Free Audiobook Software Expands iPod® Compatibility at Libraries

May 27, 2009 - OverDrive (www.overdrive.com) today announced that digital audiobook catalogs from leading publishers will be compatible with iPod® and other Apple® devices after a simple upgrade of OverDrive's free, easy-to-use audiobook software. Starting in mid-June, millions of new and existing users with Windows® PCs will be able to install OverDrive Media Console version 3.2 with enhanced transfer functionality for iPod, iPhone^TM, iPod touch®, and iPod nano®, as well as Zune® and thousands of other portable devices. Participating publishers include Random House Audio, Hachette Audio, Penguin Audio, BBC Audiobooks America, Brilliance Audio, Tantor Media, and many more.
see the whole press release

In short, the ebooks availabel in wma format shodul eb able ot be converted to mp3 format, thereby opening up all the Maryland eBook consortium titles to any and all portable digital music players.

Blu-ray format movies available in September

Great news! Starting in September, we will be adding Blu-ray format movies to our rotating DVD collections. So, what is Blu-ray? Blu-ray is high definition video, and will only play on DVD players that specifically will play Blu-ray. In other words, my standard DVD player at home will not play a Blu-ray Disc. Maybe a shopping opportunity??

The packaging for the blu-ray is a blue case that is easily identifiable as a blu-ray product. WMRL also puts a sticker on the spine which identifies the blu-ray DVDs. Thanks to WMRL.

useful knowledge, web 2.0, libraries and social media

Jon Udell posts several neat ideas in the Spring issue of LSA magazine, Can the Noosphere save us? On his way to encourage us to share our ideas and useful knowledge, he says

"if you publish something useful to me, or I to you, it is increasingly likely that the six degrees of seperation between us will collapse and that we will connnect and share."

Historically, one of the things that connected people to the "something useful to them" was the library. Now thanks to RSS, Search software, the blogospher, and social media, we can all participate by posting, sharing and discovering. Who is the intermediary now and do we have any reason not to trust them?

Library to Concentrate Efforts & Resources into Busiest Times.

For Immediate Release

Library Director, John Taube reported to the Library Board that “the Allegany County Library System is faced with the reality of our third year of level funding from our two primary sources (State and County Government).” Given this reality, the Allegany County Library Board of Trustees adopted a balanced FY2010 operating budget by making adjustments to operations in order to maximize the delivery of library services to the community.

At the beginning of the budgeting process the Library Board of Trustees prepared a set of budget drafting guidelines. The guidelines are:
• Maintain core library services and functions,
• Preserve positions and benefits of library employees,
• Minimize the disruption for access to library services and resources, and
• Recognize the finite resources of government funding agencies.

Given the efforts of the County to maintain our funding at the current level in the face of extraordinary economic times, we are balancing our budget with cuts to library expenses, a onetime transfer of reserve accounts funding of $25,000 and an increase in user fees. Operating efficiencies were identified by user and usage studies over the last year. The studies revealed areas of operation and services which would improve efficiency the most.

Effective July 1, 2009,

The Washington Street, South Cumberland, LaVale, and Frostburg libraries will have the following hours of operation:

Monday 10 AM – 8 PM
Tuesday 10 AM - 8 PM
Wednesday 10 AM – 8 PM
Thursday, 10 AM – 8 PM
Friday 10 AM – 5 PM
Saturday 10 AM – 5 PM.



The George’s Creek Regional Library will have the following hours of operation:

Monday 10 AM– 5 PM
Tuesday 10 AM- 5 PM
Wednesday 2 PM – 8 PM
Thursday 2 PM – 8 PM
Friday 10 AM – 5 PM
Saturday 10 AM – 5 PM.

The Westernport Library will have the following hours of operation:

Monday 2 PM – 8 PM
Tuesday 2 PM – 8 PM
Wednesday 10 AM – 5 PM
Thursday 10 AM – 5 PM
Friday 10 AM – 5 PM
Saturday 10 AM – 5 PM.

Library staff will not be receiving cost of living adjustments nor will merit increases be granted in the upcoming fiscal year. The Library System will cut nearly $35,000 in spending from Facilities and Services expenditures.

