Category: Document Delivery
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SerialsSolutions Summon
Got a press release from SerialsSolutions yesterday about a new product they're announcing – Summon Unified Discovery Service. A list of features can be found here. Sounds an awful lot like their current Federated Search product, 360 Search; I wonder if this product is the result of their acquisition of WebFeat early last year? From…
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DC Public Library launches iPhone app for their catalog
Aaron Schmidt blogs that the DC Public Library iPhone app is now available for download. So I downloaded it and gave it a quick run through. No bells and whistles, but it gets the job done. Seems to only allow keyword searching at the moment – can't search by author, etc. You can place holds…
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O’Reilly starting to offer DRM-free PDFs
O’Reilly Press is now offering a small number of titles as print, DRM-free PDF, or both. They’ve got 30 titles where you can choose your medium, and a dozen of those are also available on the Kindle. Interesting comments, including a brief discussion of why electronic books aren’t 90% cheaper than print even though there’s…
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E-Books in Research Libraries: Issues of Access and Use
“There is a danger that research libraries are adding e-books to their collections using agreements that significantly reduce users’ rights. There is some urgency to improve this situation before it becomes a de facto standard. The Task Group on E-Books makes two recommendations to the CARL Copyright Committee: to create or endorse a statement of…
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Relais products go Open Source
This is interesting, at least to those of us who are using Relais for our Document Delivery system: For Immediate Release April 22, 2008Relais products go Open Source Relais International is excited to announce that we will be moving all or part of the Relais software to an open source model. Why are we doing…
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Why Copyright? Michael Geist at the University of Calgary
Earlier this week, Dr. Michael Geist spoke here at the University of Calgary, on copyright, of course. The title of his talk was Why Copyright? and was a discussion of both why copyright is a hot topic in Canada right now, and why it should be a hot topic. With his permission, I recorded the…
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Survey of Library Services for Distance Learning Programs
Primary Research Group is about to release the results of their Survey of Library Services for Distance Learning Programs. I participated in this survey and am supposed to receive a free copy – will let you know if it’s worth buying, but here’s what it covers. This 145 page report gives extensive data, broken out…
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A few thoughts in favour of the Google Books project
Charles Edward Smith has a brief piece in Educause Quarterly in which he points out why he thinks Google Books Search is a good thing. A curious amount of unease surrounds Google’s initiative to scan thousands of books in major research libraries and make them available online. Although I understand the concerns, I don’t entirely…
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Docutek vs IM
Dan Sich from the U of Waterloo has posted the slides from a presentation he just gave at the Ontario Library Association Super Conference. The title of his talk was IM a Librarian: the Meebo, Skype-Unyte solution, and one really interesting slide kind of caught my eye: Just FYI, check out the rest of his…
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Survey of Library Services for Distance Learning Students
Posted to the Web4Lib mailing group: Primary Research Group (http://www.primaryreserch.com/) is planning to publish a survey of college libraries that provide library services to distance learning students. This survey is open to accredited colleges from all countries. Participants receive a free PDF copy of the estimated 100-page report. Data is broken out by type and…