BookTour

Here is a very useful website for book-lovers, BookTour. Shows what authors are speaking in an area.

We're a free online service that connects authors and potential audiences of all sorts, from book groups to civic organizations, from bookstores to corporate events. Authors create their own page (biography, books, tour dates and availability) and any group looking for speakers can find them and contact them directly to arrange for an appearance. Relevant information for both authors and venues can be added in minutes through a simple fill-in-the-blanks interface. Connecting authors with potential audiences then becomes as easy as searching (by geography, book titles, subject, dates of availability) and sending an email.

There is an interview with the site's creators, Kevin Smokler and Adam Goldstein, on IT Conversations.

Text Encoding Initiative

TEI@20: 20 Years of Supporting the Digital Humanities.

• Pre-Conference Workshops: 31 October 2007
• Conference: 1-2 November 2007
• Members Meeting: 3 November 2007

McKeldin Library, University of Maryland College Park

Zotero Has an New Version

Zotero, the open source citation manager, has added some new features.

• Zotero now offers full-text indexing of PDFs, adding your archived PDFs to the searchable text in your collection.
• Zotero’s integration with word processing tools has been greatly improved. The MS Word plugin works much more seamlessly and we now support OpenOffice on Windows, Mac (in the form of NeoOffice), and Linux.
• Zotero is also now better integrated with the desktop. Users can drag files from their desktop into their Zotero collection and can also drag attachments out of their Zotero collection onto their desktop.
• We have begun to add tools to browse and visualize Zotero collections in new ways. Using MIT’s SIMILE Timeline widget, Zotero can now generate timelines from any collection or selected items.

Here is their description:

Zotero is an easy-to-use yet powerful research tool that helps you gather, organize, and analyze sources (citations, full texts, web pages, images, and other objects), and lets you share the results of your research in a variety of ways. An extension to the popular open-source web browser Firefox, Zotero includes the best parts of older reference manager software (like EndNote)—the ability to store author, title, and publication fields and to export that information as formatted references—and the best parts of modern software and web applications (like iTunes and del.icio.us), such as the ability to interact, tag, and search in advanced ways. Zotero integrates tightly with online resources; it can sense when users are viewing a book, article, or other object on the web, and—on many major research and library sites—find and automatically save the full reference information for the item in the correct fields. Since it lives in the web browser, it can effortlessly transmit information to, and receive information from, other web services and applications; since it runs on one’s personal computer, it can also communicate with software running there (such as Microsoft Word). And it can be used offline as well (e.g., on a plane, in an archive without WiFi).

Social Software in Libraries

One of the books I'm currently reading is Social software in libraries : building collaboration, communication, and community Online by Meredith G Farkas (Amazon). It is a very readable, and seems to me reasonable treatment of the topic. Finding a mention of Catalogablog was a nice surprise.

Revised Dublin Core

Revised Dublin Core has been published as RFC 5013. This replaces the old version, RFC 2413.

Scriblio Download Now Available

Scriblio, the Mellon Award winning front end for the catalog, is now available for free download. It is based on WordPress, the popular blogging tool.

Scriblio (formerly WPopac) is an award winning, free, open source CMS and OPAC with faceted searching and browsing features based on WordPress. Scriblio is a project of Plymouth State University, supported in part by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

• Free and open source
• Represents bibliographic collections — library catalogs and such — in an easily searchable, highly remixable web-based format
• Leverages WordPress to offer rich content management features for all a library’s content
• Free and open source

Metadata Object Description Schema Revision

Revisions to MODS.

We have revised the draft of the MODS schema version 3.3, which we had released for review in April. The revision is based on comments from the review of that draft.

Substantive changes to the previous (April 12) version:

1. Add Xlink attribute to physicalLocation This would allow for a link to the website of the entity in physicalLocation. This is equivalent to MARC 21 852$u, e.g.
   Library of Congress
2. Add additional enumerated values for authority under : ISO 639-3 and RFC4646. ISO 639-3 is a new standard that codes all individual languages without the criteria for usage that ISO 639-2 has. RFC4646 updates RFC3066, which details how to use language codes in Internet applications. (RFC3066 already defined in MODS). We are planning to add these to the MARC source code list used for field 041$2.
3. Changes to MODS holdings to be generally consistent with the ISO XML holdings standard, now out for ballot as a Draft International Standard (ISO TC46).

