Some interesting statistics about how MARC usage has changed in recent OCLC cataloging--perhaps due to the influx of non-US cataloging

"The University of Michigan and OCLC today announced that they have successfully transitioned the OAIster database to OCLC to ensure continued public access to open-archive collections, and to expand the visibility of these collections to millions of information seekers through OCLC services.

OAIster records are now fully accessible through WorldCat.org, and will be included in WorldCat.org search results along with records from thousands of libraries worldwide that add their holdings to WorldCat. OCLC plans to release a freely accessible, discrete view of the OAIster records in January 2010 through a URL specific to OAIster."

R2's commissioned report for the Library of Congress

LC's internal working group responds to "On The Record"

"The Library of Congress is releasing today (10/30/09) the results of its analysis of the creation and distribution of bibliographic data in U.S. and Canadian libraries.

The Library commissioned R2 Consulting LLC of Contoocook, N.H., to search and describe the current marketplace for cataloging records in the MARC format, with primary focus on the economics of current practices, including existing incentives and barriers to both contribution and availability."

Abstract
Adapting the method used by many libraries in the acquisitions workflow to export OCLC WorldCat bibliographic records into the local online catalog, the Special Collections Department at the University of Colorado at Boulder Libraries developed a process employing a graduate student to provide access to two previously hidden special collections until the materials can be fully cataloged. The completion of the project undertaken by the student assistant resulted in the simultaneous benefits of increased efficiency among the catalogers and greater provision of access to enable users to identify important resources for their research and study. By initiating similar procedures to represent not-yet-cataloged materials with online in-process records, other libraries can move their hidden collections into the view of their users.

"This online tutorial was developed for curators, librarians, archivists, collections managers and other staff who are involved in managing machine-based media collections in cultural institutions. Viewers will learn basic principles and concepts for managing audiovisual collections and will be provided with information and strategies for preservation, contracting for reformatting, and finding funding opportunities."

Keynote speaker Dan Scott, Systems Librarian from Laurentian University, talks about implementing the open source Evergreen ILS. Library Journal 2009 Mover and Shaker Karen Combs discusses using Drupal for her library's intranet, and LYRASIS Board Chair Joe Lucia, University Librarian at Villanova University, shares his experience with the development of the VuFind open source discovery layer for library catalogs.

Abstract
Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules, 2nd ed. (AACR2) rule 1.0E1 allows title and statement of responsibility, edition, publication and/or distribution data, and series title to be "transcribed from the item itself in the language and script (wherever practicable) in which it appears there." However, AACR2 will be replaced by a set of guidelines entitled Resource Description and Access (RDA). This article compares various guidelines from the November 2008 draft of RDA that are applicable to transcribing titles and names written in non-roman languages and/or scripts with their counterparts in its predecessor.

interesting...

January 18-22, 2010
Boston, Massachusetts
ALA Hotel TBD and 90 Mt. Auburn, Harvard University

"Electronic Scriptorium, Ltd., provides a full line of metadata management services to world class businesses and institutions. We offer metadata modeling, taxonomy and ontology design, controlled vocabulary services and descriptive cataloging for digital assets. Let's talk about how to improve your enterprise-wide metadata model or strategies for increasing ROI from digital assets."

SkyRiver --a new cataloging utility --website is now live, but not much there  --a demo would be nice, even if it was canned

"The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) has published the ARL Annual Salary Survey 2008-2009, which analyzes salary data for all professional staff working in the 123 ARL member libraries during 2008-2009. Data are reported for 10,148 professional staff in the 113 university ARL libraries and for 3,748 professional staff in the 10 non-university ARL libraries.

The 2008-2009 data show that ARL librarians' salaries did not keep pace with inflation. The combined median professional salary in US and Canadian ARL university libraries was $64,823--a 3.8% increase from the previous year. Over the same period, the Consumer Price Index rose 5.6% in the US and 3.4% in Canada."

Discusses themes from the 2009 IGeLU conference, the development of ExLibris' URM product and the uncertain future of libraries and librarians

Washington, DC--The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) has published the ARL Preservation Statistics 2006-2007, a compilation of data on the levels of preservation efforts in ARL libraries throughout North America.

Highlights from the report suggest that the patterns of preservation activities may be changing, with digitization increasing and microfilming declining. 112 ARL libraries reported expenditures of $108,278,519 in 2006-2007 with a total 1,149.13 library-wide preservation staff engaged in preservation duties.

"The Coalition for Networked Information (CNI) is an organization dedicated to supporting the transformative promise of networked information technology for the advancement of scholarly communication and the enrichment of intellectual productivity. Some 200 institutions representing higher education, publishing, network and telecommunications, information technology, and libraries and library organizations make up CNI's Members"

SkyRiver -- a new competitor for OCLC cataloging services -- with ties to Innovative Interfaces

"The Kuali Foundation is a non-profit organization responsible for sustaining and evolving administrative software that meets the needs of all Carnegie Class institutions. Its members are colleges, universities, commercial firms and interested organizations that share a common vision of open, modular, and distributed systems for their software requirements. The goal of Kuali is to bring the proven functionality of legacy applications to the ease and universality of online services."

Another study debunking the Long-tail theory

Research into Netflix data  shows that the Long-tail theory may not hold up

 The Chronicle's take on next gen catalogs--mentions everything but OLE

Finally LC is reviewing the out-dated "Coookery" subject heading.  Deadline for comments is Dec. 1, 2009

What to Withdraw: Print Collections Management in the Wake of Digitization

"As journals are increasingly accessed in digitized form, many libraries have grown interested in de-accessioning little-used print originals; but desires to repurpose space often come into conflict with concerns about preservation. "What to Withdraw: Print Collections Management in the Wake of Digitization" analyzes which types of journals can be withdrawn responsibly today and how that set of materials can be expanded to allow libraries the maximum possible flexibility and savings in the future."

OCLC has appointed a new council to develop a new records use policy--hopefully this will be an open process unlike the last go-round. 

"Clarification" on the OCLC/OAIster terms--the comments are interesting

More on OAIster and OCLC

Blog post discusses OCLC's recent message to OAI-PMH data providers asking them to agree to a set of Terms & Conditions allowing OCLC to include data harvested via OAI-PMH in both free and toll services that OCLC provides.

Audio and presentation files from the 50th Annual RBMS/ACRL Preconference, "Seas of Change: Navigating the Cultural and Institutional Contexts of Special Collections"

"We are pleased to announce the publication of electronic files from the 2009 Preconference of the Rare Books and Manuscripts Section of the Association of College and Research Libraries. This year RBMS--with generous assistance from OCLC Research--initiated an experiment in providing digital audio files of programs at the Preconference in Charlottesville, VA. Audio files of presentations include: the entire short papers program, New and Emerging Voices; one of the seminars; most of the plenary speakers; and a couple of speakers who gave special welcoming and historical remarks. Also available are presentation files of some of the seminars, and PDF files of the print Preconference program and the special 50th anniversary print publication on the history of the Preconference."

A nice listing of links related to RDA

Blog posting about a tour of RBML, includes an image of the Lea Library

The Penn Libraries recently made important discoveries of rare, previously uncataloged research materials within their collections. Working on a Hidden Collections project funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, catalogers at Penn's Rare Book and Manuscript Library have found two incunables (works printed prior to 1501) in the library of Henry Charles Lea, a noted 19th-century scholar of the Inquisition. In a separate project, two pamphlets, both written and signed by Martin Luther, have also been discovered in Penn's Rare Book and Manuscript collections.

ALA, ARL Release Guidance on Digital Delivery of Content to Classrooms
WASHINGTON, D.C. - The American Library Association (ALA) and the Association of Research Libraries have released a document titled "Performance of or Showing Films in the Classroom" to provide guidance on digital delivery of content to the "physical" classroom.

According to the associations, the Technology, Education and Copyright Harmonization (TEACH) Act enacted in 2002 does not provide librarians clarity on copyright exceptions for the digital delivery of content for distance education. Thus, understanding what is permitted under the TEACH Act in combination with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) and existing exceptions, such as fair use, is becoming increasingly confusing to many practitioners.

Draft-PCC Guidelines for Creating Bibliographic Records in Multiple Character sets.
and
Preliminary Report: Task Force on Non-Latin Script Cataloging Documentation.

The accompanying draft guidelines are preliminary and not complete. In particular, the section for special guidelines for particular languages is not complete. Further comments are requested from PCC in order for the task group to receive input and advice for completing those sections and possibly revising the general section (see Specific comments requested below). The draft guidelines, if adopted, would establish a standard practice for PCC catalogers adding parallel non-Latin data to MARC bibliographic records. The final draft is due Dec. 2009.

Travel Services & Procurement Cards is pleased to announce the new Penn Travel Portal, the most convenient resource for all Penn travelers. No matter where you are heading, how you plan to get there and where you want to stay, all the information you need to organize your trip can now be found in one location.

The Penn Travel Portal features:

* Suppliers that provide Penn with special cost savings opportunities and value added services;
* Reservation assistance and on-line booking tools;
* Information about Penn policies and procedures;
* Travel advisories, insurance, currency exchange and other information for international travel; and
* Much, much more....

"Carl Grant, president of Ex Libris North America, writes some critical commentary about the OLE project on his blog.

Grant's commentary is followed by an interesting response from Brad Wheeler, Indiana University's Chief Information Officer and VP for Information Technology."

Study of tagging of images in Flickr--tags were less useful than image titles and descriptions

Commentary on the Westlaw marketing campaign and other vendors who try to double-dip by selling directly to users things that they already have access to through the library's paid subscription. 

"Welcome to AcqWeb, sister publication of ACQNET and the gathering place for librarians and other professionals interested in acquisitions and collection development. For those unfamiliar with our terminology, we are the staff who select and purchase the books, serials and related information resources for our libraries."

Not much content yet, but a really nice looking design.

Mission

The mass digitization of books promises to bring tremendous value to consumers, libraries, scholars, and students. The Open Book Alliance will work to advance and protect this promise. And, by protecting it, we will assert that any mass book digitization and publishing effort be open and competitive. The process of achieving this promise must be undertaken in the open, grounded in sound public policy and mindful of the need to promote long-term benefits for consumers rather than isolated commercial interests.

The Open Book Alliance will counter Google, the Association of American Publishers and the Authors' Guild's scheme to monopolize the access, distribution and pricing of the largest digital database of books in the world. To this end, we will promote fair and flexible solutions aimed at achieving a more robust and open system.

OCLC's participation in planning for RDA

This is an experimental tool that lets people compare what book covers are available through different APIs. It uses four underlying services to lookup that information: LibraryThing's covers API, OpenLibrary's JSON API, Amazon's Associates Web Service, Google's Books API and Worldcat's xISBN.

From Legacy Data to Linked Data: Preparing Libraries for Web 3.0

Presentations from this program are available below:

Eric Miller (Zepheira), "Linked Data and Libraries" [1]

Diane Hillmann (Information Institute of Syracuse; Metadata Management Associates), "Are Libraries Ready for Linked Data?" [2]

Jennifer Bowen (University of Rochester), "Defining Linked Data for the eXtensible Catalog (XC): Metadata on the Bleeding Edge" [3]

Rebecca Guenther (Library of Congress), "Controlled Vocabularies as Linked Data on the Web" [4]

Diane Hillmann's slides about RDA and vocabularies

The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) and the Coalition for Networked Information (CNI) are co-hosting a Forum, "An Age of Discovery: Distinctive Collections in the Digital Age." It will be held October 15-16, 2009, in Washington, DC.

The Forum builds on the work of the ARL Special Collections Working Group [PDF]. The goal is to focus attention on opportunities available in the digital environment for leveraging the strengths of special collections, making them more widely accessible. The co-hosts seek to bring together librarians, archivists, and others with responsibilities for stewarding special and distinctive resources, and to identify strategies for advancing this goal

Abstract: Project management is pervasive in the literature and practice of many industries, including finance, IT, engineering, and biotechnology. The recent rapid proliferation of complex library services such as virtual reference and digital repositories suggests that the role of librarians is becoming increasingly project-oriented. This article presents an overview of professional project management and a literature review from the library science and management literatures. A content analysis of librarian position announcements was conducted, and indicates that project management skills are in demand for librarians. However, it is unclear whether current library science literature and education adequately address project management skills or other traditionally "extra-librarian" leadership qualities now needed to effectively manage project based initiatives in libraries. Reprinted by permission of the publisher.

Abstract:

If a digital library project is to be successful, the project needs to be run in a professional manner, using project management techniques. This article points out some of the most important aspects of project management such as understanding the project requirements, the role of planning, accurately determining budget and schedule, controlling the scope of the project, and developing expertise. In order to accomplish this, the project manager needs to be a multifaceted leader as well as technically adept.

Welcome to Project Management Institute

PMI is the leading global association for the project management profession. Since our founding in 1969, we have been at the forefront of working with business to create project management standards and techniques that work.

Includes "Project Management Glossary"

The 2009 Jeremiah Kaplan Institute on Libraries, the Information
Society, and Social Policy

"The Right to Information Access"

October 30, 2009
Penn State University, University Park Campus
State College, PA
The Hub Auditorium

SPEAKER: Janis Young
EVENT DATE: 07/02/2009
RUNNING TIME: 53 minutes

DESCRIPTION:

In 2007, the Library of Congress embarked upon a project to create a system of genre/form headings, which describe what a work is rather than what it is about, as subject headings do. This presentation will explain the motivations for undertaking the project, including the need to anticipate the linked data requirements of the new generation of search engines and user interfaces, and also enumerate the authority record distribution channels, which furnish data for both human use and for data mining and computer manipulation. In addition, the presentation will address the practical impacts of this project on LC staff and users alike.

Discusses various alternatives to Amazon API for ISBN, metadata and covers images.  

Nice video introduction to library technical services for the layperson (from U of Colorade Boulder)

mentions Penntags, but attributes to Penn State

LJ article reviews the OLE report and next steps

"This working group is charged to undertake a "gap analysis" regarding electronic resource management (ERM) related data and standards. The analysis will begin with a review of the ERMI data dictionary as it presently exists, and a mapping of ERMI data elements to those within relevant standards-related projects (e.g., CORE, SUSHI, ONIX-PL, etc.). Vendors, libraries using ERM systems, and other identified stakeholders will then be consulted via surveys and/or more in-depth interviews to solicit additional feedback."

Purpose of the Report
"Orphan works" is a term used to describe the situation in which the owner of a copyrighted work cannot
be identified and located by someone who wishes to make use of the work in a manner that requires
permission of the copyright owner. Proposed orphan works legislation, such as the Orphan Works Act of
2008 (H.R. 5889) and the Shawn Bentley Orphan Works Act of 2008 (S.2913), would reduce penalties
for infringement if an infringer "undertakes a diligent effort to locate the owner of the infringed
copyright." This statement describes what professional archivists consider to be best practices regarding
reasonable efforts to identify and locate rights holders. It is based on the authors' knowledge of the kinds
of materials that are likely to qualify as orphan works and on their professional experience in trying to
obtain rights information for such works in the past.
Although the statement focuses on unpublished materials because these are the types of materials that are
usually found in archives, the authors recognize that many of the techniques that are useful in identifying
rights holders for unpublished materials may also be useful in identifying and locating rights holders of
published materials.

Back issues of CSB (1978 to current) available as free PDF download

A draft of the final report on the OLE Project is now available for community feedback.

Software using WorldCat API to produce a customized view of Worldcat.   Page includes a nice screen cast describing Bridge

"The Web 2.0 environment provides the opportunity for innovative use of freely available datasets and, not least in the UK, there is increasing interest from Government in making information created by public sector organisations more widely available for re-use, in order to generate greater economic benefit, social gain and improvements to public services.

These developments are creating a complex landscape for the creation and use of the traditional bibliographical data"

The Library of Congress has retained R2 Consulting, LLC to research and describe the US and Canadian "marketplace" for cataloging records and we need your help.

List of library-related conferences and online events

AUTHOR: Ingrid Hsieh-Yee
TITLE: Educating Cataloging Professionals in a Changing Information Environment
SOURCE: Journal of Education for Library and Information Science 49 no2 93-106 Spr 2008

"The information environment of the twenty-first century is highly competitive. This article addresses how cataloging education should be provided for the profession to stay relevant and competitive in the digital age. To provide a context for considering cataloging education, it describes important changes and trends in the information environment and summarizes discussions and debates within the profession. It identifies competencies cataloging professionals need to develop and offers strategies to ensure the future of the cataloging profession. Specifically, it discusses how to raise awareness and appreciation for information organization among students and non-cataloging educators, how to prepare graduates with different levels of expertise in information organization, how to cultivate leaders for the profession and produce more cataloging educators, how to collaborate in teaching and researching information organization issues, and how to engage stakeholders -- practitioners, educators, employers, funders, and professional groups -- in the preparation of cataloging professionals."

Discusses relationships in RDA and how FRBR-ization is less than a complete view of what FRBR could do for metadata

The guest at this ALA Annual's Program for Cooperative Cataloging Participants' Meeting was David Lankes, professor at Syracuse University iSchool.

Abstract (from his site): "When a book becomes an ebook it looses more than simply its physical binding - it looses hard boundaries that separate the content of the book from its use. Online journals are not simply pictures of a traditional journal on a screen, but rather the foundations of intellectual communities. While today we hold on to terms such as book, journal, magazine and simply affix "e" to them, in truth, these terms of simply metaphors, an echo of an earlier analog reality. Online narratives, theses, and "how-to's" become living documents bound closer to a multitude of contexts that defy traditional notions of information organization, already strained to the breaking point of scale. What is needed is a new approach to organizing knowledge, one based on context that occurs in the space between artifacts."

Description: OpenMIC is an open source, web-based cataloging tool that can be used as a standalone application or integrated with other repository architectures by a wide range of organizations. It provides a complete metadata creation system for analog and digital materials, with services to export these metadata in standard formats.

Washington DC--The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) Special Collections Working Group has launched a blog on "Transformative Issues in Special Collections" to accompany the Web conference scheduled for tomorrow, July 7, 1:00-2:00 p.m. EDT.

The blog is an opportunity for the special collections community to continue the conversation after the event on Tuesday. The discussion will be moderated by ARL Visiting Program Officer Lisa Carter, Head of the Special Collections Research Center, North Carolina State University Libraries. Members of the community who have read the recent ARL Special Collections Working Group report or who attend the Web conference and have feedback about transformative issues for special collections are encouraged to participate in the blog.

"Invest in Knowledge is a new and innovative (patent pending) program that allows anyone to subsidize the digitization of the world's knowledge one book at a time and to receive 5% of all future sales of that book through Kirtasbooks.com. You will receive a reprint of that book as well as the ongoing 5%. You can invest in as many books as they would like."

Hmmm...I wonder how many takers they might have

Streamlining Book Metadata Workflow
by Judy Luther (Informed Strategies)

Abstract: The white paper was commissioned by NISO and OCLC as a follow-up to the Symposium for Publishers and Librarians held by OCLC on March 18-19, 2009 to discuss book metadata. This paper analyzes the current state of metadata creation, exchange, and use throughout the book supply chain. With the number of book formats multiplying and the amount of digital content growing rapidly, the metadata required to support the discovery, sale, and use of content by a global audience is increasing exponentially. At the same time economic pressures on all stakeholders in the supply chain from publishers, wholesalers, booksellers, metadata vendors, and librarians present greater challenges to providing quality and comprehensive metadata at every point in the cycle. Through interviews with over 30 industry representatives, Luther has created a book metadata exchange map illustrating the process and has identified opportunities for eliminating redundancies and making the entire process more efficient.

2010 RBMS Preconference in Philadelphia

"PACSCL welcomes the Rare Books and Manuscript Section (RBMS) of the Association of College and Research Libraries, a division of the American Library Association, to Philadelphia! In June 2010, PACSCL will host the RBMS annual preconference from the 22nd to 25th. Collaboration is the conference theme, and PACSCL's 25 years of cooperation will be one of the models examined. Events will take place at the Doubletree Hotel, in the heart of Center City, as well as at the Chemical Heritage Foundation and the American Philosophical Society in Old City. Attendees will have many opportunities to get to know the city and PACSCL's member institutions. Further information on the conference will be made available as it develops, and can be found at the RBMS website."

 "The Virtual International Authority File at viaf.org now contains personal names from sixteen different authority files!"

ALCTS events at ALA 2009

This document lists MARC 21 format changes that have been approved to accommodate Resource Description and Access (RDA) since the 2008 Update (No.9) to MARC 21. The draft additions to the Bibliographic, Authority, and Holdings formats are linked to this page. This document is intended to facilitate experimentation by providing information that will be published in the 2009 (No. 10) format update.

A variety of RSS feeds available from the Library of Congress:

Categories:

General News
Site Updates
Events
For Librarians
For Teachers Collections Preservation
Copyright
Digital Preservation
Folklife
Legal Journalism
Poetry
Science
Veterans History
Visual Resources

Videos now available:

May 22-23, 2009
Milwaukee Central Library, Centennial Hall
Milwaukee, WI

Information organization (IO), like other major functions of the information profession, faces many ethical challenges. In the IO literature, ethical concerns have been raised with regard to, for example, the role of national and international IO standards, providing subject access to information, deprofessionalization and outsourcing of IO, education of IO professionals, and the effects of globalization. These issues, and others like them, have serious implications for quality and equity in information access. The Center for Information Policy Research and the Information Organization Research Group at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee join in presenting this conference to address the ethics of information organization.

