On Thursday 26th August a group of CIG members and others went on a visit to the House of Commons Library. We were met at Portcullis House, by our host, George Roe, and taken through to Westminster Palace where we began our tour.
Westminster Hall was completed in 1099 and has the oldest medieval wooden roof north of the Alps. The Royal Courts of Justice was previously housed here and the hall has witnessed the trials of King Charles 1 and Guy Fawkes, among others. Today it is sometimes used for monarchs to lie in state.
Moving on we walked through St Stephen’s Hall, an earlier debating chamber for the House of Commons, before arriving at the Royal Staircase, used for the arrival of the monarch at the state opening of Parliament, and the ornately decorated Robing Room.
The Royal Gallery was our next stop. This room is often used for heads of state to address both Houses of Parliament and the walls are adorned with two very large paintings depicting scenes from the Napoleonic Wars.
We passed through the Central Lobby, and were then taken into the Lords Chamber, followed by the Commons Chamber. The House of Lords, in red and gold, is a splendidly decorated area, in contrast to the more austere decoration of the House of Commons.
Our host works on the Index of Parliamentary Questions, otherwise known as Hansard, and was able to tell us a bit about how indexing terms are assigned to entries. Each piece of material is given only one or two subject terms so the work is highly concentrated. Indexing terms are taken from an in-house subject thesaurus using post-coordinates and conventions have been established as to how to deal with particular subject areas. The 20 plus professional indexers need to be impartial when they are indexing political material, and there are weekly meetings to discuss topical complex issues.
The House of Commons Library was our final stop of the afternoon. This is located very close to the Commons Chamber overlooking the Thames and often becomes a social area during breaks at late night sittings. The library was established in 1818 and our host told us that in the past both Gladstone and Disraeli had been involved in stock selection! The library uses an in-house cataloguing manual, similar to AACR2, but rather more basic, and with a few tweaks. Material is usually on the shelf within a week of arrival, or within 24 hours if it has been urgently requested.
Subject staff are on call for Members, and remain on call while the House is sitting. I asked a member of library staff whether she had ever worked particularly late in this capacity, and discovered she had been there until 4am one morning!
Thanks go to our host, George Roe, for a very interesting visit and for giving us a wider tour of the House of Commons in addition to the library.
<snip>
Jim unbelievable wrote: "But it must be accepted that catalogers are *most definitely NOT* the people to know what people need from information. That can only come from reference librarians and the public, the researchers, scholars, and students, themselves."
With all due respect---what planet are you on, Jim? Come back to this one. Where do you get this stuff? Let me welcome you to the 21st century where catalogers are user-centric, born and bred. We start from the point of the user--what are their needs, how do we organize it to help them meet those needs; how do the choices we make as organizers affect their ability to find, identify, select, obtain, navigate.....and so on. Let's call it functionality, shall we?I will state that in order to find out what the different needs are of different people, you must actually work with those people. A cataloger, whose work is necessarily done away from the public, *cannot do this*, unless he or she also works in reference, but then that is the reference-librarian-half of the multi-tasking librarian doing the work. (And I will state that it is highly difficult to be very good on both duties--one of the reasons why I have suggested that perhaps the current AACR2 cataloging standards may already be too high)
Only a reference librarian, and not a cataloging librarian, can know what people need from information? Bulldada. If there is an instance of this then it occurs when a cataloger gets so wrapped up in the 'brilliance' of their own cataloging skills that they can't see the forest for the trees.
Done. Outta here. Buh-bye.
</snip>
by noreply@blogger.com (James Weinheimer) at September 02, 2010 09:13 AM
> But most people do want to know what flavors of muffins you are offering, whether and what kind of nuts, chips, fruit, etc., they have in them, whether they are low-fat or low-carb or gluten-free or whole grain, and if so, which grains, what kind of and how much fat, what they are sweetened with, if anything, how many servings and how many calories per serving?
> Is that incredibly delicious pastry made with dairy products? The lactose-intolerant and vegans certainly want to know that. Vegans also want to know if it contains eggs or other animal products. Is it made with all organic ingredients?
>Some people also want to know about the business practices of the companies that produce and distribute and sell the pastries. Ben and Jerry founded an empire on their business practices.
>
>It's always dangerous to start talking about "what the vast majority of people" think or want or do, without some solid, empirical evidence behind it. And even if we are correct about the vast majority, do we only serve that majority?
by noreply@blogger.com (James Weinheimer) at September 02, 2010 07:41 AM
Katzer, Jeffrey. 1987. User studies, information science, and communication. Canadian Journal of Information Science 12, no. 3: 15-30.
Argues that changes in technology, the economics of info systems, and previous research into information behavior is pushing information science to more complexity and predicts that it will become more like the field of communication.
“What has been recommended is to add, as central to our endeavor, a more comprehensive consideration of meaning, intention, cognitive components of personality, and many other topics which have previously been viewed as more a part of the social-behavioral sciences than as integral to information science. The suggestion is that information science can add these topics and incorporate them into our field as add-ons—much like the extra features we’ve jury-rigged onto our systems over the years to overcome acknowledged deficiencies.
I disagree. Any explicit and significant increase in our consideration of meaning, intention, and cognition will affect our field fundamentally. It will bring into question the basic paradigm which has guided our research activities, our educational programs, and our service philosophies. It will ultimately change the very nature of who we are. Conceptually, if not practically, all of information science, but especially information behaviors and information retrieval, will be more profitably seen and understood in the context of human communication” (16).
Various critiques of user studies along the axes of population studied, central focus, information channel, major variables, research methods, and applicability are presented.
Argues that the “often implicit assumptions which underlie how we approach the design of our systems and the provision of information services” no longer serves us and are untenable as they present “an overly simplistic model of human behavior …” (18).
These assumptions under the heads of information needs, information user, and information uses are interrogated. As Katzer states, these assumptions when boldly (and one might add, baldly) stated would be found wanting (18).
The author points to (then) current research showing the limits of, or invalidating, these assumptions and brings attention to those who were calling for information science to become a social science, and perhaps even like the field of human communication.
“It is interesting to note who are making these recommendations. The arguments to consider our field a social science have come almost exclusively from either European-trained information scientists such as Belkin, Brittain, Roberts, or Wilson, or from U.S.-trained communications researchers such as Dervin or Paisley” (20).
Reasons are provided for the affinity between the groups.
Katzer’s main call is not for the subsumption of one discipline into another, but “is a recommendation to consider those principles and practices found in the field of human communication which look as if they could be fruitfully applied in our research” (21). Along these lines, the author looks at what may be of value from the field of human communications regarding the information channel, meaning, process, and outcomes.
Some of what is presented could easily be presented in an Integrational framework. In the section on Process, Katzer writes: “Communication is a process which occurs over time and in a specific context” (22). It also ties into a domain analytic view; also in Process, “… the fact that communication effects are almost always domain-specific” (23).
Next, the author provides some examples of application of “communication mechanisms to information science” (24).
While discussing cognitive similarity and organizational operators Katzer writes, “The point is to discover the microculture values (which goes beyond the topic), and to use those operators, norms, or success factors to improve our understanding of the user’s information behaviors” (25-6). That could easily be under the macrosocial aspect of Integrationism.
This paper relied heavily on the work of Brenda Dervin and pointed me to several Dervin citations. It isn’t like I have never seen them, but I had only read Dervin & Nilan’s ARIST chapter, “Information needs and uses.” [citation below]
I have been meaning to look more formally into Dervin’s Sense-Making Methodology so this was a useful reminder that I need to do that work. The situation has been remedied and I am working my way through a fair bit of her corpus. I was planning to discuss her article “Useful Theory for Librarianship: Communication, Not Information” next, which is one he cited, but think I will hold off for now. I will say that I enjoyed it and found it useful, although I must jettison her view of information as espoused in the article.
Regarding the progress of research in our field since Katzer’s critique was written I have no doubt that some researchers have adopted more of a communicational stance toward our field. I do not, though, feel that it has been enough.
For me this paper fits well into the sociohistorical view of our field that I am constructing for myself. It provides a good look at the communicational critique and the response of the field at a specific point in time in which the field was beginning to take these critiques more seriously. It has helped me to make sense of, or, more accurately, progress toward making sense of, the need for a view of our field that is more aligned with the way we actually communicate.
By the way, a big shout out to Christina Pikas for telling me a couple of years ago to look at Dervin, among others. I knew she was correct but just couldn’t find the time.
Dervin, Brenda. 1977. Useful theory for librarianship: Communication, not information. Drexel Library Quarterly 13: 16-32.
Dervin, Brenda, and Kathleen Clark. 1987. ASQ: Alternative tools for information need and accountability assessments by libraries. Belmont, CA: Peninsula Library System for the California State Library, July.
Dervin, Brenda, and Michael Nilan. 1986. Information needs and uses. In Annual Review of Information Science and Technology, 21:3-33. Knowledge Industry Publications.
See also [this is mostly for me: Some things read this week, 26 August – 1 September 2007 ]:
Roberts, Norman. 1976. Social Considerations Towards a Definition of Information Science. Journal of Documentation 32, no. 4 (December): 249-257.
<snip>
I agree that the testing process is being conducted with careful deliberation, and I have much respect for the way the Library of Congress is handling the process. Still, publishing, charging, and testing an incomplete product with a decision on implementation to come after the
testing is finished sounds like rushing to me.
</snip>
by noreply@blogger.com (James Weinheimer) at September 01, 2010 04:59 PM
Tuominen, Kimmo, Reijo Savolainen, and Sanna Talja. 2005. Information Literacy as a Sociotechnical Practice. The Library Quarterly 75, no. 3 (July 1): 329-345. doi:10.1086/497311.
I found this article on the main page of Library Quarterly‘s website as one of the most cited when I went looking for Archie Dick’s 1988 article on epistemologies in LIS [to be discussed soon].
I quite enjoyed this article as for me the upshot, in essence, is that they align information literacy with a domain-centric viewpoint.
The authors, whom I have read several papers by, whether together or with other authors, are social constructionists. I am not quite sure how this theory and its close “rivals” fit in with my work. They all have distinct advantages to their way of looking at the world, but none of them focus on all that is relevant. As of now, I am a pluralist as far as these theories go. I feel that slavish adherence to one and only one would cause one to miss other relevant and important ways of viewing the world, or the slice of the world one is trying to analyze. [See my upcoming comments on A. Dick's holistic perspectivism.]
As it stands, social constructionism seems only slightly orthogonal to Hjørland’s domain analytic view.
Let me state up front that information literacy (hereafter IL or info lit) is not my arena. Also, this paper is 5 years old so some of the critiques that it makes of our professional organizations’ formal statements on IL may have been addressed. Then again, as fast as our professional organizations move I would not count on that either.
Outline of article:
I am not going to cover much in the way of their critiques of these formal statements. But I will say that I fully agree with them. I guess I’ll quote this passage as a reasonable summation of their critique but be aware it is more varied and detailed than this makes it sound:
“The IL movement has not often seriously attempted to call its own premises into question or to suspend the obvious and, as a result, has been preoccupied with the binary logic of discerning facts from nonfacts and biased from nonbiased information. Such dichotomies reflect the values of traditional print culture, however, rather than the social and multimodal networked technological environments. In interactive digital environments, actors can simultaneously be readers and writers, consumers, and producers of knowledge. Knowledge is not located in texts as such—or in the individual’s head. Rather, it involves the coconstruction of situated meanings [33, p. 48] and takes place in networks of actors and artifacts” (337-8).
[33] Kapitzke, Cushla. (see below)
The authors’ critique of info lit comes from the literature on “The IL Debate.” It begins with a simple but important observation attributed to Mutch. “The difficulties with the IL concept stem partly from the fact that it marries two concepts (information and literacy) that in themselves are ambiguous and resist exact definitions [29]” (332).
[29] Mutch, Alistair. “Information Literacy: An Exploration.” International Journal of Information Management 17, no. 5 (1997): 377-86
That simple critique, in and of itself, ought give one pause regarding any attempt at defining “information literacy.” [Damn! I know I written about definitions on my blog in the past but I cannot find anything useful. I really and truly need a powerful blog search engine for my own blog; natively, that is. Anyway, this reminds me that I really need to reread Harris and Hutton on definition and write a one-page statement of my views on the topic.]
“The term “practice” shifts the focus away from the behavior, action, motives, and skills of monologic individuals. Teams, groups, and organizations can be seen as the entities that become information literate in a specific knowledge domain, that is, they enact information practices and use suitable technical tools. Seeing IL as consisting of sociotechnical practices that differ from one knowledge domain to another mandates empirical research efforts that concentrate on actual organizational environments and on routine and mundane ways of performing situated actions and interactions with and through social and technical resources needed for their accomplishment.
What we propose here is that as practices give rise to individuals as epistemic subjects in the fist place, they are primary in understanding the acts and deeds of individuals” (339).
There is much more in this article that should help one rethink, or think about for the first time, the traditional, and mostly implicit, assumptions of information literacy. This view does, in fact, complicate IL but then many of our concepts need a little (or a lot of) complication.
I find it powerful and useful in that it makes IL more about the actual processes of human communication; more social, as literacy is; and firmly situates IL in domain practices.
Highly recommended.
Harris, Roy, and Christopher Hutton. 2007. Definition in Theory and Practice: Language, Lexicography and the Law. London: Continuum.
Kapitzke, Cushla. 2003. Information literacy: A postivist epistemology and a politics of outformation. Educational Theory 53, no. 1: 37-53. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1741-5446.2003.00037.x.
Again, all very interesting and I think pertinent to current discussions surrounding RDA development, testing, and possible implementation in the years to come. I would not suppose that any implementation is going to happen next year—mostly likely not for a few years—in which case it would prudent to start planning now on how to implement, or not. As I have said in previous postings (either here or on NGC4LIB), we don’t yet have enough data to make such decisions. In looking back at the context surrounding AACR2 implementation we can see that we obviously enjoy a vast technology communications advantage and the ability to exchange information almost instantaneously. However, funding training and implementation and the amount and length of individual time and effort each of us has to put into studying and learning a new way of cataloging is, in my opinion, unchanged.
by noreply@blogger.com (James Weinheimer) at September 01, 2010 08:02 AM
<snip>
I don't agree. While many library users prefer the system to be transparent, the complexities hidden, and the correct results to come first in the simplest way, that doesn't mean that their actual needs correspond to such preferences. A good old-fashioned reference interview often reveals very complex needs, and the question then becomes: does the catalog serve those actual needs?
I've found the Statement of International Cataloguing Principles http://www.ifla.org/files/cataloguing/icp/icp_2009-en.pdf to offer the simplest language of the bare minimum of what a catalog's purpose is:Of course, this was all cribbed from Cutter's rules from the 1870s, who cribbed it from Panizzi in the 1840s, who cribbed it, probably from somebody else. The catalog has had several traditional purposes, and while I think that these purposes still mostly apply, they certainly are no longer the primary purposes of the catalog for today's patrons. I believe it is absolutely vital that librarians, and especially catalogers, reconsider these traditional purposes because otherwise, we risk being blacksmiths in the age of automobiles.
</snip>
by noreply@blogger.com (James Weinheimer) at September 01, 2010 07:55 AM
297.09 History, geographic treatment, biography
297.125 Hadith (Traditions) [formerly 297.124]
We just posted a revised draft for comment on proposed changes to the developments for Hadith and the historical periods of Islam. This draft supersedes the earlier draft mentioned in previous posts (see here and here).
Please comment directly to this blog entry or by one of the alternative methods given with the draft by September 15. EPC will begin voting on the revised draft on September 20, and your input is valuable to the committee and the Dewey editorial team.
<snip>
But I do think it is fair to say that much of the feedback has not been heeded.
</snip>
by noreply@blogger.com (James Weinheimer) at August 31, 2010 01:15 PM
by noreply@blogger.com (James Weinheimer) at August 31, 2010 01:12 PM
by noreply@blogger.com (James Weinheimer) at August 31, 2010 12:57 PM
If you didn’t already hear. For real apparently!
http://weblog.rubyonrails.org/2010/8/29/rails-3-0-it-s-done
Just a couple days ago I looked, and there were still a buncha significant outstanding tickets, and I figured, oh well, it’ll be a while. But apparently… something happened.
Um, apparently the something is that they postponed a bunch of those tickets to 3.01 instead. Which isn’t neccesarily unreasonable, if they decided they weren’t in fact show-stoppers. But there was a promise at RailsConf, that they’d get ActiveRelation performing as well as legacy ActiveRecord before a 3.0 release. I am unclear on whether this promise was taken back, or fulfilled.
