Online Catalogs: What Users and Librarians Want

OCLC has released the report Online Catalogs: What Users and Librarians Want.

This new report summarizes the findings of research conducted by OCLC on what constitutes quality in library online catalogs from both end users’ and librarians’ points of view.

Key findings:

• The end user’s experience of the delivery of wanted items is as important, if not more important, than his or her discovery experience.
• End users rely on and expect enhanced content including summaries/abstracts and tables of contents.
• An advanced search option (supporting fielded searching) and facets help end users refine searches, navigate, browse and manage large result sets.
• Important differences exist between the catalog data quality priorities of end users and those who work in libraries.
• Librarians and library staff, like end users, approach catalogs and catalog data purposefully. End users generally want to find and obtain needed information; librarians and library staff generally have work responsibilities to carry out. The work roles of librarians and staff influence their data quality preferences.
• Librarians’ choice of data quality enhancements reflects their understanding of the importance of accurate, structured data in the catalog.

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

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 June 16, 2009. 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.

Classification Code Sources

The following code is 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).

Addition:

rilm

RILM classification system [use only after June 16, 2009]

Term, Name, Title Sources

The following codes are for use in subfield $2 in appropriate 6XX fields (Subject Added Entries/Index Terms) in Bibliographic and Community Information 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:

nsbncf

Nuovo Soggettario (Firenze: Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze) [use only after June 16, 2009]

nzggn

New Zealand gazetteer of official geographic names (New Zealand Geographic Board Nga- Pou Taunaha o Aotearoa (NZGB)) [use only after June 16, 2009]

scbi

Soggettario per i cataloghi delle biblioteche italiane (Firenze: Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze) [use only after June 16, 2009]

tucua

Thesaurus for use in college and university archives (Chicago, IL: Society of American Archivists) [use only after June 16, 2009]

The following code is for use in subfield $2 in fields 700-754 (Index Terms) in Classification and subfield $f in field 040 (Cataloging Source) in Authority records.

Addition:

ddcri

Dewey Decimal Classification Relative Index (Albany, N.Y. : Forest Press) [use only after June 16, 2009]

OCLC Announces "Quick Start" Version of the OCLC WorldCat Local Service

OCLC is making a WoldCat Local available for free to First Search customers. Currently it is an OPAC replacement, however, plans are to add circulation, ERM, and other ILS functions. One effect of this would be to have the circulation records for dozens or hundreds or thousands of libraries in a central location. What could be done with that data? Who would own it?

Libraries that subscribe to FirstSearch WorldCat will get the WorldCat Local "quick start" service as part of their subscription at no additional charge. WorldCat Local "quick start" offers libraries a locally branded catalog interface and simple search box that presents localized search results for print and electronic content along with the ability to search the entire WorldCat database and other resources via the Web.

NLM Classification

News from the National Library of Medicine.

The online National Library of Medicine Classification ... has been issued in a newly revised edition as of April 23, 2009.

Seventeen new class numbers were added to the main schedules and four new class numbers were added to the 19th Century schedule. One class number was canceled. Eighty-one MeSH terms were added to the index, including thirty-four new to the MeSH vocabulary as of 2009; in addition, seventy-one schedule records and five hundred and eighty index entries were updated since the 2008 edition was published on April 24, 2008.

Open Access News

Peter Suber at Open Access news has proposed using tags to collocate news about open access on Connotea. A group tagging effort to collocate information seems like an interesting method to me. It could easily become polluted by spammers, but maybe Connotea has safeguards against that. Using the Connotea platform gives them a Web page, RSS feed, and email distribution.

You can participate as a reader, a tagger, or both, starting immediately. To participate as a reader, just follow or subscribe to some version of the project feed.

To participate as a tagger, you'll need to create a Connotea account, if you don't already have one. I recommending putting the "Add to Connotea" bookmarklet on your browser. When you see a new OA development, tag it with oa.new. If you have time, write a brief description in the "description" box of the tagging dialog.

Museum Collection Management Tool

Specify 6 is an open-source tool for the museum community to organize their holdings.

Specify is a client-server database platform for museums and herbaria which processes specimen information for computerizing holdings, managing collection management transactions, and for mobilizing species occurrence data to the web. Specify is free and open source software licensed under the GNU GPL2. Downloadable installation packages for all three desktop flavors as well as Specify's Java source code are linked to this site.

Specify is an integration platform that will transform biological collections computing. Specify's network savvy and pluggable architecture is designed for adding web service links and functional extensions. With our open source model, we look forward to community software development collaboration to extend Specify to bring specimen data to broader computational research and networking initiatives in the environmental sciences.

IN Harmony Sheet Music Cataloging Tool

The Indiana University Digital Library Program has released the IN Harmony Sheet Music Cataloging Tool.

This tool has been designed to assist libraries, archives, museums, and individual collectors describe their sheet music collections in a robust and standards-based way. This is a production system of the Indiana University Digital Library Program and was used to catalog more than 10,000 pieces of sheet music for the IN Harmony project.

The tool collects descriptive metadata about sheet music and exports it in the MODS, simple Dublin Core, and OAI-PMH Static Repository formats.

Seen on DigitalKoans.

Tagging, Folksonomy

A couple of papers by Jennifer Trant on tagging and folksonomy are available. Studying Social Tagging and Folksonomy: A Review and Framework. Journal of Digital Information 10(1).

This paper reviews research into social tagging and folksonomy (as reflected in about 180 sources published through December 2007). Methods of researching the contribution of social tagging and folksonomy are described, and outstanding research questions are presented. This is a new area of research, where theoretical perspectives and relevant research methods are only now being defined. This paper provides a framework for the study of folksonomy, tagging and social tagging systems. Three broad approaches are identified, focusing first, on the folksonomy itself (and the role of tags in indexing and retrieval); secondly, on tagging (and the behaviour of users); and thirdly, on the nature of social tagging systems (as socio-technical framework

Tagging, Folksonomy and Art Museums: Early Experiments and Ongoing Research. Journal of Digital Information 10(1).

Tagging has proven attractive to art museums as a means of enhancing the indexing of online collections. This paper examines the state of the art in tagging within museums and introduces the steve.museum research project, and its study of tagging behaviour and the relationship of the resulting folksonomy to professionally created museum documentation. A variety of research questions are proposed and methods for answering them discussed. Experiments implemented in the steve.museum research collaboration are discussed, preliminary results suggested, and further work described.

CDWA -LiteTool

A tool, COBOAT, for CDWA-Lite is freely available from OCLC. (CDWA Lite is an XML schema to describe core records for works of art and material culture based on the Categories for the Description of Works of Art (CDWA) and Cataloging Cultural Objects: A Guide to Describing Cultural Works and Their Images (CCO).)

COBOAT is a metadata publishing tool developed by Cognitive Applications Inc. (Cogapp) that transfers information between databases (such as collections management systems) and different formats.

As part of the Mellon-funded Museum Data Exchange project, OCLC commissioned Cogapp to:

• extend COBOAT to enable the extraction of CDWA Lite
• make COBOAT available under a fee-free license for the purposes of publishing a CDWA Lite repository of collections information.

Configuration files allow COBOAT to be adjusted for extraction from different vendor-based or homegrown database systems of collections information, or locally divergent implementations of the same collections management system. The configuration files available for download are designed for output from the Gallery Systems TMS collections management system.

In conjunction with the open source OAICatMuseum 1.0 software, COBOAT can be used to make CDWA Lite XML records available for harvesting via the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH).

Twitter Congress

Now you can talk back to your congressperson in soundbites.

We promised you we were working on a new and magical development in citizen activism and here it is ready to go.

We've set up a process where all you have to do is send a reply to a
special Twitter inbox, and we will transit your message to all your
members of Congress, just like on all our regular action pages.
Here's how it works.

1. First, become a follower of http://twitter.com/cxs
2. Send a reply to @cxs (our Twitter inbox gateway) that includes an issue category tag word (more on this in a second).
3. If this is your first time we will send you a special encrypted link back to your own Twitter inbox as a PRIVATE, direct message.
4. With that encrypted link (for you and you only) you can log in as your Twitter user id at the member's configuration site, and set up your contact information for your "To Congress thru Twitter" submissions (you only have to do this one time.)
5. And BANG! Your messages simply get delivered in real time from then on. You can even get sending confirmations if you select that option.

Sounds easy, so let's give it a try. We have already a regular action page calling for the release of the Torture Memos. How tough an issue is that to support? Are they telling us these LEGAL opinions are so shameful, so beneath contempt as example of lawyering that they are ashamed for us to even be able to see them? How are we to have rule of law, if we are not even allowed to see what law they were operating under?

OK, here's what you do. The special issue tag for this action is very simply #p963, so you go to your own Twitter home page, and in the update box you type

@cxs #p963

and you send.

Wow, was that easy or like what! And your voice, on the subject of "Release The Torture Memos Now", will be communicated to all your members of Congress, and in this case the Department of Justice too. And you still have like another 130 Twitter message characters left to add any personal comment of your own that you like ... but none is required.

All you need to do is become a follower of "To Congress thru Twitter" at http://twitter.com/cxs, and get all your friends to do the same thing, and you can read and share together all the messages that you and your friends are generating out on the issues.

But wait, it gets even better ...

You can send a message "To Congress thru Twitter" like this on ANY issue at all you like. All you have to do is make sure you include in your message one of the large selection of defined general issue tag words (not the same #p963 of course, which has PRESET the subject about the Torture Memos) and you can speak out on any issue under the sun. Organize your friends through Twitter to speak out. Start your own initiatives. Change the world right now this instant!!!

You will get more information on how all this works once you become a follower of http://twitter.com/cxs and send your first reply to @cxs. The system will literally hold your hand and walk you through it the first time. We'll send you your own private, encrypted link (only for you and for nobody else but you), and that will log you in so you can see more about how the whole system is set up.

So speak out on the Torture Memos. Try it out now. Send a reply from you Twitter update box like so:

@cxs #p963

If you like, add any brief comment of your own about why YOU think the Torture Memos should be released. Sure we know they destroyed the video tapes of the torture sessions. And we know that destruction of evidence, let alone the torture itself, was a very bad crime. But was it a serious crime to write a so-called legal opinion? Apparently so, since they are so desperate to keep even those opinions a dark, hidden and evil secret.

Let us shine like the sun and cast the light of truth where it is most urgently needed. Send your first "To Congress thru Twitter" reply message now. And let's fire this puppy of democracy up!

Please take action NOW, so we can win all victories that are supposed to be ours, and forward this alert as widely as possible.

OCLC's Third Research Software Contest

News from OCLC.

I'm pleased to announce that OCLC has opened its Third Research Software Contest.

The prize is $2,500 and an expenses-paid visit to OCLC Research in Dublin, Ohio to discuss your contest entry and related issues and ideas with scientists, developers, and other staff.

We will be assembling a panel of judges to judge submissions based on these criteria:

• Value to libraries, archives or museums
• Use of OCLC services or data
• Originality
• Clean architecture and design

Deadline for entry is June 30, 2009 and the winner will be announced no later than July 31, 2009. Please see the web site for details, Roy

Workshop On Integrating Digital Library Content with Computational Tools and Services

Conference looks interesting.

Workshop On Integrating Digital Library Content with Computational Tools and Services

A Full Day Workshop

19 June 2009
ACM/IEEE Joint Conference on Digital Libraries (JCDL 2009) Austin, Texas, USA

See http://www.music-ir.org/sgdl-workshop/sgdl-cfp.pdf for a more complete CFP.

INTRODUCTION
Over the past ten years, the development, deployment and use of “first generation” digital libraries (DL) have matured into a stable use paradigm: the browsing, searching and then retrieving of digital materials. With recent strides being made in the areas of data mining, high performance computing, semantic web, linked-data, and web-services, etc. exciting new opportunities are arising to create “second generation digital libraries” (SGDL) by extending the standard DL use paradigm to include the analysis of the retrieved materials in a tightly integrated manner. It is the purpose of this workshop to bring together all those that are interested in creating SGDL systems by making this analytic extension to the DL use paradigm a reality.

What's a Library to Do?

Recently the New York Review of Books made available the ICRC Report on the Treatment of Fourteen "High Value Detainees" in CIA Custody. I'd guess it is under copyright. On each page it has a statement that is may not be reprinted and it is confidential. How should libraries handle this? We can't expect it to remain on the site forever. As an important document it should be preserved and made available. As a confidential report, it is not available from the Red Cross. Discussion for the ethics sessions in MLS programs.

Candidate Recommendation for the Simple Knowledge Organization System Reference

News from the W3C Semantic Web Deployment Working Group.

The W3C Semantic Web Deployment Working Group is pleased to announce the publication of a Candidate Recommendation for the Simple Knowledge Organization System (SKOS) Reference.

A new Working Draft of the accompanying SKOS Primer has also been published.

The Working Group now calls for implementations.

We would like to hear of any vocabulary (thesaurus, classification system, subject heading system, taxonomy or other KOS) or mapping between vocabularies that has been published in the Web as machine-readable data using SKOS, and/or has been made available via programmatic services using SKOS.

We would also like to hear of any software that has the capability to read and/or write SKOS data, and/or can check whether a given SKOS dataset is consistent with the SKOS data model.

Belated Anniversary

I started this back on March 5, 2002, so about a month ago was the 7th anniversary. Over that time more than 3,400 things caught my attention enough to create a post. I'm posting less now than in 2002-03. One reason is that now there are many other excellent weblogs covering the topic. Another reason is that there was an excitement in the medium back then, now it is just another avenue for information. Thanks to all those how have read, commented on, and suggested stories over the years.

Digital Library Tool

News from the National Science Digital Library.

NSDL EduPak 1.0: An Open Source Digital Library Services Platform for Education

National educational organizations and institutions focused on establishing specialized digital collections, conducting educational research, or providing students, teachers and instructors with discipline-oriented pedagogical products and tools require basic technology to build educational digital repositories that support their work. To help meet a national priority expressed by the National Science Board (NSB) in January 11, 2009 recommendations to the Obama Administration in which they stated, "Our national economic prosperity and security require that we remain a world leader in science and technology," the National Science Digital Library (NSDL) is pleased to announce the premiere release of NSDL EduPak 1.0. Specifically designed for education, EduPak packages technology for digital storage, access and workflow into a convenient bundle designed to to jump start the essential "behind-the-scenes" framework that enables innovation in teaching and learning. NSDL EduPak may be downloaded through NSDL at NCore and through Fedora Commons.

NSDL EduPak is a publicly available, lightweight version of NCore, established in 2008 as an open-source digital library platform of technology and standards that create a dynamic information layer on top of library resources. Based on Fedora open source repository software, NCore provides users, developers, information managers and decision-makers with systems for description, organization, interrelation and annotation of resources. Built using NCore components, EduPak is an all-in-one, open source, education digital repository solution bundle that provides a general platform for building digital libraries united by a common data model and interoperable applications.

Date and Time Format

Work being done at LC.

The Library of Congress, in conjunction with several partners, has initiated an effort to develop a simple XML date/time format that can be referenced by XML schemas. In the MODS schema, for example, date formats are restricted to 'w3cdtf' (defined as the W3C Date Time Format Note which is a profile of ISO 8601), 'iso8601' (defined as the alternative in ISO 8601 "basic" that specifies the form YYYYMMDD, etc. rather than the form with hyphens), and 'marc' (defined as the conventions used in the MARC 008/07-14 character positions). None of these really meets the requirements of a date time format for these schemas.

Please see http://www.loc.gov/standards/datetime/ which provides a rationale for this work and the requirements that it addresses. We would be pleased to hear of additional requirements or any other comments or suggestions.

CONSER Coding

News from LC about the PCC.

Implementation of Authentication Code "PCC" and Change in Coding Practice of 008/39 Cataloging Source Code in CONSER Records

042 code "pcc"

Beginning May 1, 2009 all CONSER institutions will use the authentication code "pcc" in place of codes "lcd" and "lc" in records newly authenticated and distributed as part of the CONSER Program. The code will be used in records for both serials and integrating resources.

Codes "lcd" and "lc" will remain valid in pre-existing records and will not be systematically changed to "pcc" at this time. Other authentication codes will remain valid and some may be used in combination with code "pcc," when appropriate.

008/39 code "c"

Beginning May 1, 2009 CONSER practice for coding the 008/39 cataloging source will also change. CONSER institutions, other than CONSER national libraries, will use code "c" (defined as "cooperative cataloging program") in all records - original or copy - authenticated and distributed as part of the CONSER Program, unless the record began as a record from a national library, in which case the source code will remain "blank". Previously, authenticated records based on existing OCLC member copy were coded "d" (defined as "other") by default.

Code "d" on existing authenticated records remains valid and will not be systematically changed to code "c" in the near future.

The coding practices of national bibliographic agencies participating in CONSER, (e.g. the Library of Congress, Library and Archives Canada, National Library of Medicine, and National Agricultural Library) will not change. These agencies will continue to use code blank in the 008/39 for original and previously unauthenticated OCLC records.

Genre/Form Thesaurus for Music

News from the Library of Congress.

In November 2008, the Library of Congress Acquisitions and Bibliographic Access Directorate approved a Timeline and Plan for the Next Five Library of Congress Genre/Form Projects. In accordance with that timeline, the Policy and Standards Division (PSD) is beginning to develop a genre/form thesaurus for music. LC’s Music Division and other interested groups are collaborating with PSD in this effort.

Information about the project, including tentative lists of genre/form terms and terms denoting medium of performance, may be linked to from PSD’s genre/form web page.

eXtensible Catalog OAI Toolkit Repository

Another tool from the the eXtensible Catalog folks

eXtensible Catalog (XC) OAI Toolkit repository is now available to the public for download. This project page, hosted by Google Code, is home to all the up-to-date information about the OAI Toolkit, it's downloads, documentation, bug reports, feature requests, most updated under-development code etc. of the XC OAI Toolkit. You will just need a Google account to access the project's code, bug tracking system and other features.

The OAI Toolkit is used to make data stored in an institution's ILS or other repository available for harvesting via OAI-PMH, including other eXtensible Catalog applications. For an ILS, this is accomplished by exporting ILS metadata, converting it from MARC to MARCXML, and loading it into an OAI-PMH compliant repository. The repository (embedded in the OAI Toolkit) makes the data available for harvesting by other XC components.

The OAI Toolkit can be used as part of the XC system, or on its own to enable OAI-PMH harvestability of an existing repository. It is a server application written in Java and is only needed for ILS's and other repositories that do not already have the ability to be act as OAI-PMH Repositories (OAI Servers).

Documentation for the OAI Toolkit can be found at the links below:

• OAI Toolkit Manual
  
• Release Notes

You can download the OAI importer and OAI server zip files from the Downloads tab at list. The OAI Toolkit Manual would be a good help in installing the OAI Toolkit and then you would be ready to run the OAI Toolkit.

The software code repository for the OAI Toolkit could be checked out from SVN.

OAI Toolkit is in a good stable condition at the moment, but still it is under development solving the bug fixes and catering to the feature requests to make it more efficient and stable. The Google bug tracking system of the OAI Toolkit currently contains the outstanding bugs and the feature requests. If you have any suggestions, feature requests, or bugs reports we invite you to submit them to the Google bug tracker system.

For those interested in up-to the minute development, you could checkout the most current OAI Toolkit code under development from SVN.

More information about downloading the Google code and SVN, you can go under the Source tab

eXtensible Catalog NCIP Toolkit

A new tool from the XC folks.

The eXtensible Catalog (XC) NCIP Toolkit is now available to the public for download. This project page, hosted by Google Code, is home to all the up-to-date information about the NCIP Toolkit including its downloads, documentation, bug reports, feature requests, and the most updated under-development code. You just need a Google account to access the project's code, bug tracking system and other features.

You can download a compiled .war file for installing the NCIP Toolkit v0.2, a program for testing the toolkit, and documentation on the project. If you prefer to work with the source code, the latest version can be downloaded from the SVN repository. Alternatively, you can download the code for our alpha version 0.2 release.

The NCIP Toolkit is intended to be installed alongside a compatible ILS and act as an intermediary between NCIP clients and the ILS. The NCIP Toolkit will provide an NCIP interface for authentication requests, live circulation status lookups, and circulation requests. When a client sends an NCIP request to the toolkit, the request is parsed and sent to the ILS using its proprietary interface. The response is then translated back into the NCIP protocol and returned to the client

The NCIP Toolkit can be used as part of the XC system, or on its own to add NCIP functionality to an ILS. It is a server application written in Java and is only needed for ILSs that do not already implement the NCIP protocol.

The NCIP Toolkit is currently only compatible with Voyager, and we are working on adding support for Aleph and III in a future version which will also be released to Google code. We welcome contributions which will enable compatibility with other ILSs. The code is set up so a Java developer can add a support for a new ILS with minimal prior knowledge of the NCIP protocol, and instructions on adding support for a new ILS can be found in the documentation from the above link.

RDA Testers Wanted

An announcement form the RDA folks.

The US National Libraries RDA Test Steering Committee has launched a Website for the RDA test project.

The site includes a link to a fill-in PDF application form that you can use to let us know if you're interested in being selected as a test partner.

The Test Steering Committee received excellent comments about the project after the RDA Test Planning Forum at ALA Midwinter in Denver. As a result of this feedback, we realized that we needed to ask for more precise information from the potential test participants. So we revised the application form and made it available on the RDA Test Planning Website. Please complete and return the form, even if you submitted an expression of interest earlier.

The Website also has links to a proposed timeline and to the methodology that the Steering Committee plans to use for the testing. We'll update the site with additional information as we develop a complete test protocol.

Thank you very much for your interest in the US National Libraries RDA Test project. We look forward to hearing from you. As the application form states, we're requesting that anyone interested in participating as a test partner return the PDF application, via email, by April 13.

Semantic Web Podcast

This conversation between Paul Miller and Jeffrey T. Pollock, the author of Semantic Web For Dummies is going on my MP3 player.

In my latest podcast I talk with Oracle's Jeff Pollock about his recently published book, The Semantic Web For Dummies. We discuss the rationale behind the book and its intended audience, before turning to consideration of the impact that Semantic Technologies are having across a range of sectors. During the conversation, we refer to the following resources; AdaptiveBlue Adaptive Information: Improving Business Through Semantic Interoperability, Grid Computing, and Enterprise Integration Tim Berners-Lee and his Linked Data talk at TED 2009 Calais Cerebra Glue Linked Data Modulant OASIS Open Data Oracle OWL RDF SearchMonkey SOAP SPARQL Thomson Reuters TripIt Twine W3C Yahoo! This conversation was recorded on Tuesday 24 March, 2009.

Word Add-in for Ontology Recognition

For those still using MS Word the Word Add-in for Ontology Recognition could be a handy addition.

The goal of the add-in is to assist scientists in writing a manuscript that is easily integrated with existing and pending electronic resources. The major aims of this project are to add semantic information as XML mark-up to the manuscript using ontologies and controlled vocabularies (using OBO), and to integrate manuscript content with existing public data repositories.

Cataloging Playway Devices

Some help from OLAC on cataloging Playway devices.

The OLAC/MLA Joint Task Force on Best Practice Guidelines for Cataloging Playaways has completed its review of the implications of the new RDA rules for Playaway cataloging, based on the latest RDA draft. Playaways are stand-alone, pre-loaded digital audio players, usually used for audiobooks (see http://store.playawaydigital.com/ for more information).

The report, entitled Playaways and RDA: Summary of relevant sections from RDA Chapters 3, 6, and 7, is available at http://www.olacinc.org/drupal/capc_files/PlayawaysAndRDA.pdf or from the OLAC Cataloging Policy Committee publications page.

Expert Community Experiment

News from OCLC about their Expert Community Experiment.

OCLC is offering one additional live Webinar to introduce the Expert Community Experiment. It will be held on March 24, 2009 at 2:30 PM Eastern Time. We would welcome your attendance.

Statement of International Cataloguing Principles

The Statement of International Cataloguing Principles is now available in 17 languages on IFLANET.

Privacy Issue

Not cataloging, but maybe we should be aware of this privacy issue.

Today Google launched its behavioral targeting ad program, which it calls "interest-based advertising." This move has been widely expected once Google completed its $3.1 billion acquisition of DoubleClick one year ago today....

So we worked with Google to seek a new solution. Google accepted the technical challenge, and the result is the Advertising Cookie Opt-Out Plug-in, which allows users to keep their opt-out status for a particular browser even when they clear all cookies. We appreciate that Google was responsive to the opt-out cookie concerns, and especially pleased that the plug-in is available as an open source project. We look forward to it being available for Safari, Chrome and other browsers, not just IE and Firefox.

There is more information on the Electronic Frontier Foundation website.

International Conference for Digital Libraries and the Semantic Web

Looks like an interesting conference, Italy is a bit far though.

The International Conference for Digital Libraries and the Semantic Web (ICSD 2009) addresses two main questions:

1. How can digital libraries support Semantic Web functionality?
2. How can Semantic Web technology improve digital libraries?

Ultimately the goal is an environment in which all functionality is available to the user without the perception of different systems or system boundaries.

Contributions are sought that address one or both of the main questions or steps towards the ultimate system.

Hope they make MP3s of some of the talks available after the meeting.

Series Work E-List

An Announcement on AUTOCAT.

We are in the process of starting up an electronic list, SERIES-L, dedicated to concerns about bibliographic control for library materials issued in series.

Generally speaking, SERIES-L will do for bibliographic series what the PERSNAME-L list now does for personal names. Posts to SERIES-L will address specific concerns and specific situations, and will focus on resolving problems rather than discussion. Discussion is encouraged -- but not on SERIES-L! -- rather, elsewhere, in appropriate fora. SERIES-L is for the actual work of cataloging materials in series.

You can sign up for SERIES-L at this time. To do so, send an e-mail to LISTSERV@PO.MISSOURI.EDU with the text SUBSCRIBE SERIES-L plus your forename and surname. It's expected that we'll start posts to the list once enough people are signed up.

Shameless Plug TLA

Two of my collogues will be presenting at the Texas Library Association annual conference.

Space Science Resources for Students
2:00 - 3:20 PM (Thurs.)

Educators at NASA Johnson Space Center’s ARES program and the Lunar and Planetary Institute have assembled exciting, free space science resources that librarians can share with students and include in programming.

Katy Buckaloo, education assistant; and Stephanie Shipp, manager, Education and Public Outreach, Lunar and Planetary Institute (Houston).

Give them a full room and a warm reception.

Rare Map Cataloging

News from ALA.

An editorial team has been appointed to develop DCRM(C). The initial plan of action calls for a review of Descriptive Cataloging of Rare Materials (Books) (DCRM(B)) and Cartographic Materials: A Manual of Interpretation for AACR2, Second Edition (CM) to identify 1) areas of conflict between the two standards, 2) lacunae in CM, whether or not they are addressed in DCRM(B), and 3) areas where existing guidance from practices and other sources (such as LC’s Map Cataloging Manual) usefully addresses conflicts and lacunae.

From the Feb. 2008 issue of Baseline.

MODS MADS Changes

Some news from the MODS/MADS folks.

The MODS/MADS Editorial Committee is working through a long list of change proposals for the 3.4 and 4.0 versions of MODS. The 3.4 release will include minor changes, and the 4.0 release will include more major changes that prevent backwards compatibility with the 3.x versions. We'll be posting to this list and to the MODS web site specific change proposals as they are approved for inclusion. The Committee meets via conference call biweekly, and we expect that approving the queued changes for 3.4 will take at least two more calls. Here is a summary of our current status:

Changes for 3.4 approved on March 11, 2009:

• Add the following attributes to location/holdingSimple/copyInformation/note: "ID", "lang", "script", "transliteration", "xlink", and "xml:lang". Rationale: adding these attributes will harmonize the definition of <note> with the other places this element appears in MODS.
• Add the "type" attribute to location/holdingSimple/copyInformation/form. Rationale: adding this attribute will harmonize the definition of <form> with its definition within <physicalDescription>.
• Add the "displayLabel" attribute to all top-level MODS elements that now lack it. Rationale: makes MODS overall more consistent, and promotes easier use of MODS as a back-end format for customized cataloging and discovery systems.

The MODS/MADS Editorial Committee will hold our next conference call on Wednesday March 25, and will be reviewing more change proposals at that time. Please post to the MODS list if you have a feature you'd like to see in 3.4 or a future revision, or if you have any comments on the changes to be discussed on the next call by the Editorial Committee.

Changes to be discussed on March 25, 2009:

• Address the differing definitions of extent within physicalDescription and part
• Add script attribute to language
• Add lang, xml:lang, script and transliteration attributes to language subelements
• Add edtf date format as an option on date elements
• Support RDA "Content Type" element
• Add "references" or "reviewOf" to relatedItem type attribute list
• Expand use of qualifier attributes

Normalize your LCCNs

Jonathan Rochkind points out the need to normalize your LCCNs when using some services. OCLC Identities apparently does not do this. LC does provide an explanation of the process. Seems like a simple enough process. Have any of the Code4Lib crowd written anything? Just how useful would this generally be?

Bibliographic Record Production

There is now a Ning group for the Bibliographic Record Production project, R2's investigation and analysis of the MARC record "marketplace" Not much content there yet.

We are very happy to see people here at bibrecords.ning and ask that you invite other catalogers, cataloging coordinators, library administrators, and vendors to join.

Throughout the project, we will encourage you to express your perspectives, offer ideas, and engage in respectful dialogue. We will consider all comments to be useful indicators and will do our best to keep the site updated as to our progress.

There is an RSS feed even though I couldn't find the icon.

OCLC's PURL Server

News from OCLC about their PURL Server

The PURL Server is being replaced with a new architecture.

During this transition period the ability to Register, Create, or Modify records on the Server will be disabled.

This transition will occur soon. When a specific date is know the main purl page will be updated. The new achitecture is estimated to be available a week after that date.

Information about the new server.

An OCLC announcement about this server.

TxLA

I'm so looking forward to seeing the Unshelved folks at the Texas Library Association annual conference. I hope I can catch Terry Moore on the panel. Echo is the best comic I've read in quite some time. Maybe he will also have a booth? Have to check the vendor list.

Open Source

Here is another example of why open source software is necessary.

I've been using MS Money for years, mid-90s at least. A while back my version stopped working, just would not work any more without an upgrade. $35.00 just to keep using a program I had purchased.

The upgrade did not work. I couldn't open the files at all. Contacted customer support and got back instructions. I followed them. I'm no idiot and I've been using a computer since the 80s so I'm no novice either.

Lost all my data since 2001. Like all the tax info I had kept in those files.

Moneydance might have been a better option. Could not have been any worse.

FRBR in Dublin Core Application Profiles

Assessing FRBR in Dublin Core Application Profiles by Talat Chaudhri appears in Ariadne no. 58.

The question remains as to whether FRBR is suitable for Web delivery within repositories, and for which specific resource types and DCAPs. Until this is answered with practical testing, it will be difficult or even impossible to frame a ‘core DCAP’ and subsequently analyse whether the concept would be of practical use. Metadata need to be flexible and re-usable in the fast-changing world of repositories. In order to make best use of the specific improvements to repository metadata that the DCAPs have provided, it may be to their advantage to re-analyse their entity models.

Spring Break

For Spring break our family will be in Cleveland, Pittsburgh and Washington, DC and driving between them. Any suggestions? Something fun for a 13 and 15 year old?

Google Eye-tracking Studies

Google has published the results of their latest eye-tracking studies. Could be interesting for folks designing OPAC or NGC displays.

When designing the user interface for Universal Search, the team wanted to incorporate thumbnail images to better represent certain kinds of results. For example, in the [how to tie a tie] example above, we have added thumbnails for Image and Video results. However, we were concerned that the thumbnail images might be distracting and disrupt the well-established order of result evaluation.

We ran a series of eye-tracking studies where we compared how users scan the search results pages with and without thumbnail images. Our studies showed that the thumbnails did not strongly affect the order of scanning the results and seemed to make it easier for the participants to find the result they wanted.

eXtensible Text Framework

News from the The California Digital Library about a new tool.

The California Digital Library (CDL) is pleased to announce the availability of an extensive self-guided tutorial for its eXtensible Text Framework (XTF) application. XTF is an open source, highly customizable piece of software supporting the search, browse, and display of heterogeneous digital content and offering efficient and practical methods for creating customized end-user interfaces for distinct digital collections. The tutorial provides guidance for implementing and customizing XTF, from core functionality to overall look and feel. Downloads for the Mac and Windows operating systems are available from the XTF Project page on SourceForge along with the complete distribution and documentation.

The tutorial comes with a complete XTF package that is ready to run when uncompressed; no other installation is required. It contains nine modules spanning the most powerful and popular features, including how to:

• Add new content
• Change metadata
• Change logo and colors
• Increase significance of titles in ranking hits
• Customize and enable default status of advanced search
• Change fields displayed in search results
• Enable structural searching
• Create a hierarchical facet
• Change footnote behavior

Institutional Repository Software

Yet another IR system.

The University of Rochester is pleased to announce the alpha version of its new institutional repository software platform named irplus. It contains the following features:

• Personal authoring work space
• Collaborative authoring and versioning
• Publishing
• Publication Versioning
• Faceted searching
• Researcher pages
• Statistics

A further explanation of the highlights can be found here.

MarcEdit 5.1 Released

A new version of MarcEdit has been released. (Terry Reese is following the Hobbit habit and giving presents on his birthday.) Terry is presenting at TLA this year, I'm looking forward to that. He has some tutorials on YouTube. Thanks Terry and Happy Birthday.

Poll Results

Very unscientific poll results:

Do Library of Congress authority records from the mid-1980s that are still preliminary bother you?

Yes.
[ 52% (14 votes) ]
Not so much.
[ 26% (7 votes) ]
No.
[ 22% (6 votes) ]

Carbon Footprint

Reducing junk mail is a painless way to reduce your carbon footprint. YellowPagesGoesGreen allows you to stop delivery of telephone books. We use them almost never, Reduce comes before Recycle. Catalog Choice provides the same service for catalogs.

It seems the Wii is the most environmentally friendly of all the gaming consoles. However, if you turn off the others when not in use, they are not too bad.

Preliminary Authority Records

I've set up a poll on old preliminary records. Just for fun or to vent.

Off Topic - Gaming

Well, those gaming librarians have recruited me. I've always thought libraries should have games. Why not? They have romance novels, DVDs, CDs, all sorts of popular materials. But I never had any interest in games. I'd tried Pong and Space Invaders and a couple of others over the years but they didn't appeal to me. Then we gave a home to two kids and last Christmas got a Wii for the family. These games weren't your parent's games. Super Mario Galaxy and Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga were both imaginative and engaging. My TV time, never too much, disappeared for months.

Recently for my birthday I received a Nintendo DS Lite. Nice graphics, fast enough, small enough to enjoy. I started playing Brain Age: Train Your Brain in Minutes a Day!. But soon I also picked up Hotel Dusk: Room 215 and Lego Indiana Jones: The Original Adventures. If you haven't tried video games in a dozen years, you will be surprised at just how more enjoyable they have become. Since I'm new to this I'm open to suggestion from any more knowledgeable sources.

Preliminary Authority Records

I'm bothered by authority records at remaining as preliminary for 25 years or so. Seems like we should be wary of using preliminary things. If a piece of software is marketed as preliminary or beta, I'd only use it in controlled situations. Yet some of these preliminary headings have been used to create name/title authority records. Just how many are there? Well, in our small library here are the headings marked as preliminary in our catalog.

• n 83825067 Spector, William S.
• n 83825547 Library of Congress. Classification Division. Classification. Class R: Medicine.
• n 83825719 Colloquium on the Optical Properties and Electronic Structure of Metals and Alloys (Paris, France)
• n 83825864 Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology. Committee on Biological Works.
• n 83825968 Hyman, Charles J.
• n 83827345 Linhart, J. G.
• n 83827385 Solar Spectrum Symposium (1963 : Rijksuniversiteit te Utrecht)
• n 83827671 Schwarzschild, Martin.
• n 83827701 Space Age Astronomy Symposium (1961 : Pasadena, Calif.)
• n 83827876 King, Gerald W.
• n 83828167 Brandstatter, Julius J.
• n 83828312 Heide, Fritz, 1891-
• n 83828638 Watanabe, Hiroshi, 1927-
• n 83828871 Jong, Wieger Fokke de, 1896-
• n 83829154 International Symposium on the Origin of Life on the Earth (1957 : Moscow, Russia)
• n 83829438 International Symposium on Basic Environmental Problems of Man in Space.
• n 84800287 Conference on the Nature of the Surface of the Moon (1965 : Greenbelt, Md.)
• n 84802687 I.A.U. Symposium on the Moon.
• n 84803439 Zylka, Romuald.
• n 84803672 Mineur, Henri, 1899-1954.
• n 84806607 Sandner, Werner.
• n 84806671 Lunar Surface Materials Conference (1963 : Boston, Mass.)
• n 84806677 International Geophysics Committee.
• n 85800342 Bonola, Roberto, 1874-1911.
• n 85800347 Small, Robert, 1732-1808.
• n 85800679 Kunkel, Wulf B.
• n 85801170 Becvar, Antonin, 1901-
• n 85801875 White, John Francis, 1921-
• n 85802026 United States. National Committee for the International Geophysical Year.
• n 85802469 Jubilee of Relativity Theory (1955 : Bern, Switzerland)
• n 85802520 Maisak, Lawrence.
• n 85803615 Chayes, Felix, 1916-
• n 85803890 Hagihara, Yusuke, 1897-
• n 85803956 McKinley, Donald William Robert, 1912-
• n 85804249 Rankama, Kalervo, 1913-
• n 85804653 Raimes, Stanley.
• n 85804715 Jet Propulsion Laboratory Conference on the Solar Wind (1964 : Pasadena, Calif.)
• n 85806886 American Association of Petroleum Geologists. Committee on Structural Nomenclature.
• n 85814887 National Research Council (U.S.). Panel on Solid Earth Problems.

Will some of these no longer be preliminary when death dates are added? Not necessarily. Many of these have been updated over the years as a look at the 005 will show, yet they are still preliminary. /rant

MARBI

The proposals and discussion papers discussed at the Midwinter 2009 MARBI meetings have been updated to include brief summaries of discussions and decisions made.

Document Summarization using Wikipedia

Document Summarization using Wikipedia by Krishnan Ramanathan, Yogesh Sankarasubramaniam, Nidhi Mathur, and Ajay Gupta is a recent HP Technical Report. It seems the small screens used by mobile devices are creating a demand for document summarization.

Although most of the developing world is likely to first access the Internet through mobile phones, mobile devices are constrained by screen space, bandwidth and limited attention span. Single document summarization techniques have the potential to simplify information consumption on mobile phones by presenting only the most relevant information contained in the document. In this paper we present a language independent single-document summarization method. We map document sentences to semantic concepts in Wikipedia and select sentences for the summary based on the frequency of the mapped-to concepts. Our evaluation on English documents using the ROUGE package indicates our summarization method is competitive with the state of the art in single document summarization.

Google, Yahoo and MSN Agree on the Canonical Link Tag

Google, Yahoo and MSN Agree on the Canonical Link Tag. Nice and simple.

The latest news coming from the the three major search engines is a major improvement to how Websites are indexed by search engines. The idea of the Canonical Link Tag is that a website owner can specify a preferred version of a particular URL. What does that mean? If your site has identical or similar content (accessible through several different URLs), the Canonical link tag helps search engines calculate the most preferred URL. How Does it Operate? The tag is part of the HTML header on a web page, the same section you’d find the Title attribute and Meta Description tag. In fact, this tag isn’t new, but like nofollow, simply uses a new rel parameter. For example:

link rel="canonical" href="http://www.yoursite.org/yourpage.php?5473893993"

This would tell Yahoo!, MSN or Google that this page, where you place the tag will be treated as www.yoursite.com/yourpage.php. Therefore all links, as well as content metrics a search engine would apply should tie back to that URL as though it were one and the same.

Seem on Mark8t via Weibel Lines.

Metadata Remediation Tools

Future Directions in Metadata Remediation for Metadata Aggregators by Greta de Groat describes tools used by digital libraries on metadata aggregations.

This report will detail the current state of the art of remediation efforts, describe the additional services that aggregators could offer if the metadata were there to support them, and identify the types of tools that are needed to remediate the metadata in order to achieve the desired level of service. The report is aimed toward designers of metadata aggregations, including programmers, project planners, and metadata specialists. Knowledge domains such as computer science, informatics, information retrieval, information science, and library science are within the scope of the report. It is assumed that remediation efforts will be focused on working with the metadata itself, as many aggregators do not have access to the raw digital item.

Seen on Current Cites.

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

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

The code should not be used in exchange records until after April 19, 2009. 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.

Term, Name, Title Sources

The following code is for use in subfield $2 in fields 600-651, 655-657 (Subject Added Entries/Index Terms) in Bibliographic and Community Information records; field 662 (Subject Added Entry) 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.

Addition:

embne

Encabezamientos de Materia de la Biblioteca Nacional de Espaa [use after April 19, 2009]

Additions to the MARC Code List for Relators

The codes listed below have been recently approved for use in MARC 21 records. The codes will be added to MARC Code List for Relators. They were submitted by the Arizona State University Libraries, prompted by current work with resource descriptions in the areas of stage performance, archeology, and data and grant administration.

The codes should not be used in exchange records until after April 18, 2009. 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.

anl

Analyst
Use for a person or organization that reviews, examines and interprets data or information in a specific area.

ard

Artistic director
Use for a person responsible for controlling the development of the artistic style of an entire production, including the choice of works to be presented and selection of senior production staff.

dtc

Data contributor
Use for a person or organization that submits data for inclusion in a database or other collection of data.

dtm

Data manager
Use for a person or organization responsible for managing databases or other data sources.

elg

Electrician
Use for a person responsible for setting up a lighting rig and focusing the lights for a production, and running the lighting at a performance.
UF

• Chief electrician
• House electrician
• Master electrician

fld

Field director
Use for a person or organization that manages or supervises the work done to collect raw data or do research in an actual setting or environment (typically applies to the natural and social sciences).

gis

eographic information specialist
Use for a person responsible for geographic information system
(GIS) development and integration with global positioning system data.
UF

• Geospatial information specialist

lbr

Laboratory
Use for an institution that provides scientific analyses of material samples.

ldr

Laboratory director
Use for a person or organization that manages or supervises work done in a controlled setting or environment.
UF

• Lab director

led

Lead
Use to indicate that a person or organization takes primary responsibility for a particular activity or endeavor. Use with another relator term or code to show the greater importance this person or organization has regarding that particular role. If more than one relator is assigned to a heading, use the Lead relator only if it applies to all the relators.

msd

Musical director
Use for a person responsible for basic music decisions about a production, including coordinating the work of the composer, the sound editor, and sound mixers, selecting musicians, and organizing and/or conducting sound for rehearsals and performances.

pma

Permitting agency
Use for an authority (usually a government agency) that issues permits under which work is accomplished.

pmn

Production manager
Use for a person responsible for all technical and business matters in a production.

pdr

Project director
Use for a person or organization with primary responsibility for all essential aspects of a project, or that manages a very large project that demands senior level responsibility, or that has overall responsibility for managing projects, or provides overall direction to a project manager.

rps

Repository
Use for an agency that hosts data or material culture objects and provides services to promote long term, consistent and shared use of those data or objects.

sds

Sound designer
Use for a person who produces and reproduces the sound score (both live and recorded), the installation of microphones, the setting of sound levels, and the coordination of sources of sound for a production

sh

Supporting host
Use for a person or organization that supports (by allocating facilities, staff, or other resources) a project, program, meeting, event, data objects, material culture objects, or other entities capable of support
UF

• Host, Supporting

stm

Stage manager
Use for a person who is in charge of everything that occurs on a performance stage, and who acts as chief of all crews and assistant to a director during rehearsals.

tcd

Technical director
Use for a person who is ultimately in charge of scenery, props, lights and sound for a production

Displaying Searching Results

Starting from Zero: Winning Strategies for No Search Results Pages by Greg Nudelman gives advice for those creating commercial search engines. However, there are plenty of ideas we can also use.