KEYNOTE SPEAKERS:

Clare Beghtol, Professor
University of Toronto, Canada

José Augusto Chaves Guimarães, Professor
Universidade Estadual Paulista, Brazil

Janet Swan Hill, Professor, Associate Director for Technical Services, University of Colorado at Boulder Libraries, USA

"ROCHESTER, N.Y., JUNE 16, 2009 - Kirtas Technologies, the worldwide leader in bound-book digitization, and OCLC, a global online library service and research organization; have signed an agreement that will enable streamlined access to the ever-increasing numbers of digitized books to users of OCLC's WorldCat and Kirtasbooks.com.

As part of the agreement, OCLC will now be able to provide its users with data indicating that a book is either available as digitized content or that it can be made available for digitization."

New website for the JSC

"All 123 issues of Cataloging Service Bulletin (CSB) are now available at no cost. CSB is a quarterly bulletin that includes current, new, and revised information about LC cataloging and classification practices and policies. CSB lists revised AACR2 rules, LC Rule Interpretations, changes to the ALA/LC Romanization tables, changes to the LC Subject Headings, and includes "Cataloging Publication News" and "News of Cataloging Projects," and more."

"Classify is a prototype service designed to support the assignment of classification numbers for books, DVDs, CDs, and many other types of materials.

Overview

The prototype provides access to more than 36 million WorldCat records that contain Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC) numbers, Library of Congress Classification (LCC) numbers, or National Library of Medicine (NLM) Classification numbers.

The records are grouped using the OCLC FRBR Work-Set algorithm resulting in a work-level summary of the class numbers assigned a title. You can retrieve a classification summary by ISBN, ISSN, UPC, OCLC number, or author/title."

The new home for CoOL  (Conservation Online)

Great article from a reference librarian perspective on how to use LSCH subdivision terms to refine keyword searches.

This final report reflects the comments from the BIBCO community as they relate to the TG charge to define a set of required elements for bibliographic records for monographs using a single encoding level. Our tasks were:
• to develop a "model" for bibliographic records using a single encoding level to replace the BIBCO full and core levels
•to use the BIBCO core level record as a starting point, and
•to focus on a model for the printed monograph to be used as a basis for models for other formats

Washington DC--The American Library Association (ALA), the Association of Research Libraries (ARL), and the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) announce the release of "A Guide for the Perplexed Part II: The Amended Google-Michigan Agreement." The amendment represents important additions and this guide provides an overview to help librarians better understand the revised terms.

Tool for catalogers allows searching for MARC tags; assigning cutters; etc.

An online tutorial based on "Understanding MARC Bibliographic"

"Michael Halperin, director of the Lippincott Library at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, has been selected as the 2009 recipient of the Gale Cengage Learning Award for Excellence in Business Librarianship, an honor sponsored by Gale Cengage Learning and administered by the Reference and User Services Association (RUSA)."

LJ's overview of ALA Chicago

* ALA Conference 2009: Hey, Small Spender!
* ALA Conference 2009: Chicago Hope
* ALA Conference 2009: The Second City's Newest Restaurants
* ALA Conference 2009: Text a Librarian at ALA Annual in Chicago
* ALA Conference 2009: Bed Down on a Budget
* ALA Conference 2009: Tasting Chicago

Instructions for using non-Roman scripts in the OCLC Cataloging client

"The digital revolution has brought changes in the processes through which records are created and made available for use
along this chain. Each actor has its own motivations, aligned to its particular business model, in creating, adding to, using or reusing bibliographic data; and each uses models and formats that suit its purposes. These formats are then frequently modified to meet the needs of those further along the chain.

This report looks at how bibliographic records for content held by UK academic and research libraries are created and distributed, for printed and electronic books, and for scholarly journals and journal articles; and at how they are utilised by all involved in the
supply chain, from the publisher to the final end user."

"Next-Generation Technical Services (NGTS) is an initiative developed by the University Librarians and SOPAG as a consequence of work conducted in other key UC efforts. As an outgrowth of the UC Libraries Bibliographic Services Task Force (BSTF) Report, the UC Libraries are involved in a strategic partnership with OCLC to develop a "Next-Generation Melvyl" intended to re-architect the systemwide OPAC and transform the user experience of search and retrieval. NGTS will build on and complement that work by redesigning technical services workflows across the full range of library formats in order to take advantage of new systemwide capabilities and tools, minimize redundant activities, improve efficiency, and foster innovation in collection development and management for the benefit of UC library users."

"The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) Board of Directors voted in support of a resolution introduced by its Scholarly Communication Steering Committee to strongly encourage ARL member libraries to refrain from signing agreements with publishers or vendors, either individually or through consortia, that include nondisclosure or confidentiality clauses. In addition, the Board encourages ARL members to share upon request from other libraries information contained in these agreements (save for trade secrets or proprietary technical details) for licensing content, licensing software or other tools, and for digitization contracts with third-party vendors."

"OCLC is connecting the content, technology and expert capabilities of its member libraries worldwide to create the first Web-scale, cooperative library management service. Member libraries can take the first step to realizing this cooperative service model with a new, "quick start" version of the OCLC WorldCat Local service."

he Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) announces the release of a new digital publication, "The Kaleidoscopic Concern" by Kaetrena D. Davis-Kendrick. This annotated bibliography on racial and ethnic diversity in librarianship focuses on new areas of study such as gender issues and white privilege with regard to racial minority and ethnic librarians. "The Kaleidoscopic Concern" is available on the ACRL Web site as a free downloadable digital publication

The report by ARL Visiting Program Officer Lars Meyer, "Safeguarding Collections at the Dawn of the 21st Century: Describing Roles & Measuring Contemporary Preservation Activities in ARL Libraries," responds to a recommendation of the 2006 ARL Task Force on the Future of Preservation in ARL Libraries. The task force encouraged ARL to conduct a high-level investigation of the range and balance of preservation activities represented among the ARL membership. Meyer's report is a thoughtful and thorough qualitative examination of how research libraries' preservation activities are evolving and expanding in the 21st century. He not only considered activities traditionally captured by ARL's Preservation Statistics, but also a host of emerging activities largely, but not exclusively, centered on developing digital collections and involving collaborative efforts.

Facet-based interfaces demonstrate some limitations of Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH), which were designed to deal with constraints that do not exist in the current computerized environment. This paper discusses some challenges for using LCSH for faceted browsing and navigation in library catalogs. Ideas are provided for improving results through system design, changes to LCSH practice, and LCSH structure.

The goal of PennMOVES is to help Penn students get rid of the stuff they don't want to haul home, and do it in a way that is socially responsible and environmentally aware. We'll be collecting your cast-offs- clothes, furniture, kitchen gear, non-perishable food items, and the like- and distributing them to organizations who help West Philadelphians and other nearby communities in need.

This year, with the current strain on the economy, a low cost sale will be conducted of all the donated items. Proceeds will benefit the organizations identified by the United Way. The dates of the PennMoves sale will be June 6 and 7.

The Review Board on the proposed OCLC Record Use Policy made an interim report to the Members' Council on Monday May 18, 2009.

Jennifer Younger, the Chair of the Board, gave our report and it has been recorded. The podcast and the accompanying PowerPoint slides are on the Review Board's web page: http://www.oclc.org/us/en/worldcat/catalog/policy/board/default.htm

Contents: PART 1: THEORY -- Review of the literature: technical services redesign and reorganization / Laurie Lopatin -- What is technical services?: perspectives from the field and from LIS education / Pat Lawton, Deborah Rose-Lefmann -- Staffing trends in academic library technical services / Vicki Toy Smith, Kathryn Etcheverria -- Change and adaptation in the technical services of a group of mid-sized academic libraries: a 14-year overview / Pamela Cline Howley -- Quality cataloging with less: alternative and innovative methods / Mary L. Mastraccio -- The name and role of the cataloger in the twenty-first century / Nadine P. Ellero -- PART 2: CASE STUDIES -- Redesign of database management at Rutgers University libraries / Ruth A. Bogan -- Successfully merging workflow and personnel in technical services: a management perspective / Ann Branton -- Workflow analysis as a basis for organizational redesign at McMaster University library / Cheryl Martin -- Centering technical services: developing a vision for change at Union College / Annette M. LeClair -- Merging departments in a small academic library / Rhonda R. Glazier, Dr. Jack D. Glazier -- Creating career paths for cataloging support staff / Karen M. Letarte ... [et al.] -- Navigating toward the future, building on our strengths: reorganization and change at Emory University libraries / Susan B. Bailey -- Technological change and technical services: a case study of a mid-sized research library / Karen M. Ramsay -- Personnel turnover as impetus for change / Martha Ann Bace, Patricia Ratkovich -- Shifting duties and responsibilities of technical services staff / Karen Davis ... [et al.] -- Technical services between reality and illusion: reorganization in technical services at the Ohio State University libraries - questions and assessment / Magda El-Sherbini -- Shuffling the deck: two reorganizations at the University of Massachusetts Amherst / Patricia S. Banach -- Redesigning technical services in an academic law library / Andrea Rabbia -- National cataloging and indexing program for United States government publications: innovative responses to challenges created by online publishing / Thomas A. Downing -- A vision for the future: Cornell University's Geospatial Information Repository (CUGIR) / Elaine L. Westbrooks.

Contents: Technical services : gone (and forgotten) / Christine Mackenzie and Michael Aulich -- Beyond the catalog : the evolution of the technical services librarian at Miami University, Oxford, Ohio / Elizabeth Brice and Ross Shanley-Roberts -- From technical services to collections management : the evolution of technical services in a medical library / Dean James, Laurel Sanders, and Michael Garrett -- Technical services reorganization in law libraries : a survey / Karen A. Nuckolls -- Creative ideas in staffing : shared responsibilities, hybrid positions, and taking full advantage of the connections between public and technical services / Laurie Phillips -- Making room for the future : facilitating change through technical services reorganization at Northwestern University Library / Roxanne Sellberg -- Sizes of change : improving technical services efficiency at a regional public library / Daniel Sifton -- Staffing trends in academic library technical services : a qualitative analysis / Vicki Toy Smith -- Library 2.0 and technical services : an urban, bilingual community college experience / Elisabeth Tappeiner and Kate Lyons -- Web 2.0 and technical services : reorganizing workflow around collaborative interfaces / Adam Murray.

Introducing DuraSpace - an organization creating open technologies for durable digital content.

Fedora Commons and the DSpace Foundation, two of the largest providers of open source software for managing and providing access to digital content, are joining their organizations to pursue a common mission. Jointly, they will provide leadership and innovation in open source technologies for global communities who manage, preserve, and provide access to digital content.

The joined organization, named "DuraSpace," will sustain and grow its flagship repository platforms - Fedora and DSpace. DuraSpace will also expand its portfolio by offering new technologies and services that respond to the dynamic environment of the Web and to new requirements from existing and future users. DuraSpace will focus on supporting existing communities and will also engage a larger and more diverse group of stakeholders in support of its not-for-profit mission.

