Rowland Institute Library Blog

Are bloggers a gold mine for literary agents or can few write more than a lengthy posting?  (Source: Library Stuff)

and discusses features of a half-dozen better known programs that
display RSS feeds for your consumption… (source; Steven Cohen)

A&L is a fine digest of internet articles and news sources, revived
recently by the Chronicle of Higher Education.  But it has always
been hard to discover new items without scanning the whole site. 
Some wonderful person solved this problem with a feed. (Source; SciencePORT.org)

MT and Bloxsom are the only ones familiar to me.  Good breakdown of features to consider.  (Source: The Virtual Chase)

Quite positive, in fact. “Our internal use of Weblogs has greatly accelerated, and we’re beginning to see more tangible benefits as we’ve begun to reach
a critical mass of internal contributors.” (Source: beSpacific)

beSpacific reports on H.R. 3179, introduced in 2003 and debated on yesterday. 

According to Harnad et al, self-archiving works. Open access articles
are cited from 2.5 to 5 times as much as subscription-restricted
articles, according to their study.  The “green” refers to a
publisher’s “green light” for the author to self-archive a paper in
some form, which may at least be available to some researchers, if not
the “gold,” which is open access from the time of publication. 
(Source; Georgia State Libraries Issues in Scholarly Communication)

James Fallows has discovered RSS, among other things.  He has a
question for publishers, noting “Information is both invaluable and
impossible to value.”  He cites the phenomenon of the give-away
culture, exemplified in free web sites, blogs, and more or less the
open access movement.  Who’s going to pay for information if it is
free?  Well, for a long time libraries paid for information that
was made freely available to the general public, albeit with greater or
lesser convenience to the individual.  Now, there’s more material
freely available and at increasing convenience, depending on the speed
and stability of one’s internet connection.  But publishers and
libraries still provide value by collecting and organizing disparate
data.  What the price of that should be is another question. 
Many believe that the free, open source, file sharing, whatever you
want to call it, movements harm those who are simply trying to make a
living or cover costs (small companies, scientific societies,
independent artists) and will not harm those who are making
astronomical profits (the record companies, the Microsofts, the
Elseviers.)  Maybe we need to educate others about choices, and
some can play a role in that, rather than attacking the open movements
in fear of losing what they little they have. For example, it seems
that scientific societies have in interest in open access rather than
dismissing it.  Fallows (oh yeah, that’s what started this) ends
on an optimistic note (but not for the “middlemen”:”No matter how that
battle turns out, the public will win the longer war.  The
Internet’s impact on the value of information may still be in flux, but
its long-term impact on middlemen is clear.” Maybe it isn’t so much
elimination of the “middlemen” but those who would profit extravagantly
and serve their shareholders first.  (Sources; Open Access News; Bob Stepno)

Online Journalism Review has another interesting article this week on
blogging and its acceptance in academia.  Four prof bloggers are
interviewed, including LSU’s Kaye Trammell. (Source:
blogdex)