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