Tuesday, March 4, 2008
DRM Update - Major publishers abandon DRM
A few weeks ago I blogged about Overdrive's use of DRM and the resulting challenges to the ideals of public librarianship. There is an encouraging update to the DRM issue in this article from the New York Times (March 3, 2008): "Publishers Phase Out Piracy Protection on Audio Books" Two large publishing companies - Random House and Penguin Group - are planning to abandon DRM and make their audio books available in an unprotected MP3 format! Other publishers are likely to follow the trend. Hopefully soon all those iPod owners will be able enjoy the audio book services of their public libraries too. Fabulous!
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
Video - Copyright in Canada
An accessible, legalese-free explanation of some Canadian digital copyright issues.
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
Information Desk Del.icio.us Adventures
Challenging questions often lead to the discovery of interesting web resources. Over the years our reference folk have assembled a collection of useful sites for answering the FAQs (and the not-so-F AQs) that we get at the desk. These are currently saved as browser bookmarks on the various information desk computers. There are several disadvantages to this system: consistency on all info desk computers is difficult to achieve (especially for those in other locations), and it is time consuming to find and weed out broken links. So, a few months ago we decided to try converting to del.icio.us, which has proven to be more challenging than we expected. Here's a chronicle of our (mis)adventures to date:
Step One: - Setting up the hplinfodesk del.icio.us account
We uploaded the bookmarks from our reference computers to a del.icio.us account, tagged them and bundled the tags (http://del.icio.us/hplinfodesk). Aside from a minor uploading mishap (it appears there's a limit on how many can be uploaded at once) this process went fairly smoothly. We also discovered "Fresh Delicious" which enabled us to identify outdated URLs with one swift mouse click. So far so good.
Step Two: - Initial Feedback
We asked a pilot group for feedback and discovered that our tag list/cloud was so enormous that they were overwhelmed. Two potential solutions were suggested: (i) to weed both posted sites and tags to make it more manageable, and (ii) to provide a keyword search function. Since we couldn't part with enough sites/tags to accomplish (i) we started working on (ii).
Step Three: - The Quest for a Keyword Search
1. The Del.icio.us Search Function:
Unfortunately in order to search our del.icio.us page you would have to be logged in to the hplinfodesk account. This was not an option. Controling tag proliferation is difficult enough with only one person adding sites. Giving access to more than a dozen people would be a sure way to court chaos. We experimented with del.icio.us "networks" and "subscriptions", but neither of these methods made it possible for someone with a different del.icio.us account (like mine) to search just the hplinfodesk bookmarks.
2. Mashups ... DeliGoo:
Our search for a suitable mashup led us to DeliGoo. While this is a great little application there were two reasons we decided not to adopt this solution: (i) it requires the installation of a firefox extension which would pose a significant hurdle for adoption system-wide, (ii) DeliGoo performs a Google search on all of the sites posted to our delicious account (i.e. it does not search just our hplinfodesk page). So, it's an overkill and in typical google fashion produces a large number of search results.
3. Google Custom Search Engine:
A Google Custom Search Engine would be a fabulous solution ... if we could get google to index our page! We submitted the URL to Google for indexing at the beginning of January, but I guess the Google spiders are too busy crawling a different part of the web. Google is more likely to index a site that is linked to from other indexed sites. So, that's why I've put so many links to http://del.icio.us/hplinfodesk in this blog post. I'm still hopeful!
4. APIs and a DIY Solution:
Given that our lower tech "serve it up to me on a platter" approach has not yet yielded a solution, we called Ryan today to find out if the del.icio.us API would accommodate developing a customized search solution. It's looking promising, and the race is on - Ryan v.s. the Googlebot! :)
Step One: - Setting up the hplinfodesk del.icio.us account
We uploaded the bookmarks from our reference computers to a del.icio.us account, tagged them and bundled the tags (http://del.icio.us/hplinfodesk). Aside from a minor uploading mishap (it appears there's a limit on how many can be uploaded at once) this process went fairly smoothly. We also discovered "Fresh Delicious" which enabled us to identify outdated URLs with one swift mouse click. So far so good.
Step Two: - Initial Feedback
We asked a pilot group for feedback and discovered that our tag list/cloud was so enormous that they were overwhelmed. Two potential solutions were suggested: (i) to weed both posted sites and tags to make it more manageable, and (ii) to provide a keyword search function. Since we couldn't part with enough sites/tags to accomplish (i) we started working on (ii).
