“The proposed Google Book Search settlement creates the opportunity for unprecedented access by the public, scholars, libraries and others to a digital library containing millions of books assembled by major research libraries. But the settlement is controversial, in large part because this access is limited in major ways: instead of being truly open, this new digital library will be controlled by a single company, Google, and a newly created Book Rights Registry consisting of representatives of authors and publishers; it will include millions of so-called “orphan works” that cannot legally be included in any competing digitization and access effort, and it will be available to readers only in the United States. It need not have been this way.”

“This workshop seeks to bring a fresh, unique perspective to a complex and widely debated topic. It will focus not on the specific merits and demerits of the settlement itself, or the particular antitrust and privacy and other objections that have been raised. Instead, it will examine the idea of possible alternative universes and offer specific proposals for scenarios that may arise whether or not the settlement is approved . What can libraries, or universities, or non-profits, or Congress, do in the current landscape? And how might these possibilities help us to define a better world than the one that we have today and, more importantly, than the one that will exist if the Google settlement is approved in its current form? Regardless of what happens with respect to the Settlement, what alternative possibilities could lead to a richer, more open and better information ecosystem than the one we have today or might have tomorrow with the Settlement?”

For more info on the free workshop:

http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/googlebooks/Main_Page

Posted by Rich

RSVP required for those attending in person ( rsvp at cyber.law.harvard.edu)
This event will be webcast live at 12:30 pm ET.

For more info:

http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/events/luncheon/2009/07/macgillivray

Posted by Rich

How to Search For Certain Colors in Google Images
 http://ow.ly/1owr
(Source: neiljohnford)

…

Top 10 Electronic Reminder Services
 http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,234…
(Source: ResourceShelf)

Two new improvements to Google results pages
 http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/03/t…

…

100 Free Useful Mac Applications (Part 1)
 http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/100-free-us…
(Source: Ellyssa Kroski)

101 Great Free Sites and Downloads You’ve Probably Never Heard Of
 http://www.pcworld.com/article/161342/10…
(Source: digg)

Despite the internet’s origins as an academic network, when it comes to finding a book, e-commerce rules. Put any book title into your favourite search engine, and the hits will be dominated by commercial sites run by retailers, publishers, even authors. But even with your postcode, you won’t find the nearest library where you can borrow that book. (The exception is Google Books, and even that is limited.)

That’s strange, because almost every library has an electronic database of its books – searchable either at the library’s own website or via its local council. The wrinkle is that at the book level, those databases aren’t accessible to the search engines; and you may not be able to search all the libraries in your area at once.

Bibliographic data

Yet there is an alternative that few people seem aware of: Worldcat  worldcat.org), which offers web access to the largest repository of bibliographic data in the world – from the 40-year-old Ohio-based non-profit Online Computer Library Center  oclc.org). But Worldcat suffers from the same problem on a larger scale. OCLC shares only 3m of its 125m records with Google Books; none of them show up in an ordinary search.

You might expect forward-thinking libraries to put their databases online, to encourage people through their doors. But they can’t. Even though they created the data, pay to have records added to the database and pay to download them, they can’t.

In November, OCLC announced new rules covering the use of Worldcat data due to go live on 19 February. Among other things, the new policy prohibits any use – transfer, sharing – that “substantially replicates the function, purpose, and/or size of WorldCat”. In other words, no publicly searchable databases.

“It’s safe to say that the policy change is a direct response to Open Library,” says Aaron Swartz, the founder of Open Library  openlibrary.org), a project to give every published book its own Wikipedia-style page. “Since the beginning of Open Library, OCLC has been threatening funders, pressuring libraries not to work with us, and using tricks to try to shut us down. It didn’t work – and so now this.”

For the whole article:

http://tinyurl.com/bfwt2v

h/t to Librarian.net:

http://www.librarian.net/

Posted by Rich

Thanks, Garrett!

& Happy Labor Day!

(Guess I should stop laboring, eh?)

“ErrorKey is the tool you need to quickly get an answer for errors you encounter.

We first implemeted ErrorKey as an in house application to help us in our work by quickly get resolution to errors. After sharing it with a group of friends, hackers like us, we got good feedback and decided to make it available to the public.”

Search engine for Error codes and messages.
Systems currently available:

Oracle Sybase Apple Cisco 6400 Unix Solaris

DB2 MySQL PostgreSQL SAP DB Borland C

Python HTTP Symbian Mozilla Windows NT

For more info:

http://altsearchengines.com/2008/08/20/errorkey-the-search-engine-for-error-codes/

Posted by Rich

“As someone who works in a medical library and as someone fascinated by search engines and who wishes well to worthwhile innovation in search, I have a few suggestions for how search engines and Web 2.0 entrepreneurs generally can spread the word about their tools to librarians. Doing so is good business—librarians tend to spend hours searching. They deal with the public and key players in corporate settings and they read blogs by other librarians and pass along news of what they find on such blogs via email or list servers.”

“This is not an audience that you should ignore.”

“For instance, I have had some mutually productive interactions with various search engine developers I have read about here. They seem to have benefited from my (free!) input and it makes sense to have expert eyes look at your stuff and critique it. I am no expert, but many librarians are very sophisticated, astute analysts of search technologies. After all, many of the leading lights in the search world (e.g., Gary Price, Tara Calishain, Greg Notess, and Mary Ellen Bates) are either former librarians or very much listened to by librarians who attend gatherings such as Internet Librarian and Computers in Libraries. Consider attending those conferences, either as individuals just to get a feel for them or as a sponsor of a booth. You would stand out given that we librarians are quite used to seeing the old standbys such as EBSCO, H.W. Wilson and Gale. Web 2.0 is surprisingly underrepresented at tech-oriented gatherings in the vendor arena.”

For the whole story:

 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/jkbaumga/2008/08/11/pewinternet-report-49-percent-use-search-engines/ The Pew Internet and American Life Project released a report on August 6, 2008 on search engine use:

http://www.pewinternet.org/pdfs/PIP_Search_Aug08.pdf

Link via iLibrarian blog:

http://oedb.org/blogs/ilibrarian/2008/nearly-half-of-internet-users-search-daily/

Posted by Rich

Much like the situation with LiveJournal’s sale to SUP, many people wonder what the impact of Digg’s potential sale might have on its community. Will Google or any other buyer try to radically change community policies and behavior? Will they respect the established community and pretty much leave things as they are? As Harrison Hoffman speculates in the C|Net article, is Google primarily trying to acquire Digg for its community? How will an influx from Google’s users alter Digg?

While negotiations with Digg have been going on, Google did make its next big purchase: the Roman Catholic Church. (Yes, that’s supposed to be a joke, but the discussion about Google potentially buying Digg is not.)

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