Planet Cataloging

Ohio State University Libraries Non-Roman Cataloging Blog: New tools for cataloging and communication (2)

Mon, 08 Feb 2010 19:28:02 +0000

Google Calendar

For what we use Google Calendar?

A section supervisor can view simutaneously all work schedules of employees in the form of shared calendars.

Requirement

Both suppervisor and employees must have a Google account and use Google Calendar. Note, you don’t have to have a Gmail address in order to open a Google account. You can use whatever email account you have been using to open a Google account.

How to have someone share his/her calendar with you?

When someone starts Google Calendar, he or she gets a default personal calendar. One can decide to use this default personal calendar for sharing; or, to create a new calendar for the purpose of work-schedule, and share ONLY this new calendar with his/her supervisor.
Note, if one decides to share ONLY the work-schedule calendar, make sure the default personal calendar is NOT shared from the beginning. Then, he should create a new calendar and add person (email address) to share.
Make sure the email address (of the person one wants to share calendar with) is the one that he or she uses to sign in Google account.

to be continued…

The Serials Cataloger: “Me and My Shadow: Observation, Documentation, and Analysis of Serials and Electronic Resources Workflow” by Kristen Blake and Erin Stalberg

noreply@blogger.com (Lori) — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 12:14:30 +0000

Blake and Stalberg's “Me and My Shadow” outlines a project done at North Carolina State University Libraries to document and review serials and electronic resources workflow. This three-stage project looked at the entire serials lifecycle and began with a staff shadowing component where a librarian directly observed tasks being performed. Workflow mapping was the next step, where the information gleaned from shadowing was documented in a graphic representation showing what steps were involved in various processes and by whom. Finally, the workflow was analyzed to look for areas that could be made more efficient. This article provides a nice literature review, highlighting several articles looking at library workflow analysis. The authors identified a gap in the literature regarding shadowing techniques in libraries as a tool for workflow mapping and analysis and sought to fill that gap with detailed sections on the shadowing process and outcomes. This article will be of interest to librarians preparing to engage in a serials workflow analysis. A link to view the workflow mapping diagrams created in this project is an added bonus.

The article can be found in the Serials Review, vol. 35, issue 4 (Dec. 2009), pages 242-252.

doi:10.1016/j.serrev.2009.08.018

Catalogablog: RDF, COinS and Microformats

noreply@blogger.com (David) — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 09:59:42 +0000

At the closing session of Electronic Resources and Libraries 2010 I had the chance to ask Ross Singer and John Blyberg about the place of microformats and COinS in information organization. Ross had just finished speaking about the importance of linked data. As I recall John said that microformats, COinS and other semantic markup is important even if it lacks links. Providing a machine readable understanding of a text string is good, it can lead to links. Ross said, without links markup is useful today but not a way to move forward. It is a tool for today but not the future. RDFa is the way forward.

The talk was the end of an excellent conference. Well worth attending.

Catalogablog: Bibliographic Ontology Specification

noreply@blogger.com (David) — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 09:39:23 +0000

This morning DCMI tweeted about the Bibliographic Ontology Specification. New to me.

The Bibliographic Ontology describe bibliographic things on the semantic Web in RDF. This ontology can be used as a citation ontology, as a document classification ontology, or simply as a way to describe any kind of document in RDF. It has been inspired by many existing document description metadata formats, and can be used as a common ground for converting other bibliographic data sources.

Metadata Blog (ALCTS NRMIG): Recent Trends in Catalog Architecture: ALCTS Catalog Form and Function Interest Group

Sun, 07 Feb 2010 23:52:23 +0000

Apologies for being a tardy blogger, but the good news is that by now, all of the powerpoints for these fine presentations are posted and linked to from the CFFIG wiki page

ALCTS Catalog Form and Function Interest Group
Recent Trends in Catalog Architecture
Saturday Jan. 16 2010 10:30 a.m.

Chair Richard Guajardo introduced 4 presenters who described applications that draw metadata from the ILS and other sources for use in discovery interfaces. These presentations were varied but all concerned the architecture and functionality of multiple layers - "what happens (or needs to happen) in between" to transform, combine, and synchronize metadata.

LENS: Catalog records and Additional Data Sources in the Aquabrowser Implementation at the University of Chicago, presented by Frances McNamara, University of Chicago.

This was a technical overview of what happens between metadata sources and the Aquabrowser discovery interface.

McNamara described the aggregation of resources as "stone soup": in addition to 5.7 million MARC records from the catalog, they combine SFX and Metalib exports, Hathi Trust records, EAD finding aids, Dublin Core for digital image collections, results of library website crawls, and others, plus enhancements (summaries, tables of contents, etc.), plus "user lists" from the discovery system, and item availability information from the catalog (updated dynamically).

Everything is transformed into a common format in an "interim database".
Merging of records between print and electronic versions takes place (use of identifiers such as OCLC number and ISSN in bib records is important).
U. of Chicago is able to avoid synchronization issues by recreating the database nightly.

Unfortunately there was time for only one or two questions between presentations; in hindsight it would have been interesting to discover what metadata services were supported by Aquabrowser and whether local modifications or locally developed tools were used.

To Fix A Leaky Sink: Envisioning The Potential of Discovery Layers, presented by Joshua P. Barton & Lucas Wing Kau Mak, Michigan State University

This presentation was more of a thought piece about metadata architecture and strategy for "next gen catalogs" as they move toward "one stop shop" discovery interfaces, based on some challenges Michigan State is encountering with its implementation of Innovative's Encore discovery layer.

They're trying to think beyond their former approach of "everything has to be in the (ILS) catalog" toward an architecture where the discovery layer(s) accept metadata from wherever it resides, rather than having repetitive metadata created for different tools (as has happened when some of the image collections for which they have Dublin Core metadata were loaded into the ILS).

Some downsides mentioned include loss of control, with no say in normalization or controlled vocabulary. A lot depends on the discovery layer vendor, what services they offer and how much. De-duplication does not occur in the Encore system, and the duplicate image set metadata is difficult to deal with separately from other image repository metadata. Getting metadata straight from outside sources might involve facilitating connections between the discovery layer and outside systems.

This presentation gave a useful overview of factors to consider in looking to change the metadata architecture behind a "next gen" discovery layer, but didn't offer conclusions. It was interesting that they mentioned a need for both authority control and mapping of subject headings as features that need to be part of the architecture with "next gen" discovery systems.

Automated Metadata Repurposing Using eXtensible Catalog Software, presented by Jennifer Bowen, University of Rochester River Campus

Bowen prefaced her presentation with a comment on the previous one: "I have ideas that could address some problems Joshua and Lucas talked about". eXtensible Catalog is a set of open-source software tools that was developed with funding from the Mellon foundation with contributions from partner institutions; the XC Foundation will be launched next month to maintain it. Although the toolkit is still being actively worked on, many tools are already available for free download; download links and more information can be found at http://www.extensiblecatalog.org/ .

XC software currently provides 3 types of services that can be downloaded and used individually: Connectivity (tools to gather metadata from source systems and if necessary, transform it to make it available via OAI-PMH, and a separate NCIP toolkit for circulation status metadata), Metadata Management services, and a User Interface based on Drupal, with plans for a learning management system module. There are also plans for authority control features in the Metadata Management module.

Bowen's presentation focused on the middle, metadata management layer. This is designed to allow scheduling of a sequence of operations on batches of metadata. The initial set of services is designed to work on MARC metadata, but transformations could be built using XSLT for any kind of metadata.

Services include normalization, transformation (all records are transformed to a common XC schema), de-duplication and aggregation.

Among the 20 normalization functions for MARCXML are language code validation and normalization of OCLC numbers
The transformations include conversion of records into "FRBR sets".
The user interface provides a facet panel of services for navigation of metadata operation setup
Metadata is retained for staff review of record sets and error reports.

This well thought out tool set can be extended by developers and, in addition to supporting its own discovery interface, could provide the metadata management layer needed between the catalog and other metadata sources, and the discovery tools used by libraries.

Equality of Retrieval - Levelling the Metadata, presented by Aaron Wood, University of Calgary

The issue arising from the University of Calgary's implementation of a metadata aggregation service (Summon from Serials Solutions) that was the focus of Wood's presentation: how to prevent the local institution's collections (print and digital) from becoming marginalized in search results when combined with a much larger number of full text resources (licensed journal articles etc.).

In University of Calgary's case, less than 2 1/2 million metadata records, from ILS, institutional repository, digital collections, archives (EAD) and museum, are only a fraction of the total 225 million records. Relevance ranking is based on word frequency, and the much larger full text article data (average 15 kb compared to 1.5 kb for a MARC record) skews the results even more.

University of Calgary is aiming get more representation of records for its local resources through enhancement of indexed terms that appear in facets.

They have improved on the basic mapping (to Summon's internal MODS format) to capture more data from their MARC records.
Working with Dublin Core remains a challenge - it's difficult to handle controlled vocabulary terms; they are looking at qualified Dublin Core and other options.
Wood foresees a need to draw from richer resources elsewhere and to merge data for print and full text, where available, to create an "Uber-record" optimized for discovery; this kind of service may not be possible for an individual institution, but would be something libraries could exert pressure to make happen.

Lorcan Dempsey's weblog: Patterns of publication and library collections as measure of technology shifts?

dempseyl@oclc.org (Lorcan Dempsey) — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 00:57:25 +0000

We were pleased to welcome Dr Michelle Alexopoulos from the University of Toronto to OCLC last week. Michelle is an economist whose recent research has focused on creating and analyzing new measures of technical change for developed economies.

The abstract of her talk gives a flavor of some of this work, and why it was of interest to us:

Can the patterns of library collections be used to measure economic growth and technological shifts? In this talk, Dr. Alexopoulos will unveil new indicators of technical change that, she argues, resolve many of the problems associated with traditional ones (e.g., research and development (R&D) intensity and patents). Dr. Alexopoulos' measures are primarily derived from previous unutilized information contained in MARC21 records (available from the Library of Congress and OCLC's WorldCat database) on new book titles in various fields of technology over the last century. Further, Dr. Alexopoulos will discuss how the indices are related to inputs into knowledge production (such as scientific advances and R&D), and demonstrate that the measures are closely correlated with the commercialization date of new technologies. Finally, she will highlight a number of questions that the new indicators can help answer. [Presentation splashpage]

We are very interested to see Worldcat data used in this way, alongside other sources of data about book publication and use (books in print data and sales data). It was interesting hearing Michelle describe some of the reasons why books - and library catalog data - was a good candidate as an indicator:

Book publication is linked to changes in knowledge (consider the appearance of manuals, how-to books, ...)
The timing is right: there is a good correspondence between the date of commercialization of a technology or process and the date of books published about it. This is supported by commercial interests of publishers in catching interest at the right time.
Library catalogs group books into subject classifications which can be useful for analysis purposes.

We will make the slides and audio of the presentation available soon. Some further details of the approach can be found in these publications:

Michelle Alexopoulos, "Read All About it!! What Happens Following a Technology Shock?" American Economic Review, forthcoming. Available online as University of Toronto Department of Economics Working Paper 391 at: http://www.economics.utoronto.ca/index.php/index/research/workingPaperDetails/391.
Michelle Alexopoulos and Jon Cohen, "Volumes of Evidence--Examining Technical Change Last Century Through a New Lens." Available online as University of Toronto Department of Economics Working Paper 392 at: http://www.economics.utoronto.ca/index.php/index/research/workingPaperDetails/392.
Michelle Alexopoulos and Jon Cohen, "Measuring Our Ignorance, One Book at a Time: New Indicators of Technical Change, 1909-1949" Journal of Monetary Economics 56 (4) (2009), 450-470. Available online as University of Toronto Department of Economics Working Paper 349 at: http://www.economics.utoronto.ca/index.php/index/research/workingPaperDetails/349.

