Featured Link

Featured Link: World Book Trade (e-books, awards, videos)

Monday, December 29, 2003

Licensing Review and Negotiation - February 23-March 26, 2004, May 17-June 18, 2004, October 18-November 19, 2004 - This Online Lyceum course was created in 2002 in response to the ongoing demand for an introductory course that covers the basics of licensing electronic information products for libraries. The course content designers and facilitators are the same expert faculty who have been conducting this popular workshop in person for the last five years
Information Today, Inc., producer for the past 24 years of the National Online Meeting in New York City each May, has announced that it is skipping the industry-wide conference in 2004 and will return in 2005 with a "reinvented" event that will bring in "the new breed of information buyers." Three smaller conferences will take place simultaneously at the New York Hilton on May 11 and 12, 2004, but the long-running annual meeting that traditionally brought together producers and buyers of electronic information across the spectrum has drawn to a close
The top 20 groups that are changing the world, according to Fast Company
The December 22, 2003 issue of LLRX.com is now available. LLRX.com is a unique, free Web journal dedicated to providing legal and library professionals with the most up-to-date information on a wide range of Internet research and technology-related issues, applications, resources and tools

Wednesday, December 24, 2003

Journal of Digital Information Volume 4 Issue 3 is now available
The December 2003 issue of Biblio Tech Review is now available
Presentations from the conference Parallel Lives: digital and analog options for access and preservation, Joint conference of the National Preservation Office and King's College London, held 10 November 2003 are now available
Oregon Health & Science University Department of Medical Informatics & Clinical Epidemiology presents Introduction to Biomedical Informatics: A Web-Based Continuing Education Course for Health Sciences Librarians - January to June 2004
Registration for OCLC events at ALA January 9-12, 2004 is now available
King County Snapshots presents King County, Washington, through 12,000 historical images carefully chosen from twelve organizations' collections. These cataloged 19th and 20th century images portray people, places, and events in the county's urban, suburban, and rural communities
California Academy of Sciences Anthropology Collection Database - covers approximately 17,000 objects and over 8,000 images

Tuesday, December 23, 2003

To mark the bicentenary of the birth of French composer Hector Berlioz in December 1803, the National Library of Scotland is exhibiting a small selection of music and documents from its renowned Berlioz collection - 17 December 2003-21 January 2004
Dialog has announced a series of upgrades to Dialog NewsEdge, its industry-specific, personalized current awareness and news alerting service for corporations, that will facilitate information sharing within subscribing organizations
Cites & Insights: Crawford at Large 4:1 (January 2004) is now available for downloading
Library Fund Development - ARL/OLMS Online Lyceum course - February 16-27, 2004 - Participants will be provided with "a basic understanding of the library fundraising and fund development environment and the individual’s role in it"
Curtin University of Technology in Perth Australia will offer all courses online for its Master of Information Management and other programs in 2004
AskERIC service was discontinuned on December 19, 2003. The U.S. Department of Education has launched a new service, The Educator's Reference Desk offering access to AskERIC's lesson plans, and question archive responses as well as a search interface to ERIC

Sunday, December 21, 2003

Images and Sentiment - Five Publishers of Victorian Holiday Cards - companion web site to an exhibit Lilly Library in 2001
Victorian Christmas - short descriptions and images of Victorian greeting cards. scraps, and other ephemera
The best of British blogging - The Guardian unveils the winners of the second blogging contest. Phil Gyford's blog Pepys' Diary won in the specialist category. "The project started on January 1 this year: Gyford will put a new entry of the 17th-century London-based diarist's work on the web every day for the next 10 years"

Saturday, December 20, 2003

International Association of Music Libraries, Archives and Documentation Centres, United Kingdom an Ireland Branch, IAML:UK & Irl presents Advanced reference sources for music librarians will be offered at Advanced reference sources for music librarians- Humanities Library, Cardiff University, 30th March 2004. Music for the Terrified Shrewsbury Library, 16 March 2004
LexisNexis will be delivered globally using new technology platform. The product will be launched in Australia, France and Germany in the first quarter of 2004
Program is available for 2004 Information Highways Conference & Showcase - What Do Intelligent Enterprises Know? Harness the Value of Data, Content & Knowledge - Toronto, ON, March 22-24, 2004
Joint Conference on Digital Libraries (JCDL) 2004 - June 7-11, 2004 - Tucson, Arizona - Updated with information and categories for Best Paper Awards
DigiCULT.Info Issue 6 - December 2003 is available
Call for Papers - Knowledge Management Conference to be held 3-6 August 2004, at the Old Royal Naval College, University of Greenwich. The overall theme is "knowledge' and 'culture' - organisational intangibles and their tangible value

Friday, December 19, 2003

xrefer will be at the Midwinter ALA, San Diego, CA, January 9-12, 2004, at booth #439. Take the quiz and drop by the booth for a chance to win a $250 Amazon gift certificate at the show
This week's brain-teaser is on the seasonal subject of Christmas. There will be no quizzes for the next two weeks. Answers here:

1. Which two-word phrase is used for a large log traditionally burned in a fireplace at Christmas?
2. Which composer wrote "The Messiah", which is often performed at Christmas?
3. Mr Fezziwig's Ball took place in which story by Charles Dickens?
4. Which American record producer produced a famous 1963 concept album called "A Christmas Gift for You"?
5. What seasonal name is given to Kiritimati, the largest of the Line Islands in the Pacific Ocean?
6. Which US-born songwriter wrote 'Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer'?
7. Who wrote the children's book called "How the Grinch Stole Christmas"?
8. Who introduced the tradtion of having a Christmas Tree to Britain in the 1800's?
9. Which famous American wrote "How many observe Christ's birthday! How few, his precepts! O! 'tis easier to keep holidays than commandments"?
10. In medicine, what is the "Christmas factor" necessary for?

Thursday, December 18, 2003

Adobe Digital Media Store debuts - thousands of titles from several well-known publishers. Content for download includes Adobe PDF eBooks, links to digital magazines and newspapers, maps, research reports, and other documents
M6 Toll road built on pulped fiction
Google Print Beta - testing the inclusion of content from publishers in search results
Keeping Found Things Found: Web Tools Don't Always Mesh With How People Work - research study shows that people have devised many tricks for tracking sites but usually end up relying on their ability to find a site all over again
PILOTS Database - index of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) literature. The database is produced by produced by the National Center for PTSD and is free of charge. The site also offers full text documents by National Center Staff , streaming media materials, and two newsletters - National Center for PTSD Research Quarterly and National Center for PTSD Clinical Quarterly
New Canadian digitial collections - Vancouver's Golden Years: 1900-1910, Photographs by Philip Timms, The Waldren Studios: Images of Nova Scotia, 1870-1940, Centuries of the Image, Fire + Earth, Louis-Auguste Guillemette, maître d'orgue, Performing Our Musical Heritage

Wednesday, December 17, 2003

xrefer has been announced as the winner of the 2003 FreePint/Online Information award for innovative customer service. Nominations for the award were invited from FreePint's 65,000 members worldwide and a judging panel reviewed all entries
Internet Resources Newsletter - Issue 112 - January 2004 - edited by Roddy MacLeod, Heriot-Watt University
netLibrary 2004 will launch new look and functionality on January 14, 2004. At launch, the interface language for exploring and searching can be set to English, French, Spanish, and Chinese, Traditional and Siimplified. New features are described in a recorded web seminar
School Libraries Provide Vital Skills for Children - new campaign launched by Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals (CILIP), the School Library Association (SLA) and the Association of Senior Children’s and Educational Librarians (ASCEL). The School Libraries: Making a Difference web site offers advice and help with advocacy efforts
E is for Education also for Effectiveness! How to justify your Library or Information Service - Joint CoFHE / CILIP UC&R Study Conference, 5th - 8th April 2004, Collingwood College, Durham University
CLIP and BIC Free Briefings Series: Best Value through Standards and Technology - The ISBN Revision and its Implications for Libraries, Saving costs through EDI, ONIX: Enriching Bibliographic Information and OPACS, and The Benefits of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID)

