Monday, September 12, 2011

Library of Congress Preparing for RDA

A logo of the Unites States Library of Congres...Image via WikipediaWidely posted.
The Policy and Standards Division, part of the Acquisitions and Bibliographic Access Directorate at the Library of Congress (Washington, D.C.), is launching a new website as the Library prepares for RDA. The site is located at: http://www.loc.gov/aba/rda/. There are links to training documents, presentations, exercises, and examples of records as well as to other RDA related sites. Many more links will be added as items are created, edited, and updated as preparations for RDA proceed. The page originally created for LC documentation related to the US RDA Test will no longer be maintained. Links from that site will be migrated to the new site over time as appropriate.

Thursday, September 08, 2011

Permalink Service for Authority Data Available at LC

A logo of the Unites States Library of Congres...Image via WikipediaWidely posted and distributed.
The Library of Congress is pleased to announce an expansion of its LCCN Permalink Service for the Library's name and subject authority records. These persistent URLs are based on the Library of Congress Control Number (LCCN). As with bibliographic records, LCCN Permalinks are displayed on authority record entries in LC Authorities.

Create an LCCN Permalink
Simply begin your URL with the LCCN Permalink domain name -- http://lccn.loc.gov/ -- then add an LCCN.
Examples: http://lccn.loc.gov/n79018774 or http://lccn.loc.gov/sh85026371

LCCNs should be formatted according to the info:lccn URI specification. Instructions are also available in the LCCN Permalink FAQ.

How LCCN Permalink Works
An LCCN Permalink retrieves a MARCXML-formatted record using the Z39.50/SRU protocol. Both valid and cancelled LCCNs (MARC 21 fields 010a and 010z) are searched. Authority record displays for LCCN Permalink follow the labelled display found in LC Authorites. MARCXML and MADS versions of the records are also available. Displays link to entries in LC Authorities and the LC Online Catalog -- and, where appropriate, to entries in the Virtual International Authority File and LC Authorities and Vocabularies.

Friday, September 02, 2011

MARC21 Update

From the Network Development and MARC Standards Office
Update No. 13 (September 2011) is now available on the MARC website (www.loc.gov/marc/). It is integrated into the documentation for each of the Online Full and Concise formats that are maintained on that site -- the Bibliographic format, Authority format, Holdings format, Classification format, and Community Information format. The documentation includes changes made to the MARC 21 formats resulting from proposals which were considered by the ALA ALCTS/LITA/RUSA Machine-Readable Bibliographic Information Committee (MARBI), the Canadian Committee on MARC (CCM) and the BIC Bibliographic Standards Group in January and June 2011.

The changes are indicated in red. Each format also has an appendix,"Format Changes for Update No. 13 (September 2011)" that lists the changes that comprise the update. The Web version of the formats is the official version and is considered the start for implementation planning for MARC 21. Users are not expected to begin using the new features in the format until 60 days from the date of this announcement: September 1, 2011. For more information about format documentation

see: http://www.loc.gov/marc/status.html

Wednesday, August 31, 2011

CILIP CIG E-forum on Reclassification

On the 26 and 27 September the Cataloguing & Indexing Group (CIG) of CILIP will host a free e-forum on reclassification. On both days, sessions begin at 10 am and end at 5 pm (BST, i.e. GMT +1 hour).
The arrangement of libraries is rarely static, and even in these times of financial hardship there are many drivers for reclassifying libraries or sections of libraries. As the new edition of Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC23) starts to take hold, we ask how libraries tackle reclassification. What methods of reclassification have worked best for your library and/or what methods are you considering in the future? Which groups of institution staff have you consulted for your reclassification work and can you share tips for getting management buy-in for these important projects? Where do you stand on the in-house versus out-sourcing reclassification debate? What is the relationship between reclassification and retrospective cataloguing in your library, and are the two activities automatically and eternally entwined?

This e-forum will enable discussion on reclassification both specifically and generally. We welcome input from any library, whichever sector, and however big or small. We hope that everyone will feel encouraged to share ideas, thoughts and to ask questions -- whether you are a reclassification pro, working on your first reclassification project or generally interested in this important topic. Though the e-forum will debate reclassification generally, on the morning of Tuesday 27th September we will open up the floor to a specific discussion about DDC23 - under the helm of our special guest moderator, Gill Cooper. The e-forum will finish with a debate about the future of classification and reclassification, and will ask whether classification is even relevant in twenty-first century libraries.
It is free but registration is required.

Tuesday, August 30, 2011

Omeka OAI-PMH Harvester Plug-in

OAI-PMH structrueImage via WikipediaOmeka now has a OAI-PMH harvester plug-in for Omeka.net sites.
Since 2009, any Omeka website may make their data available by activating the OAI-PMH Repository plugin and may harvest OAI-PMH data sets with the OAI-PMH Harvester. Now, the OAI-PMH Harvester plugin is available with every Omeka.net site. Are you sharing and harvesting?
They have started a wiki page listing sets that can be harvested. If your Omeka collection supports OAI-PMH harvesting and you would like the community to be aware of that, let them know. It does look like the page is only for Omeka sites, not any exposed site.

Wednesday, August 24, 2011

Poster Session Call for Proposals

A close-up view of the front entrance to the U...Image via WikipediaTLA's District 8 Fall Conference has issued a call for proposals for the poster session. The deadline is October 1, 2011. The meeting will be Saturday, October 22, 2011 - University of Houston M.D. Anderson Library.

There is still time to get in your session proposals. That deadline is September 1, 2011. Speakers will be notified of acceptance by September 16, 2011.

Tuesday, August 23, 2011

LCSH Mass Update

It seems all the subject headings in LSCH have been updated. In the 005 field I keep seeing the latest change as 2011. Records that haven't been touched since 1984 have suddenly been updated. Anyone have any info on the change? Was it just moving the records to another system or has something more been checked or changed?

Broadcasting Metadata

Independence between description and content i...Image via WikipediaMetadata, especially MPEG-7, seems an important trend at the latest International Broadcasting Conference.
Metadata has never really got the juices going at IBC or anywhere else, but now at least it is being much more talked about and taken seriously by all participants in the content value chain. This will be reflected at IBC2011, where the fast expanding role of metadata in search and recommendation will be witnessed both in the conference and on the show floor. Even now metadata will not immediately leap out at delegates, since many of the relevant products and discussion topics will be under the heading of media asset management (MAM).
Thanks to Gary Price for bringing this to my attention.

Monday, August 22, 2011

Cost and Value of Bibliographic Control

Assessing the Cost and Value of Bibliographic Control by Erin Stalberg and Christopher Cronin appears in LRTS v. 55, no. 3.
In June 2009, the Association for Library Collections and Technical Services Heads of Technical Services in Large Research Libraries Interest Group established the Task Force on Cost/Value Assessment of Bibliographic Control to address recommendation 5.1.1.1 of On the Record: Report of the Library of Congress Working Group on the Future of Bibliographic Control, which focused on developing measures for costs, benefits, and value of bibliographic control. This paper outlines results of that task force’s efforts to develop and articulate metrics for evaluating the cost and value of cataloging activities specifically, and offers some next steps that the community could take to further the profession’s collective understanding of the costs and values associated with bibliographic control.

Monday, August 15, 2011

Additions to the MARC Country and Geographic Area Code Lists

de Südsudan en Southern Sudan ru Южный СуданImage via WikipediaAs the result of the split of Republic of the Sudan (or conventional short form: Sudan) into Sudan and South Sudan in July 2011, new country and geographic area codes are being defined for use in MARC records.

The coding for Republic of the Sudan will remain the current coding for Sudan: country code sj and GAC f-sj.
  1. MARC country code changes

    The new country code is:
    • sd - South Sudan
    South Sudan was previously coded sj for Sudan before August 2011.
  2. MARC geographic area code changes

    The new geographic area codes is:
    • f-sd - South Sudan
    South Sudan was previously coded f-sj for Sudan before August 2011.

Wednesday, August 10, 2011

New Vocabulary Data Added to LC Authorities and Vocabularies Service

A logo of the Unites States Library of Congres...Image via WikipediaLC has announced that new vocabulary data has been added to the LC Authorities and Vocabularies Service.
The Library of Congress is pleased to make available additional vocabularies from its Authorities and Vocabularies web service (ID.LOC.GOV), which provides access to Library of Congress standards and vocabularies as Linked Data. The new dataset is:
  • Library of Congress Name Authority File (LC/NAF)
In addition, the service has been enhanced to provide separate access to the following datasets which have been a part of the LCSH dataset access:
  • Library of Congress Genre/Form Terms
  • Library of Congress Children's Headings
The LC/NAF data are published in RDF using the MADS/RDF and SKOS/RDF vocabularies, as are the other datasets. Individual concepts are accessible at the ID.LOC.GOV web service via a web browser interface or programmatically via content-negotiation. The vocabulary data are available for bulk download in MADS and SKOS RDF (the Name file and main LCSH file will be available by Friday, August 12).

Please explore it for yourself at http://id.loc.gov.

The new datasets join the term and code lists already available through the service:
  • Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH)
  • Thesaurus of Graphic Materials
  • MARC Code List for Relators
  • MARC Code List for Countries (which reference their equivalent ISO 3166 codes)
  • MARC Code List for Geographic Areas
  • MARC Code List for Languages (which have been cross referenced with ISO 639-1, 639-2, and 639-5, where appropriate)
  • PREMIS vocabularies for Cryptographic Hash Functions, Preservation Events, and Preservation Level Roles

Tuesday, August 09, 2011

Unshelved

Today's Unshelved has cataloging references.

In other comic news, Rachael Rising by Terry Moore is off to a great start. Very creepy.

Linking to LCSH and LCC

Linking to LCSH and LCC: Controlled Subject Headings and Classification Systems through the Web Barbara Tillett, Libby Dechman, and Loche McLean will be presented on August 16, 2011, at the World Library and Information Congress : 77th IFLA General Conference and Assembly in San Juan.
The Library of Congress is making its controlled vocabularies and classification system freely accessible on the Web. This presentation describes our services related to two of those controlled vocabularies and classification schemes: the Library of Congress Subject Headings and Library of Congress Classification. It also describes the work to link various language versions of LCSH together.

The initial structure for this service uses SKOS, Simple Knowledge Organization System, which “Provides a model for expressing the basic structure and content of concept schemes such as thesauri, classification schemes, subject heading lists, taxonomies, folksonomies, and other similar types of controlled vocabulary.

Additionally we are exploring RDF XML as another structure to use for presenting this data. The service can be found at http://id.loc.gov and the LCSH/SKOS is at http://id.loc.gov/authorities.
Thanks to Gary Price for bringing this to my attention.

OCLC Documentation

Online Computer Library CenterImage via WikipediaOCLC's Technical Bulletin 260, “OCLC-MARC Format Update 2011,” is now available.

This Technical Bulletin covers all of the Library of Congress’s MARC 21 Bibliographic, Authority, and Holdings Formats Update No. 12, dated October 2010, elements from other recent MARC 21 Updates whose implementations had been postponed, code list additions and changes published chiefly since May 2010, and other suggestions from WorldCat users and OCLC staff. Many of these elements, including those from MARC 21 Update No. 12, are related to Resource Description and Access (RDA).

New IFLA Publications

Basic Group 1 entities and relations of the FR...Image via WikipediaVarious reports have been posted on the IFLA web site.

ISBD Review Group activities report and meeting reports

ISBD/XML Study Group activities report

A new version of Full ISBD Examples

FRBR Review Group activities report

Tuesday, August 02, 2011

Updated Cover Sheets for MARC Proposals and Discussion Papers

From LC's Network Development and MARC Standards Office.
The cover sheets for the proposals and discussion paper presented at the 2011 Annual meetings of the MARC Advisory Committee have been updated with the results of the discussions. They are available at:

Proposal 2011-02: RDA Production, Publication, Distribution and Manufacture Statements in the MARC 21 Bibliographic Format
(http://www.loc.gov/marc/marbi/2011/2011-02.html)

Proposal 2011-03: Encoding Date of Copyright Notice in the MARC 21 Bibliographic Format
(http://www.loc.gov/marc/marbi/2011/2011-03.html)

Proposal 2011-04: Adapting Field 377 (Associated Language) for Language of Expression in the Authority and Bibliographic Format
(http://www.loc.gov/marc/marbi/2011/2011-04.html)

Proposal 2011-05: Broadening field 373 (Affiliation) for Associated institutions in the MARC 21 Authority Format
(http://www.loc.gov/marc/marbi/2011/2011-05.html)

Proposal 2011-06: RDA Fuller Form of Personal Name Attribute in the MARC 21 Authority Format
(http://www.loc.gov/marc/marbi/2011/2011-06.html)

Proposal 2011-07: Additional Corporate Body Attributes for RDA in the MARC 21 Authority Format
(http://www.loc.gov/marc/marbi/2011/2011-07.html)

Proposal 2011-08: Treatment of Controlled Lists of Terms for Carrier Characteristics in RDA in the MARC 21 Bibliographic Format
(http://www.loc.gov/marc/marbi/2011/2011-08.html)

Proposal 2011-09: Identifying the Source of Thematic Index Numbers in Field 383 in the MARC 21 Authority and Bibliographic Formats
(http://www.loc.gov/marc/marbi/2011/2011-09.html)

Proposal 2011-10: Geographic Codes in Classification Records
(http://www.loc.gov/marc/marbi/2011/2011-10.html)

Proposal 2011-11: Addition of 1st Indicator Value 7 (Other edition specified in $2) in DDC Number Fields in the MARC 21 Bibliographic, Authority and Community Information Formats
(http://www.loc.gov/marc/marbi/2011/2011-11.html)

Discussion Paper 2011-DP05: Additional Means of Identifying Medium of Performance in the MARC21 Bibliographic and Authority Formats
(http://www.loc.gov/marc/marbi/2011/2011-dp05.html)

HotForWords

The latest video podcast by HotForWords is What is going to happen to the libraries? by Marina Orlova. She sees the demise of libraries looming. It is a combination of hearsay and personal experience that needs some correcting. Consider leaving a comment, she has a large following.

