Planet Cataloging

Marin Weller of the Open University has an interesting paragraph in a blog post about his new role as director of the SocialLearn project. He talks about a desire to be open in communicating the progress of the initiative and soliciting input .... which prompts this thought:

... it's easy to be a blogger when you don't have much responsibility, but it strikes me that the as your official responsibility increases so the the amount of stuff you can happily blog about decreases proportionally. So, for the sake of the project I may find that I can say less and less about it. But I hope not, and my default position is to be open as we go along. [The Ed Techie: SocialLearn Director]

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The Earl Gregg Swem Library has announced the release of it's Facebook application, Swem Tools to the open source community.

Released under the Apache 2.0 license, the project, Facebook Athenaeum, allows libraries to quickly develop and customize a Facebook application that provides a searching interface for a library's catalog, website, databases, or any other search target, pull RSS feeds, and provide users with the ability to show friends their location in the library.

Requirements for the application are relatively light. A set of floor plans in image form, a database compatible with the Pear DB package (MySQL, MSSQL, PostgreSQL, Oracle, etc), and PHP 5.

One of the challenges of our current environment is that there are still activities (and standards) associated with our traditional role in managing physical resources, in addition to those associated with our newer, sexier digital activities. The standard addressed in this post, ISO 11800, Book binding materials and methods, up for systematic review, is one of those that hark back to simpler times, but still retains importance to us as librarians.

According to the announcement Cindy forwarded, “This International Standard addresses publishers and book manufacturers. It also addresses acquisition librarians and archivists with a view to informing library and archival staff about the good physical properties they should expect in the books they acquire for public use.”

As is generally the case with ISO reviews, ALA members willing to review this document should apply to Cindy directly at HSLcindy@buffalo.edu for an electronic copy of the standard (I’d appreciate it if you copy me at metadata.maven@gmail.com as well). Our vote options are Confirm (as is), Revise/Amend, Withdraw (the standard), or Abstain (from the vote). Comments are required for all votes other than Confirm. In the absence of other recommendations, ALA will recommend that NISO vote to confirm ‘ISO 11800, Book binding materials and methods’ (with comments, if any).

Cindy asks that comments be forwarded to her by Nov. 27, 2008.

Diane Hillmann
LITA Standards Coordinator

My previous Standards Watch posting was for a standard of somewhat limited interest, but this next one is far more generally applicable to our work. It would be great to see some review of this standard by ALA members (particularly LITA members) with some interest in this area. As usual, this call was forwarded to us by Cindy Hepfer, who is the ALA Voting representative to NISO. Cindy notes in her message that this is looking like a particularly active period of time for NISO, and as a member of NISO’s Content and Collection Management Topic Committee, I can confirm that this is indeed the case and we’ll be seeing lots more review requests in the coming months.

This call is for ISO 11799:2003, Document storage requirements for archive and library materials, undergoing a systematic review. Our vote options are Confirm (as is), Revise/Amend, Withdraw (the standard), or Abstain (from the vote). Comments are required for all votes other than Confirm.
According to the introduction in the standard: “This International Standard applies to the long-term storage of archive and library materials, but takes into account that, as the materials are stored to allow current use as well, some compromise with the ideal conditions for long-term storage may be unavoidable.”

As is usual in these ISO reviews, ALA members should contact Cindy directly at HSLcindy@buffalo.edu if they would like to review the standard in response to this call (I’d appreciate being copied, if you’re responding as a result of this post).

Comments are due to Cindy by Nov. 25, 2008.

Cindy Hepfer, ALA Voting representative to NISO has notified us that there is a systematic review ballot of ISO 233-2:1993, Arabic simplified transliteration, going on at this time.

The formal name of the published standard is ISO 233-2:1993, Information and documentation - Transliteration of Arabic characters into Latin characters - Part 2: Arabic language – Simplified transliteration.

According to the Scope statement in the standard: “This part of IS0 233 establishes a simplified system for the transliteration of Arabic characters into Latin characters. This simplification of the stringent rules established by IS0 233:1984 is especially intended to facilitate the processing of bibliographic information (e.g. catalogues, indices, citations, etc.).”

As is usually the case with these ballots, ALA is not voting on the standard itself but rather is providing feedback to NISO as to whether to approve or disapprove the standard. Our vote options are Confirm (as is), Revise/Amend, Withdraw (the standard), or Abstain (from the vote). Comments are required for all votes other than Confirm. NISO will review and consider this feedback prior to submitting the U.S. vote.

Because we cannot provide links to ISO documents directly, those ALA members desiring to review the standards for the purposes of advising ALA should contact Cindy directly at HSLcindy@buffalo.edu (I’d appreciate being copied, if you’re responding as a result of this post). In the absence of other recommendations, ALA will recommend that NISO vote to confirm ‘ISO 233: 1883′ (with comments, if any).

Comments are due to Cindy by Nov. 24, 2008.

Diane Hillmann
LITA Standards Coordinator

Experienced cataloger and cataloging teacher, Brigid Burke, shares her thoughts about the future of cataloging in The Grim Outlook for Cataloging. In this long and thoughtful post, she critiques the development of the new cataloging code, RDA, and questions the need to shift catalogers' skill set to IT competencies.

So, the future of cataloging looks bleak and confusing. We have a new set of standards and tools being put in place that don't seem very revolutionary, and yet the hype says they are. ... If anyone wants career advancement, they will have to deal with administrators who will believe ALA's tripe about competencies, and no one will hire you if you're not a programmer/Web designer. Librarianship will not be about handling books any longer, even though libraries will continue to buy them.

====================
OUTLINE
I. Call number fields

1. Difference between 050 and 090 fields
2. Sub-fields and punctuation issues

II. Subject Heading fields

1. Types of Subject Headings
2. LC Subject Headings and “quasi-LC Subject Headings”
3. Subfields

III. Correlation
====================

I. Call number fields

• At OSUL, we assign call numbers according to the Library of Congress Call Number (LCC) system
• In a MARC record, there are two kinds of call number fields for LCC: 050 and 090
• The 050 field is for call numbers assigned either directly by Library of Congress catalogers or someone else on the level of assigning a LC Call number. When we create new record, we do not use the 050 field, instead, we use the 090 field.
• The 090 field is for “locally assigned LC-type call number,” which means call numbers assigned by us according to LCC.

In copy-cataloging

• when you find a record that (1) has only a 050 call number and (2) the form of that call number agrees with our local practice, accept that 050 field. This call number will be the call number we use for shelving.
• at time when you find a record that (1) has only a 050 call number but (2) the form of that call number does not agree with our local practice, leave the 050 field alone, add a 090 field and put there the call number modified according to our local practice. For instance, if you see
  050 _ _ DS912.382.C48 $b C47 2007 $b Z54
  leave it alone, and add a 090 field following it, your record will look like this:
  050 _ _ DS912.382.C48 $b C47 2007 $b Z54
  090 _ _ DS912.382.C48 $b C47 2007
• By default, the OPAC system (i.e. OSCAR) will automatically select the call number in the second call number field!

II. Subject Heading fields

정조
안동시

III. Classification (Call number) and Subject Heading Correlation

• We can assign more than one Subject Headings for a single publication. Totally, we can have 6 Subject Headings in a bib record.
• The Classification is correlated with the first Subject Heading. In other words, assign a call number according to the first Subject Heading in a bib record.
• Therefore, if a bib record has more than one Subject Heading fields, the first one should contain the major Subject Heading assigned for the publication. And the call number is determined by that Subject Heading.
• In case if a work treats two subjects eaqually, the subject comes first will be the first Subject Heading.
  For instance, if a book is titled
  “Modern Mathematics and Western Philosophy,”
  put mathematics in the first Subject Heading field, provide secondary headings for western philosophy, and assign a call number for modern mathematics.
• We do not have to assign Subject Headings for a fiction. In other words, a bib record made for a fiction may only have a call number.

OCLC is conducting a beta test of the WorldCat Copyright Evidence Registry.

The WorldCat Copyright Evidence Registry (CER) is a community of people, libraries, and other organizations working together to discover and share information about the copyright status of books.

The Copyright Evidence Registry is based on WorldCat, which contains more than 100 million bibliographic records describing items held in thousands of libraries worldwide. In addition to the WorldCat metadata, the Copyright Evidence Registry uses data contributed by libraries and other organizations.

You can search the Copyright Evidence Registry to find information about a book, learn what others have said about its copyright status, and share what you know.

If your library or organization is a Copyright Evidence Registry subscriber, you can run automated copyright rules that you create in the Copyright Evidence Registry to conform to your standards for determining copyright status. The rules help you analyze the information available in the Copyright Evidence Registry and form your own conclusions about copyright status.

Also, you can receive an e-mail notification when information about a book changes within the Copyright Evidence Registry.

“Oversize overrides the shelving rules.”

If a book is over 30 cm in height (or width), it will be treated as an oversized book, and shelved at a designated area in the library no matter what call number it is assigned. Each branch library will decide where to put the oversized items.

You need to do two things when cataloging an oversized item:

1. On the item record, choose the location code for oversized items.
2. Mark an asterisk beside the classification when you write call number on the piece.

There’s no special treatment on the bibliographic record.

Have you been too busy to read the Resource Description and Access (RDA) drafts? In RDA: a cataloguing code for the 21st century, Ann Chapman provides an overview of what to expect from the new cataloging code. She does a good job laying out some of the changes that will come with RDA.

Via First Person Narrative

Interesting story on TIme.com from the Hitwise folks about Twitter demographics.

I figured that the service would appeal exclusively to youngsters with nothing better to do. The user data, however, tell me I'm wrong, and reveal a very specific user profile: for example, males make up 63% of Twitterers, specifically males from California, whose residents account for more than 57% of Twitter's visitors. More interestingly, the age demographics of Twitterers show a dramatic shift. When the site became popular in early 2007, the majority of its visitors were 18-to-24-year-olds. Today the site's largest age demographic is 35-to-44-year-olds, who make up 25.9% of its users. [Even Gen X is aTwitter - TIME]

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

The codes should not be used in exchange records until after October 22, 2008. 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.

Category Code Source

The following code is for use in subfield $2 in field 072 (Subject Category Code/Code Source) in Authority and Bibliographic records.

Addition:

kkaa

Kokoelmien kuvailun aihealueet (Kokoelmakartta) [PDF: 9 KB; requires a PDF reader to view] [use only after October 22, 2008]

Classification Sources

The following codes are for use in subfield $2 in field 084 in Bibliographic and Community Information records (Other Classification Number), in subfield $2 in field 084 in Classification records (Classification Scheme and Edition) and in subfield $2 in field 065 in Authority records (Other Classification Number).

Additions:

bar

Barnard, Cyril C. A classification for medical and veterinary libraries. (London: H.K. Lewis) [use only after October 22, 2008]

ekl

Eduskunnan kirjaston luokitus = Library of Parliament Classification [use only after October 22, 2008]

finagri

Finagri-luokitus (Helsinki: Maatalouskirjasto - Agricultural
Library) [use only after October 22, 2008]

kuvacs

Kuvataideakatemian kirjaston luokitusjarjestelma = Finnish Academy of Fine Arts Library Classification (Helsinki: Kuvataideakatemian
kirjasto) [use only after October 22, 2008]

mpkkl

Maanpuolustuskorkeakoulun kirjaston luokitusjarjestelma [use only after October 22, 2008]

siblcs

Sibelius-Akatemian kirjaston luokitusjarjestelma = Sibelius Academy Library classification system [use only after October 22, 2008]
Note: arranged in two sections:

Sibelius-Akatemian kirjaston luokitusjarjestelma - kirjojen luokitus = Sibelius Academy Library classification system - book classification scheme
Sibelius-Akatemian kirjaston luokitusjarjestelma - nuottien luokitus = Sibelius Academy Library classification system - sheet music classification scheme

suaslc

Seinajoen korkeakoulukirjaston luokitus (Seinajoki: Seinajoen korkeakoulukirjaston luokitus) [use only after October 22, 2008]

taikclas

Taideteollisen korkeakoulun kirjaston luokitus = University of Art and Design Helsinki Library Classification [use only after October 22, 2008]

taykl

Tampereen yliopiston kirjaston luokitus: Systemaattinen osa & Aakkosellinen osa (Tampere: Tampereen yliopisto) [use only after October 22, 2008]

teatkl

Teatterikorkeakoulun kirjaston luokitusopas [use only after October 22, 2008]

tykoma

Turun yliopiston kirjaston vanha luokitus [use only after October 22, 2008]

veera

VEERA-luokitus = VEERA-Klassifikatsiia [use only after October 22, 2008]

I take a brief aside from the typical fare of this blog to announce the birth of my son, Titus Theophilus Brinley. At 1:05 Sunday afternoon, Stephanie delivered a healthy, beautiful, 7 lb., 3 oz., baby boy.

Welcome to the world, Titus. Say hello to all the nice people on the Internet.

Today's muffin (vegan as always) is a cupcake! In celebration of my 1st anniversary at MPOW, we had an extra special batch of carrot cupcakes with creamy-cheeze frosting (how I did it vegan style is a trade secret).

Today's metadata movie: The Clanger's Guide to Microformats . At some point we'd like to experiment with microformats and other ways of enhancing the metadata in CODA, our institutional repository.

You've likely already heard that OCLC has released a new report on library advocacy.  But today, I'm wishing that the previous one had gotten more attention from the library community. Sharing, Privacy and Trust in Our Networked World got some serious attention from the social networking cliques, but I was really hoping that it would open the dialog about privacy expectations some more.

I attended a lecture on privacy at NCSU once where the speaker mentioned that we are living in a climate where most undergraduates would trade a DNA sample for an Extra Value Meal.  A nice throw-away line, but one that sets up a value proposition for libraries.  We could certainly ask for less than DNA and offer more than a Big Mac and fries.

I started wondering why library software applications and services don't work more like the privacy settings in a web browser.  By default, even Microsoft wants to be diligent in protecting my privacy, but the software gives my organization the ability to adjust the level to its liking.  In turn, my organization can decide to extend that benefit to me as much as it sees fit, making determinations about how much it needs to protect itself and how much I can be trusted to protect myself.

Picture options like this:



I remain baffled as to why most libraries will only let patrons share their library data outside of libraries.  I'm equally baffled as to why patrons don't demand that they be allowed to do so.

Sorry for the long gap between cows...I had some technical difficulties that were making it hard for me to blog.  On with it...

I've been thinking about one of the most bloated sacred cows in library management systems.  No, not the MARC record--I'll leave that one to others.  I'm talking about Circulation Rules.  It's become almost cliche to compare what we do in libraries (and this accusation is pointed primarily at academic libraries) to a typical commercial customer service.

Picture me at the Blockbuster checkout desk.

Me: Hi, I'm visiting here for the next six months and was wondering if I could check out your movies.
BB: Um.  Can you verify your residency to prove that I should trust you?
Me: Yes.  Here is a signed affidavit from the CEO of my company who moved me here.  He can vouch for my credibility.
BB: Yeah, okay.  I can make you a "visiting resident with special privileges."  You'll get movies for 3 days fewer than other "regular" customers.  Oh, and you can't check out new releases or games.  I'll need your Social Security number and a permanent billing address just in case we need to bill you.
Me: Is there any way I can get regular privileges?
BB: Um, well....no.
Me: How many other users have this kind of borrowing privilege.
BB: You're the only one.  We add profiles for people like you one at a time.

Who are we helping by ensuring that the professor emeritus in veterinary medicine gets bound periodicals for 3 days more than a full professor?  I'm starting to find Amazon's delivery options confusing and there are only 3 or 4 of them?  Why must we complicate something that could be so simple?  Without disparaging the gargantuan effort that was the Evergreen ILS development in Georgia, the real victory, I think, was the creation universal borrowing rules.

Take a hard look at those systems, folks.  Are all those item types really helping?  Are all those patron categories useful beyond reporting usage statistics that rarely lead to any business intelligence decisions?  Is it time to simplify?

Though I heard it in a much different context once, I like to apply something from religion to the world of libraries (don't worry).  Preparing the congregation for a "radical change," a senior pastor told his flock: "There's a difference between 'tradition' and 'traditionalism'."  Tradition is what we do all the time and for some good reason.  Traditionalism is what we do all the time but we can no longer recall the reason.  I think libraries excel at traditionalism, and I have been giving quite a bit of thought to the processes we use to perpetuate it.  

In the first two posts in this series, I have attacked services and policies, both of which are strongly supported by the traditionalism of system migration.  I find it insanely ironic that after long RFP and shopping processes to improve our lot, the first step in migrating from one system to another is to ensure that the new system works just like the old one did (the other irony is that the first post-migration step is to beatify the old system that was once so hated).

More often than not, a libary system vendor will send a consultant onsite with a big spreadsheet and a large group (mostly librarians, of course) will sit around and cram old policies into that new spreadsheet.  Rarely would the vendor propose a standard list of item types, languages, or circulation policies.  No, each library is unique, just as each libraries patrons are unique.  Right then.

Next, the catalogers and IT professionals debate indexing rules.  We don't want to have to re-index this database any time in the next 5-10 years, so let's make these decisions stick (thankfully, a new generation of online catalogs is already tipping this cow).  Once we've determined all the stuff that will hold us for the next decade and replicated all of the traditional policies, it's time for the 'data fretting' to start.

"What do you mean I can't migrate Acquisitions Code #1 from my old system to the new one?  If code #1 equals 'a' then I know that it was purchased from that special fund created by Professor Styckndamud in 1962!  Someone might ask for a report on that fund!"  Granted, we do indeed use some of these data (some more often than MARC data, which flows to and fro between systems like it was designed for data transfer instead of public display...oh, wait...).

So we load the data, and we load it again, and again, and again.  Rarely do we ask ourselves how much we need those data.  Take it from someone who has done two coast-to-coast moves, and just completed my 6th house move in a dozen years...asking "do I really need this" is a useful exercise.  We like to think that because it is data, it's intangible nature makes it's movement and storage simple, but even data has a cost that often far exceeds its value.

I'm not suggesting that changing systems should be as easy as flipping a switch.  I am suggesting, however, that it should be more akin to profiling online services than building a system from scratch.  We're in the mood for change these days, it seems.  New systems are the at the beginning of change.  New interfaces are at the other end of the change.  Let's play both sides against the middle and see what we can do about changing the way we change.

Here is another entry from my colleague Janifer Gatenby, who works at the OCLC Leiden office. In her OCLC role, Janifer--a frequent speaker and standards specialist--identifies trends and opportunities for Web data services and system interoperation. One of her current projects involves leveraging the power of standard library identifiers in the Web 2.0 environment. Identifers are key elements in moving data from different systems to the network level and achieving interoperability. Janifer deals with the larger topic of data sharing and interoperability in her just published open access article, "The Networked Service Layer: Sharing Data for More Effective Management and Cooperation."

-------------------------------------------------------

My passport number is my identifier.  The passport also carries metadata that identifies me, but not necessarily uniquely, because someone else could have the same name, birth place and date.  In this case, more elements are needed to distinguish me from another person, such as my photograph.  As the number of elements required for uniqueness can vary, once identity is established, an identifier is applied for future ease.  Thus it is hard to imagine a passport without a passport number, even if, strictly speaking, it is usually not simply numeric but an alpha numeric string.  In a database, an identifier is used for identity in preference to an ensemble of descriptive elements.  Unique identifiers provide direct access to records and are of fundamental importance in eliminating duplicates both from a database and from incoming records.

 

Identifiers are important in the commercial world, having a key role in distribution, promotion, rights management and copyright protection.  In England in 1967, the SBN (Standard Book Number) was established by J. Whitaker & Sons (now part of Nielsen BookData, publishers of British Books in Print.    The following year, this identifier became the ISBN (International Standard Book Number), now arguably the best recognized identifier in the bibliographic world.  This identifier, produced by the book trade is used for collecting sales statistics and remunerating publishers and authors alike.  ISO, the International Standards Organization, has since approved and published a whole gamut of international identifiers as complements to the ISBN.  Their list of identifiers consists of:

 

• ISBN (ISO 2108).  Monographs - manifestation level
• ISSN (ISO 3297[1]).  Serials - manifestation level, but also used at the work level)
• ISMN (ISO 10957[2]).  Music - manifestation level
• ISWC (ISO 15707[3]). Music - work level
• ISTC (ISO 21047[4]).  Text - work level
• ISRC (ISO 3901[5]).  Sound recordings - manifestation level
• ISAN (ISO 15706[6]). Audio-visual - work level
• V-ISAN (ISO 15706-2).  Audio-visual - manifestation level
• ISIL (ISO 15511[7]) Libraries
• ISNI (DIS 27729) Name identifier - currently in progress
• ISCI (CD  27730) Collections - currently in progress
• DOI (Digital object identifier) - currently in progress

NISO, the North American standards body, is also involved in identifier standards, in particular a work item in progress for an institution identifier for all organisations involved in the supply chain of serial publications.

 

All the ISO standards with the exception of the ISIL and the ISCI are identifiers created for the purpose of underpinning commercial trade. These ISO identifier standards only cover materials where somebody has applied for an identifier, and the application process can be expensive.  Thus within the WorldCat database it is estimated that only 30% of the resources represented have international identifiers.  For the so called "long tail" of resources of little or no commercial value, only quasi official identifiers exist such as the Library of Congress Control Number (LCCN) or the OCLC number. However, identifiers are becoming increasingly important in the Internet environment as a means to access identical resources in multiple sites and hence the identifiers need to be unique on a global scale.  They also need to be capable of being embedded within a URL (Uniform Resource Locator). URLs themselves are addresses and very poor identifiers, because they are both location specific and are volatile, changing frequently.  This has led to the emergence of resolution systems that link from identifiers of resources to locations of information about the resources or to the actual resources themselves.  The DOI is one such resolution system.

 

There are several models for registering identifiers.  In some cases (e.g. ISBN) the international agency releases blocks of numbers to national agencies who then assign them for use by publishers.  The registration of the metadata associated with the identifier is the responsibility of the publisher and the national agency and not the international agency.  So the definitive metadata for books is found in "in print" lists and national bibliographies.  In other cases, a central database of identifiers and their associated metadata is maintained, as for the ISSN and as is planned for the ISTC.  WorldCat can potentially become a reference database for unique identification of resources of all types, commercial and non-commercial alike.  

 

Within WorldCat, like in other databases, identifiers are the key to linking and navigating from resources and their holdings in libraries to related resources, such as different editions of the same work or different works by the same author.  Identifiers also link between base data and enriched data both within the same database and external databases.  Further, identifiers are used to link from resources to services relating to the resources, for example to link from a metadata record within WorldCat.org to online delivery services provided by a local library.  The standard protocols that underlie interoperability use identifiers for processing transactions.  OCLC is already providing identifier services so that its identifier infrastructure can be used by other systems. The first two of these services are now in production, namely xISBN and xISSN that allow retrieval of related resources by ISBN and ISSN respectively.  The ISSN service includes a graphic display of the history of a serial as per the figure below.

 

 

 For a clearer view of this example, please visit the xISSN registry here.

 

Further identifier services are being progressively released by OCLC, including on the horizon a service allowing grouping of resources at work level that is currently in pilot with the Dutch union catalogue and services based on manifestation identifiers (project GLiMIr - Global Library Manifestation Identifier).

---

[1] http://www.issn.org

[2] http://www.ismn-international.org/

[3] http://www.iswc.org/

[4] http://www.istcinfo.org/about.asp

[5] http://www.ifpi.org/isrc/

[6] http://www.isan.org/

[7] http://www.biblstandard.dk/isil/

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Beloit College Mindset List has once again arrived. Always enlightening and fun.

I was interested to come across the Service Level Definitions page at the Library at the London School of Economics.

Additionally, we have a number of Service Targets which we monitor on a monthly or termly basis. You can see our general service standards and the full results for our service targets for the academic year to date here. We have put a few interesting facts for last month opposite. [ Service Level Definitions]

What is interesting is that they publish their performance against the targets. I do not have a sense of how common this is. Here are their targets for availability of the catalogue and library IT equipment.

When I do presentations, I sometimes get asked about the library brand on the web. It is well-known that users do not always associate the range of licensed materials they have access to with the library directly. And the more integrated library resources appear with other environments, paradoxically, the less visible the library itself may appear.

I usually respond that we are seeing the library itself become more visible through active engagement with research, teaching and learning activities, marketing, assessment, and programs. This type of measurement also becomes more important.

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Via Miscellany et al.

• 13 October 2008 - full draft of content released in online product for comment. Ready for final review
• 19 January 2009 - comment period closes
• Early March 2009 - Joint Steering Committee (JSC) and Committee of Principals (CoP) meet in Chicago. JSC will go over comments generated from final draft and incorporate them into RDA.
• Third quarter 2009 - RDA is released
• Last quarter 2009-early 2010 - CoP national libraries (LC, NLC, etc.) evaluate RDA prior to implementation

Dates taken from Pam Gatenby's presentation at the RDA Satellite meeting on Aug. 8. [emphasis mine]

Looks like RDA implementation won't start until some time in 2010. My guess would be spring 2010 at the earliest.

RSS4Lib has simple instructions for including Creative Commons rights metadata in your RSS feeds.

Tim over on The Bib Blog provides an excellent summary of the IFLA Satellite Meeting on RDA.

He links to Gordon Dunsire's presentation: RDA Vocabularies and Concepts [pps]. This presentation is a must-watch if you want to understand where things are going with RDA development. (I'm not a big PowerPoint fan, but this one is really cool!)

The indefatigable Tony Hirst has an interesting post about using Google Analytics to analyse library website traffic. He looks at the Open University Library website. This is in preparation for a fuller paper he is preparing with Hassan Sheikh of the Library for Internet Librarian International 2008. Something to look forward to .... Here is a taste of the entry:

A quick glimpse suggests the search links need dumping, and more real estate should be given over to the “Journals” and “Databases” links that are currently in the left hand sidebar, and which get 20% and 19% of the click-thrus respectively. Despite the large areas of the screen given over to the image-based navigation, they aren’t pulling much traffic. (That said, if we segment the users it might well be the case that the images in the middle of the page disproportionately attract clicks from certain sorts of user? I don’t think it’s possible to segment this out in the general report, however? For that, I guess we need to define some separate reports that are pre-segmented according to referrer?)

Just chasing the traffic a little more, I wonder if there are a few, popular databases or whether traffic is distributed over all of them equally? The Library databases page is pretty horrible - a long alphabetical list of databases - so can the analytics suggests ways of helping people find the pages they want? [Library Analytics (Part 1) « OUseful.Info, the blog…]

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Jennifer Bowen poses this question concerning repurposing MARC metadata over on the ITALica blog:

What opportunities and challenges can we anticipate as we start working with (e.g. manipulating, searching, augmenting, cleaning up, transforming) MARC metadata from an ILS (or from another MARC-based system) outside of that system?

How can we ensure that reusing MARC data is a worthwhile undertaking, and convince those outside the library world of this, if necessary?

Library 2.0 Gang Member and Ex Libris Chief Strategy Officer, Oren Beit-Arie joins Richard Wallis in conversation about the recently announced Ex Libris Open Platform Strategy.

In the first part of this Talking with Talis conversation, they discuss the ramifications of the recent change of ownership when Francisco Partners sold their investment in Ex Libris to Leeds Equity Partners.   This sets the background for he rest of the podcast in which they go on to discus the motivation behind, and the details of the Open Platform Strategy.

In this revealing interview Oren describes how the strategy will influence the way Ex Libris develops and delivers its products in the future.

 

To accompany this podcast, we have made available a transcript of the interview.

 

 

Library 2.0 Gang Member and Ex Libris Chief Strategy Officer, Oren Beit-Arie joins Richard Wallis in conversation about the recently announced Ex Libris Open Platform Strategy. In the first part of this Talking with Talis conversation, they discuss the ramifications of the recent change of ownership when Francisco Partners sold their investment in Ex Libris to Leeds Equity Partners.#160;#160; This sets the background for he rest of the podcast in which they go on to discus the motivation behind, and the details of the Open Platform Strategy. In this revealing interview Oren describes how the strategy will influence the way Ex Libris develops and delivers its products in the future. #160; To accompany this podcast, we have made available a transcript of the interview. #160; #160; Technorati Tags: Talking with Talis,Ex Libris,Oren Beit-Arie,Open Platform,Podcast,Talis

The impact of networking on organizational evolution is interesting: how does networking impact how libraries coordinate their resources to get their work done effectively? In the 'network age' there have been several major shifts in how libraries coordinate resources (and by resources, I am thinking about their budgets, staff, and systems as well as collections). Shared cataloging and resource sharing mark one important shift, where libraries externalized some activities to a shared policy and service infrastructure. The externalization of A&I services, and then journals, to aggregators and others marks another major shift. These types of resource coordination or sourcing decisions - go local, collaboratively source through some cooperative arrangement, source with an external supplier - are becoming more frequent across a greater range of services. Think of general systems infrastructure, repository infrastructure, population of knowledge bases, virtual reference, and off-site storage for example.

My colleague Janifer Gatenby has a reflective article in the new issue of Ariadne which looks at the data that is needed to manage library operations. She discusses how this might be coordinated differently over the medium term future. She discusses the workflow across three core collection categories: print/bought, licensed/electronic, and digital/digitized collections. Currently, these are largely managed separately and locally. As we move to more collective approaches, and as we seek to manage collections in more integrated ways, it is appropriate to consider whether data and workflows might be coordinated differently across groups of libraries.

As library collections are increasingly shared, there may be significant advantages (in terms of both cost and efficiency) in moving more acquisitions and licensing data and processes to the network level where they can be shared among the ILS, ERM and repositories and with other libraries. Moreover, libraries are finding their ILS acquisitions modules inadequate for managing the acquisition of the newer parts of whole collections. There is already a clear need for the acquisitions of the three parts of the collection to be managed as a whole; moving data to the network, thereby enabling shared network services, is one solution. [Main Articles: 'The Networked Library Service Layer: Sharing Data for More Effective Management and Co-operation', Ariadne Issue 56]

Janifer steps through some of the issues in suggestive ways focusing on one major area: "An example is explored, namely the benefits of moving data from different local systems to the network level to manage acquisition of the total collection as a whole and in combination with consortia members."

An important point to emerge is that different categories of data may live at different levels:

There is a clear need to define data at multiple levels:

• globally sharable data (e.g. bibliographic metadata, holdings, issue level holdings, suppliers, statistics, reference query-and-answer pairs)
• Data that can be shared within one or more co-operatives to which the library belongs (e.g. selection / rejection decisions, weeding reasons)
• Local data that are not shared (e.g. budgets, invoice details, some user information)

[Main Articles: 'The Networked Library Service Layer: Sharing Data for More Effective Management and Co-operation', Ariadne Issue 56]

Update: check out Jim's post on HangingTogether for some context about Janifer's article.

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I notice that this blog is included in a useful list of repository-related blogs from the Repositories Support Group.

The JISC funded Repositories Support Project has today launched a new service - The RSP Blog Directory (http://rsp.ac.uk/blogs/). It provides a list of recommended and informative blogs regarding the repository scene from around the globe. Listed blogs include personal creations from those with firsthand experience of repository management, and / or technical development of repository software; blogs for specific repositories projects and software developers; as well as blogs for groups and societies with an interest in the open access movement and digital curation. [RSP News - RSP Directory of repository related blogs]

Via Andy Powell.

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Readers of this blog - or of the RLG Partnership work agenda - will be familiar with the phrase collective collection. We use it to refer to the intensification of systemwide interest in the management of collections, whether the system is at consortial, state, national or some other level. Consortial discovery to delivery systems, mass digitization initiatives, preservation of print and digital, off-site storage: many current discussions involve this systemwide perspective.