Library and Archives Canada and OCLC announce that Canadian Subject Headings are now included as part of OCLC's Terminologies Service

"The Library of Congress has opened its ID.LOC.GOV web service, Authorities and Vocabularies, with the Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH) as the initial offering. The primary goal of this service is to enable machines to programmatically access data at the Library of Congress but the web interface also provides simple user access. We view this service as a step toward exposing and interconnecting vocabulary and thesaurus data via URLs. For LCSH, we are fortunate to have been able to link terms to a similar service provided in Europe for RAMEAU, a French subject heading vocabulary closely coordinated with LCSH.

We are very interested to get feedback on the uses and usefulness of the service to inform ways that we might enhance it. (There is a comment form at the site.). Over the next few months we will also be expanding it to other vocabularies commonly found in standards that the Library supports such as the Thesaurus of Graphic Materials, geographic area, language, and relator codes, and preservation events and roles. "

Problem statement: Special collections materials are of increasing interest and importance. As materials from the general stacks become more ubiquitous (through "mass" digitization projects and as institutions move towards joint ownership of books and journals), special collections may become what defines a library collection. With the shift in importance, it's a good time for an examination of the end-to-end process that results in archival and special collections materials being delivered to interested users. The overarching goal is to achieve economies and efficiencies that permit these materials to be effectively described, properly disclosed, successfully discovered and appropriately delivered.

"The Cataloging Section of the National Library of Medicine® is pleased to announce a new e-learning course called Using Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) in Cataloging. It is available as a link from the Cataloging Section homepage. The course is a free set of modules and interactive exercises that students may take at their own pace without an instructor.

The course covers the use of MeSH in the cataloging environment and is divided into eight modules: Subject Analysis Principles, Introduction to Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) and the MeSH Browser, Selecting the Main Concept, Use of Topical Subheadings in MeSH, Geographic Headings, Publication Types, Names as Subject, and Deconstructed Headings vs. Subject Strings."

Abstract
Folksonomies have emerged as a means to create order in a rapidly expanding information environment whose existing means to organize content have been strained. This paper examines folksonomies from an evolutionary perspective, viewing the changing conditions of the information environment as having given rise to organization adaptations in order to ensure information "survival" - remaining findable. This essay traces historical information organization mechanisms, the conditions that gave rise to folksonomies, and the scholarly response, review, and recommendations for the future of folksonomies.

"The DLF Aquifer Metadata Working Group is proud to release a brief report summarizing our Working Group's activities through the life of the DLF Aquifer initiative, reflecting on the impact and effectiveness of these activities, and suggesting some directions future similar initiatives might explore. "

E-books: The Changing Standards Landscape
A Free NISO/BISG Standards Forum at the ALA Annual Conference 2009

Join this FREE, half-day educational forum to discover the most current
e-book standards and listen to thought leadership on the critical areas of
identification, formatting, digital rights management (DRM), and the
specific use needs of libraries.

Date: Friday, July 10th
Time: 12:30 p.m. - 4:00 p.m.
Location: Chicago, IL
RSVP: nisohq@niso.org

"The fifteen members of the RLG Partners Neworking Names Advisory Group have articulated the problem space that the research community needs to address and the necessary components for a “Cooperative Identities Hub” that would have the most impact across different target audiences.  The group developed fourteen use case scenarios around academic libraries and scholars, archivists and archival users, and institutional repositories that provide the context in which different communities would benefit from aggregating information about persons and organizations, corporate and government bodies, and families, and making it available on a network level.

The just published Networking Names report summarizes the group’s recommendations on the functions and attributes needed to support the use case scenarios. We look forward to hearing your reactions and comments!"

Nice piece about the Gotham Book Mart collection

National Archives project to shrinkwrap collections

Describes Rutgers project to shrinkwrap their Special Collections prior to a construction project

"CoOL" or Conservation OnLine gathers resources for preservation and conservation

"Every year, archives, libraries, museums, and historic preservation organizations set aside May 1 to participate in MayDay, an initiative to protect cultural heritage from disasters."

Links are to the scanned text of the 1997 edition of the ALA-LC Romanization Tables: Transliteration Schemes for Non-Roman Scripts, approved by the Library of Congress and the American Library Association, with the some exceptions

Final report of the ALCTS Non-English Task Force

"This new report summarizes the findings of research conducted by OCLC on what constitutes quality in library online catalogs from both end users' and librarians' points of view. Key findings:

* The end user's experience of the delivery of wanted items is as important, if not more important, than his or her discovery experience.
* End users rely on and expect enhanced content including summaries/abstracts and tables of contents.
* An advanced search option (supporting fielded searching) and facets help end users refine searches, navigate, browse and manage large result sets.
* Important differences exist between the catalog data quality priorities of end users and those who work in libraries.
* Librarians and library staff, like end users, approach catalogs and catalog data purposefully. End users generally want to find and obtain needed information; librarians and library staff generally have work responsibilities to carry out. The work roles of librarians and staff influence their data quality preferences.
* Librarians' choice of data quality enhancements reflects their understanding of the importance of accurate, structured data in the catalog."

Describes and illustrates models for recording data in multiple scripts in MARC records. One script may be considered the primary script of the data content of the record, even though other scripts are also used for data content.(Note: ASCII is used for the structural elements of the record, and most coded data are also specified within the ASCII range of characters.) The general models for multiscript data that are followed with MARC 21 are described below.

* Model A: Vernacular and transliteration. The regular fields may contain data in different scripts and in the vernacular or transliteration of the data. Fields 880 are used when data needs to be duplicated to express it in both the original vernacular script and transliterated into one or more scripts. There may be unlinked 880 fields.

* Model B: Simple multiscript records. All data is contained in regular fields and script varies depending on the requirements of the data. Repeatability specifications of all fields should be followed. Although the Model B record may contain transliterated data, Model A is preferred if the same data is recorded in both the original vernacular script and transliteration. Field 880 is not used.

Summary:
The WorldCat Special Collections and Archives Task Force final report includes an executive summary with four major recommendations. Specific issues identified by the task force are prioritized as high, medium, and lower significance. A separate group of problems with data was
also identified.

This response to the report begins with background on the task force and then treats each major and specific recommendation. OCLC provides a timeline for development or other activity for all the major recommendations and nine of the fourteen specific recommendations (numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 10, and 12). The timelines range from April 2009 into the future. Two recommendations (numbers 6 and 9) have been assigned problem reports to be investigated and resolved as part of monthly maintenance. Two recommendations (numbers 11 and 14) have no OCLC action, as the system is working as designed. Recommendation 13 has been fixed.

"The WorldCat Local (WCL) Special Collections Task Force was convened by OCLC to make recommendations to improve discovery of special collections and archival materials in local implementations of WCL."

The Board of the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) today voted to merge the Digital Library Federation (DLF) into CLIR as a program of the Council, starting July 1, 2009. The vote follows recommendations by a DLF Review Committee in March 2009 to merge the two organizations, and a unanimous vote of consent by the DLF Board on April 8.

Rules and Permissions for Audio-visual Media Copyright law and audio-visual materials

From the ACRL/NY Annual Symposium 2008: 

Exploring New Methods of Content Delivery: Three Trial Approaches
Amelia Brunskill, Liaison Librarian for the Sciences, Dickinson College
Maureen O'Brien Dermott, Asstistant Director of Access Services, Dickinson College

"WebJunction, the online learning community for librarians and library staff, is now offering a Custom Course Catalog, a new service that provides a central location to host, promote and track library staff training.

The Custom Course Catalog allows a library organization to build a training catalog to meet the specific needs of its staff. The catalog can combine an organization's own course listings with selections from WebJunction's online course offerings in an easy-to-manage, always-accessible Web environment."

The World Digital Library will launch on April 21, 2009.

The World Digital Library will make available on the Internet, free of charge and in multilingual format, significant primary materials from cultures around the world, including manuscripts, maps, rare books, musical scores, recordings, films, prints, photographs, architectural drawings, and other significant cultural materials. The objectives of the World Digital Library are to promote international and inter-cultural understanding and awareness, provide resources to educators, expand non-English and non-Western content on the Internet, and to contribute to scholarly research.

Drexel University Libraries' Scholarly Communication Symposium
Date: April 16, 2009 8:30 am - 1:30 pm
Location: Drexel University, Bossone Lobby

Washington DC--The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) Working Group on Special Collections, formed in 2007, has released a discussion report that identifies key issues in the management and exposure of special collections material in the 21st century.

The report uses a broad definition of "special collections," which encompasses distinctive material in all media and attendant library services. The group's main focus was on 19th- and 20th-century materials, including emerging digital materials and media, but most of the report applies with equal force to collecting and caring for materials from previous centuries. While the report focuses on special collections in North American research libraries, it has potential application more broadly.

...

The report includes overviews of and recommendations in three areas:

1. Collecting Carefully, with Regard to Costs, and Ethical and Legal Concerns
2. Ensuring Discovery and Access
3. The Challenge of Born-Digital Collections

From Outgoing blog:

"The Virtual International Authority File (VIAF) is a project jointly administered by LC, the BnF, the DNB and OCLC. The National Library of Sweden is also a participant, soon to be joined by several other libraries. We currently have about 7.8 million VIAF records built from 9.2 million source records."

Blog entry on recent changes to the Virtual International Authority File (VIAF)

This is a re-telling of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice from Mr. Darcy's viewpoint.   Interesting, but disappointing. This is the first of a trilogy, and apparently the author plans to take three books to tell a story that Austen handled in one.

The principles of the Open Content Alliance

Feature Article on Penn's Rare Books and Manuscript Library.   The Lea Library collection is mentioned.

Includes sample e-mails for dialogue with faculty

Facts at a glance - includes people, schools, campus, libraries etc.

"Comments and reports from the ALA Representative to the Joint Steering Committee on issues relating to the evolving text of Resource Description and Access (RDA)"

"

This hosted service represents a new generation metasearch service. It displays results quickly and simply, and gives the searcher unparalleled control over the search experience. These benefits are accomplished through features such as

* simultaneous searching of up to 100 databases almost instantly
* relevance ranking, sorting and merging of records across databases
* processing of returned hits at the rate of 2000 records per second
* faceted searching by resource, subject, author, date or any library-defined element

MasterKey's simplicity and power provide a metasearch experience unequaled by any other metasearch service."

Blog mentions the Mellon grant to catalog the Lea Library

"The Association for Library Collections & Technical Services will present James Cuno, president and director of the Art Institute of Chicago, as the featured speaker for the 2009 ALCTS President's Program at the ALA Annual Meeting in Chicago. The President's Program, which begins at 10:30 a.m. on Monday, July 13., is once again generously sponsored by Elsevier.

Dr. Cuno's recent publication, "Who Owns Antiquity? Museums and the Battle over Our Ancient Heritage", published by Princeton University Press, is the subject of his presentation. "

Palinet Sloan Mass digitization project

"The Library of Congress today announced the next phase of its investigation into the creation and distribution of bibliographic data in U.S. and Canadian libraries. The Library has commissioned a study to research and describe the current marketplace for cataloging records in the MARC format, with primary focus on the economics of current practices, including existing incentives and barriers to both contribution and availability. The study will be carried out by R2 Consulting LLC of Contoocook, N.H."