Incidentally, it was also quite interesting for OCLC colleagues to see an economist talk knowledgeably about the MARC format ;-)

Metadata Blog (ALCTS NRMIG): ALA Midwinter 2010: Write-ups from Around the Internet

Sat, 06 Feb 2010 19:21:39 +0000

Below is the round-up of write-ups around the Internet for ALA presentations that might be of interest to Metadata and Digital Librarians. Did I miss your write-up or presentations? Email me at kmarti@uic.edu and I will add it. Would you like to share your write-up of a conference on the blog? It's not too late! Contact me about that too.

Friday 1/15

FRBR Interest Group
10:30 AM - 12:00 PM
Location: Boston Convention and Exhibition Center in 156 A/B
Unit: ALCTS
No write-up yet

CCS Forum
3:30 PM - 5:30 PM on 01/15
Location: Boston Convention and Exhibition Center in 104A/B
Unit: ALCTS - Subunit: CCS
No write-up yet

New CCS Interest Group
4:00 PM - 5:30 PM on 01/15
Location: Boston Convention and Exhibition Center in 203
Unit: ALCTS - Subunit: CCS
No write-up yet

Electronic Resources Management Interest Group
6:30 PM - 8:30 PM on 01/15
Location: Hyatt Regency Boston in Duxbury
Unit: LITA
No write-up yet

Saturday

Electronic Resources Interest Group
10:30 AM - 11:30 AM on 01/16
Location: Boston Convention and Exhibition Center in 253A
Unit: ALCTS
No write-up yet

Cataloging and Classification Research Interest Group
10:30 AM - 11:30 AM on 01/16
Location: Renaissance Boston Waterfront in Pacific F
Unit: ALCTS - Subunit: CCS
No write-up yet

Catalog Form and Function Interest Group
10:30 AM - 12:00 PM on 01/16
Location: Hyatt Regency Boston in Grand BR A
Unit: ALCTS - Subunit: CCS
Write-up on Metadata Blog
Link to presentations and abstracts on ALA Connect
Link to presentations on ALA Presentation Wiki

JPEG2000 Interest Group
1:30 PM - 3:30 PM on 01/16
Location: Boston Convention and Exhibition Center in 157B
Unit: LITA
Link to meeting report on ALA Connect

Cataloging Norms Interest Group
1:30 PM - 3:30 PM on 01/16
Location: Hyatt Regency Boston in Grand BR B
Unit: ALCTS - Subunit: CCS
Link to presentations on ALA presentation wiki

Catalog Management Interest Group
1:30 PM - 3:30 PM on 01/16
Location: Hyatt Regency Boston in Qunicy
Unit: ALCTS - Subunit: CCS
Links to presentations on ALA Connect

Collaborative Digitization Discussion Group
4:00 PM - 5:00 PM on 01/16
Location: Westin Boston Waterfront in Burroughs
Unit: ASCLA - Subunit: ICAN
No write-up yet

Image Resources Interest Group
4:00 PM - 5:30 PM on 01/16
Location: Westin Copley Place in Great Republic
Unit: ACRL
Links to presentations on ALA Connect

Sunday

Metadata Interest Group (MIG)
8:00 AM - 10:00 AM on 01/17
Location: Westin Boston Waterfront in Otis
Unit: ALCTS
Write-up on Metadata Blog
Write-up on K-State Libraries Blog

Digital Preservation Interest Group
8:00 AM - 10:00 AM on 01/17
Location: Renaissance Boston Waterfront in Pacific A/B
Unit: ALCTS - Subunit: PARS
No write-up yet

Continuing Resources Section Standards Update Forum
10:30 AM - 12:00 PM on 01/17
Location: Westin Boston Waterfront in Harbor BR I
Unit: ALCTS - Subunit: CRS
No write-up yet

Next Generation Catalog Interest Group
10:30 AM - 11:30 AM on 01/17
Location: Boston Convention and Exhibition Center in 104A/B
Unit: LITA
Link to presentations on ALA presentation wiki

Digital Library Technology Interest Group
10:30 AM - 11:30 AM on 01/17
Location: Boston Convention and Exhibition Center in 104C
Unit: LITA
No write-up yet

Intellectual Access to Preservation Metadata Interest Group
10:30 AM - 11:30 AM on 01/17
Location: Hyatt Regency Boston in Qunicy
Unit: ALCTS - Subunit: PARS
Write-up from K-State Libraries Blog

RDA Update Forum
1:30 PM - 3:30 PM on 01/17
Location: Boston Convention and Exhibition Center in 253A
Unit: ALCTS - Subunit: CCS
Write-up from ARLIS Blog

Authority Control Issues Update
1:30 PM - 5:30 PM on 01/17
Location: Boston Convention and Exhibition Center in 105
Unit: ALCTS - Subunit: CCS/LITA
Link to presentations on ALA presentation wiki

PCC Participants Meeting
4:00 PM - 5:30 PM on 01/17
Location: Boston Convention and Exhibition Center in 104A/B
Unit: UNO - Subunit: n/a
No write-up yet

CRS Costs of Continuing Resources in Libraries Interest Group: Open Access: Entitlement, Opportunity, or Peril?
4:00 PM - 5:30 PM on 01/17
Location: Boston Convention and Exhibition Center in 157C
Unit: ALCTS - Subunit CRS
Link to presentations on ALA presentations wiki

Monday

Heads of Cataloging Interest Group
8:00 AM - 10:00 AM on 01/18
Location: Boston Convention and Exhibition Center in 257A
Unit: ALCTS - Subunit: CCS
No write-up yet

Forum: Mix and Match: Mashups of Bibliographic Data
10:30 AM - 11:30 AM on 01/18
Location: Boston Convention and Exhibition Center in 104A/B
Unit: ALCTS - Subunit: n/a
Write-up on FRBR Blog
Write-up on Disruptive Library Technology Jester Blog
Write-up on Go to Hellman: http://go-to-hellman.blogspot.com/2010/01/google-exposes-book-metadata-privates.html

Continuing Resources Cataloging Forum
1:30 PM - 3:30 PM on 01/18
Location: Hilton Boston Financial District in Kellogg
Unit: ALCTS - Subunit: CRS
No write-up yet

The FRBR Blog: Last Week in FRBR #14

wtd@pobox.com (William Denton) — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 16:47:56 +0000

Hi. I usually get this out on Fridays, but I hope you don’t miss it because it’s coming out on Saturday this week. Seems like it was a slowish week in FRBRania. The first couple of pieces involve the RDA-L mailing list archives (RDA being, of course, the new cataloguing rules Resource Description and Access) and also Karen Coyle .

Mix and Match: Mashups of Bibliographic Data

Mix and Match: Mashups of Bibliographic Data at the recent American Library Association conference had people from Google talking about Google Books metadata, OCLC talking about ONIX, and the Open Library talking about the Open Library. Eric Hellman was there and wrote it up in Google Exposes Book Metadata Privates at ALA Forum, which a lot of people have been pointing out, including on RDA-L.

Karen Coyle, who was the Open Library person at the session, brought the four FRBR user tasks into talk about alphabetical ordering of titles:

In FRBR we have the four user tasks: find, identify, select, obtain. These are fully imbued with the assumption of user knowledge.

“to find entities that correspond to the user’s stated search criteria (i.e., to locate either a single entity or a set of entities in a file or database as the result of a search using an attribute or relationship of the entity);”

This seems to eliminate the possibility that the user could be successful in the library catalog with a need like: “I just finished Twilight and loved it. What else might I like?” Yet that is a legitimate query to bring to the library, and even to the library catalog. Perhaps we should spend some time re-writing the FRBR user tasks, expanding them to meet a wider variety of user needs. Then we could look at our catalogs and say: “What does this mean in terms of catalog functionality?” I maintain that alphabetical order will not be at the top of our list, but will probably appear along some user tasks.

Peter Murray was also there, and wrote it up in Mashups of Bibliographic Data: A Report of the ALCTS Midwinter Forum:

[From the OCLC section.] If there is an exact match for the incoming ONIX record in WorldCat, the WorldCat record is enhanced with certain fields from the ONIX record (descriptions, author biographies, web links) — being careful not to override authority work being done by libraries, but adding enhancements that libraries may not otherwise input. In turn, enhancements from exact match record and FRBR work set records (hardcover versus softcover versus audiobook, etc.) are added to the ONIX record (non-English subject headings, adding a Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC) field from another similar record if one doesn’t already exist, change the author field to an authority-controlled version). If there is not an exact match for the ONIX record in WorldCat, a new WorldCat record is built from the ONIX record and it is subsequently enhanced by metadata found in the FRBR work set records.

RDA-L thread on RDA and granularity

Coyle began the RDA and Granularity thread prompted by a chat at a libary conference. As you can see from the archives it started a big long discussion that changed Subject. Somewhere in there John Myers posted in the Systems v Cataloging subthread:

[C]onsider the FRBR expression entity. A significant aspect in textual works between expressions is translation. We do have a 240 field to record that, but since the application of the rules for Uniform titles were left to the discretion of the cataloging agency, indication of an expression for a translation can also appear in a translation note recorded in tag 500, sometimes in conjunction with the 240 but oftentimes alone (as several thousand records in my catalog will attest). Now, if this data were consistently recorded in the 240 (both with respect to the format and to the application of use of the 240), then machine FRBR-ization of these records for translations would be relatively simple.

There was more FRBR discussion in the replies.

RDA National Test Update

Jennifer Eustis’s RDA National Test: Update points to Testing Resource Description and Access (RDA) at the Library of Congress, which sketches out how a bunch of libraries are going to test RDA before committing to use it. Because FRBR is fundamental to RDA, this will also be the biggest test so far of how FRBR helps bibliographic organization.

RDA vs. AACR2: Implications for Social Justice

On 11 January the New York City Radical Reference Collective ran RDA vs. AACR2: Implications for Social Justice, with Rick Block from Columbia University.

Jessica Lingel wrote notes on the session, which are worth reading. It looks like there was a good review of FRBR and RDA and where things are at, and then some interesting questions about that and the social justice and progressive side of cataloguing.

Question – what aspects of cataloging relate to issues of social justice?

It’s mostly a matter of subject headings. But even in descriptive cataloging, what gets included, what doesn’t has implications. RDA won’t so much change that, although it raise the question of personal archiving.

I’d never thought about this angle on FRBR and RDA. Very interesting subject. The first thing that strikes me is that in the linked data and Semantic Web approach anyone can say anything about anything. It will be much easier for people to apply their own sets or subsets of terminology to a group of things while still keeping connected with the rest of the universe, and for anyone else who wants to use that vocabulary to mix it in with their own system. This is a big improvement.

The Cataloguing Librarian: Something to Ponder: Subject Headings Ruin the Reader’s Experience

Fri, 05 Feb 2010 14:30:39 +0000

This past week I attended a lecture at Dalhousie University entitled “Spoiler Alert!: The rhetoric of the bibliographic record for works of fiction”, presented by Elisabeth Davies, the researcher-in-residence and part-time instructor at the School of Information Management. To be completely honest, I did not agree with what Ms. Davies had to say, so in writing [...]

