Cyberlibris blog

De la créolisation en lieu et place de la disruption

D'or et d'airain

Disruption? Créolisation?

ELibris: La bibliothèque numérique de l'Université des Antilles et de la Guyane

L'Université des Antilles et de la Guyane (UAG) vient d'innover avec Cyberlibris en lançant ELibris , la première bibliothèque numérique pluridisciplinaire adossée à un réseau social académique. ELibris est riche de plus de 10 000 livres en français et en anglais auxquels viendront s'ajouter sous peu de nombreux ouvrages en langue espagnole.

ELibris est le fruit d'un travail de coopération entre les équipes de l'UAG (en particulier le Service Central de Documentation dirigé par Sylvain Houdebert) et celles de Cyberlibris. ELibris couvre la Martinique, la Guadeloupe et la Guyane et ce n'est sans doute pas un hasard si un tel projet a pris racine dans la région chère à Aimé Césaire.

Les image parlent mieux que les mots et ci-après figurent les liens vers les vidéos qui expriment les témoignages de l'UAG:

Lien 1

Lien 2

Les personnels administratifsn'ont pas été oublié. La bibliothèque est bien celle de toutes les personnes qui font vivre l'UAG et ELibris compte, outre une collection Caraîbes, une collection Loisirs qui couvrent aussi bien la fiction que la non-fiction, le monde de l'enfance que celui des adultes.

Avec ELibris, la bibliothèque numérique démontre les richesses que le web peut apporter dans la relation aux livres et au auteurs.

e-Gutenberg: il était temps!!!

Deux équipes de l'Université du Maryland et de l'Université de Californie à Berkeley nous invitent à une réflexion approfondie sur la lecture électronique. Il était grand temps que l'on s'intéresse enfin au lecteur, que l'on parle de lui et un peu moins de batterie, ePub et que sais-je encore !

L'article de recherche et la vidéo sont ici.

Cyberlibris: de la bibliothèque numérique aux communautés de savoir

Après des années de bons et loyaux services, la page d'accueil de Cyberlibris s'efface pour laisser la place à un tout nouveau portail d'accès.

Ce changement n'est pas seulement cosmétique. Il est le reflet d'années d'un travail enthousiaste et têtu (il paraît que nous ne prenons jamais "non" pour une réponse) qui a commencé à une époque où personne ne croyait au livre numérique et qui débouche aujourd'hui sur un bel engouement pour l'aventure numérique du livre. C'est aussi une manière de remercier celles et ceux qui nous ont accordé leur confiance et qui nous ont donné des raisons supplémentaires de nous lever gaillardement le matin.

Ce nouveau point d'entrée témoigne de la multiplicité des activités de Cyberlibris, que celles-ci soient déjà en marche ou que celles-ci soient sur le point d'être mis en ligne. Nous annoncerons bientôt les premières mises en ligne de notre nouveau site académique flambant neuf: le Web 2.0 sera au rendez-vous. Jamais enseigner et apprendre avec une bibliothèque numérique n'aura été aussi facile. Le grand public n'est pas oublié et les mois qui viennent verront la mise en ligne de multiples bibliothèques qui feront le bonheur des petits et des grands.

En somme, la famille Cyberlibris s'agrandit chaque jour pour donner naissance à l'une des plus vastes et des plus variées communautés francophones réunie fédérée autour du livre numérique.

Cette communauté est elle-même une bibliothèque riche de savoirs et notre ambition est que tous les savoirs réunis au sein de la bibliothèque numérique rendent l'utilité de celle-ci encore plus patente: Download Briys_Nock.pdf

Cyberlibris 2.0

We've just added two new widgets to the Netvibes ecosystem. These widgets relate to the brand new service we have co-developped with FNAC.

The first one tells you which books are added to their personal bookshelves by FNAC subscribers. The second one yields the keywords that are typed by subscribers to launch their searches.

These two are just an "avant-goût" of what we're currently cooking along Web 2.0 and Web 3.0 lines. If you have any suggestions of applications in a digital library that would make your life easier, do not hesitate to share with us by leaving a message on this blog :-)

Saving Lives with the Ipod Photo

This blog has been a strong advocate of the use of Apple's iPod (or other Mp3 players) in a classroom context for quite a while now.

For those who are not convinced yet, here is another example of what a creative use of the iPod can do to improve the richness and "reachness" of your business.

