Paul R. Pival – Page 38 – The Distant Librarian

Distant Librarian’s top 10 posts from 2009

Jan 5, 2010

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in Discovery, m-libraries, Miscellaneous, Service, Weblogs

I was poking around Google Analytics for work yesterday and thought it would also be fun to peek at the top ten posts for my blog for 2009. Here they are, without comment: Crappy Experience at the Apple Store A little more info on the Harvard linking BS Jing Pro and Jing Free Is 2009…

The ABCs of e-book format conversion: Easy Calibre tips for the Kindle, Sony and Nook

Jan 4, 2010

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Paul R. Pival

in Books, Legal, Miscellaneous, Tutorials, Web/Tech

TeleRead has a great post on The ABCs of e-book format conversion: Easy Calibre tips for the Kindle, Sony and Nook. It’s written by one of the developers of Calibre, a program for managing ebook collections, and as such touts Calibre as pretty much the perfect tool for handling your conversion needs. What’s really nice…

Quick Review: Opening Up Library Systems Through Web Services and SOA: Hype or Reality?

Jan 4, 2010

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Paul R. Pival

in Web/Tech

Late last year I received a review copy of the most recent Library Technology Reports, Opening Up Library Systems Through Web Services and SOA: Hype or Reality? written by Marshall Breeding. It's a simple report, consisting of a mere three chapters. Chapter One introduces the concept of Application Programming Interfaces (APIs), and places them in the context…

EBSCO Discovery Service – Now Available

Jan 4, 2010

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Paul R. Pival

in Discovery, Linking

I received an email last week that the EBSCO Discovery Service (EDS) is now available. You can learn more at http://www.ebscohost.com/discovery/ and there’s a link to request a free trial at the top of the page. It looks like they’ve given it the same look as the EBSCOHost products, though there’s mention that the colour…

On the importance of good metadata

Dec 29, 2009

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Paul R. Pival

in Discovery, Linking

The December 2009 issue of Information Technology and Libraries 28(4) has a slew of articles around discovery systems, all written by librarians from UNLV. I'm hoping to read them over vacation, but no promises. I did read Information Discovery Insights Gained from MultiPAC, a Prototype Library Discovery System by Alex A. Dolski and found it…

Third International M-Libraries Conference confirmed for March 2011

Dec 22, 2009

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Paul R. Pival

in m-libraries, Scholarship, Social Networks

According to a message sent to members of the m-libraries Facebook page, the Third International M-Libraries conference will be held sometime in March, 2011 in Brisbane, Australia. No more details than that at this time. Also included in that message was the following announcement: John Burger, from the Association of Southeastern Research Libraries in the…

Gale’s iPhone app – AccessMyLibrary

Dec 22, 2009

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Paul R. Pival

in Discovery, m-libraries

Got a chance to play with Gale's new iPhone app, which acts as a portal to its AccessMyLibrary service. AccessMyLibrary is a service that allows you to access your local public library's Gale databases w/o having to authenticate through the library. So back to the iPhone app. In a nutshell, it works well as far…

Have my book-buying habits changed?

Dec 21, 2009

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Paul R. Pival

in Books, Ideas, Legal

Teleread has a great post in which the author reports on his/her experiences with the Sony PRS-505 ebook reader after one year of use. I particularly wanted to point out the section of the review entitled "Have my book-buying habits changed?" because it mirrors my experience reading and buying books for the iPhone. I used…