In simple terms, I think we can see a natural progression from shared discovery, to better resource sharing logistics, to collective collection development and management. The last has always been an interest, variably realized, but current pressures and capacities bring it back into focus in different ways. This progression is characterized by deeper resource sharing, greater mutual dependency and more extensive shared infrastructure.

Now, over the years, there have been some suggestions about updating Ranganathan's laws [Ranganathan's 5 laws of library science, Wikipedia]. These have not been very convincing. Once some adjustment is made for gender and format, I think that the laws actually continue to capture very well some fundamental challenges about what we do. And one of the interesting things to me is that the laws resonate even more strongly as we do more things at a collective level. In fact, conformance to the laws in many cases suggests moving in this direction. And this is in line with his fifth law: the library is a growing organism. In this case, we need to think about what effective service means in a network environment where service models and user behaviors and expectations continue to co-evolve.

Here is one example, among several I could advance: when writing about the long tail and libraries a while ago, Ranganathan naturally came to mind:

Discussions of the long tail that I have seen or heard in the library community strike me as somewhat partial. Much of that discussion is about how libraries contain deep and rich collections, and about how their system-wide aggregation represents a very long tail of scholarly and cultural materials (a system may be at the level of a consortium, or a state, or a country). However, I am not sure that we have absorbed the real relevance of the long tail argument, which is about how well supply and demand are matched in a network environment. It is not enough for materials to be present within the system: they have to be readily accessible ('every reader his or her book', in Ranganathan's terms), potentially interested readers have to be aware of them ('every book its reader'), and the system for matching supply and demand has to be efficient ('save the time of the user') [Libraries and the Long Tail: Some Thoughts about Libraries in a Network Age]

Incidentally, I left the above paragraph as a comment on Bob Molyneux's nice post of a while ago about the user benefits of the collective Pines approach, as he too returned to Ranganathan in his discussion of how Pines makes the participants' 'collective collection' available in one 'big resource rich library'.

Related entries:

• Systemwide activities and the Long Tail
• Logistics and synchronization: making data work harder
• Library logistics
• Collective collection

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As requested by conference attendees, here is the presentation at the Industry Symposium at IFLA, 14 August 2008. The presentation describes a new environment of global information services and exciting new roles for metadata and a variety of knowledge organization methods. Argues that the changes in the environment will permanently affect what it means "to catalog" materials for the purpose of connecting citizens, students and scholars to the information they need, when and where they need it.

 

We have just released a highlights report [pdf] about our work over the last year in support of the RLG Partnership. It is a very nice record of achievement and has a range of useful pointers to documents and intiatives.

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As we have been traveling I haven't been watching a lot of TV, I thought I would go and have a look at a few videos of discussed Olympic events.

The BBC is usually my first port of call for things like this, but of course, as noted previously, they will not allow their video clips to be viewed outside the UK.

We use technology to prevent people from outside the UK from accessing content that we need to limit to the UK for rights reasons. [BBC NEWS | Help | Your guide to the BBC Embedded Media Player]

So, over to NBC. Lots of materials here, and a wide range of videos. However, to watch a video you need first to watch an advert. After a while of seeing the same ad for AT&T, Nissan or Budweiser it gets a bit tedious.

Free is rarely quite free.

Incidentally, I was interested that I had to download Silverlight to view the NBC material.

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CILIP has published a consultation paper on the funding of its Special Interest Groups (of which CIG is one) and Branches. You can find it at http://www.cilip.org.uk/aboutcilip/howcilipworks/council/boards/workinggroups/fundingworkinggroup/discussionpaper.htm The closing date for responses is 18 September and the CIG committee would welcome contributions to the discussion. Generally there has been very little public debate that we have seen so I published the following to the CILIP Communities forum for Branch and Group officers this morning:

I am surprised that I have seen no public discussion of the task and finish group report either here or on (say) lis-profession. So I thought I would fly a kite.

I wonder if the reason for the silence is that people are pleasantly surprised by the recommendations. Keeping the current arrangements for membership of Branches and Groups and increasing the capitation (albeit marginally) seems a welcome suggestion for those of us who had heard the merchants of gloom predicting something draconian and life (or at least budget) threatening.

I am slightly doubtful about the recruitment fee - how it will be administered or more precisely how one will attribute a new member to a specific group/ branch. But I am prepared to wait for the detail. That goes for the other incentive schemes too.

These are not the views of the Cataloguing & Indexing Group which will be collated and submitted in due course.

Andrew Coburn

Chair CIG