Question

Maybe I should ask this on AUTOCAT but....

When I find a typo or misspelling in an item's title I use "i.e." to supply the correct word and then create 2 246s. One with the title as on the item and the other with the correct spelling. I have not been doing anything other than using "i.e." and supplying the correct word when it occurs in subfield b. Is this enough?

Typos

MARC::Record

Version 2 of MARC::Record is now available.

MARC

New Platform for Catalogablog

Catalogablog has been moved to a new platform by Google. Seems to be OK. If anyone experiences any problems please let me know.

Cataloging Cultural Objects

Lately I've been skimming Cataloging Cultural Objects. So different from AACR2. We think in terms of author, title and subject access so easily. These folks are dealing with items with none of those properties. What is the title of a chair? Who is the author of that chair if the manufacturer is unknown? What is the chair about? I think every intro to cataloging course could benefit from doing a very brief comparison between CCO and AACR. The differences are enlightening.

CCO

Weeding

Lately there have been many posts in library weblogs about weeding issues. I won't comment on them. Each library is unique and must make decisions about what is best for them. However, it does give me the opportunity to point to the Weed of the Month Club. Each month for many years they examined a subject area and then gave some guidelines and pointed out some books commonly in collections that should be considered for weeding. Intended for school libraries, it can be used for public, community college and in some instances academic and special libraries. A great resource.

A book has been published based on the project Less is more : a practical guide to weeding school library collections by Donna J. Baumbach and Linda L. Miller.

Weeding

Koha in the Classroom

LibLime is providing supported hosted Koha software to LIS programs. Now the students can get in there and see how searches change if 505t is added to the title index. What is the effect of indexing series fields in title searches? This kind of hands on experience is invaluable.

They can get the MIT catalog to use as a catalog, just have to convert the MARCXML to MARC. Then convert the MARCXML version of the LC authority files, to have a nice test environment.

Koha

Social OPAC

Another bit of news that is sure to be widespread is the SOPAC by John Blyberg. Based on Drupal, he has released it as open-source. Works on III catalogs. "So what is the SOPAC? It's basically a set of social networking tools integrated into the AADL catalog. It gives users the ability to rate, review, comment-on, and tag items."

OPAC

Authority Records in MARCXML

Seen elsewhere but too pertinent not to mention, is that the LC authority file is now available in MARCXML.

Using a custom agent, we were able to harvest 6.95 million authority records using the publicly accessible interface to the Library of Congress authority files located at authorities.loc.gov.

• Retrieved records have been converted into MarcXML
• Accented characters have been converted into NFC (Composed Normal Form).
• Initial checks against authorities.loc.gov indicate that the retrieved data faithfully reflect that on the original system; however these checks are still only preliminary.

Cross checks against Classification Web have revealed some inconsistencies. For this reason, we are releasing this data for research purposes only. This data is not suitable for production use.

First seen on librarian.net

MARCXML

Criticism of LC

The Library of Congress Professional Guild has posted 2 papers.

• Eliminating Series Authority Records and Series Title Control: Improving Efficiency or Creating Waste? Or, 12 Reasons Why the Library of Congress Should Reconsider Its SARs Decision prepared for AFSCME 2910 by Gary M. Johnson.
  
  
• More on What is Going on at the Library of Congress prepared for AFSCME 2910 by Thomas Mann.

LC

OJAX Federated Search Service Software

An exciting announcement about OJAX, an open-source federated search tool.

OJAX federated search service software is now in Beta release and available for download. Version 0.7 has improved performance, stability and user feedback, as well as additional features such as RSS/Atom feed support. (Atom feeds of stored searches alert users when new content matching their interests is harvested.)

OJAX illustrates how federated search services can respond to new user expectations generated by Web 2.0:

• Rich, dynamic user experience. OJAX uses Ajax technology to provide immediate dynamic response to user input.
• Intuitive interface. The OJAX interface provides the simplicity and familiarity of Google but with the power of advanced search
• Integration, interoperability and reuse. OJAX uses loosely coupled Web Services and supports the OpenSearch RSS standard, thus facilitating integration with a range of virtual library environments, institutional repositories, course management systems and institutional portals.
• Open source standards-compliance. OJAX supports best-practice open source standards and software, including OpenSearch, OAI-PMH, StAX and Apache Lucene.

Features of OJAX:

• Auto-completion of search terms
• Triggering of auto-searches
• Dynamically scrollable search results - no more navigating between pages
• Auto-expansion of search result details
• Rapid sorting of results
• Integrated with the Firefox 2 / IE 7 search feature
• Supports OpenSearch Discovery
• Stored searches as Atom feeds
• Includes an OAI-PMH harvester
• Easy to install in your own institution

Further information, demo and download.

