After 17 Years, Library Website Directory Libweb to Shut Down
Libweb, the long-running web-based directory of library websites, is “being put out to pasture,” according to a post late yesterday on the Web4Lib listserv from Libweb’s founder and administrator, Thomas Dowling, assistant director of library systems at OhioLINK.
The 17-year-old site, which lists links to more than 8000 library websites in 146 countries, will no longer be updated and will be shut down for good in December. “I seldom find time to update it any more, and there’s this thing called Google now, which wasn’t around in 1994,” Dowling wrote.
Libweb was launched in May 1994. It was first hosted by the University of Washington Libraries website, and then by the Berkeley Digital Library SunSITE at the University of California, Berkeley, from 1996 to 2005. It is currently hosted by OCLC-owned WebJunction.
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New OCLC Bulletin Summarizes Research
OCLC has launched a new publication called The OCLC Research Quarterly Highlights. According to Lorcan Dempsey, the vice president, OCLC Research, and Chief Strategist:
This is the first installment of a periodic bulletin about OCLC Research. It will provide highlights of the previous quarter’s research work, including reports from the Innovation Lab, the OCLC Research Library Partnership, and the occasional look at emerging items. The emphasis will be on collecting and summarizing items of significance for your attention, with links to more complete discussions elsewhere on the OCLC Research Web site.
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OCLC App Makes Connections
OCLC announced a clever new prototype online app yesterday called the WorldCat Identities Network, which creates a visual web connecting people, fictional characters, or corporations in the WorldCat Identities database.
The project, led by OCLC Research user interface designer JD Shipengrover, uses the WorldCat Search API to help create the maps, which can be used by patrons to visually browse the many items related to their favorite authors. (WorldCat links are plentifully supplied as the patron explores.) It’s an appealing way to encourage catalog browsing.
It can also be used to play a literary game of “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon.” A blog post announcing the app uses the example of linking Jane Austen to Aldous Huxley (it’s Jane Austen to George Eliot, George Eliot to Henry James, Henry James to Joseph Conrad, Joseph Conrad to D.H. Lawrence, and D.H. Lawrence to Aldous Huxley).
Sometimes the connections are surprising: after a few minutes of browsing, I managed to link Thomas Pynchon and Tom Cruise. Definitely worth a look.
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