In other less whiny, news the Rails team has asked that if users want to show financial appreciation, they donate to Charity:Water. I like this idea. As far as I can tell, it’s a pretty good organization (I liked their answers to their FAQs 17, 18, 20), and I know clean water is a good and important cause. I gave some bucks, I encourage you to. Use the Rails link above so the donation gets credited to Team Rails Users.
McNeill, William Hardy. 1986. Mythistory and Other Essays. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
I read this book over the last 9 days and I loved it. I have previously read one other McNeill book and have had another that I have meant to read. The other book was The Pursuit of Power and I read it for one of Dr. Stivers’ grad seminars and did my book review essay on it.
This book is divided into 3 sections: Truth, Myth, and History; The Need for World History; and Masters of the Historical Craft. It is a collection of essays and lectures dating from the 1960s to the 1980s. The first one is McNeill’s presidential address to the American Historical Association in 1985 and is entitled, “Mythistory, or Truth, Myth, History, and Historians.” I believe this was an excellent choice to open the book and set the stage for his views.
I especially like McNeill’s emphasis on world history, his scolding of his fellow professional historians and his ethical stance regarding the need for world history and responsible mythmaking. I particularly adore his views on language and human communication. His main effort in this book is a rehabilitated view of myth.
I want to provide some quotes from the book to, hopefully, whet your appetite. I may or may not expound further on them, although I hope to allow most to speak for themselves.
“Really important texts are those susceptible of being richly and diversely misunderstood. An author can always aspire to that dignity” (ix).
From “Mythistory, or Truth, Myth, History, and Historians”:
“The principal source of historical complexity lies in the fact that human beings react both to the natural world and to one another chiefly through the mediation of symbols” (6).
This may well be the principal source of complexity in much of human life and living. The amount and sheer range of symbolic mediation is primarily what differentiates humans from other animals.
“Shared truths that provide a sanction for common effort have obvious survival value. Without such social cement no group can long preserve itself. Yet to outsiders, truths of this kind are likely to seem myths, …” (7).
“The liberal faith, of course, holds that in a free marketplace of ideas, Truth will eventually prevail” (9).
This is one of the most sincere beliefs we have inherited from the Enlightenment. But it is also one that causes the most tension in our views of ourselves and the market as paragons of rationality as we see over and over that it is not necessarily the case that the Truth will win out.
“Group solidarity is always maintained, at least partly, by exporting psychic frictions across the frontiers, projecting animosities onto an outsider foe in order to enhance collective cohesion within the group itself” (16).
“We need to develop an ecumenical history, with plenty of room for human diversity in all its complexity” (17).
He claims that this is exactly what professional historians have shied away from.
“If we can now realize that our practice already shows how truths may be discerned at different levels of generality with equal precision simply because different patterns emerge on different time-space scales, then, perhaps, repugnance for world history might diminish …” (18).
“The result might best be called mythistory perhaps ( … ), for the same words that constitute truth for some are, and always will be, myth for others, who inherit or embrace different assumptions and organizing concepts about the world” (19 my empahsis).
From “The Care and Repair of Myth”:
Argues that public myth provides the basis for collective action:
“A people without a full quiver of relevant agreed-upon statements, accepted in advance through education or less formalized acculturation, soon finds itself in deep trouble, for, in the absence of believable myths, coherent public action becomes very difficult to improvise or sustain” (23).
Equates all forms of knowledge, to include scientific knowledge, with his rehabilitated view of myth:
“It may seem whimsical to equate scientific theories to myth, but if one accepts the definition of myth offered at the beginning of this article, surely the shoe fits” (26).
Argues that we need generality, not more detail, and that all of the detail generated by microhistories has undermined inherited myth.
“They have consequently undermined inherited myths that attempted to make the past useful by describing large-scale patterns, without feeling any responsibility for replacing decrepit old myths with modified and corrected general statements that might provide a better basis for public action” (36).
Encounters with strangers, and the assorted things that implies, is the driver of history:
“… troubling encounter with strangers constitute the principal motor of change within human societies” (37).
On comradeship and relating to the Other:
“The most problematic of all these human aspirations is how to define the limits of comradeship, This, indeed, is where humanity’s myth-making and myth-destroying capacity comes elementally and directly into play by defining the boundary between “us” and “them.” Broadly inclusive public identities, if believed and acted on, tend to relax tensions among strangers and can allow people of diverse habits and outlook to coexist more or less peacefully. Narrowed in-group loyalties, on the other hand, divide humanity into potentially or actually hostile grouping” (41).
This serves as another reason for broadly general world histories.
To counteract these tendencies, he argues that:
“What humanity needs is balance between a range of competing identities. A single individual ought to be able to be a citizen of the world and hold membership in a series of other, less inclusive in-groups simultaneously, all without suffering irreconcilable conflict among competing loyalties” (41).
From “The Rise of the West as a Long-Term Process”
Early in this essay are several pages on varied aspects of language:
“The main function of words is to generalize experience, imposing categories and classes upon the flow of sensory inputs, and thereby allowing us to recognize useful objects, e.g., “table,” in innumerable and sharply different encounters with things. Beyond that, our words create the social world we live in to a very large degree, permitting us to recognize and respond appropriately to a policeman, a professor, a foreigner, or a fellow citizen as the case may be. …” (46).
“Symbolic discourse thus gives human being their extraordinary capacity to transform the natural worlds by collective effort. It is, indeed, what makes us human” (47).
He argues that microhistorians use the language of those they write about while macrohistorians need a specialized, but generalized, language that still needs to be developed (50).
“Social process” as a topic for macrohistorians, and his primary view of “social process” and how that view has has changed in the 20 years since The Rise of the West was published occupy several pages at this point. His basic argument was and is that contact with strangers, especially those possessing superior skills, is the principal impetus to change in social life.
“A world history should, accordingly, focus special attention on modes of transport and the evidences of contact between different and divergent forms of society that such transport allowed” (57).
His updated view includes a greater role for communication. Intensified communication and cheapened transportation heightens the impact of tensions in social processes.
From “A Defense of World History”:
On the importance of language groups:
“Since shared meanings, disseminated through communications networks, are what shape and govern collective human behavior, historians ought always to take language groups seriously into consideration” (73).
While discussing the quest for precision and exactitude he tells us:
“Epistemological exactitude is unattainable. To insist on it is an excuse for not thinking. For only by using inexact words to organize confusion, lumping together a range of particulars that differ from one another in some degree or other, can the intellectual enterprise proceed at all” (84).
I fully agree with these statements and they, in fact, clearly elucidate my concerns and doubts about ontologies and similarly highly structured abuses of words and concepts. This is not to say that they are not of use in limited, highly constrained, domains and contexts but that we must be careful of ontological “creep.”
“Beyond Western Civilization: Rebuilding the Survey” is a call to reform the then dying (now dead?) Western Civ course.
In this section, McNeill discusses 4 historians he has known in various ways and that have affected his views in 5 chapters. I am not quoting much from these but they do add another kind of value and dimension to the book as a whole.
“Lord Acton”
“Basic Assumptions of Toynbee’s A Study of History”
“Historians I Have Known: Carl Becker”
“For myth-making is a high and serious business. It guides public action and is our distinctively human substitute for instinct. Good myths—That is, myths that are credible, because they are compatible with experience, and specific enough to direct behavior—are the greatest and most precious of human achievements. Why should we not aspire to make such myths? No nobler calling exists among humankind” (165-65).
“Historians I Have Known: Arnold J. Toynbee”
There is a fascinating section in here on not taking notes (192-94).
“Historians I Have Known: Fernand Braudel”
I highly recommend this eminently readable and erudite book.
by Dublin Core Metadata Initiative Limited at August 30, 2010 11:59 PM
by Dublin Core Metadata Initiative Limited at August 30, 2010 11:59 PM
by noreply@blogger.com (James Weinheimer) at August 30, 2010 07:14 PM
The open ebook community and the Internet Archive are pleased to announce the release of the first production version of the Open Publication Distribution System (OPDS) Catalog format for digital content. OPDS Catalogs are an open standard designed to enable the discovery of digital content from any location, on any device, and for any application.
The specification is available at: http://opds-spec.org/specs/opds-catalog-1-0.
Based on the widely implemented Atom Syndication Format, OPDS Catalogs have been developed since 2009 by a group of ebook developers, publishers, librarians, and booksellers interested in providing a lightweight, simple, and easy to use format for developing catalogs of digital books, magazines, and other content.
OPDS Catalogs are the first component of the Internet Archive’s BookServer Project, a framework supporting open standards for discovering, lending, and vending books and other digital content on the web.
