Archive for January, 2006
Here’s some good news from the copyright world! A U.S. District Court in Nevada found in favor of Google in an action brought by author/attorney Blake Field against Google. Field’s complaint asserted copyright infringement based on Google’s caching of Field’s copyrighted work which Field had published on his personal web site. In its opinion, the court held that Google held an implied license to reproduce and distribute copies of Field’s copyrighted works, because Field did not instruct Googlebot not to cache his web site by using a “no-archive†meta-tag. The court also held Google’s use of the cached works to be “transformative†fair use under section 107. The latter may be useful to Google’s defense in the pending lawsuits against Google Book Search.
For some good discussion on this case, see Lessig’s blog, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and Computer World. Surprisingly enough for a copyright law decision, the opinion itself also makes for pretty entertaining reading. Enjoy!
January 31st, 2006
Google Maps is a pretty impressive site by itself, but the fact that it’s API is open for anyone to use is much more impressive. I suppose the API has been open to web developers for a long time, but I just stumbled across it in a magazine article. The idea of using Google Maps and plotting my own data on top of it was intriguing. I had to try it for myself.
The documentation for using Google Maps is really clear and includes lots of examples.
Within a few minutes I was able to plot a few points onto a map pf Michigan. Now I needed a real application for the tool. I remembered that Anne Donohue had a paper map of Michigan on her wall with a zillion push-pins in it that indicated the location of MeL delivery locations. This was the perfect application of Google maps that I needed. Anne gave me a list of 306 MeL delivery participants and their addresses in CVS format. Unfortunately you cannot plot addresses onto google maps, you need to have longitude and latitude coordinates. I found a free service, geocoder.us, that will try to translate addresses to longitude and latitude. I tried the site with a few addresses by hand typing them in and found that it worked fairly well. There was no way that I would hand enter 306 addresses into the site, so I wrote a PHP program to run through the list and submit them to the geocoder.us site and hopefully get coordinates back. It worked for over 250 addresses, the rest of the addresses had odd formatting that geocoder did not recognize. Once I had a list of coordinates I used the same PHP program to build the Javascript file with all of the formatting required to plot the addresses on the map. Things looked pretty good at this point, but there was more I could do, so I was able to color-code the icons on the map to correspond to the number of delivery days. Here is the resulting map.
I am pleased with the results. I think the next map I’ll tackle is a plotting of MLC’s 650+ members.
January 30th, 2006
Thanks to the genius of our Chief Technology Officer (Mark Szidik), we now have an online map of all our MeL Delivery locations:
http://www.mlcnet.org/~webmaint/maps/mel-delivery.html
Click on a push pin and it gives the library’s name, address, and number of stops per week.
Cool, huh?
January 26th, 2006
Firefox has been my default browser for a while. One of the things I love about it is the ability to quickly search various databases via the search engine box. And now I love it even more . . .
Mike Van Houten (Stockwell-Mudd Libraries, Albion College) has created a MeLCat title search plugin for Firefox users. He’s made it available to the Michigan library community.
Firefox users just need to click on the MeLCat link and it’ll be installed.
Users of other web browsers may be wondering what’s so exciting . . . Well, you can search for titles in MeLCat without first navigating over to the MeLCat site and selecting a title search. Instead, all you need do is enter the title in the search plugin box and press enter. No need to point your browser to the main MeLCat page first!
There are quite a number of search plugins available for quick download. It’s great to be able to add MeLCat to that list.
January 26th, 2006
Check out the latest at my local library:
Livingston Reads! is a program to encourage adult residents of the Livingston County area to read for pleasure; to create community through reading formally and informally; to promote the exploration of ideas, culture, and knowledge through books; and to advance compassion for others and understanding of human differences through the imaginative experience of reading and sharing. The program runs February 1 – May 31.
“The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time†by Mark Haddon
www.livingstonreads.org
January 26th, 2006
Please visit our brand new MLC Communique Blog! Aaron Smith, our OCLC guru, has been busy all day adding OCLC articles to the new blog. Yay Aaron – welcome to the blogosphere!
I think folks will like the new Communique format. You can now read articles on the blog as soon as MLC receives them, and you’ll no longer need to wait until the end of the month for OCLC updates.
For further information on the MLC Communique Blog and how to set up RSS Feeds, check out our news item on MLC News & Announcements.
January 24th, 2006
I thought folks might like to see what Anne was talking about in her post yesterday about MLC staff working feverishly to package and distribute the MeL marketing materials!
Here are Niki and Heather with the fruits of their labor from this morning’s requests.
January 24th, 2006
Jenny Levine, The Shifted Librarian, posted about OCLC’s Symposium “Extreme Makeover – Rebranding an Industry†on her blog last Friday.  It sounds like it was a good symposium. I’d be interested to hear comments from any of you who attended.
This symposium is timely for us here at MLC, because we’ve been talking among ourselves here about the OCLC Perceptions Report and about libraries needing to go where their patrons are. Ann Arbor District Library appears to be right on target in connecting with their patrons online. For example, see this recent post and comments on AADL’s blog. 30 comments on one post – pretty impressive!
We’ve been thinking about what MLC can do to help other libraries connect with their patrons in new ways. One program we’re considering is a series of workshops, beginning with a look at Librarian 2.0. And, our annual meeting on October 6 will feature George Needham from OCLC talking about the OCLC Perceptions Report. Your comments and suggestions are welcome!
January 23rd, 2006
We’ve added another Michigan library blog to MLC’s blogroll: Grand Valley State University Libraries blog. GVSU’s blog covers the libraries’ highlights, including new resources, activities, and topics of interest.
To see other Michigan library blogs, see the list of Links on the right-hand side of this page. If your library’s blog is not listed here, please click below to comment with your blog’s URL, and we’ll be happy to add it!
January 23rd, 2006
The MeL marketing materials generously provided by Thompson Gale are overflowing in MLC’s workroom. Staff are working feverishly to package and send out bookmarks, stickers, and tear-off pads. We’ve received over 200 requests just since Friday morning! If you don’t know what I’m blathering on about, see MeL Promotional Materials.
January 23rd, 2006
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