First RDA Vocabularies Published

Seen everywhere.
The Joint Steering Committee for Development of RDA (JSC), the DCMI/RDA Task Group (http://dublincore.org/dcmirdataskgroup/), and ALA Publishing (on behalf of the co-publishers of RDA) are pleased to announce that the first group of RDA controlled vocabularies have been reviewed, approved, and their status in the Open Metadata Registry (OMR) changed to ‘published.’

This status change, from ‘new-proposed’ to ‘published’ signals that the final steps have begun in reviewing the work of the DCMI/RDA Task Group and ensuring that the RDA vocabularies (both elements and controlled vocabularies/concepts) are available in a stable form for the builders of applications. Additional reviews of the controlled vocabularies are in progress, with the parties involved expecting to finalize that group before starting on the element vocabularies. Both groups of vocabularies should be complete by the end of 2011, but developers and others should expect to see rolling announcements as reviews are completed.

Alan Danskin, Chair of the Joint Steering Committee, noted, “The RDA vocabularies are a fundamental component of RDA, promoting consistent description and discovery of bibliographic resources. The Committee is committed to publishing and maintaining the content of the RDA vocabularies, synchronized with the text of RDA, in order to support their use by the resource description community and by developers of Semantic Web applications.” JSC is grateful to the Task Group members and to the Open Metadata Registry for making possible the publication of RDA vocabularies as linked open data.

Gordon Dunsire, co-Chair of the DCMI/RDA Task Group, said: “This achievement is a significant waypoint on the collaborative journey initiated by the London meeting in 2007 between representatives of RDA and Semantic Web communities developing and maintaining metadata models covering bibliographic resources. We have learned much about each other along the way, and look forward to continuing to provide a bridge which supports our mutual interests to the benefit of all users of information. The RDA vocabularies represent many decades of library experience and practice which is now shared with the rest of the world.”

Troy Linker, Publisher, ALA Digital Reference, said: "The publishing of the RDA vocabularies in an open registry is an important step forward in making RDA accessible to the international library community and system vendors, and, significantly, beyond the library community to the rest of the Semantic Web. Working with the JSC, the Co-Publishers for RDA are committed to ensuring synchronicity between RDA Toolkit and the registry".

The finished vocabularies can be viewed using the links below. (The links lead to the description of the vocabulary itself, the specific terms can be viewed under the tab for ‘concepts’).
All the RDA vocabularies can be viewed in the OMR by using this page: http://metadataregistry.org/rdabrowse.htm. Those interested in following the work of review and publication of the vocabularies can subscribe to the Registry RSS feeds linked from that page. Questions on the OMR can be conveyed using the ‘Feedback’ link on each Registry page.

Monday, August 01, 2011

No More Star Wars Films?

A logo of the Unites States Library of Congres...Image via WikipediaThe heading Star War films, and all other headings dealing with a series or character might be removed from the lcgft.
The recent separation of the genre/form thesaurus from LCSH provides an opportunity to reexamine the genre/form terms approved during the moving image experiment in order to determine whether they fit into the overall thesaurus, given the trajectory of development.

One ongoing issue has been what may be loosely referred to as “character- and franchise-based terms.” These are authorized terms that include either a character name or the title of a film or television program (e.g., Die Hard films; Dracula television programs; Scooby-Doo television programs; Star Wars films). PSD proposes cancelling all of these terms from the genre/form thesaurus, and has posted a discussion paper explaining the rationale on the Library of Congress’ genre/form web page, http://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/genreformgeneral.html. The direct URL for the paper is http://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/character_franchise_disposition.pdf. PSD requests input from interested parties before making a final decision.

Go To Hellman

Eric Hellman has been writing some posts I find very interesting over on Go To Hellman.
I think it's important to convert this level of interest into action. The question is, what can be done now to get closer to the vision of ubiquitous interoperable data? My last three posts have explored what libraries might do to better position their presence in search engines and in social networks using schema.org vocabulary and Open Graph Protocol. In these applications, library data enables users to do very specific things on the web- find a library page in a search engine or "Like" a library page in a Facebook. But there's so much more that could be done with the data.

Thursday, July 28, 2011

Tematres 1.4

We have the glad to invite to test the beta version of Tematres 1.4

TemaTres is a web tool to manage, publish and exploit controlled vocabularies and other formals representation of knowledge (thesauri, taxonomies, glossaries, etc).

This release includes the following fixes and improvements:
  • Quality indicators about controlled vocabularies The Quality assurance was improved with reports about the following quality indicators:
  • Free Terms
  • Terms without hierarchical relationships
  • Average number of words per term
  • Terms per N Broader terms
  • Terms per N narrower terms and depth
  • Terms words with not supported prefixes or suffixes
For more details: MARTÍNEZ, A.M.a et al. Concepto, forma y longitud de los términos preferentes del tesauro: una propuesta de indicadores de calidad. Anales de Documentación, 2010, vol. 13, p. 185-195. http://revistas.um.es/analesdoc/article/view/107151

MARTÍNEZ, A.M.a et al. Indicadores para evaluar el vocabulario y la estructura sistemática de un tesauro. I Jornada de Intercambio y Reflexión acerca de la Investigación en Bibliotecología, La Plata, 6-7 de diciembre de 2010. Facultad de Humanidades y Ciencias de la Educación de la Universidad Nacional de La Plata. http://www.jornadabibliotecologia.fahce.unlp.edu.ar/jornada-2010/martine
  • User-defined notes
    Has been added management capabilities to manage and create user-defined notes. (Thanks to Observatorio Estatal de la Discapacidad Spain: http://www.observatoriodeladiscapacidad.es/)
  • Advanced configuration options
    Has been added detailed configuration options available to the administrator of the controlled vocabulary.
  • Import controlled vocabularies
    Now TemaTres can import controlled vocabulary from plain tagged text.
For example:
  • IMS VDEX Scheme (Vocabulary Definition and Exchange) Now with TemaTres you can Display, export and publish terms and controlled vocabularies through VDEX IMS XML schema (Vocabulary Definition and Exchange). http://www.imsglobal.org/vdex/
  • Controlled vocabularies RESTful Services TemaTres have support for web services accessible through a clear and simple syntax. The service support a wide variety of queries and data can be viewed in XML, JSON or SKOS-Core.
Examples
Status:
http://www.vocabularyserver.com/gemet/en/api/

Terms beginning with the letter B:
http://www.vocabularyserver.com/gemet/en/api/letter/b
http://www.vocabularyserver.com/gemet/en/api/letter/b/skos
http://www.vocabularyserver.com/gemet/en/api/letter/b/json

Search Terms:
http://www.vocabularyserver.com/gemet/en/api/search/fish/
http://www.vocabularyserver.com/gemet/en/api/search/fish/json
http://www.vocabularyserver.com/gemet/en/api/search/fish/skos

Vocabulary Data
http://www.vocabularyserver.com/gemet/pt/api/fetchVocabularyData

Top of vocabulary terms
http://www.vocabularyserver.com/gemet/pt/api/fetchTopTerm
  • Minor bugs was solved and was added some minor features
Seen on the Code4Lib email.

