For the last two days, on the northern side of the sky (India), we are observing a big reddish big ball size phenomena in the sky. It is visible for a very brief period around 19:00 and 19:30.
Have anyone of you observed this? Do you have any idea about it? Is it a natural astronomical phenomena or have something to do with any satellite? Do send your comments in this regard.
On 22 February, 2011 almost all the leading newspapers of the world carried news about discovery of some new books of Thomas Jefferson, one of the founding father of U.S.A. at Washington University in St. Louis.
Read the New York Times story here.
They reported about the discovery of 28 titles in 74 volumes at the university.
But the question is whether it is discovery of books of Thomas Jefferson, as the newspapers screaming or is it rediscovery of books by them?
The question comes because the university’s catalogue shows the books’ availability all along. Even the 005 tag of MARC shows the date of last change made in the records.
So is not it proved that the news organisations never bothered to check the Library’s catalogue. Or may I put it in a different way – it is high time to let people know that proper cataloge of a library or any collection is the unquestionable resource discovery tool.
University of Calcutta, West Bengal, India has introduced a five-year integrated course on Library and Information Science from this academic year. It is a first in India. To get more details go to the University’s website and go to the Admission Notification Section of it.
Those who are eager to get real life examples from the both worlds i.e. AACR2 and RDA and wish to compare about how things are going to be changed, once RDA comes into force, may take a look at the Library of Congress website, as they have started to provide examples from both. Get details here:
<http://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/RDAtest/rdaexamples.html>
The link to LC’s RDA Test documentation site is here:
The co-publishers of RDA invite you for sign up to get open access to RDA toolkit from June to August 31, 2010.
Sign up to access either for solo-user or for institutional access here: RDA Toolkit
“Standards are like toothbrushes, everyone agrees they’re a good thing but nobody wants to use anyone else’s.” –Rick J. Block, Visiting Associate Professor at Pratt Institute & Head of Special Collections and Metadata Cataloging at the Columbia University Libraries.
I think by this time many of you have already read the paper by Stephen Abram — the Sirsi VP about his (or his company’s) views on open source library software. Quoting Clifford Lynch by him which Lynch himself clarified that it was little bit out of context created another round of uproar in the library community.
But the moot point remains. And Lynch also did not deny that. Do we really need money spent by libraries behind the development of open source library software in this time of flattening library budget? Do we not need to spent money and energy in some other urgent areas. And particularly in a country like India, where getting dedicated software professionals only for the library is till now dream, do we really need it?
Let us know what you think about it.
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