Thingology (LibraryThing's ideas blog): Why are you for killing libraries?

noreply@blogger.com (Tim) — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 11:21:19 +0000

Publishing idea-man Mike Shatzkin recently wrote a provocative blog post, "Why are you for killing bookstores?"

He lays out the uncomfortable facts:

"Although there are probably few people reading this blog who expect bookstores to be around in 15 or 20 years (and those who do will undoubtedly leave a comment!), there are many who would like to keep them around as long as possible. There is a magic to being in a building surrounded by 40,000, 60,000, 100,000 different books. Bookstores are inherently community centers. They make possible the wide dissemination and promotion of great writing. They enable people to see heavily-illustrated books before they purchase them.

But have you thought about this? If you are for bookstores lasting as long as possible, you want to slow down the uptake of ebooks."

He goes on to explain the broad dynamics of the situation—the way Amazon, the big physical retailers and publishing look at the future, and which side they're on—faster ebooks or not. It's a stimulating read. And a depressing one.

Particularly depressing for me is the fact that Shatzkin never mentions libraries. (As one commenter on his post wrote, "Those buildings with 1000s of books that you speak so fondly of are called libraries.") It's not his fault, really. It's a short blog post. But I think it shows the extent of the problem for libraries. When a top industry analyst looks at the book world, libraries don't figure very prominently. There is a war going on, and libraries are going to be collateral damage.

They don't deserve it. US libraries circulated some 2.1 billion books last year, compared to 3.1 billion books sold. But they don't have much of a profile in the commercial world.(1) Being responsible for something like 39% of reading, bookstores only are about 4% of book sales.(2)

The difference is, of course, that libraries don't pay every time they circulate a book. Under the First Sale doctrine—the idea that you, well, own the things you own—libraries can pay once, and lend a book out multiple times.

Ebooks change this. As ebooks advance, libraries are going to lose their "First Sale" advantage. Publishers will never allow a library to "own" an ebook absolutely, just as consumers don't really own their ebooks. Libraries are going to be renting them, in fact or in effect, and they're going to paying a lot more to do it. They're going to be paying for the use they get out of them, not spending what consumers spend and getting more use. (I've written on the economics here before, so check that out first if you disagree with me.)

As the logic takes hold, libraries will be transformed into "simple" book-subsidy machines, not the special, advantaged ones they are now. That means they're either be forced to subscribe to fewer books, invest a lot more in their holdings or, for public libraries, convince voters to give them a lot more money. Those are bad options.

Other factors exacerbate the problem. Libraries are losing the "aggregation advantage." When every book is available anywhere, why go to the library to get it? And piracy hurts. Digitization has cut the music industry in half in the last decade, and there's no reason to believe books will become the first digital medium to avoid it. When you can not only get a book anywhere, but get it for free, why go to the library?

There are some reasons. Unlike bookstores, of course, libraries do other solid, valuable things. They employ librarians, who help you find and understand things. They provide free internet access. They hold story times and author readings. They lend out other things, although, excepting tools and people, digitization is going to wipe those markets out too.(3) And they're funded indirectly. Bookstores monetize their community value—whether it's an author reading or just the value of meeting cool people—by selling valuable objects. They create more value than they can realize. Public libraries, by contrast, monetize through government taxation, which is to say by periodically asking voters if they value them. As of now, despite some budgetary cuts, voters mostly do.

But, overall, I think libraries are headed in the same direction as bookstores and in obedience to the same logic—falling in tandem with the rise of ebooks. If they survive, it'll be for everything else they offer and so, for me at least, apart from the librarians, whose value won't fall, ebook libraries won't be full-fledged libraries anymore.

Shatzkin concludes:

"I don’t think anybody would want to be accused of being in favor of killing bookstores faster. And very few of us would be comfortable having it said we were trying to slow down the progress of digital technology, strategizing to slow down ebook uptake. But you are for one or the other, unless you don’t have any opinion at all."

Isn't the same thing true for libraries and ebooks?

Update 1: If you want to reply, you can leave a comment, but I also started a topic in Talk about the topic.

Well, that's about the most depressing thing I've written. I hope I'm wrong. And I even have some hopeful, positive things to say too. But I'll save them for another day.

1. These numbers are all very wiggly. Eric Hellman, formerly of OCLC, has been working on them for a while. Start with this, this and this.
2. As founder of LibraryThing, which doesn't cede the term "library" to institution collections of books alone, I need to mention that "lending" isn't just an institutional library phenomenon. Regular people lend and share books too, probably in numbers to rival libraries. That phenomenon will be largely ended by ebook DRM—and revived by piracy.
3. It's actually digitization plus virtualization. CDs are digital, but they're also physical objects, so libraries can own them for real. When CDs are gone—and they're going—libraries will have to contract with digital music services. The dynamics are similar to the ebook dynamics.

First thus: RE: Why are you for killing libraries?

noreply@blogger.com (James Weinheimer) — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 10:42:00 +0000

First thus: RE: [RDA-L] Utlility of ISBD/MARC vs. URIs (Was: Systems ...)

noreply@blogger.com (James Weinheimer) — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 09:34:00 +0000

Coyle's InFormation: DOJ: "A Bridge Too Far"

noreply@blogger.com (Karen Coyle) — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 06:44:42 +0000

How long has it been since you read something that came from a government agency and thought: "Wow! Brilliant!" Kudos to the Department of Justice for their Statement of Interest in the AAP/AG v. Google suit. Summed up, in their words:
In general, the project is a "good thing" -

Breathing life into millions of works that are now effectively dormant, allowing users to search the text of millions of books at no cost, creating a rights registry, and enhancing the accessibility of such works for the disabled and others are all worthy objectives.

However, the settlement goes beyond the original dispute, and is trying to use class action to create a new market that is unrelated to the copyright-related lawsuit -

Although the United States believes the parties have approached this effort in good faith and the ASA is more circumscribed in its sweep than the original Proposed Settlement, the ASA suffers from the same core problem as the original agreement: it is an attempt to use the class action mechanism to implement forward-looking business arrangements that go far beyond the dispute before the Court in this litigation. As a consequence, the ASA purports to grant legal rights that are difficult to square with the core principle of the Copyright Act that copyright owners generally control whether and how to exploit their works during the term of copyright. Those rights, in turn, confer significant and possibly anticompetitive advantages on a single entity – Google.

Not only that, but the DOJ seems to lend some weight to the "fair use" defense originally claimed by Google (and by the participating libraries) -

There has not been – and simply could not be – any allegation in this litigation that Google has sold full access to works for which it lacks the right to do so, or even that such activity was threatened. Indeed, selling such access would have been legally indefensible, and thus would have been at odds with Google’s entire pre-settlement book search strategy, which was premised upon staying within colorable “fair use” grounds. With very good reason, therefore, Google consciously avoided creating precisely the factual predicate that might support the settlement of book- and
subscription-selling claims. The business models that the ASA authorizes therefore relate to activities in which Google never engaged or threatened to engage, and thus claims of copyright infringement that could not have been brought.

The anti-trust issues brought up by the suit are unchanged in this amended settlement agreement. This leaves the judge in an even tougher spot than he seemed to be in before: if he decides that the suit is a valid class-action then he has to address the anti-trust issues. However, I have seen no clear description anywhere of how those could be addressed, so the judge is being asked to be very clever indeed -

Finally, the United States recognizes that if, as discussed supra, class representatives lack the power under Rule 23 to grant Google the power to exploit broadly the digital rights of class members to sell books, create subscription libraries, etc., then neither the class representatives nor Google possesses the power to authorize such activity by third parties. However, if the Court determines that the class representatives possess such rights as to Google, then the Court should carefully examine whether there exists a means for rival distributors to access orphan and rights-uncertain works consistent with Rule 23.

The DOJ suggests the following:

Some issues could be resolved by turning the "opt out" into "opt in" for rights holders. (That would essentially be exactly what we have today under copyright law.)
A "waiting period" before Google can make use of out-of-print works, to give rights holders a chance to surface. (This option seems to contradict #1)
More effort should go into finding rights holders.
A periodic reassessment of the marketplace for the out of print works (which, because of exposure, could have changed in market value)

The big question is: Is this the death knell for the settlement? And if so, where do we go next? I predict that if the suit is rejected we will have orphan works legislation sooner rather than later, since this suit has clearly high-lighted the need for such legislation. The copyright violation lawsuit against Google, however, remains. I fear that the settlement has poisoned the air for a fair use decision. We've seen the sausage being made, and it will be harder than ever to approach this project with an open and fair mind.

What can be done? Well, in France, when faced with a take-over of their cultural heritage by Google (their words, not mine), the government responded by giving libraries a large sum so that they can do the digitizing themselves; a kind of "by the people, for the people" digitization project. Is it too much to hope that could happen here?

Bibliographic Wilderness: structural marc problems you may encounter

Thu, 04 Feb 2010 22:27:57 +0000

This is not your typical ‘why MARC must die’ post. It’s instead about very low level structural problems in a Marc21 binary file that my ILS outputs. It’s not about the semantics of MARC at all, it’s about the structural features of the Marc21 format.

I never had to know much about low-level Marc21 format details before, and wish I still didn’t, but I had to because my ILS (Horizon) is outputting certain bibs as MARC that the Marc4J Java library used by SolrMarc refused to read, claiming they were structurally invalid in various ways. (Never would have figured this stuff out with the invaluable help of sesuncedu, robcaSSon, and others in #code4Lib).

But this may help someone else figuring out why Marc4J can’t read their MARC.

1. Invalid leader bytes

In the leader of a Marc21 record, byte 10 is always ascii ‘2′, byte 11 is always ‘2′ as well, and bytes 20-24 are always ‘4500′. At least they’re supposed to be. Theoretically these bytes allow a record to specify details about the nature of it’s binary format — but these details are fixed in Marc21, and in all other Marc variants we know of, it’s a flexibility that was rarely or never taken advantage of in any Marc format.

However, Horizon actually stores most of it’s leader bytes in a db column. And if the leader bytes are something other than these invariants in that db column, Horizon’s marc export will include those leader bytes — even if they are invalid, even if they do _not_ accurately describe the Marc record they are attached to (which wouldn’t be a valid Marc21 record if it was true).

Since these values are invariant in Marc21 and most (all) other Marc formats, most Marc parsers ignore them.

However, Marc4J doesn’t, it actually treats them as gospel. So if those bytes were wrong, Marc4J will try reading the record improperly. And if those bytes weren’t ascii decimal digits at all, Marc4J will claim it can’t read the leader.

So I just had to fix those in our production ILS. And figure out where they’re coming from, and try to stop them from coming in again? Really, I blame our ILS here for even allowing such completely wrong bytes to be in it’s internal db.

(A perhaps better solution from the other end is fixing the Marc4J PermissiveReader to not pay attention to those bad bytes, assuming the invariant values. sesuncedu has prepared a patch doing some of that for Marc4J, hopefully it’ll get in there.)

2. Bib Records Too Long For Marc

Because of the nature of MARC21’s ‘directory’ structure, there is a maximum length that a MARC record can be. If it’s above this length, the MARC directory doesn’t have enough bytes in it to describe where the fields beyond this length are in the record, and the MARC record is unreadable. (Incidentally, it’s very odd that MARC includes internal byte offsets recorded as ascii decimal chars, rather than ordinary binary data. If it used more typical simple binary encoding of integers for byte offests, the maximum length of a MARC file would be quite a bit larger. But it doesn’t. Oh well.)

