In order to better integrate my blog with my website, better manage comment spam, and reduce my dependence on Google, this blog has moved to http://www.deborahfitchett.com/blog/. In order to avoid broken links I won't be deleting content from here, but no new content will be added, so please update your bookmarks and feeds.

Tuesday 2 February 2010

Links of interest 2/2/10

Foursquare
Not a chain of convenience stores - this Foursquare is a website/application that lets you use your cellphone etc to "check in" when you reach locations like cafes, movie theatres, libraries, etc. At its worst this floods your friends with endless notifications: "Now I'm at the dairy! Now I'm at home! Now I'm at the busstop! Now I'm at work! Now...!" But at best you walk into your favourite cafe and:
  • read tips from other customers about what to order or avoid;
  • win a prize from the cafe itself;
  • discover that your friend is in the area and arrange for them to meet you for a quick cuppa.
Some recent blogposts discussing the value of Foursquare for libraries (read the comments as well!) include: Publishing scandals du jour
EBSCO buys up exclusive electronic access to a number of popular periodicals which will be removed from other databases that used to provide them. Reactions:During negotiations between Amazon and "big 6" publisher Macmillan over pricing of ebooks, Amazon removed all Macmillan titles (electronic and print) from its database. Reactions: In case you're curious about non-Amazon options, there's a number of online bookstores in New Zealand and I've recently discovered The Book Depository in the UK with free international shipping.

Bookcovers in LibGuides
Springshare have announced a partnership with Syndetics so we can now use Syndetics bookcover images in our LibGuides. This is just like using the images from Amazon before - when adding a featured book just insert ISBN, click icon, and voila a cover image - but click the "S" (Syndetics) icon instead of the Amazon icon. An added advantage is that Syndetics works with ISBN-13 as well as ISBN-10 (Amazon is limited to ISBN-10).

European theses
The DART-Europe E-theses Portal gathers and provides "access to 123327 full-text research theses from 210 universities sourced from 16 European countries".