Planet Cataloging

From LC:

As previously announced, MDS- Name Authority records will be enhanced with non-Latin script data in 4XX fields and selected notes beginning June 1, 2008, (see earlier announcements at http://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/nonroman_announce.pdf and http://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/nonlatin_whitepaper.html for additional information.) An additional FAQ related to the project will be posted at http://www.loc.gov/aba/ shortly.

An effort to automatically pre-populate existing authority records with non-Latin references by OCLC, Inc. will also begin in early June 2008. The initial rate of pre-population will be limited to several hundred records per week, and will grow to a rate of approximately 25,000 records per week. Note that other clean-up projects that have recently increased the volume of name authority records (http://www.loc.gov/cds/notices/2008-02-14.pdf ) will be suspended during this pre-population effort. It is estimated that approximately 400,000 pre-population records will be distributed over a number of months.

CDS is making available a file of name authority test records containing non-Latin script data. The file of 110 test records can be found on the Library of Congress rs7 server under the /emds/test subdirectory with file names of names.nonlatintest.records for the MARC 8 version and names.nonlatintest.records.utf8 for the UTF8 version.

I've been blasted with comment spam. So I've had to turn on the comment moderation function.

It is a shame how these few folks can ruin things for all. A few years back a e-card was a fun thing to receive and send. now so many are spam, I've stopped sending and opening them. Open comments seem ready to go the same way.

High prices for crude oil have been in the news recently, e.g., “Supply Fears Push Oil beyond $126” and “Oil Price Resumes Its Record Run.” 

Among the Relative Index entries for prices are:
Prices   338.52   
Prices—economics   338.52 
Prices—mineral industries   338.23 

The comprehensive economics number (also the interdisciplinary number) for prices is 338.52 Prices.  The class-elsewhere note under 338.5 General production economics, “Class production economics of specific kinds of industries in 338.1-338.4,” has hierarchical force; consequently, the price of crude oil is classed in the appropriate subdivision of 338.1-338.4 Specific kinds of industries, specifically under 338.2 Extraction of minerals.  The scatter note under 338.52 Prices, “For a specific aspect of prices not provided for here, see the aspect, e.g., effects of prices on the whole economy 339.42,” also indicates that oil prices will not be classed in 338.52 Prices. 

Among the Relative Index entries for oil are:
Oil (Petroleum)       553.282
Oil (Petroleum)—economic geology       553.282
Oil (Petroleum)—extractive economics       338.27282

At 338.27 Products is the add note that explains how to build 338.27282 Extractive economics of oil (338.27 Products plus 282 from 553.282 Oil). There are also two class-elsewhere notes that should be considered: “Class supply in storage, shortages, surpluses, demand, and projections of these in 333.8; class specific elements of production applied to specific products in 338.23-338.26.”  The first class-elsewhere note would be relevant for a work about the effect of oil prices on supply in storage, shortages, surpluses, and demand; by the rule of application, works about the influence of the price of crude oil on something else are classed with the thing influenced.  The first note is not, however, relevant for comprehensive works on oil prices.  The second class-elsewhere note leads to 338.23 Financial aspects of extraction of minerals, which has the note, “Class here . . .  prices.”

Comprehensive works on prices of crude oil are classed in 338.23282 Financial aspects of extraction of oil (built with 338.23 Financial aspects of extraction of minerals plus 282 from 553.282 Oil, following instructions at 338.23), e.g., Oil Markets and Prices:  The Brent Market and the Formation of World Oil Prices. 

The email address to send comments, requests, etc., is:

info@planetcataloging.org

{sigh}

Imagine my dismay when I received the following email last Sunday (sent to my Princeton email address):

“The Planet Cataloging email address box is full, so suggestions can’t get through (like mine; see below). Thought the maintainers ought to know in case someone wants to do anything about it.”

Yikes.

For some reason (only known and forgotten by me), I thought I’d set The Planet emails to be forwarded automatically to my personal email address. See what happens when I think?!

Anyway, if you sent suggestions, requests, or comments but haven’t noticed any changes to Planet Cataloging, info@planetcataloging.org is once more a functioning email address, so please re-send your emails; my apologies for the inconvenience.

Thanks for reading, and thanks for your support!!!

Jennifer (and Kevin, even though I didn’t tell him about this latest glitch…)

For each step two steps forward, there is the requisite step back.Last week's two steps forward: the Rockefeller Press announcement (via Issues in Scholarly Communication) and the Harvard Law School joining the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences in unanimously adopting an OA mandate (via same).

Last week's step back: Thompson-ISI puts restrictions on how authors using ResearchID (via Disrupted Library Technology Jester).

