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October 28, 2008
Google, Publishers, and Authors Settle Huge Lawsuit Over Book-Scanning Project
Google, the Authors Guild, and the Association of American Publishers announced today that they had settled their longstanding legal battle over Google’s mass scanning of books. Under the terms of the deal, Google will pay $125-million to establish a Book Rights Registry, to compensate authors and publishers whose copyrighted books have already been scanned, and to cover legal costs.
Posted by DavidStanley at 4:22 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
October 24, 2008
Have You Used Wikipedia Lately?
A very interesting article about Wikipedia in MIT's Technology Review.
Wikipedia and the Meaning of Truth
Posted by DavidStanley at 3:26 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
October 21, 2008
To Shelve Or Not To Shelve
Students, faculty, and staff often think they are being helpful by re-shelving books when they are done using them and will not be checking them out. When I see this happening I mention to patrons that they can just leave the items on a desk, table, or book truck and we will take care of putting them back on the shelves. We do this not because there is a magical way in which we replace items on shelves or because we don’t think the patrons are capable of this fun activity, we do this because of statistics!
Before a book, periodical, DVD, video, etc. is re-shelved, it is scanned by its barcode into our circulation system. By doing so, we indicate on the item’s record that it has been taken off the shelf, which in our library lingo is termed a “browse.” When library usage reports are written for program reviews or various other reports this is part of the information that we use to adequately gauge the usefulness of the library collection. The three statistics that we rely on when evaluating any item in the library are, the age of the item, the number of times it has circulated, and the number of times it has been taken from the shelf (or browsed).
So although it may seem like we doubt the patron’s ability to replace something on the shelf in the correct place, we are really making sure that the item has not been used in vain but will get statistical credit for being considered, albeit briefly, as a useful research tool.
Posted by DavidStanley at 2:29 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack