So here is my role on the internet — a Connector: "Connectors combine a sense that information technology is good for social purposes with a clear recognition that online resources are a great way to learn new things." That definition comes from the Typology of Information and Communication Technology Users by …

Following in the footsteps of last year's annual conference and the midwinter meeting earlier this year, there is now a conference tracking page on the HitchHikr service for the 2007 Annual Conference in Washington DC. The URL for the tracker is:

http://hitchhikr.com/index.php?conf_id=212

From this …

A reader of DLTJ sent me a private comment this afternoon pointing me in the direction of a post on wisegeek with the title How can I Avoid Library Fines? This reply may never reach 246 Diggs (at the time of writing) ((I hope this post doesn't get that …

This posting used to have the tag "-- Except for Grayscale?" appended to the end of the title. That is no longer needed; see the bottom of the post for an explanation. We have been implementing University of Michigan's DLXS software, and DLXS uses JPEG2000 for its image masters. We have …

Jenny Emanuel, Electronic Services Librarian at University of Central Missouri, posted an invitation to complete a survey on how library professionals think of themselves to several mailing lists. As part of the ALA Emerging Leaders 2007 program, she is part of a team look for options on rebranding the librarian …

Here is a pair of papers that I'd like a chance to digest at some point. The first is "Recommending Related Papers Based on Digital Library Access Records" by Stefan Pohl, Filip Radlinski, and Thorsten Joachims. According to the notes on the paper, it is to appear in proceedings of …

I've been working to get JBoss Seam tied into Fedora, and along the way thought it would be wise to stop and document a core concept of this integration: the centrality of Fedora Disseminators in the the design of the Ohio Digital Resource Commons. Although there is nothing specific to …

The discussion has died down on Jack Nack's blog posting about the future of JPEG2000 support in Photoshop. Since I last updated my own commentary on the issue, there have been a few more comments, including one by Erich Kesse from the University of Florida. Jack has added a few …

With idle curiosity, I was poking around with what Google knows about DLTJ. Perhaps the most interesting piece was the company Google thinks I keep (found via a related:dltj.org search). Now most of the links are quite appropriate (the Library and Information Technology Association and ALA TechSource for …

Friend and former colleague Eric Meyer writes about the 2007 Web Design Survey (first annual) on his blog. It is an effort to "increase knowledge of web design and boost respect for the profession" and asks questions to learn "Who are we? Where do we live? What are our titles …

OhioLINK is not participating in the Google Summer of Code this year (too many other things going on for our staff to be effective mentors), which is why it is refreshing to see work on the wider adoption of JPEG2000 — one of our core goals — continue on other fronts. Among …

John Nack, Senior Product Manager for Adobe Photoshop, posted a query recently to his blog seeking customer reactions to the possibility of removing JPEG2000 support from Photoshop:

Adobe developed the plug-in in anticipation of cameras entering the market with native JPEG 2000 support on board. The thing is, that hasn't …

Recent posts by Richard Wallis and Paul Miller, both of Talis (a 40-year-old company in the U.K. specializing in information and metadata management), question a perceived division of library automation vendor technical staff with that of open source solution technical staff. I wasn't at Code4Lib this year (I'm going …

Brewster Kahle, Director of the Internet Archive, was interviewed this week in a Chronicle of Higher Education podcast on the Economics and Feasibility of Mass Book Digitization. Among the many interesting points in the interview was that one of the biggest challenges is to such a mass digitization effort to …

This month I've come across one great article and one great report on Service Oriented Architectures. The first came from Sally Rogers at Ohio State University in the form of an article from CIO magazine last year:

Koch, Christopher. 2006. The Truth About SOA. CIO Magazine, June 15. http://www …

DLTJ was upgraded to Wordpress 2.1 tonight. Everything looks good so far; please let me know if you disagree...

On Tuesday, the Poynter Institute (a school for journalists, future journalists, and teachers of journalists) released results of their EyeTrack07 study — an examination of reader behavior in the print and online mediums. An article on their website goes into more detail about the initial data but what caught my eye …

Early last month I mentioned what was happening to NDIIP funds with the impending passage of what became Public Law 110-5 [PDF] and posted a copy of a letter I sent to my senators urging them to reconsider the funding rescission. Of course, I wasn't the only one who asked …

There are just a few days left to respond to the "International Digital Preservation Systems Survey" being run by Karim Boughida and Sally Hubbard from the Getty Research Institute. From the survey description:

This survey is intended to provide an overview of digital preservation system (DPS) implementation. DPS is defined …

Update 19-Jan-2011: I've decommissioned this service. Talkr seems to be unavailable, and I haven't had time to find a replacement.

If reading the thoughts of the Jester via this blog wasn't enough, you can now hear this witty (witless?) insights read to you through your favorite podcast player. I've been …