A recent study by Stone Temple Consulting on whether or not Google + shares alone can affect search engine rank. This seems a little precise for a study, but they took three websites and had two unique pages of applicable content published on each. One was a control page and one was a test page. Next , they had Google+ influencers share the page, as well as a handful of other participants who were instructed to only share the page, not visit or link to it in any other way.
CrowdSource works with national clients such as BazaarVoice, Citysearch, Dictionary.com, and ToysRUs, so it shouldn’t be surprising that they have recently launched Transcribe.com, which adds audio and video transcription solutions to its list of managed crowdsourcing solutions. This interesting news was found on Digital Journal in their article, “CrowdSource Expands With Launch of Crowd-Powered Transcription Company.”
The Church of the Latter Day Saints are notorious for their genealogy, archiving, and indexing of familial and church history. Now the Catholic church is in the business of preserving history digitally, at least in one archdiocese. The new director of the archdiocesan Office of Archives and Records, Claire Galloway Jenkins, arrived recently at the Catholic Archdiocese of Atlanta, ready to get started.
I have found another taxonomy of a not-so-usual subject - band names. This beautifully designed infographic tracks band names in a variety of well-organized categories. The charts track which locations are most frequently cited in band names point heavily toward a bias in the direction of the Eastern half of the United States and aside from a short list of two, Australia is largely neglected.
BetterChart has announced that the unveiling of their new BetterChart 2.0 will take place during the hosting of a webinar scheduled for Thursday, October 3 at 10:30 a.m. CST. Attendees to the one-hour webinar will hear how Washington University School of Medicine uses the new and improved BetterChart on a daily basis to decrease time spent loading documents into their electronic health records (EHRs) and keep the document management costs at a reasonable place.
The SLA Taxonomy Division presents the second webinar in their Practical Classification series. Sharon Garewal, from JSTOR, and Marcie Zaharee, from MITRE, will each describe how they use tools to build thesauri and classify data. Mark your calendar now for October 3, 2013 @ 1:00 pm – 2:00 pm EST. The webinars are free to division members. SLA members may attend for $15, or contact SLA to add the division for $20. Non-members may attend for $50. Register here.
The Online Computer Library Center (OCLC) is working with 13 libraries on three continents to beta test OCLC WorldShare Metadata Record Manager. This new feature offers new record management functionality to enhance a library’s ability to catalog its collections, including electronic, digital, and physical materials. Information Today brought this news to our attention in their article, “OCLC Working With Libraries to Test Record Management Functionality.”