unAPI

Revision 3 of unAPI has been released.

unAPI is a tiny HTTP API any web application may use to co-publish discretely identified objects in both HTML pages and disparate bare object formats. It consists of three parts: an identifier microformat, an HTML autodiscovery link, and three HTTP interface functions, two of which have a standardized response format.

unAPI

MARC Records

This is nice, the Wright's American Fiction collection provids MARC records for the items in the online repository.

This is a collection of 19th century American fiction, as listed in Lyle Wright's bibliography American Fiction, 1851-1875. There are currently 2,887 volumes included (1,763 unedited, 1,124 fully edited and encoded) by 1,456 authors. See this page for more information. Collection last updated on September 3, 2005. MARC Records are available for the entire collection.

MARC

Lunar Maps

Some more lunar maps have been scanned and made available on the Web by the Lunar and Planetary Institute (MPOW).

• The Lunar Equatorial Zone Mosaics (LEMC) Series four sheets by the U.S. Army Topographic Command from the late 1960s are 1:2,500,000 Mercator projection maps.
• The Lunar Earthside, Farside, and Polar Charts (LMP) Series three sheets by the ACIC from 1970 are 1:5,000,000 Mercator and Polar Stereographic projection maps.

LPI

OCLC Name Authority Service

OCLC has a name authority service using the LC NAF. They have recently improved the matching algorithm.

We developed this service so that remotely located systems -- institutional repository software, for example (DSpace, ePrints UK, CONTENTdm, eprints.org, Fedora) -- can offer authority control without having to build full authority control modules. Without this service DSpace does not know, for example, that Mark Twain and Samuel Clemens are the same man; nor does it distinguish well between two authors with the same name. With the OCLC Research name authority service, people entering metadata for preprints can make sure the author names are consistent and well-formed.

Names

ALA Response to the LC Series Decision

ALA has issued a statement on the decision of the Library of Congress's decision to stop creating series authority records.

On behalf of its more than 66,000 members, the American Library Association expresses its dismay at the impact that Library of Congress action in the area of bibliographic control will have on all of its members, and on the public they serve. Accordingly, ALA urges the Library of Congress to delay further implementation of its decision regarding providing series authority control for bibliographic records for sufficient time to enable informed response from the library community, including from organizations central to bibliographic control such as the American Library Association, the Program for Cooperative Cataloging, and OCLC.

Series

Overdue Book

Overdue Media has at last announced the latest collection of Unshelved . Cheap at twice the price.

We're excited, proud, and a little relieved to announce Book Club, the fourth and newest Unshelved collection. It's finally ready to be preordered and folks, it don't get much pinker than this. It's a whole year of Unshelved, including several dozen of our acclaimed full-color Unshelved Book Club comic format book talks, a week of guest strips from cartoonists more talented than we, Conference Tips, and Unshelved BIZMAR, which is hard to describe, but perhaps the phrase "zombie storytime" suffices. It runs $17.95, but we're selling the bundle of all four Unshelved collections for a mere $50, including free shipping. And if you order by June 19th, Gene and Bill will sign the books for you, and Bill will sketch the character of your choice (default: Merv). Ships no later than June 22.

Unshelved

ClaimID

The ClaimID service has been getting some attention from the tech folks, CommandN and Inside the Net for instance but not much that I have noticed from the library folks. Yet, it is something developed by a couple of librarians. Looks useful.

We believe that search engines have been having the final say about our identities for too long (have you looked yourself up in a search engine lately?). ClaimID lets you classify, annotate, prioritize and share the information that is about you, so that people who search for you are able to see the identity you want to present. It's a really simple idea, and we've worked hard to build a system that is incredibly easy to use, so that just about everyone can benefit from ClaimID.

ClaimID

Digital Archives

A Content Integrity Service For Long-Term Digital Archives by Haber, Stuart; Kamat, Pandurang (HPL-2006-54).

We present a content integrity service for long-lived digital documents, especially for objects stored in long-term digital archives. The goal of the service is to demonstrate that information in the archive is authentic and has not been unintentionally or maliciously altered, even after its bit representation in the archive has undergone one or more transformations.

Authentication

Web Subject Gateways

Constructing Web subject gateways using Dublin Core, the Resource Description Framework and Topic Maps by Jesus Tramullas and Piedad Garrido.

Introduction. Specialised subject gateways have become an essential tool for locating and accessing digital information resources, with the added value of organisation and previous evaluation catering for the needs of the varying communities using these. Within the framework of a research project on the subject, a software tool has been developed that enables subject gateways to be developed and managed.
Method. General guidelines for the work were established which set out the main principles for the technical aspects of the application, on one hand, and on aspects of the treatment and management of information, on the other. All this has been integrated into a prototype model for developing software tools.
Analysis. The needs analysis established the conditions to be fulfilled by the application. A detailed study of the available options for the treatment of information on metadata proved that the best option was to use the Dublin Core, and that the metadata set should be included, in turn, in RDF tags, or in tags based on XML.
Results. The project has resulted in the development of two versions of an application called Potnia (versions 1 and 2), which fulfil the requirements set out in the main principles, and which have been tested by users in real application environments.
Conclusion. The tagging layout found to be the best, and the one used by the writers, is based on integrating the Dublin Core metadata set within the Topic Maps paradigm, formatted in XTM.

DC

Giving Thanks

MIT has a great feature on their catalog, one that should be on many of ours, thanking the donor. Donations are an important part of many of our institutions' budgets. Encouraging more makes sense. Why not use the catalog to bring the importance of donated materials to folks attention? Why not give recognition in a public space to our supporters? This is the first time I've seen this. Maybe it is more common than I think.

To see an example go to MIT, search for Web of Science, In the set of icons under "More" at the far right, one is a gift box icon. Click on it to see the thank you message. A post by Ellen Finnie Duranceau to ERIL-L brought this to my attention.

OPAC

LibraryThing Weblog

LibraryThing now has a second weblog, Thing-ology devoted to discussion of access.

This is the place where we'll talk about the meanings, methods, and debate around LibraryThing and its features. I expect there to be discussion of Web 2.0, Library 2.0, social software, FRBR and LT's "works" system, folksonomies and taxonomies, and much much more. Information Science! Philosophy! Controversy! To the library world and beyond, people!

The first posting is about tags and subject headings. Seems like mostly library folks are involved in the discussion, if not catalogers.

LibraryThing