, to secure your place and turn your ideas into reality"

Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting

CrossRef has announced the release of an OAI-PMH (Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting) interface to its Web Services metadata distribution program. In addition, it announced that it had recently signed both Scirus and the European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI) as new CWS partners

The "Welcome to Emerald" LIS School Program

The "Welcome to Emerald" LIS School Program offers library and information science graduate students and faculty free access to the Emerald Fulltext database (58,000+ peer reviewed articles in the fields of business management, engineering, and library and information science), a wide range of online resources, and technical support during the course of their collection development class

Sydney Exposed

The State Library of New South Wales was one of the first institutions in Australia to collect photographs as documentary records. Over the past 100 years the Library has gathered an unsurpassed photographic record of the people, places and events of Sydney from the 1850s through to the present. Sydney Exposed takes the first step in providing an online gateway to thousands of images highlighting the history and changing nature of Sydney, Australia’s first and largest metropolis

The Publishing Research Consortium

The Publishing Research Consortium is a group representing publishers and societies supporting global research into scholarly communication, with the aim to provide unbiased data and objective analysis

Living Reviews in European Governance

Living Reviews in European Governance is an entirely web-based, peer-reviewed journal, publishing reviews of research on core themes relating to European Governance. It is is offered as a free service to the scientific community

Digital Preservation Projects Meeting

DigitalPreservationEurope (DPE), PLANETS, and CASPAR have announced that they will be delivering a joint one-day workshop to introduce the aims of their specific digital preservation projects and to discuss their overall relevance within the context of the European Commission Information Science and Technologies Framework Programme 6. This event is being held in conjunction with the Digital Curation Centre (DCC) and will be held at the Hilton Glasgow Hotel on November 23, 2006 immediately following the 2nd Annual DCC Conference

Chicago Roots Music at the Chicago History Museum

For more than a hundred years, "Sweet Home Chicago" has been one of the music capitals of the world. Chicago is best known as a blues town, but the music doesn't end there. Chicago Roots Music explores the city's ties to many different musical genres, from the well-known jazz, blues, and gospel styles that migrated here from the South to the folk music and country sounds enjoying a revival today. The exhibition highlights the city's best-known musicians, including Thomas Dorsey, Mahalia Jackson, Win Stracke, and Jon Langford. Other popular artifacts include souvenirs from the WLS National Barn Dance, photographs and correspondence from the Blue Note, and an original sign from Nate's Deli, the Maxwell Street institution where Aretha Franklin's classic scene from The Blues Brothers movie was filmed. Opening Saturday, November 11

Library of Congress features new "Women Who Dare" Book Series

The seven authors of the Library of Congress Women Who Dare series, which celebrates the lives of remarkable women who have shaped American history, will discuss their books at 6 p.m. on Thursday, November 16, in the Montpelier Room of the James Madison Building, 101 Independence Ave. S.E., Washington, D.C. A book signing will follow the presentation, which is part of the Books & Beyond author series sponsored by the Center for the Book in the Library of Congress. The Library's Publishing Office, which published the books in cooperation with Pomegranate Publications, is cosponsoring the event. The event is free and open to the public; no tickets or reservations are required

ProQuest launches new products for digital portal

ProQuest Information and Learning "launched new products and added significantly to its 19th century collection, further establishing ProQuest as the most extensive digital portal for research on this widely-studied century. Changes to the collection include the launch of first-ever digital versions of two essential sources -- British Periodicals Collection I and Wellesley Index to Victorian Periodicals - the addition of more than 70 years of content to House of Commons Parliamentary Papers, and the addition of two new content pools to the collection's bibliographic spine: C19: The Nineteenth Century Index"

Elsevier announces major expansion to books program on ScienceDirect

Elsevier has announced the anticipated launch of 4,000 scientific and technical books online in 2007. "The program represents a major expansion to the reference works, handbooks and book series already available on ScienceDirect. At launch, the expanded program will comprise high quality selected eBooks titles published from 1995 to the present day. Approximately 50 titles will be added to the eBooks list on ScienceDirect each month following the launch, offering researcher's unparalleled integration and linking between the latest online book and journal information"

The Friday Brain-teaser from Xrefer

The Friday Brain-teaser from Xrefer - this week: Herman Melville. Answers here.

1. In which American city was Herman Melville born?
2. What was the name of the captain in "Moby-Dick" who led the voyage to kill the white sperm whale?
3. Was Melville's "Billy Budd" published before or after his death?
4. What is the opening sentence of "Moby-Dick"?
5. Name one of the five novels which Melville published before "Moby-Dick".
6. To which English port did Melville sail in 1839?
7. Where did Melville work from 1866 to 1885?
8. Which British composer wrote an opera, first performed in 1951, called "Billy Budd" which was based on Melville's book of the same title?
9. Herman Melville dedicated his "Moby-Dick" to which other writer?
10. Which islands are the setting for Melville's novel "Typee"?

