There's a fascinating discussion going on now (Nov 2012) at the NGC4LIB (Next generation catalogs for libraries) Listserv about the value of cataloguing, RDF, Linked data etc.

Hi all, this is yet another conference report from me, my 3rd and last international conference for 2012.

This is probably the final part of my mammoth series of posts analysing Summon libraries.

This is part II of How are libraries designing their search boxes?

I am sure you have seen presentation slides done in the libraryland by speakers that are often stunning in simplicity.

I am hardly a expert on usability or user experience but over time of looking at usage logs and talking to users, observing users by walking around and helping I have started to realise a couple of things.

So we librarians are failing (or are we? See Walt Crawford's analysis of public library closures in US). Amazon is eating our lunches. Google is where people go. Surely we must be doing something wrong? Below are some of the critiques about how we librarians do things that perhaps deserve our consideration.

Brian Matthew's A white paper to inspire library entrepreneurialism [pdf] is probably one of the most thought provoking pieces on academic librarianship I have read this year so far.

If you have any familiarity with blogging you will know for some unknown reason "list posts" tend to be more successful at grabbing attention.

It's finally here. FourSquare launches Local Updates from businesses . "Foursquare Local Updates let merchants send text, photos, and specials to customers who have either checked into a business several times or liked it on Foursquare" (more) Here's how it looks like.

With the rise of web scale discovery services like Summon, Ebsco Discovery Service, WorldCat Local and Primo Central, librarians have began to assess how to teach searching and Information literacy differently.