Tuesday, December 16, 2003

Country singer Dolly Parton's book program delivers its millionth book. The Imagination Library program started 7 years ago to help inspire preschoolers to read
RLG DigiNews - December 15, 2003, Volume 7, Number 6 now available
Michael Hawley, a scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has created the world's largest book. The tome is about the Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan and measures 5-by-7 feet
The December 2003 issue of D-Lib Magazine is now available

Monday, December 15, 2003

UKOLUG announces new training programme - 12th February 2004 - Usability testing / Blogs and Wikis, 3rd March 2004 - An Introduction to Information Architecture, 18th March 2004 - Content Management System Selection and Implementation, 6th April 2004 - Current Legal Issues in Information Work, 8th June 2004 - UKOLUG AGM and I'm an Information Professional ... Get me out of here!, 23rd June 2004 - Reference Management Day
Test your knowledge - take the Christmas Information Literacy quiz - Information Literacy Weblog
Publishers sue document deliverers - five scientific, technical, and medical publishers have filed copyright infringement suits against Medical Review Services and LMS Information Services
New study of emerging education needs in Asian libraries was commissioned by iGroup (Asia Pacific), a distributor of databases and ejounals and ebooks, and the web site Aardvark - Asian resources for librarians. CAVAL Collaborative Solutions, a library consortium in Melbourne, Australia, will undertake the study focusing on knowledge management and digital technologies. The study findings will be released on the iGroup site

Saturday, December 13, 2003

BBC's poll to discover the nation's favourite book has ended with The Lord of the Rings by J R R Tolkien's in first place over Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice in second, and the Philip Pullman trilogy in third. Figures released on books sales show that sales soared for books on the list by more than 425% while DVD sales of film adaptations of the top books increased by 1,500% in the two months since announcement
Chilean poet Gonzalo Rojas wins Cervantes Prize, the top literary award in the Spanish speaking world
Oxford English Dictionary - December 2003 newsletter is now available
Version 52 of the Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography by Charles W. Bailey, Jr. is now available. This selective bibliography presents over 2,500 articles, books, and other printed and electronic sources that are useful in understanding scholarly electronic publishing efforts on the Internet
CLIR Issues - November/December 2003 - now available from the Council on Library and Information Resources
Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) is announces a new post-doctoral fellowship program. CLIR plans to award ten to fifteen fellowships in 2004 to individuals who have earned Ph.D.s in the humanities within the past three years and who believe that there are opportunities to develop meaningful linkages among disciplinary scholarship, libraries, archives, and evolving digital tools
DC 2004: International Conference on Dublin Core and Metadata Applications - October 11-14, 2004 - Shanghai Library in Shangai, China

Friday, December 12, 2003

Sirsi and Bowker Partner for libraries and library users. Sirsi clients will soon be able to use the Unicorn® Library Management System to access Bowker's Books in Print® and Global Books in Print® databases and download records to their catalog. Library users will be able to search the Bowker databases through Sirsi's open public access catalogs
JM Coetzee has been presented with the 2003 Nobel Prize for Literature
The British Universities Film & Video Council News Online - news items include the Open Day at the BUFVC Friday 12 December, Learning on Screen Awards deadline, new features television and Radio Index for Teaching and Learning (TRILT) and non-fiction film and history seminar
Bridging the knowledge gap: The HINARI programme - The Health InterNetwork Access Initiative (HINARI) provides researchers and clinicians in 69 developing countries with free or reduced-price access to biomedical journals. Started in January 2002, the project has made 2200 journals from 42 publishers available by September 2003. The National Library of Medicine has added a HINARI tag on Medline to every journal in the programme - The Biochemist - December 2003
Strong plea made to World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) to support open access to scientific information. Member governments of the United Nations are being asked to endorse the draft Declaration of Principles that states: "We strive to promote universal access with equal opportunities for all to scientific knowledge and the creation and dissemination of scientific and technical information, including open access initiatives for scientific publishing" (paragraph 28) - SciDev.Net December 11, 2003

Thursday, December 11, 2003

Denmark library recovers works stolen years ago including 1,600 antique books, maps and documents - startribune.com
Fifteen public and school (K-12) libraries have teamed up with TV’s hit math mystery cartoon “Cyberchase” to help introduce kids to math
The Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) has extended its nomination deadline for the several award opportunities including the Academic/Research Librarian of the Year Award and the Excellence in Academic Libraries to December 12, 2003

Wednesday, December 10, 2003

The British Library launches new Secure Electronic Delivery Service. Customers can choose from a range of delivery options - with secure electronic delivery to the desktop available within two hours of ordering
British Library launches research service for business. The Library's research team offers services for medicine & health care, patents, trade marks & designs, market, company & product information, chemistry & biochemistry, engineering & technology, and information in official publications
Introduction to Metadata and Record-Building - January 20, 2004 -March 2, 2004 - an online workshop produced by Infopeople with sponsorship from the California Digital Library and Online Archive of California
National Agriculture Library, NAL, upgrades AGRICOLA Online Public Catalog and adds new search and retrieval capabilities

Tuesday, December 09, 2003

Saltire Literary Awards 2003 ceremony was held at the National Library of Scotland. One of this year's winning titles was Joseph Knight by James Robertson which received the Scottish Book of the Year award
Pulitzer prize winning drama, Anna in the Tropics, is set to open on Broadway. The Cuba-born playwright Nilo Cruz' drama won the Pulitzer prize last April, despite the fact none of the jurors had seen it on the stage. Cruz is the first Latin American to receive the award - United Press International - December 8, 2003
Realities of Digital Reference: Challenges, Tools, and Opportunities - a two-part teleconference series on digital reference services offered by College of DuPage - February 6 and April 16, 2004
The full archives of the Bulletin of the Medical Library Association starting v.1, 1911 have been released on the PubMed Central

Monday, December 08, 2003

An Introduction to Information Architecture - one day seminar jointly organized by UKOLUG and the Asilomar Institute for Information Architecture (AIFIA), 3rd March 2004. The aim of the seminar is to exchange ideas, visions, and practical experience about IA, and explore developing a greater awareness of IA in the UK
Info@UK - December 2003 newsletter is now available
ePrints UK Project is running 5 free workshops about the issues involved in setting up institutional repositories in Bath, Oxford, Manchester, Edinburgh, and Nottingham
Victorian Times is a digitization project examining social, political and economic developments in Victorian Britain (1837-1901). The project is funded by the New Opportunities Fund (NOF) digitisation strand. Victorian Times serves a wide-range of users, from primary school pupils to University-level researchers and lifelong learners. Major partners are Centre for Digital Library Research, University of Strathclyde, The Library of the London School of Economics, The Stationery Office, Ltd., and Tim Coates (affiliated to the Stationery Office)
Celebrating 100 Years of Flight - The American Society of Mechanical Engineers developed a web site to celebrate 100th anniversary of the Wright Brothers' first flight
The Institution of Electrical Engineers, IEE, announced major developments to Inspec in 2004. The entire collection of Science Abstracts between 1898 and 1968 to be made available as an XML archival backfile. The coverage is expanded with the addition of a new subsection on Manufacturing and Production Engineering. One million full-text links (DOIs) will be added to the backfile

