I think I first read about Twitter on Creating Passionate Users, but soon thereafter it started popping up on a lot of library blogs I read. I didn’t want to get crushed in the stampede, so I waited out the buzz until this weekend when I got talking about it with a friend and decided to set up an account. If you’re interested, you can find me at acbtanya, but be forewarned: I have no idea how or how often I’ll use it.
Popular Mechanics has published a list of 10 Tech Concepts You Need to Know for 2007. My favorites: data clouds (”you’re one step closer to retiring the original data storage device—the one in your head”) and smart pills (”could make a wide range of invasive procedures obsolete”).
This little note was squeezed into the middle of an All My Eye entry about Ingenta at the Frankfurt Book Fair:
We’ve been working closely with Google for over 2 years now, and the latest development is that we will be making our library holdings data available to Google Scholar’s Library Links program.
The full press release is dated September 25 and I’m surprised I haven’t heard about it before today.
So scholars within an institution’s IP range (on campus or using proxied Scholar links) will get appropriate copy links to Ingenta content without an intermediate OpenURL layer; Ingenta presumably gets its contented highlighted in some way; and Google gets data about library holdings, which it may already have in the case of libraries who participate in the Library Links program. The downside is that the scholar may have no idea why he or she is entitled to the full text, unless the library ponies up for IngentaConnect Premium, which adds branding to the Ingenta site.
It is unclear to me what the user will see for content the library doesn’t license and how the distinction will be made. All in all, an interesting development and one to watch.
It’s that time of year again.
Eric Lease Morgan has posted his trends at the LITA blog in advance of ALA. He touches on catalogs and cataloging, social software and social networking, and open source software, among other things.