So what does Horizon marc export do if it has a record which has too much data, which will go over the maximum record length in MARC? It outputs it anyway. But the marc record it outputs is seriously messed up. It’s got a MARC directory which may be entirely illegal (not a multiple of 12), it’s got a wrong leader bytes 0-4 ‘length’, possibly other problems. Depending on the individual record and exactly how Horizon ended up outputting it, Marc4J might just skip it as a bad record and go on. That’s the best that could be expected.

However, more often, Marc4J gets entirely confused because of the bad leader bytes 0-4 length, and doesn’t understand where the subsequent record in the marc file actually begins. So every other record after this too long one in the marc file is a loss to Marc4J/SolrMarc indexing. Either every subsequent record can’t be indexed at all, or even worse, every subsequent record is indexed by Marc4J/SolrMarc, but completely wrong, because Marc4j/SolrMarc got the wrong data.

I need to work out a patch for Marc4J PermissiveReader so when encountering such a record, Marc4J can at least recover by properly finding the beginning of the NEXT record, using the Marc Record Separator character.

3. Blank/null tags

This one might be Horizon-specific. Horizon allows the operator to accidentally add a tag to a record that has a null tag value. Not 100, 245, or something else, but just null. This accident could have been made manually, or could have been made by some sort of automated import script when we batch loaded records into Horizon. When the Horizon marc exporter encounters such a record, it does output marc21 for it, but completely invalid and wrong marc21.

I blame Horizon for this, it ought not to allow null tag values to even exist in the db, and if they do, ought to be ignored on export, not create an invalid marc record on export.

This is another problem that often results in Marc4J getting completely confused about where one record ends and the next starts, making the entire rest of the Marc file after such a record un-readable. Probably because of a bad leader bytes 0-4 length value, so perhaps if I can work out a patch to above, it will at least result in Marc4J succesfully skipping such a record and going on to the rest of the file.

4. Illegal chars in Marc values?

This one I haven’t completely gotten to the bottom of yet, because I made the mistake of fixing the couple examples I found in the Horizon Staff Client, where it didn’t really show me exactly what was going on.

But I think some Marc control characters (Field Terminator or Record Terminator) wound up in some of my record values in the db. (No doubt as the result of an import gone wrong at some point in the past). The Horizon marc exporter simply included them unescaped in it’s marc output. Resulting in special marc control characters in illegal places, or places where they don’t mean what they mean, in the marc file. This also messed up Marc4J something awful.

Again, I kind of blame Horizon here, for allowing bad data in it’s internal store, and then for writing bad data out in marc export when such bad data is in it’s internal store.

NEW! 4 Feb 2010:

Marc control character in internal data value.

I’ll describe this one in Horizon-specific terminology, cause it’s clearer.

The horizon “bib” table holds an individual marc field in the ‘text’ column. Every ‘text’ column ENDS in the Marc Field Terminator character (decimal 30, hex 1E, sometimes displayed as “^^”).

However, some of our values have that Marc Field Terminator character _not_ as the last character, but internally. This creates problems in marc export, where the marc created by marcout is invalid unparseable marc. (as it includes marc Field Terminator control character in illegal position).

This problem is not visible in Horizon Staff Client, the control character is not shown. But it’s hiding there in the database anyway. If you open an individual record in Horizon Staff Client and then simply re-save it, it SEEMS to fix the problem in at least some cases (not sure about all), but probably makes more sense to fix it in bulk through an automated process anyway.

As a technical note: I used this SQL against hzdev db to find the number of bibs which contained char(30) as some char OTHER than the last in dbo.bib. It takes quite a while ro run. This would have to be re-done for dbo.bib_longtext.longtext, another table that data destined for marc export can hide. You could base an automated fix off of this SQL technique.

select  count(distinct bib#) from dbo.bib where (charindex(char(30), text) != char_length(text))

Correction: that SQL will also find values that do not end in the FT at all. While Horizon ordinarily does so that’s sort of an error, it doesn’t cause any problems. Here’s one to find only ones with an internal FT after all, not including ones with no FT whatsoever:

select  count(distinct bib#)  from dbo.bib where  (charindex(char(30), text) not in(0, char_length(text)))

A note on MARC control character terminology

One confusing thing in dealing with this stuff that took me a while to figure out is how MARC uses it’s own special weird names for certain control characters.

MARC has a “Field Terminator” (which is sometimes called ‘field separator’ in marc docs instead of ‘terminator’) and a “Record Terminator” (also sometimes called ‘record separator’ in docs instead of ‘terminator’).

But the ascii values used for these special MARC control codes already had names in ascii, and they are confusingly similar but not the same names! This certainly leads to confusion.

Marc “Field Terminator” == Hex 1E == Decimal 30 == Ascii “Record Separator” == “control-^” or “^^”, which is how stock vim will display it.

Marc “Record Terminator” == Hex 1D == Decimal 29 == Ascii “Group Separator” == “control-]” or “^]” which is how stock vim will display it.

(Correction 3 Feb, this next is also part of the marc standard):

Marc “Subfield Delimiter” == Hex 1F == Decimal 31 == Ascii “Unit Separator” == “control-_” or “^_” which is how it will show up in vim.

Also update 3 Feb 2010. I made this little sign and now keep it on my wall next to my desk, so I can refer to it ha.

Record Separator

Filed under: General

025.431: The Dewey blog: Sinosauropteryx

Thu, 04 Feb 2010 18:07:04 +0000

Various news articles have reported on a study of the Sinosauropteryx and related dinosaurs, e.g., “Study Offers an Insight into Dinosaur Colors” (New York Times) and “Dinosaur Had Ginger Feathers” (BBC). These articles were responding to a report published online in Nature, “Fossil Feathers Reveal Dinosaurs' True Colours.” The BBC article begins:

Meet Sinosauropteryx, a very spiky little dinosaur.

A team of scientists from China and the UK has now revealed that the bristles of this 125-million-year-old dinosaur were in fact ginger-coloured feathers.

The researchers say that the diminutive carnivore had a “Mohican” of feathers running along its head and back. It also had a striped tail.

Works on the Sinosauropteryx are classed in 567.912 Saurischia, e.g., Sinosauropteryx--Mysterious Feathered Dinosaur.

How does a cataloger know that Sinosauropteryx should be classed in 567.912 Saurischia? The entry has the class-here note: “Class here Theropoda (carnivorous dinosaurs).” The online report in Nature includes this:

The team discovered the melanosomes in fossils of the suborder Theropoda, the branch of the dinosaur family tree to which the flesh-eating species Velociraptor and Tyrannosaurus belong. However, it was not in these two iconic dinosaurs that the organelles were found, but in smaller species that ran around low to the ground with tiny feathers or bristles distributed across their bodies.
. . . . .
Fossils of one theropod dinosaur, Sinosauropteryx, reveal that it had light and dark feathered stripes along the length of its tail.

Other sources also point to 567.912 Saurischia. For example, the LCSH authority record for Sinosauropteryx has this information in the source-data-found field:

Sinosauropteryx/Enchanted learning software WWW site, July 20, 2004 (genus: Sinosauropteryx; family: Compsognathidae; order: Saurischia; class: Archosauria).

Here is a link to the Enchanted Learning site’s “Sinosauropteryx Fact Sheet.” Encyclopædia Britannica Online mentions Sinosauropteryx in “Dinosaur Descendants” while discussing evidence that “that birds (class Aves) evolved from small theropod dinosaurs.”

Since Sinosauropteryx is only one of many theropod dinosaurs, the topic Sinosauropteryx is in standing room at 567.912; standard subdivisions could not be added for a work about Sinosauropteryx.

Celeripedean » cataloging: Jen

Thu, 04 Feb 2010 16:19:08 +0000

(Please excuse cross postings)

From the RDA listserve:

ALA publishing is giving the same presentation we did at ALA midwinter as a Webinar for anyone interested to see a demo of the RDA Toolkit beta site. We will give the same presentation twice at different times of day in hopes of covering as may people as possible.

These are the first of what we hope to be many RDA related webinars.

RDA Toolkit: A Guided Tour!

Join Troy Linker from ALA Publishing for an introductory guided tour of the RDA Toolkit website. If you were at ALA Midwinter in Boston, you may already have taken this tour at the RDA Update Forum, the CC:DA meeting, or on the exhibit floor–but please feel free to join us again.

The webinar will be recorded and posted for anyone that is unable to participate live. Details for accessing the recorded webinar video will be emailed to registries and posted widely.

The tour includes:

• Description of the RDA Toolkit

• Overview of the RDA Toolkit contents at launch and beyond

• Tour of the RDA Toolkit interface including Search, Browse, Bookmarks, Workflows, Maps, and more

• Launch timeline

• Details of the Complimentary Open Access period

• RDA Toolkit pricing for the US

• Linking from external products to the RDA Toolkit

Join us on February 8, – 21:00-22:00 GMT | 4:00pm-5pm EST | 3:00pm-4pm CST | 1:00pm-2pm PST

https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/639494355

OR

Join us on February 9, – 16:00-17:00 GMT | 11:00am-12pm EST | 10:00am-11am CST | 8:00am-9am PST

https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/991492442

Kind regards,

Troy Linker

Publisher, ALA Digital Reference

American Library Association

Filed under: cataloging, RDA Tagged: ALA, RDA, rda online product

Celeripedean » cataloging: Jen

Thu, 04 Feb 2010 13:55:54 +0000

A new set of webinars have been posted at: http://www.screencast.com/users/eXtensibleCatalog on the eXtensible Catalog. This is an open source alternative to integrated library systems.

From their website:

The eXtensible Catalog (XC) Project is working to design and develop a set of open-source applications that will provide libraries with an alternative way to reveal their collections to library users. XC will provide easy access to all resources (both digital and physical collections) across a variety of databases, metadata schemas and standards, and will enable library content to be revealed through other services that libraries may already be using, such as content management systems and learning management systems. XC will also make library collections more web-accessible by revealing them through web search engines.

Take a look.

Filed under: cataloging Tagged: catalogs

Catalogablog: RDA Toolkit: A Guided Tour

noreply@blogger.com (David) — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 13:50:57 +0000

Join Troy Linker from ALA Publishing for an introductory guided tour of the RDA Toolkit website. If you were at ALA Midwinter in Boston, you may already have taken this tour at the RDA Update Forum, the CC:DA meeting, or on the exhibit floor--but please feel free to join us again.

The webinar will be recorded and posted for anyone that is unable to participate live. Details for accessing the recorded webinar video will be emailed to registries and posted widely.

The tour includes:

Adapted from a e-mail widely distributed.

First Person Narrative (Anne Welsh): final first leaflet low res

Tue, 02 Feb 2010 23:18:25 +0000

The Feminist Library has received funding for a training scheme for people who would like to gain experience in radical librarianship. Come along to the open day on 27 February to find out about it. More here.

Filed under: diary, engagements, Feminist Library, Information Tagged: library training schemes, radical librarianship, Training For All

Thingology (LibraryThing's ideas blog): Something is the Future

noreply@blogger.com (Tim) — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 21:18:50 +0000

Wayne Bivens-Tatum, a Princeton librarian and blogger, wrote an excellent post, called "Nothing is the Future." It attacks a certain sort of insipid library futurism—and is going all over the "Twittersphere":

The kindest interpretation of statements like "the future is mobile" or "the future of reference is SMS" or "the future is librarians in pods" or whatever is that the librarians are trying to create that future by speaking it. The incantation will somehow make it so.... The less kind interpretation is that the authors of such statements are reductionist promoters, reducing a complex field to whatever marginal utility they're focused on and claiming that this is the future, while simultaneously promoting themselves as seers.