Sunday, December 07, 2003

Saturday, December 06, 2003

America's Most Literate Cities - Jack Miller, Ph.D., Chancellor and Professor of Education, University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, created a literacy profile of 64 American cities drawing data from the U.S. Census, newspaper circulation rates, library resources, publishers, and other public documents
The preliminary program for Computers in Libraries 2004 - March 10-12, 2004 - Washington, DC, is now available
Online exhibtion of Secrets & Spies at The Public Record Office Museum looks at codes, ciphers and spies from the sixteenth to the twentieth century
Digitizing your historic newspapers - December 9, 2003 - Web information session - Sponsored by OCLC. Learn how Olive Software can convert newspapers, currently in print or microform to digital format
STN Express® with Discover! Analysis Edition has new features that help information professionals see the "big picture" when they search and retrieve scientific and technical literature and patents
Every UK public library will be a WiFi hotspot - At the WiFi & 3G summit in London UK, government Minister Stephen Timms confirmed that his plan to put an open WiFi hotspot in every public library was "going ahead" - Guy Kewney - NewsWireless.net

Friday, December 05, 2003

This week's Friday brain-teaser from xrefer tests your knowledge about people who share the same first name. This week the name is Mary. Try to identify each Mary from the clues below. Answers here:

1. English author who wrote the 1818 novel "Frankenstein"
2. A children's nanny with magical powers, in stories by P. L. Travers
3. Follower of Christ who anointed his feet and wiped them with her long hair
4. English novelist (1819-80) who used the pen-name "George Eliot"
5. British fashion designer, born 1934, famous for her miniskirts
6. Irish politician, born 1944, president of Ireland from 1990 to 1997
7. American singer, born 1971, whose debut album "What's the 411" went platinum
8. American writer (1912-89), well known for her novel "The Group" about Vassar graduates in the 1930s
9. Singer, born 1943 in Detroit, best remembered for the 1964 song "My Guy"
10. English feminist and radical (1759-97) who married William Godwin

Thursday, December 04, 2003

Six accessible websites win awards at Visionary Design Awards - the awards, supported by Barclays and publisher Felix Dennis. The National Library for the Blind (NLB) hopes that the awards campaign will encourage website publishers to consider access technology when designing sites. Calibre Cassette Library's The Friendly Duck won the award in the Youth and Education category
FreePint launches new two fee-based publication, VIP and VIP Eye. VIP is a monthly publication focusing on information products and information people. VIP EYE provides a twice-monthly e-news and analysis service on the business information industry, concentrating on new products, companies and upcoming development
Ovid announces new PayPerView service. Individuals can purchase articles from Ovid's bibliographic databases, Journals@Ovid database, and article reference links. The article is emailed to the purchaser and remains available for 24 hours. The service is available on both the Ovid and SilverPlatter platforms
Museums and the Web 2004 - April 1 - April 3, 2004 - Arlington, Virginia - Preliminary program available. Proposals for demonstrations will be accepted until December 31, 2003
Detecting and Deterring Plagiarism - The Web: Hindrance or Help? - 15 January 2004 - University of East Anglia

Wednesday, December 03, 2003

Resource launches Disability Database to help museums, archives and libraries identify trainers, auditors and consultants who meet their specific needs
H.W. Wilson's WilsonWeb has been expanded to allow users to search Wilson databases and Google, Yahoo, and other internet search engines. A single WilsonWeb search delivers results from three distinct sources: the database(s) searched, full text links to other open-URL compliant databases to which the library subscribes, and Internet search engines
AIP (American Institute of Physics) Publishing Services announced that Online Journal Publishing Services (OJPS), its online hosting platform since 1996, will change its name to Scitation next month. Scitation will offer a simpler user interface and personalization features
Brazilian author Rubem Fonseca has won a leading Latin-American literary award - the 2003 Juan Rulfo Literature Prize
BUBL LINK Updates for November 2003 now available
Publisher Lemniscaat freely distributed 7,000 books on trains operating between Rotterdam and Groningen and from Haarlem to Maastricht

Tuesday, December 02, 2003

The November 29, 2003 issue of LLRX.com is now available. LLRX.com is a unique, free Web journal dedicated to providing legal and library professionals with the most up-to-date information on a wide range of Internet research and technology-related issues, applications, resources and tools
2003 Hawaii Library Association Annual Conference - December 13-14 2003 - Manele Bay Hotel and Lodge, Koele Island, Lanai
OCLC and The Library Hotel settle Dewey Decimal Classification® trademark infringement complaint
UK 2004 - The Official Yearbook of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland - Office for National Statistics

Friday, November 28, 2003

This week's Friday brain-teaser from xrefer tests your knowledge of film stars. Answers here:

1. Which former Mr Universe starred in "Conan the Barbarian" and "The Terminator"?
2. Which American actress is well known for a scene in a 1989 film in which she fakes sexual ecstasy in a busy restaurant?
3. Which Russian-born actor played the leader of the gang in "The Magnificent Seven" in 1960?
4. Which American actor starred in "It Happened One Night", "Gone With the Wind" and "The Misfits"?
5. Which American actor appeared in "Malcolm X" and "The Bone Collector", and was chosen by "People" in 1990 as one of the 50 most beautiful people in the world?
6. Which actor wrote, directed and starred in the films "City Lights" and "Modern Times"?
7. Which American actor became famous as a teen idol on television before starring in the films "Edward Scissorhands" and "Ed Wood"?
8. In 1994, which British actor appeared in "Four Weddings and a Funeral" and did a voiceover for "The Lion King"?
9. Which American actress played the young Wendy in Steven Spielberg's 1991 film "Hook" and starred in "Duets", directed by her father Bruce?
10. Which London-born actor portrayed a handicapped Irish writer in "My Left Foot" (1989)?
Harvard University library officials have announced they will cut print subscriptions to almost 200 academic and technical journals by the end of the year as a means of addressing budget shortfalls - American Libraries
New France, New Horizons: On French Soil in America is a vast documentary corpus, which consists of a virtual exhibition and an impressive database with 22,000 documents reproduced in more than 400,000 digitized images. It offers maps and plans, letters and reports, and other archival documents related to New France, a fundamental period in Canada's history. In addition, many documents that were previously inaccessible to the public may now be consulted online
Freedom of Information Blog - News, views and updates on the UK Freedom of Information Act and worldwide FOI by Steve Wood, Liverpool John Moores Univerrsity
KTweb Workshop: Knowledge and content technology research - the past and the future - December 2-3 2003 - Luxembourg

Thursday, November 27, 2003

European Conference on Digital Libraries (ECDL) 2004 - September 12-17 2004 - University of Bath, UK - Call for papers has been announced
Search and Retrieve Web Service Metasearch Meeting - October 30, 2003 - Meeting Summary, updated November 26, 2003. SRW is an XML-based protocol seen as a web-generation version of Z39.50
The online version of The London Review of Books has a new look and new features

