Libology Blog

Census Atlas of the United States is the first publication of a “comprehensive atlas of population and housing produced by the Census Bureau since the 1920s.” The maps are beautiful and easy to use, although I doubt that an atlas of 314 pages can be properly called “comprehensive” when it comes to mapping census data. Oh… you noticed the price tag of $165.

Well, why not try out the free online edition? You get all the maps, and you only need a decent download speed (the chapters range from 3 to 21 MB).

Actually, what I would love to see is a full-blown Web 2.0 version of this resource. Imagine picking out your criteria from drop menus, choosing the scale of maps (full country, state, county, or city), and generating a map on the fly within your browser. I could think of quite a few maps that I would love to generate with that type of web site.

For good examples of what style of mapping web sites I am talking about check out ChicagoCrime.org or Trulia.

found via ResourceShelf

The topic of Copyfraud has been on my mind for the past few months.  It is interesting how once you start noticing something relatively subtle, you can reach a point where you start seeing it all the time.  This has been one of those things.

Copyfraud is best defined by the above linked Wikipedia article, but what I seem to keep encountering is the overly restrictive assertions of copyright by those who should know better.  The most grating example I have encountered, more so because it is such an interesting publication, is the photocopy authorization statement in the magazine Strategic Finance:

Authorization to photocopy Strategic Finance.  Items for internal or personal use, or the internal or personal use of specific clients, is granted by the IMA to libraries and other users registered with the Copyright Clearance Center (CCC) Transactional Reporting Service, provided that the base fee of $3.00 per copy, plus 30¢ per page, is paid directly to CCC, 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923.  (www.copyright.com) ISSN 1524-833X, $3.00 + 30¢.

For reprint information contact …[section omitted]…

For permission to make 1-50 copies of articles contact:  Copyright Clearance Center www.copyright.com or fax (978) 774-4470.

Read it carefully… it doesn’t quite state that an individual making a copy of an article for personal use must be registered with the CCC and pay the fee, but it really reads that way.  I read it as if an individual isn’t a library, then they fall into the “other users” category.  If that is correct, then registration and payment seems required.

Which is balderdash, of course.  Fair use is very well established for this behavior.  If restricting photocopies in the manner were allowed under copyright law, then Inter-Library Loan and much of the personal and professional educational research behavior as we know it would disappear.

Another example:  The other day someone told me of an experience they had in a library while doing research for their Master’s thesis.  They had an 18xx edition of a book that was one of their primary sources.  It wasn’t in the best of shape, so she decided to photocopy the entire book to save it from wear.  A library employee stopped her from making the copies because it was “against copyright”.  Buzzzzz, wrong answer… anything created before January 1, 1923 is public domain, and therefore free of any and all copyright restrictions.

Remember to focus not only on the restrictions, but on the freedoms of copyright.  I don’t know if the person who stopped her was a librarian, but remember that to most patrons, we are all librarians (which to me translates to “we are all information professionals”).  This means that we should be sure to have at least a basic understanding of individual freedoms when dealing with copyright, and should be sure to not overextend our answers beyond what we know.

Overly restrictive and slippery notices are just one small part of Copyfraud.  Start watching for this in your daily routines, if only to allow you to better answer questions for yourself and others.

the blog posting that pushed this entry to the front of my brain - read it! Open Access News

Free-Reading is “an ‘open-source’ instructional program that helps teachers teach early reading.” Aimed at Kindergarten/First Grade learners, it is a collaborative means to establish an education program that combines the strengths of those who work on the project, and makes it available to teachers and organizations via a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike license.

Oh, and the State of Florida just added this program to their list of approved textbooks. Not only can they save a significant amount of funds that would otherwise be spent on texts, the class materials will be current and likely to be updated by a wide variety of professional educators.

found via Open Access News

Web 3.0: Chicken Farms on the Semantic Web is an article by Jim Hendler on the early signs of what he is calling Web 3.0.  The title caught my attention, natch, and so I read the article with great interest.

However, I hesitate to agree with his premise.  He argues that the semantic web, or more precisely the standards, software and services that will rise to support it, will be the manifestation of Web 3.0.  I am not so sure.

The semantic web is a big deal, and very necessary for our long-term use of the internet.  This goes double for libraries, as our biggest obstacle is a data interchange format that is user-friendly while still maintaining the complexity it represents.  However, the semantic web is not what will re-shape our web experience.  It will help make it possible, but it in itself is primarily the organizational layer that can be used by the technology.

Web 2.0 (and as an extension, Library 2.0) has both been over-hyped and under-appreciated.  It is a significant change in how we, both developers and users, relate to the internet.  We are in the midst of this transformation, and I doubt that many can see clear to the far side, but it will be viewed as a fundamental shift in information gathering and sharing.

Much of what is described in his article is either the manifestations of the semantic structuring of information, or the Web 2.0 applications that take advantage of it.  I suspect that we haven’t yet detected that which will become 3.0 (or whatever it will ultimately be called), but that is is out there.  Just as many of the 2.0 technologies have their roots in relatively clunky analogs present in the late 1990s, the acorns that will grow into mighty oaks have yet to distinguish themselves.

By the way, it is a great article, and does an excellent job in conveying what may be in store for the semantic web.

article found via ResourceShelf

7 Things You Should Know About Lulu (Pdf) is a two-paged pamphlet that is a great overview of what the web-based publishing company Lulu can do, especially if you are in an academic setting. I have quite a bit of respect for this company and its potential, enough that I am publishing my forthcoming book through them.

“Ahhhh… the book!” (fans of Wonder Boys might know that quote!) The book, titled “The LibrarySupportStaff.org Guide to Library 2.0″ is progressing again, after being in stasis for much of November and December. About 1/3 of it is fully written (though not fully edited), with much of the rest partially written (with notes or outlines filling in the gaps).

It was begun in August, and has been moving along in fits and starts since then.

Time has been the biggest culprit: I can do quite a bit in 15-20 minute segments at lunch, but integrating these small work blocks into the book itself requires longer amounts of time without distraction. I am now in a position to get that time once per week, and can hopefully wrap things up within a couple of months.

This has taken longer than I wanted (I was hoping to be published by November) but what I have learned in the process has been worth the frustration and delays. I’m just glad that Library 3.0 didn’t happen before I finished! However, watch the next few posts for something on that particular topic….

Lulu article found via ResourceShelf

Foreign Book Dealers Directory is just as described : a database of book dealers around the world that lets you search for book dealers by company, region, and country.  It is hosted by ALCTS, and seems extremely useful for those challenging acquisitions.

posted to ACQNET by Angie Cope of the American Geographical Society Library

Within Range , a training game from Carnegie Mellen University Libraries, has several strikes against it : it is flash-based, it only trains in LC classification, and it was rated “worst game” on reddit.com.

Otherwise, it is a pretty good resource for people learning to shelf LC cataloged items!

found via LISNews

Does your library track reference statistics?  If the answer is “yes” (or even “possibly in the future”), then check out the READ Scale website.  Their system for categorizing and recording reference transactions via a 6 level hierarchy is both straightforward, yet powerful.  They even provide a guide for implementing the READ Scale at your own library.

found via Extensible Librarian

Review : Directory of Open Access Journals (Pdf), by Heather Morrison is a very good introduction to what is becoming a top-tier collection of journals.

Although some of the statistics are a bit dated (due to a strength of the DOAJ - they are adding journals fairly rapidly, and are currently past the 3,000 mark) the review hits the mark, making a great case for libraries to connect their patrons with this excellent resource.

from ResourceShelf

This announcement by the Indiana State Library and the Hussey Mayfield Memorial Public Library in Zionsville is significant : they aim to make Indiana the third statewide implementation of the Evergreen ILS, assuming that it meets their needs.

Third??? Well, they missed second by two days… the Michigan Evergreen Project was also announced.

from the open-ils blog

additional note:  Karen Schneider has a great overview of the variety of current Evergreen projects

Intelways is an interesting search site.  It isn’t a meta search tool, but it does harness multiple search engines to create an improved experience.

As with many things on the web, the best way to understand it is to try it.  Enter a search term, then select a category above the search bar, or a specific search tool below the search bar.  This tool makes it easy to perform a search one one engine, then switch to another to see a different set of results without having to retype the query or load the search pages.

One note to add, however: this site has been around for a while, but has changed its name a couple of times.  Follow the link below if you are curious about the history of the site.

from ResourceShelf

NetRenderer is a service that will show you how web pages display using Internet Explorer versions 5.5, 6, and 7. This is a great, great tool for web page design, especially since pre-7 versions of Internet Explorer are notoriously tricky to design style sheets for.

IE has been much improved of late, and Microsoft recently announced that the forthcoming IE version 8 has passed the Acid2 test! (also: Acid2 on Wikipedia)

found via LISNews

EZProxy, the proxy server created by a librarian for libraries, has been acquired by OCLC.

OCLC has been doing some interesting things in the past couple of years… and indications are they will be doing even more in the next couple of years.  This acquisition might mean some added functionality to WorldCat Local, perhaps?

from ResourceShelf

On the Record : Report of the Library of Congress Working Group on the Future of Bibliographic Control (Pdf), which is the final version (formerly titled “Report of the Library…”), has been released.

Working Group main page.

Daniel Chudnov’s humorous comment on one particular segment of the report.

My previous comments here and here and here and here.

found via Catalogablog, et al.

Perceptions 2007: An International Survey of Library Automation contains the results of a survey conducted by Marshall Breeding.  He explored the relationship between libraries and their Integrated Library Systems (ILS).

The results are interesting.  Without going into my own views of the two systems I have worked with, I feel that some libraries just don’t know how they have it - both good and bad.  I would like to see statistics from those who have worked with more than one ILS within the past five years, because I suspect that some of the rankings might change dramatically.

That said, it is very good to see a snapshot of people’s satisfaction levels of their software and the companies that support it.  This may well reflect how well companies (and ILSs) will do in the next 5 years or so.

One surprise, sort of, is the low level of interest in Open Source ILS.  Part of this is due to fact that Open Source ILS is just really beginning to be used in the United States - as more libraries use the systems over time, we will have a better understanding of the satisfaction they have (or won’t have) with them.

The other part goes back to not knowing what we are missing.  For instance, I have worked with database reporting with both Voyager and Millennium, and Voyager is by far the most powerful and useful, as you are able to extract data from the Oracle DB directly into Microsoft Access and manipulate it with any SQL you can create.  Millennium has a built in extracter, and I have discovered that it saves a great deal of time and headaches to simply export large chunks of data into a text file, then import it into Access and work on it there.

(note: Millennium has a pricey add-on that adds an Oracle database to their system to enable this; I don’t have it at my current place of work, and cannot judge how well it handles the type of queries and reporting I am discussing)

found via GuidePosts

10 Ways to Make Your Library Great in 2008—via Web 2.0 is a webinar being held next week that promises to be very informative.  The focus is on social networking and how libraries and library staff can approach new technologies for improving services.  They will be archiving the presentation, so those of us who aren’t available to view it live can have a chance to see it.

I will stress that Web 2.0 (and Library 2.0) is best approached piecemeal.  Pick and choose those elements that will work for you and your situation.  Do not be afraid to try something new, to experiment with that which is in place, and to abandon that which isn’t working for you.  In the end you will have learned quite a bit about your library, your patrons, and technology - and everyone will be better off for it!

However, some library people just don’t like the word Webinar….

from a post by Ed Rossman (the webinar presenter) on Web4Lib

I am a bit of a political junkie… and it generally won’t spill over onto this blog. However, one resource that I have found very interesting when examining Ohio and New Hampshire results has been Google Maps coverage of the primaries. They haven’t committed to doing all 50 states, but the service has been popular, and I suspect that they will continue at least as long as the nominations are in play. As for November… who knows??

• Google LatLong Blog entry
• Iowa page
• New Hampshire page

found via Search Engine Land

If you work at an academic library, especially a school which emphasizes publication, then the issue of Institutional Repositories is critical to understand.

Even if you don’t fit the above, these repositories, combined with Open Access, will strongly effect librarianship, and the way your library accesses resources.

An excellent introduction to IRs can be found in Institutional Repositories, Tout de Suite (Pdf), by Charles W. Bailey, Jr. (found via Resource Shelf)

Also worth reading is Today’s Digital Information Landscape by Eric Lease Morgan (mentioned here previously), which has a section on institutional repositories.

Wikia, the search engine designed around the concept of wikis, has been launched in alpha.  This means that a) it isn’t going to work as well as anyone wants, and b) no fair comparing it to Google et. al., except in the theoretical.  In fact, we usually wouldn’t see software until the beta stage of development; this shows how much Wikia will rely on users.

There isn’t all that much to see yet, but the idea of an annotated search engine where the users provide feedback about the search results, which will then be used to improve future results, is tantalizing.  Search 2.0 anyone?

via Open Access News

I occasionally point out something that Karen Schneider writes, and this post will link to another example of her writing.

One of the things I really enjoy about her blog is that she, like Jessamyn (part of my inspiration for starting this blog), tries to be straightforward about her views and ideas regarding libraries.  They know that they aren’t perfect, and they know that the rest of us aren’t as well, and they go on to create wonderful, informative posts that feel like you are conversing with them between sessions at your favorite conference.

This particular post, titled How to be “famous” (wink wink, nudge nudge) is a week old, and by some magic involving RSS, the internet, and some type of little creatures that occasionally capture e-mails and blog posts to play with before passing them along, I didn’t get it in my feed until tonight.  It is a great example of her style, which passes along information that we all can benefit from as we make our way through libraryland.

Remember that, even if you aren’t well known, people do look to you for guidance - even if they are looking at your entire workplace for that guidance.  We all set examples, and we all have the power and ability to make better choices and to make life better for those around us, even if only indirectly.  I suspect that it is easy to forget how much influence we really have on others.