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BEYOND OPACS... THE WEALTH OF INFORMATION RESOURCES ON THE INTERNET INTRODUCTION Much has been written about 'the library without walls,' or the ability to access information independent of the library [...]

WHEN PEOPLE REFER to e-books, they typically mean device-dependent e-books such as those marketed by Gemstar. These are also what most people probably think of when hearing the term 'e-book'--a [...]

ALL DIGITAL LIBRARY projects are not created equal. Some projects attract millions of dollars of research funding, while others create useful collections without a dime of outside support. Some projects [...]

'WHAT DIGITAL LIBRARY software application should I buy?' asks the typical harried library staff member. It usually means that his (or her) boss decided that, to be modern, they must [...]

COPYRIGHT AS WE presently know it is dead. To be specific, copyright law as it currently stands is not only unenforceable, it is widely perceived by the general public as [...]

LIBRARIANSHIP FACES a pivotal and possibly disastrous problem. Our noble and essential work, for which we labor in quiet and unrecognized solitude, mostly attracts people for whom technology holds little [...]

AS I POINTED OUT in a previous column ('The Most Important Management Decision,' LJ 2/15/98, p. 102), it's essential to hire flexible staff to meet the challenges of building digital [...]

ABRAHAM MASLOW once said, 'When the only tool you own is a hammer, every problem begins to resemble a nail.' Once you understand XML and the opportunities it offers for [...]

IN A PREVIOUS COLUMN, I discussed the importance of interoperability among digital library projects ('Interoperability: The Holy Grail,' LJ 7/98, p. 38ff.). Users should be able to discover through one [...]

WE DIGITAL LIBRARY developers don't get up in the morning wondering how we can ruin the lives of our patrons. Nonetheless, unintended consequences of our work may damage the capacity [...]

THE COMMON BUSINESS practice of co-branding enables an organization to purchase content or service while making it appear as if it were its own. A typical such arrangement may involve [...]

TWO YEARS AGO, I looked at the issue of selecting items or collections to digitize ('So Much To Digitize, So Little Time (and Money)' LJ 8/98, p. 36-37). Much new [...]

SOME OF US ARE old enough to remember owning and playing vinyl music records. Now, if you don't have an MP3 player, you're nearly ancient history. And between LPs and [...]

RECENTLY THE PRESS has been full of news about how the music industry is trying to shut Napster down to prevent users from swapping pirated music files. But the genie's [...]

NEARLY TWO YEARS AGO, I asserted that print books were going to be around for quite some time ('The Print Perplex: Building the Future Catalog,' LJ 11/15/98, p. 22,24) and [...]

ACQUIRING INTELLECTUAL content on behalf of a particular group of users isn't always as simple as buying it outfight. Librarians have long used a blend of techniques to acquire content, [...]

SOMEHOW THE ART of Salvador Dali seems to be an appropriate accompaniment to an eclectic group of people interested in electronic theses and dissertations (ETDs). Overlooking Tampa Bay, an international [...]

TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGE is rapid and constant. Yet our organizations now depend on technology to serve our clientele as they wish to and should be served. But choosing the technologies that [...]

OVER TWO YEARS AGO I identified interoperability--the capacity of a user to treat multiple digital library collections as one--as a key digital library challenge (LJ 11/15/97, p. 31-32). In a [...]

THE OPEN SOURCE software (OSS) movement has garnered headlines in a variety of computing journals, and Linux--an open source operating system--has even been touted as a competitor to Microsoft Windows. [...]

THE GAME HAS CHANGED, AND IF LIBRARIES STILL WANT TO PLAY THEY'LL HAVE TO INVENT THEIR OWN FUTURE The game has changed; of this I am certain. We face an [...]

A Database for Every Need MANY DIGITAL LIBRARY projects require database software--whether for a catalog of holdings, subject pathfinders, or other kinds of structured information. Database solutions are actually fairly [...]

IN THIS CRAZY, mixed-up world it can be tough to distinguish fact from fancy, hype from honesty, and the next 'killer' application from vaporware. As information bombards us, we must [...]

UNTIL THE LAST FEW decades, the user interface to the library had long remained relatively unchanged. For decades, the only changes in the card catalog were minor tweaks in production [...]

