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

Introducing The Source


We still need libraries in the digital age

From The Guardian website

Public libraries have a vital role bridging the digital divide and teaching people how to get reliable information from the internet. An ‘opinion piece’ written by Ian Clark, who works at the Canterbury Christ Church University library and is studying library and information science at Aberystwyth University.


Metadata in, library out: A simple, robust digital library system

From the Code4Lib Journal website

This article describes a lightweight digital asset management system called Acumen, developed at the University of Alabama. Both metadata and source files exist on the file-system using a particular naming convention rather than in a database. Having meaning in filenames, and other architectural decisions, were made under the over-arching philosophy of "Keep it simple, stupid!", the authors arguing that such a system is less prone to fail than the more typically database-driven systems.


Universities and libraries move to the mobile web

From the EDUCAUSE website

The study reported in this article examines the mobile websites of large research universities and their libraries in the United States and Canada. The services available on different university and library mobile websites are compared and contrasted with the literature identifying what mobile web users desire. This analysis across multiple mobile websites provides universities and their libraries with an initial benchmark for comparisons with other institutions. Future research on the mobile web can identify trends and design issues that are currently only objects of speculation


Library standards for privacy: A model for the digital world?

From the Social Science Research Network (SSRN) website

In the ongoing Google Books settlement process, several advocacy organisations, including library associations, have filed amicus briefs to the supervising court demanding provisions for reader privacy. Because the scanned content for Google Books has come from cooperating research libraries, these advocacy groups argued that it was in the public interest that library standards for privacy should follow that content into this new digital context. The recommendation is worth consideration for other extra-library reading as well, both in digital and print contexts. While librarians have been successful advocates for privacy in library-provided reading, the values for reader privacy are the same in individuals’ subscriptions to Google Books, licensed access to e-reader books, reading on the Internet, and purchase of books through online or brick-and-mortar bookstores. This essay shares a librarian’s-eye-view of library standards for privacy and suggests that the law of reader privacy must not only address readers of Google Books, but also other digital reading and even print reading contexts external to libraries in order to protect the privacy of thought for readers.