CONTEXT'07

CONTEXT'07 - The Sixth International and Interdisciplinary Conference on Modeling and Using Context - August 20-24, 2007 - Roskilde University, Denmark

Small Island reading initiative launched

In what is being described as Britain's largest-ever community-based reading project, 50,000 copies of Andrea Levy's Small Island will be distributed free through libraries and schools in four cities next year, as part of an initiative to mark the 200th anniversary of the Slave Trade Abolition Bill

Galaxy to sponsor British Book Awards

Galaxy Chocolate is to be the first title sponsor of the British Book Awards which will now be known as the Galaxy British Book Awards. The company already has a well-established association with the pleasure of reading, and now has plans to devote up to 1m pounds on marketing the Awards, with the aim of promoting reading far beyond the Book Awards and encouraging mass-market footfall into bookshops and libraries

Journal of Medical Library Association October 2006

Journal of Medical Library Association - Volume 94(4) October 2006 is now available

Getty Vocabularies added to OCLC Terminologies Service

OCLC Online Computer Library Center, Inc. and the Getty Research Institute have announced that the Getty Vocabularies — the Art & Architecture Thesaurus, Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names, and Union List of Artist Names — will be available through the OCLC Terminologies Service

2007 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award Longlist

Details of the long list of nominated titles and the members of the judging panel for the 2007 award were announced in City Hall by the Lord Mayor of Dublin, Councillor Vincent Jackson, Patron of the Award. The short list will be announced on April 4 2007 and the winner on June 14 2007

New issue of Library Technology Reports reveals benefits of gaming services at libraries

ALA TechSource has announced the publication of its latest issue of Library Technology Reports, "Gaming and Libraries: Intersection of Services” by Jenny Levine, librarian, author of the popular The Shifted Librarian blog, and an avid gamer. "What if traditionally apathetic library users were instead motivated to get up early on a Saturday morning and plead for library staff members to open the doors?" she asks in the introduction to this highly accessible report

Library 2.0: An Academic's Perspective

Library 2.0: An Academic's Perspective is maintained by Laura B. Cohen, Web Support Librarian, University at Albany, SUNY. "This blog is an exploration of Library 2.0 from the perspective of academic librarianship. L2 presents academic librarians with - you guessed it - challenges and opportunities, and this blog shares ruminations, speculations, news, proposals, and anything else that's relevant to blogging about this topic"

The CWA Dagger in the Library 2007

The Dagger in the Library is awarded to "the author of crime fiction whose work is currently giving the greatest enjoyment to readers". Authors are nominated by UK libraries and Readers' Groups and judged by a panel of librarians. Libraries have until 16 April 2007 to produce nominations

Magpie releases version 3.2 of Search & Alert Pro

Magpie has announced the release of version 3.2 of Magpie Search & Alert Pro. Search & Alert Pro offers information professionals, bankers, lawyers and consultants unrivalled software delivery of co-mingled content through one product interface. Search & Alert Pro allows a user to search unstructured public website and blog content, intermixed with structured premium subscription information from major industry content vendors

FreePint Newsletter 217

FreePint Newsletter 217 - 9 November, 2006 - now available

EUSIDIC Annual Conference 2007

EUSIDIC Annual Conference 2007 - Theme: What will be the impact of Web2.0 and Library2.0 applications on user services in library and information services management - 11-13 March 2007 - Roskilde University, Denmark

2006 winner of The Scotiabank Giller Prize

Vincent Lam has been named the 2006 winner of The Scotiabank Giller Prize, Canada's premier literary prize for fiction, for his novel Bloodletting & Miraculous Cures, published by Doubleday Canada

The World Almanac E-Newsletter - November 2006

The World Almanac E-Newsletter - Volume 06, Number 11 — November 2006 is now available

Librarians' Internet Index New This Week

Librarians' Internet Index New This Week - November 9, 2006 now available

2006 Jesse H. Shera Award for the Support of Dissertation Research

The Shera Award Committee of the American Library Association Library Research Round Table has announced that Rebecca Miller is the winner of the 2006 Jesse H. Shera Award for the Support of Dissertation Research for her paper, "The Diffusion of Professional Knowledge in Intercultural Exchanges: The American-Bulgarian Library Exchange Case Study." Miller is a PhD candidate in the School of Library and Information Management, Emporia State University

