Library Blogs Buzz Weekly

You wouldn't want to miss this weekly overview of library and technology blogs.

Apple's Textbook Strategy(ALA TechSource Blog)
Apple has decided to attempt yet another media disruption, this time focusing on reinventing the textbook market. This move was foretold in the biography of Steve Jobs, where Walter Isaacson wrote about Jobs:“He wanted to disrupt the textbook industry, and save the spines of spavined students bearing backpacks by creating electronic texts and curriculum material for the iPad."

Knewton Prepares To Take Education by Storm( TechCrunch)
The idea of education adapting to the needs of the customer (Knewton a startup ), seems very appealing to me.

Little Free Libraries" pop up in MN and across U.S.(INFOdocket)
According to this video "home-made" libraries the size of a bigger mailbox where users can loan materials and bring their own to be lend out with no due dates any any other restrictions are becoming popular.

Credo Reference Introduces Literati by Credo(Resourceshelf)
Credo Reference by Literati goes out of beta and promises"technology, content, tools and services to help eliminate the hurdles of discovery"and research.

OCLC and Elsevier sign agreement to provide full-text searching of SciVerse ScienceDirect journals and e-books through WorldCat Local (OCLC News)
Full text from Elsevier’s SciVerse ScienceDirect journals and e-books are now available to users of OCLC’s WorldCat Local.

London Implements “Smart Bins” Before 2012 Olympics (TechCrunch)
In my opinion, LCD recycling bins might last longer than 2 hours in the central parts of Manhattan in NYC, where it is full of tourists and police.

LexisNexis Launches Social Media Visibility Service ( ResourceShelf)
LexisNexis Social Media Visibility is the new way for Lexis Nexis to help lawyers and smaller law firms with developing social media presence.

All SAGE Journals Now Available Via Mobile Devices (INFOdocket)
"SAGE’s entire online journal collection is now available in a mobile-optimized format with the help of HighWire Press’ Mobile Web Interface."

Google Adds A New Security Layer To The Android Market… A “Bouncer,” If You Will( TechCrunch)
" Bouncer", the new layer of security for Androids, automatically scans apps for spyware and viruses.

There are some really interesting posts in the third week of 2012.

Google Launches Good to Know Campaign for Web Safety( ReadWriteWeb)
Good to Know, is the name of Google's latest campaign to educate users how to stay safe online, manage data and learn more about data on Google and on the Web.

Jerry Yang Quits Yahoo (Search Engine Watch)
It is never for good when a founder leave his company, but let's see where this will bring Yahoo from here on.

U.S. House of Representatives Launches Transparency Portal (INFOdocket)
"Making good on part of the House of Representative’s commitment to increase congressional transparency, today the House Clerk’s office launched http://docs.house.gov/, a one stop website where the public can access all House bills, amendments, resolutions for floor consideration, and conference reports in XML, as well as information on floor proceedings and more."

Apple Announces iBooks 2 (CNET Video)
The new iBooks2, launched by Apple last week promises to revolutionize text books and the learning experience for users by introducing multimedia. Take a look at the CNET video to see how it works.

New White Paper from Springer: “STM eBooks: Librarian Perspectives on the First 5 Years” ( INFOdocket)
In 2006 the popular publisher Springer decided to create its own e-book collection with the consultation of leading librarians, now the publisher brings out a free white paper, which emphasizes on best practices, implementation and future for e-books.

Google Maps Now Highlighting Borders Of Cities, Postal Codes & More(Search Engine Land)
Google Maps is now highlighting different borders as part of your search, including city and postal code.

Congrats to Luis Herrera, LJ’s 2012 Librarian of the Year ( Tame The Web)
From Library Journal: "Herrera is LJ’s 2012 Librarian of the Year because of his joyous spirit and infectious optimism about libraries and his willingness to communicate that optimism to all those involved, especially the citizens of San Francisco."

Innovations continue for 3M Cloud Library (Library Technology Guides)
3M is the only vendor that offers a complete platform for downloading digital content and e-books through 3M Cloud Library Apps (Android and iOs), 3M Discovery Terminals, 3M eReaders, and 3M Cloud, and simplifies the way users download materials by eliminating the need of Adobe ID, requiring only a valid library card number.

Encore Release 5 brings social networking capabilities to discovery platform (Library Technology Guides)
Encore, the one search discovery tool for libraries with Millennium ILS platforms is adding new social networking features: "like" ans share content on social networks, with the option to share personal website, reading lists and access reviews from other users.

Introducing discipline scoped searching and customizable search widgets for the Summon Service (Library Technology Guides)
"With Summon, librarians can now easily create, customize and embed discipline scoped search boxes and search widgets in any web environment—including research guides, course management pages, collaborative research portals and more—to provide users with the ability to search for highly relevant materials from a discipline focused setting."

This Is How You Defeat SOPA/PIPA: 7.5M People Sign Petitions, 40K Call Capitol Hill ( ReadWriteWeb)
The battle to stop SOPA/PIPAis is not over but it is encouraging when millions of users are against the bill, even nineteen senators who now oppose PIPA, "including seven who formerly co-sponsored the bill".

New OCLC WorldShare License Manager combines knowledge base with linking technology to offer new approach to electronic resource management (OCLC News)
From OCLC press release: "Built on the OCLC WorldShare Platform and WorldCat knowledge base, License Manager helps library staff more effectively manage the selection, purchase and availability of databases and e-resources. This new service consolidates link resolution, subscriptions, licenses, vendor information, access and rights management to enable Webscale management, discovery and delivery of licensed and electronic resources."

Happy New Year to all readers of Library Blog Buzz!

In the new 2012 Library Blog Buzz is going to change its name to Library Blogs Buzz Weekly and will focus on weekly news posts from the library technology blogosphere. With time I will try to expand the number of library and technology blogs covered.

Without more ado, lets look at what this first week of 2012 had to offer.

Read more...

Databases were also subject of some posts in blogs during the months of September, October and November.

EBSCO Discovery Service Now Includes HathiTrust Collection (Resourceshelf)
HathiTrust, the digitized collections of more than 50 major research institutions and libraries is now part of EBSCO Discovery Service.

EBSCO Discovery Service expands music content with Grove Music Online Agreement (Library Technology Guides)
Grove Music Online is part of EBSCO now.

ProQuest's content expansion continues with Journals of SIAM (Library Technology Guides)
The Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) distributes now through the Proquest platform, its 15 of peer-reviewed journals.

EBSCO Publishing partners with the Canadian Medical Association to provide continuing medical education credits via DynaMed (Library Technology Guides )
"EBSCO Publishing (EBSCO) has partnered with the Canadian Medical Association (CMA) to provide institutional access to Mainpro MI educational credits via DynaMed, an evidence-based reference resource. The integration of DynaMed with the Canadian Medical Association system enables physicians to use DynaMed for research and quickly and easily earn Continuing Medical Education (CME) credits."

Serials Solutions Summon Service to include full-text from Japan's prominent E-Journal hosting site J-Stag (Library Technology Guides )
Serials Solutions signed an agreement with the Japan Science and Technology Agency to provide access to the Japan Science and Technology Information Aggregator, Electronic (J-Stage) for Japanese scientific research.

Kindle Cloud Reader Available on Firefox ( EContent)
Customers with Safari browsers on iPad and desktop, or Chrome and now Mozilla Firefox browsers will have access to Kindle Cloud Reader, the HTML5-based web app that lets you read Kindle books in your web browser.

Google developed new services in September, October and November of last year.

Google Voice Added to Archive Service (Resourceshelf)

"Google Voice is the newest addition to Google Takeout, the search giant's data archival tool that lets users download their data from many Google services, including Buzz, Picasa, and Google+."

Google Kills 10 More Projects, Including Aardvar (Search Engine Watch)
Google discontinued Google Desktop, Aardvar, Fast Flip, Google Maps API for Flash, Google Pack, Google Web Security, Image Labeler, Notebook and Sidewiki

Google Bringing Back Offline Access to Gmail, Docs and Calendar (ReadWriteWeb)
Google is offering offline access for Gmail and will develop access for Google Docs, and Google Calendar.

Google Lets You Block Websites From Anywhere (SearchEngineWatch)
Not happy with a website, block it from search results in Google

Google Launches Wallet, Impact Still Limited (Search Engine Watch)
For now Google Wallet works with one phone and credit card but services will be expanded.

Google to Build Tools to Increase Voter Participation ( ReadWriteWeb)
Google announced the launch of the company's new Google Politics and Elections Team Blog to cover the search engine company increasing voter engagement.

Google Takes On iTunes, Amazon With New Music Store ( Search Engine Land )
Google started their long anticipated music service called Google Music, where users can upload their music( up to 20,000 songs) and then stream those songs to their computers and Android devices.

Google Chrome Will Sync Multiple Browser Profiles ( ReadWriteWeb)
With the new feature customers can use multiple Chrome accounts when they log into Chrome and all of them will be synced.

Google Launches Native Gmail App For iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch, Faces Instant Backlash (TechCrunch)
Google is launching a new Gmail app for iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch with push notifications, search, autocomplete, support for attachments, priority inbox access and labels.

Google Launches Job Search Engine for Veterans (Search Engine Watch)
One more initiative for supporting US veterans.

In July and August of last year there were quite a few interesting posts related to Databases.

Bitberry Releases Free You Tube to MP3 Converter ( EContent)
I always collect info about converters of all sorts. You never know, when yoi wil lneed one.

ProQuest eJournal, Sustainability, Adds Data Discovery Tool(ResourceShelf)
ProQuest's peer-reviewed, open access e-journal Sustainability: Science, Practice, & Policy (SSPP) is introducing a new data discovery tool to its Researcher’s Toolkit that enables users to search more than 3,000 records containing information on tens of thousands of public datasets from the U.S. federal government via data.gov

Credo Reference, OCLC announce new agreement to bring WorldCat content to Credo General Reference service ( Library Technology Guides)
Users from OCLC libraries subscribed to Credo General Reference database can now get a list of books from WorldCat related to their search.

ebrary Ebook Content Now Discoverable through ProQuest Platform ( EContent )
E-books from ebrary are now "discoverable" within Proquest database.

EBSCOhost Integrated with Audiobooks and eBooks (ResourceShelf)
I guess, if ebrary went with Proquest, the other ebooks vendor NetLibrary was aquired by EBSCO and is now integrated with EBSCOhost.

Amazon Launches Kindle Textbook Rental Program (EContent)
Students can now pick checkout (rental)time from 30 days to a year and have access to their notes even after the rental expires, at kindle.amazon.com.

ProQuest acquires U.K.'s Expert Information
ProQuest added two more files for British and Irish dissertations theses to their famous dissertations database.

In July and August there were some really exciting posts.

Libraries Using QR Codes(The Proverbial Lone Wolf Librarian's Weblog)
QR codes are gaining popularity with a lot of businesses, including libraries.

5 Free Collaborative Whiteboard Apps For the iPad( ReadWriteWeb)
Library staff is not using iPads but many private companies do, so knowing more about collaborative apps always helps.

Mail Your Hard Drive to Amazon ( ReadWriteWeb)
For 80$, you can mail your hard drive to Amazon to be backed up in the cloud.

Final Cut Pro X video tutorials ( David Lee King )
It is rare to find free tutorials on the popular video editing software Final Cut Pro.

Facebook Launches Video Chat (ResourceShelf)
Using Skype, Facebook customers can now videochat alone and in groups.

Facebook and Twitter are broadcast design models; Google Plus is a sharing design model(Library clips)
Very nice post from John Tropea, which brings light into how Gpogle Plus differentiates from Facebook and Twitter

Ebook Vendors at #ALA11 (David Lee King)
David Lee King explains who is who in the vendor ebooks business along with the latest development.

Bitberry Releases Free You Tube to MP3 Converter( EContent)
"Free YouTube to MP3 Converter TURBO is a free product that lets users download any video from YouTube and convert it to MP3 on-the-fly."

3M Powers Cloud Library eBook lending service with proven technology platform
This is the first vendor who is offering end-to-end eBook platform to libraries: from the app, to the download station and the cloud.

Amazon Launches Kindle Textbook Rental Program (EContent)
Where was this service when I was a student: renting textbooks for Kindle with 80% discount.

Mac OS X Lion Launches Tomorrow (TechCrunch)
Apple's new Mac operating system, OS X Lion is not a surprise and it costs only $29.

Business Guide to Facebook Launches ( Search Engine Watch)
New resource guide " Business Guide to Facebook" is launched to help businesses with marketing their services.

A Fantastic Reading List on e-books and e-readers in libraries from Sue Polanka ( ALA TechSource Blog)
Wouldn't miss this post about e-books and e-readers.

Farewell Flash? Adobe Launches HTML5 Web Animations Tool "Adobe Edge" ( ReadWriteWeb)
Adobe is designing a tool for editing animation using web standards like HTML5, CSS and JavaScript, but not Flash ?

Google engineers were very productive in May and June and they announced a lot of projects that we need to take a look at.

Google Real Time Search Adds More Sources: Quora, Gowalla & More (Search Engine Land)
Google's Real Time Search now includes data from rom Quora.com ( Q&A), Gowolla (sharing place experience), Plixi(sharing pictures) and others.

Google Announces Local “Business Photos" ( Search Engine Land)
Google is offering a Google sponsored photographer to visit and take photos of you business in Orange County, San Francisco Bay Area, St. Petersburg, Florida, San Antonio, Texas and Phoenix, Arizona.

Google-Backed Corduro Promises Even Lower Mobile Payment Fees Than Square (TechCrunch)
Corduro a Google backed mobile payment services is offering lower fees for payments on mobile devices.

Google to Rent $20/Month Laptops ( ReadWriteWeb)
For now students only will be able to enjoy $20 a month rented laptops with the new Google OS.

Google Goes Big For Financial Comparison Shopping, Launches “Google Advisor” (Search Engine Land)
Google is now offering "Google Advisor,” a one-stop-shop for anyone looking for checking and saving accounts, CDs, mortgages and credit cards.

Google Book Search Adds Contextual Search, Define & Translate (Search Engine Land)
Using the new Google eBooks Web Reader in Google eBooks, users can search, define and translate words.

Google Shuts Down Ambitious Newspaper Scanning Project (Search Engine Land)
Google decided to end the Newspaper Digitization Project to focus on " Google One Pass"," a platform that enables publishers to sell content and subscriptions directly from their own sites.”

Google Map Maker Now Open To US Users (Search Engine Land)
Google Map Maker now available in the US, allows avid cartographers to update or correct Google Maps via a their browser.

Google Adds Flight Info to Search Results (Search Engine Watch)
Flight Information is now part if Google search results.

Google Correlate: A New Way To Research Keyword Popularity & Trends(Search Engine Land)
Google Correlate is a new tool that "finds search patterns which correspond with real-world trends."

Google Makes It Easier to Use "Related Search"(ReadWriteWeb)
"If you perform a search on a particular category, Google will display some of the most popular and referenced items within that category. It will also include the three top sources of this information.

Google Launches "Me on the Web" to Help You Manage Your Online Identity (ReadWriteWeb )
If you wants to remove unwanted content from Google search results and better manage your online identity, try the new Google product called "Me on the Web".

There is no good excuse for disappearing for more than a month from the blogging scene and I am not looking for one. From now on I will make sure that blog posts are updated regularly on my site. As usual, below please see the most interesting posts in March and April.

Build Video Chat Into Your Mobile Apps with OpenTok(ReadWriteWeb)
Not every librarian, will have to build a video chat into a mobile app, but this post can certainly give you some ideas.

7 Things You Should Know About the Modern Learning Commons (American Libraries Perpetual Beta)
learning Commons is " a place where students can meet, talk, study, and use “borrowed” equipment, the learning commons brings together the functions of libraries, labs, lounges, and seminar areas in a single community gathering place.

Bing’s Read/Write World: An Ambitious Project To Bridge Maps With Movies, Photos, Local Data & More (Search Engine Land)
Microsoft created a new “Reality Markup Language” (RML) to index and connect all of the world’s “geo-linked media like maps, photos, panoramas, movies, business listings in a project called Read/Write World.

Amazon to Launch Library Lending for Kindle Books (ReadWriteWeb)
Finally Amazon decided to pay attention to public libraries, which probably means that the Overdrive customers from public libraries will be able to use Kindles to borrow books.

Continuing the Conversation: Gadgets in the Library ( ALA TechSource Blog)
Anyone into gadgets will surely appreciate these two blog posts http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TechsourceBlog/~3/B1eHi-Alu5w/continuing-the-conversation-gadgets-in-the-library.html and http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TechsourceBlog/~3/B4hRrS-t-w4/continuing-the-conversation-gadgets-in-the-library-session-2.html from ALA TechSource Blog, which highlight interesting gadgets, development and apps.

Facebook for Libraries – Best Practices…04.20.11 ( American Libraries Perpetual Beta)
If you are in charge of social media in your library, you might want to check the presentation by Many Boyle.

Reaching Library Users With Mobile Technology…04.20.11 (American Libraries Perpetual Beta)
Another interesting social media presentation by Michael Casey.

We are going to talk about Google again and what they did in February, March and April.

Google Redesigns Google Profiles (Search Engine Land)
Google announced that they made improvements in their Google Profile product to make it easier for users to control info and socialize.

New: Google Lets You Block Any Site From Search Results (Search Engine Land)
You can block any site from showing up on Google Search results now, if you do a search in Google, and then return to the search results near the Cache where you will show " Block all ...."

Gmail Unveils Another Weapon Against Email Overload: Smart Labels (TechCrunch)
Google is exploring new tool in the fight with information overload - notifications in Gmail, which the email client will automatically tag and arrange.

Google Maps Allows You To Tweet Hotpot Reviews; Adds “Pinging” Feature To Check-Ins (TechCrunch)
"Google is making its local directory Places a bit more social today by allowing users to share Hotpot recommendations and reviews on Twitter directly from Google Maps for Android Phones. As you may remember, Hotpot is Google’s new local recommendation service that allows you to rate and review Places."

YouTube launches reform school for copyright violators: You're welcome, Hollywood
(Googling Google)
Google took upon the not easy task to educate users about copyright.

Google drops define: function? (Phil Bradley's weblog)
I am a big fan of define function in Google like Phil Bradley, I don't think Google dropped it completely but the number of definitions is reduced to one or two.

Google News Gets A Bit More Personal (Search Engine Land)
Google News page now opens with stories based on previous searches and with the option to add news stories to your news page.