Two alternative packages are available:

1. OJAX GUI, Web Services & Harvester
2. OJAX GUI, Web Services, Harvester & example repository index

--
Dr Judith Wusteman

OJAX

WebDAV

I'm wondering why Web-based Distributed Authoring and Versioning (WebDAV) is not more common. It seems pretty simple and has MS support, yet I never have heard of it being used. Or am I just missing it?

The WebDAV protocol's aim was to make the World Wide Web a readable and writable medium, in line with Tim Berners-Lee's original vision. It provides functionality to create, change and move documents on a remote server (typically a web server or "web share"). This is useful, among other things, for authoring the documents which a web server serves, but can also be used for general web-based file storage that can be accessed from anywhere. Important features in WebDAV protocol include locking (overwrite prevention), properties (creation, removal, and querying of information about author, modified date, etc.), name space management (ability to copy and move Web pages within a server's namespace) and collections (creation, removal, and listing of resources). Most modern operating systems provide built-in support for WebDAV. With the right client and a fast network, it can be almost as easy to use files on a WebDAV server as those stored in local directories.

WebDAV

Call to Koha Users

LibLime, the support company for Koha, posted this announcement:

The Koha project is working to improve Koha's visibility by adding Koha users to an important automation list. This list is maintained by Marshall Breeding (U.S. researcher), and tracks libraries worldwide and what ILS they are using. Marshall puts out a library technology guide every year (this year's is upcoming) which is very influential in helping libraries select an automation system.

Traditionally, Koha has not been included in his guide, and we are trying to change that this year :) In fact, Marshall has specifically invited Koha users to include themselves in the guide, to ensure open-source automation gets the recognition it deserves. We've been encouraging Koha users to add information about themselves to the site, and adding libraries ourselves as we come across them.

If your library is using Koha, make sure you are counted! To make sure your library has already been added to Marshall Breeding's list, you can do a search for your library.

If your library is not listed, you can add yourself.

You'll need to add your library by the end of the month to be counted for this year's guide.

Koha

PURL Spam

The spam problem on the OCLC PURL server has been resolved.

A new PURL server has been put into service.

Deleting what we though were spam. We added a disclaimer about PURLS on the first page.

53674 PURLS were deleted along with 95 user ids.

PURLS has now change, to request a user id you will need to request it from the System Administrator (me for now).

Users that have an existing USER ID should be able to create PURLS, DOMAIN, GROUPS etc.

Don't know if I got all we think we're spam, but if any are found let me know, also any USER ID that should not have been deleted and was, let me know.

Tom Dehn
OCLC Inc.

PURLS

D-Lib Magazine

The latest issue of D-Lib Magazine contains several pieces of possible interest to catalogers.

• Distinguishing Content from Carrier: The RDA/ONIX Framework for Resource Categorization by Gordon Dunsire discusses the results of a meeting between the RDA and ONIX communities.
• Resource Description and Access (RDA): Cataloging Rules for the 20th Century by Karen Coyle and Diane Hillmann examines problems with RDA.
• The Online Library Catalog: Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained? by Karen Markey calls for a replacement to the OPAC.

Cataloging

Link Evaluator

Link Evaluator is a free Firefox add-on from OCLC.

Link Evaluator is a Firefox extension designed to help users evaluate the availability of online resources linked to from a given Web page. When started, it automatically follows all links on the current page, and assesses the responses of each URL (link).

Link Evaluator examines both the HTTP status code and the page contents returned by each URL.

Links

OLAC Newsletter

I got my copy of the OLAC Newsletter yesterday. Always a good read. This issue has conference reports as well as the ever enlightening Cataloger's Judgment. The reports often have the PP presentation and examples available. The on-line version is open and free to all. Looks like it was a great conference. The next one is in two years, start planning to attend now. A three year membership in OLAC is only $70.00, a best buy to be sure.

OLAC

MIT Catalog

The MIT catalog is once again available for download, not as MARC only as MODS and MODS/RDF. If you need or want a large dataset for testing or research this is a good option. The announcement gives more details.

MODS

The CONSER Standard Record and RDA

A comparison of the proposed CONSER standard record and RDA has been mounted on the JSC Web site.

RDA

2006 Annual MARBI Meeting minutes

The 2006 Annual MARBI Meeting minutes are now available.

MARBI

Using Barcodes in Search

Brian Surratt at Texadata mentions he is having some success scanning barcodes on the back of books when doing ISBN searches on OCLC. It is not yet 100% accurate, many of these numnbers are in the 024 field. Yet it is working and will only get better with time.

I've been using barcode scans in ISBN searching on my Z39.50 client with mixed results. OCLC is creating 13 digit codes based on the 10 digit input code. They are also moving those in 024 to 020. Few if any institutions will do this work. Using scans in Z30.50 searches will be uncertain for many years to come. Maybe the profiles could do some remapping, have an ISBN search hit both the 020 and 024 fields?

Barcodes