Computers in Libraries

IN ORDER TO INCREASE OUR SITE'S USE AND VISIBILITY, I'VE BEEN WORKING ON WAYS TO EXPOSE MORE OF OUR METADATA ON THE OPEN WEB.One of the projects that I've been working on in the last few weeks involves trying to increase the visibility and effectiveness...

T. F. from The University of Akron writes: What's the difference between Internet telephony, like Skype, and Internet phone service, like Vonage?techman responds: Let's start with the similarities-they both use the Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP)...

In July, I gave a keynote at the llth Australasian World Wide Web Conference (AusWebOS; http://ausweb.scu.edu.au). The event was held on Australia's Gold Coast, about 400 miles north of Sydney. AusWeb is endorsed by the International World Wide Web Conference...

IT'S COME TIME FOR ME TO WRAP UP THIS COLUMN. I HOPE YOU ALL WILL INDULGE ME ONE LAST TIME.In case you couldn't tell from the title, it's come time for me to wrap up this column -to close the circle. This was not an easy decision, and it was not made...

Library Web teams invest significant time and energy trying to create usable Web sites. Despite the ongoing efforts to make them more friendly, studies have shown that visitors have difficulty using library sites to locate journal articles. (1) ...

Does designing a large academic library Web site for an imaginary person seem a sensible thing to do? As a reference librarian and member of the Web team of the Gerstein Science Information Centre (Gerstein Library), that is exactly what I set out to...

"BECAUSE WE KNOW CATALOGING CONVENTIONS, IT IS HARD FOR US TO JUDGE WHETHER A WEB CATALOG IS DECIPHERABLE BY THE UNINITIATED. SO WE NEED TO LEARN HOW BEST TO EVALUATE THE USABILITY OF THESE CATALOGS."In days that seem very long ago, when the card catalog...

HOW CAN YOU DESIGN A GOOD WEB PAGE? THE ANSWER IS SIMPLE: START WITH A COMMITMENT TO SERVICE.Web publishing has become the communication medium of the masses. Doesn't it seem like everybody including your grandmother has a blog or Web site? In response,...

I'll bet that most of you have funny stories that illustrate the fact that you don't think like everyone else does. I'm sure I'm not the only one who's been ridiculed for alphabetizing all my record albums and CDs. Friends have also been aghast when...

After I digitized medieval Slavic manuscripts, I learned why there are so few Web sites about medieval studies and how participatory design can help build useful ones.In a previous adventure (Computers in Libraries, April 2002), I told readers how I...

OpenURL resolvers and federated search engines are two exciting services that libraries are beginning to offer. For some librarians, these services may seem "old hat" by now, but for the majority these services are still in the early stages of implementation...