Simon Chamberlain’s library weblog

The National Library of NZ has launched Publications NZ, an online union catalogue of NZ material held in NZ libraries. It’s got a reasonably attractive interface and (yes!) allows users to create RSS feeds of searches. On the negative side, it’s limited to published material (so no theses), the list of the libraries that hold a given item is hard to navigate (why limit it to a small scrolling box?) and it only includes NZ material.

It’s great that users will find it easier to locate this material, but how often will they be searching solely for NZ material? We’ve already got the National Bibliographic Database, which allows subscribers to see any item held in any library in NZ; why not just expand that to the general public? I’m confused as to why we need a separate database, with less content than the NBD (albeit a much nicer interface).

Adults ‘encroach upon young people’s turf online‘, and aren’t necessarily welcome on sites like FaceBook and MySpace; and what happens when one’s different worlds collide in these networks (both Techdirt). The latter is something I’ve mentioned here before recently.

Social networking for law librarians (LLRX)

A virtual bookshelf for new books (The Shifted Librarian)

How to promote databases at your library (BlogJunction).