Innovative Online Catalogs Presentation: 8/28/07 (This presentation was by Mary Mitchell, Web Team Chair of the Phoenix Public Library for the Maricopa County Library Council Tech Talk group on 8/28/07).
Operating under the motto of "Trust Us", ibiblio is a collaboration of the School of Information and Library Science and the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at The University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. Ibiblio is billed as one of the largest "collections of collections" on the Internet, as it contains links to sites that deal with arts and recreation, geography, history, natural science, and philosophy, along with other subjects. First-time visitors can look over their FAQ section, read their collection policy, and then take a look at their "Recent Additions" area.
Moving on, visitors can also look at their collection criteria, and even submit a collection for their consideration. Along with their very impressive collections, they also have a wide range of RSS feeds which users can sign up for.
March 6: Lorcan Dempseys blog has some interesting thoughts about Web 2.0 and diffusion and concentration. http://orweblog.oclc.org/archives/001556.html
Feb 21: An Upstart Web Catalog Challenges an Academic-Library Giant (from Chronicle of Higher Education Volume 54, Issue 24, Page A11)
By ANDREA L. FOSTER
At only 21, Aaron Swartz is attempting to turn the library world upside down. He is taking on the subscription-based WorldCat, the largest bibliographic database on the planet, by building a free online book catalog that anyone can update.
Many academic librarians are wary of Mr. Swartz's project because it will allow nonlibrarians, who may be prone to errors, to catalog books.
But some young librarians are rallying around the precocious entrepreneur because his work may make their collections more visible on the Web. "It really provides the potential for libraries to leap forward in terms of working with electronic books and collections of electronic books," said Jeremy A. Frumkin, director of emerging technologies and services at Oregon State University.
Mr. Swartz does have a track record that inspires hope. At 14 he helped write RSS, a popular Web tool used to alert people to new blog posts. While still a teenager he became wealthy after Condé Nast Publications bought Reddit, the Web site he had helped build that lets users rank news and other electronic content.
Now his passion is a modern library. "I saw all these great books locked up in the stacks of libraries," Mr. Swartz said. "But nobody ever found out about them, because they didn't have a spot on the Web, and people weren't browsing the stacks anymore."
The new catalog project, Open Library, is set to go live in early March with records on 20 million books. The goal is to create a comprehensive Web page about any book ever published. Each page will include not just author, title, and publisher but also links that direct users to the nearest library with a copy and to related books. Other links will allow users to buy a book online or write a review of it.
The pages will be created or updated by anyone, in the style of the online encyclopedia Wikipedia.
Some Web pages will also connect to the full text when its copyright has expired. Or users will be able to pay about 10 cents a page to have an unscanned out-of-copyright book at a college library digitized.
The Open Library is backed by the Internet Archive, a nonprofit digital library, which gave the project $300,000 this year and will provide the full texts of materials in its own collection. (The Open Content Alliance, a book-digitization project, is another partner.)
Pushing Books on the Web
The project is similar to WorldCat, which is owned by OCLC, a nonprofit group that promotes technology in libraries. But it seeks to be bigger. While WorldCat has catalog records only from libraries — including about 10,000 academic libraries — that pay to be part of OCLC, the Open Library will include records from anywhere, free of charge. And while librarians maintain WorldCat, the public would maintain Open Library.
Mr. Swartz also wants to integrate his database with Wikipedia so that a citation of a book on the popular encyclopedia links to the book's page on Open Library. Another idea is to integrate Open Library with LibraryThing, a site that helps people catalog and share their own books. Eventually, Open Library may expand to include journal articles, too.
Should all those connections help increase Open Library's holdings close to the 72 million unique book records in WorldCat, Mr. Swartz's enterprise could upend the way libraries maintain records. Librarians could choose to bypass WorldCat and contribute catalog data to Open Library, jeopardizing OCLC's membership of more than 60,000 libraries and threatening a big chunk of its $235-million annual revenue.
It would be an amazing feat, especially since, at the moment, Open Library is struggling to get libraries to contribute.
Librarians are not just uneasy having nonlibrarians edit catalogs; they are also afraid of offending OCLC.
They rely on the organization as a broker for interlibrary loans and other crucial services. And libraries' contracts with OCLC prevent them from sharing their catalog information with for-profit institutions. That doesn't appear to be a problem for Open Library itself, because the group is nonprofit. But since there is nothing to stop Google or any other business from using Open Library's records for commercial gain, many librarians are holding back.
Striking a Deal with OCLC
Publicly, OCLC has stated that WorldCat and Open Library are complementary databases and should work together.
"We have an interest in synchronizing WorldCat with digital libraries that are of interest to our member organizations, and Open Library is certainly one of those," said Chip Nilges, vice president for business development at OCLC.