Monday, July 25, 2011

Corporate Names

A new paper from HP discusses the problems and an automated solution to distinguishing corporate names. Company Names Matching in the Large Patents Dataset by Timofey Medvedev and Alexander Ulanov, HP Laboratories, HPL-2011-90R1.
This paper addresses the name matching (duplicate detection) problem in the US patent dataset. It contains more then 400K unique company names spellings. In order to solve the matching problem we choose appropriate string similarity measure and clustering approach and estimate their parameters. Finally we apply them to the whole dataset and estimate the positives and negatives rates.

Friday, July 22, 2011

Additions to Source Codes for Vocabularies, Rules, and Schemes

Codes for the following sources were announced June 14, 2011. The codes for these sources have been changed.

The codes should not be used in exchange records until 60 days after the date of this notice to provide implementers time to include newly-defined codes in any validation tables.

Classification Scheme Source Codes

The following source codes have been added to the Classification Scheme Source Codes list for usage in appropriate fields and elements.

Additions:
ubtkl/2 (formerly klasskj)
Klassifikasjonsskjema (Trondheim: Fellesbiblioteket, Kongelige Norske videnskabers selskab, Museet, Norges laererhogskole)
Subject Heading and Term Source Codes

The following sources code have been added to the Subject Heading and Term Source Codes list for usage in appropriate fields and elements.

Additions:
noubomn (formerly nobomn)
University of Oslo Library Thesaurus of Science (Realfagstermer) (Norway: Universitetsbiblioteket i Oslo)
noubojur (formerly noubojor)
Thesaurus of Law (Norway: Universitetsbiblioteket i Oslo)

Tuesday, July 05, 2011

Genre/Form Headings Webinar

OCLC has made available the recording of the webinar held on May 12, 2011 entitled: Genre/Form Headings. This one hour webinar covers the definition of genre/form headings, different sources of genre/form terms, searching in Connexion (authority and bibliographic), and tagging/coding.

Friday, July 01, 2011

SCATNews

The June issue of SCATNews, the newsletter of the IFLA Cataloguing Section, is now available.

Tuesday, June 28, 2011

W3C Library Linked Data Incubator Group Call for Comment

The W3C Library Linked Data Incubator Group has been chartered from May 2010 through August 2011 to prepare a series of reports on the existing and potential use of Linked Data technology for publishing library data. The group is currently preparing:
  • A report which consists of
    • "Benefits"
    • "Vocabularies and Datasets"
    • "Relevant Technologies"
    • "Implementation challenges"
    • "Recommendations"
  • Use Cases, a survey report describing existing projects

  • Vocabularies and Datasets", a survey report
We (LLD XG) invite comments from interested members of the public. Feedback can sent as comments to individual sections posted on our dedicated blog or by email to a public mailing list (public-lld@w3.org, archived at http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-lld/ ) using descriptive subject lines such as '[COMMENTS] "Benefits" section'

Comments will be especially welcome in the next four weeks (through 22 July). Reviewers should note that as with Wikipedia, the text may be revised and corrected by its editors in response to comments at any time, but that earlier versions of a document may be viewed by clicking on the History tab.

It is anticipated that the three reports will be published in final form by 31 August.

Wednesday, June 22, 2011

Information Standards Quarterly

The Spring 2011 issue of Information Standards Quarterly (ISQ) is now available online in PDF format and is open access. Both the full issue and the individual articles can be downloaded.

This special edition of ISQ presents Views of the E-book Renaissance. Guest content editor, October Ivins of Ivins eContent Solutions has pulled together a broad range of perspectives on what is happening today with e-books and particularly with e-book standards. As she states in her introductory letter: “Our goal for this issue of ISQ is to present an overview of the status of e-books from multiple perspectives—publishers and other content producers, librarians, and the many vendors who support their creation, management, sales, and distribution. Not coincidentally, it also illustrates the scope of the NISO community.”

In our first feature article, Bill Kasdorf (Apex Content Solutions) provides an update on EPUB 3, the new generation of the EPUB specification just issued by the IDPF, and likens it to opening a Pandora’s box, but where “all the creatures bursting out can be made to behave in a civilized way.” This is followed with answers by Marlie Wasserman (Rutgers University Press) to 10 questions on the state of e-book publishing for university presses.

For our in practice section Mollie Pharo and Marcia Learned Au describe the public library experience with e-books from their perspective over the last decade at the Evansville Vanderburgh Public Library. Wendy Allen Sherburne (University of Illinois) provides an opinion piece on drinking the e-book kool-aid in an academic library setting.

Mark Bide (EDItEUR) has written our standards spotlight feature where he discusses the challenge for standards in the e-book supply chain. Michael Gorrel (EBSCO Publishing) provides our member spotlight where he shares with us his company’s plans for merging the recently acquired NetLibrary e-books with the EBSCOhost platform.

In NISO reports, Matt Garrish and Markus Gylling (DAISY Consortium) reveal the evolution of accessible publishing that occurred with the revision of the Z39.86 DAISY standard. Todd Carpenter follows with an announcement of a new NISO Ebook Special Interest Group that is in the process of formation.

As always, our issue concludes with Noteworthy news items such as JSTOR’s foray into e-books, ProQuest’s acquisition of Ebrary, the Project Muse and UPeC partnership to offer e-books, the trial use issuance of the Journal Article Tag Suite standard (Z39.96), and several others. And check our State of the Standards table to see the status of all of NISO’s in development projects for standards or recommended practices.

You can find the complete Table of Contents to the Spring issue of ISQ, with links to the articles and PDF downloads here: http://www.niso.org/publications/isq/2011/v23no2/

--NISO email announcement.

Awards

This past year I had the pleasure of serving on the Texas Library Association's Award Committee. I have two observations after the experience.

First, there are a lot of very talented, hard-working, innovative people in our profession. And not just catalogers, but school librarians, youth, children's, reference, managers all doing amazing things. Librarians really are a special group of people.

Second, that nowhere near enough of us apply for awards. If my experience was typical there should have been many more submissions than we received. We did ask and ask again. One notice I sent out to the cataloging and special library community had almost 400 click-throughs and yet zero submissions. It does take some time to fill in the application but to recognize a special employee or group of employees should be worth the time. Even if they don't win, seeing that application and knowing their work was appreciated is worth something. Having the committee read just how wonderful your staff and library is also has value. You never know when good PR will benefit your institution.

So, next time you see an announcement for an award think about who you know that deserves one and toss their name in the hat.

Tuesday, June 21, 2011

Identifying Entity Types in MARC Records

The report on the RDA/MARC Working Group's discussion of Identifying Entity Types in MARC records is now available.
The RDA/MARC Working Group had discussions of the many points that were brought out in the MARBI discussion of 2011-DP03, Identifying Work, Expression, and Manifestation records in the MARC 21 Bibliographic, Authority, and Holdings formats. They found that while there was some sentiment for defining such a field, there was disagreement in the group and in the community about how the values in the field should be defined. It was pointed out in the discussion that there were various reasons for establishing this marker: to be able to validate that a record for a certain level contained the appropriate fields for that level; to correctly organize displays; and for applications that do not yet exist.

