Read more about it at "Introducing Infomaki: Bite-sized Usability Testing."

Here's the abstract:

On April, 23rd 2007 a series of postings started on Infobib.de, where guest authors from all over the world introduced the library and library related blogs of their own country. This book is a collection of 30 revised LibWorld articles, accompanied by a foreword by Walt Crawford. Included are articles about the blogosphere of: Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belarus, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Greece, Hungary, Iran, Italy, Japan, Latvia, Malawi, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Peru, Puerto Rico, Russia, Singapore, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Trinidad & Tobago, USA.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

It provides a list of recommended and informative blogs regarding the repository scene from around the globe. Listed blogs include personal creations from those with first hand experience of repository management and/or technical development of repository software; blogs for specific repositories, projects and software developers; as well as blogs for groups and societies with an interest in the open access movement and digital curation.

Here's the announcement:

Hello friends, Information Technology and Libraries (ITAL), LITA's peer-reviewed quarterly journal, is about to launch a new weblog called ITALica at http://ital-ica.blogspot.com/. ITALica addresses a need we on the ITAL Editorial Board have long sensed, that is, an area for "letters to the editor", updates to articles, supplementary materials we can't work into the journal,. . . you-name-it. One of the most important features of ITALica will be a forum for readers' conversations with our authors: we'll ask authors to host and monitor discussion for a period of time after publication of their articles, so that you'll then have a chance to interact with them.

ITALica is currently a pilot project. For our first author-hosted discussion, we are very pleased to have as host Jennifer Bowen of the University of Rochester.

Many of you will know—either because you attended, or because you've heard the buzz about it since—about the 'Creating the Future of the Catalog and Cataloging', program at the ALA Annual Conference in Anaheim. This program, which was sponsored by ALCTS CCS, and co-sponsored by the LITA Next Generation Catalog Interest Group and the ALCTS Networked Resources and Metadata Interest Group, drew an overflow crowd of several hundred and featured as presenters—in addition to Jennifer—Diane Hillmann, Tim Spalding, Roy Tennant, and Martha Yee.

Jennifer's presentation was in large part based on her paper 'Metadata to Support Next-Generation Library Resource Discovery: Lessons from The eXtensible Catalog, Phase 1', just published in the June 2008 issue of ITAL. We on the ITAL Editorial Board believe that the eXtensible Catalog (XC) project at Rochester represents a significant contribution to the future development and directions of both library metadata and the library catalog as a discovery tool. Jennifer will host the first ITALica, contributing her thoughts about the ALA program, updating her ITAL paper with more recent developments in the XC initiative, and engaging in discussion with those of you who care to contribute. LITA members can access the full version of Jennifer's paper online, at the ITAL website . . . from where you can also then find a link to the ITALica discussion. You can also access ITALica directly (no membership in LITA required) at (http://ital-ica.blogspot.com/). Jennifer will be monitoring the discussion from 18 August to 15 September 2008.

Beginning with the September issue of ITAL, we plan to expand ITALica discussions to include all articles and other features in that and subsequent issues. We hope to see many of you online at ITALica for what promises to be the first in an ongoing series of very stimulating discussions!

cheers,
Marc Truitt, Editor, ITAL, for the Editorial Board

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