A revision of the Paris Principles

"The U.S. Government Printing Office (GPO) was directed by the Joint Committee on Printing (JCP) to determine the extent to which public access via the FDLP may be impaired by current or projected organizational, financial, technological, or other conditions affecting regional depository libraries. The study was delivered to the JCP and per their request GPO identified the report as "draft" and posted it on the FDLP Desktop for comment. The final report to the JCP was transmitted on January 6, 2009."

"Scholarly Information Practices in the Online Environment: Themes from the Literature and Implications for Library Service Development" by Carole L. Palmer, Lauren C. Teffeau and Carrie M. Pirmann.

"This report provides an expert review of the burgeoning literature on disciplinary research behaviors, synthesizes findings from decades of research on scholarly information practices and identifies key implications for libraries.

It was commissioned by OCLC Research and the RLG Partnership to increase awareness of the diverse evidence base on this topic and to stimulate further reflection on its importance for the research library community."

"i-Covers is a free software, conceived to search and download on Internet all sleeves, pockets, jackets, covers and movie posters.

i-Covers connects to Internet to interrogate 16 data bases different and to display the result of your research in graphic form. i-Covers is the indispensable software for all fans of movies and amateurs of videos, Vhs, Dvd and Divx."

"content@ingram is Ingram Data Services' richest and most comprehensive data set containing detailed bibliographic, metadata, and stocking information on all titles carried by Ingram. Ingram is proud of the unequalled integrity and breadth of product you will find in this database."

"Images - images@ingram encompasses more than 1.7 million full-color cover images that add instant visual appeal and interest to your website or in-store title reference system."

"The University of Pennsylvania (UP) libraries announced that it is teaming up with Kirtas Technologies, a scanning and digitization company, to try something a little bit different: selling a product that doesn't (yet) exist. Under the new partnership, users will be able to order custom print-on-demand (PoD) editions of the more than 200,000 texts among the Penn library's public domain holdings. The twist: nothing will get scanned until an order is placed. Unlike Google's large-scale Book Search scanning project, this digitization effort will be driven entirely by end-users."

Issues:

* Ways to acquire e-books
* How are e-books different from books? the same?
* What are the pricing models for e-books?
* Building print and e-book collections
* How to profile? Duplicate?
* Future of e-books

Includes transcript of the Midwinter 09 forum

"In response to requests from the cataloging community, OCLC is introducing the Expert Community Experiment, which enables cataloging members to make more changes to WorldCat records. During the Experiment, members with full-level cataloging authorizations have the ability to improve and upgrade WorldCat master records. The Experiment begins in February 2009 and lasts six months."

This is OCLC's response to the question 'what if WorldCat were more like Wikipedia'--I wonder how succesful this will be, considering the questions asked during the webinar.  It was clear that many of the participants hadn't been making upgrades and doing enrichment as previously possible with the same authorization level.   So, will this change people's behavior???

"RLG Partners participating in discussions about renovating descriptive practices have identified network-level integrating and sharing of metadata contributions as an area that would benefit from collective action. These contributions could come from curators, subject librarians, experts, users, etc., both locally and globally, that can enrich the descriptive metadata created by libraries, archives and museums. To be truly effective, we need to share and aggregate contributions added by users in many diverse environments."

"Spinner" helps to apply section 108 of the Copyright code--Reproduction by libraries and archives

Cool tool to get a quick idea of public domain status

Ad Hoc Task Force to Review the Proposed OCLC Policy for Use and Transfer of WorldCat Records
Final Report to the ARL Board

January 30, 2009

"SOLINET and PALINET Members Approve Merger!

The effective date for the new organization, Lyrasis, is April 1, 2009. We are committed to continuing business as usual as we combine our two organizations."

"This site serves as a placeholder for forthcoming web services that will enable both humans and machines to programmatically access authority data at the Library of Congress. The initial services offered are influenced by -- and therefore implement -- the Linked Data movement's approach of exposing and inter-connecting data on the Web via dereferenceable URIs. We aim to make resources available on this site within 6-8 weeks. Check this site regularly for more updates as we continue to develop this service!
Scope

The scope of this web service is to provide access to commonly found standards and vocabularies promulgated by the Library of Congress. This includes data values and the controlled vocabularies that house them. The main application will provide resolvability to values and vocabularies by assigning URIs. Each vocabulary will possess a resolvable URI, as will each data value within it. "

"INTERNATIONAL COALITION OF LIBRARY CONSORTIA (ICOLC)

Statement on the Global Economic Crisis and Its Impact on Consortial Licenses

January 19, 2009

Written on behalf of the many library consortia across the world that participate in the ICOLC, this statement has two purposes. It is intended to help publishers and other content providers from whom we license electronic information resources (hereafter simply referred to as publishers) understand better how the current unique financial crisis affects the worldwide information community. Its second purpose is to suggest a range of approaches that we believe are in the mutual best interest of libraries and the providers of information services."

"Classify is a prototype service designed to support the assignment of classification numbers for books, DVDs, CDs, and many other types of materials.
Overview

The prototype provides access to more than 36 million WorldCat records that contain Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC) numbers, Library of Congress Classification (LCC) numbers, or National Library of Medicine (NLM) Classification numbers.

The records are grouped using the OCLC FRBR Work-Set algorithm resulting in a work-level summary of the class numbers assigned a title. You can retrieve a classification summary by ISBN, ISSN, UPC, OCLC number, or author/title."

Cataloging productivity suite:

* Web-based cataloging client
* Supports copy & original cataloging
* Search millions of freely licensed records
* Share your records with other libraries

"In a series of webcasts, Dr. Barbara Tillett, Chief, Policy and Standards Division of the Acquisitions and Bibliographic Access Directorate, presents information about Resource Description and Access (RDA), the next generation cataloging code. Presentations currently available include one providing background and an overview of RDA, and one on the cataloging principles of RDA. Future presentations will focus on Functional Requirements of Bibliographic Records (FRBR), Functional Requirements of Authority Data (FRAD), and the content and structure of RDA. "

Home page of LC's Acquisitions and Bibliographic Access Directorate

"New Project: Missing Materials Beta Procedure

The loss of materials held in libraries and archives worldwide is a concern not only for owning institutions, but also for the international antiquarian book trade and global law enforcement. Centralized, highly visible exposure of "missing materials" is needed to help identify stolen materials and to deter future crimes.

OCLC Research, the RLG Partnership and the RBMS Security Committee and members of the cultural heritage collecting community are developing 'proof-of-concept' policies and procedures to experiment using network effects of WorldCat.org to broadcast centralized information about missing and stolen unique and rare materials."

Brief ALA history with postcard illustrations

"Since we were "fortunate enough" to be in at the ground level of the flooding in Iowa in Cedar Rapids and at the University of Iowa, we are documenting as best we can our experiences from beginning to end at our blog, Preservation Beat. We're slowly converting our paper logs into this blog in the hopes of helping others."

"Penn Libraries and Kirtas Technologies team up to make more than 200,000 books available for research and purchase"

"Everything behind a single searchbox.

Introducing the Summon^TM service, the revolutionary new unified discovery service from Serials Solutions. The Summon^TM unified discovery service allows the researcher to quickly search, discover and access reliable and credible library content. It goes beyond federated search, beyond next-generation catalogs to create an all-new service for libraries. Through one simple search, it provides instant access to the breadth of authoritative content that's the hallmark of great libraries - digital and print, audio and video, single articles to entire e-journals, and every format in between. No need to broadcast searches to other databases - it provides one search box for a researcher to enter any terms they want and quickly get credible results in one relevancy ranked-list."

From Cataloging Futures: New DLF report on metadata tools for aggregation

"The Digital Library Federation (DLF) has just issued a report by Greta de Groat, discovery metadata librarian at Stanford University: Future Directions in Metadata Remediation for Metadata Aggregators [pdf].

This report provides an overview of current and desired metadata tools used for mapping, correcting, and enhancing aggregated metadata."

"In response to requests from the cataloging community, OCLC is introducing the Expert Community Experiment which enables cataloging members to make more changes to WorldCat records. During the Experiment, members with full level cataloging authorizations have the ability to improve and upgrade WorldCat master records. The Experiment begins in February 2009, and lasts six months."

"New in 2008, the Mass Digitization Collaborative offers PALINET members the capability to contribute important historical and archival materials for digitization as part of our regional digital collection. Participation in the Collaborative makes digitization affordable and easy for PALINET members. PALINET staff facilitate the process by developing a collaborative collection development policy, procedures, standards, and workflows and by providing support services to project participants."

"Understanding PREMIS" is now available from the PREMIS Maintenance Activity website. This document is a "gentle" introduction to the PREMIS Data Dictionary for Preservation Metadata, giving an overview of its scope and goals. It does not give enough information for implementation, but will make the larger document, i.e. the PREMIS Data Dictionary, more familiar.

"Understanding PREMIS" was written by Priscilla Caplan, Florida Center for Library Automation, for the Library of Congress. It is available at:   http://www.loc.gov/standards/premis/understanding-premis.pdf

The full PREMIS Data Dictionary is available at: http://www.loc.gov/standards/premis/v2/premis-2-0.pdf

Dated June 2006

GODORT's Toolbox for Processing and Cataloging Federal Government Documents

The OCLC GovDoc service, available to regional and selective depository libraries, provides up-to-date, MARC-format cataloging records for U.S. government documents. As a GovDoc subscriber, your library regularly receives bibliographic records for only the government documents it holds. GovDoc is available to all federal depository libraries-institutional OCLC membership is not required to use the service.

This summary page has links to current guidelines; proposed policy and FAQ

Report on the Metadata Creation Survey

Karen blogs about the new report on the Metadata Creation Workflow survey

"OCLC Members Council and the OCLC Board of Trustees will jointly convene a Review Board of Shared Data Creation and Stewardship to represent the membership and inform OCLC on the principles and best practices for sharing library data. The group will discuss the Policy for Use and Transfer of WorldCat Records with the OCLC membership and library community.

The purpose of this Review Board is to engage the membership and solicit feedback and questions before the new policy is implemented. In order to allow sufficient time for feedback and discussion, implementation of the Policy will be delayed until the third quarter of the 2009 calendar year."

Interactive tutorial from OCLC

More on the OCLC record-use policy

A 3-part blog on the OCLC record-use policy and what steps we could take

"The new organizational structure--the Acquisitions and Bibliographic Access Directorate (ABA)--fully merges acquisitions and cataloging functions, streamlines workflows and deploys staff to take advantage of their unique language and subject skills"

Mellon grant to catalog the Lea Library is mentioned on p.3 of the PDF

Audio files and presentations from the 2008 Palinet conference

Keynote Address, Roy Tenant "Libraries, Archives+Museums (LAMs)Wide Open: Cultural Heritage Institutions in a NetworkedWorld"

The eXtensible Catalog Project is pleased to announce that we have launched our new website at http://www.extensiblecatalog.org/. This new website will be the main vehicle for distributing our open-source software once it is released in 2009. In the mean time, the website contains a wealth of information regarding the project, including publications, an overview of the software we are developing and the technologies that software will use, and a blog that has already been in use.

