Happy B'Day

On March 5, Catalogablog hit the one year mark. I've had a fun learning experience playing with the site, adding RSS feeds, Javascripts, a blogroll, and other items. Writing and posting the items has made them stick in my mind, so maybe I'm a little more on top of the issues. It has been fun receiving items from readers and corresponding with them. I also have been surprised by the people who find this useful. There are over 160 folks who get the postings mailed via Bloglet, the Web site averages over 100 hits each day and the RSS feeds are posted in lots of places (Live Journal and IA sites seems most common). What a long strange trip its been.

CONSER Survey

The purpose of the Survey on Electronic Serials Holdings is to investigate how libraries manage their electronic serials holdings data, and how they view the potential need for holdings and pattern data for electronic serials. Please send in your response by Friday, March 28, 2003.

Oft Used Forms

This item from Matthew Eberle at Library Techlog

Paul Bracke from dLIST has written back to my query to say that they'd welcome the kind of material Library_Geek says we should be collecting (collection development policies, instruction handouts, mission statements, etc.) in dLIST, so, upload 'em if you've got 'em!

Let's get the word out. Pass this along, the larger the selection the more useful. Thanks Matthew and Paul.

LISFeeds portal

The LISFeeds portal by Steven M. Cohen is now available. "The LISFeeds Portal was created for those who like to keep up with library news via RSS but don't want to (or can't) download a news aggregator." He has a 'blog about the site, naturally. Thanks Steven. Catalogablog is in the side panel but not showing any articles, have to check out why.

RSS/NNTP

If anyone is still using NNTP, nntp//rss is a reader that you can use for both your Usenet and RSS feeds. It has been years since I've checked Usenet. I once read PACS-L, AUTOCAT and other lists there, more useful than receiving all those e-mails. Now it seems like another lifetime. Anyone still using Usenet?

Scholarship Program

My alma mater has announced a new scholarship from the Tocker Foundation.

The Graduate Academic Certificate (Youth) Program. This program is designed to fill the need for library professionals in the youth services area and offers Master's-level courses to develop core knowledge in literature, services, programs, and information organization for youth. The required courses are taught 100% online via WebCT, are offered year-round, and are taught by a team of full-time graduate professors. Students will come to campus for a two-day orientation and then complete the courses online. Upon completion of the required courses, students will be awarded a Graduate Academic Certificate suitable for framing and the coursework and Academic Certificate credential will be posted on the official transcript. All twelve hours of coursework may transfer for the Master's degree in Library and Information Sciences at the University of North Texas.

The Graduate Academic Certificate is not a degree. There are many library venues with shortages that will hire people with this training in a variety of roles including reference work, technical services, or for paraprofessional functions. Students will benefit most from going on for the Master's degree which is universally recognized as the entry credential for professional positions.

• Tuition Scholarship - Full in-state tuition for four courses.
• Technology Scholarship - A new computer that meets the technology requirements for the School of Library and Information Sciences. Two years of broadband Internet connectivity (DSL or Cable).

Continuing Education for Catalogers: Survey

This survey has been designed by members of the ALCTS Continuing Education Task Force (LC Action Plan Item 5.3) to assist them in outlining a continuing education curriculum for catalogers.

Works

I've just finished The Nature of "a Work": Implications for the Organization of Knowledge by Richard P. Smiraglia. Not an easy read, but maybe necessary. It seems we, as a profession, have never researched what a work is. His definition is:

A work is a signifying, concrete set of ideational conceptions that finds realization through semantic or symbolic expression.

It seems to me that we should have a sound theoretical foundation for our work and definitions are basic. I would guess Smiraglia's work is only a beginning. Something a bit less academic would be better for most of us.