Expert Community Experiment

News from OCLC.

Software changes needed for the Expert Community Experiment, which enables cataloging members to make more changes to WorldCat master records, were successfully installed on February 15th. During the experiment, members with full level cataloging authorizations have the ability to improve and upgrade more WorldCat master records than previously possible. The experiment is expected to last six months.

Introductory web information sessions will be held on Tuesday, February 17, 2009, 8:00 – 9:00 AM Eastern Time; Thursday, February 19, 2009, 1:00 – 2:00 PM Eastern Time; Tuesday, February 24, 2009, 4:00 – 5:00 PM Eastern Time; Wednesday, February 25, 2009, 8:30 – 9:30 AM Eastern Time.

For more information, including Guidelines for use during the experiment and an FAQ, and to register to attend a web session, go to the Expert Community Experiment page.

Cataloging Sessions @ TLA

Cataloging sessions at the Texas Library Library Association Annual Conferecne look excellent.

PRECONFERENCE – Tuesday – March 31
The Nuts & Bolts of RDA
9:00 AM - 5:00 PM
Explore a new approach to cataloging rules. Barbara Tillett of the Library of Congress and the Joint Steering Committee for Development of RDA discusses RDA implementation to prepare you for the future. Preregistration required.
Barbara Tillett, Library of Congress

Thursday – April 2
Cataloging 101 for School and Public Librarians
10:00 - 11:50 AM
What are the most important components of a good MARC record? This session will review basic concepts and present essential and inexpensive cataloging tools.
Joanna Fountain

Looking beyond Shelf Location: The Benefits of the Dewey Decimal Classification System in Libraries
2:00 - 3:50 PM
Take a look beyond Dewey as a shelf location device and expose the power of the underlying DDC data file, the interoperable translations, the associated terminologies, and the exciting research efforts that contribute to the ongoing benefits and relevance of the DDC in libraries. A business meeting follows the program.
Joan S. Mitchell and Renee Patzer

Friday – April 3
MarcEdit as a Cataloging Tool
10:00 - 11:50 AM
The creator of this popular open source MARC record editing tool presents how to fully utilize the program’s capabilities for database maintenance. Learn to streamline your cataloging processes by making global edits to large numbers of MARC records.
Terry Reese

Hope to see you there.

Electronic Resources and Libraries

Slides and audio for most presentations at ER&L 2009 will be available.

UCLA is a beautiful campus. A wide variety of trees, hills, and open spaces. Some of the rooms were a bit small for the meetings. Once I had miss a talk I wanted to hear because there was standing room only. However, since all the talks were good, my fallback option was excellent. There were not enough wall outlets for those blogging and Twittering. Laptop carriers should just bring a power strip and share. Maybe the conference could provide a couple of strips for each room. Fewer people were Twittering than I expected. About six out of a group of over three hundred. 2% or so I'd guess. Thanks to all involved in the Conference, it was a great experience.

Electronic Resources and Libraries 2009

The Conference is over. Some excellent content and good presentations. The conference committee should be proud. Also a good group of attendees. Plenty to learn just talking to others between sessions. Some takeaways.

1. Check into having our catalog hosted, Evergreen perhaps.
2. OLE Project. SOA. It will be the backend, use Blacklight, whatever for the OPAC. Meant to integrate with other components, Shibbolith, LDAP, EDP, etc. Modular.
3. Worldcat Local. Attempt to answer the question "What data should be at the network level and what at the local level?"
4. Vicky Reich gave the most thought provoking talk. For many years we have been modeling our behavior on the business model. "Just in time, not just in case." Now looking at Circuit City, the auto industry, financial industry, realtor business it might not have been such a good idea. We could be next.
5. Muse Single Search is working for someone. Only federated search that even had one happy person.
6. LibGuides were mentioned several times. Have to investigate.
7. Thought experiments: Tag clouds as a display. Give users the option to open some of their circ history for finding other similar readers. Enhancing digital texts.
8. Use more than one pass of XSLT to get data in correct format. Share XSLT.
9. What is it like to be a librarian? Its all about money and power.
10. Link evaluator for FF from OCLC.
11. Kill zombie budget items, those that fund the dead programs but continue on. One library cut entire paper reference collection.
12. K. G. Schneider makes me proud to be a librarian.

Thanks to all who put this conference together. wonderful trees on the campus.

Electronic Resources and Libraries

Got a couple of things to think about at the welcome party last night.

Oracle comes with a built in link checker. Have to check just how good it is.

One library is no longer checking in journals. Time is best spent elsewhere.

OCLC's Expert Community Experiment

Good news from OCLC.

In response to requests from the cataloging community, OCLC is introducing the Expert Community Experiment which enables cataloging members to make more changes to WorldCat records.

During the Experiment, members with full level cataloging authorizations have the ability to improve and upgrade more WorldCat master records than has been previously possible. The Experiment begins in mid-February 2009, and is expected to last six months.

Introductory web information sessions will be held throughout February for those interested in participating in the Experiment.

Please see the Expert Community Experiment page to register to attend a web sessions. More information will be added to this page over the next few days.

Stimulus Package

Ask and you shall receive or at least find. It seems ALA was on the ball and has been active in asking for funding for libraries. Include Public Libraries in Recovery Funding! is a page where you can send an email to your senators. I've used it to send mine a message.

Los Angeles

Next weekend I'm heading out to Los Angeles for ER&L. I'm going in a couple days early and staying with my brother in the desert. Right now I plan to visit the La Brea Tar Pits and Griffith Observatory. Any other suggestions? How about a good place to eat near either of those places? Any English Country, Contra or International Folk dancing in the desert next weekend? At UCLA next week? Thanks.

Stimulus Package

Where are the libraries in the stimulus package? I've been swamped with petitions and write your rep forms from lots of medical, green, social services groups but not one has mentioned libraries. I know we could use the cash. Has LC, OCLC, or ALA or some other big player made a play for the funding? If so let me know, I'd gladly support and spread the word about the effort.

We know libraries are a good investment, they are underfunded, and the salaries are comparatively low. Sounds like a good place to invest some funds. Libraries are also counter-cyclical, business goes up in bad times. So our need and importance to our communities are greater now than a few years back.

Electronic Resouces and Libraries 2009

Next week I'll be at ER&L. Having some fun picking out sessions. Here are the presentations I currently plan to be at:

• Metadata Crosswalking
• Let's Stop Talking About Repositories
• Holistic Budgeting
• Sharing the Buck (aside, I'd love to find some libraries to share resources with)
• Open Source ILS Panel
• The Seismology of Google Scholar
• Electronic Resources in the Next Gen Cat
• Parterships
• Managing Freely Available E-Resource Collections

I'll be at some other sessions too, but I've yet to choose between two I equally want to see. I hope to see some folks who follow Catalogablog there.

Cataloging Info by the Crowd

The LibraryThing weblog has a post about their users adding author information.

On Thursday we introduced a silly new "meme" page called "Dead or Alive?" which listed your authors by their mortal status--alive, dead, unknown or "not a person." (See the blog post or check out yours.) The feature drew on the birth and death dates of the authors in our Common Knowledge system, a free (Creative Commons) "fielded wiki" for miscellaneous "cataloging" information (think "Wikipedia for book info"). To move an author from the "unknown" column, members had to find their dates and enter them onto into Common Knowledge.

What are the implications? Would this be useful in disambiguation? If the links are stable, COOL, PURLS, or something like that would a link here be a useful result return on an author search in our catalog? Just thinking out-loud.

Very few of the folks writing on library topics have had their birth dates entered. Hint to Meredith, Terry, Andrew, ....

Omeka Element Sets

Omeka now comes with the Dublic Core element set. CDWA-Lite is in the works.

