The Source: news about digital libraries and library innovations from around the web

Introducing The Source

Free Our Libraries! Why We Need A New Approach to Putting Library Collections Online (Note: PDF)

From the Boston Library Consortium website

Long ago, mankind figured out that special kinds of public institutions are needed to preserve cultural heritage - libraries and museums. They have been a grand success, enabling successive generations to learn from and build on the record of man’s achievements and failures. Today Google and other businesses are scanning millions of books from the world’s great libraries and offering access to them on the Web. This conjures up the vision of a vast, free, Internet public library of accumulated knowledge. It seems like a marriage made in heaven - the union of corporate capital and enormous library collections, carrying knowledge into virtually every home and workplace.


Long-term preservation: results from a survey investigating preservation strategies amongst ALPSP publisher members (Note: the download is a PDF)

Download the PDF from the Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers (ALPSP) website

One of the most important issues facing publishers and their library customers is the long-term preservation of digital content. Preservation is needed to protect against the potential loss of access to e-literature integral to a library's collection under certain, specific circumstances, for example when a title is closed down or back files are no longer offered or, on a larger scale, where a publisher ceases operations or there is sustained failure of one or more publisher delivery platforms. The dramatic increase in electronic scholarly resources raises important questions about rights and responsibilities pertaining to long-term preservation. So a critically important question is being asked throughout the industry: who is responsible for ensuring electronic scholarly materials remain accessible to present and future scholars, researchers and students? Against this background, ALPSP undertook a survey of its members to enhance awareness of long-term digital preservation issues and to establish the nature and extent of the long term preservation strategies they have planned or in place.


The Internet, Media and Emerging Technologies: uses, attitudes, trends and international comparisons (Note: PDF)

From the Canadian Internet Project (CIP) website

The Canadian Internet Project (CIP) is a longitudinal study of trends in the use of the Internet, traditional media and emerging technologies by Canadians, as well as their attitudes towards media and online activities. CIP examines patterns of use across all media and technologies, with particular focus on the confluence of delivery platforms.


US library card registration reaches all-time high

From the School Library Journal website

Public libraries are busier than ever - and now there are numbers that explain why. A new poll for the American Library Association confirms that in-person visits are up 10 percent, compared with a 2006 ALA survey.


How Readers Navigate to Scholarly Content (Note: PDF)

From the Simon Inger Consulting website

There have been many studies using web logs that calculate where users of scholarly resources were referred from, but this approach does not indicate where those users started their research, merely the details of the last “hop” before hitting a content website. This research repeats an earlier study performed in 2005 that actually asks researchers about their preferred start points. Findings shed light on how publishers should engineer their web sites to meet reader navigational behaviour.


LibraryH3lp: A New Flexible Chat Reference System

From the Code4Lib Journal website

LibraryH3lp is an integrated IM and web chat system designed specifically for Virtual Reference services in libraries. The software was designed for, and is currently used by, a night-time chat reference collaboration between several large academic libraries. This article discusses the motivation for the development of the software, and provides an overview of LibraryH3lp’s features and technical architecture. Parts of LibraryH3lp are available as open source. The complete application is available as a low-cost hosted service, and will eventually be available to be licensed for local hosting.


Putting the Library in Wikipedia

From the Information Today, Inc. website

Few online resources provoke as much controversy in the library community as Wikipedia. Some librarians hate it, arguing that since anyone can edit it, it can’t be trusted. Others love it, because it is fast, easy to use, and a good starting point for research. With such a conflicted relationship, there’s no clear answer as to where (or whether) Wikipedia belongs in libraries and librarians are not sure what to do with it.