A review of the MODS approach to holdings information is documented.

The new schema and the main MODS site has additional information about MODS 3.3 including the outline of elements and attributes.

We would like to have a 2 week review period. Please send any comments to the MODS list by Sept. 5.

Z Copy Cataloging

Z Copy Cataloging is a Z39.50 client with additional features. It is a free to use. Features:

• Z39.50 search for records
• Search by Title, ISBN or LCCN
• Sort your result sets by relevancy (title search only), date, content (AACR, ISBD), or any chosen subfield (first instance only)
• See the most important fields for copy cataloging when choosing correct records
• View the full MARC record before choosing
• Compare two records and choose the best
• Optional: Check the record for common errors
• Choose records from different targets and then choose among them to find the best record
• Scripted changes to records
• Output to CSV file
• Light editing of subfields

This is an alpha release, use with caution. The developer will work for Ruby books, if you need a feature added.

VuFind, New Release

The latest version, 0.6, of VuFind has been released.

VuFind is a library resource portal designed and developed for libraries by libraries. The goal of VuFind is to enable your users to search and browse through all of your library's resources by replacing the traditional OPAC to include:

• Catalog Records
• Digital Library Items
• Institutional Repository
• Institutional Bibliography
• Other Library Collections and Resources

VuFind is completely modular so you can implement just the basic system, or all of components. And since it's open source, you can modify the modules to best fit your need or you can add new modules to extend your resource offerings.

Additions to the MARC Code Lists for Relators, Sources, Description Conventions

The codes listed below have been recently approved for use in MARC 21 records. The codes will be added to the online MARC Code Lists for Relators, Sources, Description Conventions.

The codes should not be used in exchange records until after October 13, 2007. This 60-day waiting period is required to provide MARC 21 implementers time to include newly defined codes in any validation tables they may apply to the MARC fields where the codes are used.

Other Sources

The following code is for use in subfield $2 in field 017 in Bibliographic records (Copyright or Legal Deposit Number).

Addition:

rocgpt

R.O.C. Government Publications Catalogue
(Tapei: Research, Development and Evaluation Commission, Executuve
Yuan) [use only after October 13, 2007]

The following code is for use in subfield $2 in field 042 in Authority, Bibliographic and Classification records (Authentication Code).

Addition:

ukblderived

British Library derived cataloging Code ukblderived signifies that the British Library has re-used another organization's catalog record for its cataloging. Headings have not been validated against the relevant authority file. [use only after October 13, 2007]

Term, Name, Title Sources

The following code is for use in subfield $2 in fields 600-657 in Bibliographic and Community Information records, and in subfield $f in field 040 (Cataloging Source) in Authority records.

Addition:

muzeukv

MuzeVideo UK DVD and UMD film genre classification
(London: Muze Europe Ltd) [use only after October 13, 2007]

The following code is for use in subfield $2 in fields 600-657 in Bibliographic and Community Information records, in subfield $f in field 040 (Cataloging Source) and in subfield $2 in 7xx (Linking Entry) fields in Authority records.

Addition:

tesa

Tesauro Agrcola (Beltsville, Maryland; National Agricultural Library) [use only after October 13, 2007]

Metadata Editor

SHAME (Standardized Hyper Adaptable Metadata Editor) is a free metadata editor capable of working in Dublin Core, LOM, FOAF and more.

SHAME is a library that leverages editors, presentations and query interfaces for resource centric RDF metadata. The central idea of SHAME is to work with Annotation Profiles which encompasses:

• how the metadata in RDF should be read and modified.
• what input is allowed, e.g. multiplicity and vocabularies to use.
• presentational aspects like order, grouping, labels etc.

These annotation profiles are then used to generate user interfaces for either editing, presentation or querying purposes. The user interface may be realized in a web setting (both a jsp and velocity version exists) or in a stand alone application (a java/swing version exists).