Thompson-ISI isn't high up on my fave vendor list because of their abysmal treatment of ISSNs within Web of Knowledge (don't get me started on the difficulties I encounter administering links to WoK within SFX). To their credit they're working on that. But this ResearchID thing makes it very obvious how they're developing their market -- they want to lock up author identifiers so only they can create web services with them. They've lost their monopoly on citation analysis now that Google, Scopus etc. are in the game. Makes me think that academic libraries better get on the ball with developing author identifier tools for their repositories and/or institutions. This is something I've been thinking about. I would love to make authority files for each faculty member and research group on campus and OpenID them or some such so that doing bibliographic citation analysis becomes more rationalized.

That's in keeping with a lively discussion the librarians at MPOW had with John Wilbanks of Science Commons during lunch last Monday. Wilbanks talked about the economic issues involved in creating and maintaining namespaces, largely who is to be responsible for long term funding and support. Wilkins said he believes that this is the type of work where librarians will find their niche as the academy moves towards cyberinfrastructure/eScience what-have-you.

Maybe. There's a big gap between the idea of librarians doing server/database/webby stuff and the reality of the technology skills of librarians on the front lines. I sure as heck don't know how to install and configure a namespace server. There are research and commercial interests which are way ahead of us on providing those types of services. Why should a researcher go to his librarian for help with managing his online identity if ResearcherID-type services already exist?

I don't know how to bridge that gap when it comes to what type of things I should be working on as professional development. Is it worth the energy to bootstrap myself into managing the technology behind semantic-webified authorities? That takes not only time but day-to-day projects with which to practice skills.

And technical services librarians are enmeshed in economically unsustainable models of cataloging and electronic resource maintenance anyway. For example, I've had to fix all the records for Proceedings of the Royal Society at each single place I've ever worked (hey, 300 odd years of title changes and splits makes for hard slogging managing the 78Xs and OpenURLs). This is the forest in which we toil and the trees are fading from view.

My only means of dealing with it is to partner with public service librarians to liaise with researchers, do user needs assessment for cyberinfrastructure services that we're capable of developing and delivering, then develop pilot projects from which to learn the requisite skills.

I fear that this type of work is too little too late for academic librarians. Yet, what choice do we have other than to persevere?

Pete Johnston posted FRBR & “Time-Based” Media, Part 1 and FRBR & “Time-Based” Media, Part 2: Clips/Segments and perhaps more will follow. Go give them a read.

Suppose I develop a machinima-based tutorial video introducing some of the features of Second Life for use by undergraduate students new to the application. I might make my tutorial available for streaming using my institution’s streaming server, both in Windows Media Video format and in QuickTime format. And I might make a QuickTime version available for download as an alternative to streaming. I might also make a second copy of that QuickTime file - exactly the same content, quality, size etc - available for download from my personal Web site.

From a FRBR viewpoint, I think this would be represented as a single FRBR Work (W01), realized in a single Expression (E01), embodied in three different Manifestations (streamed Windows Media Video (M01), streamed QuickTime (M02) and downloadable QuickTime (M03)), with the first two of these Manifestations each exemplified in a single Item, and the last exemplified in two Items.

And then it gets complicated!

So, as folks might have gathered from a few of my posts over the last week, I had a few engagements that have keep me on the east coast over the past week.  One of the events that I had attended during the week was the RLG Tools forum at the Boston Public Library.  This event is the first (of hopefully what will become a reoccurring) event put on by RLG to help promote and inform RLG members of tools being developed within the library community that deal with specific facets of creating, managing and preserving objects within a library.  For this first tools forum, RLG focused on tools primarily developed to facilitate the metadata creation and maintenance process.  For that reason, I was invited to present MarcEdit…but I’ll get to that shortly.

So how was the trip.  Good.  I actually like Boston, and even though I didn’t get a whole lot of time to visit the city (simply because I was busy), I did find ways to get out and sample multiple varieties of my favorite soups, creaming Boston Clam Chowder and a creamy Lobster bisque.  It’s likely a good thing that I don’t live in a city were these types of creamy delights are always available — because I’d likely find a way to have them about everyday (which can’t be healthy).  But I’m getting ahead of myself a little.

For this trip, because I was traveling to multiple cities and multiple airports before my trip was done, I decided to buy a lot of one way tickets (partly because it worked out to be cheaper).  And because of that, I got to try out the airport in Salem, Oregon.  Salem, which had a municipal airport years ago before commercial service was abandoned, is getting a second chance at commercial airline service.  Delta provides a handful of flights out of Salem into Salt Lake City, so I decided to give the airport a try since I generally fly out of PDX, about 2+ hours from my house, depending on traffic.  So the good — its only 15 minutes from my house, which definitely has it’s pluses.  Of course, being a small airport, parking is very limited, so you really need someone that can drop you off, or, as I chose, take a cab from somewhere in Salem [note, this is where having only one car can be a pain.  I took a 6 AM flight, and to have my wife drop me off, she would have had to have driven with me (and woke up the boys), around 4:30 am.  Not something I would ask them todo.  Because of that, it actually almost costs more (depending on how I make the trip), for me to fly out of Salem, since I can rent a car through Enterprise and simply drop it off at PDX.  Odd how that works out].

