repositories for the rest of us

It's a megalist not a bibliography

2008-09-13T16:02:00.000-07:00

Here's a NY Times article on antiquarian book bibliographies being used as entrepreneurial tools. Interesting use of metadata, no? Librarians can learn something from this. Compiling bibliographies is a service. A service which, in this case, has a niche market willing to spend on the long-tail, and can easily be automated. It's low-hanging fruit for savvy entrepreneurs gathering business opportunities.

Librarians compile bibliographies all the time. How do we sell these services? Using a word like megalist rather than bibliography would help, no doubt. Do we consider the needs of our particular niche market? Do we put those needs in context with rest of the information universe? I think most librarians think they do. User needs assessment has a long and strong megalist in the LIS realm. Librarians pride themselves on creating collections and designing services based on data gained from studying user behavior, based on many methodologies. Yet, use of traditional library services is declining. And, the NY Times article shows us that other people are providing the same services librarians do and possibly doing it better. Obviously, user needs assessment is not enough. Because,

Users.don't.always.know.what.they.need.

AND

Past.behavior.may.not.necessarily.reflect.future behavior.

User needs assessment must be combined with other types of market research in order to create a value proposition. In plain English: what are you selling? And how are you going to sell it? I'm definitely including business literature in my professional development because I only think I can answer those questions for MPOW. My answers, right now, would only be opinions and conjecture. I need facts for decision-making. A business plan(s) will help with figuring out what facts to gather to create the most successful new library services.

Monday 4M*

2008-09-09T20:59:00.001-07:00

coffeecakemuffins
Originally uploaded by laurasmart.

This week's muffin (vegan as always) is cinnamon coffeecakes. The wife's verdict..meh, so so.

Our movie is "Does metadata matter?" from Andy Powell of Eduserv. Cataloging savvy folk may want to fast forward through the first 10 minutes as he reviews AACR2, MARC etc. for a non-librarian audience. His gets around to telling us why metadata matters in the latter portion of the presentation.

authority control for the rest of us

2008-09-04T12:14:00.001-07:00

As part of my work with the OCLC Networked Names Advisory Group, I'm looking for non-library/archival/info science communities who would be interested in authority control tools. Any suggestions from the blogosphere?

Monday 4M

2008-08-25T10:55:00.001-07:00

Carrot Cake!
Originally uploaded by laurasmart.

Today's muffin (vegan as always) is a cupcake! In celebration of my 1st anniversary at MPOW, we had an extra special batch of carrot cupcakes with creamy-cheeze frosting (how I did it vegan style is a trade secret).

Today's metadata movie: The Clanger's Guide to Microformats . At some point we'd like to experiment with microformats and other ways of enhancing the metadata in CODA, our institutional repository.

Do-ocracy barcamp mutation style

2008-08-13T21:36:00.001-07:00

Revival
Originally uploaded by laurasmart.

Meredith and Steve and Dorothea were prescient. They wrote about mid-level tech training and conferences as Los Angeleno librarians were planning the latest installment of techbootcamp.

It''s been over a year since we went on hiatus. We've begun the revival with more librarians participating. Here we are with our resident expert, watching the big screen, while I'm coached through a Drupal install. Through the command-line. Hands-on.

We talked through questions as they came up which led to nice side discussions on *nix, and relational database modeling with a smattering of local industry gossip. Oh yeah -- there was also good beer.

Needless to say I'm glad to see others recognizing the gap in tech training and networking opportunities for middle-grounders. And I'm thinking "no duh," hand slapped to head, when I read so many comments on the thread at See Also about the need for a library related project or problem to make the learning relevant (we had one for techbootcamp: using Drupal plug-in for 2.0 OPAC interface. Just sayin'). Middle-ground tech librarians have no time or money to pull ourselves up by the bootstraps! There is no other choice but to teach ourselves as we go. And we're doing it!

I see murmurings about an asynchronous combo online unconference barcamp somethingorother on the comment threads. I see portions of it happening with my participation in techbootcamp and the Semantic Library Learning Program. It would be great to have somethingorother coalesce. Let's marry the common elements between them all and beget the somethingorother mutation!

The take-away ideas are:

The "conference" never ends as long as it's online. There is always discussion, new content, and ways to connect with fellow participants over time.

Curricula and programming are co-created by participants hence intrinsically meaningful and thus motivating.

Curricula and programming resources are digitally distributed with asynchronous media. The web is the best vehicle for sharing instruction widely given that there are more learners than teachers in the middle-grounder community. For now.

Local communities of practice create shared opportunity for hands-on problem solving ... feeding back into curricula...etc. And most importantly: the chance to ask questions and get help from local coaches/teachers/experts

So what is stopping it from happening? Absolutely nothing. This is a do-acracy. Those that think it's a cool idea will run with it like the California Librarians in Technology participating in techbootcamp

Monday 4M

2008-08-11T11:18:00.001-07:00

Surprise!
Originally uploaded by laurasmart.

This week's muffin (vegan as always) Oat Bran Surprise! Each muffin is filled with fruit preserves. To be completely honest, we actually had a reprise of the Hearty Spiced Cocoa muffins, due to a special request from my wife for me to make an extra batch as a hostess present. We ate the Oat Bran Surprise! muffins at last week's 4M. Which I forgot to blog.

This week's movie: What is My WebJunction? We have a lot of WebJunction users within the department so we're getting accustomed to the new interface and features.

IL2008

2008-07-19T12:42:00.000-07:00

I'm going to Internet Librarian 2008. I'm super-excited to visit Monterey because my lovely wife is going to take some vacation and join me for a personal long weekend prior to the conference. Business trips are sooooo much better when she gets to come.

This will be my first infotoday conference. I've never gone for a variety of reasons. Mostly expense and employer inability to cover expense. Other reasons: I'm not a huge fan of business travel. It was a thrill when I was in my 20s. Now that I've done the circuit of major U.S. convention cities, it's less appealing 'cause it's been-there done-that. Being married with family is another incentive to want less travel. Also, I'm probably a wee bit bitter with myself for not ever submitting proposals to present at IL or CL. My shying away from giving talks is another tale, however.

I am pleased, as always, by the cool and interesting sessions. I'm looking forward to gleaning some good take-aways for application at MPOW. Also, catching up with various librarian friends that I don't get to see often enough.

Monday 4M

2008-07-14T08:15:00.001-07:00

Monday 4M
Originally uploaded by laurasmart.

This week's muffin (vegan as always): Hearty Spiced Cocoa

No new movie this week. We're still finishing up Diane Hillman's Metadata Standards and Applications.

Monday 4M

2008-06-23T10:20:00.001-07:00

choc.chip
Originally uploaded by laurasmart.

This week's muffin, by special request, Chocolate Chocolate Chip (veg but not vegan. I couldn't find vegan chocolate chips :-( ).

This week's movie: None. We're still catching up with Diane Hillman's Metadata Standards and Applications.

FYI, No 4M next week. I'll be at ALA yawning my way through a CC:DA meeting.

Digital Curation Blog: Do we really want repositories to be more Web2.0-like?

2008-06-20T15:04:00.000-07:00

Chris Rusbridge asks Digital Curation Blog: Do we really want repositories to be more Web2.0-like?. Can we be more specific about what we mean by that?

Yes. My ideas are kind of vague at this point, mostly because I don't have the tech expertise to know precisely what's do-able. Ultimately I'd like to see institutional repositories act as a "master bibliography" of all scholarly communication produced at the university. Services I envision:

1) FOAFish graphical representation of academic genealogies, i.e. who supervised who's dissertation, who's so and so's advisor's advisor (i.e. academic grandfather). A way to see relationships between various dissertations

2) Microformat citations for export/manipulation within a bibliographic citation management system -- leading to service whereby automated lists of papers for easy inclusion into web pages/CVs or other interfaces. This would also be good for automating cited reference reports, especially if we could integrate it with things like Web of Science, Google Scholar or Scopus (pipe dream there, as if commercial interests will allow us to access proprietary stuff, but hey! I can wish, can't I?).

3) Author identifier services to provide (a) authority control for name variations, (b) unique identifier for integrating with tools like OCLC's Worldcat Identities project (love the graphic views of an author's publication time line. wouldn't tenure review committees get good use out of that?)

4) Integration with annotation/comment tools. Ability to create feeds built on those comments

5) Authoring tools with version control for better co-authoring/collaboration. Getting people to add things to the repository earlier in their work flow.

6) Microformat tags/keywords for interoperability with other tag spaces/social bookmarking

7) Chemical compound mark-up

8) Geotagging/geo-referencing mark-up - linking resources to related maps

And that's just off the top of my head. Honestly, what repository managers really need to do is talk to their customers. The services we develop have to be grounded in the needs of the people we serve. What challenges do they face when managing their scholarly output? Can we make their lives easier/better? Otherwise we will be irrelevant.

Podcast on SCOAP3

2008-06-19T09:10:00.000-07:00

My grandboss is making news. She got interviewed along with John Ober of the CDL in a podcast being put out by the ACRL. They discuss the SCOAP3 project. I'm really proud to work with creative thinkers within an organization which is blazing open access trails.

Monday 4M

2008-06-15T21:24:00.001-07:00

Orange Cranberry
Originally uploaded by laurasmart.

This week's muffin (vegan as always): Orange Cranberry.

This week's metadata movie: None. We're catching up on the last 2 part's of Diane Hillman's Metadata Standards and Applications. We got busy. What can we say?

You may have also noticed that the weekly 4M doesn't always happen weekly. You would be very observant. Sometimes stuff pops up. Like Memorial Day. Or, simply me being on work travel or vacation (went to Berkeley, it was great, thanks for asking).

Regex

2008-06-05T18:29:00.000-07:00

I've been toying around with regular expressions to help out with another big batch load (oh, and I did ensure that we increased the size of our transaction file so that I could avoid the problems of my last adventure in batch-loading and global editing)

I need to work with the other California Librarians In Technology to reinstate techbootcamp. I could use a Regex for Dummies hands-on kind of workshop. I certainly have a few use cases now.

Otherwise I'm head-achy and exhausted from this darn cold. Don't think I'll be making Robert McDonald's talk tonight.

Monday 4M

2008-06-02T09:20:00.001-07:00

Fresh from the oven
Originally uploaded by laurasmart.

This week's muffin (vegan, as always): Blackberry

This week's metadata movie: Diane Hillman's Metadata Standards and Applications. Part 6: vocabularies, attributes and values.

Monday 4M

2008-05-19T10:34:00.001-07:00

Assorted muffins
Originally uploaded by laurasmart.

This week's muffin (non-vegan, store bought):

Assorted. Would you bake if it was over 100F and you didn't have AC in the house? Exactly.

This week's movies:

Part 5 of Diane Hillman's Metadata Standards & Applications: metadata interoperability and distribution

How to build the semantic web using Dublin Core

I'm so over RDA

2008-05-15T12:39:00.000-07:00

I have resigned from CC:DA. The meetings at this year's ALA Annual will be my last as a voting committee member. As a new manager I've had less time to deal with the deluge of detail. My attitude since formally resigning last winter is wake-me-when-its-over. Once it's released I'll work with colleagues in my institution to determine whether or not we need to implement. Let the triumvirate figure out the business case.

Don't get me wrong. I think RDA is a good thing. There's a good conversation happening at the Inquiring Librarian about RDA implementation and the LC statement. I agree with Jenn Riley that

that RDA is overall a positive thing, and that it represents a necessary (although of course not perfect) step forward in the ongoing evolution of libraries

I'm also with Irvin Flack, who commented on Jenn's post

I want RDA to work but I've decided I'm going to wait for the full final draft before I try to read any more of it. I become too frustrated and confused. I can't afford to lose any more hair! I find myself wondering: why on Earth did they write that rule that way?

A-effing-men!

They wrote RDA by cutting and pasting wholesale portions of AACR2 then re-writing bits -- not a good way to create a whole new means of looking at content standards for cataloging, IMHO. It also introduced a lot of the consistency errors within the text. Then they re-arranged the ordering of the parts and only released certain parts at at time. I found it impossible to keep a cohesive mental model of the drafts. I look forward to the full release. I don't think I'll read it though. Life's too short. I resigned from CC:DA because I don't have time to faithfully review it and contribute to its development anymore. I'd love to follow it, but I need to be practical with my time and my health since beginning to have problems in that realm. Not to mention the hernia risk.

I intend to test catalog some things using the electronic version of RDA when available. Let the print version die please! I realize that some small, less funded, libraries will still need to work from a print version hence the JSC's decision to stick with publishing both print+online. But couldn't we write it online and let the people with less money print out customized versions rather than writing it as if we still live in a print-centric world when it comes to "standards" for working with metadata? That could help with the cohesiveness issues in the text.

As a manager of a small cataloging and acquisitions operation I sometimes wonder just how relevant RDA is going to be in our future. I suspect not much. Sorry. I had to talk about the elephant in my room.

Shelf-ready monographs, umpteen thousand title electronic resource packages, open access eBooks, etc. mean that I'll be ingesting more records directly from publishers. And do publisher's give a rat's ass about RDA? (see EDitEUR) As for legacy bib records in my OPAC, I predict that somebody will write a MARC/RDA translator and that we'll be automating the migration of records (if it proves necessary, which I believe it may not).

I suspect it will be better for MPOW to play the middle road. Wait until other libraries adopt RDA and see how they do. I've got other priorities right now. MPOW is a specialized research institution. Our metadata services are moving in the direction of assisting with the information management of resources created on campus. Sure we'll always order books and journals but that stuff is going to become more automated as time goes by. RDA is not on my radar as a skill set I need to be training people to have. Understanding metadata formats and interoperability is a bigger concern. Ditto metadata for digital preservation and data curation. I suspect repositories and reference will be our library's life blood. I believe John Wilbanks was right when he said providing things like namespaces will be the bread and butter of the new-school library. We need to have the skills to do that type of thing or we risk diminished relevancy when our primary clientèle's needs are not being met. And yeah, we need to do the appropriate needs assessment to determine that we prioritize in terms of evolving the library.

I'm filing RDA under nice-to-be-aware-of but not worth following in detail anymore. But that's just me. Your mileage may vary.

Adventures in batch loading - or why I hate our ILS

2008-05-14T12:07:00.000-07:00

I've been spending a lot of hours of the past two weeks doing a batch import of 5001 ebook records from Literature Online.

It's been quite the educational adventure for me. Although I've been a working librarian for 13 years, I've only been a "cataloger" for the past five. At my former job I only ever had to use cataloging, serials, and, rarely, the acquisitions modules of Innovative Interfaces Millennium. Within each module I only used some of the functions with any regularity.

When I signed on at MPOW, they accepted my caveat that I wasn't a Millennium maven. They were comfortable that I could RTFM, especially since our Innovative coordinator would be handling most of the Millennium sys-admin. I know enough to bootstrap myself. Which I've done. Painfully.

Given the small size of our team in the Metadata Services Group, I've had to take on some more complicated batch imports. I knew how to do a data exchange, no problem. What I didn't know was that globally editing a large bunch of bibliographic records would fill up the transaction file on the server and cause the.entire.system to crash. And I mean crash. No circulation check-outs, no back-end processing, nothing, nada, zip.

I learned this after doing a global update prior to going to a 2 hour meeting. Guess who got called out of the meeting? It was a bit hairy until I could locate our Millennium coordinator who saved the day by doing a manual back-up of the system.

Huh? A back-up? WTF? Apparently the only way to access a system menu option to clear the transaction file is during the back up dialog. That is stupid. I hope there is some technical reason for this because I think it should be possible to send a command to a server to clear a file without having to back-up (somebody please correct me if I'm way misinformed here). Of course, we don't have command line access to our server. Innovative keeps a tight grip on that type of thing. I can understand why, they probably don't want people to have enough rope with which to hang themselves. Whatever. When we migrate to a different ILS, which is inevitable (there's only two kinds of librarians. Those who've done a migration and those who will), I will insist that our requirements list include full shell access to the system. I know that Millennium lets one use regular expressions but I'm under the impression that access to that is still controlled from the GUI.

⟨rant⟩ We shouldn't let vendors have so much control over our systems. I recognize that there are situations where it's good for vendors to hold the reins (like small operations with no staff skilled to do the sys-admin). But there is an opportunity cost to the nimbleness of the library who relies on the vendor.⟨/rant⟩

One could do the global updating of records more quickly and easily with shell access and the right skill set. But, how many cataloging librarians are well versed in regex apart from the code4lib folk? Um, yah. Right.

