COinS in the OPAC?

Just thinking about COinS. Why not have the OPAC provide them for hits? Seems like most bib records should have enough info to meet the spec. Should be a simple enough tweak.

Why would someone want them? Well, our catalog is used by folks around the world doing planetary geology. They might like to see if what they found here is available locally. That might not be true of most catalogs, but it is probable true of many.

COinS

Using COinS

I've found the problem using COinS in Blogger. Blogger converts a new line to a line break. That was messing up the code I copied from the COinS Generator. Here it is with breaks removed.

Recently I've been enjoying The Lord of the Rings: A Reader's Companion. (COinS Info)

Please let me know if the COinS info is working. We don't have OpenURL at the LPI. No way for me to test it.

COinS

Open WorldCat or COinS

I received a good question about choosing between Amazon and Open WorldCat, "Why not use COinS?" Why not indeed? There is now a COinS generator, so it should be simple to create them. However, when I use I get not the link but all the metadata showing. I'll have to read a bit more to see what the problem could be.

COinS has not received as much attention as it deserves, so here is some information

The goal is to embed citation metadata into html in such a way that processing agents can discover, process and make use of the metadata. Since an important use of this metadata will be to allow processing agents to make OpenURL hyperlinks for users in libraries (latent OpenURL), the method must allow the metadata to be placed any where in HTML that a link might appear. In the absence of some metadata-aware agent, the embedded metadata must be invisible to the user and innocuous with respect to HTML markup. To meet these requirements, the span element was selected. The NISO OpenURL ContextObject is selected as the specific metadata package. The resulting specification is named "ContextObject in SPAN" or COinS for short.

COinS

2005 Annual MARBI Meeting Minutes

The 2005 Annual MARBI Meeting minutes are now available online.

MARBI

MP3 and My Commute

On my commute, until recently, I've always listened to the radio, or played some tapes or CDs. Now I find I almost never listen to the radio, Pacifica and NPR are things of the past. I've been listening to material on my MP3 player. I listen to the podcasts "This Week in Tech" (lots of hot air but fun), "Inside the Internet" and other MP3 downloads. IT Conversations and Educause have lots of good items. Then there are the workshops like the Duke Podcasting Symposium. When I feel like music I have over 2000 tunes on the player.

If this behavior is common and continues what does this mean for traditional broadcasting?

Podcasting

Amazon or Open WorldCat

A few days back I asked for opinions about where I should link to whenever I referred to a book, Amazon or Open WorldCat. The former has the benefit of providing a small kickback. Once or twice a year I could pick up a book by Walt Crawford or Steve Cohen even though there were a bit pricey. The latter option would be supporting the presence of libraries on the Web. The Amazon option will not change my life style. The WorldCat option won't make much difference to OCLC, Google or Yahoo.

Well the votes are in and the comments read. Sticking with Amazon was OK with slightly more than half who took the time to vote. One comment was very negative about staying with Amazon. So, from now on I'll link to Open WorldCat. <grin>aside: Christina I'll want my blogger tag at the next SLA sooner.</grin>

Hoping to recoup my losses I've placed a box with current reading in the sidebar.

WorldCat

LibraryThing

LibraryThing has added RSS feeds. We should take a look at this tool and see what it tells us about what we could be doing. Folks like to share the books they are reading. Maybe we have been so concerned with privacy that we have neglected the social needs of our users. Maybe a giving our users the option to share their reading, and the control of what gets shared would be an improvement. The person who is a Dick Francis fan might enjoy sharing that but not the fact they are also reading books on bankruptcy. It is something to consider.

It seems many folks are glad to share their reading and that can build recommendation systems. People who read this also often read that. Works a bit for Amazon, except there gifts mess up the data. My library check outs don't include gifts so the data may be a bit better. With blog widgets, ratings, comments, reviews, RSS feeds and tagging LibraryThing should be giving us ideas on how to improve our catalogs.

LibraryThing