The obvious and most likely statement is that nothing is the future, as in no thing is the future, period. Anyone who tells you different is just plain wrong. With technology, it should be clear to anyone who bothers to see past their obsessions that formats and tools die hard. Some people like to imply that if librarians don't take up every new trend they'll become like buggy whip makers. I should point out that there are still people who make buggy whips. Buggy whips aren't as popular as they once were, but they're still around. There are even buggies to accompany them.

I started to reply in comments, but my words added up. So here they are:

Though a purveyor of "Web 2.0" ideas—I founded LibraryThing, what can I say?—I think it's a great post.

The rhetoric you describe rings true. It starts, I think, from the popularizers and enthusiasts who take up new technologies and communicate them to the great mass of librarians whose life revolves around other things. To get through the clutter—to be one of the things you take back from a weekend of ALA or PLA talks—the message is simplified and the rhetoric ratchets up. "This is useful" loses out to "this will save you." As it passes through libraryland the cycle repeats in spirals of simplification and amplification. Over and over I see broader intellectual discussions of technology and the future of libraries reduced to trivial and ephemeral exhortations like "every library needs to be on Meebo!" or "the future is SMS!"

It's depressing, but it's not unique to library technology. You see it in other trends, like "green libraries" (they're the future, didn't you get the memo?). It's in the dynamics of communication. Your post is a good corrective to it.

At the same time, you're missing something. I don't know if you're missing it for real, or just in this focused expression. But there's a powerful "yes but" here, and it needs saying—shouting even!—lest people take the wrong thing from your post.

For all the nonsense and hype, librares are subject to an extraordinary and rapid cultural change. They have already changed drastically—especially if "libraries" means what libraries mean to culture generally, and people who don't work in them.

Libraries are in the "information business" and this business is in one of the most profound transformations in human history. This isn't buggies vs. Stanley Steamers—different ways of getting to the habberdasher. It's horse-and-buggy culture vs. everything the car has brought—mass production, suburban living, the Blitzkreig, the global economy, global warming and the sexual revolution. Certainly, as you say, carriges continue to exist as objects that convey people, but their meaning has been utterly transformed. If libraries end up as a way for rich people to indulge children on a visit to a big city—what carriages mean today—well, crap! How did that happen?!

The world is changing, and for all the noise about this or that technology, I don't think libraries are dealing with it squarely. (Forget Web 2.0; libraries haven't really ingested Web 1.0 yet.) "The future is X" isn't the best response to that change, but it's a response.

I expect your post will get wide circulation. It says something that hasn't been said before as well. But if it prompts librarians to dismiss technology's impact on the future of libraries, it will do great harm. Instead, I hope people use your essay as a way to "kick it up a notch" intellectually, get past the small stuff and confront the very real changes ahead.

PS: By the way, LibraryThing is releasing a universal mobile catalog. It's the future. No, really! :)

Catalogue & Index Blog: CILIP RDA Executive Briefing 2010 announced

Tue, 02 Feb 2010 14:13:00 +0000

CILIP has announced its intention to hold the RDA Executive Briefing, postponed from 2009. The announced theme of the Executive Briefing will be Meeting the challenges of strategic change.

CILIP members are invited to register their interest at:

http://www.cilip.org.uk/interests/execbriefings/rda09/index.html

First thus: FW: [RDA-L] Systems v Cataloging was: RDA and granularity

noreply@blogger.com (James Weinheimer) — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 12:52:00 +0000

First thus: [RDA-L] Systems v Cataloging was: RDA and granularity

noreply@blogger.com (James Weinheimer) — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 09:55:00 +0000

Hillmann, Diane (LITA Blog): Recordkeeping Standards

Mon, 01 Feb 2010 22:30:00 +0000

Cindy Hepfer, hardworking ALA Voting Representative to NISO has forwarded to us a group of announcements related to ISO/DIS 16175, Information and documentation–Principles and functional requirements for records in electronic office environments. This is a Fast track ballot, used to create an ISO standard from an existing standard, in this case the International Council on Archives and the Australasian Digital Recordkeeping Initiative standard of the same title. Fast track standards are submitted for their first ballot at the enquiry (DIS) stage; if there are no negative votes, the standard can proceed directly to publication.

This ballot is in three parts:

Part 1: Overview and statement of principles
Part 2: Guidelines and functional requirements for records in electronic office environments
Part 3: Guidelines and functional requirements for records in business systems

As a reminder of the process: ALA is a voting member of NISO, while NISO is the official US voting member of other International Organization for Standardization (ISO) groups. On behalf of ALA, Cindy will be providing feedback to NISO as to whether ALA believes that NISO should approve or disapprove the standard. NISO staff will review and consider our feedback along with that received from numerous other voting members.

Because this is an ISO standard, access to the text for review is only available via Cindy (her email is: HSLcindy@buffalo.edu). Any ALA member who wishes to see a copy of the draft standard must explicitly state to Cindy that he/she is a current ALA member. (It helps me to provide activity information to LITA if you also copy me on your request at metadata.maven@gmail.com).

Deadline for comments to Cindy is Monday, May 17, 2010.

Diane I. Hillmann
LITA Standards Coordinator

panlibus: Perceptions 2009: An international survey of library automation

Mon, 01 Feb 2010 17:59:01 +0000

In the latest Perceptions survey, the most popular library management system is from a relatively new supplier to libraries and is available exclusively on a Software as a Service basis. The survey also reveals that interest in open source library management systems is weak outside the community of libraries that has already adopted one.

The Perceptions series of surveys is three years old now, and is part of Marshall Breeding’s armoury of library technology commentaries, the most well-used of which is Library Technology Guides. Meanwhile, Perceptions 2009: An international survey of library automation, like its predecessors, aims to ascertain levels of satisfaction within libraries with their library management system and suppliers thereof. Despite disruption in the library software arena, the library management system (LMS), or integrated library system (ILS) as it’s known to Marshall Breeding in the US, remains important:

The integrated library system (ILS) for most libraries represents the most critical component of its technology infrastructure and can do the most to help or hinder a library in fulfilling its mission to serve its patrons and in operating efficiently.

Interest may be waning in open source

One of Marshall’s central aims this year is to gauge interest in open source ILS products, which he describes as “one of the major issues brewing in the industry”.

A key overall finding was that companies supporting proprietary library management systems tend to receive higher satisfaction scores than companies involved with open source library management systems. Marshall notes explicitly that LIbLime received particularly low marks in customer satisfaction, whilst libraries that undertook to implement Koha without external support were highly satisfied with this arrangement.

Respondents who had made use of other support firms such as PTFS, Nusoft and ByWater Solutions (it should be noted that support companies servicing open source products are still not prevalent in the UK) were not sufficiently numerous to be included in the report’s summary tables. Likewise, Talis only had 14 respondents and therefore does not figure in the main tables, although as a UK supplier, we are happy to be positioned in 10^th place in terms of satisfaction with LMS in an international survey.

As Marshall told the audience at the SCONUL conference here in the UK in June 2009, there are low levels of interest registered in open source library management systems apart from the community of libraries already using one. Even those libraries that are dissatisfied with their current proprietary system fail to demonstrate interest in open source.

But Software as a Service is top of the pops

Biblionix, described by Marshall as a relatively new company, gained the top satisfaction scores in the following categories – ILS product, company, and support for its product, Apollo. This is interesting not just because it’s a relatively new entrant in the library software marketplace, but because the product is offered exclusively through Software as a Service. As Marshall comments:

The responses for Apollo were overwhelmingly positive, the only product to receive 9 as either the mode or median response. The comments offered gave effusive praise for the company, the product, the ease of migration and for support.

It should be noted that takeup of Apollo is currently limited to small public libraries in the US.

Although UK suppliers don’t feature strongly in this international survey, it remains an important source in terms of looking at the key trends in our world.

Bibliographic Wilderness: solr multi-core gotcha

Mon, 01 Feb 2010 16:12:14 +0000

This might only be a gotcha if you’re a lazy guy like me.

But in ordinary Solr, if you want to completely clear out your indexes, you can just delete the ‘data’ directory, no problem. It sounds weird, but several solr guru types told me I could do it, and it was certainly convenient to be able to do when my data (still in development) got all messed up and I just wanted to start over, and it did indeed work.

But when you’ve set up ‘multi core’ in Solr (which has nothing to do with CPUs, it’s solr term for having multiple entirely seperate solr indexes in one running solr process)… don’t try to just go and delete the ‘data’ directory in one of the cores. It messes everything up horribly and you have to repair/rebuild your cores.

So I guess in a solr multi-core world, if you want to delete all your solr data, you have to do it the normal way with a ‘delete’ operation.

Filed under: General

Thingology (LibraryThing's ideas blog): Shelf Browse live at High Plains

noreply@blogger.com (Abby) — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 15:50:47 +0000

Shelf Browse—which we announced last week—is now live in High Plains Library District's catalog. As we mentioned in our brief ALA announcement, Shelf Browse lets you browse your library's shelves visually, just as you would do in the physical library.

Shelf Browse lets your patrons see where a book sits on your actual shelves, and what's near it. It includes a "mini-browser" that sits on your detail pages, and a full-screen version, launched from the detail page.

See it in action at High Plains Library District. Some jumping off points:

Scroll back and forth, serendipitously browsing through the shelves. If lists are more your speed, in the full-screen version, you can switch between shelf and list mode.

For ordering information contact Peder Christensen at Bowker—toll-free at 877-340-2400 or email Peder.Christensen@bowker.com.

First thus: FW: [NGC4LIB] The CERN Library publishes its book catalog as Open Data

noreply@blogger.com (James Weinheimer) — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 13:18:00 +0000

First Person Narrative (Anne Welsh): january bookshelf

Sun, 31 Jan 2010 15:45:20 +0000

I’m visiting my parents in Scotland at the moment, so this month’s bookshelf shows part of my Mum’s collection of poetry anthologies.

A product of the Scottish education of the 1950s and 1960s, which relied on a lot on rote-learning, she’s been learning poetry ever since, and has a vast repertoire of classics and more modern pieces that she can recite whenever they seem relevant, or simply to cheer herself up on a dull day.

Mum’s memory is prodigious and photographic, and I can remember her in the late 1970s memorising telephone directories as her “party piece” at “dos” with her friends and family. She’s probably half-responsible for my love of poetry, since she introduced me to so many brilliant verses when I was young, most notably Walter de la Mare’s Peacock Pie, which we read together and she learned cover to cover and could reproduce on long car journeys and other times of childhood boredom.

My abilities are quite distinct from hers, however. Notwithstanding the annual Burns recitation at the Ayrshire Festival we were made to take part in at school, the only poems I’ve ever been able to retain by heart are de la Mare’s ‘The Listeners’ and Browning’s ‘Porphyria’s Lover’ – my favourites as a teen. Even as an English Lit undergraduate, I didn’t learn entire verses – just the lines that were particularly striking and useful for a critical essay.

Perhaps as a result, my poetry bookshelves at home look quite different from Mum’s, and have only a few anthologies on them, mostly from course reading lists. I own quite a few selections from women poets, but those belong on my quick reference section above my desk (you can make out a couple on this blog’s header). Generally, I like to read collections by individual poets, reading them through cover to cover and then revisiting the favourites I have read.

