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In: access, findability, interlibraryloan, Library, open access

Before the Internet made information access faster and easier (and it continues to improve), libraries were already mass-sharing information through interlibrary loan. Interlibrary loan is such a simple concept–libraries share books with other libraries–but it was and continues to be carefully planned and implemented to ensure availability and access through cooperative collection plans, lists of records and methods for disseminating them (National Union Catalog, publishing bibliographies of what books were where), and agreements to make sure users know about the materials in order to request them. Thanks to interlibrary loan systems everywhere for making information available and accessible. Making information findable, available, and usable isRead More →

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In: Florida, history, Library, UF

These two news items from the Florida History Collections at the University of Florida Libraries: Cecilia L. Johnson Library Grant for Visiting Graduate Scholars The Cecilia L. Johnson grant provides funds for out-of-state researchers who wish to come to the University of Florida to work in the UF Libraries’ Florida history collections. Application is open to all graduate students at higher institutions of learning. Awards are for $1000. Researchers are required to spend at least one week (five working days) on the University of Florida campus making use of materials in the George A. Smathers Libraries. Preference will be given to students who are currentlyRead More →

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In: cfp, Collection Items, conference, Library

Collection Development/Resource Sharing (CDRS) Conference, March 26-27, 2009 Florida State University Alumni Center; Tallahassee, Florida Information about the CDRS conference is available online and below. Call for Proposals Florida State University and the Panhandle Library Access Network (PLAN) are co-sponsoring a two day event that is based on the Janus Challenges. The Steering Committee for the Collection Development/Resources Sharing Conference is accepting presentation proposals that address some aspect of the Janus Challenges.  Presentations may demonstrate projects that have been successfully implemented at a local level and have the potential to scale to multi-institutional and/or multi-type groups, or propose innovative new approaches to collection development practicesRead More →

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In: Library, open access

Washington, DC – August 28, 2008 – SPARC (the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition), the Public Library of Science (PLoS), and Students for FreeCulture have jointly announced the first international Open Access Day. Building on the worldwide momentum toward Open Access to publicly funded research, Open Access Day will create a key opportunity for the higher education community and the general public to understand more clearly the opportunities of wider access and use of content. Open Access Day will invite researchers, educators, librarians, students, and the public to participate in live, worldwide broadcasts of events. In North America, events will be held at 7:00Read More →

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In: conference, design, games, Library, presentations, visualization

On Monday morning, Val Davis (from the University of Florida Marston Science Library) and I presented on “Bioactive: A Library Game” (currently online here) that several UF librarians made as an alternative to the standard 40 minute library intro tutorial to increase student engagement with the actual work of learning about using library resources. Bioactive was originally designed in Inform and it’s now moved to a web quest design, which is an even greater simplificiation from the earlier text-based Inform format. The simplicity of the design is for sustainability and ease of maintenance, but it’s more importantly used to ensure that the interface doesn’t getRead More →

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In: archives, Florida, gators, Library

The State Library and Archives of Florida have released a number of new items and exhibits, including Alligators in the Backyard. The “popular culture” section is particularly rewarding for anyone who’s ever been to Florida and seen Florida’s wonders or its wonderful  kitsch. Some of the best images from the page are below, but there are many great images on the State Libraries and Archives site as well as in the many digital collections throughout the state by universities, museums, and others.Read More →

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In: conference, Library

The ALA Annual Conference begins tomorrow in Anaheim. I’ve been too busy to put together my schedule thus far, but I’ll soon have my days planned out and I’ll add them here. In case anyone else is still reading and re-reading the schedules (and for my own quick reference), LITA has a quick list here and ALCTS has a quick list here.Read More →

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In: Digital Library, dloc, Library, tools, Uncategorized

The UF Digital Library Center has a number of homegrown tools for digitization, and we’ve refined these tools working with our partners in the Digital Library of the Caribbean. Our digitization tools for the digitization process are available online with general documentation as well as a full manual with tools available for download.  We also have documentation on our servers and general infrastructure as well as on our internal equipment and our day-to-day operations. Much of this was created in response to our small team and for the Digital Library of the Caribbean, and some of it comes from our ever-changing needs and operations. InRead More →

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In: Academia, comics, exhibit, Library, museum

Comics studies and comics collections continue to grow, and now there’s more great news. Ohio State University’s Cartoon Research Library is acquiring the International Museum of Cartoon Art’s collection. Currently, OSU’s gallery space is small (or so this article says–I haven’t been lucky enough to see it yet, but it’s on my list of places to go as soon as I can) so OSU’s Cartoon Research Library is planning a larger gallery space to display more of their already excellent, and now growing, collection. This is great news for comics studies as a whole–it means more resources will be available in a centralized and organizedRead More →

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In: Academia, Digital Library, Library, stamps, UF

In order to simplify our internal systems through a complete overhaul, we won’t be loading any items for the next week. A week from now, users will notice subtle, yet significant changes in terms of the overall design and in terms of speed. Most of the changes appear small, but they’re all part of the optimization process which will greatly enhance the infrastructure supporting the Digital Collections, stripping out additional code, enhancing system memory usage, and speeding and cleaning the whole process for human users and robots for search engine indexing. While we’re completing this process, we won’t be loading any items, but as soonRead More →