New Technologies for Libraries Blog

Australian libraries ROI

Edgar Crook — Wed, 15 May 2013 00:12:31 +0000

What is the ROI on Australian libraries. It is $2.90 on every $1 spent, see:

Blogs

Edgar Crook — Mon, 13 May 2013 22:55:05 +0000

See for reference:

http://libweb2.princeton.edu/rbsc2/ga/unseenhands/printers/warde.html

Sport – it is a thing

Edgar Crook — Fri, 10 May 2013 03:02:47 +0000

Here are some things about that thing, that relate to Australian collections or management – in case you wanted some quick sports reference help. They come from this conference paper Sports archives and collections in Australia which has some links at the end, to save you opening the document here they are:

National Sport Information Centre, Australian Sports Commission
Davis Sporting Collection (State Library of New South Wales)
Tom Brock Collection (State Library of New South Wales)
MV Anderson Chess Collection (State Library of Victoria)
History of the Paralympic Movement in Australia (Australian Paralympic Committee)
Olympic and Paralympic games digital archive (National Library of Australia)
Athletics in Australia, 1890- (Paul Jenes, Peter Hamilton, David Tarbotton, Fletcher McEwen and work from Bert Gardiner)
Empire Games, Sydney, 1938 (National Archives of Australia)
Olympic Games, Melbourne, 1956 (National Archives of Australia)
Australian Centre for Paralympic Studies Oral History Project (National Library of Australia)
National Sports Museum
Australian Centre for Olympic Studies
Orange City Council Sporting Hall of Fame
Picture Australia – sport (National Library of Australia)
Australian Rules Football (State Library of Victoria)
Sydney 2000 Paralympic Games (Powerhouse Museum)
Clearinghouse for Sport (Australian Sports Commission)
Criteria for Judging Heritage Significance, Australian Sports Commission
Heritage Significance Assessment of Objects, Australian Sports Commission
Sport Australia Hall of Fame
NSW Hall of Champions
Australian Society for Sports History
There are a number of people tagging sport in TROVE, here is an example

Federal Election 2013

newtechnologiesinterestgroup — Mon, 06 May 2013 00:50:38 +0000

During the last (2010) federal election, ALIA sent each of the parties a set of 10 questions seeking their views on library related issues, such as digitisation, funding, the NBN, school librarians etc. The parties responses are still available at: http://www.alia.org.au/election2010/

The Greens unsurprisingly responded well and agreed generally with ALIA’s policy directions. The Coalition agreed with many but said that economic imperatives prevented them from making any new spending commitments. The Labor response however, was laughable and seemed to have been written by a child intern. Even though, at that time, the ALP had a very good story to tell of building very many new school libraries and of developing fantastic open government initiatives its response was stunningly bad and one of the questions was even answered solely by recourse to plagiarism. See this earlier post.

This coming election, we will await again the library and information related policies from political parties. Hopefully this time, some of them will treat the questions and the sector with more interest.

A librarian opens a new library

Edgar Crook — Fri, 03 May 2013 03:54:26 +0000

The contents of the book don’t have value, the marginalia might

Edgar Crook — Thu, 02 May 2013 03:03:39 +0000

To answer that by way of illustration and example, I was giving a talk a few years ago to a group of librarians back home about provenance and the importance of historical evidence, and one of them came up to me at the end and said I work in the Library of the Royal Society of Medicine, I recently accessioned a contemporary book that had belonged to a distinguished living haematologist, which had his pencil notes on the flyleaf commenting on a recently introduced drug, saying how ineffective it was and how it shouldn’t be used. Of course, he said, I had to rub those out before putting it on the shelf, as it wouldn’t be appropriate for anyone to see them. To which I said, You did what? That was probably the only part of that book that had long-term historical value; the text probably exists in an online version already and if it doesn’t now, it will do one day.

David Pearson at: http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/bigideas/libraries-as-history/4647104

Jumping on bandwagon

Edgar Crook — Tue, 22 Jan 2013 01:30:26 +0000

Well a Manly Library assistant certainly gained some probably unwanted worldwide notoriety with their humourous sign

Source @Dane_Murray https://twitter.com/Dane_Murray/status/293497606884184064/photo/1

What amused me more is the idea, still apparently prevalent, that the books in the non-fiction shelves are still perceived to be ‘true’ or something. Didn’t anyone notice the 130s, 200s or 994s before.

It’s like nobody has read any Derrida at all, out there.

TAFE Australasia Library Conference

Edgar Crook — Tue, 22 Jan 2013 00:00:18 +0000

The Queensland VET Libraries Association (QVLA) Inc. is hosting a two-day national conference next November.

TAFE is actively involved in delivering education to tertiary students at a school, VET and Bachelor levels and the TALC conference will offer a relevant and engaging professional development opportunity for library-focussed people.

They are interested in attracting potential speakers for the conference.

The details are as follows:
TAFE Australasia Library Conference (TALC)
“Adapt, Change, Evolve”
Southbank Institute of Technology
Brisbane 21st – 22nd November, 2013
If you would like to present at our conference contact us via our website or email address.
If you would like to attend the conference, you can book online at our website at http://www.talc.org.au or contact us:
Email: talc2013@gmail.com
Website http://www.talc.org.au

Registration categories and prices

Full registration Day registration
Early bird QVLA member 260 QVLA Member (no social) 160
Early bird non-member 290 Non-member (no social) 175
Standard QVLA member 325
Standard non-member 350
Student 260

Jumping on the DRM free bandwagon

Lisa — Tue, 05 Jun 2012 02:38:53 +0000

If you’re a consumer of ebooks, you’ll be pleased to know that some publishers are now ditching DRM (Digital Rights Management) on their books.

The Tor online store proudly displays its intent to go DRM free

Tor/Forge Books in the US and Momentum (an imprint of Australia’s Pan Macmillan), have both recently announced that they no longer intend to restrict the use of their ebooks using DRM.

‘The problem,’ said Joel Naoum, Momentum’s publisher, ‘is that DRM restricts users from legitimate copying – such as between different e-reading devices. We feel strongly that Momentum’s goal is to make books as accessible as possible. Dropping these restrictions is in line with that goal.’

Speaking at Tor/Forge Books announcement, Charles Stross noted that

[restricting a consumer's use of their purchase] “is at the heart of customer resentment against DRM: once you buy a hardback you are free to do whatever you like with it — read it, lend it, or sell it on…but…DRM e-Books don’t work like that.”

Tor/Forge plans to begin selling DRM free ebooks by July, Momentum by early August 2012.

National Simultaneous Storytime

Lisa — Tue, 22 May 2012 06:05:30 +0000

There are lots of events happening as part of Library & Information Week and tomorrow is National Simultaneous Storytime. This year’s title is The very cranky bear by Nick Bland. ALIA have a range of resources on their website to support NSS, including the AUSLAN version (below) of the story being read. If you’d like to get involved, you can find your nearest storytime location in the Australia wide list here.