Additions to Source Codes for Vocabularies, Rules, and Schemes

The source codes listed below have been recently approved. The codes will be added to applicable Source Codes for Vocabularies, Rules, and Schemes lists. See the specific source code list for current usage in MARC fields and MODS/MADS elements.

The codes should not be used in exchange records until 60 days after the date of this notice to provide implementers time to include newly-defined codes in any validation tables.

Classification Scheme Source Codes
The following source codes have been added to the Classification Scheme Source Codes list for usage in appropriate fields and elements.

Additions:
klasskj
Klassifikasjonsskjem (Trondheim: Fellesbiblioteket, Kongelige Norske videnskabers selskab, Museet, Norges lerhgskole)
knt
Klassifikasjonsnkkel til norsk topografi / av Vegard Elvestrand (Trondheim: Universitetsbiblioteke)
utk
University of Oslo Library Classification (Oslo: Universitetet i Oslo)
oosk
Oversikt over systematisk katalog (Norway: Universitetsbiblioteket i Bergen)
niv
Norsk inndeling av vitenskapsdisipliner (Norway: Universitets- og hgskolerdet)
Genre/Form Code and Term Source Codes

The following source code has been added to the Genre/Form Code and Term Source Codes list for usage in appropriate fields and elements.

Addition:
gatbeg
Gattungsbegriffe (Leipzig & Frankfort: Deutsche Nationalbibliothek)
Subject Heading and Term Source Codes

The following source codes have been added to the Subject Heading and Term Source Codes list for usage in appropriate fields and elements.

Addition:
humord
HUMORD (Norway: Universitetsbibliotekene i Oslo, Bergen og Troms)
noubomn
University of Oslo Library Thesaurus of Science (Realfagstermer) (Norway: Universitetsbiblioteket i Oslo)
noubojor
Thesaurus of Law (Norway: Universitetsbiblioteket i Oslo)
tekord
TEK-ord: UBiTs emneordliste for arkitektur, realfag, og teknolog (Norway: Universitetsbiblioteket i Trondheim.)

ParsCit Updated

Logo Open Source InitiativeImage via WikipediaSeen on Code4Lib.
The ParsCit team has also been updating the ParsCit package, and is happy to announce a new version that improves on classification accuracy, especially for general science journals. This version also adds a module that further processes XML files that are the output of the commercial Omnipage OCR engine. The version also benefits from a number of user-contributed fixes and training data, such as separating volume and issue numbers for journals, and export of parsed reference strings into EndNote, MODS, BibTeX or other metadata formats via the BiblioScript library.

You can either download a copy of ParsCit for your own use, or use it through a web services interface. We welcome your feedback and hope that if you use ParsCit or any other freely available reference string parsing tool that you can contribute annotated data to help make these models more robust.

ParsCit (and its online demos) are available from:
http://wing.comp.nus.edu.sg/parsCit/

ParsCit is open source software that is used by many projects worldwide, and not just in experimental, research and academic places, but in commercial enterprises as well. Mendeley is using ParsCit to parse references from contributed papers, as is the Citations in Economics (CitEc) project.

Monday, June 20, 2011

Library Linked Data

Karen Coyle writes on Coyle's InFormation that "There will soon be a call for reviews of the draft report by the W3C Incubator Group on Library Linked Data." This is a longish document. It might be best to start reading and considering it now to make an intelligent response when the time comes.

Friday, June 17, 2011

ALA 2011

Some of my co-workers from the Lunar and Planetary Institute will be presenting at ALA 2011.

Sunday, June 26, 1:30-3:30 p.m.
Science Programming 101: Presenting excellent science programs in your library
MCC-Rm 287 (Morial Convention Center)

Learn how to create exciting hands-on science programs for children and young adults from representatives of the National Center for interactive Learning/Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colorado; the Lunar and Planetary Institute, Houston, Texas; and experienced science programmers. The program will also discuss two new science exhibits for rural public libraries: Discover Earth and Discover Tech, and introduce a new science Community of Practice librarians can use.

Give them a warm welcome and a good audience.

Invitation to comment on draft of "Examples to Accompany Descriptive Cataloging of Rare Materials (Books)"

Posted on AUTOCAT.
Examples to Accompany Descriptive Cataloging of Rare Materials (Books) is a work in progress. The Bibliographic Standards Committee of the Rare Books and Manuscripts Section of ACRL has charged a subcommittee to update the second edition of Examples of Accompany Descriptive Cataloging of Rare Books.

The fifty original examples illustrating the now outdated DCRB have been revised to reflect changes made when Bibliographic Standards and ACRL adopted DCRM(B). There are also a number of examples from Deborah J. Leslie's Rare Book Cataloging workshop from Rare Book School in Virginia and a selection of examples and accompanying rules provided by volunteers. To date, there are 84 examples.

Members of BSC and RBMS have had a chance to comment. We are now reaching out to the larger community for input.

The platform we've been using, Digress.it, allows catalogers and other interested individuals to comment upon the use of specific rules, or the application of rules in general. All comments are public.

Please note: we are not asking for comments on the rules. We are asking for comments on whether the example(s) illustrate the rule(s) accurately and appropriately. Also note, that we will accept comments until July 1, 2011. At that point, the Examples and comments we receive will be sent to BSC for consideration during a close reading.

Follow this link http://rbms.info/digress/ for the working draft and opportunity to comment on Examples to Accompany Descriptive Cataloging of Rare Materials (Books). Please read the "Instructions for Commenting" before proceeding.

For information on DCRM(B): http://www.rbms.info/committees/bibliographic_standards/dcrm/dcrmtext.html

For information on BSC: http://www.rbms.info/committees/bibliographic_standards/index.shtml

Thursday, June 09, 2011

Ibidem

Logo Open Source InitiativeImage via WikipediaMFA Learning Technologies has announced the release of Ibidem, which is focused on the front end data entry process and provides user definable Lookup Tables. Ibidem exposes its content via OAI-PMH (thanks to OAICAT). "While Ibidem was developed primarily for religious ministries, it serves as a general purpose tool, suitable for building collections in any domain."

Features
  • Pre-populated with these field sets:
    • Dublin Core
    • Extended Dublin Core
    • Our custom Religious Ministries set
  • Arbitrary number of custom field names (metadata)
  • Build custom field sets
  • Supports any file type
  • Multi-tenant: 1 installation supports arbitrary number of customers
  • User level security
  • OAI-PMH
  • Open Source

Wednesday, June 08, 2011

Shuttle Launch

So excited. I'm going to the STS-135 shuttle launch as part of the NASATweetup. That means I get to view from the press area. That's as close as anyone except the astronauts and a couple of guys in a tank.