Adopt a Book at The British Library

"Inspire someone this Christmas with an ethical gift that will last a lifetime. The British Library's Adopt a Book scheme is the ideal way to give a family member, friend or corporate client a unique gift, while helping to protect the world's greatest book collection for future generations. The Library can choose a book for you, or you can select from a range of titles on our recently revamped website"

Computers in Libraries and Searcher for November/December

The November/December 2006 issues of Computers in Libraries and Searcher are now available

Stephen Abram Named Chief Strategist of the SirsiDynix Institute

The SirsiDynix Institute, a forum for professional development in the library community, has announced that Stephen Abram, vice president of Innovation at SirsiDynix, was recently named chief strategist for the SirsiDynix Institute. Abram will continue in his role as vice president of Innovation at SirsiDynix. The SirsiDynix Institute is an ongoing forum for professional development in the library community. The Institute monitors library industry trends and issues of concern to the library community. The Institute will utilize Abram’s renown nationally and internationally to attract speakers that are industry leaders in the industry for the Institute’s webinars, executive conference and other events. Abram will also assist in developing themes and topics for these events and will continue to speak and represent both SirsiDynix and the SirsiDynix Institute at national and international library and technology events

UK Web Focus Blog

Brian Kelly, UKOLN, University of Bath, UK, writes "Welcome to the UK Web Focus Blog. As my tenth anniversary as UK Web Focus at UKOLN arrives, it is clearly time for me to set up a Blog to support my role as a Web adviser to the UK higher and further education and cultural heritage sectors. This Blog will give my thoughts, views, opinions, etc. on matters related to the Web. Your feedback is welcomed"

Scholarpedia

Scholarpedia is the free peer reviewed encyclopedia written by scholars from all around the world. Scholarpedia feels and looks like Wikipedia - the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit. Both allow visitors to review and modify articles simply by clicking on the edit this article link. However, Scholarpedia differs from Wikipedia in some very important ways:
Each article is written by an expert (invited or elected by the public).
Each article is anonymously peer reviewed to ensure accurate and reliable information.
Each article has a curator - typically its author -- who is responsible for its content.
Any modification of the article needs to be approved by the curator before it appears in the final, approved version.

ARSC Conference 2007

The Association for Recorded Sound Collections (ARSC) invites submissions of program proposals for its 41st annual conference in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, May 2-5, 2007. ARSC is dedicated to the preservation and study of sound recordings in all genres of music and speech, in all formats, and from all periods, and welcomes program proposals on any aspect of recorded sound of interest to our community of collectors, historians, musicians, preservationists, and archivists

Thomson Pharma Chemical Structures now indexed in PubChem

Thomson Scientific has announced the deposit of 2.2 million chemical structures from Thomson Pharma into PubChem, the freely accessible database that provides information on the biological activities of small molecules

OCLC awarded Gates grant

OCLC Online Computer Library Center has been awarded a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation for development of a potential national marketing campaign to increase awareness of the value of libraries, and the need for support for libraries at local, state and national levels. The $1.2 million grant will be used by OCLC to conduct research, develop strategies, create materials and test elements of a national marketing campaign to demonstrate the value of libraries, and the need to increase support for libraries to meet the changing needs and expectations of library users

ALA 2007 scholarship online application now available

The American Library Association has more than $300,000 in scholarships available for students who are studying library science or school library media at the master's degree level. Scholarships range from $2,500 to $6,500 per student per year

Discovery: Resolver upports image-based linking from Scopus

Endeavor Information Systems has announced that its full-text OpenURL linking solution, Discovery: Resolver, now supports image-based linking from Scopus. Scopus is one of Elsevier's primary science, technology, medicine and social science research information services

EPrints v3.0 beta announcement

The first beta release of EPrints version 3.0 gives more control and flexibility to repository managers, technical administrators and depositors. EPrints is the most widely used professional software platform for institutional open access repositories, and this new release will widen its appeal especially to institutions looking for a powerful, cost-effective repository capable of supporting a diverse range of users and digital objects

This Week in LibraryBlogLand

This Week in LibraryBlogLand - for the week ending November 5, 2006

900,000th trademark registered under the Madrid System

The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) has registered the 900,000th mark under the Madrid system for the international registration of trademarks, a user-friendly and cost-effective system for the international registration of marks. At the current rate of growth, it is anticipated that the one millionth mark under the Madrid system will be reached in 2009. The 900,000 milestone was a trademark registered by a Chinese company seeking protection in ten countries on four continents