So the airport — it’s small.  Only one terminal, but staff were nice and attentive.  Security took forever to get through, simply because their is only one security gate and all people are processed through it about 40 minutes before the flight.  You basically spend that time in line (unless you can be first through).  Secondly, for a small airport like this — they really need to offer passengers something — wifi would be a good start — a Starbucks or something with some food or pastries would be a second.  Since the terminal is so small, I found myself doing a bit of thumb twiddling.  Had I been at PDX, I would have gotten myself a hot chocolate and been reading the news or playing a little online chess.  Also, I’m not sure I like Salt Lake as a hub.  The airport is actually very nice (Salt Lake), but it made for a very long flight to Boston.  Generally, from PDX, I end up getting a short layover in Cincy or Chicago, which makes for a nice stretch break, and a shorter second flight.  So, I’m pretty sure PDX is going to remain my primary airport for the foreseeable future, though I hope the Salem continues to be an option.

So the tools meeting — that went surprisingly well.  I’m always happy to hear from folks that have used MarcEdit and found it useful and there I found a little of both.  Also, I got to talk to a number of people about MarcEdit for the first time (or, tell people about functionality that they might not have otherwise been aware of it).  I think most people still see MarcEdit as primarily a MARC editing package — though throughout the last couple of years, the program really has been expanded to include a number of functions that make data harvesting, metadata packaging, etc. a much simpler process.

For my part, I got to check out a number of tools myself.  I think that my favorite and the one that I’m going to take a much closer look at is Archon [http://www.archon.com], an EAD delivery and management system.  At present, OSU is making use a number of tools to store and display finding aids.  There’s the NWDA’s website (a group that might be interested in this software as well, since it’s open source, free and looks to be fairly well supported.  Certainly could free up a number of funds currently be spent to license their current software solution), OSU’s CONTENTdm instance as well as just PDF representations of the data.  I’m not sure if Archon can replace any of those interfaces, but I certainly think it’s worth taking a closer look.  Additionally, there was a metadata management tool shared by the University of North Texas Libraries that demonstrated a customized process used by the institution to metadata loaded into their digital systems (which could be interesting if uncoupled from University of North Texas’s workflows) as well as a MOD’s Editor built from XFORMS developed by Brown University, which I find amazing simply due to the simplicity of design.  However, there were lots of other tools that were shown off.  Those with URLs are as follows:

• Web Cataloging Assistant (UCLA version) — this is a helper program that makes the Web Cataloging Assistant customizable [no, url, but you can contact John Riemer (jriemer@library.uclc.edu) if you use LC’s WebCat and would like to try out UCLA’s derivative.
• Metadata Analysis Tool (University of North Texas): http://www.library.unt.edu/digitalprojects/metadata/analysis
• LS Tools Summary (Cornell University): http://lstool.library.cornell.edu
• Archivist’s Toolkit: http://www.archivisttoolkit.org [note, there was some talk between Archon and Archivist’s Tool developers on potential co-development, or at least, better integration)
• MODS Editor (Brown University): http://dl.lib.brown.edu/its/software/metadata
  Demo: http://riker.services.brown.edu:8080/editor/demo
• Subject Suggestor (National Library of Australia): http://ll03.nla.gov/au/ss/search [Very cool project.  I’m hoping that they make this available for other folks to download and use)
• Web Cataloging Assistant [WebCat] (United States Library of Congress): http://www.loc.gov/catdir/beat/webcat.html
• Archon (University of Illinois): http://www.archon.com
• MarcEdit: (Terry Reese): http://oregonstate.edu/~reeset/marcedit

So was the forum worth it?  From my prospective, as a tools developer, it was.  One of the challenges, even for someone who has been doing this for a while, it finding new ways to interact with one’s user community.  I think MarcEdit is likely unique among many tools in that it’s not a university project.  While Oregon State University certainly has been great in allowing me time to work on this project, as well as grow and support the user community — I do all development on my own time.  And the program isn’t developed specifically for OSU.  In fact, development is really community driven, in that new features are basically added at user request — so for me, interacting with users is really one of the most important ways that I can get a better idea of what people are waiting out of the program.  And for that, the RLG tools forum was very useful.  As an attendee, this meeting exposed me to a number of tools that I certainly wasn’t aware of before.  How we will be able to make use of some of these tools, well, that’s still in the air, but I think that forums like this are important.  There are a lot of people within the library community creating a lot of really interesting projects — as well as a lot of overlapping projects being developed.  I think forums like this might be able to have an affect of getting like projects together and maybe help to reduce some of the duplication being done on campuses across the country — and that would certainly be a good thing.

So, after Boston, I made a trip to NY to visit the Geneseo library and my good friend, Cyril Oberlander.  They are doing some fantastic work with ILLIAD and document/article delivery.  If you want to read a little more about their project, see http://oregonstate.edu/~reeset/blog/archives/522.  But I certainly enjoyed the opportunity to get to hear about their work and give them some feedback and some ideas as they look to make the service more widely available to organizations outside of the SUNY group.  And of course, this trip wasn’t all work as well.  On Saturday, I drove out to the Letchworth State Park — also referred to as the Grand Canyon of the East.  It’s a gorgeous area — with some great hiking and scenery.  There are basically 4 falls areas that you can hike to.  I got a lot of great pictures (which I might post, maybe not), seen lots of deer and basically spend 8 hours hiking in the woods.  I loved the quiet and a chance to get unconnected for a little while.  Of course, while I was there, one place that I didn’t visit was Inspiration Point.  My impression of the place is that it’s kindof a couples hangout, so I decided to add that as a place to visit with my wife, next time we find ourselves in the Rochester/Geneseo area. 

The only real bummer with the trip has been the travel home.  This is the first time in a long time that I haven’t been at home for Mother’s day.  Fortunately, my oldest son (Kenny) picked up the slack for me.  My wife told me that he’d been planning a secret all week and that this morning, he got up at 7 am and snuck into the our bedroom with gifts.  He left them on the bed and then gave her a kiss on the cheek and wished her a happy mother’s day before disappearing back into his room with his brother.  Not sure what the secret Kenny present was (apparently, I have loose lips because I told me he wasn’t telling me either), but I’m sure it was great.  And now I’m hoping that I’ll be able to get home before mother’s day ends.  The joys of airline travel in the 21st century.  I should just about be at PDX right now (9 pm), but thanks to an extended period on the runway (for who knows why), I’ve still got at least another hour before landing (10 pm).  Speaking of joys of airline travel. [soapbox]I personally have no problem with airlines moving to the al cart model that many have started to embrace.  If they want to charge for food, entertainment, extra bags, etc — I’m fine with that.  On a 6 hour flight, like the one I’m on now — it would be nice to be tossed a bag of peanuts now and then, but I know the score and pack accordingly so I’m generally prepared.  All I ask of an airline is two things…1) that both my bags and I get to the city at the same time (something that I’ve had few problems with considering the amount I travel) and 2) that I arrive on time.  Both are important to me, but it seems that arriving ontime is becoming a much rarer event.  Since February, I’ve been on roughly 7 flights.  Going east bound, I’ve found average arrival time has been about a 1/2 late, going west bound, my arrival at PDX has been nearly always ontime (today is actually a bit of an anomaly), but my layover flights (generally to O’Hare) have been exercises in futility as I’m always finding myself landing and then sprinting between terminally only to arrive at my gate and trying to talk myself onto a flight that is preparing to leave.  Fortunately, I’ve had a lot of understanding gate agents, but the increased frequency of delays and tardiness is something that I’ve definitely been noticing.[/soapbox]

 

–TR

 

** Update — didn’t make it.  Got home at 12:03 am in the morning.  Loooonnnnngggg day.

Rachel Bruce of JISC and Anne Bell of SCONUL join me in the latest Talking with Talis podcast to discuss the recently published JISC & SCONUL Library Management Systems Study - An Evaluation and horizon scan of the current library management systems and related systems landscape for UK higher education.

We discuss the report, the reasons for commissioning it, how it will inform the on going debate about the future of academic libraries, and how libraries could use it.

During the conversation we reference the following resources:

• JISC
• SCONUL
• JISC & SCONUL Library Management Systems Study [pdf]
• JISC Information Environment
• Libraries of the Future

This conversation was recorded on Friday 9th May  and edited on a Mac with Garageband.

Rachel Bruce of JISC and Anne Bell of SCONUL join me in the latest Talking with Talis podcast to discuss the recently published JISC #38; SCONUL Library Management Systems Study - An Evaluation and horizon scan of the current library management systems and related systems landscape for UK higher education. We discuss the report, the reasons for commissioning it, how it will inform the on going debate about the future of academic libraries, and how libraries could use it. During the conversation we reference the following resources: JISC SCONUL JISC #38; SCONUL Library Management Systems Study [pdf] JISC Information Environment Libraries of the Future This conversation was recorded on Friday 9th May#160; and edited on a Mac with Garageband. Technorati Tags: JISC, SCONUL, Academic Libraries, Library Management Systems, LMS, ILS, Talking with Talis, Podcast.