Tuesday, June 07, 2011

Metadata Authority and Description Schema 2.0

A logo of the Unites States Library of Congres...Image via WikipediaNews from LC.
The MODS/MADS Editorial Committee and the Library of Congress are pleased to announce a new version of the Metadata Authority and Description Schema, MADS version 2.0. This is the first major revision of MADS since its initial release in 2005. MADS web site: http://www.loc.gov/standards/mads
MADS schema version 2.0: http://www.loc.gov/standards/mads/mads.xsd

Major changes in MADS 2.0 are:
  • Elimination of dependence on the MODS schema
  • Updated elements that are the same in MODS to reflect version 3 (e.g. added additional subelements under hierarchicalGeographic, added descriptionStandard under recordInfo)
  • Addition of authority URI and value URI for controlled lists
  • Addition of and elements
  • Addition of an otherType attribute on for relationship types not enumerated in the schema
  • Ability to specify if a subject heading can be subdivided geographically
A complete list of changes in MADS 2.0 may be found at http://www.loc.gov/standards/mads/changes-2-0.html. MADS user guidelines are under development and will be made available soon. Please direct any comments or questions on the MADS 2.0 Schema, or MODS/MADS developments in general, to the MODS Listserv http://listserv.loc.gov/listarch/mods.html.

Friday, June 03, 2011

Final Two MARBI Papers Available for Review

Proposal 2011-08: Treatment of Controlled Lists of Terms for Carrier Characteristics in RDA in the MARC 21 Bibliographic Format
(http://www.loc.gov/marc/marbi/2011/2011-08.html)

Proposal 2011-12: Defining Subfield $q for an Assigning Agency in Field 084 (Other Classification Number) of the MARC 21 Bibliographic Format
(http://www.loc.gov/marc/marbi/2011/2011-12.html)

The updated MARBI ALA Annual Conference 2011 agenda is available at:
http://www.loc.gov/marc/marbi/an2011_age.html

Wednesday, June 01, 2011

MARC Update No. 12 is Ready for Local Print

In 2008, updates of both the full and concise MARC 21 Formats were made available online and the principle was established that the online is the version of record for the formats and the print a byproduct that is produced after the online version. Taking this into consideration, along with the decreasing demand for print, the Network Development and MARC Standards Office has decided to no longer print and sell updates to the full versions of the MARC 21 Bibliographic, Authority, Holdings, Classification, and Community Information Formats. Instead, NDMSO has developed a stylesheet that removes characteristics of an online page when it is printed -- such as breadcrumbs, extraneous links and text -- so that it resembles the print version formerly sold by CDS.

Users who want a print of changed fields will be able to print them from the Format web pages. Eventually all fields will be printable in this manner, but for now only Update 12 fields have been conditioned for improved printing. Changes to the MARC 21 Formats that resulted from Update No. 12 (October 2010) are displayed in red print. The online documentation will incorporate a print guide for an update as part of the "Format Changes" Appendix found in each format's table of contents page.

Please note that the MARC 21 Concise Format document will continue to be printed and it will consist of the Bibliographic, Authority, and Holdings formats. The 2011 edition will be available in the last quarter of 2011.

The following sections and fields were changed in Update No. 12 and should be printed to keep a print copy of the MARC 21 Formats up-to-date:

BIBLIOGRAPHIC

AUTHORITY

HOLDINGS

CLASSIFICATION

COMMUNITY INFORMATION

Friday, May 27, 2011

MARBI Papers Available for Review

Proposal 2011-02: RDA Production, Publication, Distribution and Manufacture Statements in the MARC 21 Bibliographic Format
(http://www.loc.gov/marc/marbi/2011/2011-02.html)

Proposal 2011-03: Encoding Date of Copyright Notice in the MARC 21 Bibliographic Format
(http://www.loc.gov/marc/marbi/2011/2011-03.html)

Proposal 2011-04: Adapting Field 377 (Associated Language) for Language of Expression in the Authority and Bibliographic Format
(http://www.loc.gov/marc/marbi/2011/2011-04.html)

Proposal 2011-05: Broadening field 373 (Affiliation) for Associated institutions in the MARC 21 Authority Format
(http://www.loc.gov/marc/marbi/2011/2011-05.html)

Proposal 2011-06: RDA Fuller Form of Personal Name Attribute in the MARC 21 Authority Format
(http://www.loc.gov/marc/marbi/2011/2011-06.html)

Proposal 2011-07: Additional Corporate Body Attributes for RDA in the MARC 21 Authority Format
(http://www.loc.gov/marc/marbi/2011/2011-07.html)

Proposal 2011-09: Identifying the Source of Thematic Index Numbers in Field 383 in the MARC 21 Authority and Bibliographic Formats
(http://www.loc.gov/marc/marbi/2011/2011-09.html)

Proposal 2011-10: Geographic Codes in Classification Records
(http://www.loc.gov/marc/marbi/2011/2011-10.html)

Proposal 2011-11: Addition of 1st Indicator Value 7 (Other edition specified in $2) in DDC Number Fields in the MARC 21 Bibliographic, Authority and Community Information Formats
(http://www.loc.gov/marc/marbi/2011/2011-11.html)

Discussion Paper 2011-DP05: Additional Means of Identifying Medium of Performance in the MARC21 Bibliographic and Authority Formats
(http://www.loc.gov/marc/marbi/2011/2011-dp05.html)

The MARBI ALA Annual Conference 2011 agenda is available at: http://www.loc.gov/marc/marbi/an2011_age.html

Tuesday, May 24, 2011

NISO Recommended Practice on Single Sign-On Authentication Available for Public Comment

News from NISO.
Identifies Needed Improvements for Users Authenticating to Licensed Electronic Resources

NISO announces the availability of ESPReSSO: Establishing Suggested Practices Regarding Single Sign-On (NISO RP-11-201x) for a thirty day public comment period ending on June 22, 2011. ESPReSSO identifies practical solutions for improving the use of single sign-on authentication technologies to ensure a seamless experience for the user.

Currently a hybrid environment of authentication practices exists, including older methods of userid/password, IP authentication, or proxy servers along with newer federated authentication protocols such as Athens and Shibboleth. This recommended practice identifies changes that can be made immediately to improve the authentication experience for the user, even in a hybrid situation, while encouraging both publishers/service providers and libraries to transition to the newer Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML)-based authentication, such as Shibboleth....

“NISO is testing various methods for identifying issues in our community where NISO can provide leadership in developing solutions,” states Todd Carpenter, Managing Director of NISO. “The ESPReSSO recommended practice is the first outcome of a Chair’s Initiative project, where the NISO Board of Directors Chair (then Oliver Pesch from EBSCO Information Services) identifies a specific issue that would benefit from study and the development of a recommended practice or standard.”

The draft Recommended Practice and an online comment form are available at: www.niso.org/workrooms/sso/. Publishers and distributors of licensed content as well as licensing organizations, such as libraries, are all encouraged to review and comment on the document.

Friday, May 20, 2011

Additions to Source Codes for Vocabularies, Rules, and Schemes

A logo of the Unites States Library of Congres...Image via WikipediaNews from the Network Development and MARC Standards Office, Library of Congress
The source codes listed below have been recently approved. The codes will be added to applicable Source Codes for Vocabularies, Rules, and Schemes lists. See the specific source code list for current usage in MARC fields and MODS/MADS elements.

The codes should not be used in exchange records until 60 days after the date of this notice to provide implementers time to include newly-defined codes in any validation tables.