New journals from Inderscience

Two new journals from Inderscience are now available: International Journal of Revenue Management and International Journal of Mobile Learning and Organisation

dotReader

dotReader is named after the late Dorothy Thompson, legendary foreign correspondent and broadcaster and one of the most influential women in American history. Is open source - available free, owned by no one and usable by everyone. Runs on multiple platforms including Windows, Macs, Linux, tablet PCs, and most PDAs. Reads multiple document formats with the ability to add additional formats via plug-ins. Creates a community of readers with embedded forums, discussion groups, polls, and shared annotations

University of Southampton and MIT launch Web Science collaboration

The University of Southampton and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology today announced the launch of a long-term research collaboration that aims to produce the fundamental scientific advances necessary to guide the future design and use of the World Wide Web. The Web Science Research Initiative (WSRI) will generate a research agenda for understanding the scientific, technical and social challenges underlying the growth of the Web. Of particular interest is the volume of information on the Web that documents more and more aspects of human activity and knowledge. WSRI research projects will weigh such questions as, how do we access information and assess its reliability? By what means may we assure its use complies with social and legal rules? How will we preserve the Web over time?

The Friday Brain-teaser from Xrefer

The Friday Brain-teaser from Xrefer - this week: Arctic and Antarctic. Answers here.

1. Is Antarctica bigger or smaller than the USA?
2. Is the North Pole in the Arctic or the Antarctic?
3. In the Antarctic in 1912, what were the last words of Lawrence Oates before he vanished into a blizzard?
4. Which Norwegian explorer of the Arctic won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1922 for his humanitarian work?
5. Who wrote the 1905 book The Voyage of the "Discovery" about his first expedition to Antarctica?
6. The Arctic gets its name from being below which stellar constellation?
7. In 1911, who was the first explorer to reach the South Pole?
8. Do polar bears live in the Arctic, the Antarctic, or both?
9. In 1928, the Australian Sir George Hubert Wilkins was the first to explore the Arctic in what form of transport?
10. Which Antarctic explorer had to abandon his ship, the Endurance, on his 1914-16 expedition, and died in 1922 on his fourth expedition to the Antarctic?

Academic Info What's New Listing

After a lengthy break the monthly Academic Info What's New email update is once again being published. 164 new online resources have been added to Academic Info in October
2006

Essex Book Festival 2007

The next Essex Book Festival takes place during March 2007. "We're lining up authors right now to appear at the festival. Look out for a wide range of writers and events with something for everyone. The box office will open in January 2007 when brochures will be available in libraries and across the community. We're also proud to announce that Professor Germaine Greer and Francis Wheen have agreed to become the first ever patrons of the Essex Book Festival, lending their support to this fabulous event"

Barnes & Noble Book Clubs

Barnes & Noble.com Inc. has launched Barnes & Noble Book Clubs, a social network of authors, experts and readers. The free network offers online shoppers the opportunity to have direct dialogue with favorite writers across a wide spectrum of book categories

Guardian First Book Award 2006 shortlist announced

Guardian First Book Award 2006 shortlist has been announced

SPARC Open Access Newsletter, issue #103

SPARC Open Access Newsletter, issue #103 November 2, 2006 is now available

The Carnival of the Infosciences is under New Management

Chadwick Seagraves of InfoSciPhi writes: In an effort to allow my friend Greg Swartz to devote himself to his many other pursuits and focus his efforts on his new position, I have volunteered to take over administration of the Carnival of the Infosciences

UM 2007

The 11th International Conference on User Modeling (UM 2007) will be held from 25 to 29 of June 2007 in Corfu, Greece. UM 2007 will be co-organised by the National Center for Scientific Research "Demokritos" and the Ionian University, under the auspices of User Modeling, Inc.

DC-2007 to be held in Singapore

The Dublin Core Metadata Initiative Directorate has announced that DC-2007 will be held in Singapore in the week of 27-31 August 2007, hosted by the National Library Board in cooperation with the Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information of Nanyang Technological University. Publication of the Call for Papers is expected in December 2006

Web Curator Tool

The National Library of New Zealand and The British Library have announced the release of the Web Curator Tool as an open-source project. The Web Curator Tool is a tool for managing the selective web harvesting process. It is designed for non-technical users in libraries and other collecting institutions who need to capture web material for archival purposes

Book-burning threat over town's portrayal in Booker-winning novel

When she became the youngest ever winner of the Booker prize Kiran Desai inadvertently lifted the town of Kalimpong out of the shadows of the Himalayas and into the glare of the media spotlight. But few in the town are now thanking her for setting her novel, The Inheritance of Loss, in this landscape. Instead internet forums hum with indignation about the book's "condescending statements" while others threaten public book-burnings - The Guardian, UK

