If you are involved with the selection or ordering process, then you are very likely to be familiar with searching for items by the International Standard Book Number, or ISBN.  The newer, 13-digit ISBN is actually based on the European Article Number, or EAN, which makes books consistent with most international trade goods.  The EAN was developed as an expansion of the common Universal Product Code, or UPC.

Enough theory?  How about web sites that offer lookup services that can help you find booksellers, prices, and even reviews and summaries of the books you wish to acquire?

• BookFinder – This site returns a large number of booksellers (many, many used booksellers!), although it seems odd that it doesn’t display the book’s title.
• CheckUPC.com – A good summary, and a variety of printable bar codes make this a decent site for book information.
• ISBN.nu – This is one I have used for years, and is still the one I turn to when our primary vendors don’t have a book in stock.
• ISBNdb.com – With summaries, subjects, similar items, and physical details, this site is a great resource for information about books.
• OCLC’s xISBN service – This service returns a list of related ISBNs, other editions of the book whose ISBN you append to their base URL ( http://xisbn.worldcat.org/webservices/xid/isbn/ ), in XML format.  It isn’t pretty, but when you need it, it is very helpful.
• ThingISBN – Similar to xISBN, LibraryThing provides a service where you append your ISBN to the end of their base URL ( http://www.librarything.com/api/thingISBN/ ) and get a list of related ISBNs in XML format.
• UPC Database – This site returns a large number of booksellers of the group; it also lets you know that the UPC is associated with that fictional country that so many people enjoy visiting:  Bookland.
• Wikipedia’s Book Sources – If you want a service that can give you dozens (and dozens!) of places where you can “Find This Book”, then you need to try this one.

For comparison, here are links to results for the same book (Stephen King : The Dark Tower):

• BookFinder.com
• CheckUPC.com
• ISBN.nu
• ISBNdb.com
• OCLC’s xISBN service
• ThingISBN
• UPC Database
• Wikipedia’s Book Sources

Sources and further information:

• Bibliographic Wilderness (and again)
• Comparing xISBN and ThingISBN (FRBR Blog)
• Official Web Site of The Dark Tower (The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed….)

Eric Leese Morgan has updated his workshop notes for XML in Libraries : A Workshop.  This is as good an overview of XML for library staff as I have seen anywhere.

found via Catalogablog

APML stands for Attention Profiling Markup Language.  Its purpose is to permit a standardized way to gather and transfer your interests from site to site across the web.  It is built using XML, and is definitely a new technology that may or may not catch on.  It could become an important element of using the web, because of the benefits it offers to users.

For example, Amazon.com tracks what you purchase, what is on your wish list, and even what you view (while logged in).  If you incorporated this into your APML file (which could be stored with an online service, on your computer or flash drive, etc.) your interests could be applied to other APML-compatable websites.

This has the potential, as with much web 2.0 technology, of creating privacy issues and complications.  It also could save users an incredible amount of time and effort, as resources relating to their interests would gain relevance and become much easier to find.  Think of the potential for searching news sites, link services such as Digg, and many other specialized discovery tools.

And yes, as John Fudrow suggests, it has a lot of potential for libraries.  Imagine how our users could benefit from this, especially when you add “suggested by others who liked this” and other social connectivity tools.

In a long interview on the state of the semantic web, Tim Berners-Lee (if you don’t recognize the name, you should really read this) briefly discussed DataPortability, the ability to move information freely and easily from one site to another:

“So, first of all, are they going to let people use the data? I think, the push now, as we’ve seen during the last year, has been unbearable pressure from users to say, ‘Look, I have told you who my friends are. You are the third site I’ve told who my friends are. Now, I’m going to a travel site and now I’m going to a photo site and now I’m going to a t-shirt site. Hello? You guys should all know who my friends are.’ Or, ‘You should all know who my colleagues are. I shouldn’t have to tell you again.’”

“So, the users are saying, ‘Give me my data back. That’s my data.’ That was one of the cries originally behind XML, it was a desktop application. Don’t store it in a format which I can’t reuse. So, now it’s, ‘Give it to me using the idea of standards. If you do that, then I can do things with it.’” (around 42 minutes into the interview)

Libraries are still playing catch-up in the social data area. We are starting to implement tagging and book recommendations, but we are not all that far along with implementing things. What this quote reminds me is that we should also be keeping an eye towards making it easy to export data out of our systems. Easy to use formats (like xml) and open standards and interfaces should become the norm for libraries.

This isn’t suggesting that we open all our data… it is not our place to provide patron reading or personal information. We shouldn’t make it difficult for patrons to do that themselves, if they so choose (although I feel we should make an effort to let them know the potential negative effects of placing information on the web).

We should, however, be using that data to generate social links between books (people who checked out “A” also tended to check out “B”, with A and B being books, authors, videos, etc.) and make it easy to access the patterns that result from any informational web site use.

Just something to keep in mind when we select our online tools and software…

interview found via TechCrunch

(Note regarding this post:  When you read this post, be sure to read the comments as well.  I did not state my case as well as I should, and end up sounding as though I don’t feel that LibGuides has as much value for libraries as they obviously do.) 