Washington DC-The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) and the American Library Association (ALA) have released "A Guide for the Perplexed: Libraries and the Google Library Project Settlement," by Jonathan Band, JD.

The guide is designed to help the library community better understand the terms and conditions of the recent settlement agreement between Google, the Authors Guild, and the Association of American Publishers concerning Google's scanning of copyrighted works. Band notes that the settlement is extremely complex and presents significant challenges and opportunities to libraries. The guide outlines and simplifies the settlement's provisions, with special emphasis on the provisions that apply directly to libraries.

KAren Calhoun's blog on the new OCLC policy

More on the new OCLC policy restricting reuse of records.

The full draft of RDA is now available for comment.

Palinet newsletter: 

"The focus of the camp was discussion and sharing of open source discovery tools. Developers from the VuFind, Helios, and Blacklight projects shared their progress. Topics included ILS connectivity, authority control, data importing, user interface issues, and federated search."

One of the largest U.S. member-owned and governed regional Library Networks, PALINET represents 600+ libraries, information centers, museums, archives, and other similar organizations throughout Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, West Virginia and beyond.

This paper is aimed at three audiences:

• Administrators who need to understand what FRBR is, how it benefits library users, and why trends towards increased digitization are making FRBRization even more important
  
• Researchers interested in automatic methods for FRBRizing MARC records
  
• Users of the FRBR Display Tool

"Solrmarc can index your marc records into apache solr. It also comes with an improved version of marc4j that improves handling of UTF-8 characters, is more forgiving of malformed marc data, and can recover from data errors gracefully. This indexer is used by blacklight (http://blacklight.rubyforge.org) and vufind (http://www.vufind.org/) but it can also be used as a standalone project."

"Electronic files of several out-of-print books, reports and symposium proceedings publishes by RLG, Inc. from 1988 to 2003 are now available in the OCLC Corporate Library Collection housed in the OCLC Digital Archive."

"Also on the site is a link to the draft, "How to Start Building a SUSHI Service." This work in progress by Tommy Barker, Software Engineer, IT and Digital Development at the University of Pennsylvania Library, is a valuable tool for those interested in getting started with building a client.

"I am thrilled we no longer have to download spreadsheets to retrieve Counter data," said Barker. "With SUSHI, we can conveniently automate data processing since it adheres to a common web service standard. Additionally, standardization could create a general solution to COUNTER data harvesting, which in turn encourages sharable solutions within the SUSHI community.""

Video of the Espresso on-demand printer

Discusses the use of rare and primary source materials in undergraduate education, with quotes from John Pollock at Penn

North Carolina Dublin Core Template

Qualified Dublin Core Generator

"DC-assist is a small, flexible help utility for metadata applications and is intended to complement the help pages embedded within existing software. "

Interesting analysis of how the courts applied fair use to the Harry Potter Lexicon case.   This was not just a case of the deep pockets winning.   The details of the ruling show it as a win for fair use.  

Preservation information from ALCTS and ALA

Announcement on PCC list:

"The ALCTS-CCS Subject Analysis Committee Subcommittee on Genre/Form Implementation invites interested parties to join a listserv discussion on issues relating to LC genre/form (155) subject headings and their implementation in library catalogs. The subcommittee will facilitate the discussion, posing a different question every week. The discussion will begin later this month. If you are interested in participating, please go to http://lists.ala.org/sympa/info/form-genre and choose Subscribe."

From the Almanac 10/14/08:  an A-Z listing of of Penn acronyms

Webinar
October 29, 2008
1:00 - 2:30 p.m. (Eastern Time)

"As a digital repository for the nation's great research libraries, HathiTrust (pronounced hah-TEE) brings together the immense collections of partner institutions.

HathiTrust was conceived as a collaboration of the thirteen universities of the Committee on Institutional Cooperation and the University of California system to establish a repository for these universities to archive and share their digitized collections. Partnership is open to all who share this grand vision."

Some of the Google Books libraries come together to save their digital collections for the future.

What is SlideShare?
SlideShare is the world's largest community for sharing presentations on the web. 

(share powerpoint presentations online, slideshows, slide shows, download presentations, widgets, MySpace codes)

Heidi Hoerman's presentation on RDA from the 2008 OLAC/MOUG/NOTSL Conference.  She reviews RDA and predicts: 

"RDA will die a quiet death.

AACR2r2010 will be published.

RDA's aims will be realized in due time."

Worth viewing the slides--wish I could have heard the presentation!

A rant against MARCXML:

"MARCXML isn't as much XML as it is MARC; it's really MARC with a bad hairdo"

John discusses his program to add LC subject headings to titles in the Online Books Page based on the LC classification

New Title Reports

YBP compiles reports each fiscal year showing data for all books we treated on our approval plan program. Our reports, which are widely used by academic librarians in their budgeting and planning, show new title output and price data broken down by subject and by publisher, with overall totals.

Librarian's toolbox

Links to popular OCLC resources

Our web statistics indicate that these links represent the most-often used resources on our web site.

reports, records, etc.

Although the focus of this article is on public libraries, it includes many vendors for foreign language publications

No Brief Candle: Reconceiving Research Libraries for the 21st Century
August 2008

New Report: The Impact of Digitizing Special Collections on Teaching and Scholarship, by Merrilee Proffitt and Jennifer Schaffner

DUBLIN, Ohio, USA, 18 July 2008-Subtitled, "Reflections on a Symposium about Digitization and the Humanities," the report consists of an overview and interpretation of perspecives provided at the RLG Programs symposium that was held in Philadelphia at the Chemical Heritage Foundation on 4 June 2008.

The PALINET08 Conference + Vendor Fair, "Wide Open: Your Library, Their Way," features the latest open source solutions for libraries. Participate in discussions with colleagues about open source innovations, digitization technologies, and modular solutions for today's libraries. Held in conjunction with the PALCI Fall Members' Meeting (Wednesday October 29, also at the Sheraton University City), members of both organizations can take advantage of innovative programming including an exciting round robin session with fellow members who have already undertaken open source initiatives. In addition to these discussions, there will be sessions on collaborative digitization, new approaches to resource sharing, cataloging developments and digital collection implementation.

Dates: Oct. 27-28

The keynote speaker is Roy Tennant, internationally recognized speaker and writer, well known throughout the library world for his expertise on the latest in technology for libraries.

DLF Fall Forum 2008: Providence, Rhode Island
1:00 p.m., Wednesday, November 12th, 2008 -
1:00 p.m., Friday, November 14th, 2008

This paper seeks to provide a philosophical framework for choices made about library priorities and cataloging policy, the contexts in which they are made, and the consequences they have for users. The authors invoke the notion of utility as a philosophical backdrop for dealing with competing library choices and the fallout from those prioritizations. They then look at how general utilitarian principles can contextualize the layers of wants, needs, and resource allocations in the research library environment. Finally, they examine issues and recent developments at the Cornell University Library as a case study with which to illustrate some of these principles.

With support from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Open Library Environment (OLE) Project will convene the academic library community in the design of an Open Library Management System built on Service Oriented Architecture. The project leaders are a multi-national group of libraries dedicated to thinking beyond the current model of an Integrated Library System and to designing a new system that is flexible, customizable and able to meet the changing and complex needs of modern, dynamic academic libraries. The end product will be a design document to inform open source library system development efforts, to guide future library system implementations, and to influence current Integrated Library System vendor products.

POTOMAC TECHNICAL PROCESSING LIBRARIANS
84th ANNUAL MEETING
October 17, 2008
9 a.m. - 3 p.m.
Center for Learning and Technology
Bowie State University
Bowie, Maryland

Tide or Tsunami? Riding the Wave of Change in Technical Services

Keynote Speaker: Pamela Bluh

"This curriculum is a teaching aid for an Introduction to Preservation course at Library and Information Science schools. It encompasses issues for libraries, archives, museums, and collections-holding institutions of all kinds. Educators are encouraged to modify, rearrange, and enrich the lesson plans in any way they see fit. Please read the section titled Before You Begin to gain a better understanding of the way the curriculum works."

360 degree view of the Lea Library

Note:  scroll & select from list

The 2009 Midwinter Meeting will be held in Denver, CO,
from Jan 23-28, 2009.

"This paper seeks to provide a philosophical framework for choices made about library priorities and cataloging policy, the contexts in which they are made, and the consequences they have for users. The authors invoke the notion of utility as a philosophical backdrop for dealing with competing library choices and the fallout from those prioritizations. They then look at how general utilitarian principles can contextualize the layers of wants, needs, and resource allocations in the research library environment. Finally, they examine issues and recent developments at the Cornell University Library as a case study with which to illustrate some of these principles."

Persistence of Memory:
Sustaining Digital Collections
December 9-10, 2008
Chicago, Illinois

Janet Swan Hill's report to the Subject Analysis Committee regarding the LC response to the LCWG report.

7/10/08

On July 9th, 2008, the Cataloging Policy and Support Office (CPSO) presented a report on the moving image genre/form project to the Library of Congress Acquisitions and Bibliographic Access (ABA) management team. The report includes recommendations for expanding the genre/form project beyond the moving image and radio program headings assigned and created by LC's Motion Picture, Broadcasting, and Recorded Sound Divison. ABA management has approved this expansion to include other disciplines and CPSO will be releasing further details on implementation strategies as these are developed.

Problem statement: Cultural heritage, bibliographic and archival communities use different controlled vocabularies for the resources that they manage. These controlled vocabularies may not be recognized by very diverse user communities, and ignored by large commercial information hubs and Internet search engines. Metadata needs to flow among diverse environments and reach users wherever they are. The semantic, hierarchical, and granular relationships in controlled vocabularies are often lost when retrieved outside the environment in which they were created.

Problem statement: Creating metadata that suits local needs, readily aggregates across communities, and is easily exposed to Internet search engines remains a costly enterprise. Metadata created by libraries, archives and museums is generally not available to the user communities that look first to Internet search engines. Although mapping data structures has become a commonplace solution to integrate descriptions, real interoperability across the libraries, archives and museums communities cannot be achieved without addressing differences of description at the data-content level.

Objective: Engage the RLG partnership in adapting descriptive practice to economic realities, user expectations, and the requirements of network-level services. Set new expectations for investing in metadata creation and maintenance, model attendant workflows, and facilitate the discovery of research institutions' resources by users wherever they are.

"This blog is a pilot. The editorial board of LITA's Information Technology and Libraries would like to create an environment in which readers can discuss each issue of ITAL. We'll ask the authors of the articles to monitor the discussion for a period of time after publication so that you'll have a chance to interact with them, too."

