Last week we launched what we think is a useful and appealing way to browse books at scale, timed to coincide with the launch of the Digital Public Library of America. (Congrats, DPLA!!!) StackLife DPLA (a version of what we use to call ShelfLife) shows you a visualization of books on a scrollable shelf, which… Read more »
Posts By: David Weinberger
Are publishers out-competing libraries? Podcast with Andrew Odlyzko
[mp3 here] Last week, Andrew Odlyzko [wikipedia] a mathematician and historian, and former head of the University of Minnesota’s Digital Technology Center, posted a research paper that concludes that the data suggest that libraries are losing their competition with the publishers of academic journals. Andrew is a long-time open access advocate, so he’s not saying… Read more »
Hathi Trust’s copyright victory
Paul Courant, one of the founders of the Hathi Trust, explains this week’s ruling throwing out a lawsuit by the Authors Guild claiming that Hathi’s scan-and-index program violated copyright.
Our podcasts are now at SoundCloud
The Library Innovation Lab podcast series is now available at SoundCloud.
Library e-book licensing: overview
The Berkman Center’s David O’Brien, Urs Gasser, and John Palfrey have just posted a 29-page “briefing paper” on the various models and licenses by which libraries are providing access to e-books. It’s not just facts ‘n’ stats by any means, but here are some anyway: “According to the 2011 Library Journal E-Book Survey, 82% of… Read more »
BibSoup Beta!
Congratulations to the Open Knowledge Foundation on the launch of BibSoup, a site where anyone can upload and share a bibliography. It’s a great idea, and an awesome addition to the developing knowledge ecosystem.
A couple photos
While cleaning out my phones SD card I found these two photos. Jeff Goldenson’s copy of A Pattern Language: From just a few days ago, here’s Karen Coyle’s explanation of how FRBR “works.” (It made sense while she was explaining it.)
[podcast] Karen Coyle on modern data for modern libraries
Karen Coyle visited us today to talk with us about why it is time for libraries to move to a more modern idea of data, one that focuses more on the data and less on the records, and probably one that makes use of the linked data format that consists of links pointing at public… Read more »
[podcast] Sebastian Hammer on federated search
In this 23min podcast [ogg here], Sebastian Hammer, president of IndexData, explains the srengths and limitations of federated search, which runs queries on a distributed set of sources, as opposed to using a big honking centralized index.
LibraryCloud team to work on DPLA platform
The Digital Public Library of America today announced that initial (and interim) development work on the DPLA platform will be done by the LibraryCloud team here at the Library Innovation Lab — Paul Deschner, Matthew Phillips, and David Weinberger — plus our Berkman friends, Daniel Collis-Puro and Sebastian Diaz. We’ll do this as openly as… Read more »