Latest additions to the blog

I want to take your attention to some new additions to this blog.

* Awareness Watch Newsletter is a free monthly publication that highlights the latest resources and sites on the Internet pertaining to current awareness happenings, new and reviewed sources for research and search, knowledge discovery, data mining and related updates and alerts. The November issue futures the Data Mining and Web Data Extraction Resources. These resources will allow you to keep up to date and to monitor the latest happenings in all fields associated with data mining and web data extraction associated with discovering new data and knowledge available over the global Internet. http://www.awarenesswatch.com/

* 2 Collab beta: This Elsevier social bookmarking site can be used to connect, store, share and collaborate information with others, discover new research. It is free and easy to use. Just register and explore the world out there. http://www.2collab.com/home

* D-Lib Magazine: The Nov-Dec issue have number of articles on repositories initiatives. Under "Clips &Pointers" you will find useful information on upcoming conferences in 2008, selected papers, etc. This magazine can be a good source for you to read. http://www.dlib.org/dlib/november07/11contents.html

* Smashing Magazine This magazine is really worth having a look at. It features useful and innovative information for designers and web-developers. The articles are helpful, not too technical, and are good summaries. http://www.smashingmagazine.com/

* InfoVision Summit 17-18 December, 2007: Social Networks, Knowledge Discovery & Innovation. The summit will review the current state and chart out the future of the social networking industry. Relevant processes, technologies, norms, and societal needs of the new era will be outlined. http://www.infovision.org.in/2007/topic/index.html

* Information Online Conference, 4-6 Dec 2007. "Applying Web 2.0: Innovation, Impact and Implementation." http://www.online-information.co.uk/index.html

Latest in the Internet Resource Newsletter

What's new in the December issue of Internet Resource Newsletter.

* The theme of the Online Information 2007 conference, to be held in London, 4-6 December, 2007, is "Applying Web 2.0: Innovation, Impact and Implementation."

Some news items of interest:

* Ebooks: The end of the page-turner? Many writers fear that the 'ebook' is killing off the printed word, but some, like Jimmy Lee Shreeve, think the future lies in online publishing http://news.independent.co.uk/sci_tech/article3091535.ece

* Ingenta ahead of the curve with latest release - One-click purchasing, behavioural recommendations: http://allmyeye.blogspot.com/2007/11/social-media-news-release.html

Ingenta, recently announced the latest release of its flagship web platform, IngentaConnect.

Write a Perfect E-mail

Email, not the web, is the most-used Internet application by transaction volume. It’s also the most misused....People differ in how they manage their inboxes, but attention to a few details can help make your messages more usable for everyone. These are the factors I’ve identified that will help you get a quick and valid response:

Among the tips:
* Brevity: Short emails rule.

* Context: If I don’t know you by name, tell me how you came to contact me.And for god’s sake, have a subject line. One that makes sense.

* Something to act on: Make your requests clear.

* A deadline: There comes a time when the response you seek is no longer useful. If you know when that is, tell your recipient.

Courtesy: Wired "How to wiki" and Annelize who brought it to our attention

END-OF-THE-YEAR LIBRARY PARTY

Don't forget the PARTY!

It is this week!

We worked hard this year!

Now is the time to ENJOY ourselves!

30th of November 2007

Librarians can have fun!

Come and prove it!

IUGSA presentations by UJLIC staff

Five of our Library staff members presented papers at the IUGSA last week:

Zakes Nakedi (DFC) - ERC @ UJ,
Anusuya Aramugam (APK) – ERM and CASE,
Gerda van der Berg (APK) – Self Checkout
Mdu Madondo (APB) – Preparing for self check-out,
Carina Malan (APK) – How site coordinators solve your problems

In view of this the UJ Library and Information Centre received the GAELIC trophy for best participation in the conference! Well done and thank you to our colleagues for winning this trophy for us.

Contributor: Dr. A. van Vuren

Elsevier Library Connect Newsletter Vol.5, no. 4 2007

Web 2.0, Library 2.0, Office 2.0, Health 2.0, Government 2.0, Education 2.0. We just can’t get enough of 2.0! There is some hype around 2.0 somewhat reminiscent of the dot com bubble period, but for our organizations there are and will be real impacts of 2.0 concepts and technologies....

In this issue the main focus is on Web 2.0. Topics such as:

* Using RSS to connect with your users

* Library 2.0: the new e-world order

* Web 2.0 and scholarly publishing

* How can using 2.0 help researchers find highly relevant results (Scirus Topic Pages)

and others can give you an indication of what is Elsevier doing with Web 2.0 tools, but also to read how other libraries are implementing these tools.

Libraries dump 2m volumes, by Rebecca Attwood

A rush to liberate space for e-learning suites is blamed for disposal of printed material. Rebecca Attwood reports. Universities dispose of more than 1.8 million books and journals a year, according to official figures. Statistics obtained by The Times Higher show that 36 institutions got rid of more books and printed volumes than they acquired. In 2005-06, ten universities disposed of more than 40,000 items. Dundee University disposed of 100,035 items and acquired 18,067 hard-copy texts in the year. Bangor University withdrew 55,500 items from reader use, Ulster University withdrew 50,493, and Imperial College London 48,911, according to figures from the Society of College, National, and University Libraries (Sconul).

Published: 16 November 2007
Contributor: S. van der Walt

ILibrarian Blog

I have just saw this interesting blog for librarians "ILibrarian" and added under "Useful Blogs". I wanted to make you aware of what information you can find there. Some of the latest posts are:

* 17 Tips for Productivity with Instant Messaging
* Yahoo! TagMaps
* Top 1,000 RSS Feeds
* 2.0 and the Internet World
* Conference Presentations
* The New Librarians

Lots more of interest.

Social Bookmarking Sites Which Don’t Use NoFollow : Bookmarks and Search Engines

Social bookmarking allows web users to search, share, organize, and store the bookmarks of different web pages. This can be done publicly or privately (in private groups), or a combination of the two. People who are allowed to view the bookmarks can view them using a variety of different functions to sort and tag them....

.....NoFollow is a non-standard HTML attribute value which is used to police the outbound link value of user generated content, especially blog commenting. NoFollow is used to communicate with search engines to tell them that a link should not be used to pass on link juice, or “PageRank”.
The idea is that it will help reduce people who spam links, making sure that search engines get better results when keywords are searched, and many social bookmarking sites havee implemented this strategy.

Social Bookmarking Sites Which Don’t Use NoFollow

* Listible is a newer social bookmarking site

* Furl, one of the services offered by LookSmart

* Yahoo My Web 2.0 Beta is a social search engine

* Propeller is a hybrid of social bookmarking and social news sharing

* Flickr gives social bookmarking a different spin – the site is all about photos.

* Digg.com can get a little crazy and confusing, since it is open for anyone to post sites and leave comments.

* Technorati Faves is a great place to bookmark sites

* Slashdot is the original when it comes to social bookmarking sites

* Searchles is a social bookmarking oriented search engine with tagging, video upload, groups and voting.

How Search Engines Can Use Social Bookmarks: Monitoring social bookmarking services like Del.icio.us, StumbleUpon and Ma.gnolia can help search engines in multiple ways....

Click on the TITLE to view the full-text article.

Bates InfoTip:Google Can Do That?

Mary Ellen Bates from Bates Information Services Inc. shared some ideas from Internet Librarian Conference. This is what she has to say:
I recently spoke at the Internet Librarian conference in Monterey, CA and one of the presentations I enjoyed doing the most was on the hidden features of some of the major search engines. I have covered some of them in early Info-Tips, but the following are a few of my new Google favorites.

* Google lets you search for a range of numbers, in any format. To include a number range in your search query, type in the lower and upper numbers, separated by two periods - e.g., 15..50 I had a chance to try out this feature in a real-life search; I wanted to find a set of wireless headphones on Amazon.com costing between $50 and $100. I typed in the query (wireless OR cordless) headphones $50..$99 site:amazon.com and, sure enough, I retrieved a wide selection of wireless headphones within my price range. Note that Google is smart enough to recognize decimal points - some of the items I retrieved weren't an even dollar amount but were, for example, $57.83. This feature could also come in handy if you are looking for a mention of a range of years.

* Speaking of date-searching on Google, you can limit your search to only those pages added or changed within the past [whatever] days. This can be a useful feature if you re-run a search regularly; just limit your search to the pages added or modified since you last ran your search. You can do this not by adding text in the search box but by modifying the search results page URL by adding the following text to the end of the URL and clicking [Search]: &as_qdr=dn (where n is the number of days you want searched) So, for example, to limit my search to the last 18 days, I would add &as_qdr=d18 to the end of the search results page URL.
Keep in mind that this isn't a perfect date-limiting search. Some web content management systems automatically refresh a web page frequently, without necessarily making any changes to the page. Those pages will have a recent date but the content within them may have been unchanged for months.

Courtesy: Bates Info-Tips for November 2007. Click on the title to view this and other tips from previous newsletters

Show Your Librarian Some Love

Show Your Librarian Some Love / by Todd Gilman
Many academic librarians feel unloved and underappreciated on their campuses, and the main reason is that they sense they are viewed as second-class citizens by members of the teaching faculty.
Certainly that sentiment will not come as news to librarians. I wonder, though, to what extent teaching faculty members know how their library colleagues feel.

Click on the title to view the full article.

Submited by: Sophie van der Walt

InfoToday Blog: Internet Librarian Conference weblog

In the last post you had information about the Internet Librarian Conference. You can read interesting feedbacks from the Editors of Information Today in their InfoToday blog. The pictures will give you a glimpse of the atmosphere at the conference and the short comments and links will introduce you to many of the interesting papers presented there.

The Library as Community Commons: The challenge today is how to mix/integrate new technologies with legacy (static) systems. Standard Web technologies can be the “glue” for most 2.0 applications. There are opportunities for libraries to guide the University community. They have taken the lead on introducing many new technologies. They evolved from strength in Web management to blogging, Webcasting, Webconferencing, wikis, Facebook involvement, etc. ...it’s important to match the right 2.0 tools to your situation.