Two new review titles landed on my desk this morning. They are:
Chris Oliver, Introducing RDA: a guide to the basics. Facet, 2010. vii, 117 p.
G.G. Chowdhury, Introduction to modern information retrieval. 3rd ed. Facet, 2010. xiv, 508 p.
If interested in writing a review of either of these books for Catalogue & index, please contact me at:
The source codes listed below have been recently approved. The codes will be added to applicable Source Codes for Vocabularies, Rules, and Schemes lists. See the specific source code list for current usage in MARC fields and MODS/MADS elements.
The codes should not be used in exchange records until 60 days after the date of this notice to provide implementers time to include newly-defined codes in any validation tables.
Description Convention Source Codes
The following source code has been added to the Description Convention Source Codes list for usage in appropriate fields and elements.
Addition:Cartographic Data Source Codes
- ncr
- Nippon cataloging rules (Tokyo: National Diet Library)
The following source code has been added to the Cartographic Data Source Codes list for usage in appropriate fields and elements.
Addition:
- erpn
- Scott, Andrew. The encyclopedia of raincoast place names: a complete reference to coastal British Columbia (Madeira Park, BC: Harbour Publishing)
Even if some heat has gone out of the library blogosphere, there is still a fair amount of reading and writing going on. I was asked recently what I tended to look at, going beyond the well-known bigger names. Here are some of the blogs that came to mind - some others also come to mind, but they don't sustain the reasonable amount of output that these do.
Go to Hellman Personanondata eFoundations The Book of Trogool Overdue ideas Synthesize, specialize, mobilize Martin Hamilton's Blog HangingTogether Bibliographic wilderness The Arcadia Project blog
Many of these are written from within a library perspective. Some dip into libraries from other perspectives. Personanondata, by Michael Cairns, covers the book industry more generally. Martin Hamilton, who is responsible for Internet Services in the IT services division at Loughborough University, is a recent blogger with a nicely reflective style. My former colleague Eric Hellman pulls together his science, business and technical experiences to provide some of the most interesting commentary on our changing environment. And Andy Powell and Pete Johnston at eFoundations combine technical pieces about metadata with more general discussion of education/information in a networked environment.
And then there's ......
by dempseyl@oclc.org (Lorcan Dempsey) at August 30, 2010 01:56 AM
As is my wont, I’m late to the party commenting on the SkyRiver vs. OCLC battle. Chalk it up to a busier than usual summer; I read the complaint shortly after the lawsuit was filed, but haven’t gotten around to writing about it.
Over the past few weeks I’ve been wrestling with the budget, trying to pin things down before we really get into purchasing-mode. Every time I’ve bumped into that OCLC line, I’m reminded of OCLC’s role in my library and other library’s operations. Karen Schneider has posted two thoughtful commentaries (1, 2) on the suit, and I think she gets it right.
OCLC stumbled onto the “cloud” model 40 years before it became cool, and at least 30 before it became truly practical. Forty years ago, just building the infrastructure to support that network claimed the bulk of OCLC’s resources. Today, the internet solves the connection problem and inexpensive servers take care of the need to store and deliver 199 million records. Resources can, and should, go to doing new things.
While OCLC has to defend the integrity of WorldCat, in the past few years I’ve watched their focus increasingly shift from WorldCat as the product to products that leverage WorldCat. The web-scale ILS is just the latest in a chain that started with Open WorldCat nearly a decade ago. WorldCat continues to be open to Google indexing, and all those “Find in a Library” links scattered across the web depend on having a massive bibliographic database with even more massive library holdings information. I find pushing users from Google and the open web (where we know they’re starting anyway) back into our collections to be a good thing. But maybe that’s just me. WorldCat Local and the OCLC ILS are steps in tearing down silos between libraries and reducing duplicative work in our operations by pointing to a unified database of bibliographic records. If I’d had that opportunity when I had a full cataloguing staff I wouldn’t now be struggling to address decades worth of uncatalogued materials in our special collections unit.
But aye, there’s the rub: you need the massive database before you can build services around it. SkyRiver and III would like a free copy of the database delivered to their door (or at least to their servers). No one will, or can, prevent them from constructing a bibliographic database to compete with OCLC in the same way that WorldCat was built–one record at a time by lots of cataloguers in lots of libraries, by forging agreements with national libraries for copies of their records, and yes, in some cases through the acquisition and merger of other bibliographic utilities. I can understand wanting to skip that slow, painful building stage, but should III and SkyRiver get a free ride on 40 years of someone else’s work?
I’ve looked at that OCLC line in my budget and thought “what if,” but also quickly realized how integral OCLC services are to our operations. I have my grumbles with OCLC’s bundling of things and their opaque pricing models, but they’re hardly alone in that… Unlike some of our other content and service providers, though, OCLC has held the pricing flat for the past few years, a fact which helps me in these lean budget times. So yes, our OCLC membership goes on. But it is a membership, and we have a voice through our respective Regional Councils and the Board of Trustees. If we as members think OCLC is on the wrong course, is charging too much, or is just a big meanie, it’s up to us to do something about it.
New to the CIG website: a selected e-bibliography of recently published articles relevant to 'back room' information professionals.
Each August I review the previous years' changes from Library of Congress's "Weekly List" of new headings and cross-check them with their annual "Free-Floating Subdivisions". Questionable entries are referred to the Library of Congress Cataloging Distribution Service for resolution. Changes are then added to my master file, which is then totally cumulated. Official publication date of each year's new edition is September 1.Joyce T. Ogden, the author, sent me a very nice note asking that I announce the newest version of her work.
Susan Rector from NCSU Libraries left a nice note on my entry about library websites. She pointed at some discussion of the redesign on their libraries blog. I was particularly interested to read about their objectives with the new site:
A nice list. I was interested that I had picked up on various of these things in my few remarks. This is more a sign that they have achieved quite a bit of what they wanted to than it is that I was being very perceptive ;-) I was particularly interested in the equal focus across all the elements of the library: the collections, the space, the services and the staff. Sometimes there is a tendency to be collections focused.
Somebody asked me why I used the expression 'demand-influenced' rather than something perhaps more immediately digestible like 'user centered'. Several reasons. The first is that since talking about 'Sorting out demand' at the Lita Top Tech Trends event the balance between 'sorting out supply' and 'sorting out demand' has been on my mind, and seems like an important distinction. The second is that we tend to use 'user' rather lightly and assume that everything is done in service of the user. And the third is that 'demand' suggests something a little more dynamic, and measurable, than 'user'. To me, anyway.
by dempseyl@oclc.org (Lorcan Dempsey) at August 27, 2010 09:51 PM
So, with the summer winding down, I decided to take the family for a bit of a vacation – and then took a vacation day on my own with my dad. Here’s a few pictures of the adventures.
Travelling with the family
Because of my injury this summer, my wife and I have been taking the kids all over Oregon to do a little hiking and exploring some of the real treasures in the state. This week, we decided to go an look at a few things that you cannot find anywhere but in Oregon – the John Day Fossil Beds and the Painted Hills.
The John Day Fossil Beds are an incredible treasure in the state. Its is one of the few places in the world (maybe the only place in the world) that contains fossils from 4 continues eras from around 65 MA – 5 MA. Because of this, the research done at John Day is often used to check and correlate research done elsewhere in the world. Aside from being unique – it is incredibly beautiful. The layers in the rocks represent different eras of lava flow or ash flows. This creates incredible blues, reds, yellows and greens. What’s more, fossils basically are just laying on the ground. Scratch the surface of the ground and you’ll find fossils of plants that haven’t existed in Oregon for millions of years.
Within the Fossil beds are what are called the painted hills. These represent some of the oldest geographic layers and are simply brilliant. Here’s a few pictures:
Picture in the Blue Basin
Research office in the Visitors Center where you can watch them studying collected fossils.
Painted Hills
Painted Hills
Clarno Unit Palisades (Petrified Forest)
Boys finding fossils in Fossil, OR
My mini Vacation – Climbing South Sister
After driving all over eastern Oregon, my wife dropped me off in Bend, Oregon, so I could hitch a ride with my dad to South Sister. The South Sister is the 3rd highest peak in Oregon at 10,300+ ft. The trail to the top is non-technical, but difficult. From the trail head, climbers gain nearly 6000 ft climbing up sharp, and loose volcanic rock.
Leaving at a little after 7 am this morning, my Dad and I managed to grind our way up the hill in about 4-4 1/2 hours. And our reward for all the work – nearly 60 mph winds at the top of the mountain that literately nearly blew me off the peak. So, we decided not to spend much time at the top of the mountain, but did manage to get some great pictures before retreating to a safer area.
