tim ribaric's blog

The newest version of Ubuntu (9.10 code named Karmic Koala) releases today.  For those unfamiliar Ubuntu is a distribution of Linux designed for the average desktop user.  It is easy to install, easy to use and costs zero dollars.  If you really feel inclined you can actually ask the sponsoring company Conical to send you an installation CD for free.  The CD takes a while to get but it comes with a sheet of stickers that puts you in great shape to become a member of the Ubuntu Street Team.  Tag your windowz boxes yo.

Last week was Open Access Awareness week. The main purpose behind the week is to shed light on what exactly Open Access is and why you should care about it.  Basically the typical Library user/researcher is shielded from the astronomical cost of getting access to electronic content.  Typically the sponsoring institution pays the fee and the user never has to worry about payment.  The only problem is that the costs of these resources are getting out of hand.

I've never been much for history and archeology. Most often I see it as: digitize the artifact and then forget about it.  The way I like to think of it is the idea or the piece of knowledge encoded in the artifact is what counts.  Once that has been extracted the thing is negligible and no longer serves a real important purpose.  However in the world of digitization the process of extracting that piece of information is a daunting.  There is a fairly lopsided distribution of things to digitize versus time to digitize them.  Enter the Archival Finding Aid and the distribution power of youtube: