Not Cataloging Related

Doc on Demand is a nice tool for any Palm user, it converts a Web page into the format they use.

"The purpose of this mysterious device is the conversion of text files (be they pasted from your clipboard or Stripped by this very engine from the URL you provide) from their ASCII state into a .pdb file which can be read on your palm-top computer (e.g. a Palm Pilot, Visor, one of those crazy PDA-cellphone thingies, a Psion, a Jornada, etc., etc., ad infinitum.) By the glory and miracle of science, the letters of your text doc are whisked through the motivator, into the grinder and then ejected from the vaporisor to the Vagrant's Library where the finished product is stored for download and use."

Thanks to Matthew Eberle at Library Techlog for pointing this out to me.

Cataloging Instruction

Course 5 of the Alternative Basic Library Education (ABLE) at the Idaho State Library is "Introduction to Technical Services and Cataloging" by Catherine Poppino.

"The course is designed for members of the library community who do not have formal library training. It will help you understand the basic processes of technical services and cataloging."

MARC21

Discussion Paper 2002-DP08 "Dealing with FRBR Expressions in MARC 21" is available for review by the MARC 21 community.

It will be discussed in a meeting of the MARC Advisory Committee on June 15-16, 2002 in Atlanta.

A draft agenda for that meeting is available

Metadata

Another metadata scheme developed by the museum community is the Object ID. This has a unique purpose, preventing trade in stolen art objects. The FBI, Scotland Yard and Interpol promote it.

"Object ID is an international standard for describing cultural objects. It has been developed through the collaboration of the museum community, police and customs agencies, the art trade, insurance industry, and valuers of art and antiques.

The Object ID project was initiated by the J. Paul Getty Trust in 1993 and the standard was launched in 1997. It is being promoted by major law enforcement agencies, including the FBI, Scotland Yard and Interpol; museum, cultural heritage, art trade and art appraisal organisations; and insurance companies.

Having established the descriptive standard, the Object ID project now helps to combat art theft by encouraging use of the standard and by bringing together organisations around the world that can encourage its implementation."

Classification

A classification scheme used by the graphic community is ICONCLASS.

"ICONCLASS is a subject specific international classification system for iconographic research and the documentation of images. It was developed by Henri van de Waal (1910-1972), Professor of Art History at the University of Leiden, and completed by his staff. ICONCLASS is a collection of ready-made definitions of objects, persons, events, situations and abstract ideas that can be the subject of an image. ICONCLASS organizes iconography into 10 'main divisions' in which the definitions are ordered hierarchically."

Not Cataloging Related

The latest American Libraries has a section on staff development, "The Care and Feeding of Speakers and the Spoken-To". The 1st article gives some tips to speakers. These I've seen countless times before, but they do bear repeating since people still ignore them. The other piece, "A View from the Podium" by Janet Swan Hill is something I've not seen before and information we can use. Volunteers, who change every few years, arrange many of our conferences and meetings. How to treat the invited speaker is something not taught in our MLS program and it is rare to find new officer guidelines. Here they are. This is a piece that should be copied and placed in every officer packet in all of our organizations.

About this Blog

Blogger and Bloget, the service which provides an e-mail of the postings do not seem to be communicating. This is a known issue, at least for Bloglet. Maybe this is a good time to switch to the RSS feed.

Maintaining the Catalog

Checking the links is the catalog has become (or should become) a regular task for us. Our small collection, about 22,000 titles, has almost 1000 links located in 856 fields. Thanks to Tom Tyler that task is a bit more automated. He has also created a few tools specific to Innopac.

"MarcXGen extracts URLs from MARC 21 bibliographic records and generates HTML code to create a single web page of hyperlinks that can be used with third party Link Checking software such as LinkBot and Xenu's Link Sleuth. With Version 2, MarcXGen also creates separate files of delimited data that may be used to build a relational database environment that may simplify some maintenance tasks associated with bad or problem URLs in library database records."

OCLC

"Life without Passport" is certain to become a familiar phrase over the next 18 months. OCLC is developing a new interface for cataloging and metadata services based on browser and Windows technology. A replacement for Passport and other standalone cataloging applications, the first release of the interface is scheduled July 2002, with additional releases throughout 2002 into 2003. Passport for Cataloging support will end December 31, 2002. The product itself will cease operation one year later.

A document entitled Guide to Migration that explains current plans is located on the OCLC Web sits.

Dublin Core

I received this request for help. I've made some minor spelling corrections.

"I am a student from the University of Salzburg, Austria and I developed coins and banknotes templates under DC for my PHD thesis. Libraries, archives or a coin dealer could use any of these templates which are launched with the cooperation with the REGNET Project. (REGNET-Projet under the search engine google.de) Dr. Koch from Graz www.cscaustria.at launched it.

I am the person who created the templates for the coin note short CN-Collector.

If you are interested in that program please contact me and then you could start to try these out. My goal for the PHD is to get a database, where all the people can create the on catalog online. Right now I write a handbook for the templates to get good entries.

Thank you
Alexander H.T. Schultheis
E-Mail: ahtschultheis@hotmail.com"

Break

Monday is a holiday and I'm taking off Tuesday, making this a long weekend. South Padre here we come. So there will be no more posts until Wednesday. I'm not taking a laptop or PDA. No technical reading. Just a break from thinking. Hope y'all can do the same.

Metadata

A few recent articles by Roy Tennant in Library Journal provide a good introduction metadata.

Digital Libraries- Metadata As If Libraries Depended on It

Digital Libraries- The Importance of Being Granular

Digital Libraries- The Consequences of Cataloging

I like his definition "cataloging by those paid better than librarians."

GILS

Just received this notice about the Government Information Locator Service:

Through the efforts of several people, we now have a draft Web Services Description Language (WSDL) file for the GILS search service, available for review.

This draft only defines GILS search using "HTTP Get", following the extended ZURL. The search response message follows the definition given. (BTW, these definitions align with the ZX client from Dave Vieglais.)

Future discussions of GILS as a Web Service will be conducted mostly on the GILS Version 3 Discussion List. Subscribe to the GILS V3 list.

Z39.50

A new version of YAZ has been released, May 22. Here is the notice:

"The current version of YAZ includes experimental support for the industry standard ZOOM API for Z39.50. This API vastly simplifies the process of writing new clients using YAZ, and it reduces your dependency on any single toolkit. Future versions of YAZ may include support for other emerging IR protocols through the same interface."

Art Metadata

Another resource from the Getty Institute is the Categories for the Description of Works of Art (CDWA). This is the description from the introduction:

"The Categories describe the content of art databases by articulating a conceptual framework for describing and accessing information about objects and images. They identify vocabulary resources and descriptive practices that will make information residing in diverse systems both more compatible and more accessible. They also provide a framework to which existing art information systems can be mapped and upon which new systems can be developed."

I've had the pleasure of hearing Murtha Baca speak at the ALCTS Metadata and AACR2 Institute. If you get the opportunity to hear her talk about what the Getty is doing, it is well worth the time.

MARC21

The following additional proposals are available for review by the MARC 21 community. They will be discussed in a meeting of the MARC Advisory Committee on June 15-16, 2002 in Atlanta. A draft agenda for that meeting is available.

The following papers are now available:

Proposal No. 2002-12: Coding for Publication Pattern at the First Level of Enumeration in MARC 21 Holdings Records

Proposal No. 2002-13: Changes for Faceted Application of Subject Terminology (FAST) Subject Headings Changes in Field 008 in the MARC 21 Holdings Format

Proposal No. 2002-14: Proposal No. 2002-14: Changes for UKMARC Format Alignment

Proposal No. 2002-15: Defining field 065 (Other Classification Number) in the MARC 21 Authority Format

Metadata

"The MD3 (Metadata3) Project takes a different approach to metadata - instead of having to create and implement new systems to handle new types of metadata, why not make new types of metadata work with our current systems?" The plan consists of transforming metadata from one format, say RDF, into another, such as MARC. The other component involves peer to peer (P2P) sharing of the records. Something like the Docster proposal.

Semantic Web

Two items today from a 'blog I recently found, usr/lib/info! This looks like an interesting site. Not much available yet, however.

The Semantic Web and Libraries by Art is "a column I am working on for InsideOLITA and would welcome any and all feedback."

Resource Description Framework

OCLC, as part of the Dublin Core project, has made available an open source toolkit for RDF, the EOR toolkit.

"The EOR toolkit is a collection of extensible Java classes and services which serve as a code base, demonstrating by example functions and services common to RDF applications, i.e., metadata capture, search engines, etc.. The current release provides services designed to validate RDF, build and search RDF triple stores (HTTP and Java API) and render RDF data using XSLT."

The latest issue of Information Technologies & Libraries (2002), v. 21, no. 1 pp. 27-31 has an article on the toolkit. "The EOR Toolkit: An Open Source Solution for RDF Metadata" by Harry R. Wagner.

Library Catalogs

Another open source library catalog. PhpMyLibrary version 1.0.4b has been released. It consists of Webpac, Record import, Cataloging and Holdings modules. It takes MARC records.

"The new version has been released. The file can be downloaded PhpMyLibrary-1.0.4b here! This is a version that have a Holdings and Cataloging Modules Added. The recent module only consisted of WebPAC module and Record Import module, now you can make your own catalog entry, put an accession to it, and you're done. Your new book or material are ready for browsing online."