Free webinar- Web Services for Underfunded, Understaffed Libraries

Web Services for Underfunded, Understaffed Libraries

Join Bohyun Kim, the Digital Access Librarian at the Medical Library of the Herbert Wertheim College of Medicine at Florida Internation University, for a lively, informative presentation and discussion about how underfunded and understaffed libraries of all types and sizes can make web services work for their organizations and their users.

Host: TAP Information Services

Location: OPAL Auditorium

Comparison of online screen recorders

The Distant Librarian has made a great  chart comparing screen recording tools.  This is a visual representation of information from a post on labnol.org.  To see the chart, including links, visit The Distant Librarian’s post.

Odyssey- FREE Iinterlibrary Loan Software

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“The Odyssey software allows sites to send and receive electronic documents to other Odyssey sites, OCLC ILLiad sites, and other vendor’s software that supports the Odyssey protocol.

Odyssey was designed with low cost, ease of use, and network security in mind. The software is a client/server application which allows the processing application to be split off from the delivery service function. This controls cost by allowing sites to expand by just adding the processing functionality to additional machines. It helps with network security by allowing the delivery service function of the software to be run on a server/workstation that may or may not be located in the ILL office.”

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Odyssey Features

• Send and receive electronic documents
• Review, insert, delete, rotate, crop and deskew images either sending or receiving
• Automatically add coversheets to incoming or outgoing documents
• Rescan any incorrectly scanned pages
• Send black, grayscale, color, or a combination of formats in the same document
• Send free text messages between Odyssey clients and reference documents for re-scanning requests
• Manage addresses for other libraries in the address book
• Uses standard Twain drivers
• Utilizes a single port for ease of firewall modification and allows for IP blocking of incoming items
• Automatic conversion of incoming files to PDF
• Automatic posting of files to a specific file or folder
• Automatic printing of incoming files
• Easy importing of Odyssey settings and address book into OCLC ILLiad when upgrading
• Send and receive documents between other Odyssey users or OCLC ILLiad sites

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See the Odyssey site for more details and for a free download.

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PubMed-EX

PubMed-EX is a browser extension that marks up PubMed search results with additional information retrieved from IISR & IASL text-mining services. PubMed-EX’s page mark-up includes section categorization, gene/disease name, and relation.

The mark-ups of PubMed-EX can help researchers quickly focus on key information in retrieved abstracts and can provide additional background information on key terms. Furthermore, the text-mining server carries out all text-mining processing, freeing up users’ resources.

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TinEye- a reverse image search engine

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What is TinEye?

TinEye is a reverse image search engine. You can submit an image to TinEye to find out where it came from, how it is being used, if modified versions of the image exist, or to find higher resolution versions. TinEye is the first image search engine on the web to use image identification technology rather than keywords, metadata or watermarks. For some real TinEye search examples, check out their Cool Searches page.

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How does TinEye work?

When you submit an image to be searched, TinEye creates a unique and compact digital signature or ‘fingerprint’ for it, then compares this fingerprint to every other image in our index to retrieve matches. TinEye can even find a partial fingerprint match.

TinEye does not typically find similar images (i.e. a different image with the same subject matter); it finds exact matches including those that have been cropped, edited or resized.

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Why use Tineye?

There are many uses for TinEye, but here are a few:

Find out where an image came from, or get more information about it

Research or track the appearance of an image online

Find higher resolution versions of an image

Locate web pages that make use of an image you have created

Discover modified or edited versions of an image

Open source- what does it mean?

From the blog In the Library with the Lead Pipe, Brett Bonfield writes about what open source means.

“It’s interesting how many people don’t really understand the concept of open source. People often describe freeware as open source, or they’ll describe free web-based applications as open source, or applications with APIs that allow for mashups. There are articles all the time, on some of the most popular websites, that recommend free software but don’t distinguish programs the authors gives away for free from software that is actually open source.

