Special Librarians' Yahoo Group

The Orchestra Library Information (OLI) Yahoo group looks like an interesting group.

Welcome to the Orchestra Library Information (OLI) Yahoo Group, an online forum for small and mid-budget regional and community orchestra libraries. On this site, members are encouraged to post questions about how to find the publisher of a work, instrumentation, duration, percussion instruments required, and any other details they may need.

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This group accepts members who are serious students of the profession and are, or wish to be, orchestra librarians.

Currently they have 85 members and will celebrate their second anniversary this weekend.

Librarians

Ego Boost

Well, I didn't make Movers and Shakers this year. The folks working on RDA should. Everybody, next year make sure they at least get nominated. Congratulations to all who made the list. It shows quite a collection of talents and skills. What a great group of folks to work and be associated with.

However, I did get an ego boost recently. Catalogablog has been added to the OCLC database record number 64549138. The person entering the record also did name authority work, so I'm in the NAF just like real authors.

Windows Generator for Google SiteMap-Files

Another Web site metadata creation tool. The Windows Generator for Google SiteMap-Files can help create a file for Google to index your site.

Google Sitemaps allow the webmaster to help Google index their sites more effectively. According to Google it will not effect the Search-Rankings, but you never know :). At the very least it will allow Google to figure out which URLs on your sites are worthwhile to check out more often and which ones stay static for longer periods of time.

My GSiteCrawler will help create the XML files needed for Google Sitemaps.

There is a discussion group for this tool.

Metadata

Meta Tag Expert 2.0

Meta Tag Expert 2.0 is freeware to create metadata for Web pages.

This tool enables intermediate to advanced Webmasters to produce 36 common meta-tags. You can export tags to HTML or text formats, or save them for future editing. The advanced mode allows you to create meta-refresh pages that automatically forward visitors to a URL of your choice. The program includes startup tips, XP menus and site management utilities.

Not many of the search engines now use any metadata, too much spamming, but it has a place. You provide the metadata for your site and then use an indexing tool, such as Lucene, to index the metadata. This gives your users advanced search options for your site.

Metadata

Peeps in the Library

Easter is approaching and Peeps are once again in the stores. So it is time to visit once again the delightful site Peep Research.

Peeps

Noncommercial APIs

The ProgrammableWeb points to a post by Dan Cohen over at George Mason University that looked that the APIs listed and asked a good question: Where Are the Noncommercial APIs?. If you know of any get them listed there. Maybe the unAPI will help more noncommercial, and smaller institutions get into the game.

unAPI

MyLibrary Manual

Now availabile, the MyLibrary manual called Designing, Implementing, and Maintaining Digital Library Services and Collections with MyLibrary.

The book is a manual, and its purpose is to outline the principles and processes necessary to implement digital library collections and services. It uses MyLibrary as an example but the principles and processes can be applied to just about any digital library system or application.

The manual is intended to be read by administrators who need to know what and how many resources to allocate to a digital library. It is intended to be read by librarians who are responsible for collecting and organizing content as well as ensuring the library's usability. The manual is intended to be read by systems administrators who are in charge of providing the technical infrastructure for the system. Last but not least, it is intended for programers who will use the underlying Perl API to provide services against the collection.

MyLibrary

COinS Tool

The COinS Browser Extensions for Your Library can autogenerate bookmarklets and greasemonkey scripts for sending embedded COinS to your local resolver.

Below is a form for finding bookmarklets and greasemonkey scripts to support COinS links at a number of institutions. All of the data you can search for comes from the OCLC OpenURL Resolver Registry, from which OCLC has kindly provided a subset for this page as an experiment.

COinS

Typos in the Catalog

LibTypos: Playground for a Compulsive Proofreader by Tina Gunther appears in the latest ASSOCIATES The Electronic Library Support Staff Journal. It discusses the ongoing effort to remove typos and spelling mistakes from our catalogs.

Spelling