The University of Michigan has unveiled the PictureIt Rare Book Reader, an on-screen reader that is similar to others that I have seen, but faster, smoother, and simply beautiful to see and use.

The first book available online is volume one of John James Audubon’s Birds of America:

Click the image to open the reader

The software will be released under a Creative Commons license at some point in the future.

found via the Blog for Library Technology

Found a fantastic slideshow covering the basics of Open Source ILS software via the Proverbial Lone Wolf Librarian:

Direct link to the slides on SlideShare

A List Apart has been a steady source of thought-provoking inspiration over the years, not only from a website building perspective, but also because much of what they publish crosses boundaries and impacts other projects and interests in my life.

Their current article, Accent Folding, greatly impacts library data in general, and library catalogs in particular.  It deals with the issue of Unicode and pattern recognition, namely how one creates search tools that allow for variations in how words containing accents, stress marks, and other non-ascii characters.  The most succinct example:

There is no excuse for your software to play dumb when the user types “cafe” instead of “café.”

The article presents methods of “normalizing” text to allow for proper matching, and should be read by anyone who gets to deal with library data for reports and searching aids.  If you know how to use regular expressions, you will likely be in for a treat.

The other example they present, this time to demonstrate the limitations of accent folding, uses Japanese to illustrate just how differently the same data can be presented:

These four sentences all say “Children like to watch television” in Japanese:

• Kanji: 子供はテレビを見るのが好きです。
• Hiragana: こども は てれび を みる の が すき です 。
• Romaji: kodomo wa terebi o miru noga suki desu.
• Cyrillic: кодомо ва тэрэби о миру нога суки дэсу.

Even if you don’t end up applying this directly to your work, the information in this article will help your appreciation for the challenges contained within your data, and how tough it can be to make it “just work” sometimes.

The Public Domain Manifesto is an effort to describe the strengths of public domain, and to encourage support.

Some of the general principles:

• The Public Domain is the rule, copyright protection is the exception.
• Copyright protection should last only as long as necessary to achieve a reasonable compromise between protecting and rewarding the author for his intellectual labour and safeguarding the public interest in the dissemination of culture and knowledge.
• What is in the Public Domain must remain in the Public Domain.
• The lawful user of a digital copy of a Public Domain work should be free to (re-)use, copy and modify such work.
• Contracts or technical protection measures that restrict access to and re-use of Public Domain works must not be enforced.

I recommend that you review the manifesto, and if you agree with it, show your support by signing it.

found via Open Source Initiative

Library Technology Guides has a couple of interesting data sets that, in a limited way, shows some of the dynamic patterns in the Integrated Library System (ILS) market:

Integrated Library System turnover in 2009 (listed by the ILS migrated to)

Reverse Integrated Library system turnover in 2009 (listed by the ILS migrated from)

It is interesting to note that a great deal of activity involves libraries moving to open source systems, mainly Koha (143) or Evergreen (92).  The top proprietary system is SirsiDynix’s Symphony (84), but over 70 of those installations are from other SirsiDynix products.  After that, the numbers drop to the 40-something range.

Note that these only reflect libraries that have their relevant information listed in Lib-Web-Cats.   If your library isn’t listed, you should submit your information; if listed, you should double-check your information and update if necessary.

found via GuidePosts

This is a couple of months old, but it is worth highlighting:

Unlocking the Passion Paradox

Kenneth Eikenberry illustrates the benefits of being passionate about your work, and how one can encourage and develop those passions.

From the post:

When you are passionate about an activity, event or situation, your satisfaction, success and productivity all skyrocket. If you want those benefits more of the time, it isn’t enough to wait for that passionate feeling; you must look for the opportunities, because until you look, you won’t find your passion.

He extols the benefits of having a good attitude, especially looking for the positive aspects of one’s work, as well as seeking out opportunities to apply your strengths through volunteer work or hobbies.  I can certainly vouch for these methods; they can certainly make a difference in your life, as well as providing benefits to others.

found via Library Garden

The Kirkendall Public Library in Ankeny, Iowa wanted to install a self-checkout system.  The $23,000 price tag meant that, at best, they would need to wait until they could raise the money to purchase the system.

Eric Melton, circulation librarian and tech support for the library, came up with a solution:  he built a self-check system for $1,500, less than 7% of the quoted cost for a purchased system.

