Library Stuff

I’d be in the front row at The Future of Web Apps summit, put on by Carson Workshops Summitt. Just to meet Joshua Schachter and Eric Costello would be worth the trip. Unfortunately, I won’t be able to attend, but if the summit comes to the states, I’ll be the first to sign up.

The University of Calgary Collection News blogged it. You can also find the information on the support page.

“We are very pleased to announce plans to introduce several significant product enhancements in the beginning of 2006, each designed to increase the efficiency and productivity of EBSCOhost researchers around the world.

+ RSS enabled Alerts allow librarians and users to feed results from EBSCOhost Search and Journal Alerts into their news readers and aggregators, as well as their web sites.”

Suweeeeeeeeeet! As an EBSCO user, I’m loving this.

Acatopia
Originally uploaded by stevenmcohen.

I wish that I had known about Acatopia when I was up in Massachusetts presenting on web-based readers advisory. I would have pointed to it as an example of a good idea with a lot of potential, but no users (I was explaining that in order for collective intelligence to work effectively, well at all, you need people from which to intelligently collect).

The premise behind Acatopia is an open Q&A for books. You look up a book, ask a question and, hopefully, someone will answer you. Simple concept, but no users (in fact, I couldn’t even find an example of a question to show here).

Acatopia needs to show us some examples before we jump in and ask questions. How about an RSS feed of the latest questions asked? Or a development blog (this is a pet peeve of mine). This all said, I wonder if Acatopia will be able to survive on its own. I’d love to see it incorporated somehow into services like Library Thing. I wonder how many of these fair to good collaboration tools could be combined to create one really impressive tool… (link via Robin Good)

Gregory Narain has announced syncPEOPLE:

“We build and maintain web-based communities for events of all sizes, from the biggest trade show to the smallest club. Every event provides opportunities for new connections, we simplify and accelerate the process. Our unique event management system will deliver measurable value and lasting results to event attendees, exhibitors and show management.”

On my radar…

I apologize if I’m blogging so much about William T. Vollmann (WTV), but I’m just too excited about his National Book Award. In the future, these posts will go on my litblog, if I can find the time to get it going. Anyway, The New York Review of Books has a review of Europe Central and Expelled from Eden: A William T. Vollmann Reader, the latter of which is my suggestion for WTV newbies.