Disruptive Library Technology Jester

Disruptive Library Technology Jester

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Peter E. Murray

Library technologist, open source advocate, striving to think globally while acting locally

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  • What ever happened to Google Knowls?

    It was announced on December 13th last year with much discussion here on DLTJ and elsewhere on the blogosphere. It would seem uncharacteristic of Google to announce something like that and keep the world waiting for months to see at least a beta of the concept. Is there some sort …

     Posted on  April 24, 2008
     and last updated April 24, 2008
  • OAI-ORE Alpha Specifications Updated

    As a result of discussions coming from the OAI-ORE open meeting in Baltimore in the first week of March, the document editors released a new version of the ORE alpha specifications (labeled "0.3") earlier this month to coincide with the open meeting at Southampton, UK. In a message …

     Posted on  April 15, 2008
     and last updated April 16, 2008
     ·  1 minutes reading time
  • On Innovation in the ILS Marketplace

    Last month the ILS Discovery Interface Task Force of the DLF called a meeting of library system vendors (including one commercial support organization for open source ILS software) to talk about the state of computer-to-computer interfaces in-to and out-of the ILS. The meeting comes as the work of the task …

     Posted on  April 12, 2008
     and last updated April 13, 2008
     ·  4 minutes reading time
  • Preserving Digital Video

    My place of work is looking to acquire educational videos in a digital form with an eye towards long-term preservation. At this point we receive a physical form (preferably DVD, but sometimes VHS) and digitize it to a very lossy access format (RealMedia, in this case). With this change, we …

     Posted on  April 08, 2008
     and last updated April 08, 2008
     ·  4 minutes reading time
  • DLTJ Updated to WordPress 2.5

    Unlike previous upgrades, this left some functionality broken -- notably some of the links in the second block under the "about" heading to the left (if you are reading this from http://dltj.org/ itself). But, you know what? -- it's Friday afternoon and all of the important bits are working. I …

     Posted on  April 04, 2008
     and last updated April 04, 2008
  • LC's Adoption of Silverlight -- Good Deal for Microsoft, Bad Deal for the Rest of Us

    Earlier this year, Microsoft announced that it was giving $3 million in "funding, software, technological expertise, training and support services" to the Library of Congress to build on-site and online exhibits of LC historical collections. Others have commented on this. From a Jester's point of view, I've got problems with …

     Posted on  March 31, 2008
     and last updated March 31, 2008
     ·  6 minutes reading time
  • Links to OPAC Enhancements, Wrappers, and Replacements

    Below are the supplemental links for the presentation at the NISO workshop on discovery layers in Chapel Hill, NC, on March 28, 2008.

    Update 20080404T1124 : Carolyn McCallum at Wake Forest University posted a great summary of day two of the NISO discovery layer forum, including an overview of my talk …

     Posted on  March 28, 2008
     and last updated March 28, 2008
     ·  4 minutes reading time
  • SSL for WordPress Admin and the Problem with XMLHttpRequest

    Note! The updates to SSL handling in WordPress version 2.6 handle the problem of SSL-encrypted admin sessions in a much less hackish sort of way. It doesn't make any sense to use this plugin with WordPress version 2.6 when you can simply add define(’FORCE_SSL_ADMIN’, true); to your …
     Posted on  March 20, 2008
     and last updated March 20, 2008
     ·  3 minutes reading time
  • A Glimpse into the Internet Archive's Scanning and Print-on-Demand Operations

    Wired magazine published a brief story and online photo gallery of the book scanning and print-on-demand projects at the Internet Archive. It is a fascinating glimpse into their vision and processes. Included below are cropped thumbnails and part of the text captions that accompanied the pictures in the Wired online …

     Posted on  March 20, 2008
     and last updated March 20, 2008
     ·  3 minutes reading time
  • NISO Workshop Exploring the Discovery Layer; March 27-28, 2008; Chapel Hill, NC

    NISO is conducting a workshop later this month called Next Generation Discovery: New Tools, Aging Standards. The workshop is described this way: "Discovering scholarly information and data is essential for research and use of the content that the information community is producing and making available. The development of knowledge bases …

     Posted on  March 12, 2008
     and last updated March 12, 2008
     ·  1 minutes reading time
  • OhioLINK seeks applicants for two positions: User Services Development and Electronic Licensing