Effective July 1, 2009, the cost per overdue adult print materials per day will be $0.20 per day and the cost per overdue children’s print materials per day will be $0.10 per day. The cost for printing and photocopying will be $0.20 per sheet. These fees are in line with other Maryland Public Libraries and put Allegany’s rate in the “middle of the range.” Taube continued “overdue fines are not charged on days that the library system is closed and library users have the option of renewing material at any branch or over the telephone and at the library web site.”

In order to balance the FY2010 operating budget, the Board approved a onetime transfer of $25,000 from reserve accounts. The Board expressed the desire that reserve account funding not be necessary next year as they noted it limits the library system’s options in the future.

Many library services will continue to be available seven days a week, twenty-four hours a day from your home, school, or office computer. These services include online tutoring; online story time; book reviews and readers advisory; computer classes; guides and tutorials; auto repair manuals; genealogical resources; SAT and other test preparation software; home improvement manuals; and thousands of articles, from magazines, newspapers, and journals included in our nearly 50 database subscriptions.

New Catalog on the way.

Next Wednesday (5/27/09) we will be adding a link to our new catalog. Underneath our current search box, we will have a link to our new catalog. We have labeled it "beta" as we will still be able to tweak it to our liking.

The new catalog has many new features including:

• Browse by Genre,
• tagging of library items (add your own search keywords) ,
• patron reviews (would you recommend this book or movie?),
• search news, magazines and the catalog at same time,
• book covers, movie cover art, music cover art,
• the famous Book River.

Take it for a test run and let us know what you like and don't like about it.

"Find your next great read" @ Shortcovers.com

Shortcovers is another service that lets you read the first chapter of a book to see if you want to continue. From its web page "Discover thousands of bestselling books, chapters, news and magazine articles, short stories, blog posts and more, anywhere, anytime online and on your mobile device."

Report: Corporate Blogs Not Trusted

 

 

Sent to you by john taube via Google Reader:

 

 

Shopping 2.0: Current E-commerce Trends (Redux)

via ReadWriteWeb by Richard MacManus on 5/17/09

In a RWW Live podcast from last December, we discussed 'shopping 2.0'. In this analysis of the show, we explore how e-commerce has evolved over the past few years - what web technologies our expert guests are currently using, and the trends they've picked up on.

We had 4 expert guests on the podcast: Baynote (collective intelligence platform for online shopping), ModCloth (online retailer of vintage clothing), Retrevo (vertical search for electronics), and Cartfly (social commerce store network).

Sponsor

Editor's note: This post was originally published in December 2008. It was the second in a two-part series. Part 1 was about how shopping 2.0 sites are targeting niche customers and how that's helped them increase revenues. We hope you enjoy (re)reading these posts.

Implicit Social Recommendations

RWW Live host Sean Ammirati asked the guests whether e-commerce has changed much over the past few years. Kurt Collins, VP of Business Development of Cartfly, replied that there is now a lot of implicit social recommendations across social networks and blogs. Jack Jia, founder and CEO of Baynote, noted that "99% of the crowds" are silent and so the implicit recommendation data that Kurt referred to is very valuable. It's crucial, said Jack, to tap into the interests, likes and dislikes of that invisible crowd. He added that that it may not be 'friend' data either, as we currently tend to think of it in social networks.

Eric Koger, CEO of niche clothing retailer ModCloth, said that they pay close attention to what their customers do across social sites - e.g. in their case their users activities in Flickr, StyleHive and social networks.

Expert-Driven or Crowdsourcing?

Where there was some disagreement among the guests was on the value of crowdsourced recommendations and reviews. Jack Jia, founder and CEO of Baynote, said that traditional e-commerce and commerce in general has been expert-driven, but now the crowds are driving decision-making in retail. Andrew Eisner, Director of Community and Content, Retrevo, took issue with this - saying that user reviews are key, pointing to the expert reviews at Retrevo. It's worth noting here that Andrew also used to work in the content arena, at PC World.

