STOP CHILD LABOUR

The International Labour Organization (ILO) has estimated that 250 million children between the ages of five and fourteen work in developing countries—at least 120 million on a full time basis. Sixty-one percent of these are in Asia, 32 percent in Africa, and 7 percent in Latin America.

The majority of 'main' workers are boys, whereas the majority of 'marginal' workers are girls; According to the 1991 census, about 90 per cent of working children live in rural areas; Children are engaged in various types of work, including those that are classified as 'hazardous', i.e. harmful to the physical, emotional, or moral well-being of children. An estimated 2 million children work in hazardous industries. Although there are inter-state and inter-regional variations in India, the factors that generate child labour, and hazardous child labour in particular, include parental poverty and illiteracy; social and economic circumstances; lack of awareness; lack of access to basic and meaningful quality education and skills; high rates of adult unemployment and underemployment, and cultural values of the family and society.

10 best extensions for Firefox 2

Mozilla Firefox incorporates functionality from the most popular extensions for the previous version.

Lots of stuff to try>>>>>>>>>>>>>>...

FoxyTunes
Tab Mix Plus
MR Tech Local Install
Download Statusbar
ForecastFox
All-in-One Sidebar
IE Tab
Firefox Showcase
StumbleUpon

As a social networker, bookmarker and site reviewer rolled into one, this extension wears many hats. "Stumbling" takes one click, and interactive icons make rating sites a cinch. Combined with the topic chooser, the additional one-click features give Web surfing a useful unpredictability TV just can't match.

Ook? Video Ook!

Koha ZOOM

LibLime, the leader in open-source solutions for libraries, announced that the Nelsonville Public Library System in Athens Ohio has just gone live with Koha ZOOM.Koha ZOOM includes a powerful, full-featured search engine based on Zebra, a high-performance indexing and retrieval engine. Koha ZOOM catapults Koha into the big leagues, improving standards-compliance, eliminating scalability limitations, and offering some of the most advanced searching technologies available. For those libraries who have been waiting for an open-source ILS that rivals the expensive proprietary systems, the wait is over. Koha ZOOM is a true enterprise-class ILS, suitable for even the largest of collections.

DSpace Community Survey-Results

DSpace conducted an informal survey of its open source community in October 2006.

Highlights

• The vast majority of respondents (77.6%) used or planned to use DSpace for a university IR.
• The majority of systems were in production (53.4%); pilot testing was second (35.3%).
• Preservation and interoperability were the highest priority system features (61.2% each), followed by search engine indexing (57.8%) and open access to refereed articles (56.9%). (Percentage of respondents who rated these features "very important.") Only 5.2% thought that OA to refereed articles was unimportant.
• The most common type of current IR content was refereed scholarly articles and theses/dissertations (55.2% each), followed by other (48.6%) and grey literature (47.4%).
• The most popular types of content that respondents were planning to add to their IRs were datasets (53.4%), followed by audio and video (46.6% each).
• The most frequently used type of metadata was customized Dublin Core (80.2%), followed by XML metadata (13.8%).
• The most common update pattern was to regularly migrate to new versions; however it took a "long time to merge in my customizations/configuration" (44.8%).
• The most common types of modification were minor cosmetics (34.5%), new features (26.7%), and significant user interface customization (21.6%).
• Only 30.2% were totally comfortable with editing/customizing DSpace; 56.9% were somewhat comfortable and 12.9% were not comfortable.
• Plug-in use is light: for example, 11.2% use SRW/U, 8.6% use Manakin, and 5.2% use TAPIR (ETDs).
• The most desired feature for the next version is a more easily customized user interface (17.5%), closely followed by improved modularity (16.7%).

.

TOPAZ: End-to-end electronic publishing system

Given that this is the PLoS technology blog, I thought that it would be good to start with an overview of the underlying PLoS ONE architecture. PLoS ONE will be launched on the TOPAZ application framework. TOPAZ aims to create a publishing platform to facilitate the shift of the scientific and medical communities from subscription based journals to an Open Access online commons.