Librarians' Internet Index New This Week

Librarians' Internet Index New This Week - November 2, 2006 now available

California Library Association 2006 Annual Conference

California Library Association 2006 Annual Conference - November 10-13 - Sacramento Convention Center, California

London: A Life in Maps

London: A Life in Maps - Forthcoming exhibition at the British Library from 24 November 2006 to 4 March 2007

English Short Title Catalogue now free

The essential resource for historians, English language and literature scholars, and all those interested in early printed books, periodicals and ephemera, the English Short Title Catalogue (ESTC) provides bibliographic records for all known British printed material before 1801, held by the British Library and over 2000 other institutions worldwide. The file is now freely available to researchers for the first time

Xrefer partners with PASCAL

Xrefer has announced that it has signed an agreement with the Partnership Among South Carolina Academic Libraries (PASCAL) to make Xreferplus available to students at all the schools in the South Carolina Technical College System

Research Beyond Google

Research Beyond Google: 119 Authoritative, Invisible, and Comprehensive Resources - a helpful starting point for anyone - librarian, professor, or student - wanting to do accurate research on the Web without relying solely on Google (or the visible Web)

Call for papers for International Journal of Digital Libraries

Call for papers for International Journal of Digital Libraries, special issue on Very Large Digital Libraries

University of Chicago Press changes policy regarding classroom use

In an effort to support educational use of the latest scholarly research, the University of Chicago Press has amended its policy regarding course packets and electronic reserve of journal materials published by the University of Chicago Press. Beginning on January 1, 2007, educators at institutions with Enterprise-Wide access may make multiple hard copies of journal content for the purpose of classroom use. An extension of the Enterprise-wide benefit of simultaneous access, materials published electronically by the University of Chicago Press, Journals Division may also be placed on e-reserve by members of institutions with unlimited concurrency Enterprise-Wide subscriptions

ACRL/NY 2006 Symposium

As the business model increasingly pervades the academy, librarians find themselves responding to a mentality that embraces the "bottom line." The 2006 ACRL/NY annual Symposium "Commercialization and the Academic Library: Mission Statement or Market Share" explores the commercialization of higher education, its impact on academic librarians, and the challenges and opportunities they face - December 1, 2006 - Baruch College, New York

Archives Hub Collections of the Month, November 2006

Archives Hub Collections of the Month, November 2006: Hwæt!. This month the focus is on the papers of archaeologists, historians, linguists and literary scholars who have studied the Anglo-Saxons

Searching without Google

Searching without Google: the hottest and the best of the new search engines - Find out what is wrong with Google and why other search tools are often better and more reliable. This session will take you through the latest alternative web search engines; blogs and RSS search tools; image, video and audio tools; and specialist tools including evaluated listings. Presenter: Karen Blakeman, RBA Information Services - November 8 2006 - Manchester Central Library, UK

Internet Librarian International 2006 presentations

Links to presentations given at Internet Librarian International 2006 in London, UK, 16-17 October, are now available

Cartoon America opens November 2, 2006

Cartoon America: Highlights from the Art Wood Collection of Cartoon and Caricature will open at the Library of Congress on Thursday, November 2, in the Great Hall of the Thomas Jefferson Building, 10 First St. S.E., Washington, D.C. On view through January 27, 2007, the exhibition is free and open to the public from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday-Saturday

High Energy Physics Libraries Webzine

High Energy Physics Libraries Webzine - Issue 13, October 2006 now available

This Week in LibraryBlogLand

This Week in LibraryBlogLand - for the week ending October 29-30, 2006

Dialog widens Asia-Pacific intellectual property coverage

Dialog has announced that it has added the TRADEMARKSCAN-Australia database to the Dialog platform, further expanding its intellectual property portfolio and providing greater coverage for the Asia-Pacific region. Dialog also offers trademark coverage for Japan and South Korea, having added the TRADEMARKSCAN-South Korea database in June 2006

Marketing the Virtual Information Service

Marketing the Virtual Information Service - This course, led by Antony Brewerton, will provide practical guidance on how to overcome some of the challenges of marketing our virtual services to customers (and potential users) we never see - 27 November 2006 - London, UK

DCMI Social Tagging Community

The DCMI Social Tagging Community is for those who are interested in investigating how the increasingly common practice of informally tagging resources, known as a process of social tagging, can contribute to the goals of The Dublin Core Metadata Initiative

American Library Association holds fourth online election in 2007

For the fourth year, the American Library Association will hold its election online. All paid ALA members as of January 31, 2007, are eligible to vote in the 2007 election. Polls will open on March 15, 2007