Omeka is a free and open source collections based web-based publishing platform for scholars, librarians, archivists, museum professionals, educators, and cultural enthusiasts. Its “five-minute setup” makes launching an online exhibition as easy as launching a blog. Omeka is designed with non-IT specialists in mind, allowing users to focus on content and interpretation rather than programming. It brings Web 2.0 technologies and approaches to academic and cultural websites to foster user interaction and participation. It makes top-shelf design easy with a simple and flexible templating system. Its robust open-source developer and user communities underwrite Omeka’s stability and sustainability.

MODS XML Schema Tool

Hre is a tool to validate records against the MODS XML Schema.

The Digital Library Federation's Aquifer is pleased to announce a new online service, the "MODS and Asset Action Explorer,". This is an experimental service developed at the University of Illinois Grainger Engineering Library as part of the DLF Aquifer American Social History Online project with support from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

The service allows anyone to upload MODS XML files, including modsCollection files, and verify that those records comply to the MODS XML Schema and also to check the uploaded records against the Aquifer project's MODS Levels of Adoption Guidelines. In addition to MODS records, the service also allows the upload of Asset Action Packages which is another experimental format being developed by the DLF Aquifer project. An Asset Action Package is an XML file containing a defined set of actionable URIs for a digital resource that delivers named, typed actions for that resource.

Anyone is welcome to get an account and upload their MODS records for validation and checking. However, note that the system is still in the research/development stages, so expect that any posted records could get mangled or disappear for unknown reasons.

Tagging Study

Do Tags Work? by Cathy Marshall is an interesting study comparing tags, titles and descriptions of photos in Flickr.

Have I convinced you that tags aren't all they've cracked up to be? I hope I have, but nonetheless there's a lingering fascination. Surely there's something to be done about tags: we don't want to just turn up our noses at Mr. Weinberger's argument. They could be a compact and efficient way of describing pictures. After all, picture archiving is difficult. Witness Art Spiegelman's fine graphical account in the New Yorker more than a dozen years ago; he described the difficult work of senior librarian Arthur Williams who curated the New York Public Library's extensive picture collection for over 30 years. Just how do you turn a library patron's question, “I want a picture that conveys rough times ahead” into a photo of a three-masted schooner sailing into a storm?

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

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 23, 2009. 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 015 (National Bibliography Number) The following code is for use in subfield $2 in field 015 in the Bibliographic format.

dnb

Deutsche Nationalbibliografie [use only after March 23, 2009]

Field 887 (Non-MARC Information Field) The following code is for use in subfield $2 in field 887 in the Bibliographic format.

onix

ONIX (Online Information Exchange) [use only after March 23, 2009]

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 (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.

ept

Evropski pedagoski tezaver = European education thesaurus (EET) : slovenska razliica - izdelana po angleski razliici (Ljubljana: Zavod Republike Slovenije za solstvo) [use only March 23, 2009]

eurovocen

Eurovoc thesaurus (English) [use only after March 23, 20009]

eurovocsl

Eurovoc thesaurus (Slovenian) [use only after March 23, 20009]

mech

Iskanje po zbirki MECH [use only after March 23, 2009]

pmt

Project management terminology. Newtown Square, PA: Project Management Institute. [use only after March 23, 2009]

Serial Cataloging Guide

NASIGuide: MARC Coding for Serials by Elizabeth McDonald and Beverly Geckle is now available.

Aimed at helping in the creation and interpretation of MARC bibliographic records for serials, this guide focuses on how serial MARC records differ from records for other formats. While continuing resources include both serials and integrating resources such as looseleafs or websites, this guide discusses serials only. Cataloging Serials involves an understanding of both the MARC codes and cataloging rules and practices. Although cataloging rules and practices are referred to, the main focus of this guide is on MARC coding, and not all subfields are always covered.

Typographical Errors in Library Databases

Typographical Errors in Library Databases has a new home. There is also a email group and a weblog on the topic.

MARC Tool

yaz-marcdump is a free tool from Index Data to manipulate MARC records. Perhaps it is just the tool you need to convert those MARC21 records encoded in MARC-8 into UTF-8.

yaz-marcdump reads MARC records from one or more files. It parses each record and supports output in line-format, ISO2709, MARCXML, MarcXchange as well as Hex output.

This utility parses records ISO2709(raw MARC) as well as XML if that is structured as MARCXML/MarcXchange....

The following command converts MARC21/USMARC in MARC-8 encoding to MARC21/USMARC in UTF-8 encoding. Leader offset 9 is set to 'a'. Both input and output records are ISO2709 encoded.

yaz-marcdump -f MARC-8 -t UTF-8 -o marc -l 9=97 marc21.raw >marc21.utf8.raw

The same records may be converted to MARCXML instead in UTF-8:

yaz-marcdump -f MARC-8 -t UTF-8 -o marcxml marc21.raw >marcxml.xml

Moving Image Work-Level Records

The Moving Image Work-Level Records Task Force is look for comments about their work by Friday, February 13, 2009.

The Moving Image Work-Level Records Task Force of CAPC (OLAC's Cataloging Policy Committee) has posted a finalized version of parts 1-2 of our recommendations. This document covers definitions, boundaries, attributes, and relationships.

We have also posted a draft of part 4, which covers our proof-of-concept attempt to extract work/primary expression-level information from existing MARC manifestation bibliographic records. It also gives some recommendations for cataloging practice and changes to the MARC format based on our experience. We are particularly interested in feedback on readability of the report and on the recommendations that we're making.

The OLAC website has a nice new look. Have you renewed your membership in OLAC? It is a Best Buy.

OAIster Moving

OAIster, the union catalog for OAI records, is to move from the University of Michigan to OCLC.

The University of Michigan approached OCLC about managing future operations for OAIster, which has grown to over 19 million records contributed by over 1,000 institutions and organizations worldwide since the service launched in 2002.

OCLC welcomed the proposal because OAIster complements the types of resources already cataloged in WorldCat, broadens the scope of collections to include open archives, and reaches millions of information seekers every month through OCLC services including WorldCat.org and FirstSearch.

‡biblios.net

Nicole C. Engard has made this announcement.

I have been spending a lot of time these last few months working on getting a new web-based cataloging tool ready for you all. It's finally time! I'd like to invite you to sign up for free and try out ‡biblios.net a community cataloging tool from LibLime.

So, what the heck is it? ‡biblios.net is a web-based original and copy cataloging tool with built in federated search of any Z39.50 target (via an integrated search registry with over 2000 targets - or by adding your own) and a large (30 million strong) shared database of catalog records. This means that you can isit ‡biblios.net and benefit from the work of other catalogers who have gone before you. You can also edit and contribute to the database without any restrictions.

I have also worked on creating some macros (others can be written by users) to help streamline some of our cataloging processes and templates for common item types to make original cataloging a little bit easier :) Best of all, you can set ‡biblios.net to automatically add records to your Koha system with the click of a button!

I'm looking for both novice and professional catalogers to give me their opinions of the tools, services and overall user friendliness of ‡biblios.net. I am of course also looking for people to join the community so that this tool and grow and help us all with our cataloging work.

I have worked very closely with the development crew on this new tool and believe very strongly both in it and the ideas behind it. The fact that we all work so very hard on our cataloging makes the fact that the records in ‡biblios.net are freely-licensed under the Open Data Commons all that more appealing.

If you want to learn more you can read through the documentation on the site and/or take a peek at this great write up by Jonathan Rochkind.

I'll have to look up how to get those double daggers. Including a non-keyboard symbol in a product name might not be the best idea.

Let Your Fingers Do the Walking Through WorldCat

OCLC has announced WorldCat Mobile.

• Search for library materials—Enter search terms such as keywords, author or title
• Find a WorldCat library near you—Enter your ZIP, postal code or location in the Libraries Locator
• Call a library—Highlight and click the phone number in a library listing to place a call
• Map a route—Find the fastest way to a WorldCat library using the mapping software already on your device

Type this URL into your phone's Web browser:

www.worldcat.org/m/

MARBI at Midwinter

The following papers are now available for review by the MARC community:

Proposal No. 2009-01/3: Identifying work, expression and manifestation records in the MARC 21 Bibliographic and Authority Formats.

Discussion Paper No. 2009-DP01/2: Relationship Designators for RDA Appendix J and K.

OCLC Record Sharing News

By now everyone must have seen something about the recent OCLC move to update their position on sharing records. It has been covered and discussed in many weblogs, podcasts and magazine articles. Now all that discussion has led OCLC to reconsider their position.

Members Council and the OCLC Board of Trustees will jointly convene a Review Board of Shared Data Creation and Stewardship to represent the membership and inform OCLC on the principles and best practices for sharing library data. The group will discuss the Policy for Use and Transfer of WorldCat Records with the OCLC membership and library community.

