Librarian Way

There is a lot of great stuff over on the MassonBisson.com Web site. I am putting this link here so that I don’t forget about it. He has provided a number of links to papers and tutorials for Using XML in PHP5, which I may need in my current project.

I am currently enrolled in two classes in SJSU SLIS. One is a special projects class where I am doing back-end PHP coding for the redesign of the SLIS Web site. Having studied XML/XSLT, I am going to investigate if the PHP/XML option will be better for something that I need to do, rather than getting involved in setting up a MySQL database for something very lightweight.

I went to Casey Bisson’s blog because I am writing a paper about Web 2.0, and I wanted to clarify something I remember him writing about creating a search in Lamson Library using A9.com. I found what I was looking for in his NEASIS&T presentation posted on one of his blogs at NEASIS&T Buy, Hack or Build Followup.

The April 2005 issue of Searcher: The Magazine for Database Professionals has an article about Open Access (Wikipedia entry). Jill Grogg’s article “Linking Users to Open Access,” “offers help for librarians who face the daily task of providing users with integrated access to quality scholarship, whether free or fee-based.”

The issue also has an article by David Mattison titled “RedLightGreen and Open WorldCat.” The article has a summary of comparisons between Open WorldCat [OCLC - WorldCat] and RedLightGreen (p. 19).

Speaking of Open Access and a tie-in with my current research interest, Library Autonomous Zone’s blog entry New open access govt information journal, has a link to Open Government: a journal on Freedom of Information.

This journal is international: Most of the articles in the first issue, March 2005, seem to be related to the UK’s Freedom of Information Act (2000), though the same issues are important to other nations too. This journal is currently a series of PDF files—even the editorial! I wish they had at least added abstracts so that one is not forced to download each PDF. More people will find and use the journal if they don’t have to do the extra steps of downloading, opening, and deleting just to see the what the article is about. I downloaded “The Third International Conference of Information Commissioners,” by David Goldberg, which gives a some highlights of the February 2005 conference. The conference is urging governments without a freedom of information law to implement one. In the article there are a number of links to more PDF files, but one points to the conference Web site, Info Cancún 2005. The introduction on the Info Cancún Web site begins, “Transparency and access to public information have become fundamental topics, indissoluble of political and social change in the world.”