Ident Engine

Ident Engine is a nifty tool, a javascript library that retrieves and aggregates profiles from across the web.

Most of us create identities across the web without much conscious thought. We fill in profiles, upload photos, videos, reviews, and bookmarks. Although this information is often public, it’s fragmented into the silos of individual websites. Wouldn’t it be a little magical if, when you signed up for a new site, the site said something like, “We notice you have a profile photo on Flickr and Twitter, would you like to use one of those or upload a new one?” I built a JavaScript library that can help you do just that. Ident Engine discovers and retrieves distributed identities and user-generated content to help you build a little magic into your user interfaces.

Article about the tool in A List Apart.

OCLC is Enriching ONIX Metadata

OCLC now offers a service to enrich ONIX metadata for publishers.

OCLC now offers Metadata Services for Publishers, a new service that takes publishers' ONIX title metadata, enriches it using WorldCat mining and mapping techniques, and delivers the enhanced ONIX metadata back to the publishers for use in their systems. The publishers' enhanced metadata is then made available early in the data creation process to libraries for use in selection, acquisition and technical services workflows. Information seekers also benefit from Web discovery of this metadata via WorldCat.org, the Web destination for discovery of library resources.

Cooperative Cataloging Rules Website

Cooperative Cataloging Rules is a new website devoted to cataloging issues.

We want to announce its existence and to put out a general request for professional metadata creators to participate. The site has two primary purposes: 1) to offer a serious alternative to RDA and 2) to offer a place for sharing bibliographic concepts within the general metadata community.

They already have an impressive number of cataloging rules available from the site. It is possible to become a contributor, but membership is required.

SkyRiver

There is plenty of coverage of the new bibliographic utility, SkyRiver, so I'll not rehash all that's been said. The article by Marshall Breeding in Library Journal is a good place to start. However, one aspect that has not been covered is the authority file they offer. MARC authority records are available form LC, but the process of downloading them is painful. It is not easy, maybe not possible, to create a file and import them once. Each record has to be downloaded and then imported into the local system. Then the next record is downloaded, etc., etc., etc. An improvement in this process, if it was inexpensive would be greatly welcomed here.

Another bibliographic utility with an authority file that can be edited means it may be possible for smaller libraries to participate in NACO. We have no money in our budget to become full members of OCLC. Yet, in planetary science, our community, we have very good access to most of the authors. We're the folks who host the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference that brings all the community together for a week each year. Nice access. We could be an excellent source of authority records and corrections to existing records if we could become part of NACO. I'd guess there are plenty of other special libraries that have similar expertise that could benefit other libraries.

This is not to say it will ever be offered. There are rules about how often the database has to be updated and how changes in the local one be uploaded to LC. Nothing on their website mentions NACO, but still I dream.