Webcasts from FLICC

A couple of webcasts from FLICC that sound interesting.

• Information Architecture, Metadata and Controlled Vocabularies
  Join Denise Bedford, senior information officer, World Bank, for a lively discussion of library science, linguistics and IT
• 2005 Joint Spring Workshop
  Learn about the trends in iInformation organization for the 21st Century: Taxonomies, Ontologies and the Semantic Web

Requires Real Player.

Webcasts

Google Base

I've loaded 425 items into Google Base. That is the limit they currently impose.

Google Base is a place where you can easily submit all types of online and offline content that we'll host and make searchable online. You can describe any item you post with attributes, which will help people find it when they search Google Base. In fact, based on the relevance of your items, they may also be included in the main Google search index and other Google products like Froogle, Google Base and Google Local.

I searched our catalog for records with links to our Web site. Extracted a few fields that matched the ones Google accepts. Hint: a 4 digit year date is not enough, it requires YYYY-MM-DD. Then I loaded the fields into Excel and did a few global changes, removing the ISBD punctuation for the most part. Exported as a tab delimited file and uploaded into Google.

I'm hoping this exposes some of our resources better and increases our hits. Recycling information from the catalog, field 520 especially, should better inform Google searchers.

GoogleBase

Metadata 101

Understanding Metadata and Its Purpose by Karen Coyle from the The Journal of Academic Librarianship v. 31 no. 2 160-3 Mr 2005 is now available on-line.

What is happening in the world of technology that is leading everyone to believe that metadata is the answer? Alternatively, if metadata is the answer, what is the question, and what does it mean for libraries and library catalogs?

Metadata

Classification and the Web

Crunching the metadata: What Google Print really tells us about the future of books by David Weinberger appears in the Nov. 13 edition of the Boston Globe. Wrong on so many counts. He seems to confuse classification with identification. In many libraries the call number is not unique. He seems to ignore subject headings, a book of bird paintings can have subject access both for the artistic and avian content. There is no reason we should not be able to apply multiple call numbers in 050 and 082, the "mark and park" is taken care of in the copies part of the record. But even now most records have both LC and Dewey some have USGS or NASA or NAL or NLM classifications as well.

Classification

MARC Records on Our Web Site

I have made available for download the MARC records for our scanned versions of the USGS Geologic Atlas of the Moon. We plan to continue this and have MARC records available for all our scanning projects.

MARC

NISO Newsletter

The Nov. issue of the NISO Newsletter is now available. Topics include:

• RFID Institute Highlights
• Metasearch Initiative Reaches Major Milestone
• Controlled Vocabulary Standard Published
• NISO, DLF, and EDItEUR Form Joint Working Group

Standards

Tag Cloud

At the bottom of this Web page you can see an example of a tag cloud generated from several weblogs dealing with metadata and cataloging issues. Now thanks to Davey P. you can generate one from your Horizion catalog.

Even if you don't publish one for your patrons, (but why not?) this could give you a unique picture of your collection. Could be useful for collection development.

Seen on librarian.net.

Tags

MS Office 2003 Research Pane

A few days ago I asked about the MS Office 2003 Research Pane. I received some responses I want to make sure everybody sees. Doing a bit of Web searching I found the MSDN Library entry instructions. Turns out you must be delivering information in XML, so we won't be able to implement this. Back when Office 2003 just came out the Shifted Librarian had an essay on this. She points to a community college library that has done this. Here is a site with instructions on adding the service from OAI-PMH.

Adding services to the research pane is bit involved, but if you are providing XML already it is a service you could institute.

Office2003

Ontologies and the Semantic Web

Order from Chaos by Natalya Noy appears in ACM Queue v. 3, no. 8 - October 2005.

Just as anyone can put up his or her own page on the Web and anyone can point to it (and say either good or bad things about it), on the Semantic Web anyone can post an ontology, and anyone can reuse and extend any ontology that is appropriate to his or her task. Naturally, this model brings up issues of finding the right ontologies, evaluating them, trusting the sources they come from, and so on.

Ontologies

Terminology Mapping

Challenges and issues in terminology mapping: a digital library perspective by McCulloch, Emma and Shiri, Ali and Nicholson, Dennis is now available in PDF format.

Effective information retrieval within digital libraries is limited by the lack of semantic interoperability between subject schemes used by online services and collections. The use of multiple terminologies and ad hoc modifications to standard schemes prevents users from cross searching multiple repositories, cross-sectoral resources and interdisciplinary material. In order to overcome this, improved compatibility between schemes is required. This paper considers potential solutions to the terminology problem, with a particular focus on the mapping approach. Key aspects of the mapping technique are discussed with reference to practical applications and initiatives.

Terminology

Thesauri

Construction of Controlled Vocabularies, A Primer is a tutorial compiled by Marcia Lei Zeng, a member of the Z39.19 Standard Committee.

Thesauri

Subdivisions

Becky Kornegay, Heidi Buchanan, & Hiddy Morgan praise subdivisions in Amazing, Magic Searches! in the Nov. 1 issue of Library Journal

Subjects

JSC Meeting

Two summaries of the The Joint Steering Committee (JSC) for Revision of Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules (AACR) meeting in London are now available on the JSC Web site:

• a brief executive summary
• a detailed Outcomes document

RDA
AACR

TLA District 8 Fall Meeting

The TLA District 8 Fall Meeting on is over. It had to be rescheduled due to a hurricane, and so lost a lot in attendance. Still it was a good conference. There were 7 or 8 sessions in each of the time slots to chose among, a general session and lunch. I enjoy meeting folks I've not see for too long and meeting some new faces. One person said I have given a decent talk at last year's meeting. I was very relieved to hear that. I was still on pain medication and a bit loopy. Afterwards I wasn't quite sure how it had gone. If anyone wants to give me feedback on the talk this year I'd be happy to hear from you. The conference doesn't supply feedback forms.

Thanks to all those who had to put it together twice.

TLA