Description Convention Source Codes
The following source codes have been added to the Description Convention Source Codes list for usage in appropriate fields and elements.

Additions:
iosr
"Instruktsiia po opisaniiu slaviano-russkikh rukopisei XI-XIV vv. dlia Svodnogo kataloga rukopisei, khraniashchikhsia v SSSR" in Arkheologicheskii ezhegodnik za 1975 god. (Moskva: Izd-vo Akademii)
katreg
Katalogiseringsregler: Anglo-American cataloguing rules, second edition /oversatt og bearbiedet for Norske forhold ved Inger Cathrine Spangen (Oslo: Nasjonalbiblioteket)
Genre/Form Code and Term Source Codes
The following source codes have been added to the Genre/Form Code and Term Source Codes list for usage in appropriate fields and elements.

Additions:
barngf
Svenska amnesord for barn - Genre/Form (Stockholm: Kungliga Biblioteket)
saogf
Svenska amnesord - Genre/Form (Stockholm: Kungliga Biblioteket)
The Library of Congress, Network Development and MARC Standards Office provides information about existing and newly assigned source codes on its Web site (www.loc.gov/marc/).

Monday, May 16, 2011

Guidelines for Subject Access in National Bibliographies

The Guidelines for Subject Access in National Bibliographies by the IFLA Working Group on Guidelines for Subject Access by National Bibliographic Agencies is now available for review.
The question of how to integrate the multitude of national online resources needs to be considered, how they should be catalogued, how they should be made accessible, and how they could be discovered by bibliography users. Because the Working Group on Guidelines for National Bibliographies of the IFLA Bibliography Section was concerned with exactly these „new directions”, we decided to build our guidelines on their recommendations, published in 2009 under the title National Bibliographies in the Digital Age: Guidance and New Directions. Our guidelines can be understood as a supplement to the 2009 Guidelines.

Our work is also an appeal to the producers of national bibliographies to provide subject access in national bibliographies. Users will benefit from using well organized subject structures of classification systems and subject headings to expand their ways of reaching the resources they want.
Seen on INFOdocket.

Library of Congress Changed Subject Heading Subdivisions

A message from Joyce T. Ogden.
Library of Congress Changed Subject Heading Subdivisions is ceasing publication. The latest issue, 2010 edition, was published September 2010 at $20.00. Remaining copies will be available as long as they last for $15.00. Orders accepted with your library purchase order no. by phone, e-mail, or regular mail to the address below. Invoice will be included with the shipment, or you can send prepaid check.

More information on my website www.joycetogden.com

Wednesday, May 11, 2011

New Book About User Research for eXtensible Catalog

A book from the eXtensible Catalog Organization, Scholarly Practice, Participatory Design and the eXtensible Catalog.
We are pleased to announce the release of a new book, Scholarly Practice, Participatory Design and the eXtensible Catalog, based on user research for eXtensible Catalog, available now from ACRL or Amazon.

As part of the development of eXtensible Catalog (XC), a project to develop open source software sponsored by the University of Rochester's River Campus Libraries, and funded by the Mellon Foundation and project partners, four institutions conducted eighty interviews and numerous workshops to understand how researchers learn about, acquire, and use scholarly resources. Research findings informed the design and development of XC, a set of open-source applications that provides access to resources across a range of databases, metadata schemas, and standards. In this volume, members of the project team report on key findings of the user research that was done at Cornell University, Ohio State University, the University of Rochester, and Yale University, and discuss the value of including library users and technology specialists from many disciplines in the software design and development process. Editors: Nancy Fried Foster, Katie Clark, Kornelia Tancheva and Rebekah Kilzer. Authors: Jennifer Bowen, Kaila Bussert, Katherine Chiang, Katie Clark, Maureen Donovan, Nancy Fried Foster, Gabriela Castro Gessner, David Lindahl, Melissa S. Mead, Kornelia Tancheva and Wendy Wilcox.

Tuesday, May 10, 2011

Web2Marc Generator

Seen on Cataloging Futures the Web2Marc Generator.
The Web2Marc Generator is a simple tool that generates MARC or MODS records for websites. This tool is useful for librarians who are interested in adding web resources to their library catalogs.
I'd like to know just where and how it is getting the information. Its nice that it offers the records in MARC, MODS and other flavors.

Friday, May 06, 2011

Library of Congress Genre/Form Terms for Library and Archival Materials

Library of Congress Subject HeadingsImage by ekpatterson via FlickrNews from LC.
Since 2007 the Library of Congress’ Policy and Standards Division (PSD) has been developing genre/form terms, and in June 2010 determined that the new thesaurus, Library of Congress Genre/Form Terms for Library and Archival Materials (LCGFT), should be formally separated from Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH). In order to accomplish this, on May 24, 2011 the existing genre/form authority records will be deleted and reissued with new coding.

The current coding for the genre/form authority records indicates that the terms are from LCSH, not LCGFT. The LCCNs are prefixed by “sh” and 008/11 is set to “a,” Library of Congress Subject Headings. Therefore, the LCCNs and MARC coding both need to be revised. This will require the deleting and reissuing of the genre/form authority records.

The approximately 800 existing authority records will be deleted and immediately reissued. About 1600 records (deletes plus reissues) will be sent to subscribers as part of the May 24, 2011, Volume 26, Issue 21, distribution of subject authorities via the MARC Distribution Service (MDS).

Authority records for LCGFT terms will be coded as follows.

LCCN prefix: gf
008/11: z (“Other”)
040$f: lcgft

Example:

008/11 z
010 $a gf2011987654 $z sh2009025020
040 $a DLC $b eng $c DLC $f lcgft
155 $a Topographic maps
455 $a Hypsographic maps
455 $a Hypsometric maps
455 $a Relief maps
455 $a Topographical maps
555 $w a $a Maps

[Note that the deprecated LCCN is being retained in field 010$z, to facilitate automatic updates.]

As of May 24, 2011, new coding should be used when assigning LCGFT terms in bibliographic records. That coding is as follows.

655 #7 $a [Term]. $2 lcgft

Example:

Title: Survivor: Thailand.

655 #7 $a Survival television programs. $2 lcgft
655 #7 $a Nonfiction television programs. $2 lcgft

The genre/form FAQ http://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/genre_form_faq.pdf and the Subject Headings Manual (SHM) will both be updated to reflect this change in policy.

For further information and the rationale for these revisions, please see the January 3, 2011 announcement, “Library of Congress to Reissue Genre/Form Authority Records.” http://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/gf_lccn.html

Wednesday, May 04, 2011

Cataloging Webinars

WebJunction is offering a couple of free webinars that might be interesting.
June 2: Cataloging as Collaborative Librarianship: Partnering with Your Colleagues
This webinar, presented in collaboration with Libraries Unlimited, upon the publication of Practical Strategies for Cataloging Departments, will discussion how be more effective partners with your colleagues and leverage cataloging expertise. Three contributors to the edition from the University of New Mexico Libraries will examine the relationships and potential with other technical services partners, such as acquisitions and collection development, branching out into public services collaborations; and they will address how catalogers can take an active role in the growing area of digitization services.