Wednesday, November 26, 2003

xrefer has announced that its premier online reference service, xreferplus, has won the prestigious Besterman/McColvin medal for outstanding works of reference published in the UK, electronic category
Cambridge University Press has developed a short online questionnaire about your experience of using Cambridge Journals Online (CJO). The questions focus on specific features of CJO, plus some general questions about how you use online information from other providers
Special Libraries Association 2003 Virtual Seminar Series - Business Planning: Building the Plan and the Buy-in - December 3, 2003 - presented by Jane Dysart and Rebecca Jones
Knovel, a provider of online science and engineering books and databases has announced a new web site interface, redesigned for greater clarity and ease of navigation
The University of Southampton is leading a consortium of researchers and academic libraries to digitise Eighteenth century Parliamentary papers and make them freely available on a web archive to anyone with an interest in social, political, economic or legal history. Enquirers will be able to discover the origins of the welfare state, factors that shape our current transport system and the development of the British economy both nationally and internationally
Internet Resources Newsletter - Issue 111 - December 2003 - edited by Roddy MacLeod, Heriot-Watt University
The History Cooperative is a pioneering nonprofit humanities resource offering top-level online history scholarship. Besides full text, the site also contains collateral content, including multimedia elements that could not be reproduced in the print versions of some articles
The November edition of the BMJ Journals newsletter is now available on the BMJ Journals Library Resource Centre
The Education Institute is the latest development in the reorganization of the Ontario Library Association. In the first year of operation, the Institute is offering 49 programs. 33 workshops and events will be presented 72 distinct times in locations around the province. 16 virtual programs and courses are accessible on-line or by teleconference from the member’s workplace or home
In January 2004, the U.S. Department of Education will begin to implement a reengineering plan for ERIC. The new ERIC mission continues the core function of providing a centralized bibliographic database of journal articles and other published and unpublished education materials. It enhances the database by adding free full text and electronic links to commercial sources and by making it easy to use and up to date
The presentations from Saving Ourselves: Exploring Alternative or Adventuresome Funding Strategies for Libraries program at the Internet Librarian Conference are now available
CIT INFOBITS - November 2003, No. 65 is now available from the The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Boys and reading: meeting the challenge - 4 February 2004, London - This workshop provides an opportunity to explore the facts about boys’ reading and to identify strategies for supporting and encouraging boys’ reading in school and public libraries. The focus will be on boys from eight to fourteen - CILIP
The British Film Institute is giving free access to audio and video clips from films and television programmes to UK schools, colleges and public libraries, including University libraries, through its Screenonline service

Tuesday, November 25, 2003

The title page and indexes for Cites & Insights v.3 (2003) are now available for downloading
Amazon.co.uk has announced a unique alliance with the British Library. The British Library has made available its extensive bibliographic catalogue records to Amazon.co.uk for the first time, so that rare, antiquarian and pre-ISBN books can be made easier to identify and to buy online. The British Library has added details of over 2.55 million unique bibliographic records to the Amazon.co.uk books catalogue, with 1.7 million of these dated before the 1970 introduction of ISBN
The American Library Association has added several new or updated resources online to assist libraries making decisions about Internet filtering in response to requirements of the Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA)
The Digital Treasures for Teaching and Learning teleconference, held October 10, 2003, is now available on streaming video from The College of DuPage
CATaC'04: Fourth International Conference on cultural attitudes towards technology and communication - 27 June-1 July 2004 - Karlstad University, Sweden. Conference theme: Off the shelf or from the ground up? ICTs and cultural marginalization, homogenization or hybridization
ICCC 8th International Conference on Electronic Publishing - June 23-26, 2004 - University of Brasilia, Brazil

Monday, November 24, 2003

26th European Conference on Information Retrieval (ECIR-04) - April 5-7, 2004, Sunderland, UK
Bartleby.com has recently added the New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Third Edition: Completely Revised and Updated - The manifestation of one of the most influential modern educational theories, the 6,900 entries in this major new reference work form the touchstone of what it means to be not only just a literate American but an active citizen in our multicultural democracy

Sunday, November 23, 2003

VIP is a monthly publication focussing on information products and information people. It will be available by paid subscription and include product reviews and comparisons, interviews with senior information industry figures and monitoring of research to identify future trends
Free Pint Newsletter 149 - 20 November 2003 - now available
The International Association of Law Libraries (IALL) is seeking an editor for its official journal, the International Journal of Legal Information. Application deadline is 15 January 2004
The fifth annual IMLS Web-Wise Conference on Libraries and Museums in the Digital World will be held in Chicago, March 3-5. The conference is co-sponsored by the University of Illinois at Chicago and is the first Web-Wise Conference to be held outside of the greater Washington, DC area. Registration information will be available on the IMLS Web site by December 1
Sirsi Corporation has announced an alliance with Brodart Co. that seeks to make acquisitions of library materials by Sirsi clients more effective. Both companies are now working together to utilize the X12 standard format to simplify and expedite acquisitions, ordering, and invoicing through Electronic Data Interchange

Saturday, November 22, 2003

Where Librarians Go To Hack By Roy Tennant - There is a subculture of librarians that could make a significant impact on the profession. They are women and men, youthful and experienced alike, who all share one thing: a passion for solving problems by creating software. They are hacker librarians - Library Journal
GeoBase is a federal, provincial and territorial government initiative that is overseen by the Canadian Council on Geomatics (CCOG). It is undertaken to ensure the provision of, and access to, a common, up-to-date and maintained base of quality geospatial data for all of Canada. Through the GeoBase portal, users with an interest in the field of geomatics have access to quality geospatial information at no cost and with unrestricted use
Gale Virtual Reference Library offers libraries the opportunity to select from an initial collection of more than 117 reference sources, including encyclopedias, almanacs, and series, to create a customized, integrated online library of reference works
The Internet Education Project (IEP) is a means to promote and share peer reviewed instructional materials created by librarians to teach people about discovering, accessing and evaluating information in networked environments

Friday, November 21, 2003

Yale University Library has announced the release for public review, comment, and use a prototype version of its OACIS Middle East Database. This unique collaboration will make scholarly literature from and about the Middle East much more widely and much more easily available to scholars around the world. Project OACIS (Online Access to Consolidated Information on Serials) will create a publicly and freely accessible, continuously updated listing of Middle East journals and serials, including those available in print, microform, and online
This week's Friday brain-teaser from xrefer tests your knowledge of TV Comedy. Answers here:

1. Kelsey Grammer plays the title role in the comedy series "Frasier". In which earlier series did Frasier Crane first appear?
2. In which TV sitcom did Pauline McLynn play a character called Mrs Doyle?
3. In which US sitcom from 1964 to 1972 did Elizabeth Montgomery play a witch?
4. Who played "Fonz" (Arthur Fonzarelli) in the US sitcom "Happy Days"?
5. "Fawlty Towers" consisted of how many half-hour programmes?
6. Which TV sitcom included characters called Elaine Benes, George Costanza and Cosmo Kramer?
7. Which woman was the star of "I Love Lucy" and "The Lucy Show"?
8. Who plays Ross Geller in the TV comedy series "Friends"?
9. Name five of the six creators of "Monty Python's Flying Circus"
10. Which US sitcom, first screened in 1987 and shown in Britain from 1989, featured the bickering Bundy household?
Links to resource writeups from the latest issue of ResearchBuzz ( November 13 - November 19) are now available
RefWorks will be hosting a product information session on 4 December at the Hilton National London Olympia, which will include the unveiling of their "Fall Release" featuring numerous program enhancements and the addition of new linking partners. Seating is limited and registration is required
ARL announces the formation of the MLS Graduate Student Résumé Database. The database will allow graduate students within six months of graduating from an MLS program, or within six months of completing a post-MLS residency or fellows program, to post their résumé on one of the most visited online recruitment sites in the academic and research library community
Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities (MITH) TEI XML/XSLT Winter School - 20-23 January 2004 - University of Maryland, College Park
The November 2003 issue of D-Lib Magazine is now available

