Video On Demand : Virtual delivery seen as death to discs. rteeter writes "A new study predicts audio and video on demand will kill CDs and DVDs."
The study predicts that in five years, CDs and DVDs will start to go the way of the vinyl LP as 33% of music sales and 19% of home video revenue shifts to streaming and downloading.

"The idea that anyone who has video-on-demand access to any movie they are interested in would get up and go to Blockbuster just doesn't make any sense," Bernoff said. "(The decline) begins with rentals, but eventually I think sales of these pieces of plastic are going to start going away because people will have access to whatever they want right there at their television set." [LISNews.com]

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Perspective : The times they are a'changing. The latest Beloit College Mindset List is now available. Always fun. [Catalogablog]  11:03:41 AM   [Feedback ]  

Bibliographies : Format Bibliographies Online [ResourceShelf]  7:58:14 AM   [Feedback ]  

Data Extinction : Upgrade and Archive The Ongoing Threat of Data Extinction. An Anonymous Patron writes "Keeping paper documents intact for years and years has become a matter of routine for historians and archivists trying to keep a record of history. But saving digital information is turning out to breed its own set of unique challenges. Because digital files depend on their context -- such as the operating systems in which they are stored and the applications that create and access them -- users typically must keep all elements of that context to access old digital documents. It is not unusual, for example, for companies to keep old computer systems around just to access old files stored on them. While software developers do offer some measure of backward compatibility for files created with older versions of their software, almost all software developers eventually stop supporting their earlier formats. If you never update your archived documents to your current software format using the appropriate filters, someday you will no longer be able to access those files.
The full story: The Ongoing Threat of Data Extinction is from Ecommercetimes.com" [LISNews.com]  7:53:19 AM   [Feedback ]  

Film Database : IBM to play lead role in creation of global film database. Three universities and the U.S. Library of Congress plan to create an online catalog of the world's movie and broadcasting treasures for researchers, historians, educators and the public. [Computerworld News]  7:51:26 AM   [Feedback ]