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."