Rent a book?

Two beta sites have come to our attention that allow users, for a fee, to create a list of books they’d like to read, receive the books in the mail, read them and ship them back with free paid postage.  These sites are BookSwim and Paperspine.

BookSwim’s tagline is “Don’t Buy Books, Rent Them!”  Users can search by title, author or ISBN or browse through titles.  BookSwim has 185,000 titles to choose from.  Plans are available for 2, 3, 5, 7, 9, or 11 books at a time starting at $14.99 a month.  The site also has a feature where you can keep a book and pay for it online.  You can browse titles by categories and each item features a link where you can purchase the book from Amazon.  Here is a more detailed explanation of how it works.  And here is a link to their blog.

Paperspine’s tagline is “revolutionizing the way you read books.”  Users can search by title, author or ISBN and also browse.  Paperspine has over 150,000 titles to choose from and has four available plans based on what type of reader you are: Light, Frequent, Avid or a Family.  Prices range from $9.95 to $24.95.  Light and Frequent plans allow two books at a time with the Light plan charging $1.49 for shipping.  The Avid plan allows three books at a time, while the Family plan allows five books at a time.  Here is a more detailed explanation of how Paperspine works.  Here is a link to their blog.

World Digital Library

“The World Digital Library will make available on the Internet, free of charge and in multilingual format, significant primary materials from cultures around the world, including manuscripts, maps, rare books, musical scores, recordings, films, prints, photographs, architectural drawings, and other significant cultural materials. The objectives of the World Digital Library are to promote international and inter-cultural understanding and awareness, provide resources to educators, expand non-English and non-Western content on the Internet, and to contribute to scholarly research.” –from the World Digital Library Website

Click here to read more about the World Digital Library project.

The partners involved in this project so far are the Library of Congress, Bibliotheca Alexandrina, National Library of Brazil, National Library and Archives of Egypt, National Library of Russia, Russian State Library, and UNESCO.

For more information, please also see these news releases from the Library of Congress: March 15, 2004, November 22, 2005, November 16, 2006, and October 17, 2007.

Amazon Debuts New eBook Reader

The Kindle is Amazon’s new wireless reading device.  Click on the link to see the features of the product, a video demonstration, available titles, and customer reviews – good and bad. 

Bloggers in the library world are also discussing the Kindle here, here, and here.   Search LisZen, a library and information science search engine, if you’d like to see what more people are saying.

 **According to Amazon, the product is currently sold out.  –12/10/2007

MLA Forum

Have you presented a paper at a meeting or conference? Does your institution encourage you to publish your work? If so, the MLA Forum may be the journal you need. MLA Forum is a peer-reviewed online journal sponsored by the Michigan Library Association. It is indexed in Library and Information Science Abstacts (LISA) and also found on Google Scholar. Contributors to the MLA Forum do not need to be members of MLA.

The journal’s mission is to address issues of importance to libraries of all types throughout the state and nation. MLA Forum is currently seeking articles, book reviews, and reports relevant to the library profession. For publication consideration, please submit one copy of a manuscript to the editor, Michael Lorenzen at loren1mg@cmich.edu.

Sense-making in the Universe of Scholarly Communications

Lee C. Van Orsdel, Dean of University Libraries, Grand Valley State University presented “Sense-making in the Universe of Scholarly Communications” at the Academic Librarian’s Luncheon at the Michigan Library Association Conference in November.

Please click here to download Dean Van Orsdel’s PowerPoint presentation.

Working Group on the Future of Bibliographic Control releases draft report

The Working Group on the Future of Bibliographic Control has released its draft final report.  It is now available for comment until December 15, 2007.  Comments can be submitted through the  website at http://www.loc.gov/bibliographic-future/contact/. 

The report highlights five general recommendations (from the Press Release from the Library of Congress Public Affairs Office):

• Increase the efficiency of bibliographic production for all libraries through cooperation and sharing of bibliographic records and through use of data produced in the overall supply chain.
• Transfer effort into high-value activity. In particular, provide greater value for knowledge creation by leveraging access for unique materials held by libraries that are currently hidden and underused.
• Position technology by recognizing that the World Wide Web is libraries’ technology platform as well as the appropriate platform for standards. Recognize that users are not only people but also applications that interact with library data.
• Position the library community for the future by adding evaluative, qualitative and quantitative analyses of resources. Work to realize the potential of the Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records (FRBR) framework.
• Strengthen the library and information science profession through education and through development of metrics that will inform decision-making now and in the future.

MLA Annual Conference Report by Cathy Wolford

The Michigan Library Association’s annual conference was November 7 through November 9, 2007.  One of the programs I attended was titled “Catalog 2.0.”  It was very informative and relevant to DALNET.  The presenters were Jackie Wrosch from Eastern Michigan University (formerly of DALNET); Krista Graham, Electronic Resources Coordinator/Reference Librarian at Central Michigan University; Dao Rong Gong, Catalog Librarian at Michigan State University, and Juliane Morian, Head of Electronic Services at Clinton-Macomb Public Library.

