Really appreciated the text “In your Dreams” and video provided by Jeff Scher…

The University Council’s approval was announced this morning…

Boston University took a giant step towards greater access to academic scholarship and research on February 11, when the University Council voted to support an open access system that would make scholarly work of the faculty and staff available online to anyone, for free, as long as the authors are credited and the scholarship is not used for profit. Click here to download the full pdf.

“We believe this is the first time that a university as a whole has taken a stand on behalf of the university as opposed to a single school or college,” says Wendy Mariner, the chair of the Faculty Council and a professor at the School of Law, at the School of Public Health, and at the School of Medicine. “We are looking forward to new forms of publication in the 21st century that will transform the ways that knowledge and information are shared.”

“The resolution passed by our University Council is a very important statement on the importance of open access to the results of scholarship and research created within the University,” says BU President Robert A. Brown. “The digital archive called for in the resolution will become a great repository for the creativity of our faculty and students.”

You can read more at BU Today.

Google announced a settlement in their lawsuit with the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers.

Today we’re delighted to announce that we’ve settled that lawsuit and will be working closely with these industry partners to bring even more of the world’s books online. Together we’ll accomplish far more than any of us could have individually, to the enduring benefit of authors, publishers, researchers and readers alike.

From the Chronicle of Higher Education:

If approved by a judge, the accord would allow users of Google Book Search in the United States to see the full texts of books they can read only in snippets now. The deal would also have the potential to put millions more out-of-print or hard-to-find titles within the reach of readers and researchers. Institutions would be able to buy subscriptions so that their students and faculty members could have full access to complete texts. All public libraries in the United States would be given free portals for their patrons. (The settlement does not apply to the use of Google Book Search outside the United States.)

Simson L. Garfinkel discusses the epistemology behind Wikipedia in an interesting article in Technology Review.

So what is Truth? According to Wikipedia’s entry on the subject, “the term has no single definition about which the majority of professional philosophers and scholars agree.” But in practice, Wikipedia’s standard for inclusion has become its de facto standard for truth, and since Wikipedia is the most widely read online reference on the planet, it’s the standard of truth that most people are implicitly using when they type a search term into Google or Yahoo. On Wikipedia, truth is received truth: the consensus view of a subject.

I saw that Terry had responded to the VGT Omnivore’s Hundred and decided to give it a try. I bolded those things I’ve eaten and added a few comments along the way…

The VGT Omnivore’s Hundred:

1. Venison / (This is good, but I prefer Ostrich)
2. Nettle tea
3. Huevos rancheros
4. Steak tartare / (good, but I rarely eat beef any more)
5. Crocodile
6. Black pudding
7. Cheese fondue / (long, long ago I used to have a fondue pot…)
8. Carp / bony, but good flavored.
9. Borscht / ok, but not my favorite.
10. Baba ghanoush
11. Calamari / (whenever I get a chance.)
12. Pho
13. PB&J sandwich / (used to eat PB and Honey sandwiches too. )
14. Aloo gobi
15. Hot dog from a street cart / (Only in NY)
16. Epoisses
17. Black truffle
18. Fruit wine made from something other than grapes
19. Steamed pork buns / (often in China)
20. Pistachio ice cream
21. Heirloom tomatoes / (any time I get a chance. Grow them in the garden)
22. Fresh wild berries
23. Foie gras / (took a cooking class to learn to cook it.)
24. Rice and beans (real comfort food!!!)
25. Brawn, or head cheese
26. Raw Scotch Bonnet pepper / (I like hot, but I’ve never done it.)
27. Dulce de leche / (oooo, this is good.)
28. Oysters
29. Baklava
30. Bagna cauda
31. Wasabi peas
32. Clam chowder in a sourdough bowl
33. Salted lassi
34. Sauerkraut / (I never think about making it, but it’s good on a Reuben sandwich).
35. Root beer float / (we used to call it a “black cow”)
36. Cognac with a fat cigar
37. Clotted cream tea / ( I remember a time in near Bath …)
38. Vodka jelly/Jell-O
39. Gumbo / more comfort food
40. Oxtail
41. Curried goat
42. Whole insects / not whole, but I ate grasshoppers this summer. Really good in guacamole!!
43. Phaal
44. Goat’s milk
45. Malt whisky from a bottle worth £60/$120 or more
46. Fugu
47. Chicken tikka masala
48. Eel / (best in Japan….)
49. Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnut
50. Sea urchin
51. Prickly pear
52. Umeboshi
53. Abalone
54. Paneer
55. McDonald’s Big Mac Meal
56. Spaetzle
57. Dirty gin martini
58. Beer above 8% ABV / (Victory Beer’s Golden Monkey is my favorite)
59. Poutine
60. Carob chips
61. S’mores
62. Sweetbreads
63. Kaolin
64. Currywurst
65. Durian
66. Frogs’ legs
67. Beignets, churros, elephant ears or funnel cake
68. Haggis / Liked it more than I thought I might)
69. Fried plantain / (more comfort food)
70. Chitterlings, or andouillette
71. Gazpacho
72. Caviar and blini
73. Louche absinthe
74. Gjetost, or brunost / (Really liked this)
75. Roadkill
76. Baijiu
77. Hostess Fruit Pie
78. Snail
79. Lapsang souchong
80. Bellini
81. Tom yum
82. Eggs Benedict
83. Pocky
84. Tasting menu at a three-Michelin-star restaurant. / (Once in Paris)
85. Kobe beef
86. Hare
87. Goulash
88. Flowers
89. Horse
90. Criollo chocolate
91. Spam
92. Soft shell crab
93. Rose harissa
94. Catfish
95. Mole poblano / Any time I can find it
96. Bagel and lox
97. Lobster Thermidor
98. Polenta
99. Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee
100. Snake

