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Drexel University Libraries' Scholarly Communication Symposium:
Scholar 2 Scholar: How Web 2.0 is Changing Scholarly Communication

The Drexel University Libraries, with support from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), will present The 5th Annual Scholarly Communication Symposium titled: Scholar2Scholar: How Web 2.0 is Changing Scholarly Communication. Join us for a half-day symposium featuring a speaker presentation by Jean-Claude Bradley, Associate Professor, Chemistry and E-Learning Coordinator for the College of Arts and Sciences at Drexel University, followed by panel and roundtable discussions. An optional Dutch-treat networking lunch concludes the day.

Date: Wednesday, April 16, 2008
Time: 8:30 AM – 1:30 PM
Location: Drexel University, Edmund D. Bossone Research Enterprise Center, Market Street (between 31st and 32nd Streets), Philadelphia, PA
All are welcome! The event is free, but registration is required. For more information and to register, please visit:

Scholar2Scholar: How Web 2.0 is Changing Scholarly Communication

http://www.library.drexel.edu/scholarlycommunication/.

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"NEW DELHI: The 18th World Book Fair, the largest in the Afro-Asian region, showcasing books on youth and children kicked off in the Capital on Saturday. The major attraction of the Book Fair is the presentation by Russia, which is the guest of honour country at the fair. The other features of the fair are Youth Pavilion, Children Pavilion and the pavilion comprising books on and by Mahatma Gandhi."

Read the Full article from the Times of India at:
18th World Book Fair begins in Capital

See a video clip at: 18th World Book Fair opened in New Delhi

National Book Trust, India (NBT)

The National Book Trust, India (NBT) is a professional body working for the last fifty years in the field of quality publication.

It publishes a wide variety of quality books ranging from works of fiction to books on medical sciences and cutting edge technology for all segments of the society and for all age groups.

"Visakhapatnam (PTI): For the first time in the history of Indian Science Congress, a Virtual Congress of women farmers, who constitute a major chunk of the country's agricultural workforce, was held on Saturday as part of the annual science meet currently underway in this port city.

The Virtual Congress was jointly organized by Chennai-based M S Swaminathan Research Foundation and Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) in which women members of six Village Resource Centres (VRC) spread across the country participated through a technical know-how provided by the space agency.

Read the full article at:

Virtual Congress of women farmers at ISC meet

Librarian's gift: Oral history project preserves memories of South Asian immigrants

By Robert Roseth
News and Information

A gift from a UW librarian has spawned a three-phase oral history project, chronicling the influx of South Asians to the Seattle area from post-World War II to the 1990s.

""There has been an intense level of civic engagement for a group that had so recently immigrated to the United States," says Amy Bhatt, a doctoral student in women studies and the current project oral historian and coordinator. Bhatt has been involved with the project at all phases, beginning as the interview transcriber. She says that the individuals who came in the first wave began quickly to work on establishing local fraternal and cultural institutions. These included schools that taught Indian languages, a Hindu Temple in Bothell, civic groups such as the Indian American Political Advocacy Council, and Ragamala, which provided traditional South Asian performing arts to the Seattle community. "

Read the full article at:

Librarian's gift: Oral history project preserves memories of South Asian immigrants

THOMSON SCIENTIFIC BESTOWS AWARD CELEBRATING INNOVATION AND ENTREPRENEURSHIP IN INDIA

"Intellectual Property Drives Economic and Technological Development in India
The importance of intellectual property as a major source for economic and technological development in India is demonstrated by the increasing creativity and impact of Indian research and technology throughout the world. The last five years have seen an increase in publications by 45 percent and a rapid increase in patenting activity."

Read the Full article at

THOMSON SCIENTIFIC BESTOWS AWARD CELEBRATING INNOVATION AND ENTREPRENEURSHIP IN INDIA

Social Software in Libraries is written by Meredith G. Farkas who at present is the Distance Learning Librarian at Norwich University in Northfield, VT.