Anthologies are probably best for learning off by heart – the editor(s) pick(s) out the best / most popular poems from a particular era or on a specific subject. There are even some anthologies designed especially for memorising. Some people set themselves the challenge of learning poems in the same way others learn Bible passages. Nick Seddon blogged some of the advantages:

Right from the start I have found that memorizing revives things that have become stale or deadened …

What’s more, I am beginning to make sense of poems that I’ve always found tricky … once you have them by heart – which is of course by head – the poems stay with you, resonating in what Seamus Heaney calls the echo chambers of the mind. They unfurl and display their self-delighting inventiveness: time and again, walking down the street, I have little insights and epiphanies.

Its just as illuminating when poems surprise you by how easy they are to learn, for this tells you something about how they’re made …

So in a way to commit to memory is to study, but since you don’t need a special jargon or any other paraphernalia, it’s a very democratic kind of education. And its very, very good fun.

That may be so, but I’ve always been more of the “Henry Jones School of Memorisation”:

I wrote them down in my diary so that I wouldn’t *have* to remember. (Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade)

Or in this case, I add poetry to my bookshelves so I won’t have to remember it off by heart, but can read it at any time. It’s for similar reasons I’ve always liked cataloguing – I add books to the catalogue so I don’t have to remember where they are. The popular requests, or the ones I really like (the Brownings or de la Mares of the enquiry world) will sink in anyway.

Filed under: cataloguing, monthly bookshelves, photos, poetry, reflections, Walter de la Mare Tagged: memorising poems, poetry anthologies, poetry collections, Porphyria's Lover, The Listeners

Lorcan Dempsey's weblog: All the news ...

dempseyl@oclc.org (Lorcan Dempsey) — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 04:01:18 +0000

My former OCLC colleague Eric Hellman has become one of the more interesting bloggers in our space. A little while ago he wrote about the acquisition of Liblime by PTFS. He made a general opening comment ...:

The library industry has likewise been troubled by misalignment of interests between the owners of the companies and their customers. That's why it's important for libraries to pay close attention to the frequent mergers and acquisitions of the companies that serve them. [PTFS to Acquire LibLime and Move to Library Systems Premier League]

And goes on to talk about the rationale for open source (primarily to avoid vendor lock-in, Eric argues) and PTFS and Liblime positions in the market.

Here, for example, he talks about aspects of the library/vendor transaction from the vendor perspective ...

From the vendor's point of view, the sales process is very expensive. Promises to customize the system to address customer peculiarities are common, and these add to the cost of system maintenance. Once the system has been sold, a proprietary system vendor has a guarantee of continuing profits from support contracts. Only the vendor has the system knowledge (and sometimes even the system access) to make even the most trivial changes. It's in the support phase that the vendor and customer interests can become misaligned. The vendor has every incentive to do the least work at the highest price possible. The customer is locked into whatever system they have chosen. [PTFS to Acquire LibLime and Move to Library Systems Premier League]

.... and here he talks about open source ..

The recent popularity of open source library management systems is in large part a search for business models that better align the interests of vendor and customer during the support phase. If the support vendor doesn't perform to the library's expectations, the library can hire a new support vendor without ditching their automation system. If a library wants to add a new feature to their system, or integrate it with a system from another vendor, they can hire a developer based on qualifications rather than access to source. The important thing to the library is not so much the access to source or the cost of the license, it's the absence of vendor lock-in. [PTFS to Acquire LibLime and Move to Library Systems Premier League]

The entry was informative and interesting. I may disagree with detail or emphasis (other factors are clearly in play in the current interest in open source for example) but - importantly - my thinking has been influenced by it.

When I finished reading it I was also struck by how unusual it is to read something like this in the sources where you might expect it, in the library 'journalism'. In general we are not well-served by library journalism (I am thinking of what is published in our 'trade magazines': American Libraries, Library Journal, CILIP Update, ...) when it comes to this type of 'business' analysis. Our discussions are poorer for it.

First Person Narrative (Anne Welsh): body

Sat, 30 Jan 2010 16:47:51 +0000

On Sunday we managed to catch the last day of Damien Hirst’s No Love Lost : Blue Paintings at the Wallace Collection.

A teenage Goth, I’ve always been interested by dead things and the temporary nature of our bodies, although it wasn’t until I went to work at Middle Temple that I really got into the genre of memento mori, spurred on by the regular tours we gave to new and prospective members which included a rather fine memento mori of one of the library’s founders.

As usual, Hirst’s work has attracted lots of controversy, with one critic claiming that “These paintings are a memento mori for [his] reputation” [*], but I really loved them. I loved the depth of the blue-black colour and the simplicity of the motifs. And most of all, I loved the atmosphere. However, it has to be said that the piece I loved the most was the sculpture outside the gallery (pictured right) – there’s a huge contrast between the anatomical precision of this body that has sheared off its own skin and the more blended brushstrokes on the canvas indoors.

I ended the day with another contrast, visiting the Tate Modern’s permanent galleries, which, however many times I see them, always yield up fresh discoveries. This time it was Spanish Pepe Espaliu, particularly his wonderful ‘To An Unknown God’. There’s a picture in this ABC.es article, although it doesn’t quite do justice to the proportions of the elongated broomsticks pointing skywards, or the delecate pictures of water at the side. As soon as I walked into the gallery, I was captivated by the fairytale domestic scene – like a scene from Fantasia caught in bronze, but with a sombre air. From the gallery card:

Espaliu believed that art should begin with the complex and end with simplicity, and his works are heavy with metaphor yet spare in their realisation. Created during the last few years before his premature death from AIDS, ‘To An Unknown God’ shows Espaliu attempting to come to terms with mortality. The drawings of flowing water and whirling mop-heads suggest the possibility of cleansing and healing, whilst the elongated handles pointing skywards hint at religious ascension, yet the title and precarious balance of the work introduce overtones of ambiguity and uncertainty.

As well as being glad to come across an artist I did not know, I was really pleased with the sheer serendipity of having seen the Hirst exhibition first: from paintings, to anatomical sclupture, to modern art metaphor, it was a day of considering the body anew.

Old Goths never die, we just go to London galleries.

Ref

[*] Searle, Adrian (2009). ‘Damien Hirst’s paintings are deadly dull’. guardian.co.uk, 14 October.

Filed under: Art, diary, exhibitions, photos Tagged: blue paintings, damien hirst, no love lost, Pepe Espaliu, Tate Modern, To An Unknown God, Wallace Collection

habitually probing generalist: 5th blogging anniversary

Fri, 29 Jan 2010 21:49:04 +0000

29 January is the 5th anniversary of my public blogging. I had a Bloglines private blog for about 9 days before I got fed up with its lack of capabilities. That 1st proto-blog was called In My Secret Life… via Leonard Cohen.

The 1st public-facing blog debuted on 29 January 2005 at bookmark.typepad.com and was called …the thoughts are broken…, which is from Ripple by the Grateful Dead. This would have been the beginning of my 2nd full semester of library school.

On 20 July 2006 I flipped the switch on Off the Mark on my own domain and hosted by LISHost after some tribulations with Typepad over many months. The story of the name is at that post.

On 19 July 2009 I again changed the name of the blog; reasons listed at the post. It is now known as habitually probing generalist.

I will make no promises as to what will or will not happen on this blog in the future. I have not been writing much for quite a while now—some of the reasons are interspersed in posts over the last 18 months or so—and I do not know if or when I will pick up the virtual pen again or how frequently. But I do appreciate having this space as an outlet and knowing that thanks to RSS anyone who truly cares what I might have to say can simply wait on that eventuality to arrive.

Thanks to all who have been here with me any of this time. Hopefully you’ll see me around here some more and I certainly hope to see you (and your feedback/comments/critiques/cries of BS/etc.).

025.431: The Dewey blog: United States Banking Laws

Fri, 29 Jan 2010 17:20:47 +0000

President Obama recently proposed changes to United States laws about banks and banking, e.g., “Obama Proposes Tough Limits on Largest Banks.” His proposals have provoked a variety of reactions, e.g., “Obama’s Move to Limit ‘Reckless Risks’ Has Skeptics,” “Frank Says Obama Bank Plan Could Be Law within Months,” and “Obama Proposal to Curb Banks Dominates, Divides Davos Debates.”

Works on United States laws and regulations about banks and banking are classed in 346.73082 United States law of banks (built with 346 Private law plus T2—73 United States plus 082 from 346.082 Banks, which has the class-here note “Class here banking,” following the add note at 346.3–346.9 Specific jurisdictions and areas). Examples of works classed in 346.73082 are Banks and Their Customers (from a “Law for the Layperson” series) and Federal Banking Law and Regulations: A Handbook for Lawyers.

How does a classifier find the add note at 346.3–346.9 Specific jurisdictions and areas? One way is to follow the do-not-use note at 346[.0093–346.0099] Private law of specific continents, countries, localities: “Do not use; class in 346.3–346.9.” Another way is to follow the add footnote at 346.082: “Add as instructed under 342–347.” In the add table under 342–347 Branches of law at 093–099 Treatment by limited area within a jurisdiction is the note: “Law limited to a specific jurisdiction or area is classed under the jurisdiction before indicating the subject of a branch of law, e.g., criminal courts of Australia 345.9401, not 345.01094. Further instructions are given under 342–349.” General instructions on how to build law numbers are given under 342–349 Branches of law; laws, regulations, cases; law of specific jurisdictions, areas, socioeconomic regions.

In WebDewey the number for U. S. law of banks is already built; the built number can be found, for example, by browsing in the Relative Index:

Banks (Finance)—law 346.082
Banks (Finance)—law—United States 346.73082

A cataloger who finds the built number 346.73082 and wonders how it was built can go to the record for the number, then click 346.3–346.9 Specific jurisdictions and areas in the upward hierarchy to find the add note.

First Person Narrative (Anne Welsh): ResearchBlogging.org

Fri, 29 Jan 2010 17:05:45 +0000

So, having established without a doubt that I prefer working in a team to being a solo scholar, I had a little fish around for research into collaborative publishing in LIS.

Richard L. Hart’s 2007 article in The Journal of Academic Librarianship, ‘Collaboration and Article Quality in the Literature of Academic Librarianship’ seems to summarise the issues quite well, asking

Does collaboration by two or more researchers lead to a product that is superior to that of the independent researcher? In particular, do co-authors produce a higher quality journal article than the single author?

Carrying out a citation analysis on co-authored and solo-authored articles in The Journal of Academic Librarianship and College and Research Libraries between 1986 and 1993, he found “no compelling evidence that co-authored articles are of higher quality as measured by rates of citation.”

However, he points out that

Previous studies in the literature of academic librarianship have generally noted the apparent higher quality of the co-authored manuscript at a point prior to its publication as an article. For example, Hernon et al. found higher acceptance rates among co-authored manuscripts submitted to C&RL, while Hart found that authorship varied depending on the type of journal in which an article appeared (refereed, non-refereed, and core). In each case, the judgment of quality was made at the manuscript stage, not at the article stage.

This is a moot point. It seems intuitively logical that a group of people working together should benefit from ideas-generation through being able to talk in detail about the project and that even administrative tasks such as proofreading should be easier when there are several eyes to read through a paper. Plus, a research team can consist of people with complimentary skills and overlapping interests, so one person might be strong on methodology, another on writing up. And if the research team includes someone who can fill out funding applications with ease, well, clearly it’s going to do well.

