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January 21, 2008

You have to see what Indiana has done!

You have to see this! Indiana has created a wonderful website for data and statistics. Posted on this site are the results of a state study conducted to measuere, access, and analyze the economic impact of the state's public and academic libraries on their communities and the state as a whole..

Posted by anna at 2:37 PM | Comments (0)

January 15, 2008

“We are in the advertising business,” Eric Schmidt, Google’s C.E.O.

On one of the lists I subscribe to was a post about this Jan. 14, 2008 New Yorker article entitled "The Search Party: Google squares off with its Capitol Hill critics." by Ken Auletta. This article is fascinating on many levels but, I found the breakdown of how they budget their business especially interesting. I wonder if there are any libraries out there who can convince their boards to allocate 10% of their budget for innovation? The paragraph below seems to clearly layout Googles grand design and it is clear that libraries have to figure out how we fit in.

"In its 2004 annual report, Google, amending its basic corporate strategy, officially signalled its intent to be more than a search engine. The company announced that seventy per cent of its efforts would continue to be directed to its “core” mission, “our web search engine and our advertising network.” Another twenty per cent of its energies would be devoted to “adjacent areas such as Gmail”—the free e-mail accounts available to just about anyone who wants one—and the range of software that falls under the heading of “apps.” Finally, the report said, “the remaining 10 per cent is saved for anything else, giving us the freedom to innovate.” To other media companies, this sounded suspiciously like declaring, “We are in the search business, but we might be in your business.” ...Google has amassed one of the world’s largest databases—a resource that has helped in altering its mission. “We are in the advertising business,” Eric Schmidt, Google’s C.E.O., told me not long ago... MORE"

Posted by anna at 10:38 AM | Comments (0)

January 7, 2008

One word...Digital

This excellent story that appears in Info Today's pub The Searcher, references the sixties and that reminded me of the movie The Graduate. In particular the scene where the recent college graduate is given advise about his future. Instead of "plastics" the word now seems to be "digital." I feel this article provides a great overview in a few short paragraphs.

The Race to the Shelf Continues
The Open Content Alliance and Amazon.com
by Beth Ashmore, Cataloging Librarian, Samford University &
Jill E. Grogg, Electronic Resources Librarian, University of Alabama Libraries

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Internet giants such as Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft, and Amazon are in the middle of nothing short of a modern-day space race: Who can scan the most and the best books in alliance with the biggest and brightest libraries in the U.S. — nay, the world! — while simultaneously providing print on demand, “find in a library,” and “buy the book” links as well? The amount of press and controversy surrounding the Google Book Search Library Project tends to overshadow one detail — while these companies may have begun the race to the shelf, they certainly did not invent book digitization. Look no further than Michael Hart’s Project Gutenberg, which celebrated its 35th anniversary in 2006...MORE

Posted by anna at 3:21 PM | Comments (0)