ILS Inventory

ILS Inventory has just been released. It will take some work to get it going at your institution. "This project is meant to be more or less self-serve; i.e. it will probably almost work for you out of the box, but will need some hacking."

We have just released a PHP/symfony application for processing the inventory of ILS item, under the new BSD license. This is great for those of us with an ILS that can do data export, but lacks an inventory module. Code is included for importing items from III export files, as well as checking LC shelf-order.

The Last Unicorn

Image via Wikipedia

The Last Unicorn by Peter Beagle is now being published as a monthly comic book. It is beautiful. It also includes a decent interview with Beagle. I'm sure this will be collected into a graphic novel. If your library collects graphic novels or fantasy keep an eye out for The Last Unicorn.

Additions to Source Codes for Vocabularies, Rules, and Schemes

The source codes listed below have been recently approved. The codes will be added to applicable Source Codes for Vocabularies, Rules, and Schemes lists. See the specific source code list for current usage in MARC fields and MODS/MADS elements.

The codes should not be used in exchange records until 60 days after the date of this notice to provide implementers time to include newly-defined codes in any validation tables.

Abbreviated Title Source Codes
The following source code has been added to the Abbreviated Title Source Codes list for usage in appropriate fields and elements.

Additions:

issnkey

Abbreviated Key Titles

Availability Status Code Source Codes
The following source code has been added to the Availability Status Code Source Codes list for usage in appropriate fields and elements.

Addition:

onixas

ONIX Product Availability Codes

Caption Abbreviation Source Codes
The following source code has been added to the Caption Abbreviation Source Codes list for usage in appropriate fields and elements.

Addition:

onixatc116

ONIX Abbreviation Type Code List number 116

Cartographic Data Source Codes
The following source codes have been added to the Cartographic Data Source Codes list for usage in appropriate fields and elements.

Additions:

csa

Trion. Will. Cambridge Star atlas (Cambridge, UK; New York: Cambridge University Press)

gpn

Gazetteer of Planetary Nomenclature

Content Advice Classification Source Codes
The following source codes have been added to the Content Advice Classification Source Codes list for usage in appropriate fields and elements.

Additions:

bbfc

British Board of Film Classification

mpaa

Motion Picture Association of America Film Ratings

Gender Code and Term Source Codes
The following source code has been added to the Gender Code and Term Source Codes list for usage in appropriate fields and elements.

Addition:

iso 5218

Codes for the Representation of Human Sexes (ISO/IEC 5218:2004). (Geneva: International Organization for Standardization)

Musical Composition Form Code Source Codes
The following source code has been added to the Musical Composition Form Code Source Codes list for usage in appropriate fields and elements.

Addition:

marcmuscomp

MARC Form of Musical Composition Code List

Musical Instrumentation and Voice Code Source Codes
The following source code has been added to the Musical Instrumentation and Voice Code Source Codes list for usage in appropriate fields and elements.

Addition:

marcmusperf

MARC Instruments and Voices Code List

Price Type Code Source Codes
The following source code has been added to the Price Type Code Source Codes list for usage in appropriate fields and elements.

Addition:

onixpt

ONIX Price Type Codes

Subject Heading and Term Source Codes
The following source codes have been added to the Subject Heading and Term Source Codes list for usage in appropriate fields and elements.

Additions:

eum

Eesti uldine marksonastik

hrvmesh

Croatian MeSH / Hrvatski MeSH (Zagreb: Medicinski fakultet Sveucilista u Zagrebu Sredisnja medicinska knijznica)

idsbb

Thesaurus IDS Basel Bern (Basel: Universitatsbibliothek; Bern: Universitatsbibliothek)

idszbz

Thesaurus IDS Nebis Zentralbibliothek Zurich (Zurich: Zentralbibliothek)

idszbzes

Thesaurus IDS Nebis Bibliothek Englisches Seminar der Universitat Zurich (Zürich: Universitat Zurich)