That said, it’s interesting that the impact of co-authoring a paper should in essence be felt more by the authors than by their readers. Hart ends by asserting that

The benefits of collaboration to the production of a manuscript should not be construed as a difference in quality that pertains in regard to published papers.

So, from the outside looking in, I’ll be sure not to mis-judge the solo scholar harshly, even though from the inside looking out, I’m happy to be working in a team.

Ref

HART, R. (2007). Collaboration and Article Quality in the Literature of Academic Librarianship The Journal of Academic Librarianship, 33 (2), 190-195 DOI: 10.1016/j.acalib.2006.12.002

Filed under: collaborative working, Information, references, reflections, research blogging, scholarly communication Tagged: College and Research Libraries, Journal of Academic Librarianship, Richard L. Hart

Ohio State University Libraries Non-Roman Cataloging Blog: Editing the Varable fields on Connexion for JMSTC

Fri, 29 Jan 2010 16:55:07 +0000

100 and 700 on a bib record are for names of responsibilities. 100 is for main author; 700(s) are for secondary authors.

Use the Authority form (or established form) in the 100 and 700. But transcribe the name according to piece in 245.
If there is 100 field, then the 1st indicator of 245 is 1; If there’s no 100 field, then, it is 0.

700 (see above)

245 is for “title and statement of responsibilities.”

For, our microform project, you will always have a $h [microform]
Pay attention to the 1st indicator (see under 100); the 2nd indicator is for “non-filing characters” and for us, it is usually 0.
Study Varieties in titles and statement of responsibilities.
About “sub title”. Use $b for sub title. It can be either before or after the $h, depends.
Study Title proper and varying form of title.

246
250
260
300
490 and 830 combination
533
500
9xx fields

Ohio State University Libraries Non-Roman Cataloging Blog: Editing the Fixed fields on Connexion for JMSTC

Fri, 29 Jan 2010 16:39:41 +0000

Fixed fields

Desc: a (Cataloging Rule – “a” means Anglo-American Cataloging Rules)

Elvl (Cataloging level): use “I” for full level; use “K” when lower level (when you are not very confident for some info provided in the record)

Srce: d

Form: b (”Form.” means format, and “b” indicates microform)

Ills: co-related with the 300 field.
When 300 b subfield has ill. (illustrations), you will have a; when it has maps, you have b; when it has port. (potrait), you will have c in the Ills boxes.

DtSt: put “s” (single date), “m” (multiple dates).

Dates: published year(s). If “m”, put beginning year in the 1st box, ending year in the 2nd.

Catalogablog: ERL 2010 Conference

noreply@blogger.com (David) — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 12:44:35 +0000

I'll be at the Electronic Resources and Libraries Conference early next week. #ERL10 Looking forward to this, looks like a lot of good content and presenters. I may post summaries of the talks I hear, if I have the time and energy at the end of the day.

Bibliographic Wilderness: Using Mongrel with Rails 2.2+ and prefix

Fri, 29 Jan 2010 04:51:17 +0000

First, don’t. Mongrel seems to be a dead product, I think everyone’s moved over to mod_rails/passenger. Because mod_rails/passenger (what’s that product actually called these days?) is nice. Just use that, mongrel hasn’t been updated in years now and doesn’t look like it will be.

But in case you have to. And you run into that thing where you want to use mongrel’s “–prefix” argument, but it doesn’t work with Rails 2.2+, because mongrel tries to call API that doens’t exist in Rails anymore. What do you do?

Some people patch mongrel. Some people give up on using “–prefix” in mongrel, and just set the prefix in their Rails environment.rb (a much less flexible arrangement). But I actually found a better solution, which worked out fine for me back when I was using it, before I gave up on mongrel and switched the application involved on Rails 2.2+ over to passenger.

Someone just emailed me to ask for it, and it took me a while to track down, it didn’t google well, so I’ll stick it here so it maybe googles better, and I can find it again if I need it.

###################
# Fix for mongrel which still doesn't know about Rails 2.2's changes, grr.
# We provide a backwards compatible wrapper around the new
# ActionController::base.relative_url_root,
# so it can still be called off of the actually non-existing
# AbstractRequest class.

module ActionController
  class AbstractRequest < ActionController::Request
    def self.relative_url_root=(path)
      ActionController::Base.relative_url_root=(path)
    end
    def self.relative_url_root
      ActionController::Base.relative_url_root
    end
  end
end
###################

Pretty nifty, huh? I think I came up with that myself, but can’t remember, maybe I got it from somewhere else, but I’m surprised that it wasn’t already google-able, it’s such a nifty solution which seemed to work fine as far as I can remember. Maybe cause everybody has already moved over to passenger, and nobody cares anymore.

Filed under: General

From the catalogs of babes: Ivy

Fri, 29 Jan 2010 00:06:19 +0000

Dear Readers,

I’m looking for concrete examples of libraries currently using alternative classification schema (i.e., not DDC or LCC) for some reasearch I’m doing regarding our library’s reclassification project. BISAC, Bliss, Colon, locally-designed, home-grown, what-have-you are all okay. Examples of academic libraries (regardless of size and specialty) are preferred, as are corporate libraries. Not so much on the public libraries (I’ve already noted Maricopa County and the other public libraries recently featured in the press) but I’ll take whatever I can get. Beggars can’t be choosers, and all.

If any of you faithful readers out there know of any examples, please leave a comment with any info you have and you will earn my undying gratitude (at least for now, until the next project…)

With sincere thanks,

your friendly neighborhood cataloging librarian

Ohio State University Libraries Non-Roman Cataloging Blog: Parallel records with language of cataloging code in WorldCat

Thu, 28 Jan 2010 19:25:04 +0000

Avoid creating “hybrid records” by revising the master record with different language-based data elements

One of typical cases is that N5L (=National Library of China) original MARC records having 040 $b “chi” which should mean that the record represents the Chinese language “cataloged” bibliographic record. These records usually contain the 300 field with Chinese script data, and may also contain 500 note fields with Chinese script data. These master records should not be changed into the English-language cataloged record by editing the 300 field and 500 note fields with English texts.

DO NOT revise the record, instead, please create a new English-language cataloged version of the record. The Chinese version record and the English-version record for the same bibliographic entity are not considered duplicate records but they are parallel records to each other. The 040 $b coding such as “chi” or “eng” is for the language of cataloging of that record.

For details, read Ms Hisako Kotaka, OCLC message posted on CEAL list serve.

First Person Narrative (Anne Welsh): Collaboration, Collaboration, Collaboration

Thu, 28 Jan 2010 18:52:48 +0000

After a busy teaching term before Christmas, this term is almost entirely about the research. This is one of the things that scared me most when I accepted a full-time academic post. Not the research itself, but the research environment.

Until April I was part of the tight-knit Research & Development Department at Moorfields, working as part of the even tighter Eyes & Vision Specialist Library (now NHS Evidence – Eyes and Vision). When we worked on research projects (such as the research we carried out identifying and appraising the last ten years’ systematic reviews in eye health), it was very much a team effort – Clinical Lead, Co-ordinator and Information Specialist (me). I was concerned that moving into academe from practice, I would be expected to operate as a solo scholar, and would end up looking and feeling a bit like the guy in the picture top-right (minus the crown, but maybe not the moustache).

In the event, nothing could be further from the truth. As well as finishing The Book with my co-author Sue (supported by our brilliant publisher Helen), I’ve been able to get involved in a couple of group projects through the good offices of my Head of Department and the generosity of two senior colleagues.

The first few weeks of the year have been a flurry of trips to Reading to interview participants in the LinkSphere project with my office-mate Claire. It’s been really great to be part of a team again, and even more exciting as it’s all happening right at the birth of the Centre for Digital Humanities:

Digital Humanities research … aims to produce computational applications and models which make possible new kinds of research both in humanities disciplines and in computer science and its allied technologies. It also studies the impact of these new techniques on cultural heritage, memory institutions, libraries, archives and digital culture.

The Centre’s first paper is up on the website for comment:

Ross, C., Terras, M., Warwick, C. and Welsh, A. Enabled backchannel: conference Twitter use by Digital Humanists. Draft for comment. January 2010.

We’ve submitted it to a peer-reviewed journal, but ahead of that, if you want to feedback on the findings, you can do so on the Centre’s blog or, in keeping with the subject of the paper, by tweeting a reply to @UCLDH.

Thanks to Mel and Claire and Claire for welcoming me to the Department and letting me be part of their team.

[Just to reiterate, the opinions expressed in this blog are solely my own and do not reflect that of my department, colleagues and collaborators, or the final conclusions of any research in which I am taking part]

Filed under: articles, collaborative working, diary, Digital Humanities, linksphere, microblogging, references, reflections, scholarly communication, social software Tagged: linksphere, Twitter, UCLDH

Thingology (LibraryThing's ideas blog): Library Anywhere Prices (Public!)

noreply@blogger.com (Abby) — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 15:20:07 +0000

As we announced last week at ALA Midwinter, we're about to come out with "Library Anywhere"—a mobile catalog for any library. In short, it provides a mobile catalog, both mobile web and native apps (see the handout).

Price List. We promised that Library Anywhere wouldn't just be cheap, but that we would have published prices. This is a pretty big deal in the library world, where wiggly, negotiable prices and hidden formulae are the norm.

LibraryThing Anywhere Price List!

We key off buildings and locations, to be as dead-simple as possible. It's an annual subscription fee.

Schools
$150, plus $50 for each additional location

Public libraries
$350 for main library, plus $50 per branch

Two and four-year colleges
$750, plus $150 for each additional library building

Universities
$1,000, plus $150 for each additional library building

We're confident this is 1/4 to 1/2 the price of our competition. This makes us very happy. It should also be a good deal better.

Beta Libraries Wanted. We're still looking for beta libraries, especially for some systems. Contact abby@librarything.com if interested.

For ordering information contact Peder Christensen at Bowker—toll-free at 877-340-2400 or email Peder.Christensen@bowker.com.

Cataloging Futures: Faviki: a controlled vocabulary tagging tool

Thu, 28 Jan 2010 12:42:49 +0000

Yesterday, a cataloger friend of mine mentioned this tagging tool: Faviki, which according to its blog is:

A social bookmarking tool that allows you to tag webpages you want to remember using Wikipedia terms. This means that everybody uses the same names for tags from the world's largest collection of knowledge. [emphasis added]

What Faviki calls "common tagging" is a move away from free tagging to the use of a common vocabulary. Looks like the web is turning us all into catalogers :)

International Society for Knowledge Organization (ISKO) UK: Professor Brian Vickery 1918 - 2009

noreply@blogger.com (Aida Slavic) — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 12:32:55 +0000

We are very sorry to announce the death of Professor Brian Vickery on October 17th 2009, shortly after his 91st birthday.Brian was an enormously influential figure in the field of classification and information retrieval, a powerful force in the development of faceted classification and retrieval theory, and a prolific writer and researcher throughout his life. A founder member of the

The FRBR Blog: Last week in FRBR #13

wtd@pobox.com (William Denton) — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 06:48:51 +0000

Assunção, FRBR and Music Uniform Title

Maria Clara Assunção has a paper called “FRBR and Music Uniform Title” in Páginas a & b 2:4 (2009), pp. 143-153.

