planet ecorrado.us

Two podcasts of potential interest to Evergreen fans

2009-09-15T20:59:18+00:00

Most recently, the latest Software Freedom Law Show focuses on the subject of how to choose a license for your software project's documentation. The episode was a direct response to a dent I had sent to one of the hosts, Bradley Kuhn, suggesting the subject. I thought the Evergreen Documentation Interest Group might find it a useful treatment from two of the most knowledgeable folks in the free software licensing world. As a bonus, when I started listening to the episode today, I was pleased to hear Bradley lead in with a very positive mention of Evergreen. Many thanks, Bradley, both for the show and for the shout-out to Evergreen!

Also, back in July, I had the opportunity to travel to Algoma University in Sault Ste. Marie to spend a few days locked in a room with my fellow Conifer propeller-heads (Art, Kevin, and Robin) to dump the Evergreen-related content of my brain out onto the table in preparation for my parental leave. As part of the visit, we joined in the Tangential Convergence crew to put together a podcast about Conifer and Evergreen in the standard Tangential Convergence style: having a few beer while sitting around a table in Dave Brodbeck's backyard. We ended up veering off onto other subjects rather quickly, but such is the nature of the show!

LibLime To the Koha Community: Fork You!

2009-09-15T20:25:08+00:00

A shot across the bow of the open source software community has come from an unexpected source -- a company that has championed the open source eth...

article

2009-09-15T20:13:29+00:00

So, if you try to architect your applications solidly and flexibly, and build in features for integration, and it all works out okay, one of the benefits you get is it’s pretty easy to combine them.

I’ve added a feature to the Xerxes federated search tool to add sophisticated item-level information and services that were already being compiled by our Umlaut installation— to Xerxes record-detail pages.

I think this is pretty neat from a sort of ’single business’ perspective of providing consistent services regardless of what tool the user happens to be using.

So now, when you look at an item detail page in Xerxes, you can, right on that page, see:

call numbers and availability
Full text links from SFX, right on the page
Links to “similar items” content from Web of Knowledge and Scopus.
links to pre-filled ILL forms, as appropriate.
For monographic content, full text, preview, and ’search inside’ functionality from Amazon, Google, and others.
Other stuff — whatever happens to be configured in Umlaut, when new stuff is added to Umlaut, it’ll automatically show up in Xerxes too. (Well, new services of the existing types; if a whole new type/section is added to Umlaut, will take a couple lines of code in Xerxes to add it).

This is live in production here now, but you can’t really see it without a local login. So here’s some screenshots of Xerxes item detail pages, content from Umlaut circled in red.

It’s worth noting that this content is inserted on the page by javascript after page load. It can take 1-3 seconds or so to come in (depending on speed Umlaut can do it’s thing), which you can’t see in the screenshots. While waiting, you get a spinner and status message. If a user doesn’t have javascript enabled, this feature won’t effect their page view at all.

Posted in General

Comment on “Digital Preservation: The Next Library Frontier” IGeLU presentation slides by ecorrado

2009-09-15T17:13:48+00:00

If you tried to read these using Adobe earlier and received a color space error, try again. Originally I saved the files as PDF/A which didn’t seem to please Adobe. I re-saved the PDF as a regular PDF and, at least on my Mac Book Pro, things seem to be working fine.

It's Time for Wider Acceptance of e-Textbooks

2009-09-15T16:04:07+00:00

"Because the printed book is such a perfect technology, print books will surely continue to be produced and purchased, especially for leisure reading. But the time has come for greater use of e-textbooks for educational purposes. Efforts should be made to overcome the remaining obstacles to their broad acceptance." Editorial by Bonita Wilson, CNRI.

Establishing Trust in a Chain of Preservation: The TRAC Checklist Applied to a Data Staging Repository (DataStaR)

2009-09-15T16:04:07+00:00

"DataStaR is a data staging repository in development at Cornell University. A data staging repository offers unique opportunities to recruit data into domain and institutional data repositories, but as a transitory curation environment, it demands careful consideration of the role of such a repository in the full life cycle of research data. We describe our experience applying the Trustworthy Repositories Audit and Certification Criteria and Checklist as a framework for specifying system, policy, and documentation requirements to ensure that DataStaR is an effective partner in the entire chain of preservation activities." Article by Gail Steinhart and Dianne Dietrich, Cornell University; and Ann Green, Yale University.

Subject-based Information Retrieval within Digital Libraries Employing LCSHs

2009-09-15T16:04:07+00:00

"In this article, an effort is made to take advantage of the inherent semantic wealth existing within Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSHs) in order to provide more efficient subject-based information retrieval in digital libraries. To formally express such wealth, an ontology schema is presented that is capable of modeling the semantics of LCSHs into adequate ontologies. Finally, in order to show the way towards exploiting such ontologies in favor of the development of more effective subject-based information retrieval in digital libraries, a prototype system is presented." Article by Ioannis Papadakis and Michalis Stefanidakis, University of Ionio; and Konstantinos Kyprianos and Rosa Mavropodi, University of Piraeus.

Analysing Selection for Digitisation: Current Practices and Common Incentives

2009-09-15T16:04:07+00:00

"This article presents the results of a close reading of current practices and guidelines for digitisation, in an attempt to further the movement towards greater consensus on this issue. From the existing myriad approaches found in the field, the article formulates a set of common criteria for selection by way of a sector-independent longlist. In this way the article illustrates the complex nature of selection, which may be seen to depend upon significantly greater number of criteria than have so far been put forward in any single guiding document, but it also proposes a base-terminology that can be used in any institutional setting." Article by Bart Ooghe, Heritage Cell Waasland; and Dries Moreels, Flemish Theatre Institute (BE).

OA Network: An Integrative Open Access Infrastructure for Germany

2009-09-15T16:04:07+00:00

"This article describes concepts, development, and implementation of an overall Open Access infrastructure for Germany. Currently, the joint project Open Access Network is facilitating comprehensive and value-added services built on top of distributed Institutional Repositories. Using the OAI-PMH as the harvesting mechanism, Open Access (OA) Network furnishes an open and extensible architecture to form the technological base for manifold enhanced services. It not only provides a personalized end user platform but also serves as an aggregator node for passing data to other service providers (e.g., DRIVER). Moreover, OA Network provides a testbed for the development of software to implement value-added services. OA Network is funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG)." Article by Uwe Müller, Robin Malitz, and Peter Schirmbacher, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin; and Thomas Severiens, Universität Osnabrück.

Curriculum for Digital Libraries: An Analytical Study of Indian LIS Curricula

2009-09-15T16:04:07+00:00

"The information professionals of today must discharge their duties in a hybrid environment, one that deals with traditional print documents but digital documents as well. To make digital information management a reality, Library and Information Science (LIS) education programmes in India now include digital library courses in their syllabi. An attempt has been made in this article to analyze the digital library course content of LIS Master Degree programmes of selected University Departments/Institutions in India." Article by R.S.R.Varalakshmi, Andhra University.

Report on OAI 6: CERN Workshop on Innovations in Scholarly Communication, Geneva 17-19 June 2009

2009-09-15T16:04:07+00:00

Conference Report by Elena Giglia, University of Turin.

Purple Cows and Fringy Propositions: The Edinburgh Repository Fringe Festival 2009

2009-09-15T16:04:07+00:00

Conference Report by Carol Minton Morris, Cornell University.

In Brief: File Information Tool Set (FITS): A New Tool for Digital Preservation Repositories

2009-09-15T16:04:07+00:00

In Brief: Meet RODA, an Open-source Repository for Digital Preservation

2009-09-15T16:04:07+00:00

In Brief: The New Zealand Public Sector Digital Continuity Action Plan

2009-09-15T16:04:07+00:00

Talking with Talis Podcast: Hazel Hall, Strategic Leader at LIS Research Coalition

2009-09-15T13:48:07+00:00

In this Talking with Talis Podcast I speak to Hazel Hall, the newly appointed Strategic Leader at the recently established Library and Information Science Research Coalition. We discuss how the six month old Coalition aims to address leadership and advocacy challenges by working with five bodies representing each corner of the LIS Research world (currently, the British Library, CILIP, JISC, MLA and the Research Information Network). As the first to be appointed to drive the aims of the Coalition, Hazel Hall’s plans moving forward and her vision of a successful first year are also discussed.

In this Talking with Talis Podcast I speak to Hazel Hall, the newly appointed Strategic Leader at the recently established Library and Information Science Research Coalition. We discuss how the six month old Coalition aims to address leadership and advocacy challenges by working with five bodies representing each corner of the LIS Research world (currently, the British Library, CILIP, JISC, MLA and the Research Information Network). As the first to be appointed to drive the aims of the Coalition, Hazel Hallrsquo;s plans moving forward and her vision of a successful first year are also discussed.

“Digital Preservation: The Next Library Frontier” IGeLU presentation slides

2009-09-15T12:31:19+00:00

I have uploaded the PDF of my IGeLU presentation, Digital Preservation: The Next Library Frontier to my personal repository, as well as the Binghamton University Libraries digital repository. Enjoy!

I2: Survey results

2009-09-15T12:29:55+00:00

I wrote in June that the I2 subgroup surveyed "repository managers to determine the current practices and needs of the repository community regarding institutional identifiers. Results from the survey will inform a set of use cases that will be shared with the community, and that are expected to drive the development of a new standard for institutional identifiers."

The survey closed in July, and the subgroup spent August writing a report on the survey results. That report is now final and it's available to the public. Feedback may be sent to our (woefully underutilized) public i2info mailing list, left as a comment on this post, or e-mailed to me privately which I can forward to our internal list.

The next step is to build upon the report to draw yet more conclusions from the data — there's an awful lot there — and flesh out some repository use cases for institutional identifiers. The I2 core group is moving quickly towards finalizing identifier metadata elements so that a standard may be drafted, and I think having some use cases documented will help drive the standard in a direction the community can get behind.

Onward and upward.

Prince Edward Island Is Where It's At

2009-09-15T07:46:08+00:00

That's right, Prince Edward Island is the host of the Access Conference (September 30-October 3), long one of my favorite technology conferences of...

Comment on IGeLU 2009 thoughts by ecorrado

2009-09-15T00:17:26+00:00

@LG: Hopefully they’ll be a RUG meeting near you that you can attend. I know EMA is having just as many customer-presented Voyager sessions as IGeLU. Not being on the IGeLU steering committee, I don’t want to speak for them (although I suspect they would say the same thing) but I can tell you that the ELUNA SC takes the customer concerns we here about seriously. While not directly related to incident reporting, ELUNA and IGeLU have been working together on a new enhancement system that should lead to a better process next year.

Comment on IGeLU 2009 thoughts by lg

2009-09-14T21:07:56+00:00

thanks for this update, especially for those of us who have no money to attend either ELUNA or IGELU. hats off to YOU for doing so.

i have some concerns that there are serious customer-related issues that were not mentioned in your synopsis. these include lapses in documentation and in the incident reporting system. i hope the organizations that we are paying membership money to are paying attention to customers’ concerns.

welcome home.

Comment on IGeLU 2009 thoughts by Gary Johnson

2009-09-14T20:57:10+00:00

Edward, you wrote a good overview of a really great IGeLU conference in Helsinki. All involved did a wonderful job making it a productive time for everyone there!

Comment on IGeLU 2009 thoughts by Edward Corrado (ecorrado) 's status on Monday, 14-Sep-09 20:30:41 UTC - Identi.ca

2009-09-14T20:30:45+00:00

[...] New blog post: #igelu2009 thoughts: http://blog.ecorrado.us/2009/09/14/igelu-2009-thoughts/ [...]

IGeLU 2009 thoughts

2009-09-14T20:30:03+00:00

From September 5 until September 9 I attended the International Group of ex Libris Users (IGeLU) 2009 annual conference and associated Ex Libris Users of North America (ELUNA) Steering Committee meetings. I had to attend the ELUNA SC meetings because of my role on the ELUNA Steering Committee. There were many topics discussed including how ELUNA can improve communication with IGeLU, and with ELUNA members. Communication with IGeLU actually is going really well and we just need to continue to build on the level of cooperation we have established in the last couple of years.

We have come up with a number of action items regarding communicating to ELUNA member institutions (and potential member institutions). One of the ways we hope to do this is with a new, and hopefully vastly improved Web site. We are planning to replace Drupal with a combination of three tools: For news and our main Web site we will be using WordPress Multi-User, for sharing conference proceedings and other finalized documents we will use E-Prints, and for corroborating on documents we will use Google Apps (mostly the Google Docs portion). Being that I am the ELUNA Web master, I think I have a busy Fall ahead of me.

The IGeLU conference itself was very nice. The local organizers did an excellent job and there was hardly any local arrangement issues. Kudos to the great job the folks in Helsinki did. They raised the bar to almost unattainable heights for those who will follow after them.

The conference itself had two general types of sessions: Ones that Ex Libris put on, and ones the customers put on. The Ex Libris sessions could farther be divided into sessions about the URM and sessions about the current products. The URM sessions did not have a lot of new information in them since ELUNA. It is obvious that Ex Libris has a clear vision and are working towards that, but it is going to take time before they can talk about specifics. Now that the development partners are in place, I expect a lot of work to be done between now and ELUNA 2010 and that they’ll be a lot more meat on the bones at that conference. The sessions on the existing products, Aleph and Metalib, that Binghamton University has also did not have a lot of new developments since ELUNA. Aleph enhancement voting for ELUNA just took place and IGeLU is in the process of voting so they didn’t have any announcements about new enhancements.

The news about Metalib was that Ex Libris is still planning on rolling Metalib functionality into Primo (and providing the Metalib functionality to existing Metalib-only customers at no additional costs). This should happen in Primo 4.0, due out in 2011. Primo and Metalib customers will get some improvements in Primo version 3.1. Since Ex Libris says that they are not going to release a new version of the existing Metalib in order to concentrate on Metalib, Next Generation (yes, that is what they are currently referring to it as), this means non-Primo Metalib customers will not have to worry about upgrading Metalib for a while [1].

There was also some talk about whether or not Primo Central (a product similar to Serial Solutions’ Summons) would be available to Metalib only customers. The IGeLU SC discussed this with Ex Libris and Ex Libris latter announced in the company Q&A session that they are going to consider making Primo Central available to Metalib only customers. My hats off to Ex Libris for listening to the customers about this.

The costumer sessions I went to were very good. Probably the best and most relevant one for Binghamton was “Easy OPAC enhancements” by Matthew Phillips, Systems Librarian, University of Dundee. Mathew should a large number of enhancements to the stock Aleph OPAC that will greatly improve the look and feel of an Aleph OPAC, as well as add some desired functionality. I plan on looking over his slides when the UISC begins to look at making some changes to our Aleph OPAC.

As with any conference, sometimes the personal connections you make can be important. I had interesting conversations about Aleph and other library software with many people. Among them was one of the people responsible for the new Library of the University of Amsterdam Aleph Catalog http://opc.uva.nl/F who offered me some pointers and ideas about how they designed their Aleph interface. Between the presentations and contacts I made at the conference I think it will be much easier to get more out of our Aleph OPAC than it otherwise would.

All and all, a productive, educational, and enjoyable conference. I hope I am able to go to IGeLU 2010 in Belgium.

[1] This does not mean at all that Ex Libris will not be doing knowledge base updates. They are continuing to come, and from my perspective, Ex Libris has been doing a very admirable job with the knowledgeable updates. With new procedures being put in place by Ex Libris, IGeLU, and ELUNA for determining which new resources to create connectors for, I expect that this will even improve more.

Linked Data Meetup

2009-09-14T16:14:13+00:00

On Wednesday, I had the privilege to attend the first Linked Data Meetup down in Hammersmith. The day was a storming success, with talks and presentations from all over the Linked Data community: from academia to startups. I think the organisers were slightly overwhelmed, because in the end there were nearly 200 people there, making use of the Talis-sponsored bar well into the evening. Apart from being a good opportunity to catch up with people, this meetup had the feeling of a guild-meet of Linked Data professionals—with lots of different perspectives over similar problems.

The two panel discussions gave the opportunity for quite a range of different views and topics to be covered, and seemed to well. The first was about Government Data and was chaired by Carol Tullo from the Office of Public Sector Information (OPSI) and included Sir Tim Berners-Lee on a panel of five. The topics covered a swathe of issues with public data, licensing, rights and infrastructure. This panel had a certain gravitas I wasn’t expecting from a semi-formal “meetup”, probably because it was representing the UK’s actual public sector data workers. After much discussion about what it means to “link data” and what count as “LInked Data”, I was left with the important point from the discussion: there are important and well-placed people currently working to make public data public, and I look forward to the potential benefits this will have.

The second panel covered a topic which has become very important to me, and which is strongly tied up with the first: the Future of Journalism. Although I was unable to hear much of this discussion (there were a fair few of us in that hall!), I certainly found the questions asked of the panel particularly acute. There was a particular emphasis on advertising and the future of revenue for news media in an online world. From this panel, I took the view that Journalists report on the public happenings of their nations and worlds, and often what they’re working with is made available by the very institutions “making the news”. So, the work on public data has a strong bearing on journalism and on citizens’ collective knowledge of what’s going on in their worlds. Paul Bradshaw, who chaired this panel, published his notes from the session, which will give a good overview of the topics there!

I won’t report on every talk that happened here, though the programme is still available on the Meetup site, and if anyone has any links to slides or photos they’d like to share, just ping them in the comments. I had a great time, and I left feeling hugely excited by many of the projects and trends discussed there.

The library website: a unified service?

2009-09-14T00:58:37+00:00

By: dempsey

Categories: Libraries - systems and technologies• Libraries - organization and services• Marketing• User experience• Websites: design and role

I mentioned the reworked University of Michigan Libraries website a while ago.

Although it is still a layer over various other resources, I liked the way that the site aimed to project the library on the web as a unified service not as a set of unrelated opportunities. This extended to the way that links to specialist library advice was included alongside the other resources. [Lorcan Dempsey's weblog - A web-siting at the University of Michigan]

For reasons discussed in these pages many times this layering is not straightforward:

This is largely because they are providing a thin layer over two sets of heterogeneous resources. One is the set of legacy and emerging systems, developed independently rather than as part of an overall library experience, with different fulfillment options, different metadata models, and so on (integrated library system, resolver, knowledge base, repositories, ...). Another is the set of legacy database and repository boundaries that map more to historically evolved publisher configurations and business decisions than to user needs or behaviors (for example, metadata, e-Journals, eBooks, and other types of content, which may be difficult to slice and dice in useful ways). [Lorcan Dempsey's Weblog - Stitching costs]

There is a blog entry by Ken Varnum providing a high level overview of design decisions:

Implemented in Drupal with Solr to power our search results, the site integrates what was a varied and highly decentralized network of library web pages. We pruned and weeded the roughly 100,000 pages on the old site - many of which were leftovers from past redesigns - into about 7,000 pages and 13,000 resource entries. We also introduced powerful new discovery tools for our patrons. [[BLT] Blog for library technology - The New University of Michigan Library Web Site]

I particularly like the way a search in the home-page search box gives back a range of results, including a match to a subject expert if this is possible. They try to put, literally, a 'human face' on the results page.

The catalog search itself is a VuFind deployment, and article search talks to Metalib's x-server, dropping you into Metalib if you request it (I think - I am not an authorized user so can only go so far).

I think the Michigan site does a very nice job in projecting the library service and trying to abstract the user experience away from the underlying database and service boundaries it is managing. Of course, as a 'tourist' I cannot follow trails into resources I am not authorised to use.

Recently, I was directed to the new Libraries website at Miami University. This is on a smaller scale and there is a 'thinner' integration layer over the site as a whole. But, again, I liked the fact that the design goal seems to be to project the library as a unified service offering, carrying navigation and appearance as consistently as it could between parts.

In terms of presentation, I was interested to see some things in common between the sites. They each use Libguides to assemble web-based resources in particular subject areas (including links to pictured library staff). This enhances the sense of the pages as a professionally curated resource, and seems to support better overall UI consistency. Another was the use of Drupal and Solr. And another was the deployment of a separate interface to the native ILS catalog, VuFind in Michigan's case and (I think) MULtifacet in Miami's.

MULtifacet is a Drupal 5 module that wraps a UI around an arbitrary Solr index. It shares many features with other Solr-based OPAC projects, including faceted search results, SMS/email output, RefWorks integration, user tagging, saving/exporting of records, RSS feeds, Zotero support, Google Books images/linking, "more like this", formatted citation output (via the WorldCat API), COinS, unAPI, etc. While developed for, and initially targeted at, library collections, there's no reason it couldn't put a UI on other Solr indexes that need similar features. [MULtifacet]

I had begun this entry when I was interested to see a related discussion emerge on the WEB4LIB list. Tim Spalding asked if anybody was aware of a library website where the various solutions looked as if they were part of the same organic whole. David Walker responded by pointing to the library website at CalPoly.

And as library websites go, it is indeed very nice. I noticed again that Libguides play a part, and am interested to see that you can browse by both subject area and by librarian ('people are entry points').

Even though the website is increasingly a part only of how the library projects its network services, it is important to improve how it does so.

Related entries:

A web-siting at the University of Michigan

Criss cross catalogs

A signed network presence: people as entry points

Stuck in the middle ...

Your Ideas for "Top Ten Things"

2009-09-13T19:58:38+00:00

When I was writing my "Top Ten Things Library Administrators Should Know About Technology" I put a message out on Twitter asking for the thoughts of my followers on that topic. And boy, did you ever respond! I decided that it would be worth following up my post with many of the things that my followers said, since as it turned out that I was pretty set on my list and I couldn't by any means include them all. Here you go, and thanks to all who participated!

Vendor solutions still require knowledgeable staff to make them work. A vendor who claims otherwise is lying.

No platform is forever. Ask not only how you'll move onto it, but how you'll move off of it.

It won't solve any of your problems without proper staffing and management policies, which you should allow techies to shape.

Administrators need to know that just because a staff member can support certain tech doesn't mean they can support all tech.

Allow your staff time and resources to experiment - even if nothing comes of it. Innovation comes with risks.

Understand where's a possible single point of failure i.e. rely on only one staff for a critical function.

Believe a staff member's opinion over a vendor's. Always. ALWAYS.

It's OK to fail.

Never depend on technology alone to save your library. Ask "why" and "how" instead of, and/or in addition to, "when" and "how much." Be prepared to answer those questions. Major technology decisions that are made in accordance with unclear policy can find any holes that may exist in that policy, and come back to burn you later. Don't be selectively blind or oblivious. You don't have to hop inside the black box, but make sure your policy can be met by how you choose to implement technology.

Don't say no. If you don't accept technology ideas from your techies, where do you think they'll come from?

more tech != less money; whether vendor or open src, requires approp expertise on staff.

Good project management practices are key.

#1 should be to TRUST those working with the technology to do the right thing with it and to listen.

if they do not know how to manage IT (most legacy lib admin do not), they should hire people who do and get out of their way

Technology is cheap. Having knowledgeable people costs money.

It's not scary; The youngest people on staff aren't automatically techno-geeks.

If you don't know about something, trust the people who do.

Delegate the discovery phase to those who can dedicate more resources to coming up with concise answers to "how," and justify "why."

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2009-09-13

2009-09-13T14:22:00+00:00

RSS to PDF Newspaper | fivefilters.org http://ff.im/-7QnR3 #
RSS in the Clouds « Blog « WordPress.com http://ff.im/-7QorV #
Facebook Open Sources FriendFeed’s Real-Time Tech via @feedly http://ff.im/-7VtLz #
Beautiful glass sculptures of deadly viruses and bacteria via @feedly http://ff.im/-7VueM #
Rebovich Institute Launches �Governing New Jersey� Series via @feedly http://ff.im/-7Vugq #
From the Desk of David Pogue – Apple’s New Nano – Now The World’s Smallest Camcorder – NYTimes.com http://ff.im/-7VxAU #
Apple – iPod nano – Video Camera – Shoot video wherever you are. http://ff.im/-7Vycm #
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Audacity: Download Nyquist Plug-Ins http://ff.im/-80fYA #
G2P Beta v0.2: Google helps me find the goods http://ff.im/-81geW #
Listening to Radiohead – Videotape via SkreemR http://bit.ly/KCepa #
Noticing I've got just over 1,600 followers. Thanks, tweeps! #
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John Listening to Radiohead – Videotape via SkreemR http://bit.ly/KCepa. http://ff.im/-81l3g #
John Listening to Radiohead – Down Is The New Up via SkreemR http://bit.ly/1u6xbH. http://ff.im/-81l3i #
John Noticing I've got just over 1,600 followers. Thanks, tweeps! http://ff.im/-81l3h #
@ChrisFinazzo Agreed – I use Windows when I have to, Linux when I can, and Mac OS when I have a choice. in reply to ChrisFinazzo #
@KristineLeuze Thanks for the #FF ! in reply to KristineLeuze #
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John Listening to Soundgarden – Outshined via SkreemR http://bit.ly/ApWNq. http://ff.im/-81SZ8 #

Please share this story!

