Monthly Archives: May 2009

So it gets confusing understanding how these thigns relate. But I think I’ve figured it out, and it’s actually quite simple. By EAN, I mean EAN-13 specifically, which is usually what people mean when they say EAN. A UPC is … Continue reading →

So if you have an ISBN, there are a variety of places you can look up what it represents, as discussed in the last post. Books (at least for the past 40 some years) have ISBNs.  But what about media … Continue reading →

So the Amazon E-Commerce Service has changed it’s name to the Amazon Product Advertising API.  And it now requires an AWS account, and a cryptographic signature on requests. There is a new terms of service, but according to the amazon … Continue reading →

So, the Amazon Product Advertising API (formerly known as Amazon E-Commerce API, formerly known as just Amazon Web Services back when it was the only one) will require a cryptographic signature on all requests in order to use it, after … Continue reading →

This, from the ICOLC statement on the OCLC record use policy,  is precisely and conscisely right: The proposed policy appears to freeze OCLC’s role in the library community based on historical and current relationships. We share the concern, voiced by … Continue reading →

Local colleague Liz Uzelac writes a one-side library ‘newsletter’ for patrons that’s posted in library bathroom stalls. Kind of clever idea, really. (Reminds me of my excellent undergrad alma mater library, which posted butcher paper in the bathroom stalls and … Continue reading →

At the recent DLF forum,Melanie Schlosser gave a very interesting presentation entitled “Whose Stuff Is It, Anyway? A Study of Copyright Statements on DLF-Member Digital Library Collections” I hope Schlosser publishes this as a written paper, not just slides. Basically, … Continue reading →

I don’t think libraries should give up on providing valuable ‘discovery’ services. But our  “unique value proposition” is probably more about delivery — nobody else is going to do for free what we will (‘free’ in the sense that our … Continue reading →

For some reason this blog has been getting really good exposure on google in general, I’m not sure why. Perhaps that’s what led to my previous post on Elsevier’s fake medical journal getting listed on slash dot today too. I … Continue reading →

From a bulk email I received from Amazon. Note well, if you use the Amazon products API, you may need to change your code in the next few months to have it keep working. In actually a fairly annoying way. … Continue reading →