WorldCat Hackathon

WorldCat Hackathon is the impetus for some tool development. From OCLC comes this notice

We added a few more features in this month's xID deployment, hopefully it could be useful in upcoming WorldCat Hackathon.

• support LCCN query such as: http://xisbn.worldcat.org/webservices/xid/lccn/2004273129?fl=isbn,lccn
• support deleted OCLCNUM (marc 019 field) http://xisbn.worldcat.org/webservices/xid/oclcnum/47139964?method=getMetadata In this case OCLCNUM 47139964 was merged into 33100112, and we use a flag "presentOclcnum" to mark present OCLC numbers.
• xISSN project now supports tab-delimited and CSV dissemination http://xissn.worldcat.org/webservices/xid/issn/0036-8075?method=getEditions&format=csv&fl=issn,form,title http://xissn.worldcat.org/webservices/xid/issn/0036-8075?method=getEditions&format=txt&fl=issn,form,title
  
• start to support php dissemination format in all XID projects http://xisbn.worldcat.org/webservices/xid/isbn/0596002815?method=getEditions&fl=*&format=php

Matienzo, Mark has announced that Python WorldCat Module v0.1.0 is now available.

In preparation for the upcoming WorldCat Hackathon starting this Friday, I've made a few changes to worldcat, my Python module for interacting with OCLC's APIs. Most notably, I've added iterators for SRU and OpenSearch requests, which (like the rest of the module) painfully need documentation.

isbn2marc

William Denton has written a program, isbn2marc, that takes and ISBN and returns a MARC record. It uses Z39.50 and is written in Ruby. Mr. Denton is the person responsible for the FRBR Blog, good stuff.

Changes to Dewey

973.931 Administration of George W. Bush, 2001–2009
973.932 Administration of Barack Obama, 2009–

Conference Presentations

Have you done a conference presentation lately? If so, let all that work continue to inform the library community by submitting it to the WebJunction conference page. They already have several presentations, both slides and audio, from several conferences. Well worth a look and listen. Great idea WebJunction, thanks.

Ten Do’s and Don’ts for Conference, Workshop, and Program Organizers

In the wake of Internet Librarian lots of folks have been posting tips for presenters. Conference organizers also have a nice list of hints, Ten Do’s and Don’ts for Conference, Workshop, and Program Organizers. Many of our conferences are arraigned by volunteers who change every year or two. A look at this list and the comments should make for happier speakers.

Thanks to Rachael Singer Gordon for pointing me to this again, I'd lost the link.

New DCMI Documnets

Two new documents from the Dublin Core Metadata Imitative. The first involves concepts that relate to RDA. (Although why we are still working on the intellectual foundation when it it nearly ready....) The second provides a model for interoperability on the Semantic Web. The DCMI folks are looking for comments on both.

Guidelines for Dublin Core Application Profiles describes the key components of an application profile and walks the reader through the process of designing a profile. Addressed primarily to a non-technical audience, the guidelines also provide a technical appendix about modeling the metadata interoperably for use in linked data environments. This draft will be revised in response to feedback from readers.

Interoperability Levels for Dublin Core Metadata, published today as a DCMI Working Draft, discusses the modeling choices involved in designing metadata applications for different types of interoperability. At Level 1, applications use data components with shared natural-language definitions. At Level 2, data is based on the formal-semantic model of the W3C Resource Description Framework. At Level 3, data is structured as Description Sets (i.e., as records). At Level 4, data content is subject to a shared set of constraints (as described in a Description Set Profile). Conformance tests and examples are provided for each level. The Working Draft represents work in progress for which the authors seek feedback.

OCLC News

OCLC has a new policy on sharing records. We have until Feb. to consider this policy and all the implications. There was lots of speculation about this before it was released.

Searching with Tags

Searching with Tags: Do Tags Help Users Find Things? by Margaret E.I. Kipp appears in Proceedings 10th International Conference of the International Society for Knowledge Organization, Montreal, Quebec, Canada.

This study examines the question of whether tags can be useful in the process of information retrieval. Participants were asked to search a social bookmarking tool specialising in academic articles (CiteULike) and an online journal database (Pubmed) in order to determine if users found tags were useful in their search process. The actions of each participants were captured using screen capture software and they were asked to describe their search process. The preliminary study showed that users did indeed make use of tags in their search process, as a guide to searching and as hyperlinks to potentially useful articles. However, users also made use of controlled vocabularies in the journal database.