Enterprising Ankeny librarian builds money-saving kiosk

How many opportunities can be discovered to save money in how we operate our libraries?  For most libraries, this is becoming more critical than ever.

found via AL Direct

Bill Mayer, the University Librarian at American University, has been implementing some fairly radical (for libraries) changes in how the library exists on campus and interacts with the university community:

Next Steps : Change at American University

I really don’t have much of an opinion on any particular changes, mainly because I think that any library needs to seek out the ways to best serve their community.  This means hanging on to traditional ways of service, while at the same time implementing out new tools and ways to connect people with what they seek.  The best results for this process will be different for different libraries and communities.

I was, however, impressed with his approach:

…one word kept coming up over and over again: trust. “Trust is the most important aspect of the work we do—without it, there can be no change, no movement, no growth,” he said. I asked him how one goes about building trust and his response was simple: listening. “You ask questions and then you listen to what others say and suggest, and then you build up together from there. That’s a key part. If an administrator doesn’t ask, or even worse, asks but doesn’t include aspects that staff suggest, then you lose trust.”

If he walks that talk, then I think he has a good chance of finding the right balance for American University.

As the economy continues to remain weak and budgets tighten for public libraries, here is a study that should encourage any community of the value of high speed internet access via their libraries:

Internet Use and Job Search (pdf)

In a nutshell, the rate of “discouragement” (giving up hope for finding work) is reduced by 50% when job seekers have high speed internet access, and is reduced by 30% when job seekers have access to dial-up internet.

This provides a justification for providing high speed access to the community, in that it will encourage not only a higher rate of employment, but also less desperation in those still seeking employment.

To take this one step further, I would suggest that providing training and support (perhaps through volunteers among job seekers) might improve a community’s results beyond the scope of the study.

found via LISNews, who found it via NPR

The American Library Association has announced the winners for their many youth categories:

Literary Award Winners

There are more categ0ries than I remember… scanning through the lists reveals many interesting titles.

This is a fantastic opportunity for the right organizations with the right ideas:

Ben & Jerry’s Foundation

Note that in their Funding Priorities, they limit grants to “grassroots, constituent-led organizations that are organizing for systemic social change”, so this would be something that might be useful to some Friend’s groups, or beneficial as something that a library could offer support to a community group (i.e. helping to provide books, tools, and access to underserved populations such as the homeless).

Think about how this could benefit your community, and who could effectively organize it.  Then think about how your library might be able to add value to the end result.

discovered via an OhioLink e-mail

The American Antiquary Society has a great visual reference on the Anatomy of a Catalog Record:

found via Catalogablog

While clearing out old lists of post inspirations, I ran across a post on Commonplace.net that still gets my brain going:

At my place of work, my desk is in close proximity to our two catalogers.  The conversations that ensue about cataloging standards, MARC, and such are often interesting, and occasionally stray into realms so esoteric that it becomes a challenge to keep up with the thread of conversation.

My rare contribution usually boils down to “I am an agnostic as to what standards are used, but the basic storage and retrieval of cataloging information should be as granular and relational as can be achieved.”

By granular, I mean that information should be divided into small, well-defined chunks.  When an author is listed as “Smith, John, 1947-” I cringe a little.  Dividing the author’s first and last (and middle) names into separate fields makes a world of sense, especially when you encounter authors with multiple middle or last names (or both).  Instead, MARC relegates the name into one string.  This also creates problems with cultural differences in how given and family names are presented.

Another problem is that this information exists separately in each bibliographic record.  If our data storage systems were to store author/creator information in a relational manner, we could have one record for “Smith, John, 1947-”.  This would make it much easier in the unfortunate circumstance that the author becomes “Smith, John, 1947-2010″.

Most library software uses granular and relational database methods for the storage of circulation and acquisitions information.  It is our bibliographic information that is stuck in an inefficient rut.

The strongest argument I can think of for changing this is that is is very easy to create scripts and use software to put together small pieces of information to create an easy-to-understand string; it is much, much harder to take that string and break it into well-defined and usable chunks in order to use the information in new ways.

The future of data is not so much everyone using the same specific standards, but using standards that can be compared and used in ways that are compatible.  We can easily build MARC records from a granular relational database; cataloging need not change how it views and edits records (not much, at least), but the current methods are holding libraries back.

