Author Archives: Josh
Microsoft Office Research Service for Shrew
David Walker created a SRU Interface for III servers called Shrew. I first read about it in Ryan Eby’s post SRU Interface for the III XML Server. It didn’t take much to modify my Microsoft Office interface for OAI servers … Continue reading
Open Access and Peer-to-Peer Review
Related to Ryan Eby’s recent post about PLoS One, last month’s Wired had an excellent article about open-access publishing and Harold Varmus. Also in that issue is an article on harnessing the power of crowds for distributed computation. It mentions … Continue reading
Library Director Stands Up for Privacy
I know a lot of the content on this site is critical of librarians, especially when it comes online issues. But I have to say almost all librarians have it right on when it comes to privacy. Slashdot just posted … Continue reading
Google co-op and reference services
Earlier this week Ryan Eby mentioned Google’s new co-op service and possibly using it for reference services. We’re replacing our existing electronic resources system with libdata. Since I helped with the project, I knew enough about the system to have … Continue reading
The power of collaborative editing
At MSU we recently imported most of the The Making of Modern Michigan digital collection into a wiki. We’re getting some great additions to the wiki, corrections to the main authoritative page and some wonderful personal comments in the discussion … Continue reading
MSU Library – Amazon Integration
I’ve modified Greasemonkey scripts by Carrick Mundell (based on work by Jon Udell) and the Silkworm Threadster extension to work with MSU libraries catalog. The first script checks whether a book you’re browsing on Amazon’s site is available in the … Continue reading
What patronizing.org is all about
I’ve been working in a library for the past two years. Although I don’t have a library degree, I do have a degree in a field that works with many of the same issues. Cognitive science also deals with questions … Continue reading
Alternative interfaces to digital collections
I’m currently working at the MSU Libraries on a grant to create alternative/gaming interfaces to the Making of Modern Michigan project. We’ve come up with a lot of really great ideas. Among them are an automatically created subject hiearchy using … Continue reading
Microsoft Office Research Service for OAI repositories
I implemented a Microsoft Office Research with Apache Axis. It provides access to any OAI repository that supports SRU/SRW right from inside Microsoft Office. Newer versions of Microsoft Office provide a sidebar that offers research services such as dictionary and … Continue reading
All your Google Base are Belong to Us!
I’m sure that title has been repeated many many times today. Today Google unveiled Google Base, a simple web database that allows you to include rich metadata for items. Google will then index and allow others to search the information. … Continue reading