MarcEdit came to my rescue, once again (I heart Terry Reese). Sorry Robert, I wanted to use MARC Magician but they were too slow sending me a password for a free trial.

Global updating via MarcEdit is rather painless, once you get the hang of it. Getting the hang of it took me a few hours of messing around, however. The real bitch was doing the data transfer. Word up to my fellow Millennium users - 'tis sometimes better to use Data Exchange natively in Millennium than use records transfer from within MarcEdit. It's the only way to easily make a review file of records transferred.

I had to do several batch imports/deletes before I got it right.

The #*$@!!% frustrating thing is that there were some global updates that could only be done natively within Millennium. Each run filled up my transaction file ~30% . Three big globals a day and you crash. That sucks. What will we do when bigger bulk imports are needed? Five thousand records is nothing compared to the bulk ingests I foresee in our future (think GoogleBooks, etc.)

Naturally, I didn't want to keep interrupting our Innovative coordinator with requests to do a manual back-up. We have an automatic back-up each day at midnight. So each time the transaction file got 75-80% full I needed to stop for the day and await the magical file emptying before I could continue my learn-as-I-go batch work . Factor in that I had to each global a few times as I'd make newbie mistakes. You can understand why doing this took a few hours of my day for the past few weeks.

The final insult is that if you fill the transaction file in the midst of doing a global, the records which aren't yet updated will freeze. Twice I had this happen. Innovative only allows one to "free records in use" individually. A batch free-ing must be requested via their support ticketing system. And it may take them a day or two to do it. FRUSTRATING!!

There has GOT to be a better way. Really.

Musing on role of librarian in the cyberinfrastructure

2008-05-12T09:29:00.000-07:00

For each step two steps forward, there is the requisite step back.Last week's two steps forward: the Rockefeller Press announcement (via Issues in Scholarly Communication) and the Harvard Law School joining the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences in unanimously adopting an OA mandate (via same).

Last week's step back: Thompson-ISI puts restrictions on how authors using ResearchID (via Disrupted Library Technology Jester).

Thompson-ISI isn't high up on my fave vendor list because of their abysmal treatment of ISSNs within Web of Knowledge (don't get me started on the difficulties I encounter administering links to WoK within SFX). To their credit they're working on that. But this ResearchID thing makes it very obvious how they're developing their market -- they want to lock up author identifiers so only they can create web services with them. They've lost their monopoly on citation analysis now that Google, Scopus etc. are in the game. Makes me think that academic libraries better get on the ball with developing author identifier tools for their repositories and/or institutions. This is something I've been thinking about. I would love to make authority files for each faculty member and research group on campus and OpenID them or some such so that doing bibliographic citation analysis becomes more rationalized.

That's in keeping with a lively discussion the librarians at MPOW had with John Wilbanks of Science Commons during lunch last Monday. Wilbanks talked about the economic issues involved in creating and maintaining namespaces, largely who is to be responsible for long term funding and support. Wilkins said he believes that this is the type of work where librarians will find their niche as the academy moves towards cyberinfrastructure/eScience what-have-you.

Maybe. There's a big gap between the idea of librarians doing server/database/webby stuff and the reality of the technology skills of librarians on the front lines. I sure as heck don't know how to install and configure a namespace server. There are research and commercial interests which are way ahead of us on providing those types of services. Why should a researcher go to his librarian for help with managing his online identity if ResearcherID-type services already exist?

I don't know how to bridge that gap when it comes to what type of things I should be working on as professional development. Is it worth the energy to bootstrap myself into managing the technology behind semantic-webified authorities? That takes not only time but day-to-day projects with which to practice skills.

And technical services librarians are enmeshed in economically unsustainable models of cataloging and electronic resource maintenance anyway. For example, I've had to fix all the records for Proceedings of the Royal Society at each single place I've ever worked (hey, 300 odd years of title changes and splits makes for hard slogging managing the 78Xs and OpenURLs). This is the forest in which we toil and the trees are fading from view.

My only means of dealing with it is to partner with public service librarians to liaise with researchers, do user needs assessment for cyberinfrastructure services that we're capable of developing and delivering, then develop pilot projects from which to learn the requisite skills.

