Another Library goes with Endeca

McMaster University continues to lead the way in Library 2.0 endeavors by announcing a "soft" rollout of its new Endeca-based catalog front-end.

Their catalog is here, with the new interface sharing space with the old Horizon OPAC until the fall.

It's an impressive achievement, and the new interface joins NCSU in moving Endeca into a surprisingly prominent place in the library automation business.

King County Will Evaluate Evergreen

Edward Corrado's ecorrado blog brings the story that the giant King County Library System in Washington State (43 branches, 19 million circs in 2006) is hiring Equinox Software to help them evaluate the open source Evergreen ILS.

Evergreen is certainly getting a lot of attention this year even before the serials/acquisition module is out. But the potential advantages of open source in the multi-vendor, multi-system environments in modern libraries are just too obvious to ignore.

Here's the press release: Library Technology Guides: King County Library System selects Equinox Software, Inc. for Evergreen services

FiveBlogs Meme

Karen Schneider has virtually tagged all library bloggers to list the five "nonbiblioblogs" they follow, all as part of a nascent meme.

Here's my list:


1. TeleRead - all about ebooks

2. The Technology Liberation Front - a "full service technology policy blog" with an emphasis on freedom vs. regulation.

3. O'Reilly Radar - insights from the deep thinkers at O'Reilly Media

4. The End of Cyberspace - thoughtful look at What's Next.

5. Gizmodo - one of several gadget guides I follow.

Think Students are Ready for Free Online Textbooks?

From the Google Operating System Blog comes the story of Freeload Press, a company that purchases the rights to textbooks, adds advertising, then makes copies available online for free (including free pdf downloads), or sells reduced-cost print versions.

Although the ads are distracting, we've all come to accept magazines and newspapers (and websites!) loaded with ads, and there is so much resistance from students to current textbook pricing (and remember that most students have never purchased a hardbound book before), that I can't imagine this not being popular. Instructors would probably like more students to actually use the textbook, but whether publishers and authors agree remains to be seen.