The core of TOPAZ is a digital information repository called Fedora (Flexible Extensible Digital Object Repository Architecture). Fedora is an Open Source content management application that supports the creation and management of digital objects. The digital objects contain metadata to express internal and external relationships in the repository, like articles in a journal or the text, images and video of an article. This relationship metadata can also be search using a semantic web query languages. Fedora is jointly developed by Cornell University’s computer science department and the University of Virginia Libraries.

The metastore Kowari will be used with Fedora to support Resource Description Framework (RDF) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_Description_Framework metadata within the repository.

The PLoS ONE web interface will be built with AJAX.

How to use RSS to Create and Enhance Current Awareness Services

new article at LLR.COM

By Jason Eiseman

Excerpt:

"One final way to disseminate information from RSS feeds is through an intranet or portal, although this can be difficult and require some technical know-how. This is best used for subject-specific intranet pages. Remember our earlier search for Employment Law information sources? RSS would allow us to use those resources to create a dynamic, relevant Employment Law intranet page. Many portal products are starting to incorporate the ability to read RSS. Microsoft Sharepoint has several options for working with RSS feeds, most notably the Sharepoint Web Part."

Open Access in Biomedical Field-Current Status

"Current Status of Open Access in Biomedical Field-the Comparison of Countries Related to the Impact of National Policies"-Matsubayashi, Mamiko and Kurata, Keiko and Sakai, Yukiko and Morioka, Tomoko and Kato, Shinya and Mine, Shinji and Ueda, Shuichi (2006)

From the abstract:

"This is a presentation (23 slides) made at the 2006 Annual Meeting of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, Austin, Texas. It reports the current status of Open Access (OA) in the biomedical field, and compares some countries such as the U.S., the U.K. and Japan in terms of the OA situation. There are controversies about the definition of OA. After examining the requirements about OA, we recognized OA as the situation in which researchers could read the full text of articles in unrestricted way. In order to investigate the current situation of OA, 4,756 articles were sampled randomly from articles published between January and September in 2005 and indexed in PubMed. The main results are as follows: 1) The rate of OA articles was 25%, and 75% of all the articles were available online including electronic subscription journal articles. 2) The means of OA was classified into five types. Among them, the rate of OA articles by “OA and Hybrid OA journals” was overwhelming (more than 70%), and that of PMC was 26.2%. The rates of OA articles by “institutional repositories” and “authors’ personal sites” were considerably low (6.0% and 4.9% respectively). 3) When comparing the rates of OA articles by countries, Belgium ranked the first with 41.7%. The five countries indicated more than 30% in OA articles: Canada and India (38.7%), Brazil (36.4%), Australia (30.8%), and the U.S. (30.7%). Each country was different in the means of OA. 4) We explored the rates of OA for two groups; one group consists of articles published in journals with IF, and the other consists of articles published in journals without IF. The rate of OA for the group of articles in journals with IF is 20.6%, and that of articles in journals without IF is 30.8%"

The Nature archive is available online

The Nature archive is available online back to January 1950. The archive back to 1869 (volume 1) is being digitized and will be available in late 2007.

• Author and Subject Indexes
• January 1997 - current issue
• January 1987 - December 1996
• January 1950 - December 1986

The World's Fastest Librarian

The World’s Fastest Librarian is a twelve minute short film following Mary, a fictional public librarian at the Madison Public Library (as played by the UW SLIS Lab Library) as she prepares for the World’s Fastest Librarian Competition. The World’s Fastest Librarian is a humorous tongue in cheek film that shows a different image of librarians than that usually found in films. This film was a collaborative project involving over a dozen library school students. It was a labor of love and is meant as a tribute to librarians everywhere.

World’s Fastest Librarian

"The World’s Fastest Librarian is a twelve minute short film following Mary, a fictional public librarian at the Madison Public Library, as she prepares for the World’s Fastest Librarian Competition.

The World’s Fastest Librarian is a humorous tongue in cheek film that shows a different image of librarians than that usually found in films. This film was a collaborative project involving over a dozen library school students.

It was a labor of love and is meant as a tribute to librarians everywhere. "
Video : here

"Open Scholarship 2006 : New challenges for Open Access Repositories "-Presentations available online

Presentations and posters given at the Open Scholarship 2006: New Challenges for Open Access Repositories conference.

