Going Out of Print

Going Out of Print

According to this article in District Administrator, school libraries will soon be primarily digital rather than print. The interesting point is not that students, along with adults, are shifting to digital media, but rather that this is front page news for school district administrators.

BREAKING: Powell's Lays Off 31 Workers. | Blogtown, PDX

BREAKING: Powell's Lays Off 31 Workers. | Blogtown, PDX

I suppose this was to be expected. If a giant like Powell's has to lay off employees, how are the little indies doing?

www.librarycopyrightalliance.org/bm~doc/lcacostco013111.pdf

www.librarycopyrightalliance.org/bm~doc/lcacostco013111.pdf

The US Supreme Court has not been able to decide on whether the right of first sale exception applies to materials manufactured outside the US. The discussion is about printed books. Copyright law needs to be rewritten to take into account creation of literary works outside the US by means of data conversion technologies.

Manymoon Aquired by Salesforce.com

Manymoon Aquired by Salesforce.com

This should be an interesting combination, since Salesforce requires a lot of setup, and Manymoon requires almost none. It should be a powerful combination, especially for small businesses that don't want to go through a complex implementation process.

Sage Library System of Eastern Oregon has gone live with Evergreen

From today's LTLO from the Oregon State Library.

Congratulations to Eastern Oregon! King County moved to Evergreen a few months ago, and Eastern Oregon's move shows that open source driven by librarian developers can work even for a consortium of primarily very small libraries.

SAGE LIBRARY SYSTEM GOES LIVE WITH EVERGREEN

Sage Library System of Eastern Oregon has gone live with Evergreen as their next generation ILS. Equinox Software, Inc. oversaw the installation and migration of data from their previous system. Sage Library System of Eastern Oregon consists of 63 public, college, and school libraries. Eastern Oregon University, Pierce Library, is a member, and the university provides hosting services for the consortium. Karen Clay, Library Director at Eastern Oregon University, says, "We are very excited about the change to the new software. I think library users will get a better online experience. I am also pleased that after the transition, more of the public funds paid by Sage member libraries will be used for public purposes rather than being paid to a commercial software vendor." Equinox CEO, Brad LaJeunesse, says, "A consortium like Sage with very diverse libraries will certainly see the benefits of open source software. Public, school, and academic libraries all have different needs but the flexibility of Evergreen makes it an ideal system to allow every library to function at its highest level." Evergreen is a robust, open-source integrated library system best known for its unique ability to meet the needs of very large, high-transaction, multi-site consortia. However, it has also proven equally successful scaled down for even the smallest libraries. Since its debut in September 2006, the software has sustained the 280-plus libraries of the Georgia PINES consortium. Evergreen now supports over 700 libraries of every type-public, academic, special, and school media centers. Evergreen's rapidly expanding community includes libraries across 4 countries including 18 U.S. states and 8 Canadian provinces.

Have you tried Google Scribe?

Google Scribe is a text-predicting plug-in for Chrome. If you type with one hand (like during lunch when you have a sandwich in the other, or after a bad fall when your dominant hand is in a sling) this will save you hours of hunting and pecking. I normally type at 120 wpm, but during meals this slows a lot, and I hate getting food goo on  my keyboard.

My recommended settings:




 Automatically enable Google Scribe on active text field 
While editing, use Ctrl+J (Command+J on Mac) to enable/disable Google Scribe. More keyboard shortcuts 

 Show suggestions as I type ("Always")
 Show suggestions on Tab ("On demand") 
While editing, use Ctrl+Shift+J (Command+Shift+J on Mac) to switch between "Always" and "On demand". More keyboard shortcuts 

Sort suggestions by:  Alphabetical Google Scribe score Relevance Savings  

 Enable Enter for choosing suggestion 
 Enable Tab for choosing suggestion 
 Enable Space for choosing suggestion 

Give it a whirl and let me know what you think.

yWriter5 - Free novel writing software to help you write a book

yWriter5 - Free novel writing software to help you write a book

Thanks to mediabistro.com's Galley Cat newsletter, which led to to yWriter. This is a novel-writing application created by a programmer who also writes fiction. Mea culpa--I started this post over a year ago and have been using yWriter since then. I cannot recommend it too highly. It provides the organizational tools necessary to write long-form fiction (and nonfiction) without intruding upon the creative process with a lot of silly mythomadness suggestions. It also provides frequent stable back-ups so you won't lose your data. I use this program every day. I hope you will, too.

Click here to give it a try.