Seems a good idea. I think much of the heat was generated by the policy appearing out of nowhere and taking effect in a very short time. For a member institution, there was no membership involvement.

TechKNOW

The latest issue of TechKNOW is now available.

• One Cataloger's NACO Participation: Comparing Funnel Participation and PCC NACO Classroom Training / Peter Lisius, Music and Media Catalog Librarian, Kent State University Libraries and Media Services
• Coordinator's Corner / Ian Fairclough, George Mason University (Fairfax Virginia)
• Eight Blogs Catalogers Should Know About / Michael Monaco, Senior Catalog Librarian, Cleveland Public Library
• Book Review: Cataloging of Audiovisual Materials and Other Special Materials, Manual Based on AACR2 and MARC 21
• IMHO: OCLC Policy for the Use and Transfer of WorldCat Records: What are the Implications? / Roman Panchyshyn, Catalog Librarian, Kent State University Libraries and Media Services
• Fiction Cataloging for Better Access / Michael Christian Budd, Cataloger, Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County
• Book Review: KidzCat: A How-to-do-it Manual for Cataloging Children's Materials and Instructional Resources

Provider-Neutral E-Monograph Report

The Provider-Neutral E-Monograph Record Task Group Report has been issued.

Introduction The Provider-Neutral E-Monograph Record Task Group was formed shortly after the 2008 Annual Meeting of the American Library Association. The group's charge was to develop a monographic cataloging policy that would provide for a single electronic MARC bibliographic record to represent an online resource that is available from one or more providers. This proposal is only concerned with separate MARC records for the electronic resource-- it does not address the addition of electronic fields to the print record, otherwise known as the "Single Record Approach."

Electronic Resources and Libraries

The program schedule is now available for ER&L 2009
February 10-12, 2009
Pre-Conferences February 9, 2009
UCLA - Covel Commons
Los Angeles, CA

I'll be at this meeting, thanks to the scholarship. I'll be arriving a couple days early and staying with my brother in the Desert. Thinking about visiting the Griffith Observatory and the La Brea Tar Pits. Any other suggestions? Any contra/English country/folk dancing the weekend before the conference?

This software won't allow an ampersand in the labels or title. So I can't use ER&L in either of those places.

IFLA Cataloguing Section

The IFLA Cataloguing Section's annual report for 2008 is available on IFLANET.

A Spanish translation of the ISBD is also available.

COinS News

Swignition looks for Z3988 in a variety of places, not just the standard ContextObjects in Spans span tag. It looks for a rel="Z3988", blockquote class="Z3988", q class="Z3988" and cite class="Z3988".

Swignition is:

• a Perl library for parsing files (what files?) into an RDF triple structure, and for outputting that data in a variety of serialisations and other formats (which formats?).
• a TCP service that listens on port 26464 and uses the library to parse any URIs it's asked to.
• a command-line client that acts as a simple interface for the TCP service (but calls the library directly if it detects that the service is not running).
• a web interface (try it!) for the TCP service.

MARBI at Midwinter

Marbi News.

The following papers are available for review by the MARC community:

Discussion Paper No. 2009-DP03: Changing field 257 (Country of producing entity for archival films) of the MARC 21 Bibliographic Format to include non-archival materials

RDA Papers:
Proposal No. 2009-01/1: New data elements in the MARC 21 Authority Format

Proposal No. 2009-01/2: New content designation for RDA elements: Content type, Media Type, Carrier Type in the MARC 21 Formats

Discussion Paper No. 2009-DP01/1: Encoding URIs for controlled values in MARC records

A few more papers will be announced early next week.

eXtensible Catalog Paper

Supporting the eXtensible Catalog through Metadata Design and Services by Jennifer Bowen is now available.

The eXtensible Catalog (XC) is a unique set of software toolkits for libraries that is not directly comparable to either a traditional Integrated Library System (ILS) or a “next-generation” discovery interface. XC will go well beyond providing a discovery layer to also provide a metadata infrastructure for enriching and transforming metadata to make it usable in a variety of web environments. The XC Metadata Services Toolkit can also be used for experimentation and testing of new metadata standards and schemas and can be an invaluable tool for libraries as they become accustomed to these new standards, especially RDA. The library metadata environment is entering a period that will be characterized by significant change and uncertainty, and the eXtensible Catalog Project will provide a variety of useful tools to help the library community make informed decisions about the future.

IFLA Classification and Indexing Section Newsletter

The December 2008 issue of the IFLA Classification and Indexing Section Newsletter is now available.

NISO Newsline

The Jan. issue of the NISO Newsline is now available to all Z39.n heads. They have been busy.

Changes to MARC Code List for Languages

The following change has been approved for use in the international language code standard, ISO 639-2 (Codes for the Representation of Names of Languages--Part 2: alpha-3 code) and is consequently also changed in the MARC Code List for Languages.

Language name Moldavian
New name Moldovan
Previous code mol
Now coded rum

The language code "mol" will no longer be used for the variant of the Romanian language that is spoken in the Republic of Moldova known as Moldovan or Moldavian. In the MARC Code List for Languages, Moldovan will be listed as follows:

Moldovan
Assigned collective code [rum]
(Romanian)
UF Moldavian

Semantics in HTML 5

Semantics in HTML 5 by John Allsopp has been published on A List Apart (the other ALA).

There is a very real problem that needs to be solved here. We need mechanisms in HTML that clearly and unambiguously enable developers to add richer, more meaningful semantics—not pseudo semantics—to their markup. This is perhaps the single most pressing goal for the HTML 5 project.

Interesting Collocation

Cutter's functions for the catalog are something we all learned in Cataloging 101. The FRBR functions seem pretty familiar. However, if you let others loose on bibliographic data they come up with some interesting ways to collocate works, say by a person's library. Over at LibraryThing the crowd is entering and tagging the personal collections of famous people. Want to see what Lawrence of Arabia had on his bookshelves? Or maybe Aaron Copland? Just more proof the everything is miscellaneous.

Testing RDA

RDA news.

The Library of Congress, the National Agricultural Library and the National Library of Medicine have jointly decided to test Resource Description and Access (RDA), the proposed new cataloging code, before making a decision on whether or not to implement this new standard. See the joint statement and accompanying letter from Deanna Marcum, Associate Librarian for Library Services, Library of Congress for more details.

GoodSearch

I just heard of the search engine, GoodSearch. It makes a small donation to a charity of my choice each time I search.

GoodSearch is a search engine which donates 50-percent of its revenue to the charities and schools designated by its users. It's a simple and compelling concept. You use GoodSearch exactly as you would any other search engine. Because it's powered by Yahoo!, you get proven search results. The money GoodSearch donates to your cause comes from its advertisers — the users and the organizations do not spend a dime!

I'll be using this whenever I used to use Yahoo.

More MARBI News

The draft agenda for the 2009 ALA Midwinter MARBI meeting is now available.

Also, the minutes for the 2008 Annual MARBI meeting are now available.

News from MARBI

The following papers are available for review by the MARC community:

• Proposal No. 2009-02: Definition of new codes for legal deposits in 008/07 (Method of Acquisition) in the MARC 21 Holdings Format
• Proposal No. 2009-03: Definition of field 080 in the MARC 21 Authority Format
• Proposal No. 2009-04: Addition of Codes for Map Projections in 008/22-23 (Maps) in the MARC 21 Bibliographic Format
• Proposal No. 2009-05: Adding subfield $u for Uniform Resource Identifier to field 510 (Citation/References note) of the MARC 21 Bibliographic Format
• Discussion Paper No. 2009-DP02: Definition of field 588 for metadata control note in the MARC 21 Bibliographic Format

A few additional proposals and a discussion paper will be posted shortly. MARBI proposals and discussion papers related to RDA will be posted in early January.

The draft agenda for the 2008 ALA Annual MARBI meetings and the Annual 2008 MARBI minutes will be made available soon.

2009 Electronic Resources & Libraries

I'll be going to the 2009 Electronic Resources & Libraries. Hope to see some people there I've only "met" online. This is made possible by the scholarship I received from the conference. My sincere thanks to the conference organizers and the scholarship committee.

lcsh.info Gone

Some sad news. "On December 18th I was asked to shut off lcsh.info by the Library of Congress. As an LC employee I really did not have much choice other than to comply." This has been posted everywhere else, but deserves the widest exposure, so I'm posting here as well.

uClassify Contest

The folks at LibraryThing are interested in what could be done with the uClassify tool. They are offering a $100.00 prize for the best tool.

Our dream is to share hardcore classifier technology with everyone. We recognized that classifiers are mostly present at universities research departments and expensive commercial companies. We want to change that. We want everyone to have the possibility to use a top notch classifier - completely free. We find it enormously exciting to see what happens when a tool for creativity is given to the community. We hope to see all kinds of beyond-our-imagination classifiers and incredible web applications being built around the API.