E-News for ARL Directors - May 2010 is now available online from the Association of Research Libraries

Ariadne - Issue 63, April 2010 is now available. Ariadne is targeted principally at information science professionals in academia, and also to interested lay people both in and beyond the Higher Education community. Its main geographic focus is the UK, but it is widely read in the US and worldwide. Subscribe to the RSS Feed

Above the Fold is a Web-based newsletter published by OCLC Research. It has been developed to serve a broad international readership from libraries, archives and museums - May 25, 2010 - Vol. 3, No. 17 now available

Ian Thomson's investigation into the gritty underside of "corrupted Eden" Jamaica has won him the Ondaatje prize, which goes to the book which has best evoked the spirit of a place

The BBC Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction 2010 shortlist has been announced

* Alex's Adventures in Numberland by Alex Bellos (Bloomsbury)
* Nothing to Envy: Real Lives in North Korea by Barbara Demick (Granta)
* Blood Knots by Luke Jennings (Atlantic Books)
* Too Big to Fail by Andrew Ross Sorkin (Penguin, Allen Lane)
* A Gambling Man by Jenny Uglow (Faber and Faber)
* Catching Fire: How Cooking made us Human by Richard Wrangham (Profile Books)

"DSpace 1.6.1 is primarily a bug-fix release, which means it does not introduce any new features but improves existing features and fixes bugs discovered in earlier versions of DSpace. This is also the first [minor] version of DSpace to use a "time-driven" approach to release, rather than a "feature-driven" approach: we set a deadline and worked towards releasing on that date, instead of releasing when a certain number of issues were resolved. DSpace 1.7 will be the first major time-driven release"

CILIP Multimedia Information & Technology Group has announced its latest event: social networking in libraries. The event will take place in Liverpool on Friday July 9. The speakers are:

Gareth Johnson – University of Leicester
Andy Walsh – University of Huddersfield
Zelda Chatten – University of Liverpool
Dave Pulpett – LSE

To book, please use the online booking form or email catherine.dhanjal@theansweruk.com

Paul McCartney has been named the Third Gershwin Prize Recipient by the Library of Congress

"To help public libraries address the growing needs of school students, job seekers, and other library patrons, ebrary® has announced a new pilot program that combines more than 20,000 e-books from leading publishers under a simultaneous, multi-user access subscription model; free access for local public high schools; do-it-yourself e-publishing tools; and complimentary marketing services"

"The Open Video Conference is a multi-day summit of thought leaders in business, academia, art, and activism to explore the future of online video. The first Open Video Conference was host to over 800 guests, including 150 workshop leaders, panelists and speakers. Over 8,000 viewers tuned in from home to watch the live broadcast. The event earned coverage in WIRED, NewTeeVee, BBC News, Filmmaker Magazine, and The New Yorker" - 1-2 October, 2010 - New York, USA. RSS Feed

"Linked Data is a hot topic. It provides a mechanism to expose library data in a way that is understandable to non-librarians, thereby facilitating community development of services that go beyond traditional library resources and creatively exploit library data in valuable new ways. In this webinar, OCLC senior research scientist Ralph LeVan will explain what Linked Data is about and how OCLC produces it, using examples from VIAF (The Virtual International Authority File). He will also discuss topics such as Real World Objects, Generic Documents, Content Negotiation and RDF. In addition, he'll discuss the Open Source infrastructure OCLC uses to make this happen, and which you can use to expose data in a text database like Lucene. Webinar participation is free and open to all but advanced registration is required - 27 May, 2010"

"The European research project IMPACT (Improving Access to Text) has recently entered its second phase by taking up eleven new partners from Southern and Eastern Europe into the consortium. These new partners will contribute to the project’s goals of optimising OCR (Optical Character Recognition) software and language technology for historical material and sharing institutional knowledge and expertise on digitisation. They will also help to build the IMPACT Centre of Competence, which will be launched in early 2011 to provide a central service entry point for all libraries, archives and museums involved in the digitisation of text material"

"The unique pre-1700 materials in Italy's famed Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze (BNCF) will be accessible around the world thanks to a new agreement between ProQuest and the Library. ProQuest will digitize BNCFs rich primary sources from the 16th and 17th centuries and make them fully searchable in Early European Books Online™, its recently released archive of rare works. The content will be made freely available to everyone within Italy, enabling all those users to explore the materials"

I gained new insights into the collections of the National Trust and rare books cataloguing as it is practised today, as well as a hint of a way to pass my retirement,when I heard Stephen Massil speak at a seminar... Tom Roper

I've missed some interesting racing: one of the most controversial Guineas meetings for years, and the Chester Vase meeting. I return to the fray on an indifferent day, but have chosen the following. Lingfield 210: Pyrrha Ascot 220: Barshiba Ascot... Tom Roper

I rarely sing the praises of iPhone apps, but City Poems is well worth the money will cost you in the apps store. Compiled by Victor Keegan, it mashes-up a map of London with poems about different parts of the... Tom Roper

It's the Scottish Grand National today and a good flat meeting at Newbury, a fine example of the mixed flat and jumps economy that pertains at this time of year. So I choose: 200 Newbury: Buxted 245 Ayr: Arcalis 305... Tom Roper

Le Monde des Livres, which comes out on a Friday, is much better than the British press at covering library stories. I've made this point before about their articles on Google, and in today's there's a front-page article on the... Tom Roper

The longlist for the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel Of The Year 2010 has been announced:

* In the Dark by Mark Billingham
* If It Bleeds by Duncan Campbell
* The Surrogate by Tania Carver
* The Business by Martina Cole
* A Simple Act of Violence by R.J. Ellory
* Until It's Over by Nicci French
* The Crossing Places by Elly Griffiths
* Cold in Hand by John Harvey
* Skin by Mo Hayder
* Vows of Silence by Susan Hill
* The Dying Breed by Declan Hughes
* Dead Tomorrow by Peter James
* Target by Simon Kernick
* A Darker Domain by Val McDermid
* Gallows Lane by Brian McGilloway
* Geezer Girls by Dreda Say Mitchell
* Singing to the Dead by Caro Ramsay
* Doors Open by Ian Rankin
* All The Colours of Darkness by Peter Robinson
* Child 44 by Tom Rob Smith