Archive for the 'internet' Category

VALA 2010 L-Plate Series

conference, digital right management, future of libraries, internet, mobile devices, mobile phones, mobile web, open source software, social networking, social software, trends, twitter No Comments »

Here are my notes from the L-Plate series at VALA 2010 conference.  I am just cutting and pasting from what I took at the time, so I apologise for spelling and grammar, no time to do anything else at this stage.

Hope you get something out of it. I got plenty.

Open Source Software – Kathryn Greenhill
Imperfect analogy – spaghetti sauce – buy it in jar or make it yourself.
Flexibility and control.  Open Source requires particular skills, still has a price, but involves community effort and altruism.

Proprietary software: license, user restricted, no source code
Open Source: free redistribution, source code accessible, derived works, integrity of code, no discrimination, not specific to purpse, device, works with other software

There are checks and balances before any new code goes into the code base.

Key ideas of Open Source – release early – release often, many eyes make bugs shallow, peer review, developer-user relationship.

Koha – open source library management system.
Check http://www.ohloh.net for cot comparisons between proprietary and open source over time.

We already use open source software – linux, apache, mysql, php, firefox.
Who else uses os? Denmark using Open Office by 2011, Trove at NLA, White House uses Drupal, for their website, North  East Kansas Libraries for their LMS.

Examples of open source software: Open Office, Word Press, Drupal, Mediawiki, Gimp, Dimdim, Zimbra, Pidgin, Audacity, VLC media player.

Open source LMS – Evergreen, Koha, OLE project

Discovery layers – Scriblio, Sopac2 and more

Digital resources management – Kete, Omeka

Whats stopping us from using Open Source?  Skills. We need to know about relational databases, SML,  indexing and programming
Cost – of change
Perceived accountability
Centralised IT
Maturity of the products
Consortial impacts
Monopolies – marketing
What users have at home
Cloud computing and Software as a Service (Saas)
Closed hardware

What we can gain by using open source software?
Skills, flexibility, control, nimbleness, accountability, budgetary control.

However, software needs to fit the purpose and the organisation.

Library Mashups and APIs – Paul Hagon
RSS is a common API (application programming interface)
Can be used to interact with other services – application on iphone for eg.
API is used to put javascript showing marker on a Google map.
Don’t have to do the hard work, that is all done for you.

Can use APIs to adapt URLs to change what you are getting out of a site ie. Google calendar display on our website.
Can be used with our website – but they can be fragile, as they can break if you change your website.
Can use microformats – ie. Vcards for phones and internet.

Mashups using more than one data source to make something new – may be totally disparate. One of earliest was chicagocrime. org – Google maps and crime reports.
Libraries are using mashups involving Google maps and Flickr, Picture Australia has an open search interface – can add search to your browser options, Picture Australia with Google maps and geotagging, along with your location giving you photos of local area.

Code alert – a lot of  mashups involve XML. Jquery and YUI can help ease you into the process.

Where to start: Your library catalogue can help – check your RSS feeds – play with the XML and see what you can do.
data.australia.gov.au – data licensed for re-use under Creative Commons.

delicious.com/paulhagon/vala2010-lplate – links to all the resources and demos used.

Tools available to help – Yahoo Developer Network – YQL, use common language to extract XML. Yahoo Pipes, Firebug – plugin for Firefox.

Why? – Our community not just consumers, also producers once data is made available. Some of ours could be creating these sorts of things, if only the data is available – let our geeks loose on our data.

Semantic Web – Tom Tague

Check out stuff on semantic web on Wikipedia – good foundation.

Variety of interpretations: web 3.0, near religious standard, set of technical standards and capabilities we can use – very hard to define

Standards and Capabilities: RDF (resource description framework – form of XML – ugly but it is the standard), RDFS/OWL/Other ontology standards – great debate about these, Linked data, Automated semantic information generation.

OpenCalais – Thomas Reuters initiative to connect world’s business content, free service that brings new efficiencies and productivity to publishers and content creators, fastest easiest way to categorize your contentand tag the entities, facts and events therein; 30,000s of users, 4-8 million transactions daily.

Issues: attaching metadata to content is expensive – both in time and money.

Metadata generation – feed content into their extraction engine, categorizes the stories and returns the metadata to you, also returns links.

Linked data – standard for publishing data on the web – uses RDF -  add data as well as links to other relevant linked data (not webpages, actual data). Standard is exploding, but there is no governance – ‘geeks playing in highway’ – librarians can add a lot of value to this as well as using the data generated.

