Greil Marcus finished an article about the reception of his recent book on Van Morrison with this lovely quote:

Not all the stories people tell about Morrison, though, are stories of conflict, confusion, resentment, or regret. "I was talking to my father today," a woman in Portland said. "He asked what I was doing tonight, and I told him to was going to hear someone talk about a book he'd written on Van Morrison. 'Oh, Van Morrison!' he said. 'You know, I used to work with his father on the docks in Belfast. After work he'd take me to his house to listen to his records. I'd never seen anything like it. Hundreds and hundreds of 78s and LPs, jazz, blues, country music, everything. And there'd be the little boy there, dancing around the room, saying play that, Daddy! Play that!'" [Listening to Van Morrison by Greil Marcus]

Off-topic but nice: I will follow up with another post on music in a day or two ...

Greil's book was called Listening to Van Morrison in the UK and When that rough god goes riding: listening to Van Morrison in the US.

I have been using this phrase, outside-in and inside-out, to discuss a contrast in information management practices that is becoming more important. Here is how I spoke about it a little while ago in these pages:

Think, for example, of a distinction between outside-in resources, where the library is buying or licensing materials from external providers and making them accessible to a local audience (e.g. books and journals), and 'inside-out' resources which may be unique to an institution (e.g. digitized images, research materials) where the audience is both local and external. Thinking about an external non-institutional audience, and how to reach it, poses some new questions for the library. [Outside-in and inside-out]

And here is how I have been talking about it in presentations in the context of the 'collections grid'.

'Below the line' are digitized materials (special collections, slides, etc) and the digital outputs of research and learning practices. Here a set of common interests emerge, in terms of digital library infrastructure, management of unique materials (something of course archives and museums have always done), disclosure to the outside world, and so on. This requires a new set of skills and orientations and a new way of interacting with clients.

I was reminded of this when reading an interesting post by Mark Dahl earlier where he talks about this shift in concrete terms. He notes the slow diminishment of 'above the line' activities:

As content shifts to the network and as discovery is disintermediated from the library, the work needed to support the library's traditional roles as buyer, archiver, and gateway to information is slowly diminishing. [code4lib NW: digital initiatives presentation]

He then discusses several 'thematic digital projects' where faculty are working with digital resources to enhance teaching, learning and research. One example is 'accessCeramics: a contemporary ceramics image resource' a collaboration between the Library and the Art Department at Lewis and Clark College, where the author works.

He sees a role over and above the creation and management of document- or image- based repositories we have seen emerge in recent years, and which I mention above.

But I think there are more interesting opportunities when we actually wade out into the messy world of teaching and research and offer up our expertise at organizing information. A way of doing this is to establish some kind of a digital initiatives program that faculty can engage with directly. We see this at large institutions such as University of Virginia and Columbia, but also now increasingly at liberal arts colleges like Hamilton, The University of Richmond, and Kenyon. The programs at these institutions in one way or another offer support to faculty for teaching or research related digital projects. [code4lib NW: digital initiatives presentation]

(Incidentally, given the University of Virginia is mentioned, it might be appropriate to point to the Scholars' Lab.)

I wrote an entry on yufind the other day, noting its use of xISBN to cluster editions in results. yufind is an implementation of VuFind. Here is another example of the clustering: Villanova.

As Till Kinstler points out in a comment, and as William Denton notes in a discussion of the entry on his FRBR blog, this is a feature supported in the standard VuFind distribution.

My colleagues Karen Coombs and Xiaoming Liu sent me some further information. Apparently, the VuFind developers are looking at potential integration also of the Worldcat API and Worldcat Identities.

A companions service to xISBN is xOCLCNUM. This would give better coverage (the ISBN only applies to recent items) but I do not have a good sense of how widely available an OCLC number would be in records of catalogs run by VuFind.

"vBookZ is intuitive, easy to use, and offers to the iPad users a whole new reading experience. Acapela speech synthesis comes in to turn the written content into pleasant speech, without ever having to watch the screen. vBookz is NOT 'books on tape': it is a live text-to-speech generator with no need for conversion nor stored books files. It is a new way to enjoy reading: eyes-free reading while on the move, driving or just relaxing, assisted reading for the sight impaired or audio feedback for children or those learning to read in a foreign language"

More than a million Second World War documents are to be made available to the public for the first time. Files from Bletchley Park, the UK's wartime code-breaking headquarters, are to be digitised and put online in a large-scale project expected to take up to five years to complete. Undercover mathematicians and military operatives produced high-level intelligence at the Milton Keynes base during the war, providing crucial assistance to the Allied effort. The work of the Bletchley Park staff, which included cracking supposedly unbreakable German codes generated by the Enigma and Lorenz machines, has been credited with curtailing the length of the war by up to two years. The Bletchley archive currently exists entirely in paper format and much of it is difficult to view, making it inaccessible to the general public. Until now, only limited access to the archive has been granted to academics and educators under strict supervision

On a gorgeous Derby Day, I commend to you Henry Cecil's Bullet Train. My selections in full, all at Epsom: 140: Dr Zhivago 240: Reggane 315: Oldjoesaid 400: Bullet Train Tom Roper

I still follow the discussions on the health librarians' Jiscmail list lis-medical. I do this largely for nostalgic reasons, though I would not rule out a return to health librarianship at some point in the future, despite the fact that... Tom Roper

"Biblioscape is designed to help researchers collect and manage bibliographic data,take notes while doing research,and generate citations and bibliographies for publication. Biblioscape Professional can compile your notes into a final draft with a table of contents and an index. Biblioscape Librarian can be used to manage a small library. You can use Biblioscape to manage all your research information" - Edition v8.05 now available for download

