Group items tagged

An interesting observation by a British librarian that the new, incoming model of cataloging done and stored in the cloud by vendors will cause some shifting in practices.   Namely, vendors' records will be seen as "master records."  Also, the sheer number of different people using the same "master record" will result on an easing of standards, while at the same time a governing structure will have to be set up in order for libraries to determine which standards to loosen and which to adhere to.

The burgeoning presence of ebooks on library catalogs is producing an unexpected problem-- what if the patron wants a print version of a book as opposed to an ebook version? How do you tease that out of MARC? RDA's GMD appears to be helpful, but not a useful as the Leader, 007, or 008 fields.

An interesting re-purposing of a card catalog into a collectoin called "Artists in the Archives: A Collection of Card Catalogs." Card catalogs have been redone so they include artwork that is either contributions from other artists or the public, or visual representations of what the cards originally described.

On the heels of our keynote speaker, whose presentation has been weighing on my mind, this makes me worry that what will cause things to be lost is not things simply not being updated, but also things not being findable-- if some information doesn't have any sort of access point, it may as well not exist.

Creative Commons weighs in on OCLC's recommendation that its members adopt the Open Data Commons Attribution license (linked in the article) for the catalog metadata they share in OCLC.  While CC commends OCLC for encouraging the sharing of data, it points out that a license, even an open data license, can prove problematic when it comes to reusing and recombining data found within OCLC with other sources.  

Includes one of the best brief descriptions of metadata that I've found. The author also, using example photos, illustrates the importance of metadata and its relevance to a material being used.

Nice! Thanks for sharing Jennifer.

The article is interesting for what it gets wrong and for what it brings up. The phrase "Boise Public Library's new Enterprise Discover System, which was funded by a consortium of more than 15 Idaho libraries" makes it sound like this was a home grown discovery system, but it's actually Sirsi-Dynix's Enterprise system. It's interesting because it's one of the first general news articles I've seen showing awareness of a discovery service, which means they are gradually filtering their way into the public realm of what libraries are supposed to be about.

I'm very heartened by this development, and by the implication that libraries are taking control of their own metadata in order to make the items within their collections more findable, and more easy to integrate with other mediums.

Describes the use of analytics tools such as Inspectlet, ClickTale, userfly, and more; it includes a nice little comparison table of features. Particularly cool are the real time screenshots and heatmaps depicting page use.

The Social Networks and Archival Context Project (SNAC) is a project that aims to bring together online resources and archival materials on historical person, to basically allow a researcher to know where all the records are to understand a person. What I found in the prototype is that it resembled a catalog of sophisticated authority records. This could be useful for someone needing quick information or seeing how a historical figure fits in context, but I question if in the end it doesn't repeat information found almost as readily in other resources such as Wikipedia.

A somewhat lighthearted response to all the excitement about the "discovery" of the Leale report, a report made to the Surgeon General by the first doctor to treat Abraham Lincoln after he was shot at Ford's Theater.   It's very interesting that, even though it was in the collection, where it should be, no one thought to use it in research until now.  

Just thought this was cool and their catalog looks neat too. Go Evergreen!

Yep, looks great: http://cat.catalog.berklee.edu.meowbify.com/eg/opac/results?fi%3Aitem_type=a&query=beethoven&qtype=keyword&locg=1&sort=

A heartening story about how the libraries of Douglas County, CO are bucking the current trend of leasing music from services like OverDrive.  As a result, they negotiate directly with publishers, actually own their electronic books, and are able to display said electronic books directly in their catalog, not just in a ebook-only ghetto (a source of irritation to me).  The author suggests this could start a new trend that might culminate in a loosely-organized, nation-wide system that allows smaller libraries to benefit from the expertise and work from larger systems with more resources, like Douglas County.

Harvard librarians learned that lesson when they set up Twitter feeds broadcasting titles of books being checked out from campus libraries. It seemed harmless enough-a typical tweet read, "Reconstructing American Law by Bruce A. Ackerman," with a link to the book's library catalog entry-but the social-media experiment turned out to be more provocative than library staffers imagined.

Since ALA President Maureen Sullivan threw down the proverbial gauntlet to publishers and they've picked it up, there's been a lot of inspired responses.  Jamie LaRue has a radical one himself-- circumvent the publishers, and ask the authors how they'd like their electronic books to be distributed. It's a bold proposition (posing the question, "Are publishers necessary?"), but certainly a way for libraries to work with authors to maximize their profits.

A tagent from the seed lending library...how would one catalog this?

"When not in circulation, the dogs will be kept in a shared exercise area, where they most commonly play poker together." - Well played.

Lastly, Harvard is also lending dogs now at one of their libraries. This is one of several experiments in lending things other than books (everything from tools to people) but I still question the relevance: