Web Design help

This site does some nice stuff with CSS:
it is run by Stu Nicholls CSSplay. He also has some page templates that look clean and easy to use.

Map of knowledge

interesting graphic representation of information searches:Map of Knnowledge

from the article:
The map includes both the sciences and the humanities in a hub and wheel arrangement, with the humanities at the center and the sciences arrayed around them. The arrangement fell out naturally from the data and is not contrived, said Johan Bollen, the leader of the research team.

Web Templates for libraries

Interesting application:
LibGuides--
Not sure if this is exactly what you'd call a template- but it is very clever and timely.
Basically a plug and play form for libraries to create web ready reference guides- seems to be very popular among libraries- at least judging from the Web4lib listserv.

from the Springshare website:

All institutions using LibGuides are connected in a global content network spanning 500 libraries with 8,500 librarians who have created 27,000 guides with hundreds of thousands pages available to browse, share, and learn from. Librarians can use any existing guide as a template when creating new content, and they can share specific pages and content bits with each other, and collaborate when creating guides.

LibGuides is a fully featured, easy to use, web 2.0 content management and publishing system. It combines the best features of social networks, wikis, and blogs into one package designed specifically for libraries. Check out these features of LibGuides.

feed test

EIN test link

searching

Stumbled, rambled or somehow came across this little video representation of what happens when a searcher scans a page of Google search results from Daniel Chudnov's blog- new to me, but I imagine probably one of the established bloggerati. Not knowing a thing about fractal geometry, I perhpas missed some of his reference, but I was struck by the conclusion which aptly showed how meaningless a flat list of references is for enabling interactive search behaviors.

I found this while looking at LibraryFind, an open source federated search product that was developed by the Oregon State University Libraries and is built with Ruby on Rails.

Discussions to revisit

Not having as much time to read my listservs, I am going to note those things that I need to come back to. For instance, :this on web4lib concerning open source ILS's.

Bob looks at which U.S. public & academic libraries currently run open
> source ILS software, and how Koha and Evergreen usage stacks up.
>
> "There are a number of ways one might measure the impact of open
> source ILS software on U.S. public libraries but I think these
> preliminary figures are suggestive: that few of these libraries
> actually use open source software as a means of supplying their ILSs.
> Of course, we know that many more have announced and the market is
> dynamic. When I revisit these figures, I suspect the numbers will
> change but the size of the library market is quite a bit larger than
> the open source community has supplied. Its impact on the market is
> around 1%, depending on which measure one uses and by the restrictive
> criteria I use here."

Another slideshow from slideflickr