Thursday, November 20, 2003

The European Information Association is running two courses on EU information for librarians in London. How to find out about the EU on December 4 and Electronic sources of EU information on December 5
The OASIS E-Government Technical Committee has posted a document concerning Search Service interoperability
If you are planning to attend the Online Information 2003 meeting in London, CSA (Cambridge Scientific Abstracts) invites you to attend their annual User Group meeting and lunch, Wednesday, 3 December
Cites & Insights: Crawford at Large 3:14 (December 2003), the Stuff and Nonsense issue, is now available for downloading

Wednesday, November 19, 2003

JISC, The UK’s Joint Information Systems Committee, has announced that it has secured agreements with seven major international publishers via NESLi2, the national electronic journals initiative for Higher and Further Education, since the launch of the new programme in June this year
World-Information.Org is preparing a newspaper that will be distributed at the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) in Geneva in December 2003. The aim of the infopaper is to alert the delegates and the participating public that current and future regulations and practices concerning intellectual property are among the most fundamental issues shaping the Information Society
Thomson ISI has announced the Century of Science, an initiative to provide the research community with access to the world’s most influential scientific research throughout the 20th century. Currently, Web of Science coverage extends to 1945. The Century of Science initiative will expand the Web of Science to include bibliographic data from the highest impact scientific literature published between 1944-1900, adding nearly 850,000 articles from approximately 200 journals. The journals have been carefully selected by the Thomson ISI editorial team based on such criteria as citation patterns, geographic origin, and meaningful balance across scientific disciplines
The September/October 2003 issue of the Bulletin from the National Library of Canada is now available
The programme for the 2004 Search Engine Meeting - The Hague, The Netherlands, 19-20 April 2004 - is now available
The Atlantic World: America and the Netherlands explores the history of the Dutch presence in America and the interactions between the United States and the Netherlands from Henry Hudson's 1609 voyage to the post-World-War-II period. The project is the product of ongoing cooperation between the Library of Congress and the National Library of the Netherlands, which has enlisted the cooperation of other leading Dutch libraries, museums, and archives

Tuesday, November 18, 2003

PhysicsFinder, from the American Institute of Physics, is designed to help researchers find information published in AIP journals
The long list of nominated titles for The 2004 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award have been announced
Taylor & Francis Group PLC has agreed to acquire, subject to regulatory clearances, the business and publishing assets of the Dekker group of companies, a US based Scientific, Technical and Medical publisher from the family owned Marcel Dekker Inc for US$138.6 million
Cornell and Other University Libraries to Cancel Elsevier Titles by Paula J. Hane - Information Today
LITA has just added Proxy Web Servers & Authentication as a full-day Institute preceding ALA's Midwinter Meeting in San Diego, January 9, 2004. This program is a combination of instruction on the theory of proxy servers, their use in library situations, and practical examples of implementations. The background of proxy servers as defined in the HTTP protocol specification will be outlined, followed by a discussion of the application of proxy servers for library uses
The VALA2004 12th Biennial Conference and Exhibition is the Australian forum where the use of technology in libraries is discussed. It will feature invited overseas and Australian keynote speakers, plenary and concurrent sessions and an exhibition highlighting the latest products from leading suppliers - 3-5 February, 2004 - Melbourne Convention Centre

Monday, November 17, 2003

The Year in Books 2003 - War in Iraq, politics, both domestic and literary, and the rise of the graphic novel made for a year of controversy and surprise - Publishers Weekly
The IDEAlliance Webinar, XML Primer, will be broadcast on November 20 2003 by Dianne Kennedy of IDEAlliance. IDEAlliance Webinars are broadcast live to your desktop
ACRL Information Literacy website - a gateway to and a gathering place for resources on information literacy focused on improving the teaching, learning, and research role of the higher education community

Saturday, November 15, 2003

Friday, November 14, 2003

This week's Friday brain-teaser from xrefer tests your knowledge of War and Peace. Answers here:

1. Which war started with what was called "the phoney war"?
2. "CO" is used for a person who objects to serving in the armed forces. What does this abbreviation stand for?
3. In which year did the Falklands War take place between Britain and Argentina?
4. The Vietnam anti-war movement began soon after which American president ordered the bombing of North Vietnam in March 1965?
5. Which country did Iraq invade in 1990, starting the first Gulf War?
6. Who said "Peace cannot be kept by force. It can only be achieved by understanding"? Was it Winston Churchill, J. F. Kennedy or Albert Einstein?
7. The Peace of Ghent was signed in 1814 to end war between which two countries?
8. Which Soviet president was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1990?
9. What strange name was given to the war between Britain and Spain in 1739?
10. Which composer wrote the "War Requiem", an anti-war choral work first performed in 1962?
More than 105,000 Canadians who are blind or visually impaired now have access to thousands of books, daily newspapers, and magazines with the launch of The CNIB Digital Library. The online library is the most advanced library of alternative formats in the world and a model for 175 international libraries producing alternative-format information. It also contains The Children’s Discovery Portal, the world’s first portal of its kind for children who are blind.
Links to presentations given at Internet Librarian 2003 in Monterey, CA., are now available
Online Content for All: accessibility & compliance in e-publishing - London, 3 Dec 2003 - BCS-EPSG one-day conference
The latest resource writeups from ResearchBuzz, November 6-12, are now available
The Canada Council for the Arts has announced the names of the finalists for the 2003 Governor General’s Literary Awards, in English and in French, in the categories of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, drama, children’s literature (text and illustration) and translation
2004 PEN/Newman's Own First Amendment Award - nomination ppplication deadline is December 31, 2003 - PEN American Center and Newman's Own seek to honor each year an individual who has fought courageously, against adversity, to safeguard the First Amendment right to freedom of expression in the United States as it applies to the written word wherever it may be threatened: in books, newspapers, magazines or pamphlets, film scripts or plays, or any other medium. A cash award of $25,000 will be presented at the PEN Benefit Dinner in spring 2004
The November 3003 issue of Biblio Tech Review is now available
DigiCULT.Info 5 - October 2003 issue is now available

Thursday, November 13, 2003

Internet Filters and Public Libraries by David L. Sobel is a new First Report now available from the First Amendment Center
The Library and Information Technology Association has announced the publication of XML: A Guide for Librarians, LITA Guide Number 11, by Ron Gilmour

Wednesday, November 12, 2003

Luminary Lectures @ Your Library - Karen Coyle: The Technology of Copyright: Digital Rights Management - November 19 in the Pickford Theater, Library of Congress
BOPCRIS is the British Official Publications Collaborative Reader Information Service. You can use this web site to search and browse information from British Official Publications over the period 1688-1995. You can also read abstracts, and view detailed consistent subject indexing, of key documents. You can then read the digitised full-text version of a limited number of these documents. BOPCRIS currently contains 23,279 references
Library of Congress Subject Headings 26th Edition 5 Volume Set, now including Free Floating Subdivisions, is available from Books Express, the official authorised distributors of all Library of Congress Cataloging Distribution Service (CDS) publications
Artifact is a freely available Internet gateway developed by a consortium of partners led by the Manchester Metropolitan University. It provides quick and easy searchable access to the best arts and creative industries information on the Internet. It has been specifically designed to support the learning, teaching and research needs of those in post-16 education but is also perfect for anyone interested in any aspect of the arts and creative industries
Digitizing your Journal Backfiles - 1 December 2003 - London, UK - This is a half-day seminar designed for journal publishers who are looking for practical information on journal backfile conversion

Tuesday, November 11, 2003

ReJoyce Dublin 2004 - official site for the Rejoyce Dublin 2004 Bloomsday Centenary Festival featuring information on all festival events
IFLA President Kay Raseroka has announced the appointment of Mr. R. Ramachandran as the new Secretary General of the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA). He will assume the position on 1st April 2004, following the retirement of Ross Shimmon
The WebJunction Community presents an online event Open Source for Libraries? - November 10-14, in the Software forum on All Aboard
The Library Project Symposium: Of Fishes, Monsters, and Libraries - Olin Memorial Library, Wesleyan University - November 13, 2003
The 2004 CILIP Training Directory is now available
The ACRL/Greater New York Metropolitan Area Symposium Planning committee has announced this year's upcoming symposium, Operation Intellectual Freedom: Librarians on the Front Line to be held at Baruch College November 21, 2003. This year's event will cover the 'Patriot Act', and other issues concerning intellectual freedom that affect libraries, librarians and their patrons
The catalog at The Queens Borough Public Library, New York, can now be searched in Cyrillic, and the citations for Russian-language books contained in Queens Library's collections can be viewed in Cyrillic as well

Monday, November 10, 2003

Why and How to Use Blogs to Promote Your Library's Services by Darlene Fichter - Marketing Library Services - November/December 2003
EEVL: the Internet guide to engineering, mathematics and computing, has announced the launch of two new, free services which will make it much easier to scan the latest industry news and jobs announcements from top sources in engineering, mathematics and computing. The new services are so easy to use that they have been named OneStep Industry News, and OneStep Jobs News
Breaking Boundaries in Television Historiography: Historical Research and the Television Archive - A one-day symposium organised under the auspices of the Centre for Television Drama Studies, University of Reading, UK, 9 January 2004
The 2004 LITA National Forum Committee seeks proposals for high quality concurrent sessions at the 7th annual LITA National Forum to be held at the Sheraton Westport Hotel, St. Louis, Missouri, October 7-10, 2004. Forum title: 10 Years of Connectivity: Libraries, the World Wide Web, and the Next Decade
The American Library Association and Logitech have launched a program designed to raise funds for the ALA’s 21st century literacy initiatives. Logitech will donate a portion of the sales proceeds for every Logitech cordless mouse sold in U.S. retail stores between October and December 2003

Sunday, November 09, 2003

Emerald's Journals of the Week for November 10, 2003 are Journal of Small Business and Enterprise Development and International Journal of Service Industry Management
The Library Journal editors are seeking nominations for the 16th annual Library Journal Librarian of the Year Award to honor a professional librarian for outstanding achievement and accomplishments reflecting the loftiest service goals of the library profession. Deadline is November 17, 2003

Friday, November 07, 2003

This week's Friday brain-teaser from xrefer tests your knowledge of the animal world. Answers here:

1. Which animal is defined in the dictionary as "A mature female bovine animal"?
2. Which animals are the largest species of the cat family?
3. Which animal is the offspring of a female horse and a male donkey?
4. Which animal gets its name from a Greek term meaning "river horse"?
5. The condor is a kind of vulture: true or false?
6. What is the usual word for a young moose, elephant or whale?
7. Which breed of dog, originating in Germany, got its name from the German words for "badger" and "dog"?
8. Which animal did Mark Twain say "is the only animal that blushes, or needs to"?
9. What does a koala normally eat?
10. A roadrunner is a kind of cuckoo: true or false?
Under the leadership of the Illinois State Library Talking Book and Braille Service, the Mid-Illinois Talking Book Center and the Southern Illinois Talking Book Center have announced the opening of InfoEyes, an online information community and virtual reference service for the visually impaired
Signs of the Time: Library Architecture as a Signal of Cultural and Educational Policies - 24-25 November 2003 - Vienna, Austria - Organised by The Austrian Library Association in cooperation with the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna
DigiCULT Thematic Issue 4 now available - Learning Objects from Cultural and Scientific Heritage Resources - "Heritage institutions need to improve their relevance for the education sector and lifelong learners in attractive, efficient, and sustainable ways. Simply displaying collection objects, considered useful for informal learning in some way or another online, is not enough. What is called for are learning objects: highly interoperable and reusable modular building blocks for e-learning content based on widely shared specifications or standards"
AIP Publishing Services will announce a relaunch of its online publishing services platform during Online Information at the Olympia Grand Hall in London on December 2, 2003 at the AIP Stand 49. The platform relaunch will take place in January 2004 and will be known as Scitation
Research Opportunities for 2004 - UCLA Library Deptartment of Special Collections:
2004 James & Sylvia Thayer Fellowships
2004 Mitzi Myers Fellowships
Info@UK - October 2003 newsletter is now available
E-JASL: The Electronic Journal of Academic and Special Librarianship - v.4 no.2-3 Fall 2003 is now available

Thursday, November 06, 2003

Four new Collins Bilingual Dictionaries have been added to xreferplus:
Collins French Dictionary Plus Grammar
Collins Latin Dictionary Plus Grammar
Collins Portuguese Dictionary
Collins Spanish Dictionary
New in November from Facet Publishing: Metadata Applications and Management - International Yearbook of Library and Information Management 2003-2004 and Libraries and Information Services in the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland 2004 - 30th edn
Serials Reloaded: Cataloging, Management, and Access - November 21, 2003 - College of the Holy Cross, Worcester, MA - Sponsored by NELINET, Inc
M.G. Vassanji was named the 2003 winner of The Giller Prize, Canada’s premier literary prize for fiction. The winning novel, The In-Between World of Vikram Lall, is published by Doubleday Canada. The largest annual prize for fiction in the country, The Giller Prize awards $25,000 each year to the author of the best Canadian novel or short story collection published in English

Wednesday, November 05, 2003

In January EMBO Journal will be transferred from Oxford University Press to Nature Publishing Group, joining its sister publication EMBO reports
The National electronic Library for Health Awareness Week 24-30 November 2003
Dialog has added three files of epidemiological data to its collection of medical information available through its Dialog online service
Sirsi Corporation has announced an Alliance Partnership with Moreover Technologies, a provider of real-time information management solutions, to enhance Sirsi Rooms Context Management Solutions
Libraries, and virtual libraries in particular, are increasingly faced with the current challenges of globalisation and competition. The workshop: Information Centres appraised using economic indicators as criteria: An evaluation and assessment of trends will focus on the business techniques for attracting users and the most innovative methods for promoting the use of libraries' services and resources
The Scottish Theatre Archive forms part of the Special Collections Department of the University of Glasgow. Its role is to help preserve and promote interest in Scotland's theatrical heritage by providing a safe home for archival material and by making it accessible to all those interested in Scottish Theatre
The Pitcairn Islands Study Center, Pacific Union College, contains material relating to the Mutiny on the Bounty, Captain William Bligh, HMS Bounty, and Pitcairn and Norfolk Islands
COPAC has completed the load of National Library of Scotland (NLS) catalogue onto COPAC. This is a large legal deposit catalogue (c. 3.5 million records) which enhances the range of materials available on COPAC, particularly those relating to the study of Scotland and the Scots
Libraries and the Enhancement of E-learning - OCLC E-learning Task Force - provides a look at how college coursework is being enhanced electronically and online and explores the role of library cooperation as campuses expand and enhance the instructional technology environment
BMJ Publishing Group Ltd will not be renewing its licensing agreements with database aggregators ProQuest and The Gale Group. The ProQuest contract expires on 31 December 2003 and the Gale Group contract ends on 31 March 2004