The way down the hill was tricky. While we were climbing, we didn’t think anything of the loose rocks. But on the way down, they made coming down a bit more difficult. Even more so for me since my right arm isn’t anywhere close to 100%. Fortunately, we made it through the loose stuff, then ran down the rest of the hill. So coming off the mountain only took about 2 hours, jogging at a brisk pace. Here are a few of the pictures from the top:
Looking south
Devils Lake (I think)
We were actually really fortunate that we got up and down the mountain when we did. After getting to the bottom of the trail, we looked up and the top of the mountain was completely covered with clouds. On Sisters, that’s not a good thing. Even though the freezing level was likely around 14,000 ft today, it was very likely that anyone still on the mountain had to deal with higher winds, freezing rain and some real nasty weather. So we really lucked out.
–TR
We’ve introduced a few changes to LibraryThing for Publishers to help publishers get their books in, and the data right.
Each publisher/imprint now has a “Your titles” link, which takes you to a page where you can change the URL and publication date of books.
Small publishers may find this easier than the Simple LibraryThing Format, that encourages you to put ISBN and URL in the same uploading spreadsheet. I used this feature to help Small Beer Press, Chin Music Press, Myrmidon Books.
You can now also change your “Preferred source” for book data, to get titles, authors and publication dates from Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.ca and others.
So any catalogers reading this, would appreciate some ideas or background information if you’ve got em.
So recently, someone (PCC, the Program for Cooperative Cataloging, I guess?), came up with this “Provider-Neutral” policy for “e-monograph” records. Which apparently is now being implemented, picking up steam.
Previously, if I understand right, if there was an e-book published on several different platforms, the cooperative cataloging corpus (meaning basically OCLC, and perhaps also LC) would have a seperate bib record for each one. Although they were largely identical, they had different URLs, among other things. (Not sure how this applies to the increasingly popular case of an ebook that is downloadable, not on the web, but that’s not what this post is about).
Now, instead, all the e-versions will share a bib record.
On it’s face, this made a lot of sense to me when I heard about it. More efficient, why create duplicate records that are pretty much the same, sure, why not, consolidate them, why spend time describing the unique aspects of a partiuclar provider’s representaiton that nobody really cares about anyway, “provider-neutral”, why not.
But when combined with our standard (truly insane) actual real world practices, this seems to result in some big problems.
So we buy a new ebook package, and we get a bunch of recorsd for ebooks. Sometimes we get them for free from the content vendor. Sometimes we get them from OCLC (it’s not entirely clear to me how we bulk download the right OCLC records for a several thousand book package, but we definitely don’t pick em out manually one by one). Sometimes we might get em from yet another party, not sure. Previous to “provider-neutral”, we’d get the record(s) for our licensed provider(s), which would individually have the URLs (marc 856) to access the content from those providers in em. We’d load in em our catalog, which would display the 856 urls, users would see them and click on them, great.
Now, due to the gradual adoption of ‘provider-neutral’, when we get those same records (from any of those sources), if I understand things correctly, an increasingly large portion of them (eventually to be all of them when ‘provider-neutral’ is fully adopted) have 856 URLs for every known provider of the e-book in each record. Half a dozen, more, who knows.
If we just load these all in our catalog, then for our patrons it’s like a game of scratch lotto to actually get to the content. Click on a URL, maybe you’ll hit a paywall and a solicitation to pay them $40 for access, or maybe you’ll actually pick the one(s) we’ve actually paid for as a library, who knows!
This obviously is not acceptable. But there’s also no clear way for us to filter out only the marc 856 urls that we license from the marc bibs. How do you even know which url goes with what platform? They aren’t even identified from any kind of controlled vocubulary. Sometimes the platform seems to be stuffed in a $3 subfield, which is odd since marc defines $3 as “Materials specified”, like “first four chapters only”, or “table of contents only” or what have you. “SpringerLink” is not a materials specified. And on top of that, they’re just thrown into the $3 in narrative form, along with english sentences that may or may not actually describe the ‘materials specified’, as far as I can tell using whatever language the cataloger felt like to specify the provider and/or platform. Different catalogers could use different words to identify the same provider and/or platform (sometimes what is referenced seems to be a provider, other times a platform, two subtly different things). This is not suitable data for machine processing to determine if the platform/provider specified is one we license.
So, um, what the heck are we supposed to do? What were those behind the “provider-neutral e-monograph policy” expecting that we’d do? What are other libraries doing? Having to give users a lotto scratch card of providers and hoping they “get lucky” is a big step backwards in our user experience.
Can anyone shed any light on this? Am I misunderstanding what’s actually going on? Is what’s actually going on different than the “provider neutral” drafters expected to happen? Is anyone in the cataloging world alarmed about this?
There’s an FAQ in the Provider-neutral document that provides some hand-waving about how libraries “might” handle these records in the future. Well, the future is now, what is being done? The answer talks about what libraries “using WorldCat local”might do; surely cooperative cataloging decisions, I hope, haven’t been taken to try to lock people into WorldCat Local, we don’t use it. It says “it is very likely that libraries, vendors, and OCLC will work together to provide the URLs, OCLC numbers, and vendor specific information on MARC records using the provider-neutral OCLC record as the base record.” — has that happened? Even if it has, it sounds like that means “You can pay a lot of money to a vendor for a new service you didn’t used to have to pay for at all, to wind up with basically what you used to have without paying for it.” That’s extra money we don’t have.
Reading the policy document, it suggests there are some corresponding changes in Marc values, but I’m confused about what they are.
Therefore, we have written a Discussion Paper to MARBI to add two new values in the fixed field byte for “Form of item” across all formats, for online access and for direct access. Currently byte 008/23 “s” is used for records in the “Books” format and in most of the other formats as well; byte 008/29 “s” is used for records in the “Maps” and “Visual materials” formats. If our recommendations in the form of a proposal to MARBI are successful, then code “s” for electronic will be replaced by the two new values, and code “s” will be made obsolete
Did this happen? If so, what are the two new values, and are they documented anywhere?
I can’t but worry that this is one more nail in the coffin of our cooperative cataloging enterprise. It was a noble endeavor, but it’s just so so broken. Almost all libraries pay for expensive vendor processing services on top of our theoretically cooperatively cataloged records (additional processing the results of which can not be shared cooperatively), and we still end up with (very expensive) data that is not actually sufficient to power the systems that serve our users. And things seem to be getting worse, not better. For a while people have been saying about cooperative cataloging (and cataloging in general) “if we don’t fix this soon, it’ll be too late.” I worry we may already have passed the “too late”, whether we noticed or not, this stuff is a mess, it’s not efficient, it doesn’t serve our users, it is not going well.
So the British library will apparently be releasing their complete bib corpus publicly, in RDF. So it first must be said that this is a very welcome precedent, hopefully encouraging others to do the same, and even more so.
The RDF dump is far less information than you’d find in a marc record, only certain kinds of data are present. But additionally, the data that is present is kind of shoehorned into a naive simple dublin core skeleton, with much less of semantics. Here’s some BL provided sample data.
For many things I’d want to do with it, the data isn’t really clear enough to do it. For example, the dc:subject element has both LCSH (or LCSH-style) subjects, and dewey (or dewey style) class numbers. For many things I’d want to do, I need to know which is which. Dewey numbers might go in a shelf browse, but LCSH subjects don’t. LCSH subjects might go in a subject search or subject heading display, but dewey numbers probably don’t.
My own consuming software can use heuristics to try and determine which is which (not that hard in this case), but that increases my barriers/cost, adds possible bugs, and is a chunk of work that different consumers need to duplicate, because the provider, although it surely knew which was an LCSH and which a DDC at the source, dumped them to the same data element where they aren’t clearly disambiguated.
An even less feasible example is the dc:relation element. I’m not really even sure what they’re putting in there, it looks like some kind of controlled headings, but perhaps several kinds mixed together. Some of them look like they might be series titles? Some of them look like they might be subject terms, but maybe subject terms beginning with names go in dc:relation instead of dc:subject? I’m kinda just guessing. This is data in the BL RDF I couldn’t do much at all with, because it seems to be several different kinds of things with no way to tell which is which, or what it is exactly.
