Source Ex Libris surprised us by suddenly releasing Primo Research Assistant to production on September 9, 2024 (when the earlier timeline was 4Q 2024 with some believing it might even be delayed). Despite the fact that there are so many RAG (retrieval augmented generation) academic search systems today that generate answers from search, this is still quite a significant event to be worth covering in my blog. Why?
I have recently started to move my personal code repositories away from GitHub, in favor of hosting them with a smaller, independent and collectively managed alternative - including for this static website. In the same spirit, I was also interested in whether I could be doing my small part to diversify my overall web hosting approach.
A video of Panoramax in action. Starting out with a map view which has small orange lines for where images are available. Then going into the actual 360 degree images and moving around. Above: a video showcasing the panoramax viewer, with a map to see where (most [1] ) images are, and the 360º views.
IP and ethical issues surrounding the use of content in Large Language Models (LLMs) have sparked significant debate, but I’ve mostly stayed out of it as this isn’t my area of expertise, and while there’s much to discuss and many legal opinions to consider, ultimately, the courts will decide what’s legal. However, for those interested in exploring this topic further, I recommend Peter Schoppert’s AI & Copyright substack.
In älteren Bibliotheksgebäuden gibt es sie noch vereinzelt: Räume, in denen einst die Buchbinderei untergebracht war. Manchmal finden sich sogar noch Türen, an denen Buchbinderei zu lesen steht. Aber die Räume hinter diesen Türen stehen fast überall leer oder werden anders genutzt. Heute organisieren diese Abteilungen, wenn es sie noch gibt, vor allem den Versand von Medien an Buchbindereien außerhalb der Bibliothek.
In the last blog post, I had mentioned that I was looking to move away some of my personal code hosting away from GitHub (GH), to avoid being locked in into yet another tech giant. Instead, I wanted to move to a proper free alternative. On Mastodon, lots of folks recommended checking out Codeberg as a potential alternative that is based on forgejo and provides static page hosting.
I recently watched a librarian give a talk about their experiments teaching prompt engineering. The librarian drawing from the academic literature on the subject (there are lots!), tried to leverage "prompt engineering principles" from one such paper to craft a prompt and used it in a Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG) system, more specifically, Statista's brand new "research AI" feature.
Or: Why 2024 is my personal year of Linux on the desktop According to Doctorow, enshittification might be coming for absolutely everything . I’ve more and more felt this was for my own digital devices and means of digital production: Be that Apple’s just increasing love for walled gardens - especially since having the opaque app review processes (c.f. cpython’s --with-app-store-compliance), Microsoft’s (successful?)
I have been writing about what I call citation based literature mapping tools for over 5 years now, starting from Citation Gecko in 2018.
Image: Apple As is custom, Apple gave a sneak peek into the new features that will come with the new versions of their operating systems later this year at the WWDC.