About the Book:

About the Book
Social Software in Libraries: Building Collaboration, Communication, and Community Online

By Meredith Farkas

Foreword by Roy Tennant

Here is the first book to explore the growing phenomenon of social software and how these technologies can be applied in libraries. Social software lets libraries show a human face online, helping them communicate, educate, and interact with their communities. This nuts-and-bolts guide provides librarians with the information and skills necessary to implement the most popular and effective social software technologies: blogs, RSS, wikis, social networking software, screencasting, photo-sharing, podcasting, instant messaging, gaming, and more. Success stories and interviews highlight these tools’ ease-of-use—and tremendous impact. Novice readers will find ample descriptions and advice on using each technology, while veteran users of social software will discover new applications and approaches.

2007/336 pp/softbound/ISBN 978-1-57387-275-1

See .
Social Software in Libraries

Chapter 4 - RSS where my public blogline feeds and my Engineering Library Blog Englibrary are included.

Jay Bhatt’s Feeds in Bloglines
Englibrary Blog

and also

HigherEd BlogCon

This site provides access to:

Informative Webcasts
Science Tracer Bullets and
A to Z Index of the Science Reference Services Web Site among several other important resources including

Technical Reports

The Technical Reports and Standards Special Collection has an extensive collection of over 4.4 million U.S. and foreign technical reports and standards.

For more information:

Science Reference Service from the Library of Congress

"Ask anyone which search engine they use to find information on the Internet and they will almost certainly reply: "Google." Look a little further, and market research shows that people actually use four main search engines for 99.99% of their searches: Google, Yahoo!, MSN, and Ask.com (in that order). But in my travels as a Search Engine Optimizer (SEO), I have discovered that in that .01% lies a vast multitude of the most innovative and creative search engines you have never seen. So many, in fact, that I have had to limit my list of the very best ones to a mere 100"

Read the full article at: Top 100 alternative search engines
Try experimenting with one of the search engines called Gigablast

Research Buzz reported that National Archives just announced Plan to Digitize Historic Documents.

Excerpt: "Now, the good news is that these materials will be digitized fairly soon. By February 6, the announcement said, the digitized materials will be available at no charge in National Archives research rooms in Washington DC and regional facilities around the country. The bad news is that the digitized documents will not be available at no charge through the National Archives Web site until five years have elapsed."

Read the full article at:

National Archives Announces Plan to Digitize Historic Documents

National Archives Announces Plan to Digitize Historic Documents

Excerpt:
"Googler Krishna writes that road data for lot of Indian Cities and even towns are now available on Google Maps. You can also use the Google Map data to plan trips between cities as there's detailed data for the Indian national highways as well." See Indian National Highways & Road Network now on Google Maps for more information.

From:
Digital Inspiration

Meredith Farkas reported two interesting tutorials in her blog entry on Random and cold medicine-induced thoughts on screencasting. These are: Calgary Public Library's basic Internet tutorials and Tutorials at the Orange County Public Library. Calgary's site include tutorials on Introduction to Computers and the Internet, Yahoo, Google, Internet Explorer, Hotmail, and several others. There are several virtual tutorials on searching EBSCOHost databases as well.

The Philadelphia Museum of Art has 3884 objects from the collections able to be searched online. You may search the Museum's collections by either entering a series of keywords (artist's name, title, country of origin, etc.) in the Keywords field, by selecting one or more of the search options, or by entering the Museum's accession number for a particular object, if known. Keywords must be at least 3 characters in length to return valid results.

Search the Museum collection at: Find Art online at the Philadelphia Museum of art

Google is experimenting with new search tools through its innovative Google Products compilation.
Among these tools are: Google News Archive, Google Web Features , Google Phonebook, Google Music, Google Street Maps, Google Travel and Google Flight Status and Google Finance. Google also provides access to Google Web Accelerator to help speed up your web browsers.

