The following two databases are no longer available:
Heritage Quest [Genealogy] - our subscription has been cancelled. Hopefully we will replace with another genealogical database in 2010.
Garden & Horticulture Index - was being offered to TAL core members free, but not anymore. This was not a full-text database.
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
january staff meeting - delicious bookmarks
delicious is a service for finding, saving and sharing links. This is sometimes called social bookmarking. Other social bookmarking services include digg, stumbleupon, and reddit.The new library subject guide pages use links stored in delicious.
- This allows us to give all staff access to our links, so they can be edited at any time, by anyone (as long as they have the password).
- Delicious allows us to import links lists into our webpages automatically, without editing them.
- Delicious uses tags, which gives us more flexibility in how our links are grouped. It also gives us powerful tools for making changes to whole groups of links at once.
How do tags work?
A tag is just a descriptive keyword applied to an item. Tags are similar to subject headings in that they organize information and make it retrievable. Unlike subject headings, tags are usually created on the fly and usually do not belong to a formal hierarchy.
- Tags are used on many websites, including LibraryThing, Flickr, and blogs.
- Many library staff have trouble getting used to the chaos of tags, but many patrons find them intuitive and useful.
- One item can have unlimited tags, and these tags can describe different aspects of the item.
When we save items on delicious, the tags we use make it possible for us to find bookmarks again. They also help improve the description of that link provided by delicious, which is useful to the whole community using the site.
This tag cloud shows all the tags used in our delicious account so far. The tags correspond to the categories and sub-categories used in our old Selected Sites pages. The larger tags have been applied to more pages.
You can access our full list of tags by clicking on “Tags,” next to the blue-headed bookmark man.
How to save a new bookmark:
The options in the right-hand menu include “Save a new bookmark.” If you click on this, you will arrive at the “Save a new bookmark” screen:
Complete, at least, the URL, title, and tags fields. Once a bookmark has been saved, you can edit this information at any time by clicking on the word “EDIT” below the title and description.
The words in the bottom right corner of the bookmark entry are the tags used for that link. The number in the top right corner is the number of other users who have saved that link. The default way these bookmarks are sorted is by date; the other way to access them, of course, is using their tags.
What to save? This delicious account is replacing our Selected Sites (which will soon be removed from the website altogether). If you stumble upon a link you believe is useful enough to save, especially if it is a difficult subject to research or a frequently asked question, go ahead and add it (even if that Selected Sites page was not your responsibility).
delicious: sign in
delicious: our account
delicious: help
From LibraryJournal: Tags Help Make Libraries Del.icio.us
Current tag cloud:
Monday, September 28, 2009
Gale switched to PowerSearch 2.0
GALE recently switched interfaces and is now using PowerSearch 2.0. The Gale databases we subscribe to include Associations Unlimited, CPI.Q, Contemporary Authors, Opposing Viewpoints, Gale Reference Centre Gold, and the Gale Virtual Reference Library.
Here are some links for training: PowerSearch 2.0 - Public Libraries
Here are some links for training: PowerSearch 2.0 - Public Libraries
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
Beyond TAL: The Finest Union Catalogues the Internet has to Offer
Sorry it took me so long to post these. If anyone is interested here are the links from my training session about union catalogues.
- WorldCat (OCLC - 1.4 billion items)
Advanced options/features: Keyword search, limit by format/publication date/audience/language; select only results in fiction/non-fiction/biography/thesis
- AMICUS (Library & Archives Canada - 30 million records from 1,300 Canadian libraries)
Advanced options/features: Keyword search, subject browse, limit by date/format/language, specific target audience, specific publication type (including government publications!)
- LibraryThing (User-driven website - 38,549,578 books catalogued [4 million + titles])
Advanced options/features: Search using tags (including combining or excluding tags!)—great for compiling book lists or doing readers’ advisory; includes reviews and recommended “readlikes”
- AlouetteCanada
Search Canadian digital collections including records, diaries, photos, artefacts… from a large number of contributing institutions including libraries and archives - The European Library
Access the 48 national libraries of Europe from one portal. Includes books but also all kinds of other materials, including digital resources. 150 million records.
- Google Book Search
7 million titles in full text (although not all books are browsable cover to cover), with advanced search functionality.
- OpenLibrary
The goal: “One webpage for every book.” 20 million records with a wiki interface and philosophy. A project of the Internet Archive. Audience: public rather than libraries.
A few neat archives and digitization projects
All worth a look:
Ration Coupons on the Home Front -- an archive of digitized WWII ration cards and other ephemera. From Duke University Libraries. They also have a bunch of other interesting digital collections including AdViews, which is an archive of advertisements from the 1950s to the 1980s.
Two literary ones-- Orwell Diaries and The Edgar Allen Poe Digital Collection.
Ethnologue - Languages of the World. A huge site, accessible to anyone, cataloging all of the world’s 6,909 known living languages.
The British Library's Archival Sound Recordings-- almost 24,000 items are available on here to the public including music, language and conversation, and wildlife recordings.
Actually the whole British Library online exhibitions site is incredible. Their virtual collections include historical maps of London, Victorian ephemera, and digitized manuscripts and sketchbooks, among other things.
Ration Coupons on the Home Front -- an archive of digitized WWII ration cards and other ephemera. From Duke University Libraries. They also have a bunch of other interesting digital collections including AdViews, which is an archive of advertisements from the 1950s to the 1980s.
Two literary ones-- Orwell Diaries and The Edgar Allen Poe Digital Collection.
Ethnologue - Languages of the World. A huge site, accessible to anyone, cataloging all of the world’s 6,909 known living languages.
The British Library's Archival Sound Recordings-- almost 24,000 items are available on here to the public including music, language and conversation, and wildlife recordings.Actually the whole British Library online exhibitions site is incredible. Their virtual collections include historical maps of London, Victorian ephemera, and digitized manuscripts and sketchbooks, among other things.
Wednesday, May 6, 2009
Print on Demand development
From the Guardian: Blackwell's unveils Espresso Book Machine - any title printed while you wait. This machine prints and binds a book in five minutes, while you wait.
Thursday, January 8, 2009
Canadian Copyright Online: What Libraries Need to Know
Canadian Copyright: 5 bullet overview
Libraries’ Rights
Libraries have specific rights that are set out in the Copyright Act. First, libraries can copy works in order to maintain and manage their collections. For example, a library can make a copy of a rare work it owns if the work itself is in danger of deteriorating.
Libraries also have certain rights that control what they can provide to their patrons, especially through interlibrary loans. Libraries may copy an entire article of a scholarly, scientific or technical nature for a patron. They can also copy all other periodical articles, as long as the article is at least a year old at the time the copy is made. These copies must be for private research or educational purposes, and these rights apply only as long as no commercial alternative is available.
Fair Dealing
What is called “fair use” in American copyright law is known as “fair dealing” in Canada (although the two are NOT exactly the same, as fair use extends much further and is more clearly defined). Fair dealing is the use of copyrighted works for one of the following five uses: (a) private study, (b) research, (c) criticism, (d) review or (e) news reporting. Much of the copying patrons engage in could be considered this type of use. More specific guidelines for what constitutes fair dealing have never been defined by Canadian legislation or court decisions. Fair dealing is a legal defence, in the sense that only the courts can determine if a particular use of a copyrighted work is fair dealing or infringement.
Fair dealing covers only the five types of use outlined above. It has nothing directly to do with the amount of the original source used, whether the copier profits from the use, or whether the source material has been altered. These factors may be considered as part of a fair dealing defence, but any standards set using these criteria are arbitrary and do not come from the law.
Copyright Collectives
There is no central agency in Canada that registers all copyright holders. The closest thing to such an agency is copyright collectives, which represent groups of copyright holders, authorizing copying and collecting compensation on their behalf. The main collective for English-speaking Canada is Access Copyright (http://www.accesscopyright.ca).
Copyright Online
A common conception is that material available on the Internet is not subject to copyright. Even if we know online material is copyrighted, we often tend to act as if we believe it isn’t. In the eyes of the law, material published online is no different from any other type of published material, and reproduction of online works is subject to the same restrictions as the use of any other copyrighted material.
The exception to this rule is websites and other materials that are intentionally published with alternative licenses. For example, all the text of Wikipedia is licensed under a GNU Free Documentation License. Therefore, Wikipedia authors do not retain their copyright, and the content from this website can be used in many ways. Many blogs (including this one), photos and academic papers published online are given Creative Commons licenses by their creators. Creators can specify how their content can be re-used, rather than taking advantage of the blanket protection offered by traditional copyright. These alternative forms of licensing are developed because creators do not want their works to be subject to all of the constraints of copyright. They voluntarily give up some of their rights to make their work more freely available.
The Digital Music Exception
Canada is one of the few countries where copying of music onto blank media (CDs, cassettes) is legal, because music industry copyright holders are compensated through a levy that is paid by consumers on such blank media. Such copying is legal even if the copier does not own the original recording. To constitute a legal copy, the recording must be for private use only, and it cannot be rented, sold, or distributed in any way. Uploading a file (which usually happens automatically with the use of a peer-to-peer network such as LimeWire) is not necessarily legal, however, and it is not covered by this levy.
End User License Agreements and Digital Rights Management
The way libraries can provide access to information is often dictated by End User License Agreements (EULAs) and other types of contracts. Even if all you do is click on “I Agree,” or even open a shrink-wrapped CD-ROM, this may constitute entering into a contract, which supersedes copyright law. EULAs apply to many electronic resources such as databases, and they often prohibit use that would otherwise be considered fair dealing—including, in some cases, making copies of any kind.
“Digital Rights Management” (DRM) refers to any type of control that is placed on an electronic product to determine how it is used or distributed. For example, some audio CDs cannot be copied to a computer. Like EULAs, DRM can prevent use that could be considered fair dealing. One of the most important aspects of copyright reform in Canada is whether it is legal for users to circumvent DRM.
Often, electronic products have “use rights” instead of “ownership rights” attached to them. Both DRM and EULAs affect how users can access materials, even materials that they have purchased or that are in the public domain. DRM and EULAs can result in digital products that can are useful in only very limited ways. They can also have serious, negative ramifications for the privacy of end users.
Resources
For finding public domain or un-copyrighted material:
For learning more about copyright:
Two copyright bloggers:
- Copying of recorded or published materials in Canada is governed by the Copyright Act, first ratified in 1921.
- Copyright protects ideas as expressed in a particular form, not the ideas themselves.
- It applies to "original literary, dramatic, musical and artistic" works.
- The standard term for copyright is 50 years from the death of the author.
- Strathcona County Library pays a licensing fee to Access Copyright which gives our staff and patrons the right to photocopy—as a rule of thumb, up to 10% of a published work (such as a book) or one entire newspaper article, short story, play, poem, essay, etc. from an anthology or serial.
Libraries’ Rights
Libraries have specific rights that are set out in the Copyright Act. First, libraries can copy works in order to maintain and manage their collections. For example, a library can make a copy of a rare work it owns if the work itself is in danger of deteriorating.
Libraries also have certain rights that control what they can provide to their patrons, especially through interlibrary loans. Libraries may copy an entire article of a scholarly, scientific or technical nature for a patron. They can also copy all other periodical articles, as long as the article is at least a year old at the time the copy is made. These copies must be for private research or educational purposes, and these rights apply only as long as no commercial alternative is available.
Fair Dealing
What is called “fair use” in American copyright law is known as “fair dealing” in Canada (although the two are NOT exactly the same, as fair use extends much further and is more clearly defined). Fair dealing is the use of copyrighted works for one of the following five uses: (a) private study, (b) research, (c) criticism, (d) review or (e) news reporting. Much of the copying patrons engage in could be considered this type of use. More specific guidelines for what constitutes fair dealing have never been defined by Canadian legislation or court decisions. Fair dealing is a legal defence, in the sense that only the courts can determine if a particular use of a copyrighted work is fair dealing or infringement.
Fair dealing covers only the five types of use outlined above. It has nothing directly to do with the amount of the original source used, whether the copier profits from the use, or whether the source material has been altered. These factors may be considered as part of a fair dealing defence, but any standards set using these criteria are arbitrary and do not come from the law.
Copyright Collectives
There is no central agency in Canada that registers all copyright holders. The closest thing to such an agency is copyright collectives, which represent groups of copyright holders, authorizing copying and collecting compensation on their behalf. The main collective for English-speaking Canada is Access Copyright (http://www.accesscopyright.ca).
Copyright Online
A common conception is that material available on the Internet is not subject to copyright. Even if we know online material is copyrighted, we often tend to act as if we believe it isn’t. In the eyes of the law, material published online is no different from any other type of published material, and reproduction of online works is subject to the same restrictions as the use of any other copyrighted material.
The exception to this rule is websites and other materials that are intentionally published with alternative licenses. For example, all the text of Wikipedia is licensed under a GNU Free Documentation License. Therefore, Wikipedia authors do not retain their copyright, and the content from this website can be used in many ways. Many blogs (including this one), photos and academic papers published online are given Creative Commons licenses by their creators. Creators can specify how their content can be re-used, rather than taking advantage of the blanket protection offered by traditional copyright. These alternative forms of licensing are developed because creators do not want their works to be subject to all of the constraints of copyright. They voluntarily give up some of their rights to make their work more freely available.
The Digital Music Exception
Canada is one of the few countries where copying of music onto blank media (CDs, cassettes) is legal, because music industry copyright holders are compensated through a levy that is paid by consumers on such blank media. Such copying is legal even if the copier does not own the original recording. To constitute a legal copy, the recording must be for private use only, and it cannot be rented, sold, or distributed in any way. Uploading a file (which usually happens automatically with the use of a peer-to-peer network such as LimeWire) is not necessarily legal, however, and it is not covered by this levy.
End User License Agreements and Digital Rights Management
The way libraries can provide access to information is often dictated by End User License Agreements (EULAs) and other types of contracts. Even if all you do is click on “I Agree,” or even open a shrink-wrapped CD-ROM, this may constitute entering into a contract, which supersedes copyright law. EULAs apply to many electronic resources such as databases, and they often prohibit use that would otherwise be considered fair dealing—including, in some cases, making copies of any kind.
“Digital Rights Management” (DRM) refers to any type of control that is placed on an electronic product to determine how it is used or distributed. For example, some audio CDs cannot be copied to a computer. Like EULAs, DRM can prevent use that could be considered fair dealing. One of the most important aspects of copyright reform in Canada is whether it is legal for users to circumvent DRM.
Often, electronic products have “use rights” instead of “ownership rights” attached to them. Both DRM and EULAs affect how users can access materials, even materials that they have purchased or that are in the public domain. DRM and EULAs can result in digital products that can are useful in only very limited ways. They can also have serious, negative ramifications for the privacy of end users.
Resources
For finding public domain or un-copyrighted material:
- Compfight: http://www.compfight.com/ - A search engine that searches flickr. Turn the “Creative Commons” setting to “Commercial” to find images that can be used for any purpose.
- PicFindr: http://www.picfindr.com/ -A search engine for stock photo sites. Photos may be watermarked.
- Public Domain Music: http://www.pdinfo.com/ - A site to identify public domain music and lyrics.
- Prelinger Archvies: http://www.archive.org/details/prelinger - one of the Internet’s largest film archives, containing advertising, home movies, educational films and ephemera in the public domain.
For learning more about copyright:
- Canadian Intellectual Property Office – Guide to Copyrights. http://snipurl.com/2xgkh
- Canadian Library Association’s Copyright Resource Centre. http://www.cla.ca/AM/Template.cfm?Section=Copyright_Information
- Copyright Act. http://laws.justice.gc.ca/en/C-42/index.html [note that a bill to revise the Copyright Act, Bill C-61, was tabled last year and will likely be re-introduced in 2009.]
