This 'Blog

I've made some changes to the layout and search of the 'blog. Improvements, I hope. I've changed the search tool, now it is in the bar across the very top. The old tool no longer searched the older pages, it had a page limit that Catalogablog exceeded. Please let me know if there are any problems.

NASIG

Just a notice that now is the time to renew or join NASIG.

Established in 1985, the North American Serials Interest Group, Inc. (NASIG) is an independent organization that promotes communication, information, and continuing education about serials and the broader issues of scholarly communication. NASIG welcomes anyone interested in the serials information chain. Inspired by the United Kingdom Serials Group (UKSG), NASIG held its first conference at Bryn Mawr College in June 1986. The annual conference, usually held in late May or June, offers a premier opportunity to meet others representing the diverse interests of the serials community and to hear speakers who are on the cutting edge of scholarly communication.

Annual dues are a mere $25.00. Students only $5.00.

Rights Metadata

Creative Commons announces new drag-and-drop software for rights metadata.

Leveraging the Internet Archive's generous offer to host Creative Commons licensed (audio and video) files for free, we recently completed the 0.96 beta version of The Publisher, a desktop, drag-and-drop application that licenses audio and video files, and sends them to the Internet Archive for free hosting. When you're done uploading, the application gives you a URL where others can download the file. It also is able to tag MP3 files with Creative Commons metadata and publish verification metadata to the Web.

OAI

Implementation Guidelines for the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting Conveying rights expressions about metadata in the OAI-PMH framework has reached a beta release.

The Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH) provides a mechanism for data providers to expose metadata for harvesting over the Web. This metadata is disseminated in OAI-PMH records. Metadata harvested from one or more data providers using the OAI-PMH can be used by service providers for the creation of services (e.g. search, browse) based on the harvested data.

Data providers might want to associate rights expressions with the metadata to indicate how it may be used, shared, and modified after it has been harvested. This specification defines how rights information pertaining to the metadata should be included in responses to OAI-PMH requests.

Metadata for Digital Still Images

The Library of Congress is involved in creating metadata for digital still images.

The Library of Congress' Network Development and MARC Standards Office, in partnership with the NISO Technical Metadata for Digital Still Images Standards Committee and other interested experts, is developing an XML schema for a set of technical data elements required to manage digital image collections. The schema provides a format for interchange and/or storage of the data specified in the NISO Draft Standard Data Dictionary: Technical Metadata for Digital Still Images (Version 1.2). This schema is currently in draft status and is being referred to as "NISO Metadata for Images in XML (NISO MIX)". MIX is expressed using the XML schema language of the World Wide Web Consortium. MIX is maintained for NISO by the Network Development and MARC Standards Office of the Library of Congress with input from users.

New Books

Here are a couple of new books from O'Reilly that may be of interest.

XML in a Nutshell, 3rd ed.

Steal This File Sharing Book

I think we should be more aware of file sharing and how it could be used in a library setting. As part of ILL it makes sense. Maybe to share patron information between different institutions in a reciprocal borrowing consortium. There are privacy and security issues to consider but it may be something to consider. Could it be used for e-reserves?

Reference Tools

How cool is this:

Reference by SMS is an exciting new service designed specifically to allow libraries to expand their reference delivery methods to include SMS, the mobile phone text messaging system so popular with the youth of today.

....

The "Reference by SMS" service provides a mobile phone number, unique to your library, that you can advertise as the number for SMSing your library. SMS's received by that number are automatically delivered to an email address that your library specifies. The librarian monitoring that email address creates responses in email using their usual "Reply" facility and an integrated "Send by SMS" tool designed to assist with the short replies used by SMS. Your responses are automatically delivered to the client's mobile phone by SMS.

Seems like an open source tool could be constructed, maybe not with all the "other powerful features are provided to assist with implementation, usage, management and marketing of this service" but maybe more. An RSS feed for Steven Cohen? Seen on Peter Scott's Library Blog.

Notes

Recently I cataloged some scale models, something I've not often done. I thought the scale was important so I placed it in a 500 field. Today, while looking for something else, I happened to notice there is a specific field, 507, for scale. I've now fixed the records.

How often does this happen? How much information is in field 500 that belongs in a field dedicated to that information? I haven't noticed it much, except in very bad records where all notes are in 500. Still this gets me wondering. The calls for granularity (see Roy Tennant) require placing certain types of information in a particular field. However, the existence of such fields is moot if they are not used. How does a lone cataloger even know to look for the existence of a field?

Cybertesis

Cybertesis, a portal developed by the University of Chile (Information Services & Library System), provides an easily accessible tool to full text electronic thesis published in different universities of the world.

Cybertesis.NET is a powerful tool of consultation that allows the simultaneous searches through a single Web interface, and to recuperate more than 27,000 full text theses stored in 27 different servers and university repositories, by means of the use of OAI protocol (Open Archives Initiative) as a service provider (metadata harvesting).

Each university is responsible of the production, preservation and diffusion of its theses. If you want your institution to participate, simply make your ETD collection available to OAI harvesting and drop them a line.

The interface is available in English, French, Portuguese, and Spanish.

Professional Reading

The latest issue of Ariadne contains:

• ISBN-13: New Number on the Block
  Ann Chapman outlines the planned changes to the ISBN standard and its impact on the information community and the book trade
• The Tapir: Adding E-Theses Functionality to DSpace
  Richard Jones demonstrates how the Theses Alive Plugin for Institutional Repositories (Tapir) has provided E-Theses functionality for DSpace.
• What Do Application Profiles Reveal about the Learning Object Metadata Standard?
  Jean Godby assesses the customised subsets of metadata elements that have been defined by 35 projects using the LOM standard to describe e-learning resources.

Catalogs

Bringing Amazon.com to the OPAC: One library’s mission to enrich its catalog and improve search capabilities by Patricia R. Monk appears in AALL Spectrum November 2004. Seen on Library Stuff

Open WorldCat

Corey Murata has posted 3 Open WorldCat tools for use:

• Open WorldCat Lookup Using Either Google or Yahoo
• Mozilla Searchbar Open WorldCat script
• Open WorldCat search using the Google Deskbar

Seen on Library Stuff.

SLA

SLA has made the rather short-sighted action of dropping their membership in NISO.

Scout Portal Toolkit

Version 1.3.1 of SPT has been released, and is now available for download on the Scout web site

Highlights of the release include:

• new accessibility "mini-wizard"
• support for OAI-SQ (new OAI-PMH extension for searching)
• ability to page through user list and to remove forum posting privileges for a user from within forums
• ability to delete Tree (classification) field values that have resources assigned to them and to delete entire sub-trees
• support for searching controlled name variants
• support for an expanded number of date entry formats

This is a stable production release, not a beta version. Capabilities that have been added since the last stable release include:

• support for OAI sets
• support for customizable templates for saved search e-mails
• ability to export Tree, Controlled Name, and Option values
• increased field size for adding/editing classifications
• importing of data now translates \t and \n (tab and newline) to literal values
• new optional unique field for data import

Timex Data Link Watch

An appeal for help. My Timex Data Link watch can no longer receive info from the computer. The bar codes begin but then the screen is minimized and breaks the transmission. The watch is an older technology, but it still works for me. If any one has a suggestion on how to get it working again please let me know. The last time it was the date separator. XP was using the slash and the watch required the dash. I've checked that and that does not seem to be the problem this time. Would the notebook adaptor, if I could find one, be a good alternative? I have tried running it in 95 and 98 emmulation modes. Thanks.

Monday I have jury duty, so there may not be any posts for a few days.