Some Quickies for Dec 29 - Part 1

These have been sitting around for too long so here they are:

• Over at Science Library Pad there is a post about SOA and the need to analyze business cases. I don't fully agree with the option of depending on general search engines but providing better outputs and formats (api's, microformats, etc), I definitely agree with. I may do a presentation on microformats with edsu at code4lib if the site ever lets me register.
• Some classes are starting to write their own text-book available as OA. I won't hold my breath but every little bit against the pigopolists helps.
• Laura has some ideas about an ideal scholarly portal. I agree with most except for some like linking to social sites. Of course it depends on the audience. I'd add on microformats, etc.
• I've already posted about it but I'll link to it again as I think many don't get it. Alan Gray has a post Siege Warfare that talks about making the reference more approachable. I think it's really important to make services more usable and approachable. They seem to do the opposite here.
• Here's a compact calendar which is quite nice a printable.
• The final report for the Melvyl Recommender project
• Notes from a session on library portals and individualized content</li>
• A post over at panlibus about p2p and libraries. Some ideas about aggregated data and the like
• Presentations from Open Education 2006 are available in a single whopping PDF
• If your looking for some data to play with, the SEC offers some structured feeds. Could be helpful with those doing business reference type things.</li> </ul>