Blog about the ACRL report: "Futures thinking for academic librarians: Higher Education in 2025"

"The report has identified 26 possible scenarios for academic libraries in the year 2025, the distant horizon being justified by a need to see beyond our current woes. It impressively handles very up-to-date ideas on higher education and ponders their potential impact on academic libraries, and this adds to the value of the report. Then each scenario is positioned on a quadrant that plots impact against probability."

Abstract

The Resource Description and Access (RDA) standard, due to be released this coming summer, has included since May 2007 a parallel effort to build Semantic Web enabled vocabularies. This article describes that effort and the decisions made to express the vocabularies for use within the library community and in addition as a bridge to the future of library data outside the current MARC-based systems. The authors also touch on the registration activities that have made the vocabularies usable independently of the RDA textual guidance. Designed for both human and machine users, the registered vocabularies describe the relationships between FRBR, the RDA classes and properties and the extensive value vocabularies developed for use within RDA.

The Metadata is the Interface: Better Description for Better Discovery of Archives and Special Collections,
Synthesized from User Studies

Jennifer Schaffner
Program Officer OCLC Research

From the press release:

"Washington DC-The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) has published Processing Decisions for Manuscripts & Archives, SPEC Kit 314, which examines the current policies and practices for processing manuscript and archival collections in Special Collections. This SPEC Kit is organized around four general areas: personnel, job responsibilities, and training; processing policies, procedures, and priorities; impacts on processing decisions; and management tools.

...

The survey responses speak to the classic issues of the management of processing: how to process collections efficiently but yet adequately so that collections are usable with minimal meditation; how to balance demands for more description and item-level cataloging (digitization) with initiatives to make more collections available ("more product, less processing"); and how to manage staff effectively and to assess processing progress."

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.

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.

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."

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.

"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."

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.

mentions Penntags, but attributes to Penn State

"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"

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."

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.

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.

"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 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.

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. "

"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."

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."

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

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."

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

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."

"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

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

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

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.

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.

"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."

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.

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

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

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)

"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."

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."

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."

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.

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."

"I am pleased to announce that the RLG Partner Copyright Investigation Summary Report is now available. This report summarizes interviews conducted between August and September 2007 with staff from eight partner institutions. Interviewees shared information about how and why institutions investigate and collect copyright evidence, both for mass digitization projects and for items in special collections. This report is one of the deliverables of the Contribute to the Development of a Registry of Copyright Evidence Project that is part of our Create New Structures and Service Areas work agenda program."

It details a web service that OCLC is providing for metadata conversion ("Crosswalk Web Service"); ... it gives a thorough and well-written look at the technical details of generalizing data conversion."

The subcommittee is now pleased to make available the final report of this investigation, available from . The release will also be announced this week at the 2008 ALA Midwinter Meeting in Philadelphia."

Cataloging is the foundation of librarianship, and catalogers are professionals with special skills that set them apart from the profession in general and give them unique ethical responsibilities.

AALL's official response to the report of the LC Working Group on the Future of Bibliographic Control

OCLC's response (written by Karen Calhoun) to the draft report of the LC Working Group on the Future of 
Bibliographic Control

We conducted this survey in July and August 2007 among 18 RLG partners in the United States and the United Kingdom, selected because they had "multiple metadata creation centers" on campus that included libraries, archives, and museums and had some interaction among them. (Ten of these partners are also represented on this focus group.) Our objective was to gain a baseline understanding of current descriptive metadata practices and dependencies, the first project in our program to change metadata creation processes."

From catalogablog: 

Smith, Tiffany (2007) Cataloging and You: Measuring the Efficacy of a Folksonomy for Subject Analysis. In Lussky, Joan, Eds. Proceedings 18th Workshop of the American Society for Information Science and Technology Special Interest Group in Classification Research, Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

"Dan Chudnov has done a lot of thinking on how itunes and zeroconf could fit into libraries, collected here:

http://onebiglibrary.net/taxonomy/term/39

And a good starting point is here:

http://onebiglibrary.net/story/zeroconf-meta-opensearch-part-one

In fact, I think Dan answers the question brilliantly by posing another question: "shouldn't our whole libraries be as easy to connect and share as iTunes?" Sounds like a good candidate for a NGC to me."

This SPEC survey investigated how metadata is implemented in ARL member libraries: which staff are creating metadata and for what kinds of digital objects, what schemas and tools they use to create and manage metadata, what skills metadata staff need and how they acquire them, and the organizational changes and challenges that metadata has brought to libraries."

As the project team investigates long-term sustainability issues for the Variations3 software, we have begun thinking about what a truly FRBR-ized version of the metadata model would look like, and if changing to this type of model would make our system more sustainable and interoperable. As a first step towards answering these questions, members of the Variations3 project team have released a report outlining the potential application of FRBR to a system designed to deliver musical content in a library environment."

