Google Book Search Copyright Settlement

Posted on by jessamyn

Information you may want if you’re interested in the Google Books lawsuit. I’m still reading so haven’t yet analyzed but this seems like good news?

The library section, down near the bottom of the second link, says this.

This agreement wouldn’t have been possible without all the libraries who have preserved these books and now partnered with us to make so many of them discoverable online. We’re delighted that this agreement creates new opportunities for libraries and universities to offer their patrons and students access to millions of books beyond their own collections. In addition to the institutional subscriptions and the free public access terminals, the agreement also creates opportunities for researchers to study the millions of volumes in the Book Search index. Academics will be able to apply through an institution to run computational queries through the index without actually reading individual books.

linkdump for october ’08

Posted on by jessamyn

Again, here are a set of things that maybe don’t need their own post but are worth letting people know about.

I’ll be doing another post on blogs added to my feed reader lately. I had organized and culled and plumped up my feed reading list a few months back [down time on an airplane] and was all pleased but then the hurricane that was my HD crash set me back to the beginning. I’ve been reading some neat stuff that I’ll be sharing with you.

Workshopping

Posted on by jessamyn

I am always at a loss when I do things called “workshops” and people don’t have computers. Replicating the 2.0 world [or heck even the 1.0 world] using pens and flip charts seems a little silly, but I’m generally a tough one to please when dealing with participatory talks/events. I don’t mind interacting, but I like to think it will be worth my while and not embarass me. I like Andrea’s Blog Her “speed dating” idea. Gets everyone moving, a little, doesn’t embarass them, makes them think.

If it were my workshop I think I’d have everyone be in two lines and person #1 would say “I work at [$NAME_OF_LIBRARY]” person #2 would say “I know [$THING_I_KNOW] about [$NAME_OF_LIBRARY]” and then they’d move on, 60 seconds, bang. Point being, I think we sometimes have a hard time understanding what our institutions look like to people from outside them and from the outside it can be tough to know what things look like on the inside. I was showing off some Kansas libraries using Twitter this week and naming one library sent a few people in the audience into giggles. I had no idea why. They explained later that it was because of some recent drama concerning the library and the local consortia that I would have had no way of knowing about. Knowing about it was actually a neat thing, more stories, more data.

If anyone’s been in a workshop with an activity — offline if possible though online is fine — that you’ve really liked, please feel free to share in the comments. I’m always looking for new ideas.

HOWTO give a good presentation

Posted on by jessamyn

Aaron has a good post about giving good presentations. As always, stick around for the comments. I offered my advice. Even in the short thread, it’s interesting that people have such different ideas about what makes a good presentation. Should it be something that can be repackaged and replayed without the presenter at a later date? Should there be handouts? What’s the balance between charisma and raw data?