Libology Blog

Library of Congress’ Working Group on the Future of Bibliographic Control released their Draft Report (Pdf) today, and are requesting that people review and comment on their recommendations between now and December 15th.

This promises to be one of the most influential documents in librarianship, influencing the choices and direction of our technology and cataloging for years to come. I have only read their cover letter (Pdf) so far, but I encourage anyone with an interest in the future of libraries, information, and how we will interact with it to download it, read it, think about it, discuss it, and comment.

found out via Next Generation Catalogs for Libraries (NGC4Lib) listserv

MIT has expanded their OpenCourseWare initiative to include science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) for high school students.  Dubbed Highlights for High School (a name that, for me at least, evokes Highlights magazine), their stated purpose is to “inspire the next generation of engineers and scientists”.

This sounds like it will be a great repository for college level students to review this material, as well as a resource for the general public.  Keep this site in mind for future use…

from Open Access News

For those of you using the Firefox web browser (and if not, why?) here is an add-on that is currently impressing me to pieces : Add to Search Bar.

It isn’t flashy, or obvious, but it does one thing that makes it highly recommended in the library world : you can visit an OPAC search page, right-click in the search box, and add that search to your built-in Firefox toolbar. It’s that easy.

I have tested it on Millenium and Voyager with 100% success. I don’t know how it will handle other OPACs or search tools, but the ability to search my workplace’s collection without having to go through the multiple layers of our web site will save a great deal of time and effort.

Add to Search Bar web site.

found via ResourceShelf

ResourceShelf has a list of highlights of the Survey of Library Database Licensing Practices.  The highlights are pretty interesting, and the cost of the complete survey results ($80 for a paper version and a whopping $89.50 for a downloadable pdf) make the highlights that much more interesting.

Redesigning or editing the content of your library’s web site? Unsure whether to call that particular section “Periodicals” or “Serials” or “Journals” or even something else? Check out Library Terms That Users Understand for a useful collection of data on what words are best understood by library users. Be prepared to spend a bit of time, as most everything is found via dozens of links. The information can save you, and your users, quite a bit of time in the long run!

thanks to Kathleen Turner for posting this to the Web4lib list

Lingro is a service that will allow one to have a dictionary available for text on any web site.  Simply enter the URL for a site, then click on any word.  Viola!  You get definitions for that word quickly and effectively.

This is great for those who are learning a new language, as you can get definitions in one of several languages.

from Metafilter

Bernhard Eversberg of the Braunschweig University Library (or Universitätsbibliothek Braunschweig ) has created a very neat, and very useful online tool : a Library of Congress Subject Headings Browser.

Try it out; put in some of your favorite gnarly subject terms. Try various sub-headings. Enter a LC Classes to see the subject headings in shelf order. Enjoy!

found via the ngc4lib listserv

You have heard about the book digitization projects.  You know that Optical Character Recognition is sometimes an uncertain thing, especially with offbeat typesets and obscure fonts.

Then there is CAPTCHA (and here), the security method that many sites are using to monitor logins.  Basically you view an image of distorted text, and type in the correct letters in order to access the site.

What if each of these problems could use the other as a solution?  reCAPTCHA (here, too)

found on MetaFilter

Three items have caught my eye this past week, and they all point in the same direction, even though they each are about something fairly specific:

1. First was an article about a bill working its way through the Ohio General Assembly. If passed as is, it would mandate that all state schools must provide via. their libraries two copies of every textbook used in their classes. The cost, in todays textbook market, would start in the hundreds of thousands. (received via the OhioLink-gen listserv)
2. Next was an article in ars technica about the federal education bill that would require colleges and universities to police their networks in order to prevent file sharing. (I wonder if universities will be able to allow legal file sharing at the same time? Some don’t, apparently.) The bill would also mandate that colleges and universities provide an alternate means of acquiring copyrighted files… meaning that they would need to partner with music subscription services. (found on The Patry Copyright blog )
3. Last was an article from The Chronicle of Higher Education detailing a project that works to provide textbooks to people in developing countries. These include donated used texts, but the focus is increasingly moving towards free and open textbooks available online. (found on Open Access News )