There are alternatives to Open Calais – Yahoo and more.

Use it to:  add metadata to cotent, content enhancement via linked data, build your own linked data could, but don’t just think source content (commentary, user submitted content)

Think about collections: repositories, trend analysis, harmonization across data sets, federated search.

Cloud Computing – Bart Rutherford
Geek and poke cartoons.

No standard definition of cloud computing – consistently about the internet however.

Charting –  input/processor/output, corporate computing – people with money had these systems (banking, transport).

Progress of clients – fat clients, thin clients, desktop computer as client, browser as client.

How things have changed: mobile as client, internet, cheap storage, broadband, wifi, 3G and LTE, Open source and Linux, Ipv6

Lots of different types of clouds – public eg Facebook, private – Intranet, hybrid. Joined by VPNs and virtualization (servers with sub-servers within it)

Saas, Iaas, Paas
Software as a service – vendor provides hardware and infrastructure, user interacts through PC – eg. Webmail, facebook, twitter, Apples App, Google Docs, BitTorrent, DropBox and so  much more.
Infrastructure as a service – Amazon, Microsoft Azure.
Platform as a service – software and development tools hosted on the providers infrastructure, access and delivery (API) – Google Apps, Yahoo Pipes, Google Maps, Sugar CRM, Finance eg. Paypal.

Complexity runs from low to high – moves from consumer to developer.

Services are based on buy as you use – like utility bills. Scalable – to meet your needs, cost effective – PAYG and low tech input, secure and automated, mobility.

Warnings – no network connection – no cloud, no local storage – no local data,  slow connections no good, what to do if provider is destroyed?

Global outlook – EASE – Everything as a service, everywhere!  Won’t matter where your data is, just need the power and network connection to get to it.

Discovery Layer Interfaces – Marshall Breeding
Crowded landscape of information providers on the web – lots of non-library destinations, ie. Google Search and Scholar, Amazon, Wikipedia, Ask.com.

Digital natives are more experienced than us in web stuff, so when they come to our websites and catalogues, they are way underwhelmed. Don’t want to lose relevancy to this audience who have been raised on those listed above.

Evolution of library collection discovery tools: bound handwritten catalogues, card catalogues, OPACs – many libraries have stagnated here, discovery interfaces, web-scale discovery services.

Not just about books on shelves, but about all our subscription content, digital items and more.

Don’t want a computerised card catalogue, although that is generally what we still have.  Amazon is our competition in terms of user interfaces and information presented.  They make it as transparent to the user as they can.  It has a complex layered structure, but with a simple user interface.

Have a lot of great content and services, but have too many barriers to our users accessing them.

Disjointed approach to delivery: silos prevail – catalogue, databases, website and more and each one has to be accessed individually.

Simple vision – single point of entry to all the content and services offered by the library, but wth precision, nuanced sophistication and multiple dimensions. Doesn’t preclude advanced searching options and ability to hone in on particular services or collections as alternative options.

Modernized interface – single search box, query tools (did you mean, type ahead), relevance ranked results, faceted navigation, enhanced visual displays – covers and summaries/reviews, recommendation services. Must be visually pleasing, give more than a single record and helps users find more.

Can have any front end almost regardless of what back end you use.

Deep indexing – metadata is no longer enough, increasing opportunities to search full content, commercial providers already doing so.

Current phase of discovery tools now focused on pre-populated indexes that aim to deliver Web-scale delivery eg. Summon, WorldCat  Local, EBSCO Discovery, Primo Central, Encore with Article Intergration.

Products available will index the vast majority of content that libraries have in their collections.

Beyond local discovery – eg. NCSU – Summon, Phoenix Public – Endeca (very Amazon like interface), Queens Public Library – Aquabrowser.

Need to make our search compelling, but not overwhelm our users with the guff about what and where they are searching.

Being social: apps for libraries – Kim Tairi
@haikugirloz

Social media conversion scale – image from – darmano.typepad.com

Social apps about conversations, marketing and communications with our users.

She follows High Country Public Library on Twitter – they talk about the library and things that are happening in their broader community as well.

Amongst top 10 tools for libraries – niche networks – eg, NING, built by users, focus on particular interest, UX – User experience, want to create good ones – starts at design and works through testing, evaluating and decision making.

More visual infographics – designing messages so they are clear, short, sharp. eg. The story (so far) of Twitter (image). Move to make visual communication more widespread.

