Category Archives: Libraries & Networked Information

LCSH News: “Mountain Biking” Replaces “All Terrain Cycling”

January 29, 2008 – 1:19 am

Even though mountain bike sales and participation are down (as a percentage of market share, biking has been declining for ten years), the Library of Congress has just issued a directive to change the subject heading from “All Terrain Cycling” to “Mountain Biking.” The term was apparently first coined by Charlie Kelly and Gary Fisher [...]

By Casey | Also posted in Dispatches | Comments (3)



Stephen King Doesn’t Hate Kindle

January 28, 2008 – 12:23 pm

Stephen King writes at Entertainment Weekly.com that he doesn’t hate the Kindle:
Will Kindles replace books? No. And not just because books furnish a room, either. There’s a permanence to books that underlines the importance of the ideas and the stories we find inside them; books solidify an otherwise fragile medium.
But can a Kindle enrich [...]

By Casey | Also posted in Dispatches | Comments (0)

Introducing Phonepedia, a Voice-Activated Wikipedia Mashup

January 21, 2008 – 11:11 am

The Phonepedia concept is simple: take Wikipedia’s rich content and add voice recognition. It’s as easy as calling a number and asking your question, the answer will be returned via SMS and email. Go ahead and try it for yourself.
The voice recognition is powered by Jott, and thanks are due to Heidi for writing so [...]

By Casey | Also posted in Technology | Comments (1)

Is Facebook Really The Point?

January 17, 2008 – 11:55 am

A post to Web4lib alerted me to this U Mich survey about libraries in social networks (blog post) that finds 77% of students don’t care for or want libraries in Facebook or MySpace.
the biggest reason being that they feel the current methods (in-person, email, IM) are more than sufficient. 14% said no because they [...]

By Casey | Also posted in Technology | Comments (2)

How Do I Create A Semantic Web Site?

January 9, 2008 – 4:13 pm

A member of the Web4lib mail list asked:
How do I create a semantic web site?
I know I have to use either RDF or OWL but do I use either of these to create a mark up language which I then use to create the web site or, with the semantic web do we move away [...]

By Casey | Comments (1)



Free Report On Accessible Web Design From Jakob Nielsen

December 18, 2007 – 7:46 am

Free from Nielsen Norman Group: Beyond ALT Text, Making the Web Easy to Use for Users With Disabilities, a report on web design for users with disabilities. “Seventy-five best practices for design of websites and intranets, based on usability studies with people who use assistive technology” According to the blog post, usability is three times [...]

By Casey | Also posted in Dispatches, Technology | Comments (7)

bSuite Machine Tags

December 17, 2007 – 12:08 pm

There can be no arguments about it, machine tags are cool and they solve problems. And now they work in WordPress with bSuite too (svn only, for the moment).
It’s not just because flickr popularized them that I like them, though it helps and you should definitely look at that stuff:

The announcement
Excitement from O’Reilly Radar, ProgrammableWeb, [...]

By Casey | Also posted in Technology | Comments (0)

Language Translation Icon

December 13, 2007 – 12:41 pm

We all need a recognized icon to represent “translate this.” We’ve got one for feeds and social bookmarking, but where’s our translate icon? A lot of folks simply use flags, but that’s a bad idea because they’re “nationalistic, and represent ideals, boundaries, and political beliefs, but do not represent a language.”
Joe Lee has developed [...]

By Casey | Also posted in Technology | Comments (3)

In Flight WiFi Back In The Air?

December 13, 2007 – 6:41 am

I thought the matter was dead after Boeing shut down their much hyped in-flight WiFi plans (yep), but Engadget got a seat on JetBlue’s private introductory flight for their WiFi service. The good news is that it’s free, the not surprising news is that Yahoo! is partnering in it (and it requires a Yahoo! account), [...]

By Casey | Also posted in Dispatches, Technology | Comments (2)

Scriblio 2.3 v4 Released

December 11, 2007 – 9:03 pm

Scriblio 2.3 v4 is out. See it. Download it. Install it. Join the mail list.
What’s new?

Lots of small bug fixes.
Implemented wp_cache support.
Revamped SQL query logic for better memory efficiency.
New widget options.
Search suggest/autocomplete support (implemented in the new theme).
New theme. New Theme! By Jon Link.

By Casey | Also posted in Technology | Comments (4)

Home Libraries, Amateur Libraries

December 11, 2007 – 7:43 pm

The Library Problem:
In March of 2006 my wife Mary and I owned about 3,500 books. We both have eclectic interests, voracious appetites for knowledge, and a great love of used bookstores. The problem was that we had no idea what books we had or where any of them were. We lost books all the time, [...]

By Casey | Also posted in Blink | Comments (0)

People Make Scriblio Better

November 29, 2007 – 11:09 am

It’s way cool to see Lichen’s Scriblio installation instructions translated to Hungarian. Even cooler to have Sarah the tagging librarian take hard look at it and give us some criticism (and praise!). But I’m positively ecstatic to see Robin Hastings’ post on installing Scriblio (it’s not easy on Windows, apparently).
Part of it is pride [...]

By Casey | Also posted in Dispatches | Comments (2)

My iPhone Commercial (or, The Night We Almost Died On A Mountain)

November 25, 2007 – 10:55 pm

It was cold. The air carried no scent, ice squeaked under our boots, and every little leaf and twig crinkled and snapped as we walked over it. But this was louder than that. Much louder. Neither Jon nor I saw it actually happen, but when I found Will he was mostly upside down between a [...]

By Casey | Also posted in Technology, Travel | Comments (8)

How Expensive Does Commercial Software Need To Get Before We Consider Open Source?

November 21, 2007 – 12:17 pm

Open source software of the free as in free beer and free as in free speech variety has matured to the point that there are now strong contenders in nearly every category, though that doesn’t make them easy choices. It’s often revealing when people criticize OSS as being free as in free kittens, which is [...]

By Casey | Also posted in Politics & Controversy, Technology | Comments (1)

Tidens Hotteste IT-Trends

November 16, 2007 – 1:44 am

My presentation for today’s hottest IT trends is nearly completely new, though it draws a number of pieces from my building web 2.0-native library services and remixability presentations. What it adds is an (even more) intense focus on the people that make up the web.
Denmark is among the most wired countries of Europe, and it’s [...]

By Casey | Comments (1)