The Library and Information Technology Association (LITA) has posted discussion regarding the “top technology trends” forum held at ALA Midwinter. It’s an interesting read (http://litablog.org/?cat=6). This posting is from LITA’s own blog.
This CNN article (http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/science/01/26/tiny.fish.ap/index.html) describes the discovery of the world’s smallest fish, which has been identified in Indonesia. The article quotes Ralf Britz, who was one of our contributors on the Fishes volumes for Grzimek’s Animal Life Encyclopedia. Amazing stuff.
Greenwood is launching a new imprint called Praeger Security International (PSI). It will feature the continuation of a book series from Praeger devoted to military history, intelligence issues, and so forth, but it will be combined with a website containing information that will be free to the general public, at least at first. Read about it at http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6300991.html.
I’m back at my hotel after a long but very useful day of meetings with prospective clients; tonight I’ll be dining with a colleague from Thomson Gale. Word on the convention floor is that attendance yesterday was fairly light, and most vendors were not optimistic that today would be any better. ALA Midwinter is always smaller than ALA Annual; it’s known as the “business” meeting, when the various committees and divisions of ALA conduct a lot of their organizational business. There is a lot of discussion about what attendance will be like in New Orleans this summer. Past conventions in New Orleans typically have seen lighter attendance than other, more accessible (and cooler) locations such as Chicago. What with the Katrina recovery, many vendors are worried that librarians will stay away in droves. My flight was delayed yesterday, and so I unfortunately missed the opening session and speech by Madeline Albright. And the weather is chilly, gloomy, and rainy. All that said, my meetings today were quite informative, and I look forward to returning home and getting to work.
Booklist has announced its annual “Top of the List” awards (http://www.ala.org/ala/pressreleases2006/january2006/booklist2005toplist.htm), which are chosen from its Editors’ Choice citations for 2005. This year the reference award goes to the Encyclopedia of Religion, published by Macmillan (an imprint of Thomson Gale). The nonfiction winner, a biography of J. Robert Oppenheimer, was coauthored by Martin Sherwin, who is a longtime contributor to the Scribner Encyclopedia of American Lives.
Thomson Gale has added titles from several new publishers to its Virtual Reference Library, which contains dozens of e-book titles, all searchable through a single interface. The publisher partners now include M.E. Sharpe, Sage Publications, John Wiley and Sons, Idea Group Reference, and Berkshire Publishing. The full list of titles/publishers is available at www.gale.com/eBooks .
Library Journal has named its 2006 Librarian of the Year (http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6298433.html). It’s Rivkah Sass, director of the Omaha Public Library. Interestingly, Sass worked for Thomson Gale for several years in the 1990s between library stints. (I never knew her, unfortunately.) She has apparently done some very innovative things to enhance Omaha Public’s services.
Mary Gillaspy, our friend and colleague who is the director of Northwestern Memorial Hospital’s Health Learning Center in Chicago, sent me this link to an article in Medscape (http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/520070; registration is free but required). The article’s author offers a favorable opinion of Wikipedia and suggests that the traditional peer-reviewed medical/science paradigm may be outdated. Certainly, the peer-reviewed journal system has its flaws, and it wasn’t helped by the recent discovery that a Korean scientist faked his research in cloning human embryos and extracting stem cells from them, research that he published in the prestigious journal Science. But it’s worth keeping in mind that most librarians and educators still view Wikipedia with distrust and prefer more authoritative sources, whether these are peer-reviewed journals or encyclopedia entries that likewise go through a lengthy editorial review process before being published. But it will be interesting to see how this debate develops in the near future.
The American Library Association has announced plan’s for this year’s National Library Week, to be held April 2-8. The theme is “Change Your World @ Your Library.” We’ll be looking for ways in which we might participate in our local libraries’ activities, both here in Broward County and in Vermont.
The Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) has started a blog (www.acrlblog.org). I’ve added it to our links list for now, although I need to be careful not to add too many blog links lest the list become unwieldy. This site seems quite useful and informative, however. There is a posting from Dec. 30 about the top stories of 2005 for academic librarians. Check it out.
Earlier this week I got a lovely holiday card in the mail from Lee and Brenda Lerner, of Lerner & Lerner. The Lerners have contributed to a number of our science titles in the past, and they have since produced many excellent titles on their own. They do numerous projects for Thomson Gale, and they also work in the multimedia and film field. They travel frequently and have contacts throughout Europe (their holiday card was postmarked from Paris). Lee told me recently that they are considering making a permanent move to France from their current home in coastal Alabama, where they have been swamped by hurricanes in the past few years–something we understand all too well. Check out their site for an interesting perspective on a fellow book production company.
I am slowly but surely figuring out how to manage this blog and navigate the blogosphere. I have added a few RSS links; you should be able to click on these links and see a summary of the news items posted recently on those sites. (All the sites I’ve added so far are blogs, but I could also syndicate news and other kinds of sites, if I were so inclined.) If you want to read a particular item, simply click on the specific line and you will be taken to that site.
Today’s New York Times features a commentary about the Wikipedia vs. Britannica debate (http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/03/science/03comm.html; registration is required). The author makes some interesting points about the exceedingly minor nature of some of the so-called errors in both sources as outlined in the recent issue of Nature.
The new issue of Information Today, which focuses on the electronic information industry, has arrived. It is dominated, once again, by Google news. The issue features a “viewpoint” by a Google exec who seeks to explain the rationale behind the company’s controversial Google Book Search product. In addition, it seems nearly every other article in this issue mentions Google in some way or another. Another interesting highlight of the issue is an article of predictions from industry professionals about the year ahead. Virtually all the observers feel that the industry is in the midst of a genuine revolution, one that threatens traditional publishing media and firms (e.g., print publishers, directory publishers, journal publishers) while offering huge opportunities to companies that can capitalize on new technologies. And there is a report on the European National Library initiative, which provides access to more than 100 collections from national libraries throughout Europe. This could be a useful tool for some of our various research projects. Once again I’m reminded of what a fascinating–and yes, challenging–time it is in our industry.