The concepts of “work” and “expression” introduced by FRBR model, have particular implications for the rationale behind the construction of music uniform titles and can help to significantly improve the identification of musical works through this cataloguing resource. This study results from the practical need to establish a set of effective criteria in the development of uniform titles for musical works of a diverse nature, mostly of doubtful identification, often handwritten and sometimes anonymous. This paper aims to contribute to clarify this vital resource in the cataloguing of music but often avoided or misapplied.

LibraryThing, A FRBR Model of Publishers

I spent some time cleaning out my inbox. At work I’ve been doing Inbox Zero for a long time and it’s an enormous help, but my personal mailbox had a bunch of stuff in it that was dragging me down, so I started deleting. One thing I found was from Tim “Mr. LibraryThing” Spalding, sent in May 2009, pointing out a discussion on the LT site: A FRBR Model of of Publishers.

As many know, LibraryThing has a concept of “works” being composed of editions. And we have author and tag aliases.

Together, these concepts resemble what librarians call the FRBR model, and its siblings FRAR, FRSAR, FRBRoo, and FR-lama-lama-ding-dong.

Now, I want to do publishers. That is, I want to have pages for publishers.

This requires some model of how publishers are. An ideal model would understand that HarperCollins used to be called Harper Collins, that Collins is an imprint of HarperCollins, but was an independent company, etc. Truly publishers and imprints are much worse than authors or works. They’re a river you can’t step in twice and that calls itself a stream the next day. Also the river is only really significant insofar as books float down it. And there are beavers making dams, and fish and… Okay, not the last part.

So, does anyone have any advice on this problem? What does FRBR look like when applied to publishers, imprints and etc.?

I don’t know if this lead anywhere. To my surprise, even for the new Stephen King, Under the Dome, no publisher is listed in the Common Knowledge section. (It’s Scribner.) I had a look at a few books and didn’t see a Publisher field on any of them. I don’t know what’s going on there, or where Tim got with this, but that’s what happens when you let email sit around for eight months and then feel bad about not dealing with it.

The Cataloguing Librarian: How users find the library catalogue

Thu, 28 Jan 2010 03:30:23 +0000

I have been doing a lot of reading lately on library catalogues and the future of the library catalogue as I write my book. With the amount of information that I’ve read, and the seemingly endless amount of literature on the subject, I fluctuate between extreme excitement for our future, frustration at the slow [...]

Metadata Matters (Diane Hillmann): The RDA Vocabularies, Continued

Wed, 27 Jan 2010 17:16:29 +0000

One of my favorite aphorisms is “Time flies, whether you’re having fun or not.” I’m not sure where I heard it, but for sure I’m not creative enough to make it up on my own. The truth of it has been reinforced by the realization that here it is the end of January, post-Boston Midwinter, and I’ve done so little blogging for the past six months that it’s a stretch to call myself a blogger. Time to reclaim the turf. So this post is an attempt to summarize what I’ve been doing all that time, some of which has come to a sort of fruition, but some still ripening.

Last fall I participated as a speaker in a NISO Webinar “Bibliographic Control Alphabet Soup.” I decided for my topic to talk about some of the issues around building the RDA vocabularies from spreadsheets and ERDs (Entity Relationship Diagrams), which is what I had to work with on that task. (You can see the ERDs on the RDAOnline website). Part of my reason for trying to tackle those issues in the webinar is that the vocabularies had become a major focus of my working life for quite a while (does the word ‘obsessive’ sound too dramatic?) At the time, we (Jon Phipps, Karen Coyle, Gordon Dunsire and I) were also trying to write an article about what we’d done with the RDA elements and vocabularies, and that article came out last week in DLib Magazine. Starting the article last fall prompted me to create some diagrams in an attempt to try and convey the structure of these vocabularies, and to provide examples for folks to look at while they puzzle through the ideas. I used a subset of the diagrams in the webinar as well, but most of them are used to better purpose in the article. I’m not at all sure that the several hundred folks listening in to the webinar got much of what I was trying to convey—it’s pretty new stuff for most people, and I was trying to fit too much into my limit of 20 minutes (not nearly enough time). I hope that for those who might have been overwhelmed or confused by the webinar, the article will help to make the work we’ve done a bit clearer.

The writers of the article had a number of purposes in mind, not least to document the decisions and rationale for the strategies taken by the DCMI/RDA Task Group charged with the work of building the vocabularies. Given that the library community generally has little experience with RDF and RDF vocabularies, it seemed particularly important to attempt to provide explanations that we hoped would be accessible to most librarians, and I hope we’ll have sufficient feedback to determine how close we came to that goal. Given that we expected the article to come out just after Midwinter, we did most of our presentations in Boston on the implications of the vocabularies rather than the mechanics. I talked about these at the Technical Services ‘Big Heads’ meeting (slides) and Jon, Karen and I included some of these expectations in our introduction to application profiles at CC:DA on Monday (slides).

Just before Midwinter we started a dialogue with the JSC about next steps, and I hope that some of the issues that have come up will be open to public discussion, just as the vocabulary building was done in public. We’re all in a fairly intense learning space at the moment (at least it seems so to me), and keeping the process open and visible for all seems in support of that learning. We’re also continuing to update the vocabularies as errors are brought to our attention, and to complete portions where we need to add information. One such point in the property/subproperty hierarchies in the element sets—at the time the work was done there was a limitation in the Registry software that prevented us from including the proper hierarchies in both the general and FRBR-bounded portions of the vocabularies. That limitation is now removed, and the missing relationships will be added.

Interestingly, we’re getting lots of help in finding errors from our friends in Germany, who are doing nifty things with the vocabularies. They’ve been particularly helpful with things like inadvertent spaces introduced in URIs and other things difficult for a human proofreader to find. Because we don’t have good ways (yet) to visualize the relationships, their help has been invaluable. We urge anyone else who spots an error or who has a question to use our feedback button in the Registry to communicate with us about their concern.

The Cataloguing Librarian: What is professionalism?

Wed, 27 Jan 2010 14:30:49 +0000

In view of my last post – and the contradicting sentiments reflected in the comments, I thought I’d explore the concept of professionalism and professional conduct with the express purpose of how an attitude of superiority or arrogance can assist/impact professions and professionals. My last post centered on personal conduct and professionalism in how [...]

Catalogablog: Cataloging Exhibition Publications

noreply@blogger.com (David) — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 12:01:31 +0000

Cataloging Exhibition Publications: Best Practices by the Art Libraries Society of North America provides useful guidance for these materials.

Catalogablog: Additions to the MARC Code Lists for Relators, Sources, Description Conventions

noreply@blogger.com (David) — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 10:16:17 +0000

The codes listed below have been recently approved for use in MARC 21 records. The codes will be added to MARC Code Lists for Relators, Sources, Description Conventions.

The codes should not be used in exchange records until after March 26, 2010. This 60-day waiting period is required to provide MARC 21 implementers time to include newly-defined codes in any validation tables they may apply to the MARC fields where the codes are used.

Other Sources

Field 034 (Coded Cartographic Mathematical Data) The following code is for use in subfield $2 in field 034 (Coded Cartographic Mathematical Data) in the Authority and Bibliographic formats.

Addition:

wikiped: Wikipedia

Term, Name, Title Sources

The following codes are for use in subfield $2 in fields 600-657 (Subject Added Entries/Index Terms) in Bibliographic and Community Information records; subfield 662 (Subject Added Entry) in Bibliographic records; subfield $2 in fields 700-754 (Added Entry Fields) in Bibliographic records; subfield $2 in fields 700-754 (Index Terms) in Classification records; subfield $2 in fields 700-788 (Heading Linking Entries) in Authority records; and subfield $f in field 040 (Cataloging Source) in Authority records.

Additions:

bjornson: Bjornson: emneord for Bjornsonbibliografien
hamsun: Hamsun: emneord for Hamsunbibliografien
netc: National Emergency Training Center Thesaurus (NETC)
stw: Standard-Thesaurus Wirtschaft = STW Thesaurus for Economics (Kiel: ZBW - Deutsche Zentralbibliothek fur Wirtschaftswissenschaften)

The following code was previously defined for usage in subfield $2 in fields 600-651 (Subject Added Entries/Index Terms) in Bibliographic records and and in subfield $f in field 040 (Cataloging Source) in Authority records.

Usage has been expanded. It may now be used in subfield $2 in fields 600-657 (Subject Added Entries/Index Terms) in Bibliographic and Community Information records; subfield $2 in field 662 (Subject Added Entry) in Bibliographic records; records; subfield $2 in fields 700-754 (Added Entry Fields) in Bibliographic records; subfield $2 in fields 700-754 (Index Terms) in Classification records; and subfield $2 in fields 700-788 (Heading Linking Entries) in Authority records.

rasuqam: Repertoire d'autorites-sujet de l'UQAM [use in expanded fields only after March 26, 2010]

First Person Narrative (Anne Welsh): ResearchBlogging.org

Tue, 26 Jan 2010 23:13:04 +0000

This year I’m taking a module from UCL’s Postgraduate Certificate in Learning and Teaching in Higher Education which has been really useful for meeting new lecturing staff from other departments.

Tomorrow we have to present a piece of research from our own subject area that deals with an element of teaching or learning research. I’ve chosen Kate Marek’s recent paper in the Journal for Library and Information Science on ‘Learning to teach online’. I chose it for this assignment because it covers a topic that’s important in LIS but also of interest across the faculties.

Marek conducted an online survey of LIS faculty in US universities in order to establish the support they receive and the support they perceive they need. Specifically, she asked

What support structures exist in LIS programs and their institutions to help faculty develop new skills in online course design, delivery and content? (p.279)

296 faculty members replied to Marek’s questionnaire, with the majority coming from institutions with over 10,000 students (p.280), and the most frequent form of support available was peer-to-peer training (63%) followed by university IT workshops (58%). Formal training lagged some way behind – only 44% had received university training and 20% through the LIS programme (table 2, p.281).

This is interesting, since Marek points out in her literature review that Harman in a 2008 study

cautions against this sort of dependence on the innovation and energy of a few [peer-to-peer support], citing short-lived and spotty progress, inconsistent results, and limitations of scale across the institution. (p.278).

Indeed, Marek’s respondent’s listed course attendance as their “chief need” in preparing for online teaching, although “only 13% of respondents to this survey report its abailability.” (p.287). The need for consistent IT support and the availability of hardware, software and training for it is also important, as well as conference attendance (p.288).

Marek concludes:

As the number of courses delivered online continues to increase, faculty members must gain enhanced pedagogical skills for online learning environments. Universities should see their commitment to faculty development in this area as a significant investment in institutional quality. (p.289).

This paper is really useful in highlighting the literature on the subject and providing some quantitative data on the sort of needs that LIS lecturers have expressed regarding online learning. From the UK perspective, where library schools and teaching staff are fewer in number, it is helpful to see a survey of a large sample of US colleagues, although, of course, some things would inevitably be different in a local setting.

I also hope that the paper will be accessible to my non-LIS colleagues tomorrow morning in our PGCLTHE class.

Ref

Kate Marek (2009). Learning to teach online: creating a culture of support for faculty Journal of Education for Library and Information Science, 50 (4), 275-292

Posted in ILS education, reflections, research blogging, UCL PGCLTHE Tagged: blended learning, education, Kate Marek, online learning

Catalogablog: Mobile App for the Catalog

noreply@blogger.com (David) — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 13:50:52 +0000

LibraryThing has announced a low-cost mobile app for the catalog, Library Anywhere.