Bloglines to officially close service October 1 2010

Bloglines, one of the earliest web-based RSS readers, and one which I have used religiously over the years, is scheduled to officially close on October 1 2010. According to a report on the Read Write Web "while it was one of the early success stories of the RSS movement, the service never managed to get its groove back after the launch of Google Reader and a number of technical issues that made Bloglines very unreliable for a while".

Users who store and manage web content on Bloglines will now have to think about migrating to other rival services such as Google Reader. On the Bloglines website there are simple instructions currently posted on how to export current subscriptions. This comes as a surprise to the many loyal users who have consistently used and relied on the service for years.

How Libraries Stack Up - OCLC 2010 report

In the US, we go to libraries to find jobs, create new careers and help grow our small businesses. We borrow books, journals, music and movies. We learn to use the latest technology. We get the tools and information needed to reenter the workforce. We get our questions answered, engage in civic activities, meet with friends and co-workers and improve our skills at one of the 16,600 U.S. public libraries. Every day, our public libraries deliver millions of dollars in resources and support that meet the critical needs of our communities. BUT how do libraries compare/stack up to the corporate/for-profit world in these areas?

OCLC did the research and came up with a two page 2010 report (pdf) called How Libraries Stack Up.

ALA 2010 conference - panel discussion on career growth and promotion

If you can find the time during ALA annual please come to this session which I helped to organise on career growth and promotion...

Dr. John C. Tyson Award Committee of the Black Caucus of the American Library Association will host a panel discussion on "What do I Need to Know? Strategies for Career Growth and Promotion at ALA Annual 2010 Conference, Washington, DC. The workshop will be held at Four Points Sheraton in the Franklin C/D rooms on Sunday, June 27, 2010, from 10:30 a.m. to 12:00 noon.

The purpose of the What Do I Need To Know? Strategies for Career Growth and Promotion" program is to impart career strategies to librarians preparing for promotion and leadership. A panel of veteran librarians from various areas of the profession will discuss their career paths to higher management positions and provide similar strategies for 21st century librarians.
As we continue to plan the presentation for ALA 2010, we would like to hear from you. What would you like to hear from our panelists regarding career paths and strategies for 21st century librarians and information specialists? To facilitate this process, we have created a blog for you to post your questions, comments or suggestions. The blog is located at the following URL http://www.careergrowthtoday.org/. Please visit the blog and be part of this discussion. We want to hear from you!

RDA Toolkit available - complimentary access period June - August 2010

The RDA (Resource Description and Access) Toolkit is now available to help catalogers navigate from AACR2 to RDA. RDA is the new, unified standard for resource description and access, designed for the digital world and an expanding universe of metadata users. The RDA Toolkit will be available at no charge for everyone to try from mid-June 2010 through August 31, 2010.

Here is a link to a webinar on how to use the RDA Toolkit: http://www.rdatoolkit.org/training

Some RDA Toolkit highlights:
-RDA instructions that are searchable and browseable
-AACR2 Rule Number Search of RDA instructions
-Workflows, mappings, examples: tools to customize the RDA instruction set to support organizational training and processes
-Two views of RDA content—by table of contents and by RDA element set
-What you need to evaluate and implement RDA; to make cataloging decisions based on principles; to increase efficiency; to facilitate collaboration; and to help position the community for the future by making bibliographic data accessible on the Web
-Full text of AACR2 with links to RDA

The content of RDA has been developed in a collaborative process led by the Joint Steering Committee (JSC). The project is overseen by the Committee of Principals representing American Library Association, Canadian Library Association, CILIP: Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals, Library of Congress, Library and Archives Canada, British Library, and National Library of Australia. The RDA Toolkit is published by American Library Association, Canadian Library Association, and CILIP (through its publishing imprint Facet Publishing).

Librarian's spin on Lady Gaga's Poker Face

A group of University of Washington librarians and library science students have made their own rendition of Lady Gaga's "Poker Face" -- library-style, of course.

"You got a question that is causing you some pain," the rewritten lyrics go. "Typin' keywords into the search engine again." Can use my, can use my, you can use my catalog... don't forget the databases. View it here:

Super computational engine Wolf|ram Apha - a review

In its FAQ page, developers of Wolfram Alpha are quick to point out that Wolfram Alpha is not a search engine. It is described instead, as a computational knowledge engine. When a user plugs a query into the search box provided, WA generates output by doing computations and providing answers using its built-in knowledge base and algorithms, instead of searching the web and returning links.

As of now, WolframAlpha contains 10+ trillion pieces of data, 50,000+ types of algorithms and models, and linguistic capabilities for 1000+ domains. All data in WolframAlpha is centrally curated and audited bythe WA Team. This team also use a portfolio of automated and manual methods to check data, including statistics, visualization, source cross-checking, and expert review.

The lofty goal of this computational engine is to take as much of the world knowledge as possible and make it computable and accessible to everyone. Taking all the data, methods, models and algorithms accumulated during our civilization and make this immediately computable so that anyone, anywhere, can go on the web and use that knowledge to compute answers to their specific questions.

Their target group is indeed wide-ranging spanning all professions and education levels. Any level, from kindergarten to graduate school to a practitioner in the field can use this engine to get answers. For example for kindergarten students, WolframAlpha can do simple arithmetic what is 2+2, showing a step by step calculation. For the graduate student, what is the GDP of France, for the researcher how many internet users in Europe?

This seemingly super computational engine does list some of its main limitations as follows: engine can only know things that are known, and are somehow public; only deals with facts, not opinions; limits the computation time for each query; and of course, it's in continual development (continuous beta).

Click here to view tutorial video