Saturday, March 26, 2011

Newport Beach, California Wants a New Library, But Without Books

This might be a bit controversial: the Newport Beach, California, Public Library is considering closing one of its four branches and outfitting a planned community center with everything that the closed library offered, except the books.

At a meeting about the Balboa Peninsula's Marina Park development, city officials unveiled plans to close the Balboa Branch Library -- which houses 35,000 items, including books, DVDs and other materials -- and to dedicate a portion of the Marina Park Community Center to an "electronic library."

By eliminating books and librarians at the building, they said, they hope to adapt to modern times and save money while providing residents with services they'll actually use.

Officials analyzed how its patrons use the branches and found that most come for a quiet place to study, to plug their laptops into work spaces and to use the Internet-connected library computers. Few of them actually remove books from the shelves.

If residents still want to borrow a real book from the library, they will be able to order it online from the other branches and pick it up at Marina Park. Instead of holding books behind a desk, the library would drop them off in individual lockers.

You can read the full story at http://www.dailypilot.com/news/education/tn-dpt-0325-library-20110324,0,4121813.story

Tuesday, March 22, 2011

Comparisons of Genealogy Software

Wikipedia has great, although abbreviated, comparisons of nearly all the current genealogy software. The list of software is impressive. I thought I knew about all the programs available today but must admit I have not previously heard of HuMo-gen.

The reports are split in two: one for client-based (Windows, Macintosh, UNIX, and Linux) programs and a separate report for web-based programs that are installed on a web server. All programs are listed by name, prices, and also have the most recent release dates. You might note that a few of these programs haven't been updated in years but most of them do have recent release dates. The oldest one listed is Personal Ancestral File, which has not been updated for nearly nine years.


Many features are compared, including Unicode support, pedigree views, chronology views, narrative reports, fan charts, research managers, mapping, and more.

The client-based comparisons include screen shots for many of the programs. All the programs listed have links that point to further sources of information.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_genealogy_software