I don’t normally post “negative” about web sites or services; if I am not impressed by something being offered, I simply don’t blog about it. However, I have noticed a really interesting Library 2.0-related offering, and feel that it should be mentioned here.

LibGuides is a truly interesting and useful product. It offers a way for a library to implement many Web 2.0 tools via a service that is remotely hosted and configured, with content and features that you select.

It looks great, in many ways. They include tools for Facebook integration (great for academic libraries), showing RSS feeds on LibGuide pages, and built in instant messaging (IM) capabilities.

Why am I not happy with this offering? Two reasons.

Reason one is their pricing model. According to their FAQ page, their “annual license fee ranges from $899 to $2,499″. This, to me, is packaging Library 2.0 like a database subscription. True, they have done some excellent work in setting up page templates and integrating tools, but why should a library spend that amount of money to rent those services?

Let me provide an example. This blog is run on a hosted web server. The annual fee for this server is less than $50. This provides 1 GB of disk space, plus quite a few built-in tools such as a MySQL database, full e-mail management including listservs, site statistics, and a comfortable amount of site traffic. I have run several different websites on this company’s servers, and have been happy with their service.

What have I run on these sites? Standard web sites, wikis, a blog, a content management system (CMS), listservs, discussion forums, and custom search pages. There are only two things that I have wanted to install that I haven’t been able to, based on their security settings: I can’t host a WebDAV calendar (for shared group calendar software), and cannot install a library automation system, like Koha or Evergreen (so I have to play with Evergreen using a virtual server on my home computer).

Most Web 2.0 software has open source options available. This means that I can select a blog software, download it, install it to the web server, configure it, and there it is. Is this easy to do? Yes and no. Configuration, especially the database settings, can be fairly detailed. WordPress has very good instructions, and if you are comfortable with copying files from one place to another, and can follow a written guide you won’t have much trouble getting a blog up and running.

Wiki? Same type of installation. Want to run a listserv? Don’t need to install anything, just go to the sites control panel and set it up. What I am trying to say is that for $50, time, and some effort, your library can create a web presence that is just as rich as what is being offered via LibGuide.

Reason two, for those of you who are still with me, is their license agreement (Pdf). You pay them, they provide the service on their servers for one year. They can change anything about the agreement, and all they have to do to make you comply is notify you. You own your own data, and they will provide it to you within 30 days of cancellation, if you ask.

These are pretty standard clauses for many services and software. It is actually quite mild compared to some. It still doesn’t sit well with me that open and interactive services are packaged and controlled like this.

Sure, you could try them out for a year, decide not to renew, and only have an xml file with your content and data to show for it. Or you could get a hosted site, start a blog and a wiki (or a CMS with both built in) and build your site from scratch, adding content here and there, adding new programs and technologies as you go.

Even if you hire someone as a consultant to do the installation and initial training (find people in your area who do this, or want to learn… try contacting web design instructors at your local community college for potential contacts), you can do a great deal in a relatively short time span. Even if you spent $500 for someone (and you shouldn’t even need to go that high), once set up the software and technology is yours for just the annual web hosting fee. Just be sure to learn as much as you can about how everything works, and learning what your site’s potential can be.

And after all of this, if you don’t want the hassle or cost of the hosted web service, you can still do many Library 2.0 functions through other sites. Blogs are available simply by registering at Wordpress or Bloglines. Similar options exist for IM. You can find hosted wiki and CMS sites, but these are mostly paid solutions.

I strongly suggest that every library examine their options for the range of 2.0 technology, and adopt those which will best fit your environment. It doesn’t need to cost much; it doesn’t need a limiting license agreement; it does need to give you the flexibility and the power to connect your services with your customers.

And if you want to see a positive review of LibGuides, which highlights the great points of the site, check out BiblioTech Web

eTools.ch is a search engine with a couple of interesting twists…

It is a meta-search engine, meaning it doesn’t do its own crawling and indexing of web pages, it sends your search to 10 other search engines, then sorts the results for you. But this is neither new or interesting; MetaCrawler was doing that when Google was called BackRub.   Look at these features, though:

• eTools lets you rank, and even disable, any of the 10 search engines it uses. Thus, if you don’t like the results that Google retrieves, you can eliminate them.
• eTools works with keyword search terms, like every other search engine. Unlike every other search engine, however, it accepts boolean queries, and translates it into the closest equivalent for each of the search engines it uses.
• eTools allows you to select a language limit for your results.
• eTools will export the search result list as either a Pdf or RSS file (essentially an XML file).

from Search Engine Land

OpenDocument.XML.org is, as the name might suggest, a website devoted to the new standard document file format. These formats have been making news over the past year or so because of the issue of archiving data files and having the ability to access them when the software and/or software company that created the format no longer exists.

OpenDocument files are available for any software company to incorporate into their products, and are based on a combination of xml and file compression. An interesting trick: take an open document file, change the extention to .zip, then open using whatever program is convenient for you to do so.

You will see the components of the file stored as separate files within the zipped folder. These are mostly .xml files, but if you have images in your document, these will be stored as their own image files. There is even a .png thumbnail of the first page of the document.

The site is mostly for people who are developers or at least very curious about OpenDocument, but it is worth your while to check out the “Learn More” link and read about the generalities of the specification.

from OSDir