"A few days ago, just before hitting thirty million books, we hit one million user-uploaded covers. So, we've decided to give them away-to libraries, to bookstores, to everyone."

All you need is a LibraryThing Developer Key and simple code in an image tag to image on your website. catalog,e tc.

At a glance

* A new Web service that provides information about serial publications' history, variant editions, and current metadata
* Offers machine-ready XML service, for easy integration into library applications
* A human-ready demonstration interface known as Title History available at no charge
* Included at no extra charge in OCLC cataloging subscriptions

In an effort to provide opportunities for ALA members to connect with and learn from one another, ALA President Jim Rettig is creating "The ALA Connections Salon."

Like European discussion salons, the ALA Connections Salon will provide an online environment for members to participate in formal and informal discussions centered on a specific topic. The salons will take place on OPAL (Online Programming for All Libraries; www.opal-online.org), a user-friendly site offering online rooms where participants can interact via voice-over-IP, text chatting, synchronized browsing and other functions.

A pilot salon will take place from 2 p.m. to 3 p.m. Eastern Standard Time on Friday, Aug. 15. During this pilot salon Peters will interview his collaborators on this project, Genevieve S. Owens (Williamsburg Regional Library, Va.) and Karen G. Schneider (Equinox Software, Inc.). To join the discussion, log onto OPAL at http://www.conference321.com/masteradmin/room.asp?id=rs423c62c43df0 and follow the instructions for entering the meeting space.

Note comments on:  Task Force on Electronic Member Participation

"Cataloger's Learning Workshop is a clearinghouse portal for cataloging and metadata training resources for information workers. The scope of Cataloger's Learning Workshop includes bibliographic information training in the context of formal library and information science degree programs, as well as continuing education for library practitioners. Cataloger's Learning Workshop is a cooperative project of the Library of Congress, the Program for Cooperative Cataloging, and the Association for Library Collections and Technical Services, a division of the American Library Association.
"

The Cataloging Distribution Service, Library of Congress, has posted to its web site an announcement that the training materials posted to the Cataloger*s Learning Workshop will be available for downloading at no cost on or about 1 October 2008.

This is the famous Greene-Meissner article:

A call to archivists to stop being perfectionists in processing collections, and just get more done.

From p. 2 "How, then, do we break these chains of unhelpful practice that holds us to inadequate productivity? We need to articulate a new set of arrangement, preservation and description guidelines the (1) expedites getting collection materials into the hands of users, (2) that assures arrangement of materials /adequate/ to user needs, (3) that takes the /minimal/ steps necessary to physically preserve the collection materials, and (4) that describes materials /sufficient/ to promote use. In other words, it is time that we focused on what we absolutely need to do instead of on all the things that we might do in a world of unbounded resources."

"Bibliocommons is a complete social discovery system for libraries.

We're completely re-thinking the online library experience. We've had our heads down building and delivering groundbreaking new services, transforming online library catalogues from searchable inventory systems into engaging social discovery environments."

For the product in action see: http://opl.bibliocommons.com/dashboard

Interesting blog post about an ExLibris presentation at ELUNA '08 about their strategy for a URM (=unified resource management) which would be a modular replacement for their existing ILS. Sounds like an ambitious timeline. Not clear whether this is a replacement for Voyager or Aleph or both or neither.

Cuil (pronounced Cool) is a new search engine, which claims to index more content than Google and shows results in the magazine format (rather than list).

Developers who need to translate metadata now have access to a new demonstration service.

OCLC Crosswalk Web Service translates metadata records from one format to another and will process up to 500 records from all requests per user, per day. With the aid of the WSDL file, users can develop a client to access the service, which is available on the OCLC ResearchWorks Web site for an undecided duration.

The WorldCat Developer's Network is a community of developers collaborating in a "sandbox" environment in order to propose, discuss and test WorldCat Grid Services. This open source, code-sharing infrastructure improves the value of OCLC data for all users by encouraging new Grid Service uses.

WorldCat Affiliate Services
Let users of your Web site discover content and resources in WorldCat libraries worldwide

Make library-based resources part of your Web experience! WorldCat Affiliate Services integrate seamlessly into your application and let your users see complementary sources of information, look up physical items in WorldCat member libraries, and link to electronic resources such as full-text articles.

These tools provide benefits for any Web site or Web-enabled application, including search engines, online databases, e-commerce sites, e-learning environments as well as library systems and similar information services. Information is drawn from quality bibliographic and institutional metadata contributed and updated by thousands of librarians and other information professionals.

Link to:  Robert E. Wolverton, "Becoming an Authority on Authority Control: An Annotated Bibliography of Resources," Library Resources & Technical Services 50, no. 1 (2006):31-41.

At a glance

* Makes your library's electronic serials collection more visible and increases its usage since the service makes it easier for library users and staff to find and use the full-text electronic serials in your library collection.
* Keeps your electronic serials holdings up to date in WorldCat in a cost-effective, simple and efficient way.

"The discovery experience does not have to be tied to the inventory management system. "

Links to many of his postings on the future of the catalog

DLF ILS Discovery Interface Task
Group (ILS-DI)
Technical Recommendation

An API for effective interoperation between integrated library systems and external discovery applications
June 4, 2008

In 2007-2008, the DLF convened a Task Group to recommend standard interfaces for integrating the data and services of the Integrated Library System (ILS) with new applications supporting user discovery. This page gives access to the group's recommendation, related materials, and information on followup activities.

Fact sheet from Univ. of Rochester's eXtensible Catalog Project

Famous Catalogers’ Course

Created by Lois Reibach, this blog will discuss news and trends in authority control, and new uses of authority data. Developments in controlled vocabularies will also be covered.

Handy chart for interpreting German Fraktur

RLG Programs releases "Seeking Sustainability," a casual report on RLG's exploration of ways to make access to digitized special collections self-supporting

From Karen S-Y (RLG):

"Tracking serial title changes outside the MARC record. Serial title changes can be challenging, and it can be difficult to parse all of them from what's in MARC records. OCLC recently introduced a new xISSN Web service, and it includes a neat Title History tool. (Lorcan Dempsey blogged about it at http://orweblog.oclc.org/archives/001664.html - he includes one of the examples in the Title History visualization tool, the one for 0888-5885, the Industrial and engineering chemical research.) My favorite of the examples is the one for Journal of the Chemical Society, 0368-1769 which I thought demonstrates just how complicated title histories can be!"

"Categories for the Description of Works of Art (CDWA) describes the content of art databases by articulating a conceptual framework for describing and accessing information about works of art, architecture, other material culture, groups and collections of works, and related images. The CDWA includes 512 categories and subcategories. A small subset of categories are considered core in that they represent the minimum information necessary to identify and describe a work. The CDWA includes discussions, basic guidelines for cataloging, and examples. You may print an overview of the CDWA categories and definitions as a PDF (see left navigation).

What is CDWA Lite?
CDWA Lite is an XML schema to describe core records for works of art and material culture based on the CDWA and the CCO. CDWA Lite records are intended for contribution to union catalogs and other repositories using the Open Archives Initiative (OAI) harvesting protocol."

"OCLC has launched a pilot project to explore upstream metadata capture and enhancement using publisher and vendor ONIX metadata. Pilot partners from the publishing, vendor and library communities are assisting us in this effort. We hope the pilotwill result in ongoing processes for the early addition of new title metadata to WorldCat and enhanced quality and consistency in upstream title metadata used by multiple channels."

"Terminology Services are web-based services for controlled vocabularies. More than 4.5 million terms, 2.4 million concept links, and 2 million contextual data elements are accessible to your applications.

Each vocabulary is fully indexed and searchable. Vocabulary data is retrievable in multiple representations including the MARC authority format, used by libraries, and the SKOS Core Vocabulary used in Semantic Web applications."

Lorcan describes OCLC's Terminology services:

"We have now made a set of controlled vocabularies available as web services for experiment. In effect, these services make a variety of subject vocabularies available as resources on the web in ways that individual vocabulary elements can be found, referenced and recombined in applications. They are 'webified'."

Loracen writes about the problems of linking/sharing national authority files, and how the problem compounds when we add indexing to a discovery layer along with bibliographic records.

Since previous posts about linking to WorldCat Identities are getting out of date, here's a summary of the current API. There are several ways of linking to Identities:

1. Directly to the pages themselves
2. OpenURL
3. NameFinder searches
4. SRU searches

The paper explains the background to the development of Resource Description and Access, a metadata content standard intended for international use by a wide range of metadata communities. The paper discusses the implications of RDA for library systems.

The major authority record exchange partners (British Library, Library and Archives Canada, Library of Congress, National Library of Medicine, and OCLC) have developed a plan to allow the addition of non-Latin script data (also known as nonroman script data) to name authority records distributed as part of the NACO program.

The addition of non-Latin script data is scheduled to begin on July 13, 2008

Classify is a prototype service designed to support the assignment of classification numbers for books, DVDs, CDs, and many other types of materials.
Overview

The prototype provides access to more than 36 million WorldCat records that contain Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC) numbers, Library of Congress Classification (LCC) numbers, or National Library of Medicine (NLM) Classification numbers.

The records are grouped using the OCLC FRBR Work-Set algorithm resulting in a work-level summary of the class numbers assigned a title. You can retrieve a classification summary by ISBN, ISSN, UPC, OCLC number, or author/title.

In 2006, the Director for Acquisitions and Bibliographic Access (ABA) at the Library of Congress (LC) requested the Cataloging Policy and Support Office to review of the pros and cons of pre- versus post-coordination of Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH). The final report (2/19/08) recommended, and the ABA Management accepted, that LC catalogers continue to apply pre-coordination of LCSH terms.

...

The LC report documents the recommendations approved in June 2007, regarding further automation of the assignment of subject heading strings, the expansion of machine validation of strings, further simplification of practices including the fixed order of subdivisions, exploration into LC's use of the current generation of sophisticated search engines, the enabling of more social tagging additions to the LC records, and encouragement of Web applications that take advantage of LCSH. On this latter point, LC intends to make LCSH freely available on the Web in a SKOS (Simple Knowledge Organization Schema) format for the world at large.

Deanna Marcum's response to the "On The Record" report of the LC working group (June 1, 2008)

Ten Actions for ALCTS

The ALCTS Task Group on the LC Working Group report, "On the Record," has reviewed our overall analysis of the report, with the task of identifying up to ten actions which ALCTS and its various bodies might undertake. Our list of potential actions follows. They are grouped, not in order of priority, but approximately in the order in which the WG recommendations appear.

We have put the emphasis on ten actions for ALCTS, as compared with ten WG recommendations. In many instances, multiple WG recommendations may (and probably should) be addressed under one umbrella. We have suggested ALCTS bodies which may be involved in these actions, as well as potential collaborators from outside ALCTS. These suggestions are not intended to be exclusive, but simply to suggest the possibilities for collaboration. Representatives from other ALCTS/non-ALCTS groups may be involved.

