Browse LCSH Database Links to lcsh.info

The Browse LCSH database (6.5m records) now includes the complete file of 266.857 terms that was made available by the lcsh.info project. That means you find links from our database to the record in lcsh.info to view their innovative display. The notes contained in the lcsh.info records have been included too. LC classes are indexed as well and can be browsed, to find LCSH terms.

LC has improved the findability of authority records recently. They have added a keyword search to the database.

Facebook Application

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.

WorldCat Copyright Evidence Registry

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.

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 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:

1. Sibelius-Akatemian kirjaston luokitusjarjestelma - kirjojen luokitus = Sibelius Academy Library classification system - book classification scheme
2. 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]

Beloit College Mindset List

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

RSS and Rights Metadata

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

Semantic Web Podcast

The Simmons Graduate School of Library and Information Science has a podcast by Rober Wolfe, The Semantic Library: RDF in Practice. Some of the topics he discusses are:

• SIMILE, Semantic Interoperability of Metadata in unLike Environments
• Babel, Format Converter developed by the SIMILE Project
• Longwell, A SIMILE demo by MIT Libraries
• W3C Semantic Web Activity, Simple Knowledge Organization System
• Open Archives Initiative Object Reuse and Exchange

21 Aug. 2008 Listening to this on my commute. Fascinating. So much to consider.

‡biblios Released

LibLime announces the release of their open-source cataloging tool, ‡biblios.

At Code4lib 2007 you may have attended a presentation by yours truly about a new open-source cataloging editor initiative at LibLime called ‡biblios. In case you missed it, there's a video of the presentation available from: http://www.code4lib.org/conference/2008/catalfo

Over this past week we put the finishing touches on the project Web site and the .9 release of the ‡biblios editor.

Dangers in the Library

Who was prepared in library school for all the dangerous critters in the library?

Hebrew Script Tool

lc-hebrew-detransliteration allows you to convert from Library of Congress Romanized Hebrew to Hebrew script. Great for adding those 880 fields.

Work and Edition Fields

The Open Library has been doing some FRBR work on their records. They have been trying to decide which fields are work and which expression fields. Some end up as both. Not MARC BTW. They welcome comments.

A Techie Looks at Libraries

Digital Web Magazine has an article on libraries, Getting The Most Out Of Your Library by William Hicks. Some interesting statemnents:

• Think of the library system as something akin to the open-source movement before software.
• You will not be happy with many library websites.
• So you found the library catalog, fired off a search and found an item that sounds mildly intriguing. The result page probably didn’t have any real reviews of the book, it is doubtful there was a book cover, nor apparently any other related items. You’re most likely staring at a title, some notes on the author, a bunch of useless publication data, some subject headings, notes, and a string of letters and numbers. Amazon.com it is not. It’s not built for you the user. It’s built for the vendors, librarians, and their staff.
• While you may not get instant gratification from a library, and few if any are really cutting-edge when it comes to their use of web technologies, there is something to be said for the diversity and quality of information they provide you in your daily development tasks.

WorldCat and the LibX Firefox toolbar are both mentioned.

Telescope Library Exhibit

Apply by Sept. 19 to host "Visions of the Universe: Four Centuries of Discovery"

Public libraries are invited to apply to host “Visions of the Universe: Four Centuries of Discovery,” a traveling exhibition developed by the America Library Association (ALA) Public Programs Office in cooperation with the Space Telescope Science Institute Office of Public Outreach and the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, to mark the International Year of Astronomy in 2009. The exhibit will travel to 40 selected public libraries from January 2009 through December 2010.

Free Covers from LibraryThing

LibraryThing is making nearly one million book covers available for free. It is pretty simple coding to grab them. Thanks Tim et al.

Update 12 Aug. 2008 I just added 37 links to covers from a page and none of the items had covers in LibraryThing. One million might be enough for a public library, not so much for a research library. Oh well.

WorldCat Search API

Nice for members of OCLC, WorldCat Search API (Web service).

The WorldCat Search API allows your application to search the WorldCat catalog—which indexes the collections of thousands of member libraries around the world—and retrieve:

• lists of bibliographic records, and individual records, for library-held items;
• information about WorldCat libraries that have cataloged a particular item; and
• direct links to those libraries' Web catalog records for the item, when available

Your application will allow users to discover books, videos, music, electronic content and more through WorldCat.

How the API works

• Send searches in OpenSearch or SRU CQL syntax
• Receive OpenSearch responses in RSS or Atom format
• Receive SRU responses in MARC XML or Dublin Core
• Receive MARC XML content for a single OCLC record
• Receive geographically-sorted library holdings information (each including the institution's name, location and a catalog link) within requests for single records
• Receive records in standard bibliographic citation formats (APA, Chicago, Harvard, MLA, and Turabian)

Who can use this tool.

Panama City Beach Library

Panama City Beach Library
Originally uploaded by dbigwood

While on vacation I stopped into the library to check my e-mail. I was greeted by a person at the front desk. Very friendly, not like the Wal-Mart greeters. I was able to use the machine to check my email, Facebook page, and OK some comments to this weblog. Nothing seemed to be blocked. There was a 30 minute a day time limit, it seems a silly rule, if the machines are empty, but....

While I was there other folks were using the computers browsing the fiction, reading a magazine. It was a very small library, but they did have a childrens' collection and provided story time.

They caught me taking this picture and asked about it, curious not snooping.

Koha 3.0

The Koha folks have announced that a packaged release of Koha 3.00.00 is now available. It can be download from the usual location:

http://download.koha.org/koha-3.00.00.tar.gz
http://download.koha.org/koha-3.00.00.tar.gz.sig

The 3.0 manual is available and will continually be updated.

LibraryThing API

News from LibraryThing.

LibraryThing just released a free, CC-attribution-licensed Web Services XML API to our "Common Knowledge" system, including series data, fictional characters, author dates and much else. I'm particularly stoked about the series data. I think it's of exceptional quality, suitable for use in OPACs (eg., Star+Wars). Anyway, in a catalog or not, there are a lot of cool things to do with it.

OCLC Crosswalk Web Service Demo

New demo tool from OCLC Research, Crosswalk Web Service.

The purpose of the Crosswalk Web Service (CWS) is to translate a group of metadata records from one format into another.

For this service, a metadata format is defined as a triple of:

• standard - The metadata standard of the record (e.g. MARC, DC, MODS, etc ...)
• structure - The structure of how the metadata is expressed in the record (e.g. XML, RDF, ISO 2709, etc ...)
• encoding - The character encoding of the metadata (e.g. MARC8, UTF-8, Windows 1251, etc ...)

To use the service you will have to write your own client software. With the aid of the WSDL file, this should be relatively easy. This documentation, however, does not cover how to write the client.

Facebook Blog Network

Still need a few more confirmations on the Blog Network on Facebook that I'm responsible for New and Noteworthy. Still need plenty for Recent Additions. Catalogablog is doing fine.