New Version of Omeka

News from Omeka.

Omeka 0.9.1 is our first release since the initial public launch on February 20, 2008. It fixes 20+ bugs, and we highly recommend that all users upgrade their existing Omeka installations. The API hasn’t changed since the 0.9.0 release, so existing themes and plugins should continue to work after the upgrade.

BTW

Omeka is a web platform for publishing collections and exhibitions online. Designed for cultural institutions, enthusiasts, and educators, Omeka is easy to install and modify and facilitates community-building around collections and exhibits. Omeka is free and open source

PREMIS Data Dictionary for Preservation Metadata

The PREMIS Editorial Committee is pleased to announce the release of the PREMIS Data Dictionary for Preservation Metadata, version 2.0. This document is a revision of Data Dictionary for Preservation Metadata: Final report of the PREMIS Working Group, issued in May 2005. The PREMIS Data Dictionary and its supporting documentation is a comprehensive, practical resource for implementing preservation metadata in digital archiving systems. Preservation metadata is defined as information that preservation repositories need to know to support digital materials over the long term.

This document is a specification that emphasizes metadata that may be implemented in a wide range of repositories, supported by guidelines for creation, management and use, and oriented toward automated workflows. It is technically neutral in that no assumptions are made about preservation technologies, strategies, syntaxes, or metadata storage and management. Members of the PREMIS Editorial Committee revised the original data dictionary based on comments and experience from implementers and potential implementers since its release. The Editorial Committee kept the preservation community informed about issues being discussed, solicited comments on proposed revisions, and consulted outside experts where appropriate.

The international Editorial Committee is a part of the PREMIS Maintenance Activity sponsored by the Library of Congress. The Maintenance Activity also includes PREMIS tutorials and promotional activities, and an active PREMIS Implementers Group.

Major changes in this revision include:

• Expanded rights metadata
• More extensive significant properties and preservation level information
• Mechanism for extensibility for a number of metadata units

The PREMIS Data Dictionary for Preservation Metadata, version 2.0 is available. An XML schema to support implementation is currently in draft and is available. This is an extensive revision of the earlier PREMIS version 1.1 schemas.

After a one month review, the schema will be finalized. Please send comments about the XML schema by April 24 to Ray Denenberg, rden@loc.gov.

NISO Website

The NISO website has a new look.

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

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 May 28, 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 Sources
The following code is for use in subfield $2 in field 072 (Subject Category Code/Code Source) in Authority and Bibliographic records.

Addition:

ekz

Systematiken der ekz [use only after May 28, 2008]

Classification
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:

dopaed

DOPAED der UB Erlangen [use only after May 28, 2008]

methepp

Methode Eppelsheimer [use only after May 28, 2008]

ssgn

Sondersammelgebiets-Nummer [use only after May 28, 2008]

Description Conventions
The following codes are for use in subfield $e in field 040 in Bibliographic and Authority records (Description Conventions).

Additions:

din1505

Titelangaben von Dokumenten (Berlin: Beuth) [use only after May 28, 2008]

vd16

Formalerschliessung nach dem Verzeichnis der Drucke des 16. Jahrhunderts (VD 16) [use only after May 28, 2008]

vd17

Formalerschliessung nach dem Verzeichnis der Drucke des 17.
Jahrhunderts (VD 17) [use only after May 28, 2008]

rakddb

Ansetzungsform gemaess der RAK - Anwendung Der Deutschen Bibliothek [use only after May 28, 2008]

Other codes
The following code is for use in subfield $2 in field 210 in Bibliographic records (Abbreviated Title).

Addition:

din1430

Key Title nach DIN 1430 (Berlin: Beuth) [use only after May 28, 2008]

The following code is for use in subfield $2 in field 044 (Country of Publishing/Producing Entity Code) in bibliographic records.

Addition:

swdl

Lndercode der Schlagwortnormdatei (SWD) (Leipzig, Frankfurt am Main, Berlin: Deutsche Nationalbibliothek) [use only after May 28, 2008]

Term, Name, Title Sources
The following code is for use in subfield $2 in fields 600-657 in Bibliographic and Community Information records, and in subfield $f in fields 040 (Cataloging Source) and subfield $2 in fields 700-788 (Heading Linking Entries / Source of heading or term) in Authority records.

Addition:

rswkaf

Alternativform zum Hauptschlagwort [use only after May 28, 2008]

The codes listed below were previously defined for use in subfield $2 in fields 600-651 in Bibliographic and Community Information records, and in subfield $f (Subject heading or thesaurus conventions) in field 040 in MARC 21 Authority records.

Usage has been expanded to subfield $2 in fields 654-657 and 662 in Bibliographic records (Subject Added Entries/Index Terms); subfield $2 in fields 654-657 in Community Information records (Subject Added Entries/Index Terms); and subfield $2 in fields 700-788 (Heading Linking Entries / Source of heading or term) in Authority records.

rswk

Regeln fr den Schlagwortkatalog (Leipzig, Frankfurt am Main, Berlin: Deutsche Nationalbibliothek) (3MB PDF file) [use in new fields only after May 28, 2008]

swd

Schlagwortnormdatei (Leipzig, Frankfurt am Main, Berlin: Deutsche Nationalbibliothek) [use in new fields only after May 28, 2008]

TLA Conference

At TLA I'll be a room host for the session by Cali Lewis. Tuesday, 2 PM @ the NetFair. I'll also be at the RDA preconference.

I lost the election as councilor for the Digital Libraries group, I do think the best person won. So I'll be passing on the DL business meeting, but will most likely hit most of their sessions. I'll be starting a Twitter for the conference. I'm looking forward to seeing some folks soon.

This morning I restarted my Facebook account. I got bored with it about a year ago and shut it down. Today I reactivated it. Everything was still there. The information does not get erased when you close it down.

USEMARCON Plus

A new version of USEMARCON Plus, The Universal MARC Record Convertor, is available.

USEMARCON facilitates the conversion of catalogue records from one MARC format to another e.g. from UKMARC to UNIMARC. The software was designed as a toolbox-style application, allowing users with detailed knowledge of the source and target MARC formats to develop rules governing the behaviour of the conversion. Rules files may be supplemented by additional tables for more accurate conversion of MARC-specific character sets or coded information. The tables and rules files are simple ASCII text files and can be created using any standard text editor such as MS Windows Notepad.

Microformats

Microformats University: 100+ Articles and Resources by Jessica Hupp.

Microformats are small formatting pieces designed to make your data easier to read by both users and software. Although their use is not widespread, it’s important that every web developer becomes familiar with them, as they’re sure to be an integral part of the web’s future. Because of this, there are a number of articles and resources out there devoted to microformats. We’ve compiled more than 100 of the best here.

Additions to the MARC Country and Geographic Area Code Lists

As the result of Kosovo declaring independence from Serbia in February 2008, new country and geographic area codes have been defined for use in MARC records.

1. MARC country code change
   
   The new country code is:

   kv

   Kosovo

   Kosovo was previously coded rb for Serbia from February 2007-May 2008. From 1992-April 2007 it was coded yu for Serbia and Montenegro. Prior to October 1992, yu was used for Yugoslavia, which included the Socialist republics of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, and Slovenia.
2. MARC geographic area code change
   
   The new geographic area code is:

   e-kv

   Kosovo

   Kosovo was previously coded e-rb for Serbia from February 2007-May 2008.

Yugoslavia [e-yu] will be retained for works on Yugoslavia as a whole (including the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, and the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia) and former Yugoslav republics before they separated.

Code4Lib Journal

The 2nd issue of Code4Lib Journal is now available. Plenty of good articles.

LibraryThing API

Tim Spalding has released an API for LibraryThing.

I just released a Javascript/JSON API to LibraryThing core work data.

http://www.librarything.com/thingology/2008/03/first-cut-works-json-api.php

It's basically a riff on what Google did recently—a way to link to LibraryThing if we have a book, and not if we don't. It also includes copy and review counts, and the average rating. It takes ISBNs, LCCNs and OCLC numbers.

Next up will be a JSON API into member books, so members can design their own widgets and mash their library up with the contents of a page.

It's all very beta, and my ears are wide open.

Organizing Without Organizations

Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations is a talk by Clay Shirky discussing his new book, Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations. (WorldCat Amazon) It is available in both video and audio. Seen on Thing-ology.

OAI Toolkit

Now available on Sourceforge, OAI4J a client library for PMH and ORE

OAI4J is an open-source client library for OAI-PMH and OAI-ORE created by the National Library of Sweden. The library is object-oriented in it's design and written in Java. It can be used to harvest metadata from OAI-PMH compliant repositories. It can also be used to create new OAI-ORE Resource Maps from scratch, to parse existing ones and to serialize them to xml.

This is the 1st tool I've noticed that works on the new OAI-ORE specs.