So, making any data public is a start. There are certainly some things you could do with this data. You could feed it all to some machine learning automated clustering algorithm, and generate clusters of “similar” bibs, such algorithms just work on text tokens and dont’ have to care that it doesnt’ know what the heck a dc:relation actually is. Although really, even for such algorithm, the more specific data you have, the better they can. At the source, the BL certainly knew which strings were DDC and which were LCSH, and what was what that they jammed into dc:relation.
The more specificity you are able to provide, the more use cases you’re going to cover. So if you put your data out there and get frustred “Hey, everyone said they wanted our data, and now nobody is using it,” one reason could actually be that it’s too hard (or impossible) to use for the use cases people want, due to the way your data is structured.
Data modelling is actually kind of hard. So just making the data available isn’t always enough, if it’s not enough data, or not modelled well enough.
Now, this seems to be a work in progress. I don’t think the complete RDF dump is even available yet? Or is only available if you email them and you send them a zip? Perhaps this a work in progress, and will improve. I don’t know if the BL has a business like LC’s in selling cataloging, and might intentionally want to decrease ‘resolution’ of this data to avoid cutting into their other business? Their free data services web page cited above suggests that they encourage you to use at least their current z39.50 api for “cataloging”, so apparently they don’t mind? Their z39.50 interface probably returns marc?
So one thing I’d suggest is to provide an easy bulk download for the marc records too, if they really want to share the data. I am no marc lover, believe me. But data modelling is hard — it’s in fact very very important that we work on modelling our data better than marc using modern technologies, but in the meantime and in parallel, why not share the marc to, to allow people to use that if your other data formats lose ‘resolution’ required to make someone’s particular use case possible or easier?
by noreply@blogger.com (James Weinheimer) at August 26, 2010 02:02 PM
by noreply@blogger.com (James Weinheimer) at August 26, 2010 02:00 PM
McGrath, William E. 2002. Explanation and Prediction: Building a Unified Theory of Librarianship, Concept and Review. Library Trends 50, no. 3 (Winter): 350-370. http://hdl.handle.net/2142/8420.
McGrath advocates that we need a Unified Theory of Librarianship and outlines what he considers to be “some of the traditional areas of concern to librarianship” which will have to be subsumed into such a theory. He provides some ideas on what kinds of studies we would need to allow us to generate an overarching theory of LIS and lists some (then) recent studies that fit or demonstrate this mode.
According to McGrath, the traditional areas to be considered are: publishing, acquisitions, storage and preservation, classification and organization of knowledge, collections, and circulation. As he admits on page 356, he completely ignores “the digital revolution” as he believes “while the production of electronic databases, the World Wide Web, and the Internet is technology, their use can be described in terms of traditional library functions.” While this is, in fact, true it is also an extremely limiting view. The “digital revolution” has progressed to the point where simply trying to describe it in the terms and categories of traditional librarianship is not a healthy way to move the profession forward. It is, in my opinion, the opposite.
One of my largest areas of complaint with the article is in his treatment of classification and organization of knowledge. I find it lacking in several ways.
His initial sentences in the section CLASSIFICATION just bother me:
“The classification scheme used by the library is a major property of the collection. The scheme reflects the librarians’ perceptions of how knowledge is organized or structured” (354).
One can certainly make both of these claims and, in a sense, they are true. But I do not believe either of them. The classification scheme, one or more (more in a perfect world) is applied to the collection and provides one form of order to it, but it is not an inherent property of the collection. That is, the number of books in a collection, whether or not scholarly journals are present, whether or not some edition of “Tom Sawyer” is present are all facts about, and in a sense properties of, the collection. But the classification scheme can only be stated as to which is applied, or what to each specific book. The facts about the classification scheme seem, to me, to be of a different kind and are not inherent in the collection itself. I know that wasn’t explained well but I am having a hard time expressing what I think.
As to his second statement in that quote, while at some historical point it is true that the classification “scheme reflects the librarians’ perceptions of how knowledge is organized or structured” it is also simply not the case at all. I find it hard to believe that many librarians, and especially catalogers and classification theorists, would agree that our library classifications reflect the structure of knowledge, except in some simplistic(and ultimately pragmatic) way.
Take, for instance, the libraries of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Most of the forty or so remaining libraries are organized using the Dewey Decimal System. One of the largest libraries in the world is still using a scheme that is entirely inappropriate for one of its size and complexity. Why is that? Institutional inertia and lack of funds are two of the primary reasons. Discussion of switching to LCC has arisen repeatedly over the decades. Early on it was probably doable but for whatever reasons the choice was rejected. At this point, which has been “this point” for a decade or more now, it is simply inconceivable to switch. The costs and time frame to do so are so out-of-hand that it can never happen. What can, and may, happen is that they will start doing new acquisitions in LCC and they will end up with a divided classification system complicating life for all concerned, but especially for the users. There is really no way in which it can be said that DDC reflects the UIUC librarians’ view of the structure of knowledge.
Also in the section on CLASSIFICATION, McGrath states:
“Because society is mutable, no classification theory can ever be enduring. Nevertheless, we can still look for structure in knowledge. And even though structure many not be permanent, principles are permanent and are reason enough to look for more enduring structure” (354).
Most of that I fully agree with. But I am really beginning to wonder how permanent the principles really are. They may last longer than the classification systems which are built upon them but the world is changing so rapidly, and the amount of things needing some form of bibliographic control increasing seemingly exponentially, that it seems to me that the principles are being pushed harder and harder and that some of them are at a breaking point, if not already broken.
When I got to the Classification and Organization of Knowledge section of included studies I realized another issue I have with his plan. Earlier we got simply CLASSIFICATION, with organization of knowledge sort of subsumed under it. But that is the wrong way round. Classification is a part, a small part, of the organization of knowledge. But even in this section where they get equal billing in the heading the studies are primarily about classification and its intersection with circulation, browsability and so forth. There is no discussion of, or studies to support, any kind of issues in descriptive cataloging. This oversight would be a major roadblock to any sort of unified theory.
In fact, this is one of those areas where the “digital revolution” is seriously playing havoc with our principles and our practices. What sort of descriptive cataloging is required, or not, when a resource can “describe itself” and the system can make use of those self-describing resources in new and novel ways; ways that our users are turning to more and more. These are fundamental questions in the area of organization of knowledge.
Besides leaving out the digital he also, admittedly, does not address—”the psychology of users and librarians, attitudinal studies, organizational behavior, interaction with other disciplines, scientometrics and informetrics, individual scholarly productivity, citation analysis, LIS education, welfare and status of librarians (tenure, salaries, and prestige), and so on” (356). It seems to me that an awful lot that would be required to turn all of this into a “Unified Theory of Librarianship” is being sketched so broadly, or simply ignored for the purpose of publishable article length, that to even consider the possibility of such a unified theory is hardly thinkable. There. I’ve played my cards. I do think this is a fool’s errand.
As for the studies he included as support towards a possible unified theory, he only included those that use quantitative methods or those which could be quantified. So I guess only the quantitative can make it into a grand unified theory of librarianship. Because, you know, librarianship and information science are such a natural sciences. Well, considering that in the end the Grand Unified Theory of physics will, in my humble opinion, leave out much of what is truly important and ultimately meaningful about the world, as it will include nothing qualitative, I fail to see why we should pursue such an ugly beast.
Besides, the incredible number of studies, even if restricted to the quantifiable, that would be necessary to get us anywhere near a grand unified theory are important in their own right and should be done. And, in fact, they will have to be done first, along with the small and medium-scale theorizing that is necessary to move our field forward.
So whether or not we can, or should, pursue such a beast is currently unanswerable. We are simply too far away from the goal posts. In fact, I fear we are so far away from such an overarching theory that one might say that we aren’t even sure what sport it is we are playing, much less our being “on the field.”
As of version 6.14, Drupal works with PHP 5.3, but many essential modules still issue warnings (usually due to passing expressions by reference). If your Ubuntu 10.04 (Lucid Lynx) server is running 5.3, this script will automate the downgrade to the latest 5.2 by telling aptitude to use the source lists for Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala).