I fear that this type of work is too little too late for academic librarians. Yet, what choice do we have other than to persevere?

Monday 4M

2008-05-11T06:08:00.000-07:00

lemonpoppyseed.JPG
Originally uploaded by laurasmart.

This week's muffin (vegan as always): Lemon poppyseed

This week's movies: Part 4 of Diane Hillman's Metadata Standards & Applications: Specific metadata standards and application overviews

Talis' Rob Styles on Finding Relationships in MARC

Another repository blog

2008-05-08T07:36:00.000-07:00

Yay! Shane joins the repository blog-o-verse . Personally, I don't mind the term repository-rat, having mentioned it on the main page of the infodiva web site no-less.

Shane and Dorothea mention the plethora of repository-related blogs. I think there are a fair number, actually, if you include digitization, scholarly communication, and open access as topics and if you are international in your scope. The folks in the U.K. pop to mind.

Note to self: look into making repository planet to bring these related blogs together.

Note to self: continue writing more here on Rep4Rest and begin promoting the blog. If I'm not visible I'm contributing to the perceived problem that there's a dearth of repository related blogs.

Welcome Shane!

Monday 4M

2008-05-05T09:03:00.001-07:00

Carrot Muffin
Originally uploaded by laurasmart.

MSG's weekly meeting with movies and muffins.

This week's muffin (vegan as always):

Carrot with walnuts & raisins (adapted from The Joy of Cooking)

This week's movies:

Part 3 of Diane Hillman's Metadata Standards & Applications: Relationship Models

Social bookmarking in plain English

IUG 2008 & twitter

2008-04-24T16:43:00.000-07:00

FYI, I'll be attending the annual Innovative Users Group meeting so I'll be in Washington, D.C. from the evening of 4/26 through 5/1. I'll be at the Hilton, the alternative conference hotel. If anybody wants to hang out over coffee or beer or whatnot feel free to email or tweet.

Speaking of tweets, I'm finding I'm liking twitter more than I anticipated. I'm still not convinced it's not a waste of time. While it's great fun, I haven't yet found anything of work-related value there beyond locating people I follow via blog anyway.

GCI 2008

2008-04-22T16:57:00.001-07:00

@ GCI 2008
Originally uploaded by laurasmart.

A pic of M. and me at the Grilled Cheese Invitational. Isn't my wife gorgeous? The event was a blast, as usual, and we're getting geared up for competing again next year.

Congrats to Shady et al. for the awesomeness of it all. And congrats to all who won.

We've obviously got our work cut out for us.

Monday Morning Metadata Movie (with muffins!)

2008-04-21T16:16:00.001-07:00

Very Simple Blueberry Muffin
Originally uploaded by laurasmart.

The Metadata Services Group continues its Monday morning meeting ritual of watching metadata related movies while enjoying home-baked muffins!

Today's muffin:

Blueberry

Today's movies:

Tim Berners-Lee waxes enthusiastic about the Semantic Web

Metadata Standards and Applications Trainer Screencasts: Part 2: Approaches to Models of Metadata Creation, Storage, and Management

drinking the kool-aid

2008-04-16T17:16:00.000-07:00

I got me a twitter account. Whoo. You can follow me at infod1va if you're so inclined. I do this with great hesitation as I'm the type who can get sucked into bulletin boards or groups or lists to the detriment of my work. I took the plunge so I can follow the folks participating on the semanticlibrary wiki, which was created by Fiona Bradley of semanticlibrary.net. If you haven't caught this blog yet, you should. Only up since 11/2007 and already it's a "must read" in my aggregator.

The wiki exists to support the goal of putting together an online learning program for librarians who are interested in learning more about semantic web technologies. One of my big goals for 2008 is to gain more hands-on experience with the relevant technologies. Yes I can read XML but transforming it is beyond me. Most of my professional development in things technical is project-based. Meaning, I think of a useful application and then set out to build it. For example, I taught myself javascript back in the '90s by creating an interactive tutorial on patent searching (please forgive the color scheme. It was the 90s, I was hanging out with ravers, what can I say?). I read a lot but it's not the same as doing something yourself.

There's a good story as to why I have to use infod1va rather than infodiva. I'll tell it when my lawyers give me the go-ahead.