- Laura J. Murray and Samuel E. Trosow. Canadian Copyright: A Citizen’s Guide. 346.710 MUR 2007.
- Media Awareness Network: Canadian Copyright Act Overview. http://snipurl.com/2xert
- University of Alberta – Copying Right. http://www.ls.ualberta.ca/copyrightoffice/copyingright.htm
Two copyright bloggers:
Monday, January 5, 2009
Two new electronic resources: NovelistPlus and Small Engine Repair Reference Center
Did you know--we now subscribe to NovelistPlus and the Small Engine Repair Reference Center?NovelistPlus is an enhanced version of Novelist which includes non-fiction titles and authors. This means about 50,000 new titles in Novelist.
SERRC contains the service manuals for all kinds of small engines including ATVs, lawn mowers, motorcycles, snowmobiles, boat motors, tractors, etc.
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
Photo archive: LIFE
Google is now hosting the archive of images from LIFE Magazine. This archive would be great for historical research and is also fun to browse. Many of the images included were never even published in LIFE--they are available here for the first time.
You can search only this archive from the regular Google image search by adding "source:life" at the end of the search, for example: coffee source:life
Many of them are very high-resolution, although their copyright extends only to personal use.
You can search only this archive from the regular Google image search by adding "source:life" at the end of the search, for example: coffee source:life
Many of them are very high-resolution, although their copyright extends only to personal use.
Monday, November 17, 2008
Google and Meta Searching
Google Tips and Tricks
Google automatically “ands” search terms, and excludes common words (“stop” words) and most punctuation. Google automatically stems words (use phrase searching to avoid this). Word order in search affects how results are ranked. Use capitalized OR to “or” search terms.
Boolean Operators for Google: OR, +, - , ( )
Quick Look-Ups
| To Find: | Type: | Example: |
| Time anywhere | time location | time Lima |
| Weather anywhere | weather location | weather Edmonton |
| Word definitions | define:term | define:pedantic |
| Stock information | stock:abbreviation | stock:GOOG stock:MMM |
| Get a cached version of a page (When a site is down) | cache:URL | cache:http://www.sclibrary.ab.ca |
Perform conversions and calculations
| To Perform: | Type: | Example: |
| Conversions | x in y | 70 in in m 4 tonnes in pounds |
| Math calculations | numbers and + - * / ( ) | 4*7 (15*3)/7 |
| Currency Conversions | amount in currency | 1 USD in CAD 1 Canadian dollar in Australian currency |
Search limiters - Retrieve fewer results
| To: | Type: | Example: |
| Search within a single site | query site:www.domain.com | cabinet site:www.gov.ab.ca |
| or type of site | query site:.domain | entrance requirements site:.edu |
| Limit to a single file type | query filetype:extension | presentation filetype:ppt |
| Exclude a particular file type | query -filetype:extension | presentation -filetype:ppt |
"Fuzzy" searching--retrieve more results
Tilde (~) adds related terms to a search: for example, “~auto loan” will also retrieve car loan and truck loan
Recommended links:
Googling to the Max [From Berkeley Unviversity] [PDF] - a guide to Google searching features, with a focus on in-depth research.
Google Labs - Google's page for their new and upcoming features and projects
Google and Libraries Wiki - This wiki is based on the Netspeed 2008 Presentation "Google and the Future of the Public Library," delivered by Kay Cahill and Michele Pye. It includes lots of tips on how libraries can use Google features, including some more in-depth ones not covered here.
Answers to questions I sent out:
- Question 1: use a phrase search, eg., "Namey McName" OR "Namey P. McName"
- Question 2: define:alacrity
This function retrieves definitions from all over the Web
- Question 3: 1 Canadian dollar in US dollars, or 1 CAD in USD
Note: This will work even if you don’t know the abbreviation, or even the name of the currency you are looking for. You can just say “Chinese currency” or “Russian currency” or whatever.
- Question 4: search the job name (possibly in parentheses) followed by site:www.macewan.ca. This is mainly helpful if you know the URL of the site you are searching. (Note: Many sites will have their own internal search, but the quality of these search functions varies. This can be a good workaround if you find the internal site search for a particular site is not giving you good results.)