User tagging of library resources: Toward a framework for system evaluation
JONATHAN FURNER (University of California, Los Angeles, USA)

 Presented at IFLA 2007

The aim of the program was to demonstrate how institutions can provide new methods for display, use and management of digital objects on their websites and in their repositories, using widely available open source XML tools."

June 25, 2007

The Levels of Adoption document is intended to supplement the Digital Library Federation / Aquifer Implementation Guidelines for Shareable MODS Records, released in November 2006 under the auspices of the DLF Aquifer initiative. The Shareable MODS Guidelines represent a record-centric view of Aquifer's goals, whereas it is often helpful to set priorities for metadata creation with a user- and use-centric view. The newly-released Levels of Adoption document describes five general categories of user functionality that are likely to be supported by following specific recommendations from the Guidelines. It attempts to provide additional guidance to MODS implementers in the planning process by documenting what sorts of functionality is possible when certain elements of the Guidelines are
followed."

Why? Students often start their research outside of the library's Web site, so it made sense to put links in one of the top Web reference resources to lead students back to resources available to them in the library."

And the harm this causes.

The award panel state, "This captivatingly crafted article brings a panoply of historiography and knowledge organization to bear on the problem of how to define and describe the records of evanescence: that is, performances. The dream metaphor, which is all mixed up with the show-biz metaphor, which reaches back to Shakespeare's Tempest is all too apt for the nature of performances, and especially for their treatment with FRBR. The paper is timely, original, innovative, extremely well-documented, and of enduring
value. It has appeared at a critical juncture for the application of the FRBR model in the bibliographic control of performances. We applaud the authors. Bravo!"

The IFLA Working Group on Functional Requirements and Numbering of Authority Records is pleased to announce that a 2nd draft of "Functional Requirements for Authority Data" (previously titled "Functional Requirements for Authority Records") is now available for worldwide review. This draft, updated in response to comments received during the previous review, is on the IFLA web site at http://www.ifla.org/VII/d4/wg-franar.htm .

Comments should be sent by July 15, 2007 to:
Glenn Patton
Email: pattong@oclc.org

Issue Date: 12-Jan-2007
Abstract: The paper presents a model for academic libraries for the next 20 years. The parts of the model are: 1.) Complete the migration from print to electronic collections; 2.) Retire legacy print collections; 3.) Redevelop the library space; 4.) Reposition library and information tools, resources, and expertise, and 5.) Migrate the focus of collections from purchasing materials to curating content. The interactions of the parts of the model and organizational issues for implementation are explored.
Description: Paper presented at "Visions of Change," California State University at Sacramento, January 26, 2007.

from publisher...

What is the magic formula for turning a place into a high-tech capital? How can a city or region become a high-tech powerhouse like Silicon Valley? For over half a century, through boom times and bust, business leaders and politicians have tried to become "the next Silicon Valley," but few have succeeded. This book examines why high-tech development became so economically important late in the twentieth century, and why its magic formula of people, jobs, capital, and institutions has been so difficult to replicate. Margaret O'Mara shows that high-tech regions are not simply accidental market creations but "cities of knowledge"--planned communities of scientific production that were shaped and subsidized by the original venture capitalist, the Cold War defense complex.

At the heart of the story is the American research university, an institution enriched by Cold War spending and actively engaged in economic development. The story of the city of knowledge broadens our understanding of postwar urban history and of the relationship between civil society and the state in late twentieth-century America. It leads us to further redefine the American suburb as being much more than formless "sprawl," and shows how it is in fact the ultimate post-industrial city. Understanding this history and geography is essential to planning for the future of the high-tech economy, and this book is must reading for anyone interested in building the next Silicon Valley.

Margaret Pugh O'Mara teaches history at Stanford University. The dissertation this book is based upon won the Urban History Association's award for Best Dissertation in Urban History completed in 2002.

From EDUCAT:

Taylor, Arlene G. "Teaching Authority Control." Cataloging & Classification Quarterly 38, no. 3/4 (2004): 43-57.  Also published in _Authority Control in Organizing and Accessing Information: Definition and International Experience_. Arlene G. Taylor and Barbara B. Tillett, eds. New York: The Haworth Information Press, 2004), pp. 43-57.

It contains several suggestions from people on this list [EDUCAT] as to ways to teach authority control (and also substantiates the very difficult task that it seems to be for all of us to get the point across).

Lessing says

Yochai Benkler’s book, The Weath of Networks, is out. This is — by far — the most important and powerful book written in the fields that matter most to me in the last ten years. If there is one book you read this year, it should be this. The book has a wiki; it can be downloaded as a pdf for free under a Creative Commons license; or it can be bought at places like Amazon.

Read it. Understand it. You are not serious about these issues — on either side of these debates — unless you have read this book.