But one OCLC official, speaking on the condition that he not be identified, said Open Library was a waste of time and resources, and predicted it would fail.
Mr. Swartz plays down the competition between Open Library and World Cat, aware that highlighting the tension won't bring librarians to his project. A beta version of Open Library even provides links to WorldCat for users seeking to find a book at a local library.
"We're not in opposition with OCLC," said Mr. Swartz. "It's just that because they've built this structure over time, dependent on a particular business model, it's much harder for them to move on to the Internet than it is for a new group like us."
Most of the Open Library records to date have come from the Library of Congress and various publishers. The University of North Carolina system has provided Open Library with 4.2 million records. Additional records have come from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute and Talis, a British library cooperative. Mr. Swartz said he was talking with a few other academic libraries, including the University of California's, about obtaining their records.
Jessamyn C. West, a librarian based in Bethel, Vt., who runs a popular blog, Librarian.net, wants Open Library to flourish. The small libraries she counsels can't afford subscriptions to WorldCat. As a result, their holdings are invisible to Vermonters searching online.
She acknowledges, though, that contributing to Open Library would be difficult for many.
"The library community is comfortable having a vendor," said Ms. West, "even if the vendor is not doing exactly what they want."
Feb 4: Here is a new development that could have a huge impact on the library automation field:
The Duke University Libraries are preparing a proposal for the Mellon Foundation to convene the academic library community to design an open source Integrated Library System (ILS). We are not focused on developing an actual system at this stage, but rather blue-skying on the elements that academic libraries need in such a system and creating a blueprint. Right now, we are trying to spread the word about this project and find out if others are interested in the idea.
We feel that software companies have not designed Integrated Library Systems that meet the needs of academic libraries, and we don’t think those companies are likely to meet libraries’ needs in the future by making incremental changes to their products. Consequently, academic libraries are devoting significant time and resources to try to overcome the inadequacies of the expensive ILS products they have purchased.
Frustrated with current systems, library users are abandoning the ILS and thereby giving up access to the high quality scholarly resources libraries make available.
Our project would define an ILS centered on meeting the needs of modern academic libraries and their users in a way that is open, flexible, and modifiable as needs change. The design document would provide a template to inform open source ILS development efforts, to guide future ILS implementations, and to influence current ILS vendor products. We would use the grant to fund a series of planning meetings, with broad participation in some of those meetings and a smaller, core group of schools developing the actual design requirements document.
At this stage, we're seeking feedback on our ideas and finding out who might be interested in participating, prior to our formal submission of the proposal to the Mellon Foundation in early March. We would greatly appreciate your responses to the following questions.
1) Does designing an open source ILS seem like something worth exploring for academic libraries?
2) Given the information above about the proposed project, is your institution interested in:
-- staying informed of our progress?
-- contributing time and effort to the planning process, even if only through the first or second workshops?
-- possibly being one of the core schools that participates throughout the full planning and writing process
3) If you have any initial feedback on our ideas, we would love to hear it!
**Please email us at openlib@duke.edu**
Thank you for your interest and considering this opportunity to work with us on this project. If your answer is yes to number two above, we will be contacting you to further explore participation. **Please send your reply to openlib@duke.edu**
Jan 25: Here is the overview of the 2008 Computers in Libraries 2008 annual meeting (April 7-9, 2008). Check out the whole conference schedule at: http://www.infotoday.com/cil2008/
INNOVATIVE CHANGE:
Integrating High Tech With High TouchLibraries are at the forefront of experimenting with and adopting new technology, but are they as focused on their clients as they are on technology? New tools and processes have ignited creative content mashups, specialized and personalized services for community segments, and exciting new techniques for dealing with voluminous information flows. Now user-generated content in conjunction with new tools is shaping the new information world. Our conference theme, Innovative Change: Integrating High Tech With High Touch, focuses on how libraries excel when technology advancements match the people capabilities. It highlights leading-edge online initiatives and innovations in all types of information enterprises, tools and techniques for enhancing user-friendly digital information flows, information discovery and visualization methods for dealing with today’s information overload, building new communities and supporting online connections in engaging ways, supporting change and training, and more. Join us at the most comprehensive conference for library and information professionals interested in technology to discover insights, strategies, and practices that will allow us to manage computers, libraries, digital information, and people in a cohesive, exciting, and productive way.
Jan 21: Here is a new twist on a library automation system. According to the web site:
"Let us take the complexity and high cost out of automating your library. Use this state of the art Web based system to build your collection and start circulating today. No costly software, hardware, or networking nightmares. Simply register and use the service for 30 days at no cost. When you are happy with the service, simply activate your library for only $365 per year."
Jan 16: I attended a virtual meeting from OCLC on wikis, blogs and RSS feeds yesterday which was quite interesting. Here are the slides for those of you who may be interested in these new technologies:
