This week’s 4cast:
1. Don’t Digitize That Obituary Just Yet
Anthony Grafton writes in The New Yorker that massive digitization projects (such as Google Book Search and Microsoft Live Book Search) have some people foaming at the mouth about a grand universal library that will put traditional libraries out of business. Except for one thing – these projects will never get around to digitizing everything.
- Future Reading: Digitization and its discontents (The New Yorker)
- Anthony Grafton on “Future Reading” (The End of Cyberspace)
- Stop and Smell the Knowledge (Intermittent Thinking)
- The New Yorker is as wrong about e-libraries as Martin Luther apparently was about paper books (TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home)
2. Google’s Buddies Corner Facebook
In a move that puts pressure on Facebook, Google has unveiled OpenSocial, a common set of technical standards (APIs) that will allow third-party developers to more easily build applications that work across multiple social networks. MySpace and other well-known services were quick to jump on board.
- Google Aims to Break Open the Closed World of Social Networking (Wired)
- Checkmate? MySpace, Bebo and SixApart To Join Google OpenSocial (confirmed) (TechCrunch)
- OpenSocial opens new can of worms (CNET)
- Google: As Open As It Wants To Be (IE, When It’s Convenient) (Seach Engine Land)
3. Out With the Old, In With the Open
In recent months, some more library systems have been dumping their traditional ILS vendors in favor of open source solutions such as LibLime and Evergreen.
- InfoTech: LibLime Signs INCOLSA and Central Kansas Library System (Library Journal)
- Presenting on Our Planning for the Future of the Catalog (Pegasus Librarian)
- A conversation with LibLime’s Joshua Ferraro (Panlibus)
- Open Source OPAC Market Presentation-beta 2 (LISNews)
4. Library Website? Don’t Go There.
Meanwhile, echoing a sentiment expressed a few weeks ago in 4cast #73 (item 1), one of the key findings of the most recent OCLC report (see 4cast #77, item 2) is that less and less people are visiting the library website.
- Declining Use of Library Web Pages (Something New Every Day)
- Ponder This…. (Tame the Web: Libraries and Technology)
- IL2007: New Rules of Web Design (LibrarianInBlack)
- if libraries made slides would they look like this? (walking paper)