For a program to be open source, it has to meet two basic qualifications

1. The author has to provide full access to its source code
2. The software has to be accompanied by a license that protects the contributions and rights of the community.

Perhaps what people associate most closely with open source—free software—is its price tag. However, it is often pointed out that open source software is usually free like a puppy or a kitten…”

He also mentions 7 open source software applications to take a look at-

• Blacklight (demo)
• Evergreen (demo)
• Kochief (demo)
• Koha (demo)
• Scriblio (demo)
• SOPAC (demo)
• VuFind (demo)

AHRQ Launches Monthly Health Advice Column and Enhanced Web Site in Spanish

Last month AHRQ announced Consejos de Salud Para Tí (Health Advice for You), a new monthly online health advice column for Spanish-speaking consumers. The column provides evidence-based tips on preventive health, safe and appropriate use of medications and other medical therapies, ways to get better health care, and other key health care issues.  The column is part of AHRQ’s Información en Español Web site (http://www.ahrq.gov/consumer/espanoix.htm), which has been enhanced and now includes audio and video in Spanish on a wide range of health care issues.

AHRQ’s enhanced Spanish-language Web site includes more than 35 consumer guides on health care quality, surgery, health conditions and diseases, quitting smoking, safe use of medicines, understanding health insurance options and prevention and wellness. The 30- and 60-second audio spots on the Web site focus on comparisons of pills for type 2 diabetes, pain medicines for osteoarthritis, tips for preventing blood clots, safe and effective use of blood thinner pills, tips for quitting smoking, preventive health and more. The Web site also features “Superhéroes,” a national public service campaign developed in partnership with the Advertising Council to encourage Hispanics to become more involved in their health care.

Sign up for Información en español (Spanish) E-mail updates from AHRQ at http://www.ahrq.gov/consumer/espanoix.htm.

EBSCO Enables New Search Technology

From the EBSCO News Center

~ Search and Retrieval Improvements Added to the EBSCOhost^® Platform Include Natural Language Searching to Greatly Enhance the User Experience ~

EBSCO Publishing (EBSCO) has launched new display and searching technology designed to improve the user experience. The new system supports natural language searching for scientific formulas and provides users with the ability to store and show html markup allowing display of scientific formulas. The new database architecture means Article names, Abstracts and Key Phrase Headings within citations will contain scientific formulas:

Theoretical study on N₂⁺, P₂⁺, As₂⁺, NP⁺, NAs⁺, and PAs⁺: Hyperfine coupling constants for 1²Σ_(g)⁺, and electron-sping-factors for 1²Σ_g⁺/1,2²Σ_u⁺(X₂⁺) and 1,2²Σ⁺(XY⁺) states. Bruna, P.J.; Grein, F. In: Journal of Molecular Spectroscopy, Aug. 2005, vol.232, no.2, pp. 137-50, Journal Paper. (AN: 8727739).

With natural language searching, researchers will find it easier to find relevant information within their searches.  For instance, those searching for records related to water are now able to enter “H20” to return the desired records.

Inspec^® is the first of many databases to utilize this new database architecture.

Elsevier Won’t Pay for Praise (Any More)

“As if the textbook industry didn’t have an image problem already…

Elsevier officials said Monday that it was a mistake for the publishing giant’s marketing division to offer $25 Amazon gift cards to anyone who would give a new textbook five stars in a review posted on Amazon or Barnes & Noble. While those popular Web sites’ customer reviews have long been known to be something less than scientific, and prone to manipulation if an author has friends write on behalf of a new work, the idea that a major academic publisher would attempt to pay for good reviews angered some professors who received the e-mail pitch.”

Read the rest of the post at Inside Higher Ed

Google Wave Preview- Highlights

Curious about Google Wave but don’t want to watch the 80 minute demo video?

Check out the highlights that Gina Trapani at Smarterware pulled out of the original presentation.  Now you can see what’s particularly cool with this future tool in less than 8 minutes.