Wheeee!
October 7th, 2006Beyond the OPAC : future directions for Web-based catalogues - Text of papers, PowerPoint Presentations, and Mp3 files. (via)
Finding Finding Aids on the Web - (E-LIS - 10/07/06) - “Reports results of a study to explore how well six popular Web search engines performed in retrieving specific electronic finding aids mounted on the World Wide Web. A random sample of online finding aids was selected and then searched using AltaVista, Excite, Fast Search, Google, Hotbot and Northern Light, employing both word and phrase searching. As of February 2000, approximately 8 percent of repositories listed at the ‘Repositories of Primary Resources’ Web site had mounted at least four full finding aids on the Web. The most striking finding of this study was the importance of using phrase searches whenever possible, rather than word searches. Also of significance was the fact that if a finding aid were to be found using any search engine, it was generally found in the first ten or twenty items at most. The study identifies the best performers among the six chosen search engines. Combinations of search engines often produced much better results than did the search engines individually, evidence that there may be little overlap among the top hits provided by individual engines.”
Academic Blog Portal - “Welcome to the main portal page for the academic blogs wiki. Brad DeLong has described the academic blogosphere as a kind of Invisible College - this site is supposed to help make the College a little more visible to itself and its readers.” (via)
New(ish) Libr* Blog - Cliff Landis
Pure Video - “Use PureVideo to find any video on the web” (via)
NYT Book Review Podcasts - “Every week, Book Review Editor Sam Tanenhaus talks to authors, critics, editors and best-seller columnist Dwight Garner about new books. The files below are in mp3 format, and instructions for subscribing to the weekly podcast are below.”
Web Presentations With Sound: Soundslides Makes Creating Online Audio-Visual Presentations Easy - (Robin Good - 10/07/06) - “Soundslides is a simple, affordable way of getting audio-visual presentations onto the web. With no more than a folder of image files and an audio recording of your narration, Soundslides will output an easy to view, simple to navigate presentation ready to be viewed in any browser.”
Reading rabbit tells you what’s up, Doc - (Vancouver Sun - 10/07/06) - “If you’ve got a WiFi router and you have a deep desire to have a cute rabbit do things like read you the news, sing your favourite MP3 to wake you up and provide you with the weather forecast for your area then, hey, it’s probably time you got a Nabatztag (available at ThinkGeek, www.thinkgeek.com). For even more money — a subscription of $14.95 US a month — you can get Nabaztag to read you an RSS feed (if you have to ask, you don’t need this) and tell you how your stocks are doing, plus give you e-mail and GoogleTalk alerts.”
Divvycast - “With Divvycast, bands, solo artists, producers, and DJ’s can get closer to their core audience, reach new fans, and get paid while they’re doing it.” (via)