Available at : University of Glasgow institutional repository

Sun releases 'Java' to Open Source Community

Java is used in more than 3.8 billion mobile phones, computers and other devices around the world.

The decision to release the code under an open licence means the world can now use, develop and share Java for free.

The same type of licence also covers the distribution of the core, or kernel, of the open source operating system Linux.

'More capability'

Rich Green, Sun's executive vice president of software, said the company hoped to turn more developers into Java programmers.

"The open sourcing of this really means more: more richness of offerings, more capability, more applications that consumers will get to use," Mr Green said.

"The platform itself will become a place for innovation."

Open source software has become a major force in the digital world - with the majority of web servers globally using Apache, an open source web server, many businesses using Linux on their machines and a growing library of open source projects available free to use.

All the Java source code is expected to be released by March 2007, Mr Green said.

Google Books Library Project: University of Virginia becomes new Partner

The University of Virginia becomes new partner in the Google Books Library Project.

Partners:

University of California

Harvard University

University Complutense of Madrid

University of Michigan

New York Public Library

Oxford University

Stanford University

University of Wisconsin-Madison

pilot project with the Library of Congress.

see more details: http://books.google.com/googlebooks/partners.html

The Google Books Library Project digitizes books from major libraries around the world and makes their collections searchable on Google Book Search. More information can be found at: http://books.google.com


Also see today's blog post on the Google Book Search about the announcement: http://booksearch.blogspot.com/.

Digital Libraries for the Blind

Digital Libraries for the Blind ABSTRACT Google serves a minority of humanity reasonably well today. How is Google going to fulfill its mission to deliver the world's information usefully and universally? Character recognition and accessibility pioneer Jim Fruchterman presents his quest to make information accessible to the long tail of humanity (which stillincludes most of the "bulge!" From inventing omnifont character recognition and affordable reading machines for the blind to creating accessible digital libraries for the blind and using technology to teach literacy to people who have fallen through society's cracks, Jim will cover the technical and practical challenges to reaching all of humanity with accessible information

Book: "Libraries and Google " Edited by William Miller

"Google® has become a nearly omnipresent tool of the Internet, with its potential only now beginning to be realized. How can librarians effectively integrate this powerful search engine to provide service to their patrons? Libraries and Google® presents leading authorities discussing the many possibilities of using Google® products as effective, user-friendly tools in libraries. Google Scholar and Print are extensively explored with an eye toward offering an expanded view of what is and may be possible for the future, with practical insights on how to make the most of the product’s capabilities.

It seems certain that Google® is here to stay. Libraries and Google® comprehensively examines this “disruptive technology” that is seen as both a threat and an opportunity by both librarians and publishers. Both perspectives are explored in depth, along with practical applications of this and other Google® technology that may be new to librarians. Google® products and other more familiar research tools are compared for effectiveness and ease of use. The various unique needs of users and scholars are detailed and considered as a springboard for insightful discussion of the future role of librarians in today’s world. Potential problems are closely examined, such as copyright issues of digitization, and privacy concerns sparked by its collection of personal information about its users. The book comprehensively explores the path libraries need to travel to benefit from the search tool, rather than being overwhelmed and destroyed by it.

Topics in Libraries and Google® include:

• the viewpoint that Google® may make libraries obsolete
  
• new opportunities for libraries through using Google® products
  
• technical aspects of purchasing and implementing Google® search products with proprietary vendor databases
  
• testing the performance of Google Scholar and Print
  
• practical use of Google®’s products
  
• personal privacy issues
  
• making digitized library resources more accessible
  
• digitization of copyrighted materials
  
• much, much more!
  

LIS Radio

LIS Radio is a new and exciting series of interactive webcasts brought to you by the School of Information Science and Learning Technologies at the University of Missouri-Columbia.

RSS Feed: http://lisradio.missouri.edu/feed.php

LiS Limited Edition: LiS Limited Edition is a place where you will find a wide assortment of one-of-a-kind webcasts focused on library science topics.

RSS Feed: http://lisradio.missouri.edu/feed.php?series_id=16

LiS ClassCast: At various times, and for various classes, SISLT professors will be using LiSRadio as part of their classes. While the content is usually class specific it might well be interesting to listen in. Watch the schedule for possibilities.

RSS Feeds: http://lisradio.missouri.edu/feed.php?series_id=4

Visual Discovery Tool by OCPL(Onondaga County Public Library)

http://www.onlib.org/
search results by format, author, subject, language, series, year, or data sources


Visual Discovery Tool-

Very nice interface to library catalog

This catalog runs with

AquaBrowser Library®

library search tool.

Gaming in Libraries and Future......?

ALA TechSource announced the publication of its latest issue of Library Technology Reports, “Gaming and Libraries: Intersection of Services” by Jenny Levine, librarian, author of the popular The Shifted Librarian blog, and an avid gamer.

“What if traditionally apathetic library users were instead motivated to get up early on a Saturday morning and plead for library staff members to open the doors?” she asks in the introduction to this highly accessible report.

HubMed(Boost with RSS) alternative interface to the PubMed Medical Database

HubMed:alternative interface to the PubMed medical literature database

This is a variation on PubMed in that with the same database contents as
PubMed for different searching interface.

HubMed provides these features :


1.Daily updates of search results via web feeds.

2. Firefox search plugin or a HubMed bookmarklet (drag to your browser's bookmarks toolbar).

3.Export citations in RIS, BibTeX, RDF and MODS formats, or directly to
RefWorks.

4.Unzip HubMed's import filter into Endnote's Filters folder for direct
import into Endnote, or install the RIS Export plugin for direct import
into ProCite, RefMan and older versions of Endnote.

5.Use the Citation Finder to convert reference lists from PDFs into search
results.

6.Create lists of closely related papers using Rank Relations, then
visualise and browse clusters of related papers using TouchGraph (requires
Java).

7.Graph occurrences of keywords in published papers over time.

8.Tag and store annotated metadata for articles of interest.


Example : searched for "Oncology Therapies"

Result:

For earch Article these options are avb. --

Abstract · PubMed FullText · SFX · GS Clip Export InterDB · Terms Related · Graph Cites · Scopus · Tag 10.1038/sj.cgt.7701011

Search results page url(short url) :


http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger2/655/4131/320/hubmed.1.jpg

EMPI Digital Library National Convention (EMPI DLNC), New Delhi, India

“Roadmap for Modernization of Libraries and Information Centres in the Emerging Knowledge Era”

The intended community for this conference includes those interested in aspects of digital libraries such as infrastructure; institutions; metadata; content; services; digital preservation; system design; implementation; interface design; human-computer interaction; performance evaluation; usability evaluation; collection development; intellectual property; privacy; electronic publishing; document genres; multimedia; social, institutional, and policy issues; user communities; and associated theoretical topics.

IASLIC-XXII NATIONAL SEMINAR On"Open Source Movement - Asian Perspective",December 13-16, 2006.

Central Library
Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee
Roorkee -247667.

The Open Access a philosophy has seemingly brought many advantages
 for the developing countries economic, faster means of communication,
visibility and accessibility. It opens a new horizon for the advancement of
free access to information and availability of publications.
IASLIC with a strong linkage with the Professionals and other
stakeholders is providing a common forum to address various issues
 relating to Open Source and Open Access at its 2200National Seminar to be
held at the Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee (Uttaranchal) from 13th to
16th December 2006. The Seminar will provide an opportunity to review and discuss
 comprehensively the matters related to open source and related areas,
and adopt appropriate strategies.
Theme: Open Source Movement -- Asian Perspective

Papers are invited in the following areas for deliberation:

• Open Source Resources
• Open Source Development
• Open Source in LIS
• Open Source Communities
• Open Access Strategies
• Open Access Journalas-its implications
• Open Source Initiatives and Organizations
• Open Access Repositories - Institutional and Self-Archiving
• Impact of Open Access on Scholarly Communication
• Open Access Initiatives : Role of various Stakeholders, Scholars, Publishers, Academic and Research Institutions, Governments etc.
• Bibliographic Control of Open Access Literature Quality.
• Issuies in Open Access-Peer Review, Quantitative methods Copyright and Legal Issues for Open Access Standards, Services of Open Access Open Source and Open Access Initiatives in various countries with particular reference to Asian Countries Case Studies.
  