More information and registration »

June 14: Cataloging Efficiencies That Make a Difference
OCLC Member Services staff have been traveling around the U.S. to hear how librarians have faced the challenge to streamline cataloging at a time of reduced budgets and staff. These discussions have provided a great opportunity to exchange practical tips on how to become more efficient—from defining "good enough" cataloging to collaborating on improved workflows, to sharing the latest on RDA and WorldCat quality. In this webinar, two academic librarians will share their experiences of reviewing and revising tech services workflows, and cataloging e-books. We'll also discuss the key trends and strategies provided by the hundreds of library staff who have contributed to the Good Practices for Great Outcomes series so far, and will end with a discussion of where we go from here. Presenters: Daphne Kouretas, OCLC; Helen Heinrich, California State University, Northridge; Debbi Dinkins, Stetson University.

More information and registration »

Monday, May 02, 2011

The National Network

Some interesting work linking researchers is being done with VIVO.
The National Network enables the discovery of researchers across institutions. Participants in the network include institutions with local installations of VIVO or those with research discovery and profiling applications that can provide semantic web-compliant data. The information accessible through VIVO's search and browse capability will reside and be controlled locally, within institutional VIVOs or other semantic web-compliant applications.

VIVO is an open source semantic web application originally developed and implemented at Cornell. When installed and populated with researcher interests, activities, and accomplishments, it enables the discovery of research and scholarship across disciplines at that institution and beyond. VIVO supports browsing and a search function which returns faceted results for rapid retrieval of desired information. Content in any local VIVO installation may be maintained manually, brought into VIVO in automated ways from local systems of record, such as HR, grants, course, and faculty activity databases, or from database providers such as publication aggregators and funding agencies.

Sunday, May 01, 2011

Personal Announcement

I've created a personal Twitter account. If you have been following LPI_Library to follow me, switch over to DPBigwood. On foursquare (not that I use it much aside from conferences) I'm also dpbigwood. Once I was trying to keep the LPI Library numbers as high as possible on Twitter. Now I think they have reached a point where splitting off my personal stuff won't hurt their numbers much if any. The LPI account is getting a few new followers every day. If that continues that will mean well over 1,000 new followers this year. Not bad for a library with about 350 card holders.

Thursday, April 28, 2011

NLM Classification Updated

News from the National Library of Medicine.
The online National Library of Medicine Classification, available at http://www.nlm.nih.gov/class/, has been issued in a newly revised edition as of April 28, 2011.

Forty-six (46) new class numbers were added and three (3) class numbers were canceled. Sixty-nine (69) MeSH terms were added to the index, including forty-one (41) new to the MeSH vocabulary as of 2011; in addition, one hundred and seventy-eight (178) class number captions or schedule notes and six hundred and six (606) index entries were modified since the 2010 edition was published on April 29, 2010.

Tuesday, April 26, 2011

DOIs as Linked Data

Instance linkages within the Linking Open Data...Image via WikipediaDOIs as Linked Data is an excellent post by Ed Summers at Inkdroid. Plenty of implications to consider for cataloging and scholarly publishing and access.

Monday, April 25, 2011

Procedural Guidelines for Proposed New or Revised Romanization Tables

News from LC.
I am pleased to report that the "Procedural Guidelines for Proposed New or Revised Romanization Tables" is now available on the LC website at http://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/romguid_2010.html. These guidelines were developed jointly by the Policy and Standards Division at the Library of Congress, the Committee on Cataloging: Description and Access (CC:DA) and the Committee on Cataloging: Asian and African Materials (CC:AAM) within the Cataloging and Classification Section of the American Library Association. The need for a formal procedure became apparent in recent efforts to revise certain Romanization tables. A draft was issued on June 15, 2010, with a request for feedback. The current procedure, dated August 13, 2010, is the result of that feedback and was printed in Cataloging Service Bulletin Issue 127http://www.loc.gov/cds/PDFdownloads/csb/CSB_127.pdf (PDF, 289 KB).

Additions to Source Codes for Vocabularies, Rules, and Schemes

The source codes listed below have been recently approved. The codes will be added to applicable Source Codes for Vocabularies, Rules, and Schemes lists. See the specific source code list for current usage in MARC fields and MODS/MADS elements.

The codes should not be used in exchange records until 60 days after the date of this notice to provide implementers time to include newly-defined codes in any validation tables.

National Bibliography Number Source Codes
The following source code has been added to the National Bibliography Number Source Codes list for usage in appropriate fields and elements.

Addition:
jnb
Japanese National Bibliography (Tokyo: National Diet Library)

Classification Scheme Source Codes
The following source code has been added to the Classification Scheme Source Codes list for usage in appropriate fields and elements.

Addition:
mu
Clasificacion Musical de la Bibliografía Nacional de Espana (Madrid: Biblioteca Nacional de Espana)

Subject Heading and Term Source Codes
The following source in the Subject Heading and Term Source Codes list formerly had code "ndllsh" assigned to it. It has been assigned a new code:

ndlsh
Kokuritsu Kokkai Toshokan kenmei hyomokuhyo = National Diet Library list of subject headings (Tokyo: Kokuritsu Kokkai Toshokan)

Thursday, April 21, 2011

Stuck in the Past

This month in Library Journal Michael Stephens writes in Stuck in the Past about the changing nature of the profession. He neglects catalogers. However, we can offer a few suggestions along the lines of those he suggests for reference. How about advising or offering classes for those wishing to "catalog" their collection? In metadata how about advising the town or academy in best selecting a metadata standard, standard indexing terms, and the software to use it? Just what is the benefit in filling in the info on a Word or PDF file? How could it be more useful? How should files be organized and named so that they can be easily found again? Would adding microformats to the Website of a local business reduce costs and drive more business their way? Giving a workshop, training session or just such advice might be useful. Any other suggestions?

Wednesday, April 20, 2011

Facebook Metadata

Image representing Facebook as depicted in Cru...Image via CrunchBaseFacebook Engineering is having a webcast of their tech talk about using metadata.
Join Mukund Narasimhan, a software engineer, for a discussion on the tools and techniques used to extend the Facebook graph to include entities such as places, businesses, and music bands as well as the interactions between Facebook users and these entities.

He will explain the computational and statistical challenges involved in annotating these entities with structured metadata while ensuring that they are authentic. He will also discuss how users are helping us solve these problems.

This tech talk will occur at 7pm (Pacific) on Wednesday April 27th. It will be live streamed via http://www.facebook.com/FacebookLive.
Seen on the dc-general email list.

Tuesday, April 19, 2011

VuDL: Open Source Digital Library Administration

The Falvey Library at Villanova University has announced the Alpha Launch of VuDL: Open Source Digital Library Administration.
VuDL is a simple to use Digital Library Administration application powered by all open source technologies. With VuDL, you get:
  • METS metadata editor
  • Service image generation tools
  • XML database repository
  • Built-in OAI server
  • Built-in record drivers for easy implementation with VuFind
The core of VuDL's application is powered by Orbeon Forms, a powerful XML/XForms processor. eXist (a native XML database) and the server's file system combine to support the data and image repository.
VuDL is offered for free through the GPL open source license. You can modify the software and share your successes with the community!