Archive for December, 2006
U.S. District Judge Sam Lindsay (No.Dist.Tex.) granted a preliminary injunction against Robert Davis, who had been providing direct links from his website to live streaming audio Webcasts of motorcycle events. The Webcasts are copyrighted by SFX Motor Sports.  For the complete news article, click here.
This ruling is unsettling, because Davis did not reproduce nor redistribute copyrighted materials but only provided a direct link from his website to the Webcasts. The copyright owners objected because this “deep link” bypassed their web page of sponsor advertising.
December 22nd, 2006
MLC Training Coordinator, Heather Thomas, celebrates her 30th birthday tomorrow. Staff decorated her office with balloons, streamers, and NASCAR flags to commemorate the big event!
December 21st, 2006
Google has launched a new online service, Google Patent Search. The official description states, “As part of Google’s mission to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful, we’re constantly working to expand the diversity of content we make available to our users. With Google Patent Search, you can now search the full text of the U.S. patent corpus and find patents that interest you.â€
In addition to basic search, Google Patent Search also includes an Advanced Search that allows searching by patent number, date, title, inventor, and more.
You can also search for intellectual property information online at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office website: Trademark search (TESS) and Patent Search. And the U.S. Copyright Office web site offers Copyright search.
December 20th, 2006
LISNews (Library and Information Science News) posted Ten Stories That Shaped 2006 on their blog Friday: “Another year, another recap! Read on for a look back at the good, the bad, and the ugly library stories of 2006. ”
2006 has been an interesting year for libraries, from tasering a student at UCLA’s library to Library 2.0 to Bush closing EPA Library. See esp. the links from #6 Library Weblog Explosion Redux (good blogs to add to your RSS).
Happy New Year!
December 20th, 2006
The Library of Congress now offers RSS feeds for several topics, including news about LC, webcasts, science reference, copyright, and more.
If you have not yet started to use RSS feeds, I’d like to recommend them as a wonderful and efficient way to keep up on your favorite blogs and web sites. And subscribing to your favorite feeds is pretty easy. LC’s RSS web page includes an FAQ on RSS. For additional information about RSS feeds (and links to subscribe to MLC RSS feeds!), please see MLC’s RSS web page.
December 19th, 2006
ProQuest announced today that it is selling ProQuest Information & Learning to Cambridge Information Group for $222 million. See these articles:
Reuters
Houston Chronicle
Forbes
No word yet on who is purchasing Thomson Learning. Guess we’ll have to stay tuned for that sale.
December 15th, 2006
A few weeks ago, I posted a list of public libraries with local history archives on this blog. In that post, I mentioned that we were playing around with setting up an MLC wiki. It seemed to us that it would be more useful to our member libraries if we provided this type of information in the context of a wiki, rather than through the blog. We also thought that the wiki format would allow for member libraries to contribute and to locate information more readily.
We now have an “under construction” wiki. It is still very much in test mode, and we might end up scrapping the current content before we finalize, but I wanted to give member libraries a sneak preview to hear your input.
A couple of the test pages we’ve set up include Michigan Public Libraries with Local History Collections and Public Library-Museum Combinations. Keeping in mind that this is still a rough draft – what do you think so far? Is there potential for this wiki to be useful to you? Please post your thoughts to the blog. Thanks!
December 12th, 2006
The MLC Annual Report for FY 2006 has been posted on our web site. For links to previous years’ reports, see our Annual Reports web page.
FY2006 was a good year for MLC. During FY2006, we improved and increased services to our members, including new databases, new ejournal and ebook subscriptions, more training workshops and special programs, and MeL services, training, and support (MeL Databases, MeL Delivery, and MeLCat).
We’re looking forward to another good year of service to our membership! Happy New Year!
December 12th, 2006
MLC recently opened a virtual library building in Cybrary City in the virtual world Second Life. If you’re in Second Life, please stop by to see our new facility. The avatar for our librarian, Evie Mikazuki, will be happy to show you around if she’s there. Evie recently conducted a tour for “Librarian Luna” (avatar of a former state librarian of Michigan – can you guess who?).
If you know nothing about Second Life but would like to learn, MLC has a couple of opportunities for you. This month, MLC is offering free online sessions to introduce libraries to Second Life. The December 14 session is already full, but there are still seats available in the December 18 session. And on February 15, our special program “R U A nOOB?” will include a presentation on Second Life.
MLC is still in the exploratory stages with our presence in Second Life. We’re viewing this as an experiment to investigate how Second Life might be used to help us serve our member libraries. Ideas and suggestions are welcome!
December 7th, 2006
Jeff Trzeciak, director of the McMaster University Library, announced on his blog on Monday that his library is “getting out of the cataloging business.” Jeff wrote:
“I know this will not come as a shock to many who have paid attention to the changing library landscape! However, McMaster has been slow to change! Original catalogers will be moving to “tiered referenceâ€. Copy cataloging will cease. We hope to do this as soon as possible and are offering separation incentives to staff.”
It’s a bold move to outsource cataloging entirely. Are any Michigan libraries are going this route as well? What are the implications?
Jeff’s blog post also outlines seven new positions at his library, including Digital Strategies Librarian.
December 6th, 2006