This week's muffin (vegan as always): Lemon poppyseed

This week's movies: Part 4 of Diane Hillman's Metadata Standards & Applications: Relationship Models

Talis' Rob Styles on Finding Relationships in MARC

Mick Eadie, Towards an Application Profile for Images, from Ariadne 55 (April 2008). A quote:

However, after much investigation and consultation, it was decided ultimately that FRBR did not address our requirements for the IAP [Images Application Profile]. In essence what is being done by FRBR is not the modelling of the simple image and its relationships, but rather an attempt to model the artistic / intellectual process and all resultant manifestations of it. We decided this was inappropriate for the IAP for number of reasons. While possible, an application profile of this complexity would require detailed explanation that could be a barrier to take-up. Moreover, it strays from the core remit of the IAP to facilitate a simple exchange of image data between repositories. While the FRBR approach attempts to build relationships between objects, e.g. slides, photographs, objects and digital surrogates, this facility already exists in, for example, the Visual Resources Association Core (VRA) schema. Our intention was not to reinvent or in any way replicate existing standards that are robust and heavyweight enough to deal with most image types. Rather our intention was to build a lightweight layer that could sit above these standards, and work with them, facilitating a simple image search across institutional repositories.

There is a fascinating entry by Seb Chan of the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney documenting experiences one month into their participation in the Commons on Flickr. The Powerhouse Museum has been alert to various ways of combining professional and audience metadata in its services. It was an early comer to the Commons, joining the Library of Congress.

Our experiment with the Commons on Flickr continues and barring a few hours delay we have managed to keep to our promise of 50 new images a week. We’re up to 400 images now with the most recent 50 going live this morning. 158 of these have been geotagged. [fresh + new(er) » Blog Archive » Commons on Flickr - one month later]

A couple of things struck me about his note. First, the volume of activity:

... our images have been viewed 39,685 times to yesterday. That’s more than an entire year on the old Tyrrell website (which, incidentally, has more images and is better indexed by Google) [fresh + new(er) » Blog Archive » Commons on Flickr - one month later]

And second, he talks about the volume and quality of tagging activity:

Tonnes of tags have been added and they have been of a quality that we’ve not experienced in our other tagging projects. I am firmly of the belief that the quality is a result of the Flickr environment (lets call it ‘culture’) and its userbase. [fresh + new(er) » Blog Archive » Commons on Flickr - one month later]

It will be interesting to see the promised three-month report. It seems to me that this shows the long-tail dynamic I have discussed elsewhere. A large part of the long tail effect is about better matching supply and demand by aggregating each in a network environment. Flickr aggregates supply: it provides a critical mass of pictures and community structure for sharing at the network level. It also aggregates demand by attracting large numbers of users, and creates value for them through its sharing structures. An individual institution has difficulty mobilizing this audience.

Related:

Dempsey, Lorcan. Libraries and the Long Tail: Some Thoughts about Libraries in a Network Age. D-Lib Magazine, April 2006, Volume 12 Number 4.

Quick Bookmarks: del.icio.us  Digg   Google  Reddit   Furl

Sorry I haven’t gotten this up — I’ll post it tonight.

–TR

For the first time, in a really long time, I won’t be home on Mother’s Day.  A trip to Boston last week was extended to include some time in NY to talk to friends and the Geneseo library about the resource sharing project that they are working on.   I was really impressed by the work that had currently been done on this project.  Their work to integrate ILLIAD instances to work towards unmediated article sharing within their partners as well as their ability to generate workflow reports generating time spent on each part of the request and delivery process (seeing information about both the borrowing and lending institutions) was pretty cool.  At this point, this group is looking to expand their current work into a very ambitious open source project that could potentially help both their own consortia, but also provide an open tool that could be utilized by other Interlibrary Loan offices to deal with issues relating to publisher licensing guidelines, as they relate to lending digital articles.  If anyone happens to be working on something like that, they should contact Cyril Oberlander.  At this point, they are starting work on their next implementation of this project and are interested in knowing if anyone else is working a project like this.

 

–TR

Libraries have major challenges in developing their websites. Think just of the information resources they provide access to. There are locally managed resources: a catalog, a repository or two, informational pages, and so on. And there are many remote resources: licensed databases, links to web pages, and so on. And there are pages which try to pull these together: resources organized by subject or department, for example.

These resources may be different in scope (reference, discovery, full-text or other content, ...), in type of content, in terms and conditions, in specialization, and so on.

Abstracting up to that single - or small number of - search boxes that are presented as a goal is not straightforward. And indeed it is still common to see various searches/entry points offered: the catalog, metasearch, a list of databases, a search of the library website, ....

In this context I was interested to see Suzanne Chapman's "search box round-up".

She does a nice job of commenting on several approaches, and has a companion Flickr set of search box pics.

