ITI Bloggers June 13th, 2006
Boe Horton, CEO and GM for CSA, told me today we can expect "revolutionary, ground-breaking" developments to be announced by this fall. ITI will be on the story, so keep a watch on our coverage in Information Today.
For now, CSA had "nothing new" to report, except for "7 launches since January," according to Horton, including the release of EIS (Enviornmental Impact Statements Full-Text") being demo-ed in this picture by Horton and Diane Hoffman. The display on the screen is of the area surrounding Union Station in Washington, D.C.
Dick Kaser
ITI VP, Content
SLA2006
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ITI Bloggers June 13th, 2006
Public Services Librarian Donna Swischer shared with me today the plans for the new wing at Linda Hall Library in Kansas City.
The new facility, slated to open later this summer, features another 17 miles of stacks to help house 47,000 journals in the science libary’s collection, plus a new area devoted to the history of science and a cosmology theater (both recently opened). The new facility also features a geothermal heating system.
Donations are welcome.
Dick Kaser
ITI VP, Content
SLA2006
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ITI Bloggers June 13th, 2006
Here’s a view of the exhibit hall:
Reuters again sponsored a massage service to help revive weary exhibitors and attendees.
Attendees lined up for ice cream on Tuesday afternoon.
The parrots were a great hit. People lined up to have their picture taken holding a parrot. Did you know that you can hold a parrot upside down without it objecting? Here, Jill Hurst-Wahl demonstrates.
Don Hawkins
Columnist, Information Today
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ITI Bloggers June 13th, 2006
According to the conference program, from 2 to 4 PM today in the Exhibit Hall, the "Parrot Guy" who "rescues and rehabilitates parrots and other tropical birds" will appear. I was just heading for lunch and saw the parrots arriving. Here they are, waiting to be taken inside the Convention Center. Check back later for further reports of their appearance.
Don Hawkins
Columnist, Information Today
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ITI Bloggers June 13th, 2006
I didn’t hear about this one at the conference but via an email from Jill O”Neill of NFAIS (Thanks Jill!). This browser add-on should be of interest to many of us. Firefox Scholar (aka SmartFox) is being developed by the Center for History and New Media (CHNM) at George Mason University with funding from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS). Here’s what is posted on the site (http://chnm.gmu.edu/tools/firefoxscholar/).
Due for beta release in Summer 2006, Firefox Scholar will help teachers, students, and scholars organize and cite materials they have found online. Comprised of a set of browser extensions, Firefox Scholar will allow researchers to recognize and capture metadata from online objects; collect documents, images, and citations from the web; and allow those materials to be sorted, annotated, and searched–all directly within their web browser window. Like the Firefox browser itself, Firefox Scholar will be open and extensible, allowing others who are building digital tools for researchers to expand on the platform.
Paula J. Hane
News Bureau Chief
Information Today, Inc.
www.infotoday.com
SLA2006
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ITI Bloggers June 13th, 2006
Stretching to embrace new ideas that we can bring back to our organizations is the heart of a conference like SLA. Members of the News Division heard a stimulating group of presenters on Monday who talked about their implementations of wikis within the newsroom. I’ve participated in a wiki but only briefly for information sharing. Probably 75 percent of the audience knew about wikis but only a few use the technology on a regular basis. The speakers opened many eyes to the possibilities for recording research results, timelines, linking to official documents, documenting tasks and procedures, providing catalog information, and much more.
Several of the presenters said their organizations had chosen to use the free MediaWiki software (http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/mediawiki). While they have encountered reluctance to edit by some staffers, most said the implementation was fairly easy and fast and the applications have proven to be very useful. Susan Ebbs of the Raleigh News & Observer said they continue to use blogs when having a single voice (with a place for comments) is required. A wiki is good for applications with “many voices.” They still have a lot of content on the intranet, with links to the wiki.
Paula J. Hane
News Bureau Chief
Information Today, Inc.
www.infotoday.com
SLA2006
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ITI Bloggers June 13th, 2006
With corporate and academic researchers reaching around the globe for data, language doesn’t have to be one of the roadblocks to sharing information.