Twitter can enhance your experience – back channel is interesting and adds to the experience. Librarians are sharing. Kim’s presentation was based a lot on the feedback she got from people on Twitter. It gives you a sense of community and helps to build a community. It is self-selecting, creates conversation, can be used for public note-taking and it’s interactive. Great as a personal learning network, both with workmates and colleagues at other libraries. Can get followed by bots or social media gurus, but can control it by blocking them or making your tweets private.

Mobile interfaces for catalogues and websites. Deakin Uni has done this. NYPL has an iPhone app. Can get into mobile interfaces, apps, info literacy, tours and QR codes (see Powerhouse Museu who are doing great things with these).

Technology petting zoos – letting users play with the new technology, as well as staff.

Social apps and networks have taken off since VALA2008 – need to get into it. Australia has now 7.9 million active Facebook users, there over 400 million worldwide.

eBooks – Bart Rutherford

File formats for ebooks include text, html, pdf, mobipocket, DjVu – magazine specific, EPUB – Kindle uses azw which is a modified mobipocket. Some locked in DRM, some not.

Can read ebook content on desktops, mobile phones etc – software includes Microsoft Reader, Mobipocket, Adobe Reader (pdf) and Calibre (open source read and convert).

EPUB – open publication structure – open XHTML, open packaging format – SML, OEBPS Container format – bundled ZIP file. Many readers that originally came out with proprietary formats are now opening up to EPUB. Keep watch out for EPUB and the devices that will read it.

DRM – Digital Rights Management (Bart’s boss calls it Don’t Read Me). PID Personal identification number – can restrict to one user, unlike print copy,  Access levels include print, copy, paste and now lending, depending on device and content.

Content – Amazon: Fiction to Kindle, Dymocks – using eBook library growing fiction, Gutenberg Project, Read Cloud, EBL – nonfiction, academic learning model using Adobe reader.

Should not have to worry about how the content gets on the device, it should just happen.

Publisher rights are still a problem, so a lot of content that could be available, is not because of these issues.

E-Paper technologies: Elerophoretic technology used by eInk, iRex, Sony Reader, Kindle, Plastic Logic Que. Use glass back pane, but they don’t flex so can break.

Cholesteric technology – Modified LCD, being used by Fujitsu FLEPia. Need to have a colour display which doesn’t require a backlight and doesn’t use as much power.

Combination of eInk and LCD – eg. Nook. LCD gets turned off when reading the ebook.

Electrowetting – controlled water/oil interface, then Electrofluidic technology which uses the former.  Deals with the issue of slow display and these devices will be able to show video.

Interferometric – wavelengths of light etc, uses reflective natural light, low power usage, which can also show video eg. mirasol

Growing market – lots of options and many more on the way. Be sure the one you choose does EPUB.

News Limited is launching the Skiff interface – from publishing to reading, including payment process and their own software.

Publishers will hopefully start putting material out in a wider range of formats so that multiple readers can access them.

The Dream for DRM – Desktop reading, when called away, you pick up where you left off on your e-reader, then the same again with your phone.  As you can with a book.

Interesting reading

internet, knowledge sharing, social networking, social software 1 Comment »

Its been so long between posts, because its been busy. Between work, a conference paper, a journal article, school holidays and trying to organise our holiday to Central Australia, I haven’t had time to think.  But its all done or booked now.  So I’ll begin my catch up blogging by talking about what I’ve been reading of late.

Felipe Morin

I’ve been doing something that I have never really done before – reading a lot of non-fiction. I have always been a strictly fiction gal, with only the odd non-fiction title thrown in for good measure. They are very different styles to read.  For me, non-fiction takes a lot more work and is a lot drier reading, whereas I can get lost in a good fiction book.  On the otherhand, I will persist with a non-fiction book, but won’t with a fiction book if its not engaging me.

Anyway, after reading recommendations on blogs, websites, article and more, I decided to throw myself in to the world of popular culture and more, usually relating to the internet. Being a good librarian, I got them from my public library of course!  Either from their collection or from the collection of one of the 13 other public library services in our ILMS consortia.  So here’s what I’ve been reading, with a bit of a review and my thoughts on each title.

Purple cow: transform your business by being remarkable by Seth Godin

I have been following Seth Godin’s blog and although I don’t always find it interesting and relevant, there is the odd post which really catches my attention.  Its also a good way to keep in touch with what’s happening in popular culture.  So Purple cow talks about the things that businesses can go to make a real impact on customers – and its not about the right television ad or the best logo – its the things that you do that are really attention grabbing.

