Tag Archives: Barcodes

Tech Sharecase, 8 October 2010

Attendees
Arthur Downing, Stephen Francoeur, Ellen Kaufman, Mike Waldman, Kevin Wolff

Barcode Scan Apps for Phones

We talked about a blog post from Boing Boing detailing how one used book dealer uses barcode scanning app on his phone to identify profitable items in thrift shops.

Copyright and Course Reserves
There was some discussion about recent decisions in the course reserves case at Georgia State in which three publishers alleged that the library had infringed copyright. We looked at the blog posts on the LibraryLaw Blog and the ARL Policy Notes blog about the case.

E-textbooks
We went over the business model that Flat World Knowledge offers in its e-textbook service. Relatedly, in future meetings of the Tech Sharecase, we hope to have more discussion of online learning objects that might supplement or replace altogether textbooks in certain classes.

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Scan Book Barcode with Your iPhone, Find Library Holdings

ResourceShelf passed along this item from OCLC noting that an iPhone app used to do price comparisons for books (the user takes a picture of the barcode with the iPhone and gets Google price search results back) can also include WorldCat holdings info, too.

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Tech Sharecase, 30 October 2009

Attendees
Arthur Downing, Stephen Francoeur, Joseph Hartnett, Randy Hensley, Ellen Kaufman, Louise Klusek, Ryan Phillips

Google Discover Music
Talked about new Google Discover Music service in which search results are more socially based and about October 23, 2009, radio story from On the Media, “Charting the Charts,” which noted how Billboard is waning in influence and new services are appearing that measure music success differently. One such services is Band Metrics that ranks popularity not by sales but by an aggregation of metrics, including social ones. Search is changing the economic model for music rankings. Big Champagne offers another service that measures rankings using social aspects. What is a credible or reliable metric is shifting from authorities like SoundScan or Billboard to services that look at social use of media.

Google Social Search
This experiment from Google looks at who is in your social graph (your collection of online friends) so that it can present you with search results that are refined by content that your friends have posted online.

Google Reader
We looked at the way that people who use Google Reader can friend others who use the service and share notable feed items with each other.

Google Site Search Tool
The Baruch College website today unveiled its new site search engine powered by Google. The library website will be changing its search site software to Google soon as well.

2D Barcodes
Following up on Arthur’s comments on an earlier blog post here, We talked about 2D barcodes, QR codes, and their potential uses by colleges and libraries. We looked at the barcode service from ScanLife and the video about how Case Western Reserve University used ScanLife codes.

Mobile Websites for Libraries
We talked about various strategies for creating library websites that would render well on browsers in mobile phones.

Amazon Kindle vs. Barnes & Noble Nook
While talking about basic differences between new Nook reader coming out in November, we also discussed the Kindle loan program at North Carolina State University and how the service also offers patron-driven acquisitions (hear all the details about this on the Library 2.0 Gang podcast from September 2009 in which Orion Pozo from NCSU was interviewed).

TinyURL vs. HugeURL
TinyURL is a well-known service that will shrink a long URL with a brief one that redirects you to the original site. HugeURL is a funny spoof that turns short URLs into obscenely long ones.

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