ALA Learning’s Top Ten Customer Service Skills for Library Staff is not only a great review of those habits that can make us more effective when we interact with the public, but are also good reminders of what we can do to improve communication and collaboration with co-workers, vendors, family, friends, strangers, etc.

found via MLxperience

Baker & Taylor has the next big thing in ebooks. Really!

As with all of  the “next big things” we see in digital technology, we get to “wait and see”.

However, reading the post makes me marvel at the possibilities that this could provide to libraries that use Baker & Taylor and their Yankee Book Peddler (YBP) subsidiary.  Imagine being able to offer e-books bundled with any print copies purchased, with cataloging services included.

found via LISNews

The part of me that is somewhat of a Star Wars geek really finds it fascinating that, according to one of the catalogers at my place of work,  Barack Obama’s Dewey Decimal Cutter Number is…

Ob1

I see these types of messages all the time on library-related websites, and I agree that it sends the message that those who manage those sites don’t have a good grasp of current web technology:

Time to Update? by David Lee King.

Check the web sites that your library presents to the world.  If you see messages like those highlighted by David, start talking to people about getting them up to date (or better yet, getting rid of them, since a good standards-designed site will work well across browsers and browser versions).

OCLC is previewing their new Policies Directory site, which is set to go live on December 13th.  To try it out, point your browser to:

https://policies-preview.oclc.org/

• Authorization:  100028264
• Password:  oclc

Be sure to enter your OCLC Institution Symbol to view your library’s directory information.

Be sure to visit OCLC’s overview of changes to the directory, which includes the link to the live directory.

found via ResourceShelf

How College Students Seek Information in the Digital Age (pdf) is a report from Project Information Literacy, maintained by the Information School at the University of Washington that contains a few surprises for libraries:

• Course readings were the first place most students turn to for course-related research (97%).
• Over 80% of students used library-provided research databases.
• Usage of library offering (research databases, OPAC, print materials, and study areas) were all above 50%.

Now the not so good:

• All interactive library research (talk to a librarian, attend a training session, use chat, e-mail or other online “Ask A Librarian” service) fell below 25%.
• Students are missing out on potential resources (including library research assistance), simply because those resources are not within their range of research activity.

Where are students going for assistance?  They tend to go to their instructors for guidance and assistance, but otherwise they simply use the resources they already know about, or discover in the course of their research.

What might this mean for libraries?  We should push for better interaction with instructors, so that they will be more likely to understand the full range of resources available for students to use, and will be more likely to refer students to an interactive library resource (which was only done 26% of the time — and the only result on the survey below 60%).

We also should examine our online presence.  How does it present research resources?  Will someone looking for a particular type of information be able to locate all the resources that the library has to offer?  Print and online library guides for these activities can also be very beneficial.

This report should be read, and reviewed, with each of our libraries in mind.  By understanding that the people we interact with are only one-fourth of the population using our resources, we can begin to re-focus our efforts to ensure that what we have to offer will be used effectively.

found via Bill Drew, who found it via the Free Range Librarian

A link to a thought-provoking article on Open Source business models was posted by Stephen Abram on his blog, Stephen’s Lighthouse.  If you follow that last link, you may note that not only does he post the link “without comment”, he has also turned off the option for his readers to comment on the article.

I suspect (but truly don’t know) that this is because of the firestorm of attention he received surrounding a position paper he wrote, and that his company was circulating to some of their customers.  If comments were enabled on his post, the following thought (probably compressed) would have been left by me.  Now it is a post all its own:

What libraries need now, more now then ever, is a good, open discussion of software and service models.  Many of our problems derive from weaknesses in those models, and many of our future problems will derive from weaknesses in the models we choose to move forward with.

The New York Times article is a good example of reporting that misses the elephant in the room:  the Open Source model is not the same as the Closed Source model.  The closed source model uses sales and company profit to determine success.  An open source project could succeed in that way, but looking simply at this ignores the model.

If a group of people put the effort into creating, maintaining, distributing, and using an open source software product, it will survive.  If the project is dynamic, and responds to the needs of the users, it will thrive.  If it does all of the above better than the closed source companies that make competing products, then it is not fair to judge them based only on sales and profit.

One other thing to add to the mix:  don’t ignore the wealth created and saved by those who use the product.  If this were calculated and compared, there might be a few surprises in store for companies, including some companies that have libraries for their customers.