What's in your library's catalog?

I've been thinking about OER and trying to discover it - including free ebooks and open textbooks... and at the same time I have been looking around for books that others are recommending in MobiMOOC on mobile learning. Of course Mohamed Ally's book Mobile Learning: Transforming the Delivery of Education and Training was recommended. The hard copy is available for sale, but it is also available as a free e-book. I checked a couple of libraries - hard copy listed, but not the free e-book. WorldCat has bibliographic records for print, Netlibrary, etc., but I didn't spot a bibliographic record for the free e-book. Should the OPAC list material that library doesn't own or license? Should libraries help us discover OER? If not, how will that job get done? (Google Books doesn't seem to note the free version.) I know - It's the old problem of staff time, whatever costs are necessary to upload and update records for what is supposed to be free material.

QR codes and augmented reality

Over the last couple of days, some of the librarians on the ILI-L discussion list are wondering about the use of QR codes in libraries. Some say it hasn't caught on yet, so why bother? I think QR codes - or something similar - are bound to become more ubiquitous. QR codes are showing up everywhere. The "wait until later" attitude was enough to get me to sign up for the March 16 session at http://www.trendytopics.info/schedule.htm Lori Bell and Tom Peters are involved. That's an excellent endorsement - and ought to be enough of a cue to make sure you know about QR codes and augmented reality right now.

Stanford's bookless library

This article from Mercury News is from a few days ago. I noticed it on the Kept-Up Academic Librarian blog. I keep thinking about it. Stanford is going to go bookless for their Physics and Engineering libraries and put in a smaller electronic library that covers physics, computer science, and engineering. This doesn't seem to do with some idea to throw away all the books. Instead Stanford is going to store books in order to save space and has selected disciplines where electronic access makes sense. Maybe there are other disciplines where this approach makes sense as well - or maybe it'll make sense in a few more years. I had an experience the other day with a professor who wanted to review a batch of research methods textbooks. I don't see that these are available online... at least not yet. I remember when periodical indexes were moving online. We kept the print versions around until it was clear that even if the Internet went down, no one was willing to go back to the tedium of looking through the indexes by hand. I think it was smart of our administrators to let us wait until our patrons caught up.

Krieger, L. (2010, May 19). Stanford University prepares for 'bookless library.' San Jose Mercury News. MercuryNews.com. Retrieved May 22, 2010, from http://www.mercurynews.com/education/ci_15114502?source=rss&nclick_check=1

(Geez, does anyone know an easy way to get a bibliographic citation out of Zotero and into your blog post?)