It was interesting to read it as a librarian, because we do remarkable things everyday – lend latest bestselling everything – FOR FREE!  So how do we add to that remarkableness and how do we get people’s attention in the first place.  Its short, full of great practical examples and it makes you think about marketing practices, so it was well worth the time invested in reading it.

Long tail: how endless choice is creating unlimited demand by Chris Anderson

The Long tail has been talked about around the blogosphere since it was published in 2006 and although I understood the concept of it, I wanted to know more of the details.  Although libraries aren’t true representatives of the long tail, as a library user reminded me the other day, we do lend items that they can’t get through the shops anymore, so we have more of the tail than retail does.  So it was interesting to read how the long tail works and to recognise libraries’ place on the graph.

Dancing barefoot : five short but true stories about life in the so-called space age and

Just a geek : unflinchingly honest tales of the search for life, love, and fulfillment beyond the Starship Enterprise by Wil Wheaton

Wil Wheaton, of Stand by Me and Welsey Crusher on the Enterprise (Star Trek) fame, has become a noted blogger and popular culture commentator, as well as actor and now author.  These books were stories from his life and were a hoot.  He is an excellent writer, engaging, amusing and captivating.  Both books were easy and enjoyable to read.  As a result, I now follow his blog and am looking forward to seeing him in guest spots on TV shows.

The cult of the amateur : how today’s internet is killing our culture and assaulting our economy by Andrew Keen.

There was a bit of controversy over this one, mainly that author Keen was sensationalising everything.  He does.  He takes every story of how the internet is being used by the average person and takes it to the extreme.  The only chapter I actually agreed with and got anything out of  was the last chapter, which looked forward with a measure of caution.  If you like getting frustrated, or need the background to be able to play devil’s advocate, then check it out.

Here comes everybody : the power of organisation without organisations by Clay Shirky

I’ve just finished with this one and its almost the opposite of Keen’s book.  Shirky looks at how the internet is being used, with a lot more objective eye than Keen does, although he focuses more on the positive outcomes from the net.  I got onto this one after seeing a short presentation of his on YouTube.  A good look at how the internet is changing the world.

So that’s whats been keeping me busy when I haven’t been so busy.  I still have a list of books I have on hold, so there will be more at another time.  Hopefully I have motivated you to do some reading along these lines.  Knowing what I’ve been reading, if there is any other titles you think should be on my must read list, please let me know.  :)

VALA 2008 Conference – Day 3 – Stuart Weibel – Plenary

VALA 2008, internet, librarians, libraries, library users, social networking, social software 2 Comments »

Next Space (OCLC) magazine includes a social networking article featuring Stuart Weibel.

Where is the Library as a brand?
Perceptions of libraries and information resources – OCLC report (available online)
3300 respondents to questions on library use, awareness and use of library electronic resources, internet search engine the library and the librarian, free vs for-fee information, the brand itself.
Libraries are trusted sources of information, search engines are trusted about the same, people care about quality and quantity of info they find, but speed is less important (not believable). However, convenience is very important.
Do not view paid infomration as more accurate than free info.
The overwhelming brand image of libraries is BOOKS!

Library Brand Equity – we need a strong visible brand on the web.  Libraries currently are a black and white presence in a colorful, flashy web world.
How do we build the brand?  Build on the trust of our patrons. Build on our business model – making info look free to our end-users.  Build on the scale that libraries represent – presence in every community, global scope and reach.  Improve awareness of library resources.  Make libraires a part of the new electronic environments that dominate social, educational and work environments.  We need to be there!

Social netowrking software!  Its not new, just the technical manifestation is. Deliver library services into the emerging social networks. Motivate people to participate: tagging, book reviews, emergent relationships that are evident from data about what people borrow, like and dislike, link to the people as well.  Need to build our own systems into the social structures that are so quickly developing.

Numbers of content creators and contributors are changing – increasing.  More people are wanting to get their content out on the web.  Their are great innovative approaches to attract that content to the library community.

Social Networking is not just for games: Facebook, MySpace, Second Life and Twitter.  All are flawed as service delivery models – business models are closed or obscure, features are rudimentary or overbearing. But they foretell a digital future in both their virtues and faults. Stuart Weibel has both Twitter and Facebook accounts and will be your friend.  They teach us about what people are doing out there – think of it as a professional investment.  They are all goofy because they are all new.  They will develop and some of that development will be interesting.