Thanks to Nick Veenhof, mrkandy, and their many commenters, from whom this script is derived.
php_installed=`dpkg -l | grep php| awk '{print $2}' |tr "\n" " "`
# remove all php packge
sudo aptitude purge `dpkg -l | grep php| awk '{print $2}' |tr "\n" " "`
# use karmic for php pakage
# pin-params: a (archive), c (components), v (version), o (origin) and l (label).
echo -e "Package: php5\nPin: release a=karmic\nPin-Priority: 991\n" | sudo tee /etc/apt/preferences.d/php > /dev/null
apt-cache search php5-|grep php5-|awk '{print "Package:", $1,"\nPin: release a=karmic\nPin-Priority: 991\n"}'|sudo tee -a /etc/apt/preferences.d/php > /dev/null
apt-cache search -n libapache2-mod-php5 |awk '{print "Package:", $1,"\nPin: release a=karmic\nPin-Priority: 991\n"}'| sudo tee -a /etc/apt/preferences.d/php > /dev/null
echo -e "Package: php-pear\nPin: release a=karmic\nPin-Priority: 991\n" | sudo tee -a /etc/apt/preferences.d/php > /dev/null
# add karmic to source list
egrep '(main restricted|universe|multiverse)' /etc/apt/sources.list|grep -v "#"| sed s/lucid/karmic/g | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/karmic.list > /dev/null
# update package database (use apt-get if aptitude crash)
sudo apt-get update
# install php
sudo apt-get install $php_installed
sudo aptitude hold `dpkg -l | grep php5| awk '{print $2}' |tr "\n" " "`
#done
Of course, make sure to restart Apache when you’re finished.
Image via WikipediaThe British Library has made their catalog freely available for research.As part of its work to open its metadata to wider use beyond the traditional library community, the British Library is making copies of its main catalogue and British National Bibliography datasets available for research purposes. Files are initially being made available in XML and structured in an RDF/DC format (see sample). Files are distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
The British Library is currently investigating options for structuring its catalogue information as linked data and is collaborating with a number of organisations in examining the issues associated with making bibliographic metadata available in this way.
This blog used to have a “feature” entitled “Some Things Read This Week” but I ended it before my blogging dropped completely from sight. With no promises one way or the other I’d like to start blogging again about some of the things I read.
As I said a couple of posts back:
I am ramping back up the work on my CAS thesis via several angles of attack. I am working on the paper proper and I am also working on a journal article, which will be highly related (as in with a little reworking can become a chapter), and I am thinking about trying to come up with a presentation for a conference in early December. The conference is “Semantics for Robots: Utopian and Dystopian Visions in the Age of the ‘Language Machine’. ‘The Language Machine’ is one of Roy Harris’ early books, of course.
Thus, I am reading and taking notes again. Along with trying to “reconstruct” work I have done previously, I am also continuing to pursue these interests further, along with pursuing other interests. In these areas I am also reading and taking notes. Having not written much of anything in quite a while I need to get assorted writing chops back in order, be it annotated bibliographic entries, blog posts, general and specialized note taking, summarizing, journal article(s), or CAS thesis.
So I am going to jump in again. Any feedback is appreciated whether on style, further reading suggestions, etc.
The first article I want to discuss is:
Dill, E. A., & Janke, K. L. (2010). “New shit has come to light”: Information seeking behavior in The Big Lebowski. Retrieved from http://hdl.handle.net/1805/2099 [pre-peer reviewed version of a forthcoming article in The Journal of Popular Culture.]
No doubt, many of you saw references to the Dill & Janke article over the last two weeks. Many people, understandably, could not help themselves in mentioning it in one venue or the other. “New shit has come to light” as the title of an academic paper is worth mentioning in its own right, but assuming you get the reference to The Big Lebowski then you doubly could not help yourself. I can appreciate that. And do. So a quick shout out to the two folks I first saw reference it, Dorothea Salo and Christina Pikas [although probably saw the 1st references in twitter].
The first, and perhaps most important, thing I want to say about this article is that I am glad this is going into The Journal of Popular Culture. It is about time some of the research from our field shows up in other places besides our own stodgy journals. Now, I’d much prefer that other LIS research made its way where it is needed and that it was actually being cited and used in other fields. This, though, is a small start. If no one in another field is aware of our work then they cannot and will not use it. And to my knowledge JPC is pretty interdisciplinary.
This article, as noted above, is a preprint of the prior-to-peer-review paper. It will be interesting to see what changes have been made once it is in print. I am looking forward to reading it again for that reason alone.
The paper uses four characters from The Big Lebowski to highlight some differences in information seeking behavior, going from least effective to most. Along the way the authors use assorted LIS literature on information seeking behavior to support their analysis of these characters styles and methods. Or as they say, “This paper analyzes the information seeking behaviors of Donny Kerabatsos, Walter Sobchak, The Dude, and Maude Lebowski through the lenses of a variety of information seeking theories and models” (pp. 2-3).
Their claim is that “The film’s most important contribution to the study of information seeking behavior is its illustration of how a highly complex information search is not about finding the “answer,” but rather is about an individual’s ability to make sense of and create meaning from the process of information seeking (Dervin par. 8)” (p. 2). This I certainly agree with, both the author’s claim and Dervin’s. “Answers” frequently come along for the ride but then an answer is whatever one is willing to (currently) accept as an answer. This is true whether the one is an individual or a social group of any size.
Some of the assorted theories, models, and researchers used to illustrate the characters information seeking behaviors are the following [for the record, some of these are borrowed from outside LIS]:
If you are interested in any of these ideas and how they affect info seeking behavior, or you are a library-type and fan of TBL then you ought to have a look at either this preprint or the published article [Sure wish I could tell you when that is].
A friend of mine wrote on her blog (private, no link) that she was watching TBL as she was inspired by hearing about this article. I told her that I enjoyed the article even if some times some of this research is fairly questionable. She responded that she was glad that “our profession has people like you who can quickly identify questionable research.” To which this was my response:
As for quickly recognizing … well, that’s the problem. It isn’t quick. It takes a weirdo like me who actually checks (and then reads) the things people cite. Are the methods appropriate to that kind of study? Can it be generalized? Or does it only apply to upper middle class, white kids, in private schools from the Midwest, and so on? (Like in many disciplines), most are too lazy to check that stuff so even if an author says explicitly not to generalize from their study and gives excellent reasons why not other people will. Some of our most beloved truisms in LIS come from this sort of thing. (Same in other disciplines, too.) Much of it is fairly intuitive, “Oh, you say depressed people have shoddy info behaviors? They give up easily and tend not to trust themselves? Blah. Blah.” Anyway, I wish it were easier so perhaps others would do more of it.
Nonetheless, I enjoyed the article and am glad others might see some of this research. I just hope they do their jobs if they want to make use of it and read the actual studies themselves.
I should clarify that I am not saying that any of the research cited in this article is shoddy. Nor am I saying that it is generally so in info behavior research. The biggest problem as I see it is that someone does a study and for assorted reasons—only one method used where more are appropriate, small sample size, etc.—they clearly state in the section(s) on further research, limitations of their study, and/or conclusions to not generalize, and give excellent reasons not to do so, and the next thing you know the article is cited over and over again as showing “such-and-such behavior” in general, or in a completely different group of people than studied. This happens far more than one would hope. And while I can imagine multiple reasons for it occurring none of them are good.
I have one particular article in mind which we read in our introductory course, LIS501, which studied a very limited and demographically narrow group of fifth-graders (sample size 10, computer-savvy, bright, middle class+, well-funded school district, etc.). The author clearly stated this was an exploratory study and could not be generalized. According to ISI Web of Knowledge this article has been cited 71 times. I have read some of those articles and I noticed their citations to the one I am thinking of. And believe me, their use of this as article as supporting evidence for their claims is in no way appropriate. I imagine many of the uses are appropriate but of the several I have seen none of them are.
I see this repeatedly. But the “ability” to see this sort of thing does not come easy. One must pay attention as one reads. One must look at the citations an author uses, especially if used as support for their argument. And one must often go and read those sources cited. You certainly do not have to read everything everyone cites but by looking at what is being cited, particularly around an area of your personal interest, you will begin to notice the things being repeatedly cited. At that point, you ought to definitely read those.
None of that is easy. Nor is it quick. It may even increase the amount of crap you read. [Yes, crap gets repeatedly cited.] I imagine that it qualifies as one form of slow reading; at least, I would argue that it does.
Anyway, I am hoping that this article does not get eviscerated before seeing print. Eviscerated? C’mon. You are familiar with The Big Lebowski, aren’t you?
We've set up a hash tag #cigx for those wishing to Twitter about the CIG Conference before, during, or after the event. http://twitter.com/AlanDanskin/status/22074845919
Alan
A friend who was unhappy with her previous attempts at book clubs, in-person and virtual, decided a book club where we each read whatever it is we want to read might work better. Thus, 12 Books, 12 Months was born.
Whoops! How did I end up with 13 books?