Wiki for ALCTS Task Group's on the LC Working Group Report recommendations regarding On the Record: the Report of the Library of Congress Working Group on the Future of Bibliographic Control Report.

LJ's summary of the LC response to 'On The Record'

Goal of This Unit:

* To acquaint and/or refresh those who need to become familiar with issues of collection management, serials records functions, and preservation.

Goal of This Unit

To acquaint and/or refresh those who need to become familiar with the current aspects of selection, funding, and acquisitions, specific to serial publications, regardless of format (print or e-resources).

Goals of this unit

1. To acquaint and/or refresh those who need to become familiar with current aspects of descriptive cataloging specific to serials
2. To acquaint those who need to become familiar with historical trends in serials cataloging

TITLE: Cataloging Principles and RDA: Resource Description and Access

SPEAKER: Barbara Tillett
EVENT DATE: 06/10/2008
RUNNING TIME: 49 minutes

DESCRIPTION:

The second in a series on RDA: Resource Description and Access, the next generation cataloging code designed for the digital environment. This presentation deals with the cataloging principles that have influenced the development of RDA; the challenges they present to the international sharing of bibliographic and authority data; and the challenges they present to the developers of RDA.

TITLE: Resource Description and Access: Background / Overview

SPEAKER: Barbara Tillett
EVENT DATE: 05/14/2008
RUNNING TIME: 67 minutes

DESCRIPTION:

RDA (Resource Description and Access), the next generation cataloging code designed for the digital environment, is under development. This presentation provides background on its development and a general overview of the conceptual models, international principles, and structure of this new code.

"The Co-Publishers of RDA Online (the American Library Association, the Canadian Library Association, and the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals) have reached the conclusion that further time is required to complete the development of the new software that will be used for distributing the full draft of RDA for constituency review.

The full draft was originally scheduled for release on August 4, 2008. Instead, it will now be issued in October 2008. The three month time period allocated for comments on the full draft is unchanged, and in this new schedule will extend from October into January 2009. More specific dates for RDA's final release will be forthcoming shortly."

Mary Ghikas, Senior Associate Executive Director of the ALA, put together an informal snapshot of numbers and events

"This paper examines the use of non subject related tags in social bookmarking tools. Previous studies of tagging determined that many common tags are not directly subject related but are in fact affective tags dwelling on a user's emotional response to a document or are time and task related tags related to a users current projects or activities. These tags have been analysed to examine their role in the tagging process."

RLG Programs 2008 Annual Partners Meeting
June 2-4, 2008

Now updated with speaker presentations and summaris of the breakout sessions

"The University of Tennessee Digital Library Center has released the UT-DLC MODS Metadata Workbook to the library community. Developed by Cricket Deane under the direction of Melanie Feltner-Reichert, this open source client-side software provides control of date formats and other problematic fields at the point of creation, while shielding creators from the need to work in XML. The tool consists of a series of web pages that enable users to easily generate complex, valid MODS metadata records that meet the 1-4 levels of specification outlined in the Digital Library Federation Implementation Guidelines for Shareable MODS Records, (DLF Aquifer Guidelines November 2006)."

LJ's Picks & Pans for ALA in Disneyland

"Both Lifehacker and Micro Persuasion have compiled excellent lists recommending useful bookmarklets to make your browsing experience more effective. These handy little applications are a combo of the bookmark and the applet (a small computer program) and they set up one-click buttons which appear on your browser and perform a specific function."

Formerly Promptcat

The Future of Cataloging: A PALINET Symposium (Thursday, May 29, 2008, The College of Physicians of Philadelphia)

Keynote Address:Karen Calhoun, Vice President, OCLC WorldCat and Metadata Services, will present an overview of the current state of cataloging and the future direction of bibliographic control.

Now updated with audio recordings and slides (from most of the presenters)!

Screencast (slides & audio) of an entertaining presentation about tagging in LibraryThing given by Tim Spalding at the
Association of Christian Librarians.

[side note: He claims that there are more things tagged daily in LT than the total number of PennTags done in 2 years]

From Glenn E. Patton:

"To get a sense of which MARC data elements are used in the various indexes for WorldCat, take a look at "Searching WorldCat Indexes" (http://www.oclc.org/support/documentation/worldcat/searching/searchworl
dcatindexes/). Click on "List of Fields and Subfields Indexed in Tag Order" in the navigation bar on the left of the screen to see a list of MARC elements and the indexes in which they are used."

DigCCurr 2009:
Digital Curation Practice, Promise and Prospects

April 1-3, 2009
Chapel Hill, NC USA

Important dates:
September 30, 2008
Proposals due for contributed papers, panels and posters

Seeking Sustainability: "a casual report about RLG's exploration of ways to make access to digitized special collections self-supporting, prepared by RLG Program Officer, Ricky Erway.

The report begins with an overview of RLG Cultural Materials and Trove.net (two services RLG offered prior to the RLG/OCLC combination) and discusses why they were curtailed. The findings regarding sustainability are based on RLG's experiences with subscription access, image licensing, and relevant advertising, as well as attempts at sponsorship and content licensing with other Web portals. The report captures a moment in time, but should be of interest to anyone pondering the question of how to provide access to and sustain library, archive and museum resources.

This report is part of an ongoing series of papers from OCLC Programs and Research to promote evidence-based practices that are likely to have an impact on research institutions and the communities they serve."

More on using the Google Book Search cover images

My slides from the The Future of Cataloging: A PALINET Symposium (5/29/08).   I was part of a panel responding to Karen Calhoun's keynote address:  Traveling Through Transitions in Technical Services: From Surviving to Thriving

Everybody's Libraries blog posting about the “first sale doctrine” and copyright

"This site is designed to make it easier to find materials before, during, and after ALA conferences. If you are a presenter at an ALA conference, we ask that you please post your session materials here or add a link to them if they are hosted on another site. It is also our hope that working groups within ALA will use this resource to link to materials generated from ALA conferences, such as meeting minutes, collaborative documents, etc. Thank you!"

"Thomas Mann's detailed review of the Report of the Working Group on the Future of Bibliographic Control. The paper also examines the reorganization of LC's cataloging department proposed by Library management, and the predicably damaging impact it will have on libraries in all Congressional districts. "

This forum allowed presenters to share various metadata related tools (including MARCedit, Archon, Metadata analysis tool, etc.)

Website includes links to a summary page for each tool.

John Mark Ockerbloom's review of the Palinet Symposium on the future of cataloging

4/22/08 the Guardian had a supplement dealing with libraries and technology...about 15 articles in all.

An excerpt from the introduction:

"Academic libraries are changing faster than at any time in their history. Information technology, online databases, and catalogues and digitised archives have put the library back at the heart of teaching, learning and academic research on campus."

July 9th 2008 - Bucknell University - Lewisburg, Pennsylvania

Resource Description and Access (RDA): Joint Statement of the Library of Congress, the National Library of Medicine, and the National Agricultural Library on Resource Description and Access (May 1, 2008)

Steve Coffman's article from March 1999 - an Amazom-influenced view of library catalogs and delivery of materials

How much did this influence WorldCat.org?

Brief video about the Annenberg Library renovation, summer 2008

From LibraryThing:  scripts for getting book cover images from Google

DUBLIN, Ohio, USA, 19 May 2008-OCLC and Google Inc. have signed an agreement to exchange data that will facilitate the discovery of library collections through Google search services.

Under terms of the agreement, OCLC member libraries participating in the Google Book Search^TM program, which makes the full text of more than one million books searchable, may share their WorldCat-derived MARC records with Google to better facilitate discovery of library collections through Google.

March 14, 2008
Google Unveils Tools to Integrate Its Digitized Books Into Campus Library Catalogs

"This week Google unveiled a set of software protocols that allow libraries to essentially merge Goolge's collection with their own."

ALCTS events at ALA Annual 2008

From ALCTS ANO:

"The Electronic Resources Interest Group now has a blog. The ERIG blog was developed and is maintained by Jennifer Lang. Announcements and updates to upcoming programs and speakers' presentation slides will be posted to the blog."

BIBCO's core record standards combined in chart form

Nine questions to guide you in choosing a metadata schema

Marie R. Kennedy

This article is a guide for collection developers at the point of considering a metadata schema for their digital collection. The nine questions asked in this article will assist a developer in clarifying how he wants the collection to be organized, described, and used. This article uses examples to illustrate how these questions guided the development of a digital collection built at the University of Southern California.

MetaArchive/LOCKSS Distributed Preservation Networks Workshop

Joint Conference on Digital Libraries (JCDL)
June 20, 2008 - Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Omni William Penn Hotel

This all-day workshop will provide information and training for institutions seeking to build or join LOCKSS-based distributed digital preservation networks. Please consider attending if you are interested in learning more about the technical logistics and operational considerations of hosting or participating in a Private LOCKSS Network for distributed preservation.

This is a revision of the 1961 "Paris Principles"

Comments due by June 30, 2008, to Barbara Tillett, Chair, IFLA's IME ICC Planning Committee at btil@loc.gov or fax to +1 (202) 707-6629.

See form at: http://www.ifla.org/VII/s13/icc/IME-ICC_final_vote_form_200804.doc

"As previously announced, NACO libraries may begin to add non-Latin script references to name authority records beginning in June 2008. A list of Frequently Asked Questions has just been posted to provide additional information on this project at:

http://www.loc.gov/catdir/cpso/nonlatinfaq.html "

Images of Fore-Edge Paintings from Boston Public Library

"Planet Cataloging is an automatically-generated aggregation of blogs related to cataloging and metadata"

The Penn Library Collections at 250

Early Modern History 

Reprinted from The Penn Library Collections at 250: From Franklin to the Web, (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Library, 2000), pages 33-59.

ScholarlyCommons@Penn 

Brief description of Lea collection and a brief Lea biography

Finding Aid 

Lea, Henry Charles, 1825-1909
Papers, ca. 1830-1935

This lecture series honors Henry Charles Lea (1825-1909), one of America's greatest historians of the Middle Ages.

Lea's Library and papers are housed in the Rare Book and Manuscript Library. The lecture has been hosted annually by the Penn Libraries since 2004.

"Ten things Google has found to be true".  Is there a message for libraries?  

11th Annual LITA National Forum
October 16-19, 2008
Hilton Netherland Plaza Hotel, Cincinnati, OH

From Cataloging Futures: 

"Martha Yee has a new article available at the UC eScholarship repository, Cataloging, Compared to Descriptive Bibliography, Abstracting and Indexing Services and Metadata."

Thom Hickey describes a project that is controlling millions of headings in OCLC by linking them to the NACO authority files 

"Right now we are working our way through the a set of fairly easy 26 million headings, personal names that match an authority record on multiple subfields."

[I guess 'easy' is relative] 

This is a refinement of their earlier program: Cyril.

Apparently adds 880s for Cyrillic based on the existing transliterated fields.

How can we advance arts and humanities research through the development of share