Google's Ngram Viewer

I've been seeing many blurbs the past couple weeks about Google Books Ngram Viewer (way to mine text for word usage). I thought this blog entry provided some good links to the pros and cons of Ngram.

http://www.dancohen.org/2010/12/19/initial-thoughts-on-the-google-books-ngram-viewer-and-datasets/

From Google Labs (details):

See how often phrases have occurred in the world's books over the years. Google Books has scanned over 10% of all books ever published, and now you can graph the occurrence of phrases up to five words in length from 1400 through the present day right in your browser. We currently support the following languages:

• Chinese
• English
• French
• German
• Hebrew
• Russian

Holiday tree - Librarian-style

Some librarians took National Union Catalog volumes and turned them into a Christmas tree.
Source: libraryland:softculture:anarchivist (17 Dec. 2010)

Also posted to http://booklover.tumblr.com/post/286319825/libraryland-softculture-anarchivist-some

[Click on the picture to learn to make your own.]

Real-time citation metrics

An article in Inside Higher Education that discusses various uses of web-based data of article use, including implications for what libraries are asked to pay and are willing to pay.

Steve Kolowich. New Measures of Scholarly Impact - Inside Higher Ed (17 Dec. 2010)
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/12/17/scholars_develop_new_metrics_for_journals_impact

In the article is mentioned Springer Realtime, a tool to visualize download activity.

"Springer is launching a new free analytics tool realtime.springer.com which provides multiple visualizations of the usage that is generated worldwide by Springer's online products, including journals, books, images and protocols.

Realtime.springer.com aggregates the raw data on downloads of Springer journal articles and book chapters in real time from all over the world, and displays them in a variety of interactive visualizations such as: a map showing where the downloads are coming from, a constantly updating keyword tag cloud, and a visualization of total downloads. In addition, a search feature shows a chart of the downloads and the 'Top Five Most Downloaded' list for every journal or book. Springer launches realtime.springer.com (7 Dec 2010)"

If Web Browsers Were Celebrities [Infographic]

This great inforgraphic was created by Shane Snow, a New York based artist and founder of Printing Choice
“If Web Browsers Were Celebrities” is brought to you by Wix.com. Use creative design to make a Flash website.

You are most welcome to share this infographic with your audience.

Official Google Blog: Discover more than 3 million Google eBooks from your choice of booksellers and devices

Official Google Blog: Discover more than 3 million Google eBooks from your choice of booksellers and devices

Google eBooks will be available in the U.S. from a new Google eBookstore. You can browse and search through the largest ebooks collection in the world with more than three million titles including hundreds of thousands for sale. The system is designed to be open, accessing ebooks via the new Google eBooks Web Reader from laptops and desktop computers, ebook readers, and smartphones. The reader can buy, store and read Google eBooks in the cloud—using a free, password-protected Google account with unlimited ebooks storage.

"You can discover and buy new ebooks from the Google eBookstore or get them from one of our independent bookseller partners: Powell’s, Alibris and participating members of the American Booksellers Association. You can choose where to buy your ebooks like you choose where to buy your print books, and keep them all on the same bookshelf regardless of where you got them."

Research and Productivity Measurement Webcast - SLA D.C. Chapter - October 27, 2010

Impact and Productivity Measurements in a Changing Research Environment
Hosted by Elsevier in conjunction with SLA Washington D.C. Chapter
The Library of Congress, Mumford Room - October 27, 2010

"Research productivity had been measured through citation metrics in much the same way for many years now. But in recent years, SNIP, SJR and h-Index have joined Impact Factor as leading performance metric providing new insights into research at the forefront of discovery.

In today's rapidly changing, global and collaborative research environment, the research community is looking for new methodologies to assess research that better reflect the complexities of today's research. Today's research assessments need to encompass many performance metrics and consider measurements that do not easily lend themselves to analytics such as patents, products, business initiatives and awards.

"Impact and Productivity Measurements in a Changing Research Environment" furthers this dialog. Watch the presentations and Q&A from a day of learning and discussion with the leaders of research & productivity measurements in the scholarly community, held on October 27th, in Washington, DC, USA."

Google Strikes Deal with French Publisher Hachette Livre to scan French titles

A New York Times story reports: “Google said Wednesday [November 17, 2010] that it had reached a deal with the publisher Hachette Livre, which has broken ranks with its French rivals and agreed to allow Google to scan thousands of out-of-print books for its digital library project.

Under the agreement, which follows a landmark settlement with U.S. publishers last year, Google will be allowed to sell the books it scans as e-books or in other electronic formats.

But there is one important difference between the U.S. settlement and the deal with Hachette, the largest publisher in France and the No.2 trade publisher by sales worldwide, after Pearson. Hachette, not Google, will determine which of the books covered by the deal — those that remain under copyright but are no longer commercially available — can be scanned.”