Knowledgespeak reports a study on Open Access journals and its possible impact on journal subscriptions.

Excerpt: 'A study of librarian purchasing preferences commissioned by the Publishing Research Consortium (PRC), UK, has revealed the factors that could prompt a librarian to substitute journal subscriptions with open access (OA) materials. According to the study titled 'Self-Archiving and Journal Subscriptions: Co-existence or Competition?' the length of the embargo period and peer review are key determinants in a librarian’s decision to maintain, or not, journal subscriptions. The study raises questions about previous claims that librarians will continue to subscribe to journals even when some or all of the content is freely available on institutional archives.'

The full report from the Publishing Research Consortium is available at 'Study finds factors that could lead to cancelled subscriptions'.

Webwire
reported a collaboration between Scirus and the Indian Institute of Science in which the digital content of the Institute will be indexed in Scirus.
Scirus will index two institutional repositories, ePrints@IISc and etd@IISc. The former is an eprints archiving facility for the IISc research community and the latter a digital repository of theses and dissertations of IISc' students and researchers.
Read the full article at:

Scirus Partners with Indian Institute of Science

Directory of Medical and Health Feeds

Submit RSS feeds that relate to medical or health issues to this topical medical feeds directory. All the feeds are grouped by topic so that someone interested in say Rheumatology can easily locate appropriate feeds, to stay current on that medical issue or condition.

See:
Medical Feeds

Source:
Directory of Medical and Health Feeds

About the Open Source Geospatial Foundation

The Open Source Geospatial Foundation, or OSGeo, is a not-for-profit organization whose mission is to support and promote the collaborative development of open geospatial technologies and data. The Foundation provides financial, organizational and legal support to the broader open source geospatial community. It also serves as an independent legal entity to which community members can contribute code, funding and other resources, secure in the knowledge that their contributions will be maintained for public benefit. Recently concluded four day FOSS4G2006 conference, brought together all the Free and Open Source Software for Geoinformatics (FOSS4G) communities. The conference incorporated the OSGIS Conference, Mapserver User Meeting, GRASS Users Conference, Java oriented FOSS4G and EOGEO Workshops.

Source: FOSS4G 2006 Conference - A Great Success

Despite 99% of all Public Libraries in the United States provide free public access to the Internet, they have not seen a corresponding increase in budgets.

Excerpt: The study, "Public Libraries and the Internet 2006," was conducted by the Information Use Management and Policy Institute at Florida State University (FSU) and funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the American Library Association.

"Libraries do an incredible job of connecting people with technology, but demand for this service is significantly outpacing libraries' capacity to make necessary upgrades, purchases, and repairs," said John Bertot, Florida State University professor and author of the report."

See Full article at:

Today's Public Libraries Are Thriving Technology Hubs That Millions Rely on for First or Only Choice for Internet Access.

Sachin Kalbag reports a unique project to digitally archive and preserve 700 year old Indian scriptures in his article in DNAINDIA.
Excerpts: "The project will digitally preserve 13th century scholar Madhavacharya’s Sarvamoola granthas, a collection of 36 works with commentaries on his Dvaita philosophy of the meaning of life and the role of God. PR Mukund, Gleason professor of electrical engineering at RIT, and his colleague Roger Easton, have embarked on this project to restore 340 palm leaves, each of which is 26 inches long and two inches wide, and is bound together with braided cord threaded through two holes. "

Read the full article at:
US university restores 700-yr-old Indian scriptures

The "Digital Repository Infrastructure Vision for European Research" (DRIVER) project responds to the vision that any form of scientific-content resource, including scientific/technical reports, research articles, experimental or observational data, rich media and other digital objects should be freely accessible through simple Internet-based infrastructures.

Read the Full Article at:
DRIVER: Networking European Scientific Repositories

Is there a similar initiative to network repositories in the United States? Worldwide? Can Google Scholar provide an option to search within worldwide repositories?