   
  Registration Fees:

Individual (Residential) Rs.l,200/-
Individual (Non~residential) Rs. 1,000/-
Retired Person (Residential) Rs. 900/-
Student. (Residential) Rs. 800/-
Sponsored/ Deputed (Residential) Rs. 2,000/-
Local Rs. 800/-
Accompanying Members Rs. 1,000/-

The weather during the period will be very cold.
The average maximum and minimum temperature
remains 15°C and 6°C respectively. Delegates are requested to
bring woolen clothing.

For detail information please contact

Mr. Dipak Kr Nag,
Hony. General Secretary,
IASLIC, P-291, CIT Scheme 6M,
Kankurgachi, Kolkata 700 054
Phone - (0): (033) 2362 9651
Mobile: +919830521409
E-mail: iaslic at vsnl.net

Mr Yogendra Singh,
Institute Librarian and Organizing Secretary.
XXII IASLIC National Seminar Central Library,
Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee,
Roorkee-247667 UA INDIA,
Tel(O) 01332-285239/277587/285352
Res 01332-285240/278331
Mobile +91-94-121-58901
Email iaslic2006@)iitr.emet.in

Dr Pijushkanti Panigrahi,
Reader, Dept of Lib and Inf Science,
University of Calcutta,
87/1 College Street,
Kolkata - 700 073,
West Bengal, India,
email : panigrahipk at yahoo.com,
Ph  (M) : +91 94342 43522.
Associate Editor,
IASLIC Bulletin,
IASLIC, Kolkata-700 054

OJS(Open Journal Systems):Open Source Software- freely available

Open Journal Systems (OJS) is a journal management and publishing system that has been developed by the Public Knowledge Project through its federally funded efforts to expand and improve access to research.

OJS Features

1. OJS is installed locally and locally controlled.
2. Editors configure requirements, sections, review process, etc.
3. Online submission and management of all content.
4. Subscription module with delayed open access options.
5. Comprehensive indexing of content part of global system.
6. Reading Tools for content, based on field and editors' choice.
7. Email notification and commenting ability for readers.
8. Complete context-sensitive online Help support.

OJS assists with every stage of the refereed publishing process, from submissions through to online publication and indexing. Through its management systems, its finely grained indexing of research, and the context it provides for research, OJS seeks to improve both the scholarly and public quality of referred research.

Documentation: http://pkp.sfu.ca/ojs_documentation
Download: http://pkp.sfu.ca/ojs_download

ICDL 2006 - International Conference on Digital Libraries, 5-8 December

Registration open: ICDL 2006 - International Conference on Digital Libraries, 5-8 December 2006, New Delhi, INDIA.

International Conference on Digital Libraries (ICDL) 2006 will be held from 5-8 December 2006 in Association with TIFP, Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, Ministry of Science and Technology, Govt. of India and UNESCO and in cooperation with ACM SIGCHI at the India Habitat Centre, New Delhi. Ministry of Culture and Department of Information Technology, Ministry of Communication and Information Technology, Govt. of India have also agreed in principle to associate with this conference. The theme of the conference is Digital Libraries: Information Management for Global Access and it will focus on creation, adoption, implementation and utilization of digital libraries (DL), e-learning and knowledge society. For detail information about the conference please visit the website www.teriin.org/events/icdl

You are invited to attend and register to the 2nd International Conference on Digital Libraries, to be held in New Delhi, India 5-8 December, 2006. This conference is going to be a very high standard. We have invited many world renowned digital library experts. About 50 renowned and experienced speakers from India and abroad has already accepted to share their experiences. The papers we have received so far are all cutting edge researches and practical experiences. We believe you and your colleagues will be benefited tremendously from this conference. We encourage you and your colleagues and students to attend and share experiences with others in the conference.

Registration Information :

For details about the conference registration fee for all presenters and participants and other registration information, please refer to the conference website (www.teriin.org/events/icdl)

For any queries contact at –

Debal C Kar
Organising Secretary
ICDL2006 Conference Secretariat
TERI, Darbari Seth Block
IHC Complex, Lodhi Road
New Delhi - 110 003, India
Phone - 91-11-24682141, 24682111 or 24682100
Fax - 91-11-24682144, 2468 2145
E-mail ICDL@teri.res.in
Website: www.teriin.org/events/icdl