So there you have it. Now here’s the rules:
1) Copy this list into your blog or journal, including these instructions.
2) Bold all the items you’ve eaten.
3) Cross out any items that you would never consider eating.
4) Optional extra: Post a comment here at www.verygoodtaste.co.uk linking to your results.

-jwa

I did a little more work on VuFind. One of the unresolved problems with our install was the display of circulation status, location, and call number. I discovered that VuFind uses the 001 tag of the marc record to create a unique id for the record. It uses that id to query the local ILS to retrieve the circulation status, location and call number on the fly to display in basic search results page. In our implementation of III, the oclc number is stored in the 001 tag and the bib record number is stored in 907|a in exported files. I decided for testing purposes it might be easier to modify the marc records than modify the code to look to the 907 tag.

I used MarcEdit to do a simple search and replace to transform the 001 to 035|a and to transform the 907|a to 001.  That fixed the problem:

http://digilib.bu.edu/vufind

There are still a few configuration issues to deal with.  I like, however, the faceted searching and the ability to create a mash-up record.

I was able to harvest the University of Toronto records from Internet Archive, but the resulting marc records had a few problems. I’m stll working on that. But for now, the call number, location, and circ status seem to be working.

It seems like I’ve been gone a long time.  End of the semester (spring), travel, family crises, new staff, new servers and major projects have occupied much of my time. During the summer, I guided the process of redesigning the School’s web site. (http://sthweb.bu.edu). It’s public, but content is still being added. We chose to use Joomla for the backend. It has proven to be robust and easy for the staff to learn.

We replaced two aging servers in the Library. Migrating applications and upgrading software required a bit of time, but the increased capacity is great.

And of course we are launching a new semester. I’ve concluded that we should skip the first week of class and move right to the second. The Library’s support load during the first week of class is enormous. I think we would all be happier if we just eliminated the first week.

I’m hoping to carve out a little time this semester for reading, and hopefully more frequent postings here.

John Markoff’s article in the NYT about Microsoft’s new “Live Mesh” is a move by another major player toward cloud computing.

“The Web is the hub of our social mesh and our device mesh,” he wrote. That statement is the first of a set of three “guiding principles” that Mr. Ozzie outlined in the five-page document entitled “Services Strategy Update.” In taking the PC off center stage, Microsoft is refocusing some of its resources to catch its cloud computing rivals.

In an earlier post, I suggested this trend will be significant for libraries. Initially I thought of libraries using cloud computing as a consumer of cloud computing as in the model that OCLC is developing with WorldCat Local. I believe it is more productive, though, to develop means for  libraries to become an active part of the computing cloud that allows consumers to library resources and services.

Early this morning, the Library’s network was upgraded to provide more bandwidth to our servers. Our old 10Mbs equipment was simply unable to provide the bandwidth required by the increased demand on our servers. The upgrade went well and our servers are now on a 1Gps pipe. I hope you are able to see improved response times.

This summer we anticipate the addition of a new server as well.  We’ll be moving most of the applications currently hosted on digilib to the new server.