Phoenix Translations offers a special level of translation to bridge the gap between hemispheres and technology. A simple translation may leave accuracy and technical nuances wanting. So Phoenix Translations has a multilevel-translation process that is handled by technical and linguistic experts to ensure the work is accurate from start to finish, whether it’s a patent (translation, retrieval, and monitoring), engineering technical manual, or FDA submission. Maricella Infante, chief operating officer at Phoenix, said her firm (with clients including Wyeth, DuPont, Kodak, and L’Oreal) doesn’t rely on machine translation that “can be problematic when it comes to translating technical information.” So she said that the 5- to 7-day turnaround for most documents includes technical and linguistic translation by an original language expert along with a technical expert, and then the document is fine tuned by an editor and proofreader. Need the document in a hurry? Not to worry. Phoenix can handle rush jobs too.
Rick Streu, the technical translation team leader at Global Language Translations and Consulting, Inc., offers translation on a variety of levels. “Let’s face it, there’s a continuum between cost and quality,” he said. For some needs, a quick and cost-effective machine translation is “good enough” to provide the “gist” for a researcher or scientist. Otherwise, more critical documents can be scrunitized by human translation with native-speaking translators, whether from Africa to Eastern Europe or China (and points in-between). Consider the cost differences though. Human translation can average about 2,000 words a day (at about 25 cents per word). Machine-assisted translation can deliver about a 35-page document in Japanese, for example, for about $75.
Barbara Brynko
Editor in Chief
Information Today
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ITI Bloggers June 13th, 2006
Is business going well for Kari Paulson? You bet.
The president of Ebook Library (EBL) is adding titles and clients to her company that’s growing in leaps and bounds around the world. “Growth has tripled for us,” she said, noting that 2,000 titles a month are being added to the collection of 35,000 current titles. Government, applied research, as well as public and academic libraries are among the top growing sectors.
EBL differs from other e-book providers in a few ways, she said. Collections can be customized to the needs of a university, research librarians, and clients. Libraries also can control their selection and budgeting processes, so there’s no need to buy anything that library patrons don’t need or won’t use. EBL also offers title-by-title selection of e-books for multiple concurrent access and electronic reserve. Plus, there’s also chapter-level lending and course-pack tools.
Barbara Brynko
Editor in Chief
Information Today
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ITI Bloggers June 13th, 2006
Business guru Peter Drucker loved librarians as many conference-goers may remember from his SLA keynote in 2002. In Monday morning’s session on “History, News, and Peter Drucker,” Bruce Rosenstein, the news research librarian at USA Today, presented a 20-minute video interview with the late Drucker from April 2005, just 7 months before his death at age 95. The DVD presentation about the “Ultimate Knowledge Worker” (once the in-house tech expert finally solved the mystery about adjusting the audio level) reflected thoughts from the ever-articulate expert whose insights about a purpose-driven life were captured with all of Mr. Drucker’s character and style.
Rosenstein also called the audience’s attention to the Business section of USA Today on Monday, touting a playful new book titled If Harry Potter Ran General Electric by Tom Morris, who also wrote If Aristotle Ran General Motors and Philosophy for Dummies. Morris’ latest book tackles the wizard world with Harry at the helm to provide lessons in leadership. For example, Harry faces fear with stoicism: “Courage is doing what’s right, not what’s easy.”
The other part of the session on capturing and transferring oral knowledge was led by Debra Bade, director of news research at the Chicago Tribune. Bade shared her efforts (through surveys, interviews, and video sessions) to talk to long-term employees who were about to retire and her desire to save personal anecdotes about their years with the newspaper. Her 13-minute video introduced this look down memory lane with news snippets from years gone by, from mini and midi skirts to Hawaii 5-0 to Five Easy Pieces to man’s first walk on the moon before letting each of the 10 Tribune workers recount their memories. Hearing the tales firsthand by those who were there preserves this special collection of vintage vignettes. Her countless hours of work culminated in a “win-win kind of project” for Bade, who sees this chapter in Tribune history being preserved while employees know their work and their thoughts made a difference.
Barbara Brynko
Editor in Chief
Information Today
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ITI Bloggers June 13th, 2006
Chairman of the Board and controlling shareholder (70% of the shares) of The Thomson Company, Kenneth R. Thomson, died yesterday at the age of 82. Majority ownership of the company remains with the Thomson family.
Marydee Ojala
Editor, ONLINE: The Leading Magazine for Information Professionals
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