Incidentally, over time I reckon that 'single search' alternatives to 'metasearch' for general article access will emerge. By this I mean that services will consolidate article level metadata to facilitate access. This is not to say that there will not be target markets where niche databases continue to exist, rather that alternative solutions for general article searching seem inevitable. And of course, we are also seeing integrated search solutions for local resources emerge, Primo for example. In this way, the multiple resource challenge may get simpler, but will continue to exist in some form.

Related entries;

• The simple search box and the rich texture of suggestion

• Comparing single search environments
• What is the catalog
• Federated search that doesn't very well
• Metasearch: a boundary case
• From metasearch to distributed information environments
• Metasearch, Google and the rest
• Three stages of search
• Systemwide discovery and delivery
• The one-stop-shop that isn't
• Landscape versus brandscape

• Library websites again
• The library website

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I was delighted to see that via the newly launched Podcasts area of the CILIP Communities site they are syndicating the Library 2.0 Gang.

The combined feed of podcasts that CILIP have launched, is a great service to CILIP members and a recognition that the traditional ways of learning and keeping up to date are being powerfully supplemented by blogs and podcasts.  I will be interested to see how this develops.

As the monthly round table listen for those that are interested in libraries and the technologies that influence them, I am eager to make it available to all that will benefit from the the insights and opinions from the librarians, vendors, journalists, and commentators that join the Gang.

To that end, whilst welcoming CILIP’s recognition of the Gang, I also invite others in different sectors and geographies that are interested in enriching their site by adding value for the visitors to it,  by syndicating the Library 2.0 Gang series, to drop me a line librarygang@talis.com.

I was delighted to see that via the newly launched Podcasts area of the CILIP Communities site they are syndicating the Library 2.0 Gang. The combined feed of podcasts that CILIP have launched, is a great service to CILIP members and a recognition that the traditional ways of learning and keeping up to date are being powerfully supplemented by blogs and podcasts.#160; I will be interested to see how this develops. As the monthly round table listen for those that are interested in libraries and the technologies that influence them, I am eager to make it available to all that will benefit from the the insights and opinions from the librarians, vendors, journalists, and commentators that join the Gang. To that end, whilst welcoming CILIP's recognition of the Gang, I also invite others in different sectors and geographies that are interested in enriching their site by adding value for the visitors to it,#160; by syndicating the Library 2.0 Gang series, to drop me a line librarygang@talis.com. Technorati Tags: CILIP, Podcasts, Library 2.0 Gang, Talis, Library

Metadata for Learning Resources: An Update on Standards Activity for 2008 by Sarah Currier appears in the latest issue of Ariadne.

The major areas of development covered in this article are:

LOM Next: plans for the next version of the IEEE LOM
The Joint DCMI/IEEE LTSC (Learning Technology Standards Committee) Taskforce: bringing together the two major metadata standards used for learning resources, and providing an RDF translation for the LOM
DC-Education Application Profile (DC-Ed AP): a modular application profile purely looking at educational aspects of resources, based on community requirements
The United Kingdom’s Joint Information Systems Committee Learning Materials Application Profile (JISC LMAP) scoping study: working alongside a number of similar projects looking at application profiles for repositories in other areas, e.g. images.
International Standards Organisation Metadata for Learning Resources (ISO MLR): based primarily in Canada, this international standards body is devising a new international standard for educational metadata, in response to perceived limitations of the IEEE LOM
The European Commission’s PROLEARN Harmonisation of Metadata project: a study into the issues and challenges of achieving harmonisation in metadata, given the heterogeneous landscape

Martha Yee has a new article available at the UC eScholarship repository, Cataloging, Compared to Descriptive Bibliography, Abstracting and Indexing Services and Metadata.

Cataloging is compared to descriptive bibliography, to enumerative bibliography and abstracting and indexing services as well as to metadata created by Web search engines or by nonprofessionals at sites such as Amazon.com. These four types of metadata are compared with regard to object of the description, functions, scope, number of copies examined, collective vs. individual creation, standardization, authority control, evidence, amount of descriptive detail, degression, time span the data is intended to last, and degree of evaluation.

Important reading for keeping up with the development of the new cataloging content standard, Resource Description and Access (RDA):

The Joint Steering Committee for the Development of RDA (JSC) has just issued outcomes from their most recent meeting. The meeting was held in Chicago in April 2008.

I've been waiting for this one. Radical Cataloging: Essays at the Front edited by K.R. Roberto is now available in paperback.

This collection of critical and scholarly essays addresses the state of cataloging in the world of librarianship. The contributors, including Sanford Berman, Thomas Mann, and numerous front-line library workers, address topics ranging from criticisms of the state of the profession and traditional Library of Congress cataloging to methods of making cataloging more inclusive and helpful to library users. Other essay topics include historical overviews of cataloging practices and the literature they generate, first-person discussions of library workers' experiences with cataloging or metadata work, and the implications behind what materials get cataloged, who catalogs them, and how. Several essays provide a critical overview of innovative cataloging practices and the ways that such practices have been successfully integrated in many of the nation's leading libraries.