Tuesday, November 04, 2003

The October 27, 2003 issue of LLRX.com is now available. LLRX.com is a unique, free Web journal dedicated to providing legal and library professionals with the most up-to-date information on a wide range of Internet research and technology-related issues, applications, resources and tools
First Monday - Volume 8, Number 11 - November 3rd 2003 is now available
Emerald's Journals of the Week for November 3, 2003 are Interlending & Document Supply & International Journal of Bank Marketing
New England Technical Services Librarians (NETSL) is seeking nominations for the fourth annual NETSL Award for Excellence in Library Technical Services. The NETSL Award recognizes and honors significant New England-based contributions to the field of library technical services
The immediate goal of the Library Fellowship Program at Cornell University Library is to increase the number of African-American, Latina/o, and Native American staff in academic libraries at Cornell University
The 2003 Lieberman Memorial Lecture will be delivered by Roderick Stinehour, founder of the Stinehour Press, in conversation with book designer and printer Jerry Kelly, at Wellesley College, MA, November 18, 2003 at 4:30 P.M.. All Lieberman lectures are free and open to the public
ED-MEDIA 2004: World Conference on Educational Multimedia, Hypermedia & Telecommunications - June 21-26, 2004 - Lugano, Switzerland - call for presentations has been announced
ALLC/ACH 2004 Joint International Conference of the Association for Literary and Linguistic Computing and the Association for Computers and the Humanities - Goteborg University, Sweden - June 11-16, 2004
Taylor & Francis has expanded its Scientific, Technical and Medical (STM) portfolio through the acquisition of Swets & Zeitlinger Publishers for 16.75 mln eur from Koninklijke Swets & Zeitlinger Holding NV

Monday, November 03, 2003

The November/December 2003 issues of Information Today, ONLINE, Computers in Libraries, Searcher, MultiMedia Schools are now available
Australian Medical Pioneers Index - a database of over 3,000 pioneer doctors, from the 1700s through to 1875. The site covers Australian medical history, with a database of medical pioneers and educational background material. You will find doctors who were registered or qualified in Australia, were resident in Australia, or visited here in a professional capacity, before 1875. Ships' surgeons, convict doctors, general practitioners and medical specialists are included. AMPI provides access to information obtained from sources such as medical registers, shipping records, newspapers, pictorial archives, and early medical publications
Archives Hub Collections of the Month November 2003: Astronomy - The Hub includes descriptions for the papers of leading astronomers, physicists, and mathematicians, and for the records of instrument makers and observatories
JewishEncyclopedia.com - contains the complete contents of the 12-volume Jewish Encyclopedia, which was originally published between 1901-1906. The Jewish Encyclopedia, which recently became part Natihe public domain, contains over 15,000 articles and illustrations

Sunday, November 02, 2003

Free Resource of the Month from Ovid for November is Inspec Biomedical Technology
From Aesop to e-book: the story goes on - SLA/IASL joint conference - 17-20 June, 2004 - Dublin, Republic of Ireland
Linux In Libraries (LIL) is an electronic mailing list/user group dedicated to utilizing the Linux operating system in academic, public and special libraries as an alternative affordable solution for public access computing
Ariadne - Issue 37 - October 2003 - is now available
The October 2003 issue of the ALCTS Newsletter Online is now available

Saturday, November 01, 2003

How Much Information? 2003 - This study is an attempt to estimate how much new information is created each year. Newly created information is distributed in four storage media – print, film, magnetic, and optical – and seen or heard in four information flows – telephone, radio and TV, and the Internet. This study of information storage and flows analyzes the year 2002 in order to estimate the annual size of the stock of new information contained in storage media, and heard or seen each year in information flows - University of California at Berkeley
Cabeza de Vaca and La relacion On-Line - comprehensive web archive devoted to the Spanish explorer. Digital access to the 1555 edition of La relacion, full-text academic essays, art, bibliographies, and more - Texas State University-San Marcos
The Legal Deposit Libraries Act 2003 extends previous legal deposit legislation passed 1911. The Act enshrines the principle that electronic or e-publications and other non-print materials will be deposited in the future under secondary legislation. It ensures that these publications can be saved as part of the published archive, and become an important resource for future generations of researchers and scholars
Cambridge University Press has announced that 14 new journals have been added to its list for 2004, widening its scope across several disciplines. Among these, three renowned law journals, two brand new music titles, and other high profile publications such as Compositio Mathematica, and Utilitas have been added
Freedom to Read Week - February 22-28, 2004, encourages Canadians to think about and reaffirm their commitment to intellectual freedom, which is guaranteed them under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms
The winter roster of LIS continuing education workshops delivered wholly via the Internet is now available from the University at Buffalo library school. A computer with Internet access and a Web browser are all that's needed to access these self-paced instructional modules, accessible 24 hours a day, 7 days a week during the posting period. New workshops have been added covering serials cataloging, proposing & surviving new library technologies, XML, and constructing database driven web sites
Managing the Electronic Monster: the Impact on the Library User - The Southern California Technical Processes Group will present a program on managing electronic resources and the impact on library users - November 21, 2003 - California State University, Northridge
CIT Infobits - Issue 64 October 2003
Humanities Computing Needs: A Survey - A Project of TAPoR, the Text Analysis Portal for Research, assessing the needs of the humanities research community concerning electronic text and text analysis tools

Friday, October 31, 2003

This week's Friday brain-teaser from xrefer takes a look at the magical world of stage and screen musicals. Answers are here

1. Which actor famously sang in the rain in the 1952 film "Singin' in the Rain"?
2. Which composer had five musicals running concurrently in London in 1993?
3. In the 1960s, which English singer, whose real name is Harry Webb, starred in the musical films "The Young Ones" and "Summer Holiday"?
4. Which 1943 musical by Rodgers & Hammerstein changed the direction of musical theatre?
5. Which 1956 musical was adapted by Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe from George Bernard Shaw's play "Pygmalion"?
6. Name the character played by Julie Andrews in the 1965 film "The Sound of Music".
7. The musical "Five Guys Named Moe" featured songs associated with which American musician?
8. What was the first name of Fred Astaire's sister, who appeared with him in several stage musicals?
9. Who composed the music for the shows "Sweeney Todd" and "Sunday in the Park with George"?
10. The 1950 musical "Guys and Dolls" was based on stories by which writer?
The shortlist for this year's Guardian First Book Award have been announced
MedRef-L is a discussion of health and medical reference issues. The focus of this discussion is on reference services, marketing and promoting library services and the role of the health/medical library in the organization or in the community served, professional continuing education and training, etc. MedRef-L is not meant to replace MEDLIB-L but rather to provide a forum specifically for the discussion of health and medicine reference issues
The CHCC Census Resource Discovery Service is a catalogue of census data and associated learning and teaching materials available to the UK higher and further education sector
Internet Use in Libraries - ALA Library Fact Sheet Number 26 - almost all academic, public, and school libraries in the U.S. are connected to the Internet, both for staff use and for public access. Here are the most recent national statistics for each type of library
Global Learn Day VII - A 24 hour continuous live webcast with presentations from educators in every world time zone - show starts November 15 at 5:00 PM Pacfic time
EXEMPLARIA has announced the launch of Medieval Noise, a Special Cluster under the guest editorship of Professor Jeffrey Jerome Cohen (The George Washington University)