Libraries must compare favourably with experiences that our patrons expect: discovery and recommender services, web 2.0 social network capabilities, experiences of comparable commerical services, last-mile delivery capability, bookstore social experiences.  We are offering an experience as well as a service.  Save the user time.

Can Libraries compete in this space?  Should they?
Social software movement is fueled by (dollar denominated) entrepreneurial fervor.  Rate of innovation (and failure) is rapid. Distinguish between trends and the trendy and don’t get wrapped on the latter, especially when they fail.

Future of library catalogues?
Evolving towards network level. Collections linked to people, organisations, global location, concepts, context, metadata and social networking benefits.  Fit into the workflow and social lives of patrons. Help create a scaffolding for past knowledge and future productivity.

Web or Scaffolding?  We want more conherence and context, durable environments that help us preserve and fix resources in the context of culture, librarianship embedded in the emerging technologies of a social web.

Our catalogues need to be wholistic, treating not only works, but also people, concepts, works and objects (FRBR).  In addition we need book reviews, lists, services, commentary, other?  Book reviews are part of social bibliography, user created content.  All these things should be First Class Objects which have to ahve a persistent identity on the web, accessible by anyone or any applicaation, stand alone (attribution, clear IP rights), curated (not left alone). Allow the user to enter and tranverse the catalogue from any point.

WorldCat Identities – Beta product from OCLC – Another piece of the puzzle?
Tag cloud shows the top 100 identities.  Uses bibliographic data and mining it from other sources at OCLC.

Complicated puzzle – where ya gonna turn?
People, information, resources, places, terminologies, user generated content, FRBR (explain it to your patrons).  We need to better mine and utilise the data that we have.  Hook everything together with the right sort of identifiers.  A coherent identifier infrastructure is essential. Broad dissemination of identifiers serves the library collaborative and is the single most compelling means of making library assets persistent and visible on the web.

Persistence: not technological but rather a function of the commitment of organisations.  Libraries and other cultural memory organisations do this well.  Harder to do in the digital era, but the community is up to the task.
Universal access and global scoping: open to all, public identifiers in a public Web. Should work everywhere. WorldCat is the first globally-scoped identifier architecture for library assets in which the global surrogate is mapped to locality.  But we’re not quite done yet.
SEO and canonical identifiers – visibility of assets in the global library is diluted by the multiplicity of identifiers, agreement is needed on a canonical identifier.  Lack of it is a dilution of our brand and a lack of visibility on the web.
Branding is an important component of URIs – every URI is a micro-billboard branding library content in a crowded and largely commercial Web landscape. URIs need to be designed for people as well as machines, should be speakable, should be as short can be as managed, should have a predictable pattern that makes them hackable and truncatable.

FRBR is an important ocintrubtion to resource organisation on the web, but it is a challenge to explain to users.

World Cat – Mid 2006. Globally unique, freely available, citable and resolvable, independent of location, but not quite canonical.  Falls short because of duplicates, either mistaken or functional, not always resolvable to content and only sort of canonical.

NEWS!!!   Pilot project by OCLC – GLIMIR – Global Library Manifestation Identifier which is global in scope, canonical, business neutral, provides the URL equity necessary to support the library brand, fits comfortably with the FRBR model.  If its going to work, it can’t be an OCLC product, but it will be managed by them. It will require participation, buy in and support, all of which will be very tricky to achieve.  Can a global community agree and adopt this when there are already so many identifiers – eg. ISBN.  OCLC is launching this pilot to identify functional requirements and practicalities solicited review from technical specialists,moving forward will require a careful balance of use cases, business issue and more.

Identifiers are key to fulfilling the mission of libraries in a digital future, to compete ont he open web for recognition of our brand, to integrate our traditional bibliographic values with social networking content, to provides services and access to the digital tribe – our future constituency.

weibel-lines.typepad.com.
twitter – stuartweibel
flickr – weibel-lines

VALA 2008 Conference – Day 2 – Michael Geist – Plenary

internet, social networking, social software 1 Comment »

Michael Geist – Canada Research Chair of Internet and E-Commerce Law, University of Ottawa
“Unlocking access: in support of a hands-on Internet policy”

Early days of the web (90s) were seen as a hands-off time for government, leaving it to the practitioners and users.  However, government and policy have always been a part of the internet.