BISAC

Recently there has been plenty of discussion about the library in AZ using BISAC to arrange the collection. Phoenix Public is also adding BISAC terms to the catalog record. Personally I don't see how SCI004000 is any easier to a patron than 520 or QB, but it is good to experiment and they seem to have a significant increase in circulation. If you want to see what they are using, the BISAC classification is available online.

ONIX Records for Libraries

Roy Tennant's ONIX Records for Libraries has a new home. The site contains over 100,000 records from:

• Cambridge University Press
• Harvest House Publishers
• Ingram
• McGraw-Hill
• Penguin
• Random House
• University of California Press

If you know of any other publishers offering free ONIX records please let him know.

TLA District 8 Meeting

Looks like I may be presenting on tagging at the TLA District 8 Meeting. If you have any favorite tagging tools, papers or sites please let me know. The meeting will be at Aldine High School Oct 13, 2007 (Sat).

Tagmash @ LibraryThing

Tim Spalding continues to do some interesting work on tagging books. The latest effort is Tagmash, the ability to combine tags in searching.

I've just gone live with a new feature called "tagmash," pages for the intersections of tags. This is a fairly obvious thing to do, but it isn't trivial in context. In getting past words or short phrases, tagmash closes some of the gap between tagging and professional subject classifications.

It is worth reading the entire post to see the thought process that went into creating the feature.

Podcasting Tips

Podcasting is not so new any more. It seems to me, it is past the time that just throwing up an MP3 file is enough. I've heard some pretty poor production that made me just move on to the next selection on my player. So, here are a few tips I've picked up doing a podcast for our library for well over a year.

1. Noise reduction. Record about 10-12 seconds of room sounds, as a sample, to have them removed after the recording is done. If you are recording a live event, conference presentation, record the room before it fills up with people. The air conditioning, computer fan, outside traffic and such add nothing and can be distracting. The sound of folks shuffling papers, coughing, etc., gives it a live feel. Don't worry about those. Very long pauses can be shortened.
2. Sound compression. Compressing the sounds removes any clipping from segments that are recorded too loud and makes everything clearer. Do this after removing any noise.
3. Volume. Make sure to record at a decent volume level. Then make sure the file plays back at a good level. I've downloaded files only to find they are too soft and getting the level right brings out the hum in the car's system. I just skip to the next selection. MP3Trim will do smaller files for free. Adjust the volume last.

Topic Maps

If you have any projects in a library environment that you are using or are planning to deploy that involves Topic Maps please here is a short survey. They are trying to get a general sense of what, if anything, the library community is doing with this technology.

Pymarc

The latest version of pymarc has the ability to change records from MARC-8 encoding to UNICODE, UTF-8. A task that most of our catalogs will have to go through in the next few years, I guess. Nice to have a tool for when that day arrives.

The pymarc module provides an API for reading, writing and modifying MARC records from python. MARC (MAchine Readable Cataloging) is a metadata format for bibliographic data.

....

While it's not rocket science to read MARC, it's also not something you want to code very often, so pymarc does the lifting for you. pymarc allows you to read records, extract arbitrary fields from each record, update records, and write records back out in transmission format.

OPAC Replacement

The open-source Next-Gen library catalog browser, VuFind has been released. Currently only works with Voyager, other systems are planned or you could help write the code. Features include:

• Search with Faceted Results
• Live Record Status and Location with Ajax Querying
• "More Like This" Resource Suggestions
• Save Resources to Organized Lists
• Tagging
• Commenting

VuFind is a library resource portal designed and developed for libraries by libraries. The goal of VuFind is to enable your users to search and browse through all of your library's resources by replacing the traditional OPAC to include:

• Catalog Records
• Digital Library Items
• Institutional Repository
• Institutional Bibliography
• Other Library Collections and Resources

VuFind is completely modular so you can implement just the basic system, or all of components. And since it's open source, you can modify the modules to best fit your need or you can add new modules to extend your resource offerings

LibX

There is a new version of the LibX Edition Builder.

LibX is a Firefox extension that provides direct access to your library's resources.
LibX is an open source framework from which editions for specific libraries can be built.
Currently, 61 academic and public libraries are offering LibX editions to their users, an additional 86 libraries are testing editions.