A series of mental health registers reveal the stark reality of how the mentally ill were treated in Yorkshire over 130 years ago. As part of the Archive Awareness Campaign, East Riding of Yorkshire Archives has catalogued the registers - the Men's and Women's Case Books - from the Broadgate Hospital archive. Comprised of case records of individuals admitted to Broadgate between 1871 and 1906, the registers paint a harrowing picture of life for those deemed mentally ill over a century ago. Ian Mason, Archives and Local Studies Manager at East Riding of Yorkshire Archives, said: 'Sadly, despite our modern preconceptions of mental hospitals, some of the patients admitted to Broadgate in its early days would not be diagnosed insane today. Cases such as epilepsy and depression, which we can treat relatively easily today, were not as well understood and were considered a form of "idiocy" or "stupidity".' - UK National Archives

The Idea of Order explores the transition from an analog to a digital environment for knowledge access, preservation, and reconstitution, and the implications of this transition for managing research collections. The volume comprises three reports. The first, "Can a New Research Library be All-Digital?" by Lisa Spiro and Geneva Henry, explores the degree to which a new research library can eschew print. The second, "On the Cost of Keeping a Book," by Paul Courant and Matthew "Buzzy" Nielsen, argues that from the perspective of long-term storage, digital surrogates offer a considerable cost savings over print-based libraries. The final report, "Ghostlier Demarcations," examines how well large text databases being created by Google Books and other mass-digitization efforts meet the needs of scholars, and the larger implications of these projects for research, teaching, and publishing

Cambridge University Library has announced visionary plans to become a digital library for the world - following a GBP1.5m lead gift pledged by Dr Leonard Polonsky. Home to more than seven million books and some of the greatest collections in existence, including those of Newton and Darwin, the Library will begin digitising its priceless treasures to launch its Digital Library for the 21st Century. University Librarian Anne Jarvis said: "Our library contains evidence of some of the greatest ideas and discoveries over two millennia. We want to make it accessible to anyone, anywhere in the world with an internet connection and a thirst for knowledge. This will not only make our collections available to the world; it will also initiate a global conversation about them"

CARL E-Lert # 378, June 4 2010 from Canadian Association of Research Libraries. Some of this week's items: Ryerson University Library and Archives joins CARL as its 32nd member; Ontario to appoint provincial chief scientist; AUCC welcomes new copyright bill; Investment in digital economy holds key to Europe's future prosperity, says Commission report; Behold, our digital future

CARL E-Lert # 377, May 21 2010 from Canadian Association of Research Libraries. Some of this week's items: Lynn Copeland winner of the 2010 CARL Award for Distinguished Service to Research Librarianship; British Library to digitise 40m of its newspaper pages; 2010 Outstanding Service to Librarianship Award Announced by the Canadian Library Association; Recommendations for independent scholarly publication of data sets

The Radiology Legacy Collection is a searchable electronic archive of Radiology issues from 1923 to 1998. All covers, editorial information and advertisements are included. The Collection is accessible only to Radiological Society of North America members and institutions that purchase it

INFORMS has announced 2011 pricing for its 12 individual journal titles and Publications Suite package

The Friday Brain-teaser from Credo Reference - this week: Scientists. Answers here.

1. Which English scientist wrote a book called "A Brief History of Time" (1988) which became an international best-seller?
2. Which Russian scientist used dogs in conditioned response experiments where he sounded a bell while presenting food to a dog?
3. Which British environmental scientist proposed the Gaia hypothesis, for which he is best known?
4. Which science writer collaborated with Stanley Kubrick on the 1968 film "2001: A Space Odyssey" and conceived the idea of communications satellites?
5. Name the US scientist who invented the phonograph and the electric light bulb.
6. Name the British civil engineer who designed ships called the Great Western, Great Britain, and Great Eastern.
7. Which British chemist (1733-1804) discovered oxygen and 10 other gases?
8. What was the surname of the Swedish naturalist who, in 1735, devised a system for classifying plants into groups depending on shared characteristics?
9. What was the nationality of the inventor Marconi?
10. Which French chemist and microbiologist developed the germ theory of disease and created a vaccine for rabies?

"Bodleian Library Publishing has partnered with The All England Lawn Tennis Club at Wimbledon to reproduce the first rules of the game. John Barrett's introduction looks at the fascinating story of the origins and evolution of tennis, from its incarnation as Jeu de Paume in medieval and renaissance courts to the present day. The Bodleian Library holds a number of early rules of tennis. This book reprints in full the first two rules of the game from 1874 and 1878 as well as detailing the many alterations since then, including lowering the net height three times, introducing advantage sets in 1884, and banning the technique of double stringing, the spaghetti racket, in 1978"

"Kno, short for knowledge, is a unique two-panel, touch-screen tablet that blends textbooks, course material, note-taking, web access, educational applications, digital media, sharing and more into a more powerful and engaging educational experience. Kno was developed on open web technologies that welcome the publisher and developer communities and opens the door to unprecedented innovation in education. Its platform provides the opportunity to create new revenue streams for publishers and developers of content that can be delivered electronically to students"

Kno Movie from Kno, Inc. on Vimeo.

"ALA will again be hosting an Unconference. This year will feature new discussion styles, debates, media integration, and fun only chaos can create. The Unconference will be Friday, June 25, 2010 from 9am-4:30pm. The event will take place in 207A at the Washington Convention Center. An unconference is a participant-guided experience that harnesses the unstructured conversations people usually have between conference sessions into the conference itself. Unlike most conferences where talking heads and group leaders decide what is important, unconferences are organized by the crowd. Unconferences are about sharing the knowledge and passion we have for our profession and taking what we learn into the world to make a difference. Everyone has something to share. Everyone has something to learn. We can all change the world"