There are scores more books I want to/could read and there are certainly more on my goodreads to-read shelf besides being a couple (or more) score not on the list.
The above are all certainly currently near the top of my TBR list but things changes; i.e., interests, focus, discovery of something previously unknown or just published, …. Thus, I am going to reserve the right to substitute any book for one on this list. As I see it I will probably read more than 12 books in the next year anyway so maybe they’ll only be additions. One can hope.
What’s on your list? [Whether or not you intend to participate in this or any other challenge, I am interested.]
by noreply@blogger.com (James Weinheimer) at August 24, 2010 01:54 PM
Dr. Larry Rosen’s new book Rewired: Understanding the iGeneration and the Way They Learn looks at how technologies available to children today (the iGeneration) are affecting the ways they best learn. He observes children texting during class, studies the technologies they’re using on their own time and applies his observations (and clinical research) to suggestions for educators and parents for how to engage students.
Go to the interview page to listen, as well as to get resource links and the transcript*.
Dr. Rosen is also answering questions via an author chat, until September 5th, if you’d like to ask questions or follow the conversation.
*I’m hoping to crowdsource the transcript, so if you have time to listen and transcribe a bit of the podcast, it will help those who aren’t able to listen.
While writing about subject pages and library websites the other day, it occurred to me that we might think of library websites in three stages - which emerged successively and continue to exist together. Always mindful of the rule of three ;-)
We might clumsily call these stages: [1] fragmentary, [2] integrated supply, and [3] demand-influenced.
Fragmentary. Libraries have to manage a variety of resources which are outside their control and present them to their users as best they can. This has meant that the library website has often been a thin wrapper around two sets of heterogeneous resources.
One is the set of legacy and emerging systems, developed independently rather than as part of an overall library experience, with different fulfillment options, different metadata models, and so on (integrated library system, resolver, knowledge base, repositories, ...). Another is the set of legacy database and repository boundaries that map more to historically evolved publisher configurations and business decisions than to user needs or behaviors (for example, metadata, e-Journals, eBooks, books, A&I databases, and other types of content, which may be difficult to slice and dice in useful ways). [Lorcan Dempsey's Weblog - Stitching costs]
Integrated supply. Recently, libraries have been focusing on the website in a more holistic way, as a unified service. There are several developments which have supported this. One is the move to the single, or tabbed, search box as a focal point of the website. This may sit over a metasearch product, or, more recently, over a discovery layer product. Another is the adoption of a consistent content management framework which gives a similar look and feel across the website, extending to linked services (the catalog for example) where possible (I was interested to note that SOPAC and Ting both advertise the integration between the catalog and the rest of the website). Others include the integration of staff interaction capabilities (making relevent staff visible in appropriate places, including various ways of contacting staff or asking questions, ...), and a consistent approach to developing subject or course pages. I discussed some examples of unified service provision in this post a while ago.
Given the fragmentation they face it is easy for libraries to see integration - the consolidation of supply - as an end in itself. However the real end is less the integration of information resources with each other than the integration of relevant information resources with the working patterns of their users. For this reason, we will begin to see more emphasis on sorting out demand as well as sorting out supply.
Demand influenced. I gave some examples recently of how sorting out demand is becoming more important. This of course touches on core library values, connecting users to appropriate resources in convenient ways. A specific example might be the Bookspace section of the Hennepin County Library website.
Looking at the North Caroline State University Libraries website the other day it also seemed to me that it provided a nice example of a site trying better to predict, meet and guide demand. As well as continuing to integrate the various sources of information supply. Here are a few things that occurred to me. As always, it is sensible to note that my impressions are those of an interested tourist rather than somebody who regularly uses the site ....
by dempseyl@oclc.org (Lorcan Dempsey) at August 23, 2010 02:25 AM
by Bob Bater (noreply@blogger.com) at August 20, 2010 09:19 PM
I was glancing through slashdot this morning and ran across this article by the wall street journal (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704554104575435243350910792.html) that discusses how advertising, embedded in ebooks, could be in our future. The article looks at some of the trends that point to this being true (patent applications by Amazon, advertising in other media, etc).
I realize that advertising being embedded in our electronic media isn’t something new. Probably the most in-genius use is product placement is found in movies, where the camera lingers on a computer brand, an actor only orders a specific drink or drives a specific car. We get use to them, filter them out. If done well, the viewer never really knows that they’ve sat through a number of mini-commercials while sitting in the theater. But could that same experience translate to a book? I don’t know — and nor am I sure I would want to. Imagine reading Douglas Adams’ Restaurant at the End of the Universe. You come to the page where they are in the restaurant and the cow has come out to their table to suggest different parts of itself to be eaten. A hilarious section of the book. Somehow though, I imagine that some of the fun of the book might be muted if on the next page a big advertisement for McDonalds showed up. Maybe with the caption, Even our cows are lovin’ it.
Speaking only for myself, but I find that the reading experience is much different than my viewing experience. It is a much more intimate experience because as the reader, it is up to us to us our imagination to build that picture in our head. Understanding how I read, I’m wondering then how intrusive I would find such embedded advertisement (or linked advertisement) if it were suddenly part of the reading experience. It would also be interesting to see how advertising was placed in an ebook. Since most ebook readers are able to be online, would this give advertisers another method of providing targeted advertising based on your reading profile. I’m not so certain that would be a direction I’d be fond of either.
Maybe if (when) advertising comes to the ebook platform, we’ll see different purchasing levels. Kind of like the ITunes option to purchase DRM or DRM free versions of music — you’d have the option to purchase an ebook subsidized by ads or an ebook without such interruptions for a few dollars more. I guess we shall see.
–TR
The Library of Congress proposes to adopt the AACR2 provision (which is also incorporated into RDA: Resource Description and Access) of not abbreviating "department" in headings unless it is abbreviated by the body on the resource from which the name has been taken. OCLC has agreed to change the approximately 48,000 1XX fields in name authority records, and the Library of Congress would change its approximately 200,000 bibliographic records and re-distribute them, beginnning no earlier than March 2, 2011. The former 1XX heading would be retained as a 4XX field in the authority record (with $w nne), and existing references would be adjusted as necessary (e.g., for higher bodies with "Dept." in their names). Fields 110, 130, 151, 410, 430, 451, 510, 530, 551 along with 781, all except 4xx where $w is present are all candidates for change. A very small number of changes may be erroneous because the resource actually used an abbreviated form. Such conversion errors may be corrected by NACO participants as encountered after the batch process has been run. The Library of Congress is seeking comments on this proposal by Oct. 1, 2010. Comments should be sent to policy@loc.gov.
With my medical restrictions lifted, I made my first commute of the summer on my bike. And while I’ve ridden that road hundreds of times, it has never looked better.
TR
025.431: The Dewey blog
A Gentleman's Guide to Cataloguing...
Bibliographic Wilderness
Catalogablog
Cataloger 2.0
Cataloging Futures
Cataloging thoughts
Catalogue & Index Blog
Celeripedean » cataloging
Clarke, Kevin S.
Collocate and Disambiguate
CommonPlace.Net
Coyle's InFormation
Dowling, Thomas
Dublin Core Metadata Initiative
First Person Narrative (Anne Welsh)
First thus
Free Moth :: Flutterings
From the catalogs of babes
Future4catalogers' Blog (Heidi Hoerman)
Hectic Pace
Hillmann, Diane (LITA Blog)
Inquiring Librarian
International Society for Knowledge Organization (ISKO) UK
Juxtaprose
Kate drones on about cataloging
Lorcan Dempsey's weblog
Metadata Blog (ALCTS NRMIG)
Metadata Matters (Diane Hillmann)
Metalibrarian
Metalogger
Metalogue
Minerva Shelved
NSDL Metadata Registry Blog
OCLC Cataloging and Metadata News
Ohio State University Libraries Non-Roman Cataloging Blog
Organizing Stuff
Outgoing
QUICK T.S.
Resource Description and Access: ALA Rep notes
Sarahisacataloger's Weblog
TagCommons
Terry's Worklog
Texadata
The Cataloguing Librarian
The FRBR Blog
The Serials Cataloger
Thingology (LibraryThing's ideas blog)
Three Catalogers Walk Into a Blog
Universal Decimal Classification
WadingIn
Weibel Lines
Yee Cataloging Rules Weblog
Z666.7.B39 (www.jenniferbax.net)
darcusblog
eXtensible Catalog (XC)
habitually probing generalist
panlibus
schenizzle
washtublibrarian
x + 3
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September 02, 2010 11:30 PM
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