How do you see the future of the libraries? Shanachie (Storytelling)Tour.

Four Dutch men took a trip from New York to the Monterey (for the Conference) and along the way they visited libraries and interviewed all sorts of librarians about how they saw the future of libraries. Read about their experiences: http://www.shanachietour.com/

What's Hot with RSS feeds! Presentation by Steve Cohen, RSS enthusiast (read more on his wiki: http://stevenmcohen.pbwiki.com/IL2007)

"RSS is neither simple nor syndicated".
"The reference interview doesn’t end when the requester walks out the door. It ends when his/her project is done. So keep feeding them information as long as they need it."

He very much likes Google Reader, which provides lots of data on his feeds and said, "Google Reader makes me smarter".

Click on the TITLE to see direct link to the InfoToday Blog or click on: http://www.infotodayblog.com

Internet Librarian Conference 29-31 October 2007

2.0: INFO PROS, LIBRARY COMMUNITIES, & WEB TOOLS.

This year theme, 2.0, captures leading-edge online initiatives and innovations in all types of information enterprises, tools and techniques for enhancing user-friendly digital information flows, radical new ideas for roles and values of information professionals, information discovery and visualization methods for dealing with today’s information overload, building new communities and supporting online connections in engaging ways, and more.

The PreConference workshops include topics such as: Social tools for your Library; Libraries on the MUVE in Second Life; Nex-Generation Research tools; Mining Blogs & RSS for Research; Searchers Academy; Academic Library 2.0; Wikis: Basics, Tools & Strategies; Integrating RSS into your Web site, and many more.

The Conference offered topics on: 2.0 & the Internet World; What's New with Search?; What's new with Federated Search?; Online Marketing for Libraries; Planning & Implementing Library 2.0; New Rules of Web Design; MySpace and Facebook: Pros & Cons; Getting Their Attention: Training Strategies & Social Networking tools; I'm at Web 2.0, are you?; Organisation 2.0; Librarians as Knowledge Managers; Virtual Worlds & Libraries; Building Communities in Second Life; Visual Information retrieval; What's hot with RSS?; Designing and OPAC for Web 2.0; and much more.

When I looked at the programme last week, I thought that, whoever is attending this Conference will come back with 101 ideas to implement. But for those of us, far away from Monterey, California there is still hope that we can learn something and make use of it just by reading through the abstracts of the papers and the people behind them. Let's hope that some of the papers will be available online soon.

Click on the title for link to the Conference website or just visit: http://www.infotoday.com/il2007/default.shtml

UKSG Serials-eNews

When I'm receiving newsletters' notifications through my e-mail, I will either find time to have a quick look at them, or I will just sort them in a folder "Journals & Newsletters" and have a look when the time permits me. Today I even created a folder " Blog entries", which will remind me to write something for this blog.

What's new in UKSG Serials-eNews, 19 October 2007, no 156?

* UKSG will have a seminar on 22nd November, discussing "Caught up in Web 2.0? Practical implementations and creative solutions for librarians and publishers". They say " as Facebook and MySpace wage their own war for the hearts and minds of social networking desciples, the innovators and early adopters in the library and publishing communities are already forging ahead with practical and creative implementations of new technology..." http://www.uksg.org/event/web20. One of the presenters, Andy Powell (Eduserv Foundation)will talk about " A snapshot of UK library and educational use of Second Life". This could be very interesting for us, as we also want to implement the Second life.

* Gottingen University and Springer sign Open Choice pilot agreement

* SwetsWise Online content signs up its 400th publisher

* NetLibrary and Elsevier offer libraries eBook discounts

* Digital Lives research Project webpages and blog go live

These are some of the highlights of this issue. To view all, either click on the title or go to: http://www.ringgold.com/UKSG/si_pd.cfm?AC=3992

Blackwell Synergy

Blackwell Synergy database will be a new addition to UJ databases list from 2008. The full collection consist of 797 journals.
* Science, Technology and Medicine Collection - 424 journals
* Social Sciences and Humanities Collection - 373 journals
* Medicine and Nursing Collection - 234 journals

Learn more about what is new at Blackwell Synergy from the latest "Librarynews" from Blackwell Publishing:
* The 2008 Journal Price list 2008
* The American Anthropological Association Move their Publishing Arrangements to Wiley-Blackwell
* Licensing the Blackwell Publishing Collection of Online Journals
* Blackwell Journal changes
* Blackwell Synergy: change of login. From individual login functionality from username.password TO e-mail address/password. This upgrade will improve usability and increase security.
* Blackwell Publishing Books will soon be available on WileyInterscience
* Announcing 8 more titles for Blackwell Reference Online

Link to PDF version of the Librarynews on: http://wiley-blackwell.msgfocus.com/q/12j0aPjFJN57k/wv
You can Subscribe to this Newsletter by visiting: www.blackwellpublishing.com/librarians