idszbzna

Thesaurus IDS Nebis Zentralbibliothek Zurich, Nordamerika-Bibliothek (Zurich: Zentralbibliothek)

idszbzzg

Thesaurus IDS Nebis Zentralbibliothek Zurich, Graphische Sammlung (Zurich: Zentralbibliothek)

idszbzzh

Thesaurus IDS Nebis Zentralbibliothek Zurich, Handschriftenabteilung (Zurich: Zentralbibliothek)

idszbzzk

Thesaurus IDS Nebis Zentralbibliothek Zurich, Kartensammlung (Zurich: Zentralbibliothek)

nskps

Prirucnik za izradu predmetnog kataloga u Nacionalnoj I sveucilisnoj knjiznici u Zagrebu (Manual for NSK subject headings) (Zagrebu: Nacionalna i sveucilisna knjiznica)

pmont

Powerhouse Museum Object Name Thesaurus

sbt

Soggettario Sistema Bibliotecario Ticinese (Cantone Ticino, Svizzera: Sistema Bibliotecario Ticinese)

Name Authority Records Enhanced with Geographic Coordinates

News from LC.

The Library of Congress has recently entered into a cooperative project with OCLC to receive and distribute revised name authority records for jurisdictions that will add geographic coordinates in 034 fields (Coded Cartographic Mathematical Data). The coordinate data has been extracted by the OCLC Office of Research from 670 citations and online geographic databases as part of FAST (Faceted Application of Subject Terminology). This project follows successful efforts by OCLC to enhance authority records with geographic data including 043 fields (Geographic Area Code) and 781 fields (Subdivision Linking Entry--Geographical Subdivision).

LCCNs of sample records that illustrate the coordinate additions:

• n 00004724
• n 00005017
• n 00001407

It is expected that OCLC will be enhancing approximately 77,000 name authority records with this project. The records will flow through the normal NACO contribution and distribution streams. MDS-Names subscribers should expect a steady flow of these corrected records over the upcoming weeks until all records have been re-distributed.

Metastudy of Users

Image via Wikipedia

The digital information seeker: Findings from selected OCLC, RIN and JISC user behaviour projects has just been published by the JISC.

In the interest of analysing and synthesising several user behaviour studies conducted in the US and the UK twelve studies were identified. These 12 selected studies were commissioned and/or supported by non- profit organisations and government agencies; therefore, they have little dependence upon the outcomes of the studies. The studies were reviewed by two researchers who analysed the findings, compared their analyses, and identified the overlapping and contradictory findings. This report is not intended to be the definitive work on user behaviour studies, but rather to provide a synthesised document to make it easier for information professionals to better understand the information-seeking behaviours of the libraries’ intended users and to review the issues associated with the development of information services and systems that will best meet these users’ needs.

One finding of the report: High-quality metadata is thus becoming even more important for the discovery process.

Item Availability Information

DAIA, the Document Availability Information API provides a method of showing the availability of an item.

DAIA is a data model to express information about the availability of documents and their particular copies for library-related services (loan, local presentation, open access online, interlibrary loan...). Its specification (http://purl.org/NET/DAIA) includes serialization in XML, JSON and RDF - use the format of your choice and get the other serializations for free.

If you are happy with stuff like NCIP, SLNP, SIP2, Z39.50 Holdings, ISO 20775 Holdings than I wonder why. But if you like to decouple and open up your library system for better innovation that you might want to have a look. Additional services like "Tweet-me-if-the-book-is-back" should be easy to implement by third parties based on a common, well-defined availability API (/end-of-advertisement)

The current SVN repository contains the existing Perl implementation (that you can also get via CPAN), an implementation in PHP and an XSLT client for DAIA/XML. The VuFind project also contains a DAIA-Driver as client component.

Feedback is very welcome, feel free to join. The project mailing list is https://lists.sourceforge.net/mailman/listinfo/daia-devel (don't be confused that the first mail is in German, we also know English).

So how do you get availability information out of your library system?