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Latest Blog Post

Annotating the real world

Submitted by Jason Griffey on March 11, 2010 - 9:04am

Over the course of the last year, there has been a lot of discussion about the interaction between the real and the virtual via mobile phones, specifically about using barcodes as a unique identifier that can be read by a mobile phone's camera. In Japan and other countries, it is very common to see this sort of thing done via a type of code called a QR Code, a form of 2 dimensional barcode. There are lots of places online wh you can create your own QR Code, and many phones come with the ability to read them built in. For smartphones with applications stores, like the iPhone App Store or Android Market, there are many barcode reading apps to chose from.

Some libraries are playing around with QR Codes and other methods of annotating the real world via digital metadata. One tool that I just discovered is called StickyBits, and it takes a different model that I find really interesting. Instead of concentrating on linking physical objects to a single virtual place or information, StickyBits allows people to attach content to a given barcode, and have others see it. It's a form of tagging, but instead of tagging via terms, the user is tagging with any digital information they want: audio, video, photo, or text. For instance, a user could use StickyBits to tag a book with a video review. Read More »


Library Technology Reports

RDA Vocabularies for a Twenty-First-Century Data Environment

Library data has been designed to be read and interpreted by librarians and users. Although there are some controlled data fields, most of what is in the library catalog entry is text. The machine as user has not gotten a great deal of attention in the library cataloging environment. Now there’s yet another potential user of library data, and that user is the Web and services that function on the Web.
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Smart Libraries Newsletter

February 2010

In Smart Libraries Newsletter this Month:

"The start of a new year and a new decade gives us a great opportunity to take a look
ahead at some of the major technology trends that are currently playing out and examine how they will impact libraries. I think that it’s quite important to pay close attention to the changes and transitions playing out in the library automation industry, and also in the broader realm of information technology. In this month’s column, I’ll explore some of the key topics with forward momentum that I think that readers should keep in mind as they shape technology strategies in their libraries.
"

--Marshall Breeding
 

 

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