We'd be interested in our reader's opinion on this issue. Clearly consumer reviews in aggregate represent very valuable data for big online retailers especially - e.g. Amazon has virtually built its entire business off the back of crowdsourced user reviews and recommendations. What's more, this type of data is highly trusted by consumers - one of the factoids perhaps lost in the commotion about Forrester's report on trust in corporate blogs, is that consumer product ratings and reviews are the second most trusted data online, behind only email from someone you know:

Yet we can also see Andrew's point of view, that there is a big place for expert reviews when it comes to consumer products online. For example, I'm more likely to read and take notice of a review of Bose headphones by a CNET reviewer who specializes in music electronics, than a review written by "lolcatzndogz67". What do you think? Perhaps in aggregate, crowdsourced data is key; but when it comes to decision-making on certain types of products, we still want to read expert reviews before we buy.

How Can Existing E-commerce Vendors Tap Into the Social Web More?

A RWW commenter called Mark commented on the original RWW Live post that he has just relaunched a social/e-commerce website. He used to have an eBay site, but now he wants to tap into the social web more. Here is what Mark wrote:

"In our previous site launch, we spent months building a database of products, opened the doors of the site, and it was just too much product, and not enough interaction with our customer base.

In our relaunch, we decided to go social first, e-commerce second. Working on our customer relationships first. The site is a transition from our successful eBay business to a more controllable blog/e-commerce solution."

I put that dilemma to our guests, starting with Kurt Collins - whose service Cartfly addresses exactly that need. Kurt said that the socialization of e-commerce can come in different forms - e.g. embedding a store in a user's social network profile. That won't replace "end destination e-commerce", but Kurt said it will "augment sales tremendously" at the edge of the network. It's all about bringing the product to the customers, rather than the other way round.

Eric from ModCloth said that their business started by using a series of open source shopping systems. He says that they still currently use an "archaic" e-commerce platform, but that blogging and direct engagement on external networks are their current tools for reaching out to ModCloth customers.

Favorite Online Shipping Web Apps

Finally, a bit of a tradition we've started on RWW Live is to ask our guests at the end of the show to name one web app in their field of expertise (other than their own) which has caught their eye. So I put this question to our 4 guests: which online shopping app do they recommend to the listeners and readers of ReadWriteWeb?

Andrew said "vertical gadget sites", but he also said that Amazon "does everything right in the world of shopping" - particularly because it recommends products he didn't know he wanted.

Eric mentioned Revolve Clothing, and what they're doing with the "category view" - allows you to see a lot more at a higher level.

Jack mentioned that he buys books from Amazon and other specialist sites, but he still goes to Google for products that he needs to do research on.

Kurt said that ThinkGeek ('stuff for smart masses') is one of his favorite sites and that Zappos is a site that many of his female friends use. He also mentioned that he buys a lot of things from iTunes.

One of my favorite sites at the moment is a new social wish list called Boxedup.com, which I mentioned in our roundup of 10 wish list websites. However, I have to admit that I've since renewed my interest in Amazon Wish Lists - their universal wish list feature pretty much does all I need.

Sean also said that Amazon is his favorite, due to related recommendations. But he had a shout-out for Glue, the browser add-on made by AdaptiveBlue.

Tell us your current favorite online shopping app or site in the comments!

You can listen to the entire RWW Live podcast on shopping 2.0 here:

Image credit: Fosforix

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Who let these folk into Ocean City?

Maryland Library Quilt

At last evenings MLA Banquet, they unveiled the new Maryland Library Quilt. Our own Janice Beall made the quilt square to represent the library system. It is the featured in the prime spot of top right corner.

MLA Emerging Leader Award 2009

Congratulations to the much deserving Jennifer Spriggs.

ACLS on Facebook

The Library System has created a Facebook page to keep you up to date on upcoming events and programs. Stop by for a visit and let us know what you think. ACLS on Facebook

The Ecology of Information: A Future in a Library Without Walls

Nice presentation from LITA 2009, good questions and things to ponder as we move forward .
The Ecology of Information: A Future in a Library Without Walls

View more presentations from John Blyberg.

Print jewel case Album/CD covers from iTunes

I just learned that you can print out CD covers to fit the jewel case from within iTunes.

Just open an album, click File, Print and the many options open up. Neato.