Kemp discusses the organization and presentation of serials data in library catalogs with a particular interest in the relationships between serials. Included is a brief discussion of the application of FRBR concepts to serials and how these concepts along with the use of identifiers (some yet to be created) and superwork records (to fully outline the history of a serial title) could provide a useful framework for the organization of serials data. She also calls for the simplification of cataloging rules, looking to RDA for flexibility for future cataloging needs and citing the CONSER standard record as an improvement currently underway. Outsourcing is another means she cites to simplify the cataloging process. She argues that simpler records have the dual advantage of being more understandable for users and more efficient to create. Another aspect she considers in catalog design, specifically the implementation of web 2.0 functionality. She briefly addresses mash-ups, user-created metadata (a.k.a. tagging), user reviews, and personalization through recommender services as ways of bringing web 2.0 into library catalogs. She also touches on improvements in search technology such as relevance ranking, metasearching, natural language searching, faceted searching, and clustering. How can these advances help users searching for serials titles or articles? Kemp outlines five scenarios for locating known and unknown items, including mock-ups of catalog results screens. Overall, Kemp attempts to cover a lot of ground in this article and as a result does not provide comprehensive coverage on any of the topics included.

Kemp's article can be found in The Serials Librarian, vol. 53, no. 4 (2008), pages 91-112.

Wendy Baia makes an impassioned plea for a return to latest entry cataloging in her article, “Excessive Successive: Time for a Radical Change.” She first provides a brief history documenting her own experiences over a 40-year career with both latest entry and successive entry cataloging. She then uses the example of Organic Gardening to illustrate the differences between what successive entry looks like compared to latest entry cataloging. (She makes a technical error in suggesting that the OG record covering the years 2001-2003 should be marked for deletion—that title change happened prior to the Dec. 2002 implementation of major and minor title changes and so was correct at the time it was cataloged.) [Note: She presents her evidence as 6 records in successive cataloging versus only 1 with latest entry. However successive record #6 was input incorrectly, leaving 5 successive records, and if all those changes had occured after the Dec. 2002 minor title change rules were implemented, there would be only 2 successive entry records.]

The real meat of the article comes in the section, “What’s Wrong with Latest Entry Cataloging?” where Baia presents 13 criticisms of latest entry cataloging and her responses to them. She mentions FRBR, although in my opinion dismisses FRBRized displays as a solution too easily. She also argues that “using one record to represent one serial fulfills the FRBR goal to promote users’ ability to find, identify, select, and obtain resources.” However, I would argue that data elements within records are far more vital to achieving those user tasks than simply the number of records that exist. (See Table 6.3 on pages 93-95 of Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records.) Even though she hasn’t quite convinced me, overall the article is thought-provoking and well-worth reading as she presents both user-focused reasons for, as well as possible workflow advantages to latest entry cataloging.

You'll find Baia's article in the Serials Librarian, vol. 53, no. 1/2 (2007), pages 57-80.

Kevin Randall looks at the history of serials cataloging practices at Northwestern University, which used latest entry cataloging from the mid-1980s through the mid-1990s ignoring the standard of successive entry cataloging. He discusses some of the problems encountered in using latest entry in addition to its advantages. From the cataloging perspective, he mentions that quick copy-cataloging of successive entry records is often easier than local maintenance with latest entry cataloging. Randall's evaluation of latest entry versus successive entry is more balanced than in the Baia article. He also gives more credit to the potential of FRBR stating,
“If any ideal solution is to be found, it is in more sophisticated OPAC development to utilize data encoded in the MARC records." He goes on to say that it does not matter to the user if one record or several are used, what is important is the display of the data. Randall concludes that successive entry is “our only real hope” in the current environment.

You'll find Randall's article in the Serials Librarian, vol. 53, no. 1/2 (2007), pages 81-91.

Grenci adds another assessment to the successive entry versus latest entry debate. She considers arguments about which method is most practical and efficient for catalogers, noting the difficulties in researching a serial’s history in latest entry cataloging and the time spent creating or editing new records under successive entry. She concludes that both methods require time and effort to determine “what’s going on” on the part of a cataloger. She then considers the user perspective. She provides a rebuttal to the argument that latest entry is best for users, pointing out that most users don’t care about a serial’s history--they simply want to find the title that matches their citation! On the other hand, long browse displays or receiving a large number of hits can be confusing. Latest entry records may result in false hits if portions of the serial run are not owned. Like Randall, she looks to improved catalog displays as the solution to serials confusion. She cites the issuance of the FRBR report as an important step forward and briefly mentions the concept of the “superwork.” While acknowledging arguments on either side, Grenci ultimately advocates for a combination of successive entry cataloging and improved library catalogs as the best option for the future.