IN AN EARLIER COLUMN ('In-House Digitizing Options,' LJ 9/15/98, p. 30), I described options for digitizing materials in-house. But sometimes you must go outside your organization for the best solution. [...]

BEFORE BEGINNING any project to digitize material (either published or unpublished), you shouldn't assume you have the right to do so. It's an act of publication to digitize something and [...]

WITHIN A DECADE, many libraries have gone from having virtually no online presence to offering an incredible variety of online information resources. No wonder our users are confused. When they [...]

OVER THE LAST SEVERAL years we have made much progress in building digital libraries, but one major problem remains largely unsolved. The digital library is a lonely place. When we [...]

IT'S A VISCERAL, deeply affecting feeling to hold a very old book in your hands, gently turning the brown and fragile pages, experiencing the unique smell of aged paper, and [...]

Roy Tennant of the California Digital Library and Sarah Michalak of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, summarized the dayEs activities and presentation at the conclusion of the ePortals In Libraries: A SymposiumE is discussed. Some of the identified appropriate software applications that are key technologies for integration are mentioned.

I RECENTLY TOOK library catalogs to task for being the wrong solution for the right problem--general information discovery (Digital Libraries, LJ 2/15/03, p. 28). But I believe that federated or [...]

NEARLY THREE-AND-A-HALF years ago I wrote about digital reference in these pages (LJ 6/15/99, p. 30ff.). Clearly, we have come a long way. Back then computer-based chat was nearly the [...]

IN LAST MONTH'S column (LJ 10/15/02, p. 26ff), I outlined why it is time for us to rethink our most basic bibliographic standards: MARC elements, MARC syntax, and AACR2 (the [...]

WHEN MARC was created, the Beatles were a hot new group and those of us alive at the time wore really embarrassing clothes and hairstyles. Computers were so large, complex, [...]

FACULTY AND RESEARCHERS at universities worldwide gather and interpret data, advocate new ideas, and extend human knowledge. This work is sometimes shared with other scholars and researchers as working papers, [...]

MY FIRST TIME was on a Gale bus. It was during the recent annual conference of the American Library Association, while traveling between the Georgia World Congress Center and my [...]

AS AMAZING AS technological progress in libraries has been in the last decade, more dramatic opportunities await. One such opportunity, under the prosaic name 'Web Services,' would knit together software [...]

YOU DON'T NEED to be a futurist or a rocket scientist to know that our profession is rapidly changing. Our clienteles--not to mention their abilities and needs--are changing demographically, and [...]

OUR LIBRARIES ARE increasingly dependent on metadata. Besides the obvious (our catalogs), other uses are becoming more commonplace. Virtually any content we digitize and make available to our clientele requires [...]

IN DIGITAL LIBRARY work, we often talk about metadata, what I jokingly call 'cataloging by those paid better than librarians.' A more serious definition would be 'a structured description of [...]

ANYONE WHO HAS worked a reference desk has seen users pleased with a quick and mediocre answer when, with a bit more time and effort, they could get a better [...]

YOU KNOW YOU want it. Or you know someone who does. One search box and a button to search a variety of sources, with results collated for easy review. Go [...]

FOR DECADES, librarians have been cataloging books and journals for their libraries' collections. So it's only natural that some who embrace the Internet talk about 'cataloging the net.' They envision [...]

SO YOU WANT to build a digital library. You have some money or some staff to throw at the project--ideally, both. Now what? More specifically, what do you choose to [...]

AS FAST AS digital libraries are being built, they still remain islands of order in a sea of chaos. Locating them by using web search engines or subject directories is [...]

INFRASTRUCTURE: hardly anyone thinks about it until something goes wrong. It's the computers we rely on to provide information, news, and communication. It's the network that ties them together. You [...]

CATALOGING HAS basically remained unchanged for decades. Despite the development of Machine-Readable Cataloging (MARC) and the Anglo-American Cataloging Rules, 2d Edition (AACR2), what is recorded about a library item is [...]

Digital librarianship differs from any previous type of librarianship. Sure, you still select, acquire, organize, provide access, and preserve, but these basic library activities are completely different in the digital [...]

Decades ago, OUR professional predecessors laid the foundation upon which so much of library technology rests. Through sheer hard work and determination, they created a metadata standard for the interchange [...]