    Applications are invited for two positions at OhioLINK: an Assistant Director of Library Systems -- User Services Development and an Assistant Director of Electronic Licensing. OhioLINK is a consortium of Ohio’s college and university libraries and the State Library of Ohio. It serves more than 600,000 students, faculty, staff …

     Posted on  March 10, 2008
     and last updated March 10, 2008
     ·  2 minutes reading time
  • Vint Cerf on the Origins of 32-bit IP Addressing

    Via a weekly wrap-up post by Dion Almaer on the Google Code Blog comes mention of a Google Tech Talk video from their IPv6 Conference 2008. It is a panel discussion called "What will the IPv6 Internet look like?" and it offers insight into the difficulties of transitioning to the …

     Posted on  March 07, 2008
     and last updated March 08, 2008
     ·  2 minutes reading time
  • "Teaching with Digital Texts" presentation

    At the Ohio Digital Commons for Education conference yesterday I had the privilege of chairing a panel for a session called "Teaching with Digital Texts: Comparative Experiences from the Field". The panel was a mixture of the principle investigators and the publisher representatives from two pilot projects that ran last …

     Posted on  March 05, 2008
     and last updated March 05, 2008
     ·  2 minutes reading time
  • JPEG2000 to Zoomify Shim -- Creating JPEG tiles from JPEG2000 images

    This is a textual representation of a lightning talk done on Feb 26th at Code4Lib 2008. When the video of the talk is up (thanks, Noel!) I'll link it here, too. The video is now available, and that article includes an update on progress since the this article was posted …

     Posted on  February 28, 2008
     and last updated February 28, 2008
     ·  3 minutes reading time
  • New Blog for Ebooks in Libraries: "No Shelf Required"

    Sue Polanka, head of reference and instruction at the main library of Wright State University, sent a message to the OhioLINK membership today about a new blog she is moderating called No Shelf Required:

    No Shelf Required provides a forum for discussion among librarians, publishers, distributors, aggregators, and others interested …

     Posted on  February 22, 2008
     and last updated February 22, 2008
     ·  2 minutes reading time
  • Voting open for Code4Lib 2009; Central Ohio is a candidate

    The Columbus Metropolitan Library, OCLC, and Ohio State University and OhioLINK have put in a bid as host site for the 2009 Code4Lib meeting. Code4Lib is an informal organization of self-selected librarians and technology professionals. It exists as a volunteer organization run by consensus of interested individuals. The meeting in …

     Posted on  February 21, 2008
     and last updated February 21, 2008
     ·  2 minutes reading time
  • Microsoft Giving Away Developer Software to Students

    Stu Hicks, one of OhioLINK's systems engineers, told the OhioLINK staff last night about a new program at Microsoft called DreamSpark. Through this program, post-secondary students around the world who are attending accredited schools or universities can download some of Microsoft's big developer and designer tools free of charge. At …

     Posted on  February 20, 2008
     and last updated February 20, 2008
     ·  1 minutes reading time
  • Note to Future Self: Use `ssh -D` to bypass annoying interception proxies

    Dear future self,

    If you are reading this, you are remembering a time when you ran into a really nasty interception proxy ((Version of the "Proxy Server" Wikipedia page when this posting was written)) and you are looking for a way around it. Do you remember when you were sitting …

     Posted on  February 18, 2008
     and last updated February 18, 2008
     ·  3 minutes reading time
  • Would the Real "Dublin Core" Please Stand Up?

    I've been following the discussion by Stu Weibel on his blog about the relationship between Resource Description Framework (RDF) and Dublin Core Abstract Model (DCAM), and I think I'm as confused as ever. It comes as a two part posting with comments by Andy Powell Pete Johnston (apologies, Pete), Mikael …

     Posted on  February 18, 2008
     and last updated February 18, 2008
     ·  7 minutes reading time
  • Is JPEG Good Enough for Archival Masters?

    On the ImageLib mailing list, Rob Lancefield (Manager of Museum Information Services for Wesleyan University) posted a link to the Universal Photographic Digital Imaging Guidelines (UPDIG) for image creators. The introduction says: "These 12 guidelines — provided as a Quick Guide plus an in-depth Complete Guide — aim to clarify the issues …

     Posted on  February 05, 2008
     and last updated February 06, 2008
     ·  4 minutes reading time