Posts by Melody Smith
Supporting the Role of Taxonomists
The new phase of the Encyclopedia of Life (EOL) Open Access Support Project (EOASP) started last month, but with some slight changes in the eligibility criteria. The goal of the EOASP project is to increase the data flow into EOL, promoting the open access publishing model in taxonomy. Education is also part of the project as they value the importance of supporting and educating the next generation of taxonomists in open science principles.
Read MoreChoosing the Right Partner
Seal Software Group has partnered with Novatus Contract Management. This partnership will allow Novatus to attain full contract visibility by utilizing the unique Contract Discovery capabilities of Seal Software. Channel EMEA brought this news to our attention in their article, “Seal Software Announce Partnership with Novatus.”
Read MoreWe’re Going, Are You?
The annual Frankfurt Book Fair will take place October 9-13, 2013 and is considered the most important marketplace for books, media, rights and licenses worldwide. The trends in publishing change faster than it is sometimes possible to keep up. The Frankfurt Book Fair brings all the new technology and innovations together in one location.
Read MoreTelling Your Own Story
Personal Archiving – Preserving Our Digital Heritage is a new release addressing digital archiving that may just be the first of its kind. This multi-authored work offers robust explorations of the emerging field of personal digital archiving. Edited by Donald T. Hawkins, the contributors cover a range of innovative projects and practical topics. Some of those include archiving individual and family histories, social media and email applications, academic research projects and Library of Congress initiatives. Hawkins and his contributors are passionate about personal archiving and that is obvious in this must-read. Information Today brought this topic to our attention in their review of “Personal Archiving.”
Read MoreTerms and Style
Taxonomists like to view a vocabulary as a literary work, which is more artistic when the style is consistent and cohesive. Consistency – which leads to predictability when searching or browsing – also makes it easier to avoid unintentional inclusion of multiple preferred terms for a single concept.
Read MoreRecording the Past
At the recent Joint Annual Meeting of the Council of State Archivists and the Society of American Archivists, the educational session addressed military archives best practice in the 21st century. The focus on the relevance and value of military archives to multidisciplinary research topics led into issues of processing massive amounts of digital records from the war in Iraq using innovative management and techniques.
Read MoreGovernment Agencies Looking for Big Data Solutions
The national archives for managing federal records, NARA, maintains more than 12 billion pages of physical records, 42 million photographs, and 500 terabytes of electronic records. Now that puts a new perspective on big data.
Read MoreTaxonomy of What?
This interesting and somewhat alternative taxonomy fell on my radar today and I couldn’t resist. Humor me. It is Friday, after all.
Read MoreStandards for All Sizes
The American National Standards Institute’s Nanotechnology Standards Panel (ANSI-NSP) has announced the launch of a new database compiling information about nanotechnology-related standards and affiliated activities. This new database is part of a larger project by the ANSI-NSP to increase the visibility of existing and in-progress documents in relation to nanotechnology.
Read MoreHometown Memories Online
I was reading my hometown paper today online. I am from a small town in Seymour, Indiana. In fact, “the small town” referred to in John Mellencamp’s so-named 80’s hit. The leading story was about digitizing records to make search work faster and with more comprehensive results. These deja vu moments almost surprise me in a very pleasing sort of way. It is like the universe is saying, “you made the right choices.”
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