Rich's Random Thoughts

I spoke to a local Rotary club recently on topic of - Google vs. the Library: Research & Collaboration in the 21st Century. The group wanted to know if Google and the Internet would be putting our libraries out of business.  My answer?  Yes and No (see the link above for more details).

Yes, Google and the internet (specifically Wikipedia) have already put libraries out of the business of providing basic reference material.

No, Google and the internet will not put libraries out of the business of lending books in the short run.  More importantly, Libraries for the foreseeable future will the the primary conduit for most people to access high quality and expensive research databases like Pub Med and other walled off online journals.

One interesting factoid from the presentation: The Encyclopedia Britannica contains about 100,000 articles and costs over $1,000 for a set of books. Wikipedia has over 3,000,000 articles and is completely free.  Wikipedia is 30 times larger than Britannica, and is widening it’s lead on a daily basis.

For now the Goliath vs. David battle is a draw

It’s not just people who steal software who have to worry – when you buy a Microsoft product, you’re buying a lifetime of fear of audit and legal persecution. So says the new recruitment campaign by OpenOffice.org, "Get Legal – Get OpenOffice.org", launched today. Why pay $150 if you are a student, or $400 for everyone else for a word processor and spread sheet program? OpenOffice is free, and works just as well for 99% of the population!

read more | digg story

Very interesting article on the relative accuracy of Wikipedia and the Encyclopedia Britannica by he scientific magazine "Nature". They compared 42 articles in both the encyclopedia Wikipedia and the Encyclopaedia Britannica. Experts in their field were given the task to check for factual errors. To the surprise of nature, both encyclopedias were containing similar amounts of errors. The verdict? Almost no difference!

read more | digg story

I ran across an interesting article on the Linux Terminal Server Project in schools. A school in Utah reports annual savings of $24,000 by having moved to linux terminal server away from Microsoft workstations. Those savings include software licencing costs, hardware upgrades, and support costs.

From the article:

Grace Lutheran’s installation stats:

• >60 Pentium 1 and Pentium II computers for 250 total students
• One computer lab of 25 computers
• 9 classrooms with an average of four computers in each classroom
• Actual cost of Linux thin client conversion for all 60 computers: under $15,000
• Estimated annual maintenance cost: $3,600
• Comparable cost of PC/Windows installation: $50,000
• Estimated annual maintenance cost of a PC/Windows solution: $24,000
• Net yearly savings, based on four-year replacement cycle: $29,150

http://www.desktoplinux.com/articles/AT3124052951.html