Comics aka Graphic Novels

Randy Gatley, Christine Wallace and Donna Waye, students at School of Library, Archival and Information Studies, The University of British Columbia have made available their class project BOOM, Graphic Novel Explosion @ Your Library. They discuss subject analysis and classification as well as more general topics. Useful bibliography.

Comics

New RSS Book

Developing Feeds with Rss and Atom is a new book from O'Reilly I'll have to check out. It covers:

1. metadata interpretation
2. the different forms of content syndication
3. the increasing use of web services
4. how to use popular RSS news aggregators on the market

RSS is a metadata format that has found wide acceptance. As a news/push metadata format is a bit different than the descriptive metadata we use in MARC and Dublin Core. However, the new version, Atom, can act as a wrapper for the descriptive formats, if I understand it right. Could be useful in distribution of MARC records? A simple alternative to METS?

RSS

Thesauri Software

Termado is a free tool for creating a controlled vocabulary. Doesn't seem to accept MARC authority record input. It is XML based. Maybe MARC authority records in XML would load?

Termado is a complete tool for management and publishing of term catalogues, lexicons and dictionaries. Termado allows you to quickly and easily create advanced term catalogues and dictionaries and make them available for presentation, browsing and searching on the Internet, or export to external applications.

Thesauri

NLM Classification Updated

The online National Library of Medicine Classification, was issued in a newly revised edition on April 26th 2005.

Fifty-five new class numbers were added to the Schedules and ninety-three MeSH terms were added to the Index, including sixty-seven new to the MeSH vocabulary as of 2005; in addition, over two hundred Schedule records and over six hundred index entries were updated since the 2004 revised edition was published on April 19, 2004.

Classification

Dewey via RSS

Now get new Dewey mappings to LCSH via RSS. Someone was thinking.

Dewey
RSS

BSO Classification Scheme

A classification system that is new to me is the Broad System of Ordering (BSO), a general, faceted classification scheme for information exchange and switching.

BSO is a compilation of about 6800 terms, arranged in an order which is systematic or structured at the level of meaning. It is a knowledge classification which attempts to reflect a modern consensual world outlook, and because it is essentially concept-oriented rather than word-oriented, its captions are supplemented by definition notes whenever the scope and meaning of the caption is not clear from its context in the systematic schedules.

The schedules are freely available.

Classification
BSO

Unshelved

Unshelved has a new collection soon to be released.

We are inordinantly proud to announce Library Mascot Cage Match, the newest and best Unshelved collection yet! We packed this one full with goodies. A year's worth of strips, ten Conference Tips, and best of all an all-new full-color graphic novelette! Empire County Strikes Back is our first full-length Unshelved story - it tells of the epic battle between the Mallville libararians and the mother of all bookmobiles. With an introduction by Strangers in Paradise's Terry Moore, Library Mascot Cage Match is a must-have!

Still waiting for a cataloger to appear. I hope the creators put in an appearance at SLA.

Unshelved
Comics

ERRoLs

Extensible Repository Resource Locators (ERRoLs) for OAI Identifiers are a tool from the folks at OCLC Research.

An ERRoL is a "Cool URL" to metadata, content, and services related to registered Open Archive Initiative (OAI) repositories. Following the examples below, anyone can create/use a Cool URL to any metadata record or web resource related to supported OAI repositories.

The weblog entry at Outgoing is another good introduction.

ERRoLs
OAI

Toronto, Here We Come

I'll be attending SLA in Toronto this June 4-8. SLA has the best parties I've attended at a library conference. Should be fun. I'll be giving a talk on weblogs to the Astronomy Roundtable. Thanks for the invite.

Cora and I will be there the whole week, doing the tourist thing. Any suggestions of what to see and do in the area? Where to eat? Any good music or dance in early June? I notice Niagara Falls is less than 100 miles away. We have been there before, but it is worth seeing again. That's an option. Ottawa and Quebec City seem a bit far for a day trip.

SLA2005
Toronto

Houston Area

CopyNight is a monthly social gathering of people interested in restoring balance in copyright law. We meet over drinks once a month in many cities to discuss new developments and build social ties between artists, engineers, filmmakers, academics, lawyers, and many others.

The first meeting in the Houston area will be Tuesday April 27 between 7:00-9:00 (more or less). It will be at the Stagshead pub. Here's a map, but basically it's near Richmond between Shepherd and Greenbriar. 2128 Portsmouth, Houston TX (713) 533-1199.

Copyright

Free Tagging Software

Freetag - an Open Source Tagging / Folksonomy module for PHP/MySQL applications.

Freetag is a module that implements a simple, fairly robust beginning of a tagging and folksonomy system. It works with PHP4 and MySQL 3.23 so far, and I imagine that if it gets popular, it should be easy to port to additional databases and/or languages.

You point it at your users, then you point it at your objects, and use the API to allow your users to tag your objects.

Sounds like this should work with Koah. It would be an interesting experiment.

Seen on the BlogDriversWaltz.

Folksonomies