Monday, July 20, 2009

Upcoming book: Library Mashups

If you're interested in Library 2.0 and library technology generally, you might want to pre-order Library mashups : exploring new ways to deliver library data (website), a collection of articles on innovative ways to use (and abuse) library data.

I haven't read it yet, except for the chapter I wrote, "Breaking into the OPAC." I'm looking forward to many, including one on John Blyberg/Darien Library's SOPAC and something on "Zack Bookmaps," an effort to show local library copies of a book, without using OCLC. There's also a chapter on the LibraryThing API and libraries, written by Robin Hastings. Nicole Engard (a LibraryThing author), shepherded the whole thing to completion.

I found the book-process frustrating at times. At their fastest—and multi-author collaborations aren't that—books are slow things. This one took about a year. But the articles still look timely to me, and it's going to be good to hold "my" book in my hands.

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Sunday, December 28, 2008

Book blogs?

I need to broaden my horizons, and pick up a few good book-industry and bookseller blogs. I don't care about book deals, but I wouldn't mind some insight into how publishing is changing, particularly when it comes to technology.

I subscribe to some 114 blogs right now—mostly library-related, with a smattering of technology, startup, web 2.0 and competitor ones thrown in. But I don't follow much in the way of publishing industry blogs—pretty much only the BookFinder Journal, Michael Cairns' Persona non Data, Eoin Purcell, BookBrunch and Joe Wikert. And I only read one bookseller blog, the recently-discovered Hang Fire Books, which I read for the pulp covers.

Does anyone know of any good blogs?


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