Libraries place a good deal of emphasis on collection development policies -- a written statement of a library's intentions for building its collection. It describes the collection's strengths and weaknesses and provides guidelines for the purchase ("acquisition") and disposition ("weeding") of content. This is an activity that sets libraries apart from …

[Aside: I'm not quite sure what the procedure is for posting on LITAblog.org. This report was posted there last night to appear at something like http://www.litablog.org/2007/06/23/standards-ig/ but it seems to be stuck in a moderation queue of some sort. I'm reposting it …

Why settle for mere digital copies of books (a la the Google Book Search project and the Open Content Alliance) when you can have an edition printed, bound and sent to you in the mail? That's the twist behind a recent partnership announced by Amazon.com, Kirtas Technologies, Emory University …

Minutes of the JPEG2000 Interest Group have been posted to the j2kArcLib.info website. Comments there are restricted to registered users of the site (although registration is freely available), so feel free to post comments here.

The text was modified to remove a link to http://j2karclib.info/node/113 …

I am pleased to announce the formation of Planet Library SOA -- an aggregation of blog postings and resources related to the application of the Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) software paradigm to library systems. You can follow the topic by reading the aggregation website, but the best way to follow along is …

DLTJ now uses reCAPTCHA on comment forms. reCAPTCHA is an enhanced version of CAPTCHA (an acronym for "completely automated public Turing test to tell computers and humans apart") and like the original it is a type of challenge-response test used to determine whether there is a human user at the …

As a part of work for an OhioLINK strategic task force, I have been exploring the creation and operation of regional/collaborative/shared digitization centers. This is a report of findings to date after an open call for information. The report is structured with questions to be explored when considering …

At the meeting we …

Rob Casson of Miami University announced this weekend the beta availability of their video catalog. In a subsequent posting, Rob describes the user interface elements. Rob and the crew at Miami are seeking feedback on the interface, so if you have some be sure to offer it to them.

A …

The Technical Committee and Liaison Group of the OAI Object Reuse and Exchange effort met last week in New York City to hammer out face-to-face some of the last remaining issues before work could begin on a draft specifications document. In preparation for that meeting, we worked on a white …

This year has seen the release of two personal repository services: http://PublicationsList.org/ and the U.K. Depot. These two services have an admittedly different focus, but I think it is still interesting to compare and contrast them to see what we can learn.

The Depot

The Depot provides …

A recent posting in the Chronicle of Higher Education "Wired Campus" section describes the new iTunes U portal, "a spot on the site that will collect college lectures, commencement speeches, tours, sports highlights, and promotional material, all available at no cost." (If you have iTunes on your desktop/laptop, you …

A post by Bill Harris at "Dubious Quality" with the title Information got caught up in my Technorati filter for disruptive change in libraries. Geoff Engelstein, a colleague of Bill's mentioned this in an e-mail:

We were a generation of information explorers. They [Geoff's thirteen– and eleven-year-olds] are a generation …

OhioLINK is engaged in building a "trusted digital repository" on behalf of its membership. As we build it, we want to have an understanding of what "trusted" means, and so we are engaging in an audit process to assess whether we can claim to be trustworthy. This process is panning …

In case you haven't run across Gapminder.org yet, I encourage you to carve out about 45 minutes of a day to do so. Even before going to the URL above, your first stop should be this 20 minute video by Hans Rosling -- professor of global health at Sweden’s …

I will never fly U.S. Airways again, if I have a choice. A competing airline's ticket is going to have to be substantially more expensive for me to even consider U.S. Airways as an alternative.

This all started with a trip to Ithaca two months ago. There was …

Professor Eric Faden of Bucknell University demonstrates principles of fair use to give an overview of U.S. copyright principles in A Fair(y) Use Tale -- a 10-minute video in five acts. Using clips from dozens of Disney films, Faden gives the historical perspective and underlying principles for copyright law …

I'm looking for information about the formation and management of regional digitization centers for one of the OhioLINK strategic task forces. For our purposes, a "regional digitization center" is a place that has the hardware, software, and human expertise to convert a variety of media to digital form. (We're primarily …

Activity still continues on the National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program (NDIIP). There were two stories in Washington DC newspapers in recent weeks. The more interesting of the two came from the May 16th Washington Post in a column by Jim Barksdale and Francine Berman called Saving our Digital …

"Participatory Digital Libraries" is the name of a talk Paul Jones, Director of ibiblio.org, gave this morning at OCLC's Kilgour Auditorium. Known as "The Public's Library," ibiblio is a large, diverse digital library. His talk offered insight on how ibiblio works and commentary for applying the same successful techniques …