This is a test post from 
, a fancy photo sharing thing.
June 21, 2006
January 7, 2006
Internet encyclopaedias go head to head
Nature magazine investigated the coverage of science by Wikipedia and Britannica and found many factual errors, omissions or misleading statements: 162 and 123 in Wikipedia and Britannica, respectively.
However the difference in accuracy was not particularly great — only eight serious errors, such as misinterpretations of important concepts, were detected in the pairs of articles reviewed, four from each encyclopaedia!
For more info, read “Internet encyclopaedias go head to head” (Nature 14 Dec 2005)
yew boon
January 6, 2006
Ever wonder what it takes to digitise a book?
Ever wonder what it takes to digitise a book? See the photos below … Read the Wall Street Journal article “Building an Online Library,One Volume at a Time” for more info
yew boon
January 4, 2006
Book Scanning Projects
Goggle made the headline last year trying to scan millions of books to make them searchable on the Internet. Rocky Mountain News (24/12/2005) listed more such projects –
Book scanning projects
• Google Inc.: The search company has deals with several publishers to scan and display portions of their works. For millions of other books, Google is working with the New York Public Library and university libraries at Stanford, Harvard, Michigan and Oxford to scan their collections.
• Open Content Alliance: Yahoo! Inc., Microsoft Corp. and others are working to scan thousands of books, mostly out-of-copyright works.
• Amazon.com Inc.: The online bookseller already has deals to display portions of books it sells. Under its new Amazon Pages service, the company plans to let customers buy portions of a book – even just one page – for online viewing. A second program, Amazon Upgrade, will offer full online access to those who have purchased the physical book. Both services are expected to begin next year.
• Internet Archive: In addition to joining the Open Content Alliance, this nonprofit preservation group hosts about a half-dozen scanning programs.
• HarperCollins Publishers: The book publisher plans to scan its entire active catalog of 20,000 titles plus its 3,500 to 5,000 new releases each year.
URL: http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/other_business/article/0,2777,DRMN_23916_4339638,00.html
yew boon
Developing New Industries for S’pore
S’pore poised to ride growth in new sectors
Read today’s Straits Times article that 2 fast growing fields in S’pore will be ENVIRONMENT and water technologies as well as digital and interactive media. “If these sectors develop as anticipated, together with the biomedical sciences, they could account for 80,000 jobs – double the current number – by 2015.” To create successful media products, you need quality content and this probably implies more opportunties for people trainined in humanities and social sciences!
yew boon
November 29, 2005
New blog
Quoting Shelley Powers –
“If Shakespeare had been a weblogger, Romeo would find Juliet after she took poison and would have been so overcome with emotion he would have blogged about finding Juliet dead and would have taken so long that Juliet would have awoken and Romeo wouldn’t have killed himself, and they would have married and had kids and his and her weblogs… and everything.”
Blogging seems to be very much in the news nowadays. Everyone seems to be blogging these days — from students, IT consultants, executives, scientists and reporters to patients and librarians. So, this space welcomes contributors who wish to share their opinions and experiences pertaining to the HSS community, academic libraries and information world.
Some pointers –
- Keep it conversational and light
- Know your audience and write to them
- Blogs are highly time-sensitive so currency is critical
- Anecdotes are encouraged and expected
- Use links to refer to relevant information
- Be succinct and break-up the text – which encourages ‘scanning’
yew boon