Put these together and what do you get? An incredible amount of pressure, financially and legally, placed on educational institutions to move towards open access. If a significant number of texts in use on a campus are available as open access, the issue of providing them becomes more a matter of format (print vs. screen) than of anything else. Look at the costs involved for policing and providing copyrighted materials. Open texts, as well as other open access media, will look very attractive to those who have to implement these laws (assuming they pass).

Think of squeezing a watermelon seed between two fingers… at some point it will move in a particular direction, and very quickly. Be prepared….

The Library Software Manifesto was compiled by Roy Tennant (with input from many others) and should be read by everyone who uses an Integrated Library System (ILS).

Why?  Reviewing the manifesto puts one into the mindset of critically reviewing your ILS, detailing its strength and weaknesses from your perspective.

What did I get out of it?

• A great deal of of the manifesto deals with open and honest communication - in both directions.  This includes the vendor being straightforward about what their system can and cannot do, as well as the consumer communicating their needs and issues clearly and with the understanding of what can reasonably be done by the vendor in response.
• Another large part of the manifesto deals with access.  There is no reason why we shouldn’t be able to connect to our system in various ways in order to better understand our data, or to enhance our offerings.  One of the shocks at my current job is how clunky the default reporting tool is in our product, compared to my previous place of work.  Setting up this access was complicated, but the end result was powerful and relatively easy to learn.  There is no reason why we shouldn’t have direct, read-only access to our own database.
• Thinking about the Evergreen project in relation to this manifesto is illuminating.  Open Source is going to transform the ILS landscape, sooner or later, especially when people recognize that the access and communication issues improve dramatically for a healthy open source project.  The downside will be some of the documentation issues (often times a problem with open source… rare are the people who like to write software documentation, and valuable are their contributions), and the need to actively engage the community.  Note:  I am not specifically discussing Evergreen’s documentation, which I have only viewed once or twice… I am referring to open source as a whole.
• I like the last point:  “…lighten up and have fun!”  There is more than enough mind-numbing detail for us to deal with; if we all make an effort to enjoy our work as well as helping others to do so, then we are all better off.

So, read the manifesto, note the issues that exist with your current system, but also note the issues that exist on your institution’s side, as well.  Think about all of it, and remember it in the future, especially when it is time to consider changing to a new system.  This may be the single best tool for you to begin that process.

Marshall Breeding has posted a chart detailing the various brands of Integrated Library Systems (ILS) software used by the Association of Research Libraries (ARL).

Most interesting, from my own perspective, is that Voyager and Millennium are the top two systems. I used Voyager for many years, and feel very comfortable with it; I have been working with Millennium for about 9 months, and am still getting used to it.

Note his brief comment about Open Source ILS use within the ARL. I personally think the shift is coming.

It seems that Library Journal’s Movers and Shakers nomination process has hit a severe bump: every nomination that was submitted through their online form prior to November 5th has been lost.

If you nominated someone, well… you need to nominate them again.  The nomination deadline has been extended to November 28th.

An additional note (from experience): without knowing what happened with LJ’s process, I will stress that with online forms redundancy is the best policy. It is well and good to drop form information into a database, but send it to an e-mail account as well (or even two different accounts). It can be time-consuming to re-create the information, but certainly it is less of a hassle than having that information completely disappear.

previously here

discovered via Catalogablog

Karen Coyle (again) has written a great post on the subject of the Dewey Decimial Classification system, the Library of Congress Classification system, and Library of Congress Subject Headings.

She highlights what, to my view, is one of the major problems with all three of them : they are too complex for their own good.  To structure classification and subject information in a straightforward, scalable manner is a daunting challenge.  That we don’t have this structure is hurting us, and this will only get more prominent as time goes on.