Saturday, September 30, 2006

Libraries will vanish like the dinosarous?


Darwin's On the Origin of Species (1859)

" The struggle for existence: Nothing is easier than to admit in words the truth of the universal struggle for life, or more difficult -- at least I have found it so -- than constantly to bear this conclusion in mind. Yet unless it be thoroughly engrained in the mind I am convinced that the whole economy of nature, with every fact on distribution, rarity, abundance, extinction, and variation, will be dimly seen or quite misunderstood. We behold the fact of nature bright with gladness, we often see superabundance of food; we do not see, or we forget, that the birds which are idly singing round us mostly live on insects or seeds, and are thus constantly destroying life. . . . I use the term Struggle for Existence in a large and metaphorical sense, including dependence of one being on another, and including (which is more important) not only the life of the individual, but success in leaving progeny. . . . As more individuals are produced than can possibly survive, there must in every case be a struggle for existence, either one individual with another of the same species, or with the individuals of distinct species, or with the physical conditions of life. It is the doctrine of Malthus applied with manifold force to the whole animal and vegetable kingdoms (Chapter 3, "Struggle for Existence"). "

Information Storage Media :

Name

Symbol

Meaning

In bytes

kilobyte

KB

1024 byte

1024

megabyte

MB

1024 kibyte

1048576

gigabyte

GB

1024 megabyte

1073741824

terabyte

TB

1024 gigabyte

1099511627776

petabyte

PB

1024 terabyte

1125899906842624

exabyte

EB

1024 petabyte

1152921504606846976

Zettabyte

ZB

1024 exabyte

1180591620717411303424

yottabyte

YB

1024 zettabyte

1208925819614629174706176


1.2 petabytes of storage in 3.5-inch discs

He says he's the first person to solve non-contact optical spintronics which will in turn utlimately result in the creation of 3.5-inch discs with a million times the capacity of any hard drive - 1.2 petabytes of storage.

To put that into perspective, mega is 1,024 times kilo, giga is 1,024 times mega, tera is 1,024 times giga and peta is 1,024 times tera.


He says "Normally all the electrons could spin randomly working against the best electrical signal. The electrons are also capable of spinning in both directions a once. But my unique method for creating uniform in-sync spinning electrons will for the first time allow a whole new field of science and electronics to emerge.

"With the ability to control electron spin we will see much smaller electronic devices on the market."

Holographic Nanotechnology :

1 Colossal Storage 10 Terabyte Rewritable FeDisk will equal 100 - 100 Gigabyte hard drives, 20,000 DVD's WORMS , 4,000 Blu-Ray or China's 405-408 nm Violet Laser EVD WORM Disk's .


Future of libraries ????

"The Internet has expanded access to information, removing both teacher and student dependencies on a limited amount of information sources. Education is no longer bound by the limits of the teacher, textbook, or the books in the school library…Moreover, the Internet offers students in low-income and remote locations far more information than any single traditional library". [Microsoft]


The End of Libraries(Posted on Friday 8 September 2006 Infomancy)

" The end of school libraries came and went yesterday with little fanfare and hardly any notice. On September 7, 2006, the School District of Philadelphia and Microsoft opened the “School of the Future” with every possible space you could imagine…except a library. One of the stated goals from this pilot is to develop a ” replicable model that improves student achievement through holistic reform of secondary education [Microsoft].” Let me translate that administrative gibberish: We are going to create a school model that can be implemented across the country and we don’t need libraries to do it. Well, it translates to something like that. You can read the whole document if you can stand that much VisionSpeak.

But what’s that about the library? Oh yeah…the School of the Future doesn’t need a library. Libraries are a dead place, wasted space, just use Google (or MSN Search!). There are rather a lot of other “learning spaces” identified on the Learning Space Matrix: School District of Philadelphia/Microsoft School of the Future. The School of the Future recognizes the need for a distinct “Driver’s Education Lab” to “Develop skills that improve job-related prospects and advance employment opportunities” (within the field of Pizza Delivery?) [Microsoft]. But no library. There is something called an “Interactive Learning Center” but is this a library? Will there be a librarian?.




Friday, September 29, 2006

Avanti Library Systems released Avanti MicroLCS 1.0.1




Avanti Library Systems started in 1998 to develop a simple low cost open source library system for small libraries. This system gradually evolved into Avanti MicroLCS today. MicroLCS is an easy to use, powerful and configurable open source OPAC and cataloging system available. Though it is targeted for small libraries, its flexible and scalable architecture allows it to be used in libraries of any type. For both Windows and Unix platform.

Key Features

  • Clean consistent and simple user interfaces that are easy to use.
  • Flexible configuration. Title and holdings databases are 100 per cent configurable. No hard coded fields and not restricted to MARC record format. Any and all fields fully indexable.
  • Platform independent. Runs on any computer that supports Java.
  • Advanced searching capabilities support full boolean searching (with AND OR and NOT operators), nested searches and searching on all indexed fields.
  • Powerful and easy to learn search syntax available in a single search mode -- no Basic/Advanced search dichotomy.
  • Self contained. No third party software needed to install and configure.
  • Complete source code is available.
  • Small footprint. Entire system can fit on a floppy disk.
  • Client-server architecture allows a networked deployment.
  • Supports collections of up to 16 million titles and items.
  • Text based command line client available as well as a graphical user interface.
At version 1.0 beta 4 MicroLCS is an OPAC only. It does not yet support circulation functions. These are currently in development. Circulation will appear in the full 1.0 production release.


Download link for Windows: http://www.avantilibrarysystems.com/microlcs-1.0.1.zip

Download link for Unix: http://www.avantilibrarysystems.com/microlcs-1.0.1.tz

User Guide: http://www.avantilibrarysystems.com/manual/

For Source Code:http://www.avantilibrarysystems.com/microlcs-1.0.1.dev.tar

Wednesday, September 27, 2006

Knowledge Management: What has Wisdom got to do with it?

Professor Bruce Lloyd of the London South Bank University talking on "Knowledge Management: What has Wisdom got to do with it?" at a Gurteen Knowledge Cafe in London on 24th January 2006.

Tuesday, September 26, 2006

Introduction to the Semantic Web

Hugo Mills gives a short talk on the semantic web and RDF. This talk requires some very basic knowledge of web fundamentals. See http://www.hantslug.org.uk/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?TechTalks for more details and copies of the presentation that accompanied the talk. This talk was given at the Hampshire Linux User Group (HantsLUG) meeting on 3rd June 2006 at Southampton University.

Monday, September 25, 2006

Open Source: Events: FOSS(Free and Open Source Software ): Bangalore







FOSS.IN is one of the world's largest and most focussed FOSS events, held annually India. Over the years, it has attracted thousands of participants, and the speaker roster reads like a "Who is Who" of FOSS contributors from across the world.


Where and When

FOSS.IN/2006 will be held on November 24-26, 2006, at National Science Symposium Centre of the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore, India.

Speaker and talks registration for FOSS.IN/2006 is now open.

Read about FOSS.IN/2006 at

http://foss.in/2006

then read the Call for Participation at

http://foss.in/2006/info/Call_for_Participation

and then register at

https://foss.in/2006/cfp/speakers/

Please remember that the last date for putting in your talk proposals will
be October 8th, midnight GMT+0530.