this is the post

nbm 

 They promise to “reveal the secrets behind unique collections of paintings, motor cars, books, porcelain, contemporary art, ceramics, jewellery and more” (which I will have to take their word for now since I don’t have any headphones handy).

 about their current show on “Oudry’s Painted Menageries.” Very engaging; a relaxed note by one of the curatorial staff leads to interesting discussion with readers.

The Chronicle of Higher Education featured an article written by Susanna Ashton, entitled “What Goes Around,” on the use of Interlibrary Loan. ILL is a service that most faculty pretty much take for granted; they don’t even think about the costs, which the libraries usually absorb on their behalf. Personally, I know I am glad when the nice ladies that work ILL here find me a particular article I may want to read now and then. Anyhow, this should probably be mandatory reading for certain professors.

Ross

 Check it here: http://thewalters.org/blog/default.aspx

Research on Wikipedia/Trusting the Source of the Source

(Via Smart Mobs) So here is a research study (and I mean research, full of all sorts of funny looking formulas and symbols and stuff) about Wikipedia that comes to the conclusion that the more edits there are to a particular article the more accurate it is. Not surprising, to me at least, but since smart people are publishing quantitative results, it might add to the discussion.

Since its inception six years ago, the online encyclopedia Wikipedia has accumulated 6.40 million articles and 250 million edits, contributed in a predominantly undirected and haphazard fashion by 5.77 million unvetted volunteers. Despite the apparent lack of order, the 50 million edits by 4.8 million contributors to the 1.5 million articles in the English-language Wikipedia follow strong certain overall regularities. We show that the accretion of edits to an article is described by a simple stochastic mechanism, resulting in a heavy tail of highly visible articles with a large number of edits. We also demonstrate a crucial correlation between article quality and number of edits, which validates Wikipedia as a successful collaborative effort.

The conversations I had this week about Wikipedia with the schools I was working with in Atlanta were pretty heated at times. But it’s interesting how it quickly turns into a larger discussion about students as editors in general, and that Wikipedia ain’t the only problem we have in terms of what to trust and what not to trust. And that quickly turns into another discussion about how the network (if you have one) filters out much of the good stuff, just as it did in this instance. You may not trust the source, but if you trust the person or people who sent you the source, the source inherently becomes more trustworthy.

Or something like that…

The comments section is worth skimming as well.

*** BTW, WordPress has reconfigured its splash page, making loging in a little less intuitive. Just look to the far right-hand column, under the header Meta ».

Ross

The group is also compiling a list of libraries with flickr! accounts. We are (ahem, that is the Watson Library is) listed twice (aren’t we enterprising?).

Ross

A Google Package Challenges Microsoft
By MIGUEL HELFT

SAN FRANCISCO, Feb. 21 — Google is taking aim at one of Microsoft’s most lucrative franchises.

On Thursday, Google, the Internet search giant, will unveil a package of communications and productivity software aimed at businesses, which overwhelmingly rely on Microsoft products for those functions.

The package, called Google Apps, combines two sets of previously available software bundles. One included programs for e-mail, instant messaging, calendars and Web page creation; the other, called Docs and Spreadsheets, included programs to read and edit documents created with Microsoft Word and Excel, the mainstays of Microsoft Office, an $11 billion annual franchise.

Unlike Microsoft’s products, which reside on PCs and corporate networks, Google’s will be delivered as services accessible over the Internet, with Google storing the data. That will allow businesses to offload some of the cost of managing computers and productivity software.

For corporate technology staffs, “we think that will be a very refreshing change,” said Dave Girouard, Google’s vice president and general manager for enterprise.

The e-mail and messaging package, which is based on products like Gmail, Google’s e-mail service, has been available in a free trial since August and is supported by advertising. It has been used by thousands of businesses, educational institutions and other organizations, Google said.

Google will continue to provide the extended bundle of software free to businesses and educational institutions. But it will also offer businesses additional e-mail storage and customer support for an annual fee of $50 a user.

By comparison, businesses pay on average about $225 a person annually for Office and Exchange, the Microsoft server software typically used for corporate e-mail systems, in addition to the costs of in-house management, customer support and hardware, according to the market research firm Gartner …

Sounds a little like what’s happening de facto here.
Read the rest of the article here.

Ross

It’s proven to be quite a ‘viral’ phenomenon. It was making the rounds of the biblioblogosphere last week; my apologies to any who might have seen this before — except to say it gets better with repeated viewing. For those who want a transcript of the text (and it does go by in quite a hurry), it’s been published here.

And you will want your headphones for the techno background music.

Ross