Thursday, May 24, 2007

Congratulations to John Dupuis


New Members Join IEEE Library Advisory Council

Four new representatives have joined the IEEE Library Advisory Council. They include: Jose Octavio Alonso Gamboa, Biblioteca Universitaria; David Alsmeyer, British Telecom Library; John Dupuis, York University; and Gerald Steeman, NASA Langley. The IEEE Library Advisory Council brings together international corporate, academic, and government librarians who consult with IEEE to help develop products and policies. For more information, visit here


I invited John many years ago to speak to the Sheridan Park Library and Information Science Committee about blogging and his talk convinced me that I could do it too.

Tuesday, May 15, 2007

Scitopia.org


Welcome to scitopia.org – 3 million articles, spanning 150 years of science and technology

Scitopia.org is a free federated vertical search that lets you explore the research most cited in scholarly work and patents in a single click.

Brought to you by thirteen of the world’s leading science and technology societies, scitopia.org searches more than three million documents, including peer-reviewed journal content and conference proceedings. You’ll get to the content you need quickly without having to search each individual society’s online library.

Scitopia.org, the best place on earth for technology research, will be revealed in June 2007.

To read more about this groundbreaking partnership, please visit our Press Room

Scitopia.org Partners:

American Geophysical Union (AGU)
American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA)
American Institute of Physics (AIP)
American Physical Society (APS)
American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE)
American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME)
The Electrochemical Society (ECS)
IEEE
Institute of Physics Publishing (IOP)
Optical Society of America (OSA)
SPIE
Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE)
Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM)

Other organizations will be invited to join as the project progresses

Scitopia.org is powered by Deep Web Technologies' Explorit Research Accelerator federated search engine.

Sunday, May 6, 2007



As some of you may know my family has been fostering a Dog Guide since October 2006. His name is Casper. You can see his photos here. http://pets.webshots.com/album/555254083lUOkiP

Because of him, we will be participating in the Purina Walk for Dog Guides on June 3, 2007, to help raise funds for the training and placement of Dog Guides for Canadians with visual, hearing and medical or physical disabilities.
The Purina Walk for Dog Guides is organized by local volunteers and is truly a grassroots effort. Everybody is welcome – all ages and abilities, with or without dogs. It’s an outdoor, feel good, start to the day.

You can help by giving a online gift by credit card at http://www.walkfordogguides.com/personalPage.cfm?ID=1186 You will receive immediate credit card payment confirmation and an official Income Tax Receipt.

It would also be great if you would accept my invitation to walk as well. Go to http://www.walkfordogguides.com/findWalk.cfm to find a walk near you.

I hope you can join me in supporting this wonderful event that will help provide mobility, safety and independence for Canadians with disabilities. If you would like more information about Lions Foundation of Canada and the Purina Walk for Dog Guides, please visit www.dogguides.com.



Carolyne, Albert, Emma, Andrew, and Casper

Friday, May 4, 2007

CISTI offers Ebook lending service


Press Release  http://cisti-icist.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca/media/press/myilibrary_e.html

"The National Research Council's Canada Institute for Scientific and Technical Information (NRC-CISTI) and MyiLibrary, the market leading eBook aggregator, have partnered to launch an innovative new service called eBook Loans, an electronic twist on the traditional library-interlending model. With the click of a mouse, eBook Loans offer instant access to tens of thousands of electronic books from major scholarly publishers, including Elsevier, Taylor & Francis, Blackwell and Springer."

"Each loan costs US$25, payable online using a credit card. Users have access to an eBook for 30 days through a URL received in an e-mail immediately after payment has been received. There is no need to return a borrowed eBook because the link expires automatically, and there is no need to worry about lost or damaged books."



Very cool.

My questions so far -
1. We have clients in both the US and Canada. For all other CISTI services we need separate accounts, US and Canada.  Is there any differentiation between US and Canadian users for this service.

2. Since we are control freaks, can the library order the ibook to its email address and then forward to the original requester, or must the requester's email be used?

3. It appears to be credit card based. Can we charge to our CISTI account?

Since people have to know the books are there to order them, I guess I better start working on our ILS to get "remote" searching working.




Thursday, May 3, 2007

A map of the "world"



This is the coolest thing I have seen in a while.

Posted by eddie a. tejeda on the "Future of the Book" blog http://www.futureofthebook.org/blog/

Wednesday, May 2, 2007

Google Reader -- better than ever


Google Reader fixed the one thing which has been bothering me -- their email format when sending links.

It is now easier, cleaner, and creates much better output.

Thanks Google.

And I thougth the quiz was US accents :)


What American accent do you have?
Created by Xavier on Memegen.net

Canada. You probably get irritated when British people and Europeans think you're from the States, but over here we wouldn't make a mistake like that.

Take this quiz now - it's easy!
We're going to start with "cot" and "caught." When you say those words do they sound the same or different?