Step Three: - The Quest for a Keyword Search
1. The Del.icio.us Search Function:
Unfortunately in order to search our del.icio.us page you would have to be logged in to the hplinfodesk account. This was not an option. Controling tag proliferation is difficult enough with only one person adding sites. Giving access to more than a dozen people would be a sure way to court chaos. We experimented with del.icio.us "networks" and "subscriptions", but neither of these methods made it possible for someone with a different del.icio.us account (like mine) to search just the hplinfodesk bookmarks.
2. Mashups ... DeliGoo:
Our search for a suitable mashup led us to DeliGoo. While this is a great little application there were two reasons we decided not to adopt this solution: (i) it requires the installation of a firefox extension which would pose a significant hurdle for adoption system-wide, (ii) DeliGoo performs a Google search on all of the sites posted to our delicious account (i.e. it does not search just our hplinfodesk page). So, it's an overkill and in typical google fashion produces a large number of search results.
3. Google Custom Search Engine:
A Google Custom Search Engine would be a fabulous solution ... if we could get google to index our page! We submitted the URL to Google for indexing at the beginning of January, but I guess the Google spiders are too busy crawling a different part of the web. Google is more likely to index a site that is linked to from other indexed sites. So, that's why I've put so many links to http://del.icio.us/hplinfodesk in this blog post. I'm still hopeful!
4. APIs and a DIY Solution:
Given that our lower tech "serve it up to me on a platter" approach has not yet yielded a solution, we called Ryan today to find out if the del.icio.us API would accommodate developing a customized search solution. It's looking promising, and the race is on - Ryan v.s. the Googlebot! :)
Bonus Thing #3 - The Semantic Web
The concepts of the"Semantic Web", or "Web of Data" have been buzzing on the blogosphere for a while, but honestly, it's still very fuzzy to me. The most comprehendable definition I've found is this one:
There have been some interesting interviews on the topic on the "Talking with Talis" podcast:
As far as I can understand, once the standards and methods expounded by the supporters of this concept are realised, searching the web and the ways in which we are able to find and combine information will be revolutionized. I look forward to reaping those benefits, and hopefully by the time they are available to librarians I will also have a firmer grasp on just exactly what it all means and what implications it could have for information privacy.
"The Semantic Web is about two things. It is about common formats for integration and combination of data drawn from diverse sources, where on the original Web mainly concentrated on the interchange of documents. It is also about language for recording how the data relates to real world objects. That allows a person, or a machine, to start off in one database, and then move through an unending set of databases which are connected not by wires but by being about the same thing."
W3C Semantic Web Activity
There have been some interesting interviews on the topic on the "Talking with Talis" podcast:
- Inigo Surguy Talks with Talis about 67 Bricks and the Semantic Web
- Andreas Harth Talks with Talis about the Semantic Web Search Engine and SIOC
- Mathieu d'Aquin Talks with Talis about Networked Ontologies and the Semantic Web
As far as I can understand, once the standards and methods expounded by the supporters of this concept are realised, searching the web and the ways in which we are able to find and combine information will be revolutionized. I look forward to reaping those benefits, and hopefully by the time they are available to librarians I will also have a firmer grasp on just exactly what it all means and what implications it could have for information privacy.
Bonus Thing #2 - Kiva.org
I first heard about Kiva.org on the December 27/07 episode of the CBC's Search Engine podcast. They interviewed some donors/lenders on the show. The concept seems to be working increadibly well and providing wonderful opportunities to entrepreneurs in less affluent communities!
Monday, February 18, 2008
Adding music to my blog
It's my day off and it's pooring rain out there, so I decided to goof around on the computer. After a few less than inspired moves on Scrabulous I thought "I could add some music to my blog". It turned out to be more complicated than I had expected. At first I thought the wysiwyg editor would provide an easy way to do it - nope, that only seems to cater to pictures and videos, but not sound files (strange, I wonder why). Then I thought I could just "add an element" in the laout tab ... nope, not an option there either! So I searched google for "blogger mp3 player widget" and found this cool widget on the widgetbox site which I installed at the top of the left column of this blog: Google Audio Widget. In the interests of nostalgia I've customized it to play a track called "Zambo" by a southern African-style marimba band "Nyamamusango", which, as far as I can tell is a legal free download from the music.download.com site. (Perhaps that's a good research topic for a future blog post ... how can one tell if an mp3 file can legally be used on a private blog? I really don't know.)
Bonus Thing #1 - Zamzar
Zamzar is fabulous! I played around with it by converting a few sound files between mp3 and m4a format. I could really have used it a few months ago when I needed to convert between different sound file formats. That project would have been a far less painful experience with Zamzar! One feature I would love to see added is some information/indication on which media file conversions lead to loss of quality and which don't. I've never quite been able to wrap my head around which types of sound/video file conversions to avoid. Anyone know of a good resource that could explain that to me?
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