Internet 2008: World of blogs, podcasts, social networking which is enabling people to create, speak out, making their voices heard.  They can share experiences and find that they are not alone. Creation, using desktop software and distribution of video is also growing exponentially – eg. Star Wreck, Elephant’s Dream.  Public broadcasters are allowing their users (and funders) to do the same. (eg BBC)  Flickr with billions of photos now has over 100 million photos available under Creative Commons licences – enabling others to create with this content as well as millions of other online works.

Growth of the collaborative media – ie. Wikipedia – 2 million articles in english. Encyclopedia of Life aiming to catalogue all life on earth in 10 years – started last year.  OhMyNews – citizen journalism contributed by the person on the street, to a handful of editors.  Project Gutenberg, LibriVox (audio of it), MIT Open Courseware (7 years old) – online syllabi, course materials, powerpoint demos, podcasts and videocasts. Public Library of Science – open access peer reviewed scientific journal. Internet archive is good for more than the Way Back machine, it will host any content that the individual has the copyright to. Digitisation projects worldwide making previously unknown titles or those thought to be lost, now available to all.  Underlying a lot of this is open source software.

Internet 2018: Four pillars: connectivity, enhance participation,copyright, content
Price of admission for participation, lifelong learning, self expression is access. Connectivity – Broadband for all.
Muni wifi – market can’t do it all, there is a place for public utlities
net neutrality (not the Internet 2 model – pay for better service) – will help develop innovation – much would not be around today if it had not been in place ie. Google, eBay and Amazon.  Need legislation to ensure equity for all.

Enhance participation – intermediary liability issues – being blamed for the content of others and sometimes having legal action taken.
domain names
privacy – protections are often dictated by the policies of the sites they inhabit
trust
transparency

Copyright – anti-circumvention – trying to keep it away, but if not, then retain fair dealing rights
fair use – ensure robust enough to deal with the shifting landscape
term extension -
orphan works
WIPO -

All communities need to speak out so that our governments are truly representing the view of the people in international negotiations.

Content: Open access, digitisation, crown copyright sometimes used as a legal form of censorship, public broadcasting.

New reports make interesting reading

Pew Internet, changes, collaboration, future, internet, knowledge sharing, learning, mashups, mobile web, professional development No Comments »

Have a big week coming up – attending and giving a short showcase at VALA in Melbourne. So before I start blogging that (hopefully live), I thought give my readers some interesting things to read.

Pew/Internet regularly produces reports related to online use. One of the latest was conducted with the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at the University of Illinois on Information searches that solve problems: how people use the internet, libraries and government agencies when they need help.  Interesting results include high use of public libraries by Generation Y’ers for the scenarios surveyed, digital divide is still an issue and the expected result of the internet as a first stop.  Well worth a look at.

University College London has produced another in their series of Ciber briefing  papers, this one on the Information behaviour of the researcher of the future.   The study was commissioned by the British Library and JISC to “identify how the specialist researchers of the future, currently in their school or pre-school years, are likely to access and interact with digital resources in five to ten years’ time.”  Very eye opening with some interesting results.

The Horizon Report 2008 from the New Media Consortium is out.  It aims to “identify and describe emerging technologies likely to have a large impact on teaching, learning or creative expression within learning-focused organizations’.  This is their 5th annual report.  Considering the link between libraries of any type and our learning organisations, this is a key document to be watching.  The key emerging technologies highlighted in this report include grassroots video, collaboration webs, mobile broadband, data mashups, collective intelligence and social operating systems.   You can get the gist of the report through the Executive Summary.  Definitely food for thought for our libraries.

Enjoy!

The difference between libraries and the internet

internet, libraries No Comments »

I have been so busy with getting my report finalised (yay, its done), getting two presentations and other things started, as well as my daughter’s birthday, that I haven’t had much time to ponder all things library. However, to start our school holiday break here, I thought I would point to something that is both thought provoking and entertaining.

Unshelved is a daily comic following Dewey and the library staff at Mallville Public Library. I have subscribed to the RSS feed so that I can get my daily fix. Working in a public library myself, it comes very close to home at times and is even more amusing as a result.

Anyway, this week’s comic strips were based on the Hi I’m a PC and I’m a Mac ads, with the substitution of Hi I’m the Internet and I’m the Library and as I said, they have all been very amusing – so check them out!

Monday – Beyond Google
Tuesday – Copyright
Wednesday – Information authority
Thursday – Novels
Friday – Censorship

Enjoy!

PS. And now Saturday’s comic which sums it all up!