Jackie explained various ways that Eastern Michigan University (EMU) tries to make their OPAC more user-friendly and dynamic.  One way is to embed java script into the HTML templates that come with their OPAC. Also, an open source alternative she is investigating is from Villanova University and called VUFind. It was released this past July in beta. The library at Villanova University uses Voyager for its ILS as does EMU. VUFind has faceted searching which is becoming very popular. If you are interested in looking at some library catalogs with faceted searching try these:

North Carolina State University

Queens Library

Miami University (Ohio)

Peninsula Library System

Plymouth State University

Michigan State University (MSU) was one of the initial 13 libraries that entered a partnership initiative with Innovative Interfaces to help develop Encore, Innovative’s answer to Library 2.0. Recently Encore beta went live in Michigan State’s opac. In this MLA program, Dao Rong Gong from Michigan State University explained the development and features of Encore. Through a survey link on the Encore search page, MSU is hoping to get feedback about what users think about their searching experience with this new product. For a recent press release from Innovative concerning the launch of Encore please see this link.

Clinton-Macomb Public Library did usability tests of their library web site last August. Juliane Morian explained that their users wanted “keyword” searching taken off of the quick search and added to the advanced search. Users also requested that the font size be increased. She showed us their old home page and catalog and compared it to their new home page and catalog. The visual differences were dramatically better in their new version. She mentioned that they used contrasting colors to make items “pop.” She also configured the MeLCat search in their catalog to imitate the look and feel of the Clinton-Macomb’s library catalog. She described it as a “virtual MeLCat branch.”

Krista Graham from Central Michigan University (CMU) had two focus groups help their library determine what patrons would prefer in the library catalog. The librarians had some pre-selected catalogs to show the groups and asked what they liked and did not like about them. The consensus was that they did like spell check. The users also wanted advanced searching on the first page of the library catalog. Both Krista and Juliane agreed that when asking library users what they want in the catalog, the answers may be surprising.

There were several very interesting and informative programs at this year’s MLA conference. Next year the conference will be held at the Radisson in Kalamazoo, Michigan during October 22 through October 24, 2008.

Check out our DALNET Office collection!

The DALNET Office has a small but growing collection of library-related books, periodicals and audio-visuals available for check-out to members via Inter-Library Loan. Topics range from Cataloging to Copyright to Digital Librarianship and more.

Some book titles include: Copyright law for librarians and educators by Kenneth D. Crews, The whole digital library handbook by Diane Kresh, Maxwell’s guide to authority work by Robert L. Maxwell, Web site design with the patron in mind by Susanna Davidsen and Out front with Stephen Abram: a guide for information leaders.

Our periodical titles are American Libraries, Cognotes, College & Research Libraries, College & Research Libraries News, Information Technology and Libraries, and Library Administration & Management.

The following links go to the DALNET Single Database HIP:
DALNET Office Books: click here
DALNET Office Periodical Holdings: click here
All DALNET Office materials: click here

For now, please contact Kristy if you would like to borrow any DALNET Office materials. After testing, another option for borrowing will be the GAC for ILL through OCLC WorldCat Resource Sharing.

CODI Conference Report, November 7-9, 2007

This year’s Customers of Dynix, Inc. (CODI) conference took place in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. George Marck attended the conference as the DALNET representative and reports the following:

Early in the conference, Gary Rautenstrauch, the CEO of SirsiDynix, stated that the company needed to pay particular attention to their Horizon customers; there were several positive signs that the company has finally begun to do that.

In particular, SirsiDynix has announced that they will continue to support their Horizon product for at least the next four to six years. In addition, they announced that there will be a new version of the Horizon 7.X series, which will be available in general release in early 2008. They also plan to release two new versions of HIP at the same time – HIP 3.09 and 4.16.

Much of the conference was devoted to the new joint product release from SirsiDynix which is called Symphony. There were workshops on the following: preparing your data for moving to SirsiDynix Symphony; project plan implementation for upgrading to Symphony; basic system administration and maintenance in Symphony; and the basic architecture of Symphony. The good news is that Symphony is built on a platform utilizing the current releases of Oracle (a better supported database version than SYBASE, which is used by Horizon) and JAVA, and employs a thin client.

In addition, there were workshops on the new releases of HIP as well as SirsiDynix new federated searching product, EPS (Enterprise Portal System). There was also a workshop session for large libraries using Horizon. Most of them plan to use Horizon for the foreseeable future and to evaluate the marketplace sometime later. So, DALNET is not alone in its current plans.

Automotive Authors Day at Detroit Public Library

Automotive Authors Day, sponsored by The Friends of the National Automotive History Collection, will take place on Saturday November 17, 2007 from 2 to 5 PM at the Detroit Public Library Skillman Branch.

From the website: “Car collectors, restorers, historians and motor heads of all ages are invited to attend the Detroit area’s largest gathering of automotive history writers. Come meet over 20 book authors who write about the world of cars, trucks, ships and airplanes. The Authors will assemble in the Rose Skillman Gallery, home of the National Automotive History Collection. They will talk with you about your interests and sign your copy of their books. Books will also be available for purchase. This event is free and open to the public; street parking and area lots are recommended.”

Participating Authors:  John Bluth, Joe Cabadas, Sally Clarke, Mike Davis, Peter Delorenzo, Mike Dixon, George Green, Larry Gustin, Roger Hart, Charlie Hyde, Matt Lee, David Lewis, Walt McCall, Byron Olsen, Sinclair Powell, Tracy Powell, David Roberts, Rex Roy, Richard Stanley, Jim Wagner, Willem Weertman.

The Skillman Branch of the Detroit Public Library is located at 121 Gratiot Avenue (in downtown Detroit behind the Compuware Headquarters).