- Question 5: search “hot chilli peppers” –band and/or –music
- Question 6: Time Toronto (This will provide time zone information as well)
- Question 7: Search “effective e-communications” filetype:ppt
Note: The filetype is the actual file extension. .doc for Microsoft Word documents, .txt for text files, .mp3 for MP3s, etc.
- Question 8: use brackets and OR to combine search terms. Recipe (Kenya OR Tanzania OR Uganda)
Meta-Searching
Examples of meta-search engines
- Dogpile
http://www.dogpile.com/ - Surfwax
http://www.surfwax.com/ - Clusty
http://clusty.com/ - MetaCrawler
http://www.metacrawler.com/
How Does Meta-Searching work?
Advantages:
- Can search the deep/hidden web
- Can retrieve more results and a greater variety of results than a single search engine
- Reduces interference from a single search engine—for example, if a page has an artificially high ranking in Google or Yahoo a meta-search engine may help to compensate
- Can provide more in-depth tools for organizing and limiting results
Disadvantages:
- Within aggregated results relevance rankings may be skewed—best results may not always be at the top
- Sponsored results may be interspersed among results without adequate disclosure
- The quality of meta-search results is limited by the quality of the data in the databases being queried. Many meta-search engines use free or small search engines for source data
Recommended link: MetaCrawlers and Meta-Search Engines [Links to many of these services including reviews)
Saturday, August 16, 2008
Twitter for Librarians
Twitter for Librarians - suggestions for using Twitter in the library. Twitter is a tool for "micro-blogging"--short updates, up to 140 characters. The individual updates posted via Twitter are sometimes called "Tweets." Twitter also allows its users to interact with each other, commenting on each other's tweets and "tagging" other users in their posts.My personal twitter feed, with my most recent tweet, looks like this:
For an example of a public library using Twitter, see The Missouri River Regional Library. Their Twitter stream contains updates about new content on their webpage, upcoming programs and events, and library services. At the time of this posting, they have 59 "Followers," meaning 59 other Twitter users who are receiving updates via Twitter.
Other libraries/library associations using Twitter:
Cleveland Public Library | Website | Twitter Feed
Grand Rapids Public Library | Website | Twitter Feed
ALA's Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA) | Website | Twitter Feed
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
Book recommendation: Here Comes Everybody
Here Comes Everybody: How Digital Networks Transform Our Ability to Gather and Cooperateby Clay Shirky (2008)
303.48 SHI
Clay Shirky writes about how technology enables social networks, and in particular, lets them develop without the structures that always used to accompany them. My favourite part, on Wikipedia:
"Wikipedia's utility for millions of users has been settled; the interesting questions are elsewhere." (117)His website, Shirky.com -- includes articles on a number of Web 2.0 related topics.
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
Databases update: Consumer Reports
This is just a note that we can now retrieve Consumer Reports through our databases with no embargo. (In the past, the most recent three months were citations only, not full-text). We get this publication through a number of databases including Academic Search Elite, Business Search Elite, and CPIQ.
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
New search engine
A newcomer to the search world - Cuil - claims to index three times as many pages as Google does, and also has a different and interesting way of presenting results. I haven't had much of a chance to play around with this yet, but it will be interesting to see if it can even make a dent in Google's search supremacy. It does have some pretty nifty features, including suggested search terms (these appear as soon as you start typing). And check out the results page--it looks more like a page of database results than a search engine.
Read more about Cuil on the ALA tech source blog.
Friday, July 25, 2008
Credo Reference update
In early August, Credo Reference will introduce the new version of its service. Credo will include these new features:- Faceted browsing - Refine searches by subject, person, location, type of content, and entries with images, animations or audio.
- Possible links directly from Credo to our catalogue.
- Multilingual interface options
- Improved concept mapping and visual search
- Saving and exporting results and citations - including to external tools like RefWorks
Links:
overview of Credo's new features [PDF]
SCL's database list
FAQ
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