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Michael & Jenny

SA400448 Originally uploaded by testdriverone . To make a blog post from Blogger via Flickr without going into your own blogger web edit pages is really easy. After uploading a few pictures from the TICER courses of today a simple click opens up a box. Almost everything of today's talks are concentrated around "boxes". For Jenny this is the blog box, for Michael the IM text box and Paul Miller asks us to "think outside the box"... Tags: TICER2006

Back from Spain and on the road again to TICER

After a refreshing holiday in Spain I'll be off to the Ticer's Digital Libraries à la Carte: New Choices for the Future 2006. The 4 modules this year are: Technological developments: Threats and opportunities for libraries Hands-on: Library 2.0 technologies to reach out to the customer Libraries supporting research and Open Access Libraries and teaching and learning I am going to attend the first two and colleagues of me will visit the 3rd and 4th module. That way we have covered the complete programme! If any special will come up, I will post about it. I am looking forward in seeing Jenny Levine ( The Shifted Librarian ) again. She took Michael Stephens ( Tame The Web ) with her and I hope to have the opportunity to talk to them about "reaching out to the customer" & libraries and gaming in general & the Second Life Library project in particular! Categories: TICER2006 , library2.0 , web2.0

Summer Holidays!

Do not expect any posts before August 19th, because i am off for a holiday to Spain! Almost three weeks surrounded by the mountains of the Pyrenees, i am looking forward to it. First issue in August will be about the scientific program of the next Eahil Conference in Cluj , Rumania! Second one will be about the brand new Medical Building of the Second Life Medical Library 2.0! Third one, oh, we'll see about that later!

Listen to the website! Readspeaker on UMCG website

You can now listen to the Internet site of the University Medical Center Groningen (UMCG) The UMCG is the second Dutch Hospital that offers this ReadSpeaker-software. The Utrecht UMC was the first in June 2006, but with a somewhat limited version of ReadSpeaker. The remarkable thing is that the texts are not previously recorded, but converted by the software and send back to the visitor as a sound file. It not just reads out the pages, but also downloaded pdfs, like patient brochures..

Elsevier's Scopus versus ISI Web of Science and Google Scholar

With a title like this I should attract a lot of hits -;) But to call me a Black Hat spammer right away, I don't think so. I believe this reseach deserves a lot of attention. I wonder if Jeroen Bosman will publish his report "Scopus doorgelicht en vergeleken : de dekking van de citatiedatabase Scopus inclusief vergelijkingen met Web of Science and Google Scholar" on this subject also in English. (He just confirmed to me he will, so be patient!) In the ongoing debate about the language of blogging/publication, I am convinced that in this case the language of publication is a negative impuls. Making it available in a open repository is on the other hand a very positive point. There is certainly international interest for this! In a free translation it would be: "Scopus examined and compared: the coverage of citationdatabase Scopus with Web of Science and Google Scholar ." There is also a powerpoint available. This presentation is also in Dutch, but will give you...

The Library Catalogue Issue... : Fixing Library Discovery

Just a few days ago I had a discussion about our OPAC with a colleague. I told her that the overviews we are making of our medical library collection by subjects and by publication type should be possible to generate easily from within our Library Catalogue. And not only by us, but of course by the users. The overviews are only useful if the Catalogue is properly maintained and if all records get proper subject keywords. Our Catalogue it the typical example of a by-product of a acquisition system, a traditional library system with modules that focus on administrative functions instead of functional services for the users. Tomorrow I am going to show her the new Catalogue of the North Carolina State University (NCSU) and let her read the column of Roy Tennant in LibraryJournal.com of a few days ago. Fixing Library Discovery By Roy Tennant , LibraryJournal.com, June 15, 2006 http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6341887.html Roy mentions s he is "seeing some major new interfac...

The User IS Not Broken! : get a new mindset!

The following text can be used to "brainwash" new library staff, library school students and in certain cases to give existing library staff a new "mindset" if they seem to be stuck in a 20th-Century mindset. Print these lines on a Virtual Librarian Trading Card and pass them around in Library World. They can be used as meditation Chant. Wake up and practice every morning. Gather your staff each morning around the coffee machine and chant for 5 minutes. Never leave the library if you haven't read them outloud at least once a day. These are the first lines: All technologies evolve and die. Every technology you learned about in library school will be dead someday. You fear loss of control, but that has already happened. Ride the wave. You are not a format. You are a service. The OPAC is not the sun. The OPAC is at best a distant planet, every year moving farther from the orbit of its solar system. The user is the sun. The user is the magic element that transform...