Talis Source

Talis Source looks interesting. A union catalog (catalogue) of UK libraries. They freely accept uploaded records, no need for membership. If you are reading this in the UK consider contributing to the effort. How long before they start a US or North American union catalog? I'm ready to contribute.

Catalogs

Beyond the OPAC

MP3 audio and PowerPoints are already available from the Beyond the OPAC : future directions for Web-based catalogues meeting. The presentations are:

• Beyond the OPAC : future directions for web-based catalogues by Martha Yee
• The well connected catalogue by Patricia Scott, Denise Tobin and Helen Attar
• Setting a new standard : Resource Description and Access (RDA) by Deirdre Kiorgaard
• The potential impact of RDA on OPAC displays by Ann Huthwaite and Philip Hider
• OPACs and the real information marketplace : why providing a mediocre product at a high price no longer works by Lloyd Sokvitne
• Seeding search engines with data from the Australian National Bibliographic Database (ANBD) by Tony Boston
• Applying FRBR to library catalogues : a review of existing FRBRization projects by Martha Yee
• Managing OPACs : approaches to the process of OPAC change and development (panel discussion) with Lisa Billingham, Del Shiers, David Wells, and Shane White

Some also have the text of the presentation available. I'm downloading all the MP3s. Thanks to Peta for bringing this to my attention.

OPAC

Mark's Toolkit for Libraries

Here is a tool for MARC that is being updated and is getting a new name, but the initials will stay the same, MTL.

The MARC Template Library is currently is the process of being renamed (to Mark's Toolkit for Libraries) and completely rewritten. Expect to see lots more here soon. 4 October 2006.

The MARC Template Library is a C++ API (using C++ templates and STL) for reading, writing and processing MARC records. I (Mark Basedow) am using this project to improve my knowledge of the C++ Standard Template Library.

The MTL has currently been compiled and tested with Microsoft Visual C++ Version 6 (sp5), Borland Free Command Line Tools 5.5, and the Mingw compiler (using Bloodshed Dev-C++ 4) on Windows 98 SE. It should work on other platforms with a few changes to the make files.

MARC

Toward a 21st Century Library Catalog

Toward a 21st Century Library Catalog by Kristin Antelman, Emily Lynema, and Andrew K. Pace (2006) appears in Information Technology and Libraries 25(3):pp. 128-139.

Library catalogs have represented stagnant technology for close to twenty years. Moving toward a next-generation catalog, North Carolina State University (NCSU) Libraries purchased Endeca's Information Access Platform to give its users relevance-ranked keyword search results and to leverage the rich metadata trapped in the MARC record to enhance collection browsing. This paper discusses the new functionality that has been enabled, the implementation process and system architecture, assessment of the new catalog's performance, and future directions.

OPAC

Metadata Schema Registry

A Metadata Schema Registry as a Tool to Enhance Metadata Interoperability by Mitsuharu Nagamori and Shigeo Sugimoto appears in the latest issue of TCDL Bulletin.

Interoperability is one of the most crucial issues for the metadata and digital library communities. Metadata registries are formal systems that can disclose authoritative information about semantics and data elements to realize semantic interoperability of metadata across domains and cultures. Registries typically store the semantics of metadata elements, maintain information about any local extensions, and provide mappings to other metadata schemas. This article describes the basic requirements and functions for a metadata schema registry. The primary function of a metadata schema registry is to provide reference descriptions of metadata terms for both human users and machines. Based upon our experiences in developing software tools with metadata schema registries, e.g., subject gateways and metadata databases, we have learned that a metadata schema registry has the potential to provide a wider range of services based on metadata schemas. This article also describes some functional extensions to our metadata schema registry in Tsukuba, Japan.

Metadata

Day Against DRM

Access to the physical and intellectual contents of materials is a cornerstone of our profession. DRM can block both. Today is the Day Against DRM.

A personal experience to show just how annoying DRM can be. I recently bought Neal Young's CD Road Rock. It won't play on my PC nor can I rip the tunes. I do most of my music listening using my MP3 player or using Winamp on the PC. Both those are blocked. My use of this CD, which I paid for, is very hampered. I wonder if the place I bought it from will take back an open CD because the manufacturer broke it. now I'm thnking of searching 2600 for a DRM cracking tool. They are pushing folks to the dark side.

Rights

RIP RedLightGreen

On November 5th the RedLightGreen service will end. It will be missed.

RedLightGreen

FRBR Expression

The FRBR weblog reports that the definition for expression has been clarified. The committee is seeking comments about the changes. All the details and links at the FRBR page.

FRBR

Online Indexing

Complementary or Discrete Contexts in Online Indexing: A Comparison of User, Creator and Intermediary Keywords by Kipp, Margaret E. I. (2006) will appear in Proceedings Canadian Association for Information Science, York University, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

This paper (forthcoming in the Canadian Journal of Information and Library Science) and presented at the CAIS Conference examines the context of online indexing from the viewpoint of three different groups: users, authors, and intermediaries. User, author and intermediary keywords were collected from journal articles tagged on citeulike and analysed. Descriptive statistics and thesaural term comparison shows that there are important differences in the context of keywords from the three groups.

Indexing