Thursday, October 30, 2003

Issue 5, October 2003 of Reference Update from xrefer is now available
TEEAL: The Essential Electronic Agricultural Library is a CD-ROM library that includes the contents of over 140 of the world's most important scientific journals in the field of agriculture. It is available well below cost to over 100 of the lowest-income food deficit countries, as listed in the World Bank's 1998-9 World Development Report
How to find statistics on the EU will explore the key features of the Eurostat website and how to access other sources such as OECD, the CIA, EU Country Reports and the World Bank. It will also tell you how to identify a reliable source and what's available free of charge. Particularly useful for anyone dealing with EU enquiries or who needs European statistics on an an occasional or regular basis - 20 November - Oxford, UK
The CILIP/LiS Libraries Change Lives Award is established as one of the leading accolades in the library and information world. Its aim is to highlight and reward good practice in any innovative library/information related project. Open for entries until Friday 30 January 2004
A list of future courses from The Professional Learning Centre, Faculty of Information Studies, University of Toronto, is now available
Helping Users find your Content - 20 November 2003 - BSG House, London
Digital identifiers: bringing digital communities together - 24 November 2003 - The Liberal Club, London
The new British Library site is up, including the new sections Services for researchers, Services for business, Services for library and information professionals and Something for everyone

Wednesday, October 29, 2003

Sirsi has selected Openly Informatics OpenURL linking technology as the core engine for Sirsi Resolver, Sirsi's solution for OpenURL resolution and linking
OverDrive, Inc. has announced that over 150 publishers have joined its Digital Library Reserve. Best selling titles from Microsoft Press, Merriam-Webster, Barnes & Noble Digital Publishing, Tyndale House, Zondervan, Multnomah, Rough Guides, RosettaBooks, Peanut Press and others will join eBook collections from Time Warner, HarperCollins Perfectbound, John Wiley & Sons, McGraw-Hill, and Scholastic for libraries to loan their patrons
The Center for Book Arts invites submissions to its annual Poetry Chapbook Competition by December 1, 2003. The winning manuscript will be chosen in April 2004 and will be awarded with the publication of a letterpress-printed, limited-edition chapbook designed, printed and bound by artists at The Center for Book Arts
The Institute of Museum and Library Services awards $9,898,338 in 27 inaugural grants under a new program, Recruiting and Educating Librarians for the 21st Century
The Depository Library Council, a 15-member advisory body to the Public Printer of the US, seeks input on three topics the Public Printer addressed at the annual Federal Depository Library conference last week in Arlington, Virginia. These issues are significant ones and will impact federal documents depository libraries. The three topics are: Preservation; Authentication/Version Control; and Revenue Enhancement to the GPO sales program. Council has until December 1st to respond
Applications for presenting Poster Sessions at the 2004 American Library Association Annual Conference in Orlando, Florida, are now being accepted. The website also provides rules and guidelines for presenting poster sessions, helpful hints in applying, frequently asked questions, and photos of sample poster sessions
MLA '04: Seize the Power! - May 21-26 2004 - Washington Hilton and Towers in Washington, DC. The wide variety of educational programs sponsored by sections and special interest groups (SIGs) offer exciting opportunities for you to share the power of your library’s innovative and improved projects, planning, and research. Visit the Participate area of this site to submit your contributed paper and poster abstracts
Effective Information Training Skills - A One Day Course for CoFHE LASEC - 4 December 2003
Internet Resources Newsletter - Issue 110 - November 2003 - edited by Roddy MacLeod, Heriot-Watt University

Tuesday, October 28, 2003

IOP Publishing Limited has announced its book sale. with over 360 books knocked down in price by 75%. The sale ends 31 December
The proceedings of the 2003 Dublin Core Conference, held in Seattle, are now available online
The Calicut Medical Journal - The Refereed Online Biomedical Journal published by the CMC Alumni Association will be published exclusively online. All content will be openly and freely accessible. First issue available 30 October 2003
The Open WorldCat pilot is a year-long initiative that makes library resources available from nonlibrary Web sites. The pilot aims to test the effectiveness of Web search engines in guiding users to library-owned materials, making libraries more visible to Web users and more accessible from the Web sites many people turn to first
On the occasion of the anniversary of the secularization, the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek presents the exhibition Lebendiges Büchererbe. Säkularisation, Mediatisierung und die Bayerische Staatsbibliothek from 7 November 2003 to 30 January 2004. The exhibition focuses on the consequences of the upheavals of the year 1803 for the Bavarian libraries. Choice treasures from the dissolved Bavarian monasteries and cathedrals are on show, among them the Codex aureus, the Gutenberg Bible, the Serbian Psalter, the Qur'an of Père Lachaise, the Gospel Book of Otto III and the Old Church Slavonic texts from Freising
Elsevier has signed a declaration of compliance of the usage reports for its product ScienceDirect, with the international COUNTER Code of Practice (Release 1), which governs the recording and exchange of online usage data. The COUNTER Code of Practice is supported by librarians, publishers and intermediaries worldwide, as well as by their professional organizations. It promotes the credible, consistent and compatible measurement of the usage data from online information resources

Monday, October 27, 2003

A two-week long festival, 27 October–9 November, to mark the 50th anniversary of the death of Dylan Thomas aims to increase the poet's profile in Welsh schools
Emerald's Journals of the Week for October 27, 2003 are foresight & European Journal of Innovation Management
Arden Davies Publishing, legal publishers specialising in the law applicable to the public sector in England and Wales, is offering free 3-month subscriptions to its journals
The Marxist.Net site is maintained by the Committee for a Workers International, an international socialist campaign group. It provides links to a wealth of online resources relating to Marxism, Communism, Leninism and Trotskyism. Thes include recent news stories and access to full text classic writings (such as the works of Karl Marx and Lenin) and pamphlets published by the Committee for a Workers International
On 8 December 2003 the public services of the Historical Manuscripts Commission, currently located in central London, will open at the National Archives building at Kew. Prior to the move the HMC reading rooms in Quality Court will close on 7 November, to allow staff to prepare for and carry out the move. When services reopen on 8 December they will no longer be based in Chancery Lane but at Kew in West London
The National Union Catalog of Manuscript Collections, a free-of-charge cooperative cataloging program operated by the Library of Congress, has been updated
The Canada Council for the Arts has announced the names of the finalists for the 2003 Governor General’s Literary Awards, in English and in French, in the categories of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, drama, children’s literature (text and illustration) and translation
2004 International Conference on Digital Archive Technologies (ICDAT2004) - 18-19 March, 2004 - The Howard Plaza Hotel Taipei, Taiwan. The intended community for ICDAT 2004 includes those interested in technologies and tools for advanced digital archive systems, new knowledge about archival storage and preservation, best practices of technology development in digital archives, and applications of digital archive technologies

Sunday, October 26, 2003

Online Information 2003 - December 2-4 - London, UK - the programme for its free seminars and Masterclasses has been announced
Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online - the first phase presents persons who died between the years 1000 and 1920 or whose last known date of activity falls within these years

Saturday, October 25, 2003

ICSTI, The International Council for Scientific and Technical Information has published their study The Information Imperative which looks at the socio-economic impacts of scientific information
The National Agricultural Library has selected the Canadian-based Relais Enterprise document delivery system to further automate the library's document delivery services
The University of Delaware Library has created a web site which provides digital images of the Library's collection of more than 2,000 Delaware postcards. The postcards in the collection date mainly from the very end of the nineteenth century to the mid-twentieth, although there are also postcards from throughout the later part of the twentieth century
Version 51 of the Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography by Charles W. Bailey, Jr. is now available. This selective bibliography presents over 2,000 articles, books, and other printed and electronic sources that are useful in understanding scholarly electronic publishing efforts on the Internet