The Wired Campus Blog posted today (by way of Kairosnews) about an open access program at THE Ohio State University Press. THE Press has made a selection of out-of-print books from their catalog available for download (PDF). While THE Press (or individual author) retains copyright for the works, the copyright statement on the books I browsed says the “…PDF files contain the complete text of the book and may be used for any non-commercial purpose.”
What a great step for a publisher. Now students and other researchers can access a number of materials they might not otherwise find in a local library or have the patience to wait for via interlibrary loan. Assuming, of course, that libraries can catalog and link to these texts or add them to an already existing e-book collection. Any other university presses doing this yet?
Microsoft Live Labs recently posted a video presentation (see below) highlighting two software projects, Seadragon and Photosynth. Seadragon appears to be a viewing technology that, at the very least, enables users to quickly view a collection of images at macro and micro levels while displaying them with a high degree of clarity.
Just after the first minute of the video (starting at 1:15) check out how the presenter displays a complete ebook edition of Charles Dickens’ Bleak House and how clear the text displays:
I wonder if this will eventually extend beyond image files to include live applications. As a computer user, I could see some benefits of being able to keep multiple applications open simultaneously and have the ability to bounce from one to another without having to add an additional monitor to the desktop.
As a librarian, I wonder if a Seadragon-like application could be used to reformat those “Research by Subject†pages found on many library websites. Instead of clicking from page to page to page, just zoom to your area of interest. Perhaps each row or column could represent a subject area. And instead of links to the databases, why not have a search form ready and waiting. Since the ebook option is already within grasp, the delivery of text-based materials like pathfinders and other handouts is surely a possibility.
Photosynth
Here’s how Microsoft describes the Photosynth project:
The Photosynth Technology Preview is a taste of the newest – and, we hope, most exciting – way to view photos on a computer. Our software takes a large collection of photos of a place or an object, analyzes them for similarities, and then displays the photos in a reconstructed three-dimensional space, showing you how each one relates to the next.
In our collections, you can access gigabytes of photos in seconds, view a scene from nearly any angle, find similar photos with a single click, and zoom in to make the smallest detail as big as your monitor.
Check out the video for a preview of both Seadragon and Photosynth:
Having paid many dollars over the years for software tools like Norton’s PartitionMagic that were rarely used, I was glad to find GParted. This free partition tool is an open source software project that let’s users add, remove, and edit partitions on hard drives. You can use it for simple projects like creating two drive partitions on a hard drive or for more complex projects like setting up a machine that can dual boot Windows and Linux.
I used it recently to setup a new machine and it worked quickly and flawlessly. It was easy. I downloaded the LiveCD image, burned it to a CD, booted the machine from the disc and then ran the program to configure my partitions. After a restart, the hard disc was setup with the desired partitions and I could then install Windows. While this is a great tool for the computer toolbox, you’ll need to know about various types of filesystems (fat23, ntfs, ext2, etc.) and which ones your operating systems support in order to make full use of GParted.
Using data provided by the EPA’s Superfund program, terra IMS has created the U.S. EPA Superfund Site Locator. This Google Maps mashup lets people search for Superfund sites by city and state and then view the results through Google Maps.
What’s a Superfund site? According to the EPA, “A Superfund site is any land in the United States that has been contaminated by hazardous waste and identified by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) as a candidate for cleanup because it poses a risk to human health and/or the environment.*”
If that doesn’t freak you out too much give PlanetHazard a try. This site is also a Google Maps mashup, but it relies on data from the EPA’s National Emissions Inventories database. Although the data are from 2002 they are the most current. The site is organized geographically (city, county, state, & nationwide) and gives you the option to see maps showing polluters, pollutants, and industries.
Mashable recently posted an “Ultimate RSS Toolbox” article that describes over 120 RSS-related viewers and utilities. I’m glad to see so many resources available that allow people to customize how they want their information delivered. My favorite viewer is the Sage plugin for Firefox. I like having the ability to jump directly to articles/posts and viewing them in my browser. The standalone readers I’ve tried either had an integrated browser or required me to jump back and forth from reader to browser.
Library vendors such as Ebsco are finally coming around and making steps in the RSS direction. Although the process in its current form is a bit cumbersome, users can extract customized feeds that show things such as search results or table of contents. Below is a table of contents feed for College and Research Libraries, a journal published by the Association of College & Research Libraries. [In order to view these articles you'll need to be at an institution that subscribes to Ebsco's Academic Search Premier database]:
