Monthly Archives: April 2009

id.loc.gov is AWESOME. Not only is it the first (so far as I know) online free search and browse of LCSH (with in fact a BETTER interace than the proprietary for-pay online alternative I’m aware of). But it also gives … Continue reading →

Like the title says, anyone know what Serial Solutions is doing with Ruby on Rails?  Maybe the Summon UI is going to be Rails? Ah, answering my own question now that I read the excerpt completely ‘will be creating open … Continue reading →

Thoughts provoked by Peter Murray’s excellent untangling of what’s going on with OCLC’s new offerings. What does web-scale mean? First, what the heck is “web scale” anyway? Is this just a marketting buzzword, or does it mean something? I guess … Continue reading →

In writing software to tie together disparate databases of bibliographic information, having un-ambiguous identifiers to represent a manifestation or edition (this isn’t about the specificities of FRBR, use whatever term you are comfortable with) is crucial for making things work … Continue reading →

SFX, like most link resolvers, depends on CrossRef for DOI-resolving functionality. This is pretty core functionality for the link resolver, required to take an incoming link that has only a DOI (as many do these days, most notably from Google … Continue reading →

Someone at Code4Lib (I think?) talked about using ‘games’ to get the public to provide metadata. I noticed that Google Images is now trying that out. I still remain skeptical that people actually find this fun and will engage in … Continue reading →

I enjoyed this new article by Dorothea Salo.  Clear thoughts, written clearly. (Sometimes you don’t even find one out of those two in ‘the literature’;  we readers deserve both). Salo writes, among other things: Because existing name authority files cover … Continue reading →

JStor seems to be a big offender of sending bad DOIs to Google Scholar, which then sends them on to me. Google Scholar is full of bad DOIs from JStor. DOIs which don’t resolve, but have a JStor prefix. When … Continue reading →

Umlaut now supports links to “cited by” and “similar articles” links from ISI and Scopus.  This is now live in our link resolver. You can see examples, but you won’t be able to actually click on the links provided without … Continue reading →

There are dangers to such large portions of our information infrastructure being in the hands of commercial companies in business to sell things. Apparently Amazon’s “best sellers” lists are now in fact the best selling books that they (or more … Continue reading →