New Blog to Focus on Building a National Digital Library

LibraryCity is a recently launched weblog that will provide news and comment about the building of a national digital library for the United States. On the LibraryCity homepage it provides a more precise definition about what LibraryCity. It reads, Toward a universal national digital library system with public governance.”

The site is being developed/organized by two experts on libraries and digital material.

2009 Library Technology (b)Log

After a long hiatus, during which I launched 2 additional blogs –http://library.blog.fdu.edu/ and http://valenjdesign.wordpress.com/, I am finally returning to this blog. For the short term, I plan to use this blog to track the day-to-day technology-related tasks and questions that I encounter on my job. The goal is to determine just what technical skills are necessary to work in our library, and to figure out what kind of technology training people, including myself, actually need.

Good News, Bad News

I did not get elected as a Leader-at-Large for the ELUNA Voyager Product Group. It was a bit of a long shot. I am still waiting to find out who won. Hopefully, Sharon Yang, another NJ librarian, from Rider University, was successful in her bid for a position in this group.

The good news is that I will be the new co-chair for the VALE Web Committee. I will be working with Yingting Zhang from UMDNJ (Newark campus). I am looking forward to representing FDU in this role and to contributing to the statewide academic library consortium.

OCLC Will Share Book Records With Google

In an effort to increase the visibility of libraries’ holdings on the Web, Google and OCLC—formerly known as the Online Computer Library Center—have agreed to swap data. Under the arrangement, OCLC member-libraries that have made their holdings available via Google Book Search will share their bibliographic records with Google. And Google Book Search, which contains the digitized text of more than one million books, will provide links to WorldCat, the world’s largest bibliographic database. It is run by OCLC, a nonprofit group that promotes technology in libraries.

Other groups, too, are trying to promote libraries holdings on the Web, including Open Library and LibraryThing.

I am not sure what this may mean for the FDU Library as we are members of OCLC, but we are not yet doing anything with Google Book Search. I welcome comments.

Link to source

New ExLibris Product Development Agreement Signed

I am  pleased to announce that Ex Libris, IGeLU, and ELUNA have signed a new Product Development Collaboration Agreement.  This document outlines the governing principles for collaboration between Ex Libris and its user groups on development and enhancement of the Company’s products. It also details the responsibilities of all three parties in the process of collaboration.  It builds on a strong history of collaboration and lays a solid foundation for ongoing efforts.  It will also serve as the basis for the development of enhancement agreements for each product. Please note that this agreement supersedes IGeLU’s Product Development Cooperation Agreement with Ex Libris (August 22, 2006).

The document has been posted on both the ELUNA and the IGeLU web sites:

http://el-una.org/org/docs/2008_pdc_agreement_final.pdf
http://igelu.org/about-us/developement-cooperations