Tagging Structures and the Organization of Information

Analyzing Communal Tag Relationships for Enhanced Navigation and User Modeling by Edwin Simpson and Mark H. Butler (HPL-2008-24)

The increasing amount of available information has created a demand for better, more automated methods of finding and organizing different types of information resource. This chapter investigates methods of improving navigation, personalization and recommendation of information resources using collaboratively generated tags to model resources and users. We discuss the advantages and limitations of tags, and describe using relationships between tags to discover latent structures that could be used to automatically organize a community's tags. We give a hierarchical clustering algorithm for extracting latent structure and explain methods for determining tag specificity. Next we explain how latent structure visualizations could enhance navigation. Finally we discuss future trends including using latent tag structures to model users and their current tasks for recommendation and user interface personalization. Publication Info: Submitted to (Book) Collaborative & Social Information Retrieval and Access: Techniques for Improved User Modeling, Edited by Max Chevalier, Christine Julien and Chantal Soule-Dupuy, published by IGI Global.

RDF Browsing Tool

A new Hp report of possible interest, Humboldt: Exploring Linked Data by Georgi Kobilarov and Ian Dickinson (HPL-2008-23)

Abstract: We present Humboldt, a novel user interface for browsing RDF data. Current user interfaces for browsing RDF data are reviewed. We argue that browsing tasks require both a facet browser's ability to select and process groups of resources at a time and a 'resource at a time' browser's ability to navigate anywhere in a dataset. We describe Humboldt which combines these two features in a single coherent interface. Our approach is based on the operation of pivoting, which enables the user to move the focus of a browsing from one set of resources to a set of related resources. With repeated use of the pivot operation the user can browse anywhere in the data. We describe a preliminary evaluation of our approach and discuss its implications for further development. Publication Info: To be presented and published in Linked Data on the Web (LDW'08), Beijing, China, April 2008

New Book

Added to my must read list, Responsible Librarianship: Library Policies for Unreliable Systems by David Bade and Thomas Mann (WorldCat, Amazon)

Working Group on Aggregates Report

The report of the Durban meeting of the Working Group on Aggregates has been posted on IFLANET.

VuFind, New Release

The latest release of VuFind, the open source library resource discovery platform, is now available. Version 0.8 Beta is now available for download, it can be accessed from VuFind or from Sourceforge.

The major enhancement in version 0.8 is the new MARC import tool developed by Wayne Graham. This should help improve any issues dealing with importing records as well as a speed enhancement.

If you are interested in trying VuFind, have a look at the live demo.

CC:DA Discusion List

Distributed to several email lists.

CC:DA announces a public read-only email discussion list to allow non-CC:DA members to "view" committee discussions and work that takes place between outside of the ALA Annual Conference and Midwinter Meeting.

In order for the committee to do its work efficiently, non-CC:DA members will be able read CC:DA email, but will not be able to post messages. However, ideas and comments on discussions are welcome, and can be funneled to the list through your CC:DA representative or liaison. The committee roster is located at http://www.libraries.psu.edu/tas/jca/ccda/roster.html

To subscribe to the list, send an email to sympa@ala.org with the phrase "subscribe rules" in the subject line and the body of the message blank. Your email address will be captured automatically.

FRBR Object-Oriented Definition and Mapping to FRBRER

Comments are welcomed on FRBR Object-Oriented Definition and Mapping to FRBRER. This is a 140 page document. Message distributed to email lists.

The FRBR Review Group and the Working Group on FRBR and CIDOC CRM Harmonisation welcomes comments on FRBRoo (object-oriented definition and mapping to FRBRer) version 0.9 (January 2008) and also at: http://cidoc.ics.forth.gr/frbr_drafts.html

This document includes a substantive introduction to the purposes and methodology of the work, a graphical overview of the resulting model, complete FRBRoo class and property definitions, a mapping between FRBRer and FRBRoo, all CIDOC CRM class and property definitions referenced, and an appendix on the modelling of identifier creation.

The goal of the FRBRoo project is to express the conceptualisation behind FRBR using the object-oriented methodology as used in the CIDOC CRM. FRBRoo is defined as an extension to the CIDOC CRM, however, the FRBRoo document is self-contained in that all definitions referenced are included. This has provided the opportunity to verify FRBR's internal consistency, extend the scope of both FRBR and CIDOC CRM, enable interoperability and extend mutual understanding between the museum and library documentation communities by working towards a common ontology.

Comments on this work are appreciated on an ongoing basis, however, comments received prior to April 21, 2008 will be considered at the next meeting of the Working Group in May 2008.

Please send all comments to:

Pat Riva
(Chair, FRBR Review Group)
patricia.riva@banq.qc.ca

Google Books API and the OPAC

Google has an API for Google Books that can add informaiton to the OPAC.

The Google Book Search Book Viewability API enables developers to:

• Link to Books in Google Book Search using ISBNs, LCCNs, and OCLC numbers
• Know whether Google Book Search has a specific title and what the viewability of that title is
• Generate links to a thumbnail of the cover of a book
• Generate links to an informational page about a book
• Generate links to a preview of a book