Grenci's article can be found in the Serials Librarian, vol. 53, no. 1/2 (2007), pages 93-98.

Genereux covers three major aspects of serials trends in her literature review for 2004-2005: cost, management, and access. Serials catalogers will be particularly interested in her coverage of access issues. Specific topics addressed include: FRBR and serials; new rules for major and minor title changes; aggregator-neutral records for online serials; changing roles and responsibilities of serials catalogers brought on by the proliferation of e-journals; cataloging of new types of continuing resources such as zines, e-zines, and blogs; and serials holdings records. As with any literature review, readers will want to consult the original works to learn more about the topics.

Genereux’s article can be found in Library Resources & Technical Services, vol. 51, no. 4 (Oct. 2007), pages 293-304.

Volume 7, Issue 3/4 (2007) of the Journal of Internet Cataloging includes Bordeaux's article on the single vs. separate record debate concerning the cataloging of electronic serials. I first discovered this article as a pre-print a couple months ago while doing research on the topic. While a number of articles already address the debate, Bordeaux's article provides a fresh perspective by using a survey to find out what libraries are doing in the real world. While her survey showed no clear preference in practice, those using separate records were more likely to have the majority (76-100%) of their electronic serials represented in the online library catalog. Also notable is the similar perception of patron satisfaction between libraries using the single record approach versus the separate record approach.

Shroyer’s article is the fourth in a quartet on the latest entry versus successive entry debate. He surveyed both catalogers and public services librarians, using separate survey instruments for each group, in his exploration of the topic. Both raw data and evaluative summaries of his survey findings are provided in the article. Both groups leaned more towards latest entry cataloging leading him to conclude, “a fresh exploration of the rules governing choice of entry, in terms of both principles and practicalities, would be timely and could be productive.”

Shroyer’s article can be found in the Serials Librarian, vol. 53, no. 1/2 (2007), pages 99-123.

“Data organization.” “Human Information  Organizing Behavior.” “Knowledge Organization Systems.”  What would characterize a “Wisdom Organization  System?”   

I’ll be posting an update this weekend that includes an updated bootloader to deal with a problem identified when installing on Vista 64-bit, as well as including enhancements to the Z39.50 Extended Services support and the OAI Harvester (making it more fault tolerant).

Also, I reharvested the UMich. Google Books records and will be posting the set (for those interested in a testing set, etc) this weekend as well, likely Friday night as I’ll be spending a good deal of time tomorrow on the road.

–TR

Self Archiving has failed. Stealth Archiving is the answer.

An ordinary person spends there time getting out avoiding tense situations. A repo-rat spends his time getting in to tense situations.

Never broke into an office. Never wire-tapped an office. Kid. I never broke into a laptop. I shall not corrupt a file northe contents thereof. Nor through inaction let that file or the digital contents thereof come to harm. That’s what I call the repo code kid. Don’t forget it etch it in your brain. Not many people got a code to live by anymore.

(nodding to Wisconsin)

A letter from Deanna Marcum was just posted to the AUTOCAT list. It provides the joint statement of the Library of Congress, the National Library of Medicine, and the National Agricultural Library on Resource Description and Access. Some excerpts:

The three national libraries agreed on the following approach: First, we jointly commit to further development and completion of RDA. Second, following its completion, a decision to implement the rules will be based upon the positive evaluation of RDA's utility within the library and information environment, and criteria reflecting the technical, operational, and financial implications of the new code. This will include an articulation of the business case for RDA, including benefits to libraries and end users and cost analyses for retraining staff and re-engineering cataloging processes.

Together, we will:

• Jointly develop milestones for evaluating how we will implement RDA
• Conduct tests of RDA that determine if each milestone has been reached; paying particular attention to the benefits and costs of implementation
• Widely distribute analyses of benefits and costs for review by the U.S. library community
• Consult with the vendor and bibliographic utility communities to address their concerns about RDA

Included among the tests that will be developed to assist in formulating implementation decisions:

• Usability testing with cataloging staff, i.e. librarians and technicians, experienced and newer staff from the three national libraries in consultation with representatives from the U.S. library community (including OCLC and library vendors) about its participation in the process
• Testing of records for a broad array of materials created during usability studies to determine compatibility with existing record sets and ensuring records are usable and understandable for our end users
• Testing the feasibility of integrating this new cataloging standard into all relevant technology systems

The three institutions agreed that these steps will be followed and, if there is a decision to implement RDA, that the implementation would not occur before the end of 2009.

UPDATE: Letter and joint statement [pdf] now available on the LC Working Group website.