A private library in Indore claims having rare volumes

According to a news item - Indore library has rare volumes of Hindu scriptures in Arabic, Portugeese and Farsi

"Aziz Indori's private library, located in Khajrana area of Indore, boasts of several rare volumes and publications of Hindu epics such as the Ramayana and the Mahabharata in Portuguese, Urdu, Arabic and Persian languages."

Google's Wikipedia - Knol

Google has released for public its Wikipedia known asKnol (a unit of knowledge).

Report on Top Indian Web sites for May 2008

Top Indian Web sites for May 2008 - CIOL News Reports

According to a report on Internet usage in India, more than 28 million people in India accessed the Internet from home and work locations in May.

Another wiki coming up for medical information

Medpedia would be an another wiki based collaborative project to collect and disseminate authentic information about health, medicine and the body.

midomi.com

Search for Music Using Your Voice by Singing or Humming, View Music Videos, Join Fan Clubs, Share with Friends, Be Discovered and Much More For Free! - midomi.com

Librarians in Movies

In most movies, librarians are typically stereotyped as people who are enforcing 'silence' in libraries.

It would be interesting to read a post in TCM’s Movie Blog that depicts librarians' roles in various movies.

..most librarians are portrayed as rather stuffy, repressed types, hellbent on enforcing the rules and naive about the real world..

Diigo

Diigo - Web Highlighter and Sticky Notes, Social Bookmarking and Annotation, Social Information Network!

British Library has a Flickr Group on Ramayana

A Scene from the Epic, Ramayana
Originally uploaded by Kamala Number

Libraries are choosing Flickr to post and share Photos on web. Here is an interesting example by British Library.

The British Library (see its Flickr Profile) has a group on Flickr called Ramayana. Photos / images submitted to this Flickr Group could appear in their gallery in London and on their Library's website, under the section - Ramayana: Love and Valour in India's Great Epic.

bit.ly

bit.ly, - is yet another url shortening service. However it also provides API. Worth exploring.

Philosophy behind Google ranking:

Google Fellow Amit Singhal shares the philosophies behind Google Ranking in their Official Google Blog. The post, Introduction to Google Ranking, lists following philosophies:

1) Best locally relevant results served globally.
2) Keep it simple.
3) No manual intervention.

Open Source Software in Education

Open Source Software in Education (EDUCAUSE Quarterly) | EDUCAUSE CONNECT

..Open source and digital education and learning, separately and together, aim to reach everyone. Although both movements have gained considerable maturity, a need for greater coordination exists..

Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Online Video

Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Online Video

..is a code of best practices that helps creators, online providers, copyright holders, and others interested in the making of online video interpret the copyright doctrine of fair use..

Study - Most webmasters have to remove dead links.

According to a study "Delinking: An Exploratory Study" by Isola Ajiferuke published in Webology, Volume 5, Number 1, March, 2008 most web masters have to remove external links from their sites. The most common reason for removing links is obviously that the linked pages cease to exist or had become irrelevant. However sometimes the links are removed on the basis of Political/philosophical difference with owner of linked site.

..webmasters, especially those at colleges and universities in Canada and US, do delink on a regular basis, and reasons for delinking include dead links, site outdated, site is poorly designed, and site’s content is of low quality. Given that most web search engines use the number of inlinks as one of the criteria in ranking search output, a site owner/webmaster should try to minimize the risk of the site being delinked from by other sites by ensuring that the site is well designed, rich in content, up-to-date, and if the site’s (or any of its pages) address changes, users are re-routed from the old address to the new address..

Book on Open Access

An e-book on Open Access has been released by ICTP-SDU. This book titled "Science Dissemination using Open Access" aims to guide the scientific community on the requirements of Open Access. It includes available low-cost solutions for open access along with selected literature on Open Access.

The book is available as PDF File. It is also available from an interesting on-line publishing platform - ISSUU.