Metadata

The latest Learning Technology publication of IEEE Computer Society Learning Technology Task Force (LTTF) is a special issue on Learning objects metadata: implementations and open issues. Articles include:

• eduSource: Creating learning object repositories in Canada (Rory McGreal, Griff Richards, Norm Friesen, Gilbert Paquette and Stephen Downes)
• The Le@rning Federation Metadata Application Profile (Jon Mason and Nigel Ward)
• Implementing metadata collection: a projects problems and solutions (Ben Ryan and Steve Walmsley)
• Learning Object Metadata in Operations Research/Management Science (Leena Suhl and Stephan Kassanke)
• Implementing and Extending Learning Object Metadata For Learning-directed Assembly of Computer-based Training (Robert Farrell, Samuel S. Dooley, John C. Thomas, William Rubin and Stephen Levy)
• Introduction of the Core Elements Set in Localized LOM Model (Xin Xiang, Zhongnan Shen, Ling Guo and Yuanchun Shi)

There are many more as well. I found this at Column Two. I was checking the referer log and noticed someone had clicked through from there. The URL was one I didn't recognize so I checked it out. A nice 'blog about knowledge management.

ONIX

ONIX: What Is In It for Libraries? at NISO provides links to some papers.

• ONIX in the Library or, Why This Presentation Should Be Longer by Laura Dawson, SIRSI
• ONIX: What's In It for Libraries? The Technical Services Angle by David Williamson, Library of Congress
• ONIX for Serials: An XML metadata standard and applications framework to support the serials community by Tim Devenport, EDItEUR
• Joint Working Party for the Exchange of Serials Subscription Information by Priscilla Caplan, Florida Center for Library Automation

The revised ISBN standard calls for metadata associated with the number to be supplied to a central database in ONIX. If that could be easily moved into MARC it could save some libraries quite a bit of time when cataloging.

Access Points

What are the differences between a vocabulary, a taxonomy, a thesaurus, an ontology, and a meta-model? by Woody Pidcock. A short item providing distinctions between the terms.

Dublin Core

The DCMI Directorate is pleased to announce the Public Comment period for the document "Guidelines for implementing Dublin Core in XML". Public Comment is open until March 31, 2003.

The Web site has also been redesigned.

Michael Gorman

The Library Shall Endure A Conversation with Michael Gorman. Gorman discusses technology, the place of the book in Western civilization and academic publishing. Seen on the Scholarly Electronic Publishing Weblog.

Metadata

Metadata: pure and simple, or is it? by Marilyn Chalmers, one librarian's experience with Dublin Core on their Web site.

Southbank's venture into metadata was a major investment in organising and maintaining data to enhance its operations and one that has produced mixed results. It was a steep learning curve for me at the time and has resulted in a deep interest in the subject. Metadata is but a means to an end and was introduced solely with good information retrieval in mind. However, the metadata venture has not stopped here. Trends will be monitored continuously to ensure that Southbank has the most relevant scheme in place and will be updated if required to provide relevant search tools for our most valuable market segment - our clients.

XML

Getting Started With XML: A Manual and Workshop by Eric Lease Morgan.

Designed for librarians and library staff, this workshop introduces participants to the extensible markup language (XML) through numerous library examples, demonstrations, and structured hands-on exercises. Through this process you will be able to evaluate the uses of XML for making your library's data and information more accessible to people as well as computers. Examples include adding value to electronic texts, creating archival finding aids, and implementing standards compliant Web pages.

This large document (73 pp.) is available in HTML, PDF, zip and tar.gz.

FRBR

The proceedings of a FRBR Symposium that was organized by the National Library of France on December 5th, 2002, have just been made available. Most are in French. They include:

• Le modele FRBR : presentation - historique - enjeux, par Patrick Le Boeuf
• FRBR Status of Research and Implementation at OCLC and OCLC PICA, par Janifer Gatenby
• Les FRBR et la revision des regles de catalogage, par Francoise Bourdon

Sandy Berman

Some recent writings by Sandy Berman are now available. They include several from the Unabashed Librarian.

Career

The latest issue of Info Career Trends is now available. The issue focuses on jobs, salaries, and raises. The articles include:

1. Introducing: The Library Job People
2. Salary Self-Empowerment
3. Why I Can't Afford ALA Dues
4. Don't Let Your Dream Job Be Just a Dream
5. Hiring Reference Librarians
6. Of Interns And Others
7. What's Online? Recommended Resources
8. But I Want To Hold It In My Hand! Print Resources

They are always looking for contributors. Reliable contributors.