Professor Osman Ratib, vice-chairman of radiologic services at UCLA, has found a new way of dealing with high-tech images of the human body. Professor Ratib uses his 40gb iPod Photo to download complex X-ray photos:

"Radiologists deal with a very large amount of medical imaging data. I never have enough space on my disk, no matter how big my disk is—I always need more space. One day I realized, I have an iPod that has 40 gigabytes of storage on it. It's twice as big as my disk on my laptop and I'm using only 10 percent of it for my music. So, why don't I use it as a hard disk for storing medical images?"

Images can then be viewed in 3-D (thanks to a free software named OsiriX), swapped, easily carried and discussed by MDs. Professor Ratib sees many applications forthcoming.

In any case, who would have thought that a hype tech consumer object would eventually save lives?

Happy Birthday Dr Moore!

"With unit cost falling as the number of components per circuit rises, by 1975 economics may dictate squeezing as many as 65,000 components on a single silicon chip."

Moore, Gordon E., "Cramming More Components onto Integrated Circuits", Electronics, Vol 38, Number 8, April 19, 1965

This article by Dr Moore, co-founder of Fairchild Semiconductors and Intel, has become the basis of what has been dubbed Moore's Law. This law says that the number of components one can print on a chip doubles every two year. So far the law has never been revoked. Just think of the amazing number of components you carry through your laptop, cellphone, PDA, wristwatch etc... Moore's law seems to be to electronics what the compound interest is to finance.

Its 40th birthday was celebrated a few days ago. Dr Moore was interviewed in a recent podcast by Larry Magid (through ITConversations). It's interesting to note that when the article was published it triggered no reaction at all. These days, quite the opposite! It has become an industry benchmark.

There is another birthday that is forthcoming and that we should not forget about, namely that of the article entiteld "As We May Think" by Vannevar Bush (published in the Atlantic Monthly in July 1945). Dr Vannevar Bush coined a term, "memex", for what he anticipated would be a reality in the future:

"Consider a future device for individual use, which is a sort of mechanized private file and library.  It needs a name, and to coin one at random, "memex'' will do.  A memex is a device in which an individual stores all his books, records, and communications, and which is mechanized so that it may be consulted with exceeding speed and flexibility.  It is an enlarged intimate supplement to his memory."

Sounds familiar? Well, read what's next:

"It consists of a desk, and while it can presumably be operated from a distance, it is primarily the piece of furniture at which he works. On the top are slanting translucent screens, on which material can be projected for convenient reading.  There is a keyboard, and sets of buttons and levers.  Otherwise it looks like an ordinary desk.

In one end is the stored material.  The matter of bulk is well taken care of by improved microfilm.  Only a small part of the interior of the memex is devoted to storage, the rest to mechanism.  Yet if the user inserted 5000 pages of material a day it would take him hundreds of years to fill the repository, so he can be profligate and enter material freely.

Most of the memex contents are purchased on microfilm ready for insertion.  Books of all sorts, pictures, current periodicals, newspapers, are thus obtained and dropped into place.  Business correspondence takes the same path.  And there is provision for direct entry.  On the top of the memex is a transparent platen.  On this are placed longhand notes, photographs, memoranda, all sort of things. When one is in place, the depression of a lever causes it to be photographed onto the next blank space in a section of the memex film, dry photography being employed."

Now to make the whole vision complete here is an example of how to use "memex":

"The owner of the memex, let us say, is interested in the origin and properties of the bow and arrow.  Specifically he is studying why the short Turkish bow was apparently superior to the English long bow in the skirmishes of the Crusades.  He has dozens of possibly pertinent books and articles in his memex.  First he runs through an encyclopedia, finds and interesting but sketchy article, leaves it projected,  Next, in a history, he finds another pertinent item, and ties the two together.  Thus he goes, building a trail of many items. Occasionally he inserts a comment of his own, either linking it into the main trail or joining it by a side trail to a particular item. When it becomes evident that the elastic properties of available materials had a great deal to do with the bow, he branches off on a side trail which takes him through textbooks on elasticity and tables of physical constants.  He inserts a page of longhand analysis of his own.  Thus he builds a trail of his interest through the maze of materials available to him."

No need to say these visionary sentences are for us at Cyberlibris "music to our ears".

What we work hard for, what we dream of is somehow a blend of the visions of the two doctors. What we do is possible because Moore's law work and what we do is precisely what Dr Bush was hoping for!

PS: To know more about Vannevar Bush, follow this link.

Viewing the videos for PC/Windows users

Just a quick piece of advice. To view (seamlessly) the videos that we usually post on this blog, you're better off having Quicktime 6. You can download it there.

PS: Alternatively you can buy a Mac!