Librarian Way

The The Book & The Computer Web site says their focus is “exploring the future of the printed word in the digital age.” (Via Library Link of the Day) The latest article is a conversation with University Librarian Michael Keller at Stanford University, in which he discusses the digitization project and their custom-built 4digitalbooks robotic scanner.

The interview includes a discussion of intellectual property issues as it relates to this project. They are first concentrating on scanning books published by Stanford University Press during the last 80 years. Keller states, “We can take books that have been long out of print and put them back on the market, benefiting authors who might not have seen a dime since their first sale long ago.” The scanner can go through 1,000 to 1,200 pages per hour, but they need more of these and they need more organizations using these so that older materials can be made globally available at a faster rate. There must also be coordination of what is being scanned so as to reduce duplication of effort.

Many university libraries and OCLC have digitization projects: OCLC, Digital and Preservation Services Outreach and Colorado Digitization Program have a nice set of resource links. Mary Minnow wrote a six-part overview of copyright law at
LLRX.com - Library Digitization Projects and Copyright. First Monday published a transcript of Clifford Lynch’s 2002 keynote address at the Web-Wise conference
titled Digital Collections, Digital Libraries and the Digitization of Cultural Heritage Information and they have many more presentations from the 2000 Web-Wise conference: First Monday June 2000.

Digitization is something SLIS students need to learn about, as there will be more of it as the cost of digitizing drops.

Not much to report. I went to the LITA “Top Technology Trends,” and someone is going to post the minutes to the LITA Web site. It was an interesting format: The first two hours are a discussion among the members of the committee on all sorts of philosophical and technical issues related to implementing technology in information service organizations. They sit at a table and discuss, and the audience looks on, takes notes, and prepares questions. See Walt Crawford’s special Midwinter 2004 issue of Cites & Insights for some of the issues discussed. (Yes, I finally got his autograph on his new book.) The philosophical issues have to do with privacy for both patrons and library staff, so that they cannot be profiled. A missing committee members sent his list of top trends and suggested that XML is a “Tower of Babel.” I could not catch his name and I am familiar with only two of the group: Crawford and Roy Tennant. There was only one woman in the group: I expect this will change as more females in the profession become familiar with technology. The last part of the session is open for questions from the audience. It looked to me like there were over one hundred people in the audience; there were seven present on the committee.

I went back to the exhibition hall and sat in on a couple of the sessions given by the Library of Congress (LC). They handed out a free CD about the LC at the end of the talk. I also picked up a free coffee mug from them. In the afternoon I attended a LITA/ALCTS joint program on authority control in the online environment, which was over my head because I haven’t taken cataloging yet.

The San Diego Union-Tribune mentioned the ALA Midwinter conference: Librarians to tackle issues during convention. Luis Monteagudo, Jr., on page B3, starts with the sentence, “thousands of librarians will be in town today, but don‘t expect a lot of shushing.” He mentions two issues of concern to librarians: library patron privacy rights that are endangered by the Patriot Act and the jailing of librarians in Cuba who opened libraries that provide a full range of information on issues, rather than only government approved materials.

I think the public forgets, or more likely, is not aware that librarians are contantly fighting, at great expense, for our First Amendment rights. Yesterday, ALA President Hayden was wearing a button that says, Another “HYSTERIC” librarian for freedom. I picked one up for $2.00 in the ALA bookstore.

This was brought to my attention via Library Link of the Day.