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2009-09-13

2009-09-13T14:22:00+00:00

RSS to PDF Newspaper | fivefilters.org http://ff.im/-7QnR3 #
RSS in the Clouds « Blog « WordPress.com http://ff.im/-7QorV #
Facebook Open Sources FriendFeed’s Real-Time Tech via @feedly http://ff.im/-7VtLz #
Beautiful glass sculptures of deadly viruses and bacteria via @feedly http://ff.im/-7VueM #
Rebovich Institute Launches �Governing New Jersey� Series via @feedly http://ff.im/-7Vugq #
From the Desk of David Pogue – Apple’s New Nano – Now The World’s Smallest Camcorder – NYTimes.com http://ff.im/-7VxAU #
Apple – iPod nano – Video Camera – Shoot video wherever you are. http://ff.im/-7Vycm #
Liked "Cupcake Sliders" http://ff.im/-7VyrP #
Joey Roth's porcelain speakers via @feedly http://ff.im/-7VyCF #
21 Great Shots [And How They Were Taken] http://ff.im/-7VDMK #
Comment on 10 reasons why I’m giving up Beer Blogging. by lemasney http://ff.im/-7VGug #
Brookdale Computer Users Group: My Top 10 Favorite Free Graphics Tools http://ff.im/-7Y3Yw #
Open Directory – Computers: Multimedia: Music and Audio: Software: Plug-ins http://ff.im/-8098M #
Audacity: Download Nyquist Plug-Ins http://ff.im/-80fYA #
G2P Beta v0.2: Google helps me find the goods http://ff.im/-81geW #
Listening to Radiohead – Videotape via SkreemR http://bit.ly/KCepa #
Noticing I've got just over 1,600 followers. Thanks, tweeps! #
Listening to Radiohead – Down Is The New Up via SkreemR http://bit.ly/1u6xbH #
John Listening to Radiohead – Videotape via SkreemR http://bit.ly/KCepa. http://ff.im/-81l3g #
John Listening to Radiohead – Down Is The New Up via SkreemR http://bit.ly/1u6xbH. http://ff.im/-81l3i #
John Noticing I've got just over 1,600 followers. Thanks, tweeps! http://ff.im/-81l3h #
@ChrisFinazzo Agreed – I use Windows when I have to, Linux when I can, and Mac OS when I have a choice. in reply to ChrisFinazzo #
@KristineLeuze Thanks for the #FF ! in reply to KristineLeuze #
Listening to Soundgarden – Outshined via SkreemR http://bit.ly/ApWNq #
Restaurant Calls Rowdy Toddler "Little F***er" On Family's Receipt via @feedly http://ff.im/-81Q09 #
How to Reach Gen M(illennials) in the Library and Classroom–A Panel Discussion via @feedly http://ff.im/-81Q0U #
John Listening to Soundgarden – Outshined via SkreemR http://bit.ly/ApWNq. http://ff.im/-81SZ8 #

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Google Book Settlement will help stimulate eBook availability in libraries

2009-09-11T16:13:30+00:00

So says former Google Book Search product manager Frances Haugen in her contribution to the debate on the September Library 2.0 Gang.

This month’s Gang was kicked off by Orion Pozo from NCSU, where they have rolled out dozens of Kindles and a couple of Sony Readers. The comparative success of their Kindles ahead of the Sony Reader appears to be because of the simpler process of distributing purchased books across sets of readers and a broader selection of titles at a lower cost. Currently users request books for the Kindle via an online selection form, then they are purchased and downloaded on to the devices which are then loaned out. There were no restrictions on titles purchased and they have an approximate 50% split between fiction and non-fiction.

The Gang discussed the drivers that will eventually lead to the wide adoption of eBooks. This included things like the emergence of open eBook standards, and the evolution of devices, other than dedicated readers, that can provide an acceptable reading experience. Carl Grant shared his experience of starting a read on his Kindle and then picking it up from where he left off on his iPhone (as he joined his wife whilst shopping).

An obvious issue influencing the availability of eBooks is licensing and author and publisher rights. This is where the Google Book Settlement comes in to play. If it works out as she hopes, Frances predicts that over time this will facilitate broader availability of currently unavailable titles. I paraphrase:

[From approx 26:50] Institutional subscriptions will become available on the 10M books that Google has scanned so far. Imagine in the future a user with a reader that accepts open formats will be able to get access to the books this institutional license would provide. Imagine school children having access to 10M books that their library subscribe to, instead of having to formally request one-off books to be added to their device.

[From approx 44:50] There are a huge number of books that are no longer commercially available in the US, for several reasons. If the rights holders of those books do not opt-out, they will become available for people to purchase access to. One of the interesting things about the way the settlement is set-up is that you will be able to purchase access either directly or through an institutional subscription. What is neat is that cycle will put a check on prices as prices for individual books are based upon the demand for the books. So less poplar books will cost less… So if the price of the institutional subscription ever gets too high libraries can decide to buy one-offs of these books. I think that whole economic mechanism will substantially increase access to books.

The Gang were in agreement that eBooks will soon overtake paper ones as the de facto delivery format. It is just a question of how soon. Some believe that this will be much more rapid than many librarians expect. A challenge for librarians to take their services in to this eReading world.

Technorati Tags: Library 2.0 Gang,Libraries,Google,eBooks,eReaders

Documents

2009-09-11T16:02:46+00:00

I’ve struggled in the past with what constitutes an Information Resource in the context of Web Architecture, Linked Data and practical digital library applications such as the National Digital Newspaper Project I work on at the Library of Congress. So it was reassuring to see the issue come up a few months ago during a review of the effort to revise the HTTP specification (RFC 2616). It would be a major effort to summarize the entire conversation here. However an interesting sub-discussion circled around the idea of normalizing the language in the Architecture of the World Wide Web and RFC 2616 with respect to Resources.

Well into the multi-month thread Tim Berners-Lee offered up a very helpful, historical recap of the “what is a resource” issue , in which he said:

I would like to see what the documents [AWWW and RFC 2616] all look like if edited to use the words Document and Thing, and eliminate Resource.

A Short History of “Resource”

Which, somewhat predictably, started a discussion of what a Document is. However this conversation seemed more tangible and earthy, and culminated in Larry Masinter recommending David M. Levy’s book Scrolling Forward:

… since much of the thought behind it informs a lot of my own thinking about the nature of “Document”, “representation”, “Resource” and the like.

www-tag email message

Now Larry is a scientist at Adobe, a company that knows a thing or two about electronic documents. He also works closely with the W3C and IETF on web architectural issues. So when he suggested reading a book to learn what he means by Document my ears perked up. The interjection of a book reference into this rapid-fire email exchange was like a magic spell, that made me pause, and consider that a working definition of Document was nuanced enough to be the subject matter of an entire book.

I’ve come to expect references to Michael Buckland’s classic What is a Document? in discussions of documents. I hadn’t run across David Levy’s name before so Larry’s recommendation was enough for me to request it from the stacks, and give it a read. I wasn’t disappointed. Scrolling Forward is an ode to documents of all shapes and sizes, from all time periods. It’s a joyful, mind expanding work, that explores the entire landscape of our documents: from cash register receipts, the multi-editioned Leaves of Grass, email messages, letters, books, photographs, papyrus scrolls, greeting cards and web pages. Since this takes place in 212 pages, it is not surprising that the analysis synthesizes rather than being exhaustive. Having received a doctorate in computer science from Stanford, obtained a diploma in calligraphy and bookbinding from the Roehampton Institute, and then worked at Xerox PARC studying the nature of documents for 15 years, Levy’s own professional career is marked by a bringing together of scientific and humanistic disciplines.

One of the key messages of the book is a working definition of the Document. Levy’s draws out his definition largely in contrast to a statement made by David Weinberger in his 1996 Wired piece What’s a Document? where he says:

The fact that we can’t even say what a document is anymore indicates the profundity of the change we are undergoing in how we interact with information and, ultimately, our world.

What is a Document?

To which Levy responds:

We can say what a document is. Doing this, however, requires a somewhat different approach from that which dictionaries take. It requires going beyond word usage. It does require looking at the relevant technologies, but in such a way that we aren’t fixated on them, that we don’t fetishize them. Most of all, it requires immersing ourselves in the social roles these technologies play.

Scrolling Forward p. 23

So Scrolling Forward is a survey of sorts; a survey of document types that are inextricably linked to the social contexts in which they were created. This approach to describing rather than positing a theory of documents dove-tailed nicely with some reading of Wittgenstein I’ve been doing recently. In Wittgenstein’s later period he eschewed positing philosophical theories, but instead attempted to resolve philosophical problems by exploring the richness of language and its use in social settings, or language games, to lay bare the problem in a therapeutic way. Levy takes a similar approach in simply laying out the complex, sometimes contradictory history of documents before us, instead of carving out a logical argument and selecting facts to support it.

Some parts of the book that were of particular interest to me (as a software developer working in the area of digital preservation) were the sections discussing document fixity:

… paper documents, and indeed all documents are static and changing, fixed and fluid. There is a reason why text and graphics editors have a Save button, after all.

Scrolling Forward p. 36

Also of interest was Levy’s analysis of why the idea of “digital libraries” is such a lightning rod of opinion (which perhaps applies to its sister concept “repositories”).

[The] ambiguity between institution and collection is carried through in the phrase “digital library”. For some groups, most notably librarians, the phase refers most directly to institutions that oversee digital collections, while for other professionals, primarily computer and information scientists, it refers to digital collections, without regard to the institutional settings (if any) in which they might be managed … Digital library, it seems to me, draws much of its power from this ambiguity: it provides a name for collections of digital materials that invokes the aura of the modern library and its social mission (library as social institution). But it does so without actually making any commitments to the public good (library as collection).

Scrolling Forward p. 135

And finally, Levy doesn’t shy away from the big questions of how our psychological and religious impulses influence our notions of what documents are.

The human search for and construction of order [...] is our response to the profound mystery, and accompanying anxiety, of existence. Emerging into an unfathomable universe and fearing we are nothing within it, we strive to create a meaningful and ultimately immortal place for ourselves [...] Culture creates the conditions for a meaningful existence, for us to play out our games of physical and symbolic survival. But it is an ongoing performance, a play we can never stop performing, lest we see the back-stage gears and levers and be reminded of the mysterious and terrifying backdrop against which we are performing it. [Documents] are death-transcending, lack-filling artifacts of major proportions. Perhaps they can’t literally prevent our physical demise or fill our deepest sense of lack. But they are the central participants in our attempts to do so. Every one of them — each cash register receipt, each greeting card, each Post-it note — makes a contribution to the collaborative edifice we call human culture. Although few carry the weight of the Bible or the Constitution, all of them inform us of “what is and what we should do”. And in concert they help us create and sustain an orderly, and meaningful human lifeworld.

Scrolling Forward pp. 187-188

Heady stuff to be sure. And now I feel like I’ve traveled far from the beginning of this blog post, and the definition of information resources and the semantic web. Scrolling Forward has given me a very personal perspective on what documents are, and have been–and as a result I’m a bit more hopeful about the future of electronic documents. Working in digital preservation, it’s sometimes pretty easy to give in to despair. I’m not sure what the the application of this perspective is towards the normalization of language in the Architecture of the World Wide Web and RFC 2616. But it seems certain that part of the answer lies in not taking our information technologies too seriously, and trying to stay focused on the roles that they play in our individual and collective lives:

We make a mistake, I believe, when we fixate on particular forms and technologies, taking them, in and of themselves, to be the carriers of what we want either to embrace or resist. Not only do we fail to see the forms and technologies in their full complexity, but we use them, in their symbolic simplicity, as blunt instruments with which to beat one another over the head.

Scrolling Forward p. 198

PS. The bibliography is a great source of new material to read too.
PSS. This blog post was also a not-so-secret experiment in using RDFa and the Bibliographic Ontology to mark up quotations. Check out the rdf assertions you can extract from it using the RDFa Distiller.

What is our ROI?

2009-09-11T00:55:06+00:00

Welcome back guest-blogger, Matt Goldner.

ROI (Return on Investment) is not commonly used among librarians while it is a key issue for commercial business. This is somewhat natural given our different missions, libraries typically serve the public and businesses serve their shareholders. I have been wondering about a possible application of this same measure to libraries and where it might be applied.

Commercial businesses have over the last half a decade moved more and more of their business processes up to the cloud, e.g. as Web delivered applications. Areas that might have been unthinkable to have stored and maintained offsite are now routinely placed on external platforms. Examples are a business's customer relationship management system, HR systems, payroll systems. Why are they doing this, because it allows them to reduce their costs for these systems and re-allocate time and effort to moving their business forward thus enhancing the opportunity for a better ROI.

Why should this matter to libraries? On what would a library ROI be based? To answer the second question I would say it is how well we have served our constituency. Are they delighted and amazed with our service? Or are we the last ditch resort when they can't find what they need elsewhere.

As to why it should matter if we are spending too much of our financial resources on maintaining infrastructure we are reducing our opportunity to increase the value of our services to our constituency. So perhaps we have something to learn here from commercial businesses who have found value in reducing local infrastructure and moving it to the cloud. It could give libraries the opportunity to increase a good measure of return on investment, delighting and amazing our constituencies.

jrochkind

2009-09-10T21:00:12+00:00

So, I have a servlet (based on initial work from Tod Olson at uchicago, expanded by me) to provide holdings information from Horizon in the DLF ils-di “dlfexpanded” format. The servlet code and some documentation is available.

That’s the short statement. It turns out that you can’t really just say that without providing some more specifics, caveats, exceptions, limitations etc. Also it’s worth adding some interesting observations.

Motivation

As we’ve moving ahead with blacklight, we’re going to need to have some way to get item holdings information out of Horizon. By “item holdings information” I mean “copy” information, what items do we have, what are their call numbers, what are their statuses (checked in or out among many others), what are their locations, etc. etc. Everything you’d need to provide an actual OPAC display telling the users what they need to know about our holdings.

A sidenote on terminology: In Horizon there are ‘items’, and sometimes a bib just has ‘items’. But sometimes a big has different sets of items in groups — this is usually used for serials, or occasionally for multi-volume series. Horizon confusingly calls this set of items a ‘copy’. The DLF ils-di report calls it a ‘holdingset’. I have no idea what your ILS calls it. It’s a two-level hiearchy, a bib can contain one or more copies/holdingsets which each contains items. OR a bib can contain one or more items directly, without the intervening copy/holdingset.

And, the way most people are doing this at present (for a variety of reasons) is checking in realtime at point of demand for this info, not trying to index it. So, okay, go with the conventional wisdom. So I need a realtime service to provide this info from Horizon.

But I figure, as long as I’m doing this, MUCH better to provide the info in some standard format, instead of a custom one. Then, theoretically, the consuming code on the Blacklight end can be written to that standard format, instead of being custom for Horizon. And my understanding is that the Blacklight team has indeed been thinking/wishing for some standard stuff on the Blacklight end to consume stuff in DLF ils-di format, and/or jangle (which also typically, at the moment, uses the DLF ‘dlfexpanded’ format to actually return data in).

So, okay, that makes sense.

But DLF ils-di format is not a complete spec

So it turns out once you decide to return data in the DLF ils-di “dlfexpanded” format, you’re actually not done deciding what your data is actually going to look like.

The dlfexpanded format is just kind of a coat tree to hang your actual metadata ‘coats’ on. dlfexpanded lets you give a list of itemIDs and say they belong to a bib; it lets you give a list of holdingsets and say which itemIDs belong to them. Good so far. But to actually describe anything else about those items and holdingsets (location, call number, item status, any user-displayable notes, etc), you’ve got to include additional metadata of your own choosing — dlfexpanded gives you some hooks that it allows you to hang basically whatever other namespaced (and hopefully specified and standardized) XML you want on.

So figuring out what metadata to actually use to describe everything I wanted about my Items and Copies (aka ‘holdingsets’) took a bit of investigating and thinking.

simpleavailability

Sure, I used the dlf:simpleavailability format that dlfexpanded gives you just to say whether something is “available” or not (and provide a custom user-displayable string conveying that).

Although I ended up only providing that at the item level. The dls-di report seems to assume the client could ask for ‘availability’ at the bib or holdingset level too. But I wasn’t even sure what the semantics of this should be, and figuring out the code to this without impacting performance (more on performance later) was tricky. So, okay, the client can look at the availability on all items and figure out how to sum them up at the bib or copy level itself, if needed (I’m not sure I’ll even need to, for my use cases).

But I want to say a lot more about my Items and Copies than simpleavailability. I want to include enough data that my complete OPAC screen could be replicated by third party software.

mfhd

So after hunting around for available ’standard’ options, I settled on good old MFHD — expressed in marc-xml. I considered the new fangled “ISO Holdings”, but limited public documentation is available, and from looking at the schema that is available, it didn’t look like ISO Holdings would let me express anything that MFHD didn’t. Sure, MFHD is kind of a bear for the developer to work with, with all those opaque numeric codes, but oh well, went with the known evil, MFHD.

Except I’m not really using mfhd as is typical. I use just enough of it to express what I want. I include kind of a dummy ‘leader’ just for the sake of appearances, since there’s nothing in the leader I actually need. In standard MFHD usage, you would rarely (never?) have an individual MFHD record just for an item, but the dlfexpanded “coat tree” gives me hooks to hang MFHDs for individual items, and that makes it a lot more convenient to express and retrieve things unambigously, so why not. So anyway, it’s MFHD, but I’m not neccesarily saying any existing MFHD-processing tools will be able to do much with it, I’m using it so unusually (although not illegally in any way as far as I can tell). Oh well, at least it’s a standard format.

Interestingly, while MFHD theoretically lets you express serial run statements in a machine readable form… A) I don’t have that info in my ILS anyway, and B) that machine readability in the way mfhd has you express it is a lot more theoretical than practical. So I’m not doing that. If my ILS had the data, I’d probably express it in the more straightforward ONIX Serial Coverage Statement instead of MFHD. (Note to ONIX people — why oh why do you only provide the actual schema in a zip file online? You used to provide it individually. Very inconvenient.)

But wait, there’s more

But to completely express all the data I’d need to duplicate my OPAC display in external software, mfhd still didn’t quite do it for me. Mostly, I wanted more internal ILS codes. mfhd lets me express ‘location’ and ‘collection’ as user-presentable strings, but I want to reveal my internal non-mutable codes for these too. mfhd doesn’t let me express the concept of ‘item type’ that’s in my catalog at all!

So after looking around some more for something to do that, I gave up and just created my own very simple XML schema to do it, which I’m calling “ILS holdings schema” for expressing internal codes and such, in case you want to.

And one more plug for DAIA

And as I alluded to my last post, I’m using DAIA too — at this point solely to expose the URL that can be accessed to issue a ‘request’ for the item through HIP. This is a bit against the spirit of DAIA, since exactly what a ‘request’ will do is unclear [recall a checked out item, or only add you to a hold list? Let you check it out, or only request it to be provided in the special collections reading room? Deliver it to a circ desk, or actually to your office (as we provide to some people). Who knows!]

And worse, I’m not able to actually pre-check if ‘request’ really is available or not, for reasons discussed in the last post. Which is really against the spirit of DAIA.

But oh well, it was such a nice little schema for simply revealing a URL for a service, and my OPAC ‘request’ feature is a service… so I used it.

At some later point I hope to go back and make a real nice DAIA response, but it’ll be a buncha work, which isn’t required by the specs of the project I’m working on presently.

Oh, and I only provide DAIA at the item-level too, not at the Copy or Bib level. (I think some people’s Horizon setups actually do allow Requests at the Copy or Bib level, but not ours, so I couldn’t quite figure out how it should/would work and didn’t have time for it).

Performance Issues

So I think the servlet is reasonably fast, but the trickwhen you’re developing an API that’s going to be used by other software is… “reasonable” gets a lot less forgiving. I mean, let’s say there’s a search result ‘hit list’ with 20 hits on it — my software might want to call this API 20 times for one web page! A 0.2 second response time might be pretty good for a user-facing web app, but not for an API that needs to be called 20 times to deliver one page to the user.

So I might have some speed issues, that theoretically I can optimize to some extent. (Although I’m not looking forward to it. Java is not my specialty. If I had to do it over again, not sure I would have done this in Java, although it made sense at the time for several reasons. And if I were going to do it in Java, I think I’d want to use a framework of some kind, not do it with the pretty low-level stuff that JDBC and Servlet APIs alone give you. But that would result in it’s own trade-offs.)

But perhaps worse than the speed issues are some response size issues. I took a look at the response for a bib I knew would have a lot of items — JAMA, with dozens of holdingsets and hundreds or more items. The dlfexpanded response was 1.2 megs! That might be an issue for sending accross the network, loading into memory, and parsing the XML on the client side.

It’s so large in part because there’s some redundancy in the multiple metadata formats we use to express everything. A basic schema-less ad hoc uchicago-created XML response for the same data is only 220k. Which is still pretty big.

So, I provided some extra query parameters (not specified in dlf ils-di of course) to allow the client to limit the data returned, if it doesn’t really need all of it. The client can choose which metadata payloads it wants for items or copies, instead of taking all of them. And the client can choose NOT to have items included in a response that includes copies, just to include the copy information, and let the client ask for the item info later if it needs it.

We will see how it goes.

Standard or not? Workable or not?

So, okay, I’m providing my info in the DLF ils-di ‘dlfexpanded’ format, but how standard is it? If someone says “Oh yeah, I have code that can consume dlfexpanded”, does that mean it will automatically work with my (or anyone elses!) dlfexpanded info?

Doubtful. You’ve got your choice of metadata payloads to hang on that ‘coat tree’, and everyone can choose different things. Even once you’ve chosen, two people providing the same ones may be using them slightly differently (as evidenced by a few choices I had to make here and there with how to use mfhd).

On top of that, for performance related reasons, or to fit ‘dlfexpanded’ into the actual use cases I have (which go beyond simple DLF “getAvailability”), my dlfexpanded responses sometimes don’t include everything — just because there are no ‘items’ listed in the response doesn’t necessarily mean there are no items, they might have been suppressed based on the request parameters for performance. And, those request parameters are non-standard, but I think (at least for my use cases), the client is really going to need to use them to avoid a performance nightmare.

Or, if you asked my API for info on a certain item, you get a dlfexpanded response that only has that item in it, not all the other items belonging to the same bib, which may or may not be misleading or confusing to the consumer.

Meanwhile, I’ve only written the producer end of things so far, I haven’t even written the consumer. When I get around to writing the consumer, I’m probably going to run into even more tricks and problems requiring me to go back and revise, including but not limited to performance stuff.

So we’ll see. I don’t blame the DLF ils-di task force for this; they did a great job. But we make the map as we tread the path, there’s no way to map out everything without actually trying it in practice first, and trying it in a bunch of different use cases and scenarios to abstract out the commonalities. So, we’re figuring it out as we go, that’s the only way to do it, and the ils-di task force wisely recognized that and didn’t try to map everything out in advance.

Still, it means this stuff is trickier than it might originally seem. The specs, standards, and best practices are not “done”, not even close. We’ve got to figure out a bunch of stuff.

Posted in General

How To Release Open Source Software

2009-09-09T22:55:09+00:00

Recently an institution that I respect released some open source software. Being interested, I immediately downloaded it and started checking it ou...

The Best Live Presentations Make the Worst Archived Ones

2009-09-09T00:32:11+00:00

Many of the best PowerPoint (or Keynote, or whatever) presentations are virtually devoid of words. Slides usually consist an image or a graphic, an...

William Tunstall-Pedoe talks about True Knowledge

2009-09-08T11:23:34+00:00

In my latest podcast I talk with William Tunstall-Pedoe, CEO of Cambridge-based True Knowledge.

We discuss the company’s ‘Answer Engine’ and consider the ways in which its technology can be seen as complementing rather than competing with more traditional search engines.

During the conversation, we refer to the following resources;

Bing
Cambridge University
David Letterman page on Wikipedia
Powerset
Siri, and my podcast with CTO Tom Gruber
True Knowledge
True Knowledge API
True Knowledge Browser plugins
True Knowledge Local Search
Wolfram Alpha

This conversation was recorded on Monday 7 September, 2009.

For other Talis podcasts in this Nodalities series, see here

In my latest podcast I talk with William Tunstall-Pedoe, CEO of Cambridge-based True Knowledge. We discuss the company's 'Answer Engine' and consider the ways in which its technology can be seen as complementing rather than competing with more traditional search engines. During the conversation, we refer to the following resources; Bing Cambridge University David Letterman page on Wikipedia Powerset Siri, and my podcast with CTO Tom Gruber True Knowledge True Knowledge API True Knowledge Browser plugins True Knowledge Local Search Wolfram Alpha This conversation was recorded on Monday 7 September, 2009. For other Talis podcasts in this Nodalities series, see here

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2009-09-06

2009-09-06T14:22:00+00:00

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2009-08-30 http://ff.im/-7o33y #
Twitter Weekly Updates for 2009-08-30 http://ff.im/-7o33x #
Twitter Weekly Updates for 2009-08-30 http://ff.im/-7ob13 #
Twitter Weekly Updates for 2009-08-30 http://ff.im/-7ob14 #
Cool Stuff: Rick Baker’s Real Life Popeye via @feedly http://ff.im/-7rB7o #
Disney To Acquire Marvel Entertainment For $4 Billion via @feedly http://ff.im/-7rB9D #
@gservo I'm pretty sure twitter is my primary blog now, but you can find me at http://lemasney.com and http://johnwlemasney.wordpress.com in reply to gservo #
It’s Nice That : Article : Aakash Nihalani via @feedly http://ff.im/-7tYU9 #
Tutorial Roundup: 53 Amazing Blender Tutorials – Cgtuts+ http://ff.im/-7uewp #
GOMlab.com – Play Any Video File, Any Time! The Best Media Player! http://ff.im/-7vsci #
Confirmed: eBay Sells Skype In Deal Valuing It At $2.75 Billion via @feedly http://ff.im/-7vscj #
FFFFOUND! | a beautiful revolution: blog via @feedly http://ff.im/-7vtCn #
One year walk/beard grow time lapse video – Boing Boing via @feedly http://ff.im/-7vvb5 #
Finding Files On The Command Line | HowtoForge – Linux Howtos and Tutorials http://ff.im/-7vvsf #
Education Needs to Be Turned on Its Head http://ff.im/-7vwa2 #
Computer Repair with Diagnostic Flowcharts – Troubleshooting Dell, HP, Sony, eMachines, IBM, Compaq and Gateway PC's http://ff.im/-7vwMO #
Graphic Design Resources for Illustrator and Photoshop, Shapes, brushes, styles, Tutorials, free, vector, images,… http://ff.im/-7xrE8 #
Comment on 10 reasons why I’m giving up Beer Blogging. by lemasney http://ff.im/-7yp7s #
Now Use PHPanywhere To Code Directly From Your Browser via @feedly http://ff.im/-7yB63 #
Cargo Bikes, Part 2 – Core77 via @feedly http://ff.im/-7yGRX #
@SamZABARR Welcome to Rider! #
RT: @joe_mendis 4 Resources for Inkscape Open Source Drawing Tool: Among advanced open source graphics tools, GIMP .. http://bit.ly/pjbZB #
John RT: @joe_mendis 4 Resources for Inkscape Open Source Drawing Tool: Among advanced open source graphics tools,… http://ff.im/-7C80G #
RT @seannyfunco: @lemasney @angelbrady – http://tinyurl.com/n2s8hd – Flash Drive based College Courses. Me: nice. #
John RT @seannyfunco: @lemasney @angelbrady – http://tinyurl.com/n2s8hd – Flash Drive based College Courses. Me: nice. http://ff.im/-7Ck2g #
Beck – Hell Yes http://ff.im/-7Ck2h #
Just in case you didn't know — I love my Mac Book Pro. I use Windows, I appreciate Ubuntu, I love Mac OS. #
John Just in case you didn't know — I love my Mac Book Pro. I use Windows, I appreciate Ubuntu, I love Mac OS. http://ff.im/-7CLJk #

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Book review of Steven Johnson’s Best technology writing 2009

2009-09-06T01:31:58+00:00

Libraries and publishing: a couple of examples

2009-09-04T21:44:48+00:00

By: dempsey

Categories: Books, movies and reading ...• Research, learning and scholarly communication• ebooks and other e-resources

As interaction with the book literature, publishing, the role of large print collections, and research and learning behaviors are all changing in a network environment, academic libraries have been looking at their role in the scholarly communication and publishing process. I came across two examples of library activity which prompt this note ....

The Economist has a short article on the Google Book Search settlement (who doesn't?). A colleague and I had a look at the two works it mentions as examples of orphan works. One was The Appalachian frontier America's first surge westward by John Anthony Caruso.

Worldcat tells me about three versions of The Appalachian Frontier.

Caruso, John Anthony. 1959. The Appalachian frontier; America's first surge westward. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill.
Caruso, John Anthony. 2003. The Appalachian frontier: America's first surge westward. Knoxville, TN: University of Tennessee Press.
Caruso, John Anthony. 2003. The Appalachian frontier America's first surge westward. Appalachian echoes. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press. http://www.newfoundpress.utk.edu/pubs/caruso/.

The third is a digital version provided by the Library at the University of Tennessee Knoxville through its imprint Newfound Press. The Press is described as follows:

The University of Tennessee Libraries is developing a framework to make scholarly and specialized works available worldwide. Newfound Press, the University Libraries digital imprint, advances the community of learning by experimenting with effective and open systems of scholarly communication. Drawing on the resources that the university has invested in digital library development, Newfound Press collaborates with authors and researchers to bring new forms of publication to an expanding scholarly universe. We consider manuscripts in all disciplines, encompassing scientific research, humanistic scholarship, and artistic creation. [Welcome to Newfound Press]

In partnership with the library's Digital Library Initiatives and the UT Digital Repository, Newfound Press applies technology to promote emerging forms of scholarly inquiry and discovery of the results. The University Libraries and the University of Tennessee Press enjoy a longstanding, friendly relationship. Newfound Press draws on these advantages to pursue its mission of expanding access to scholarly and specialized work in the global environment. We aspire to prominence as a publisher of choice. [About us]

The second example is a joint initiative between Cambridge University Press and Cambridge University Library called Books of Enduring Scholarly Value. From the press release:

Cambridge University Press has launched the Cambridge Library Collection, a new project reissuing books of enduring scholarly value. It uses state-of-the-art scanning and print-on-demand technology to make accessible in new ways works that until now would have been available only in libraries.

Already a pioneer in the re-publishing of titles from its own backlist, Cambridge University Press is extending its reach to include other books which are still of interest to researchers, students and the general reader. The Press's unique relationship with Cambridge University Library allows access to a vast range of out-of-print and out-of-copyright titles.

With subjects ranging from travel to maths and from life sciences to music, the Cambridge Library Collection allows readers access to books they would otherwise struggle to find. Writings by Charles Darwin and his circle, and studies on Shakespeare, Jane Austen, Handel and Wagner all appear, alongside the works of the greatest nineteenth-century mathematicians, and a range of books on Cambridge from the serious to the scandalous.

The Press takes advice from experts worldwide on what books in their subject areas should be included in the programme. Each book is carefully scanned, and the resulting files undergo a rigorous process of cleaning, in which any blemishes are removed to obtain a crisp and legible text. Each book has a new cover design and a specially written blurb which highlights the relevance of the book to today's readers.

The Cambridge Library Collection launched on 20 July with 475 titles, to celebrate the 475 years since the Press was granted permission to print 'all manner of books' by Letters Patent of Henry VIII. By the end of 2009, this number will have grown to over 1,000. [Cambridge University Press launches a new venture to reissue rare and out-of print books]

And here is a video, which shows among other things, the actual scanning in action ...

The Cambridge example is discussed in an article in Inside Higher Ed which also refers to the recent announcement by the University of Michigan about reprint on demand services for thousands of its rare books in collaboration with Booksurge. It also points to Cornell's arrangement with Amazon for reprint services on 80,000 titles through the Cornell University Library Bookstore.

These examples show an area of growing interest. They also underline how books will appear through multiple channels with consequences for discovery and fulfillment options.

Metadata redux

2009-09-04T15:33:53+00:00

By: dempsey

Categories: Metadata

I was asked in a meeting recently to define metadata. This prompts me to adapt some text recycled from All that is solid melts into flows* ...

Like most people ;-), I tend to think about metadata as 'schematized assertions about resources': schematized because patterned and machine understandable; assertions because they involve a claim about the resource by a particular agent; resource because any identifiable object may have metadata associated with it. Metadata is useful because it relieves a potential user (a person or a program) of having to have full advance knowledge of the characteristics or existence of the resource. In other words, metadata provides 'intelligence' which supports more efficient operations on resources. Examples of operations are discovery, preservation, purchase, reformatting, embedding, analysis, extraction of components, and so on.

* And sorry, I couldn't resist keeping in the smiley ....

Muldoon and Colbert

2009-09-03T21:01:01+00:00

By: dempsey

Categories: Books, movies and reading ...

I have mentioned Paul Muldoon in these pages several times. I could not resist linking to this appearance of the Northern Irish poet, Princeton faculty member, and poetry editor of the New Yorker, on The Colbert Report. The best bit is at the end.

The Colbert Report

Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c

Paul Muldoon

www.colbertnation.com

Colbert Report Full Episodes

Political Humor

Health Care Protests

Here is Muldoon's Worldcat Identity.

Google Book Scanning Project – Issues and Updates

2009-09-03T16:07:29+00:00

Last night I listened to another Educause webinar – something that is developing into a (good) habit. This week’s was entitled The Google Book Scanning Project – Issues and Updates, and featured presentations and discussion between Dan Clancy, Engineering Director of Google Book Search, and Jonathan Band from the Library Copyright Alliance.

Even though the current negotiations are US-specific, it’s still a good idea for librarians everywhere to keep themselves up-to-date on progress on this area. This webinar provides a useful overview of the project, but if you haven’t got a full hour to spare, a recent article written by William Skidelsky in The Observer – Google’s plan for world’s biggest online library: philanthropy or act of piracy? – should also do the job.

So I’ll leave it to those two sources to cover the basics. However, there are a number of concepts that are important to understand in order to follow the debate between the two sides, which is what this blog posting is really about.

First of all, Google is categorising all the books it scans into one of the following:
a. Public domain – defined as having been published before 1923.
b. Books published after 1923, but which are either out of print or orphaned works (around 75% of all books scanned).
c. Books still in print.

Secondly, Google is planning to offer a number of different diverse access models, the most noteworthy being:
a. Preview uses
b. Online consumer access – enabling users to buy online access to individual works under a pricing regime set by either the rightsholder or Google.
c. Institutional subscription – on a FTE basis, for HEIs and corporations
d. Public Access Terminal – one free terminal per US public or university library.

Thirdly, an independent Books Rights Registry (no website as yet) will be set up to represent rightsholders and to collect and distribute revenues as well as resolve disputes.

Well that covers a lot of Dan Clancy’s presentation, although it’s worth mentioning in passing that Clancy does come across as being genuinely philanthropic, as the Observer article also noted.

So now let’s move onto Jonathan Band, who was there really to cover the pros and cons of the project as it currently stands.

Band had many good things to say about the Google Book Settlement, painting a rosy picture of where we’ll be if the Settlement is approved. Firstly, of course, Google will be able to continue scanning books into its search index. Notable benefits for users include free access to users to full-text through public access service terminals, and the ability to purchase access to out of print books for relatively low cost. Meanwhile, institutions will be able to purchase access to the full text of millions of books, and those that are participating in the project will receive digital copies of their collections.

As Band said, all in all there’s a lot to like.

And yet the project has generated considerable controversy. Why is this?

One frequently made argument is the absence of competition for what is bound to become an essential facility. Google has already scanned 10 million books in 5 years so it has a huge competitive advantage. So here is a situation in which there is enormous demand, yet there is no other supplier, so there is a risk of a cost-prohibitive subscription which might undermine equity of access, privacy and intellectual freedom.

The business model is also contentious. Together, Google and the Books Rights Registry (with arbitration if necessary) will set the price of the institutional subscription. Google’s objectives in pricing are the realisation of revenues at market rates and of broad access to books. The parameters for pricing include pricing of “similar products and services”, and Band is concerned that if eJournal subscriptions are used as a benchmark, then the subscription could be cost-prohibitive for many institutions.

Only Google’s library partners have the right to a separate price negotiation route. And even then, refund is limited to Google’s share (37% of price).

For Clancy, the solution is that rather than ask the court to reject the Settlement, we should ask the court to closely supervise the interpretation and implementation of the settlement, given that this is a natural monopoly needing regulation. Brand is also anxious to ensure diverse composition of the Book Rights Registry, encompassing author representation in particular.

Clancy countered this by emphasising that Google cares deeply about the pricing, and is making this investment because it believes in broad access; a limited access project will be inconsistent with their vision. Clancy compared the planned price of a typical book under the terms of the Settlement with the price of a journal article, which can cost around $30. To me this seemed like a fudge. The original argument that Band made was around the cost of the institutional subscription, so why didn’t Clancy use the price of an eJournal subscription as a comparator? He also argued, though, that the vast majority of books will be cheaper than ILLs.

Clancy didn’t touch the issue of competition, emphasising customer choice instead i.e. libraries can decide that the subscription is too expensive and instead opt for free services. Again, this lacked conviction. No library worth its salt would build its collection on such a restrictive basis. He did mention the lack of competition and choice in the eJournal marketplace though.

He also dismissed the suggestion that people will get rid of their physical books as seeming stupid. Actually this seemed strange, as Band hadn’t mentioned that argument.

The killer argument for me was made by Band towards the end of the webinar. He argued that we all want to trust Google. The Settlement is fundamentally desirable. And the people who are at Google right now seem eminently trustworthy. However, ownership can change, and that is why some degree of quasi-regulation is necessary. Clancy could only reply by saying that Google’s library partners (i.e. only the partners and not libraries as a whole) would have the right to arbitrate with Google if they felt the pricing was unfair.

Niche Print on Demand services on the rise

2009-09-03T13:16:27+00:00

Today in the Times Higher Education (THE), Matthew Reisz reports on the growth of niche print on demand (POD) services offered by academic libraries and university presses in both the UK and the US. While the Google Book Settlement moves through its long and laborious negotiation process, a small handful of libraries have taken the initiative and are making an increasing number of books available via print on demand.

Probably the most well-known of these is University of Michigan’s growing Michigan Historical Reprint Series, which recently announced the availability of 400,000 additional titles. But the THE article also highlights similar developments at Cornell University Library and Cambridge University Press.

These developments surely deserve our congratulations. They have succeeded in generating a new revenue stream, which, as all librarians know, is easier said than done, especially in what is now a very risk-averse climate. Furthermore, any initiative that broadens availability of long tail publications has got to be a good thing. And lastly, whatever we think of the Google Book Settlement, a bit of healthy competition can only be a good thing for all parties.

jrochkind

2009-09-02T18:21:31+00:00

So DAIA is a nice little response format-slash-API specification from Jakob Voss.

It’s focused on a very specific goal: describing what services are available for a given item, possibly providing URLs to access that service for a given item, telling the user how long they’ll have to wait to get that service, etc.

Some more specific scenarios mapped to my library might make things more clear. For a given item and user, that user might be able to:

Look at the item in the library. Which they might be able to do immediately (upon finding it in the stacks), or there might be a 1 or 2 business day delay because it’s in some kind of closed stacks or offsite storage, and they’re going to have to request it.
- OR, there might be a longer delay, because the item is currently checked out, and they’re going to have to wait until it comes back — or maybe they have ‘recall’ privileges, and there’s still a delay, but shorter!
Check the book out? Again, maybe they can, or maybe they can’t at all. If they can, maybe they’re going to have to first ‘recall’ it (if they’re allowed to), with a longer delay.
Request the book for delivery to a circ desk? Related to recall/checkout, but in rare cases they might be able to request delivery to a circ desk, but only view it in library! And there are cases where they might be able to check it out, but NOT request delivery. Or where they can request delivery, but they won’t get it until the book comes back on it’s own, they have no ‘recall’ privileges.

Now, the answers to these questions, once determined, are easily expressible in DAIA, no problem.

The problem is, as the complicated foregoing discussion may have hinted, that determining the answers to these questions from our ILS is enormously complex. All the info is in the ILS somehow. In the end, either the ILS is going to allow a ‘request’ or a ‘loan’ or a ‘recall’, or it’s not. And there’s info in the ILS to let us predict what’s going to happen, and estimate how long it’ll take until the user gets access (as DAIA allows us to express once we’ve figured it out). It’s all there somehow — but trying to figure out how to actually predict it, oh boy, I get confused really quick. There are dozens of different tables I need to consult in the ILS, and figure out how they interact and which takes priority or overrides which other. Privileges can be set on item statuses, locations, groups, etc. Borrower statuses, groups, types, etc. And they are not set, in my ILS Horizon, in only one place, but in dozens of different places with different semantics that all interact in ill-defined ways.

Phew.

It seems like something a user would expect, in this day and age, that when they look up a book the listing could actually TELL them if they can check the book out (and how long they’ll have to wait to get it, if there’s a recall involved, etc), if they can view it in the library, if they can request it for delivery, etc. Our ILS is currently incapable of doing that — to the extent that it even always displays a ‘request’ button, and the user has to actually click on it to find out if they actually can make a request or not. Which is generally the only way a user can find out what services are available, by trying them. Which depending on the service may or may not be able to be done over the web (can you look at it in the library? Who knows unless you go there and try. Or call a librarian and hope they aren’t as confused as I am!). You want to know how long you’re probably going to have to wait to get it? Too bad.

At first I optimistically thought I could calculate all this stuff from the ILS, deliver it in DAIA, and then use it in new interfaces to actually tell the users what they’re going to want to know. DAIA is quite up to it. But writing code to actually calculate these things — very non-trivial. Not so happy with Horizon right now.

Anyone reading this know about the open source ILS’s? Would this be easier in any of them?

Posted in General

Latinas cross the IT border: Understanding gender as a boundary object between information worlds

2009-09-02T14:44:09+00:00

How do successful Latina IT professionals construct and reconstruct their conceptions of gender before, during, and after contact with the information world of the IT industry? We conducted semi-structured phone interviews with five Latinas who held senior management positions in IT firms in 2008 to explore their reasons for choosing and persisting in the workforce. Using the theory of information worlds as a framework for analysis of gender as a boundary object, this article reports four trends in the perceptions of these women dealing with the relationship between gender and success in IT.

Massive Storage For a Song

2009-09-02T01:25:07+00:00

What if I told you that for under $8,000 you could have 67 Terabytes of storage? Would you call me crazy? If you were to price today's storage solu...

QOTD: public libraries and social engineering

2009-09-01T22:27:51+00:00

By: dempsey

Categories: Libraries - organization and services

From the Preface to Books, buildings and social engineering:

We seek to rescue the historic public library building from a perspective that in the past has all too easily denigrated it. The mass construction - for that is what it eventually became - of early public library buildings is to be celebrated as a successful exercise in social engineering, an unprecedented effort by a public-sphere movement to persuade citizens, in a consensual way, of the importance of knowledge in an increasingly open and modernising society (we have deliberately used the term 'social engineering' as opposed to the narrower and misleading term 'social control'). More precisely, the provision of what amounted to over one thousand library buildings in the period 1850-1939 was an exercise in what Karl Popper called 'piecemeal social engineering' - social engineering that was incremental and continually amended in the light of experience and new knoweldge, a scientific approach to planning social change, in this instance via the free provision of books, information, education and knowledge, that reflected the essence of the public library as an institution of progress and scientific inquiry. [Black, A., Pepper, S., & Bagshaw, K. (2009). Books, buildings and social engineering: Early public libraries in Britain from past to present. Farnham, England: Ashgate Pub.]

Comment on Grokker gone :-( by Edward Corrado (ecorrado) 's status on Tuesday, 01-Sep-09 19:01:01 UTC - Identi.ca

2009-09-01T19:01:08+00:00

[...] http://blog.ecorrado.us/2009/09/01/grokker-gone/ a few seconds ago from web [...]

Comment on Grokker gone :-( by ranti

2009-09-01T17:15:17+00:00

Bummer. I happen to like Grokker as well; I still have their desktop application (too bad it no longer works.)

Grokker gone :-(

2009-09-01T15:15:50+00:00

We received an e-mail from Binghamton University Libraries has been one of the few Academic Libraries using Grokker for visual search of scholarly materials. Binghamton began collaborating with Groxis on the project in Fall 2004 and went live in January 2005 (more than 3 years before I arrived here). Since starting at Binghamton, I have really liked the visual search interface it provides and used it rather often. It is not to say I don’t like our other federated search product, Metalib, I do and in many ways it was better. However, they both had the strength and weaknesses and I will miss the visual result sets from Grokker.

For more information, see Groxis CEO Randy Marcinfo’s comment about the financial situation of Groxis on Steve Arnold’s Beyond Search Web log.

jrochkind

2009-09-01T13:32:34+00:00

I have returned from my leave of absence, and am back at work.

Posted in General

Twitter Is the New RSS

2009-09-01T02:55:08+00:00

After going a full six weeks without reading my blog aggregator, I have to wonder what's up. What's up, I can tell you, is that if it isn't hot wit...

Strategic reading and bouncing

2009-08-31T01:26:07+00:00

By: dempsey

Categories: Books, movies and reading ...• Metadata• Research, learning and scholarly communication• User experience

I was very taken by Timothy Burke's presentation at the first open meeting of the Library of Congress Working Group on Bibliographic Control. What was especially interesting was how he outlined a variety of ways in which he needed to interact with the literature. In his own specialties, he expected to have comprehensive knowledge of what was published. Occasionally he might prospect a new area, wanting to get a sense of its 'shape'. He might need to understand something of the research area of a student. And so on. This variety of approaches led him to outline a set of capacities that would be useful to him, summarized in the meeting report as follows:

the ability to recognize clusters of knowledge production (persons and subjects),

the lineage of publications (i.e., how they exist in chronological relationship to each other),

the ability to make previously unknown connections among resources,

the ability to make serendipitous or unforeseen connections among topics,

identification of the authoritativeness of sources,

the popularity/amount of use of a resource, and

the sociology of knowledge, for example the "pedigree" of authors and publishers.

[Users and Uses of Bibliographic Data Meeting - Meetings - (Library of Congress)]

Now, he does not talk about 'discovery' or 'search'; he talks about patterns, relationships, judgements. That said, I was also interested that for his specialist areas he was able to name appropriate Library of Congress Subject Headings.

It seems to me that that phrase "strategic reading" might cover what he is doing quite nicely: his pattern of reading is determined by a particular goal, and will be different depending on the goal. His goals are probably variably well supported by our bibliographic apparatus (and remember he is also the author of the modestly notorious Burn the catalog.)

"Strategic reading" is a phrase used by Alan Renear and Carole Palmer in a recent contribution to Science Magazine: Strategic Reading, Ontologies, and the Future of Scientific Publishing (Science 14 August 2009: 828-832) (behind a paywall), and in the associated news story. Their focus is more on the techniques adopted to do some of what is discussed above, than the patterns themselves.

Scientists have always strived to avoid unnecessary reading. Like all researchers, they use indexing and citations as indicators of relevance, abstracts and literature reviews as surrogates for full papers, and social networks of colleagues and graduate students as personal alerting services. The aim is to move rapidly through the literature to assess and exploit content with as little actual reading as possible. As indexing, recommending, and navigation has become more sophisticated in the online environment, these strategic reading practices have intensified. ...

... They sweep through resources, changing search strings, chaining references backward and citations forward, dodging integrator and publisher sites to find open-access copies, continually working to reduce the number of clicks required for access. By note-taking or cutting and pasting, scientists often extract and accumulate bits of specific information, such as findings, equations, protocols, and data. In this process, rapid judgments are made--such as assessments of relevance, impact, and quality--while search queries are being formulated and refined. (Fig. 3). The goal often seems to be undifferentiated assimilation of information about a domain or a problem at hand, and the online experience may be highly valuable, even though no clear aim is met and no articles to read are located. [Allen H. Renear and Carole L. Palmer. Strategic Reading, Ontologies, and the Future of Scientific Publishing. Science 325, 828 (2009) - behind a paywall]

They go on to refer to the analogy with the remote control proposed by David Nicholas et al in their work on information behaviors. We have become bouncers and flickers, moving horizontally though the literature.

Just as the aim of channel surfing is not to find a program to watch, the goal of literature surfing, is not to find an article to read, but rather to find, assess, and exploit a range of information by scanning portions of many articles. This behavior is common among scientists (9). [Allen H. Renear and Carole L. Palmer. Strategic Reading, Ontologies, and the Future of Scientific Publishing. Science 325, 828 (2009) - behind a paywall]

What types of services are strategic readers most likely to use?

(9) D. Nicholas, P. Huntington, H. R. Jamali, T. Dobrowolski, Inf. Process. Manage. 43, 1085 (2007).

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2009-08-30

2009-08-30T14:22:00+00:00

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Mike Judge, Finding A Comic 'Extract' In The Office via @feedly http://ff.im/-7aoZl #
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2 episodes in, I'm loving Entourage. Jimmy Kimmel piece was fantastic. #
@saltlinestudio yeah we all need a bit more zen. in reply to saltlinestudio #
John 2 episodes in, I'm loving Entourage. Jimmy Kimmel piece was fantastic. http://ff.im/-7gonS #
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Twitter Weekly Updates for 2009-08-30

2009-08-30T14:22:00+00:00

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2009-08-23 http://ff.im/-724DB #
Twitter Weekly Updates for 2009-08-23 http://ff.im/-72kEI #
Screensavers – Best Of | Graphics | Smashing Magazine http://ff.im/-78MAP #
Sony announces Reader Daily Edition, free library ebook checkouts via @feedly http://ff.im/-797az #
Font Viewer http://ff.im/-79I4W #
Engadget's Kindle design contest: we have winners! via @feedly http://ff.im/-7a4YK #
Mike Judge, Finding A Comic 'Extract' In The Office via @feedly http://ff.im/-7aoZl #
VLC Allows You To Convert Videos via @feedly http://ff.im/-7ap8i #
The Book Cover Archive http://ff.im/-7bn8p #
Online Students Performed Better via @feedly http://ff.im/-7brHr #
It’s A Meme! Get Photoshop Warmed Up And Win A Bing Tshirt via @feedly http://ff.im/-7brHq #
@kathymcc I'm definitely a hyperparent, but working on it. in reply to kathymcc #
@melanieplageman I don't use AfterEffects, so i couldn't tell you, but PS/EPS/PDF export very well. AI = proprietary, not standards based in reply to melanieplageman #
@Ekajtactless no funny stuff indeed. in reply to Ekajtactless #
@islandlibrarian thanks for the RT! in reply to islandlibrarian #
Killer brushes that work for the most part in the GIMP. http://icio.us/cwbmjt #
Free Photoshop Brushes at FBrushes! http://ff.im/-7cllR #
John Killer brushes that work for the most part in the GIMP. http://icio.us/cwbmjt. http://ff.im/-7csOc #
Design Resources Search Engine http://ff.im/-7cN3C #
The Bureau of Communication – Fill-in-the-blank Correspondence http://ff.im/-7dmSK #
PhotoFunia http://ff.im/-7do54 #
Free Web Resources – Web Resources Depot http://ff.im/-7dyMi #
Inside Google Books: Download Over a Million Public Domain Books from Google Books in the Open EPUB Format via @feedly http://ff.im/-7dDzU #
Online services should work: A rant about Staples Online via @feedly http://ff.im/-7dDAX #
Share Google Docs on Slideshare via @feedly http://ff.im/-7eIEX #
How to Live a Better Life with Less via @feedly http://ff.im/-7eJeD #
2 episodes in, I'm loving Entourage. Jimmy Kimmel piece was fantastic. #
@saltlinestudio yeah we all need a bit more zen. in reply to saltlinestudio #
John 2 episodes in, I'm loving Entourage. Jimmy Kimmel piece was fantastic. http://ff.im/-7gonS #
Dads Say The Darndest Things…On Twitter via @feedly http://ff.im/-7kion #
Using a Blog to Give My Student Workers a Voice via @feedly http://ff.im/-7kivL #
Anne Wojcicki and Sergey Brin Support CC with $500,000 Gift via @feedly http://ff.im/-7kirC #
Pulp And Circumstance: Tarantino Rewrites History via @feedly http://ff.im/-7kiEx #
sourceforge: XMind is the next SourceForge CCA winner to answer our questions: http://ow.ly/lF8v via @feedly http://ff.im/-7kiVI #
QBrushes – Quality Brushes for Photoshop http://ff.im/-7lMk1 #
WebTreats ETC http://ff.im/-7mFqa #
Obsidian Dawn Resources – Photoshop & GIMP Brushes, Illustrator Vectors, and more! http://ff.im/-7mGf9 #

Please share this story!

Reinventing academic publishing online. Part II: A socio-technical vision

2009-08-28T21:10:21+00:00

Part I of this paper outlined the limitations of feudal academic knowledge exchange and predicted its decline as cross-disciplinary research expands. Part II now suggests the next evolutionary step is democratic online knowledge exchange, run by the academic many rather than the few. Using socio-technical tools it is possible to accept all, evaluate all and publish all academic documents. Editors and reviewers will remain, but their role will change, from gatekeepers to guides. However, the increase in knowledge throughput can only be supported by activating the academic community as a whole. Yet that is what socio-technical systems do --- activate people to increase common gains. Part 1 argued that scholars must do this or be left behind in the dust of progress. The design proposed here is neither wiki, nor e-journal, nor electronic repository, nor reputation system, but a hybrid of these and other socio-technical functions. It supports print publishing as a permanent archive byproduct useful to a living, online knowledge exchange community. It could also track academic submissions, provide performance transcripts to promotion committees, enable hyperlinks, support attribution, allow data-source sharing, retain anonymous reviewing and support relevance and rigor in evaluation. Rather than a single "super" KES, a network of online systems united by a common vision of democratic knowledge exchange is proposed.

Presidential Web sites and the Georgian-Russian War, 8-16 August 2008

2009-08-28T21:10:21+00:00

During the war between Georgia and Russia, 8-16 August 2008, the Web sites of Presidents Mikheil Saakashvili and Dmitry Medvedev were used actively to promote their countries´ conflicting views on the war. This article considers the structure of the two Web sites, their use during the war and their place in the media systems of Georgia and Russia.

The voice from the base(ment): Stridency, referential structure, and partisan conformity in the political blogosphere

2009-08-28T21:10:21+00:00

The Internet has become a critical medium for American politics: in 2008, almost half of American adults looked for political information online, and 30 percent of Internet uses contributed to online political discussions. Using the candidacy of Sarah Palin as a case study of a provocative political event, this paper examines the tone, partisan leanings, and referential structure of six elite blogs. First by randomly sampling overall trends of Palin coverage and then by performing a quantitative content analysis of a sub-sample of posts, this paper finds that the valence and stridency of blog posts vary by partisan identification, and that stridency dramatically affects the referential structure of posts. Although the referential structure of blog posts varies significantly by blog, it does not vary along partisan lines. Nonetheless, the relationship between stridency and partisan conformity exposed by this paper illustrates a trend amongst conservative blogs to repeat the allegations of “liberal media bias” often voiced by traditional conservative media outlets, contributing to an “echo chamber” effect in the blogosphere.

The relationship between public libraries and Google: Too much information

2009-08-28T21:10:21+00:00

This article explores the implications of a shift from public to private provision of information through focusing on the relationship between Google and public libraries. This relationship has sparked controversy, with concerns expressed about the integrity of search results, the Google Book project, and Google the company. In this paper, these concerns are treated as symptoms of a deeper divide, the fundamentally different conceptions of information that underpin the stated aim of Google and libraries to provide access to information. The paper concludes with some principles necessary for the survival of public libraries and their contribution to a robust democracy in a rapidly expanding Googleverse.

What value do users derive from social networking applications?

2009-08-28T21:10:21+00:00

Why do users of social networking sites recommend some applications to their friends while rejecting others? What value do they obtain from applications? This exploratory study investigates the value users derive from ‘cool’ Facebook applications, and explores the features that either encourage or discourage users to recommend applications to their friends. Our qualitative data reveal consumers derive a combination of functional value along with either social or emotional value from the applications. Female Facebook users indicate self-expression as important motivators, while males tend to use Facebook applications to socially compete. Three broad categories emerged for application features; symmetrical features can both encourage or discourage recommendation, polar features where different levels of the same feature encourage or discourage, and uni-directional features only encourage or discourage but not both. Recommending or not recommending an application tends to be the result of a combination of features and context, rather than one feature in isolation.

From PDF to MP3: Motivations for creating derivatives

2009-08-28T21:10:21+00:00

With increasing frequency, authors are licensing their works in such a way so as to permit others to create derivative works. In some cases, these derivatives extend the impact of a work by providing a translation into another language or modifying the file format to make it more accessible. The Internet is increasing people’s ability to create and distribute these derivatives. Seventeen creators of derivatives were surveyed on their motivations for doing so. They indicated that they were willing to create derivatives that extend the original content of a book because they want to help others access the work. Nearly all the people surveyed indicated they were glad they had created derivative works, often feeling like they were part of a community effort to share the work with others. These creators of derivatives believe that as awareness of open licenses increases others will be encouraged to create derivative works.

The Great Web Site Die-Off: Why It Matters

2009-08-28T14:18:08+00:00

You may not think that a web site needs something akin to a living will, but many do -- or more accurately, will. These are sites that are basicall...

e-Readers and e-Textbooks: current reality and future possibilities

2009-08-28T10:22:27+00:00

e-Readers and e-Textbooks: Current reality and future possibilities turned out to be easily the most interesting webinar I’ve ever attended. This Educause webinar featured Dr Jon T Rickman and Dr Roger Von Holzen from North West Missouri State University in the States and describing an initiative there around the evaluation of e-Readers and e-Textbooks over the past year.

Like other universities, North West Missouri State university had found itself under considerable pressure to deliver electronically, and the introduction of new devices in the marketplace has acted as a catalyst for an explosion in sales. There is focus on textbooks specifically in the relentless pursuit of cost reductions. NW Missouri State University is, in terms of its computing provision, unique as it has had a computer rental scheme in place for over two decades – the university charges $360 to its students for a wireless notebook computer.

They set about evaluating the e-Readers out in the marketplace and chose Sony Reader. The Kindle people at Amazon weren’t really interested in participating in the project. The Sony Reader looked attractive for a number of reasons. It was going to cost $250 per unit with bulk purchase (Kindle would have been $299 plus shipping). Sony will be transitioning to the EPUB format. The device has a 6 inch (15cm) display. Text is available in three sizes. It also uses electronic ink technology, which is almost like paper and retains good levels of readability even in strong sunlight, as well as having low power consumption and thus offering great battery life.

They had discounted the idea of offering a paper textbook rental service as the notional cost savings would have been cancelled out by the difficulties in running such a service.

The difficulties they ran into with e-Readers turned out to be considerable. For example, formatting content for e-Readers can take weeks. For campus-wide deployments there are currently not enough e-Reader-compatible e-Textbooks. Keyword searching and annotating are very important features for both students and academics, so despite the strong affinity that students have for hand-held devices, enthusiasm waned without those functions.

They also encountered a number of issues intrinsic to the e-Textbook format rather than the device. For example, the multiple components to the textbook including graphs and images, all have separate copyright. PDF format textbooks provide very restrictive options. And it turned out that what students really want from e-Textbooks is interactivity, animation and the ability to integrate content into other online tools.

They accepted that the whole area of e-Readers and e-Textbooks is subject to rapid change. It’s already the case, for instance, that keyword searching is now offered by e-Reader suppliers even though it wasn’t at the time of evaluation. Nevertheless, they were happy with their decision to move away from e-Reader provision, and instead set about making e-Textbooks available on the notebook computers that they were already renting out to students. They perceived that e-Reading devices and notebook computers are merginginto each others. They also felt uneasy that e-Readers aren’t the platform that authors are creating on – they’re actually creating the content on notebooks. With issues such as these in mind, it was hard to justify an additional $2million costs to add e-Readers to their raft of student services.

A Notebook approach to e-Textbook provision would also integrate with other software and services, including email and web access, thus meeting a key student requirement. And user support was already in place.

The delivery of a range of eTextbooks provided by five publishers to students via notebooks turned out to be simple and efficient. Students were able to complete the download of e-Textbooks with little support.

Rickman and Von Holzen don’t expect e-Textbooks to replace the traditional textbook any time soon. They foresee a transition, but expect academics to continue to select resources on the basis of content. In the meantime, they will continue their search for a new delivery platform, seeing the tablet PC with integrated eReader as an option. Overall, then, they’ve found that e-Readers simply don’t have the functionality to support the richness of e-Textbooks right now, and are more suited to a leisure-type read.

Serendipity

2009-08-28T03:54:35+00:00

By: dempsey

Categories: Search • User experience

Digital environments provide many more opportunities for serendipity than print ones. Sure, there may be happy discoveries on the shelf or in a random group of items bound together. But the chances of happy discovery are multiplied in the web environment. Now, when I hear an argument based on serendipity, I usually assume that it really an assertion of a preference for one set of behaviors over another.

In this context, I was interested to read Steven Johnson's discussion of serendipity from a few years back ...

I find these arguments completely infuriating. Do these people actually use the web? I find vastly more weird, unplanned stuff online than I ever did browsing the stacks as a grad student. Browsing the stacks is one of the most overrated and abused examples in the canon of things-we-used-to-do-that-were-so-much-better. (I love the whole idea of pulling down a book because you like the "binding.") Thanks to the connective nature of hypertext, and the blogosphere's exploratory hunger for finding new stuff, the web is the greatest serendipity engine in the history of culture. It is far, far easier to sit down in front of your browser and stumble across something completely brilliant but surprising than it is walking through a library looking at the spines of books. With music blogs and iTunes, I've discovered more interesting new bands and albums in the past year than I did in all of my college years. I know radio has gotten a lot worse, but really -- does anyone actually believe that radio was ever more diverse and surprising in its recommendations than surfing through the iTunes catalog or the music sites? [stevenberlinjohnson.com: Can We Please Kill This Meme Now]

Now, if you narrow the discussion to the library 'before' and 'after' the digital turn, we come back to the issue that library systems do not make their data work hard enough in service of discovery, routine or happy ....

Meet you at the Forum

2009-08-27T14:09:15+00:00

On of my favorite conferences is coming up. LITA Forum will be in Salt Lake City this year and the theme is "Open & Mobile." Save the dates--October 2-4, 2009. There are some great concurrent sessions planned--mobile technologies, open data, open source software, lightening talks, and some really great looking poster sessions. Lest I forget three fantastic keynoters:

If you're in the mood for an extra day in Salt Lake, two LITA members are sure to dazzle with their pre-conference offerings. Jason Griffey will be talking about the future of Mobile, a great pre-conference that extends the excellent article Jason wrote for netConnect last year. And Nina McHale will help libraries navigate the tricky issues surrounding Accessibility with updates, a live tour of several assistive technologies, and industry updates.

I love the programming at the Forum, because it is literally the only conference I go to where I am torn between which session to attend. This headache for conference organizers (just too much good stuff!) should be joy for conference attendees with shrinking professional development budgets or concerns about getting the most for their money. I should mention that I have never witnessed such a hard-working and dedicated group of volunteers as the ones who put this Forum together. They are to be congratulated.

But I have thus far neglected the best part about LITA Forum--the people. If you want to socialize, network, chat with vendors and sponsors in a relaxed atmosphere, or make that connection that will spark an idea or solidify a fleeting thought, then LITA Forum is the place to be. LITA is fun and inclusive. LITA is valuable. These are tough financial times for travel and professional development. Librarians, IT professionals, and support staff need to choose wisely from an array of conference offerings. If I had to narrow my choices down to one conference per year or pay for extra professional development out of my own pocket, you'd find me at the Forum.

Did that sound too much like a commercial? If not, then let me add that you should ACT NOW! and save $50 off of registration. I'm already registered, are you?

Seriously, this year's Forum is shaping up to be fantastic. I'll be in Salt Lake City the first weekend in October and I hope to see lots of people there.

Wikipedia Crosses the Rubicon

2009-08-26T14:04:07+00:00

As the New York Times has reported, Wikipedia will now require that edits on pages of living persons be first approved by an experienced volunteer ...

Sony Edges Kindle on Library Integration

2009-08-25T18:55:10+00:00

As seen in Engadget today, and reported by Macworld, Sony is moving to integrate access to library purchased ebook licenses. From Macworld: On Tue...

Thanassis Tiropanis talks about the Semantic Web and Higher Education

2009-08-25T12:50:55+00:00

|This podcast also appears on Talis Education Blog.

In my latest podcast I talk with Thanassis Tiropanis of the Learning Societies Lab at the University of Southampton.

We discuss the findings of the recent JISC-funded project, SemTech, which set out to

“identify and quantify the benefits of semantic technologies and outline a roadmap for their adoption in the context of [Further and Higher] education, informal learning and exploratory learning.”

We conclude by looking ahead to the SemHE workshop in Nice on 30 September.

During the conversation, we refer to the following resources;

Mark Birbeck podcast, discussing RDFa in Government
CETIS
CETIS Semantic Technologies Working Group
DSpace
EC-TEL conference
Ensemble
ePrints
EPSRC
ESRC
JISC
Learning Societies Lab, University of Southampton
SemHE workshop
SemTech project
SemTech survey

This conversation was recorded on Friday 21 August 2009.

For other podcasts in the series, see here. To subscribe to updates from all of Talis’ podcast series, see here.

#124;This podcast also appears on Talis Education Blog. In my latest podcast I talk with Thanassis Tiropanis of the Learning Societies Lab at the University of Southampton. We discuss the findings of the recent JISC-funded project, SemTech, which set out to "identify and quantify the benefits of semantic technologies and outline a roadmap for their adoption in the context of [Further and Higher] education, informal learning and exploratory learning." We conclude by looking ahead to the SemHE workshop in Nice on 30 September. During the conversation, we refer to the following resources; Mark Birbeck podcast, discussing RDFa in Government CETIS CETIS Semantic Technologies Working Group DSpace EC-TEL conference Ensemble ePrints EPSRC ESRC JISC Learning Societies Lab, University of Southampton SemHE workshop SemTech project SemTech survey This conversation was recorded on Friday 21 August 2009. For other podcasts in the series, see here. To subscribe to updates from all of Talis' podcast series, see here.

JSONovich emerges

2009-08-24T18:18:50+00:00

JSONovich has now emerged from the Mozilla Add-ons sandbox and is available to the masses: http://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/10122.

Making Up Book Covers

2009-08-24T17:39:08+00:00

It came to my attention lately (from my colleague Lorcan Dempsey) that Google is creating book covers from images found within public domain books ...

On books again

2009-08-24T01:41:28+00:00

By: dempsey

Categories: Analytics and measurement• Books, movies and reading ...• OCLC

'Book' is a big word. It has a lot of power as it is intimately bound up with our intellectual and imaginative histories. More parochially, the book is also strongly bound up with the professional practice and identity of the library and librarians.

At a more prosaic (sic) level, the book is also interesting as we manage data about multiple formats. We use book to mean a format (a set of bound pages, etc, say), a type of creative work (continuous textual/pictorial narrative, say), a work (Don Quixote, say), and maybe other things. Because of its centrality when our professional practices were being formed, perhaps more was taken for granted about the book than has been about other formats (the phrase 'non-book formats' is telling here).

This is a bigger topic than a late-night blog entry will tackle. I am prompted to write the post by a conversation I had recently with my colleague Brian Lavoie about what a book is. This was in the context of data mining activity looking at counts of books in particular contexts (here and here for example). There are two questions here: 'what is a book?', and 'how do you operationalise that definition in relation to a particular data set?'. It may be that it is not possible to operationalise aspects of your definition, in which case you will not be able to count as you wish. For example, one sometimes sees this Unesco definition of a 'book':

A book is a non-periodic publication of at least 49 pages exclusive of the cover pages, published in the country and made available to the public. [Revised Recommendation concerning the International Standardization of Statistics on the Production and Distribution of Books, Newspapers and Periodicals, 1 November 1985]

The document provides some other qualifications as to what is and what is not a book. So, is this this unambiguous enough to be operationalizable in a database like, say, Worldcat? Well, the short answer is 'probably not completely' ;-) I would have to consult more knowledgable colleagues who would have to do some work to find out how much could be done. However, it is unlikely that one would be able to consistently identify all the included categories of materials and apply a limit of 49 pages.

Anyway, this is a prelude to the these comments that Brian sent me about the issue:

"As a non-librarian who works with library data on a regular basis, I was surprised to learn that the commonplace object 'book' is not well-defined in traditional cataloging practice. This is all the more surprising when one considers that historically, libraries were built around aggregations of books. The difficulty is that there are no explicit bibliographic criteria for identifying something most people would recognize as a 'book'. So for example, consider a simple question like 'How many books are in WorldCat?' In the bibliographic universe, there is nothing explicitly defined as a 'book': there are monographs, or more narrowly, language-based monographs, but the items falling into these categories are not necessarily books as we might commonly perceive them. Is a government document a book? A dissertation? A technical report? A pamphlet of only a dozen pages? These kinds of materials, and more, get included when we use a construct like 'language-based monographs' as a proxy for 'books'.

"Why is this important? The concept of "books" is appearing in a variety of current discussions, most notably in the context of digitization issues like the Google book settlement. So we are often asked questions like, 'how many print books in WorldCat have been published after 1923?' We can provide answers to these questions, but only with a degree of approximation built in: i.e., we can calculate a number that reflects something along the lines of 'all language-based monographs in WorldCat, excluding dissertations and government documents'; we can even throw in a minimum page requirement (at least 49 pages, according to the UNESCO definition of a book). But we can't say exactly how many books are in WorldCat, because from a cataloging standpoint, we don't know what a book is. Libraries are grappling with difficult new questions these days, as collections and services transition from print to digital, from local to the network. But an old question still remains: what is a book?" [Personal communication from Brian Lavoie]

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2009-08-23

2009-08-23T14:22:00+00:00

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2009-08-16 http://ff.im/-6GKMX #
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Google Books adds Creative Commons license options (via feedly) http://ff.im/-6H9WM #
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@ErikBoles thanks for the #FF Erik. Right back at you. in reply to ErikBoles #
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The Power of Visualization

2009-08-22T03:32:06+00:00

Large amounts of data require appropriate visualization for comprehension. Edward Tufte in his books and presentations has tried to make that point...

The Allman Brothers & Widespred Panic in Camden for a night of great music

2009-08-22T00:11:45+00:00

So last night The Allman Brothers and Widespread Panic played at the Susquehanna Bank Center (formerly the Twitter Center) in Camden, NJ. Widespread Panic came on stage promptly at 7:00pm. I had forgotten that Jimmy Hearing was playing guitar for them. He use to play with The Allman Brothers, Jazz is Dead, Phil and Friends and The Dead. The whole band sounded great and I was glad to finally see them. Jimmy was working it and his playing was outstanding. They played 2 hours and it was packed full of great music. I was very impressed with them, and since I have only heard a few things of there’s and I think this show has made me a fan. I will be downloading some other shows to get a better feel of them.

Here is the Widespread Panic playlist from last night:

Lil Kin >
Radio Child
Up All Night
Can’t Get High >
Fishwater >
Christmas Katie >
Travelin’ Light
Diner >
Space Wrangler
Blackout Blues
Junior >
You Should Be Glad
Tall Boy
Climb To Safety

The Allman Brothers took the stage around 9:50pm and hit the ground running with Statesboro Blues. Even though the weather was hot and humid the band sounded great. I haven’t seen the brothers in about 2 years and I was very impressed at how well Derick Trucks has grown into the band. Greg sounded great and he hasn’t lost his grove, he pounded on the keys and never sounded better. Of course Warren Haynes sounded great so not much to say there. A few of the members of Widespread Panic joined the band for a few songs. I thought Jimmy playing with band was good, it was one of the best Dreams and One Ways Out I have heard in a long time.

Here is The Allman Brothers playlist from last night:

Statesboro Blues
Les Brers In A Minor
Come and Go Blues
The Sky Is Crying
Don’t Keep Me Wonderin’
I Walk On Gilded Splinters
with John Bell, guitar & vocals; Sonny Ortiz, percussion
Trouble No More
Good Morning Little School Girl
with Jo Jo Hermann, piano; James van de Bogert, drums
Revival
The Weight
with Jo Jo Hermann, piano
Dreams
with Jimmy Herring, guitar; James van de Bogert, drums
One Way Out
with Jimmy Herring, guitar

Encore
Whipping Post

Now to the down side of the night. At this show there were 2 different types of fans. The we are going to get so drunk and wasted that we will look and act stupid all night and the we come to a show to actually see the show and have a good time and actually remember the show the next night.

I see these types of fans at most shows I go to. The first type get so drunk and stoned that they weave all over the place and act like fools, then they usually pass out and miss the show. We had a whole row of them in front of us last night. They enjoyed the whole two hours of Widespread Panic and the whole break before the Brothers then when the Brothers hit the stage they droped like flies and were asleep by the end of the second song.

It just doesn’t make sense to me why you would pay good money to see a show and then get so wasted you miss most of it and then feel sick the next day.

I also don’t understand those who leave the show in the middle of it to go home? But that’s a whole different post.

Ebooks and/or digital books

2009-08-21T03:15:36+00:00

By: dempsey

Categories: Featured• Libraries - organization and services• RLG Partnership• The cultural and scholarly record• ebooks and other e-resources

I was in a meeting with a group of folks from research libraries the other week. I was interested in a particular terminological issue: 'ebooks' and 'digital books' were each being used in conversation. I asked was there a pattern of consistent use here. 'Not complete consistency' was the answer, but there was certainly a tendency to use 'ebooks' for materials available for license from external providers, and a tendency to use 'digital books' for materials digitized from library collections.

So, in this context, it is easy to see how each expression has a different - if overlapping - set of associations. Ebooks may evoke an environment currently fragmented by provider platforms, with restrictions on use, and managed in a licensed e-resource workflow. They are for reference, information, reading. Digital books may evoke a digital library environment, an aspiration to provide higher level research services based on text mining, entity identification, and so on, and various funding and cooperative initiatives which aim to increase the corpus. The Monk Project or the international Digging into Data Challenge are examples of a direction here.

Over the next few years, it will be interesting to see how these environments evolve as ebooks/digital books grow in number and usage. Ebooks and digital books - to continue to use these ambiguous terms - will become more important in the practice of research and learning. There are at least three big drivers in the environment the group above was discussing. The first is around moving physical collections to the cloud as libraries balance service between local collections, shared offsite collections and digital collections. There are early discussions about policy and service frameworks within which libraries can reduce their print inventory and the opportunity costs associated with it (see here for example). The second is around the demand environment, as books in digital form offer a better fit with research and learning workflows which are increasingly network based. The increasing availability of books in digital form supports patterns of discovery, analysis and use now common with other resources. Think for example of the practice of 'strategic reading' (or 'reading avoidance') where researchers are found to prospect the literature broadly in a digital environment, searching, consulting abstracts, scanning for terminology, diagrams and so on (interestingly described by Renear and Palmer here). For many purposes, people will prefer the digital versions and will shift use. This is not to say that people will not continue to read physical books, but it is interesting to consider the pattern of adoption (and continued development) of the journal literature. The third is around the environment of supply, where there is major current activity. The post settlement Google Books institutional product offering, Amazon's attempt to 'iPodify' books, the rise of the iPhone, and a range of other developments point to rapidly changing opportunities.

So the relationship with the book literature is going to change in significant ways, which may make the ebook/digital book distinction advanced above less relevant. In fact, Google Book Search already moves beyond it in important ways. And libraries are exploring various syndication models (with Amazon, for example, or Kirtas) or in collaboration with publishers such as the the Cambridge Library Collection, for example. Fragmentation, of technical platform, of format, of business model, and so on, will complicate service provision..

This poses major questions for libraries at all levels. From a (current) workflow point of view, we will see a shift of more activity out of the 'bought' materials workflow into the 'licensed' materials workflow. From a collections point of view we will see a rebalancing between local, shared and third party print and digital provision in ways now being worked through. There are bigger issues, already with us with the journal literature, about the curation of the scholarly record, about sharing of materials, and about assuring the type of access that is compatible with use and re-use in research and learning.

I was very interested to read the following remarks by David Nicholas in Update (behind a member wall) recently ...

I think that libraries may be underestimating the impact and pace of change in the book world ...

New York Times Topics as SKOS

2009-08-19T04:50:16+00:00

Serves 23,376 SKOS Concepts

INGREDIENTS

Text editor: Vim, Emacs, TextMate, etc
Python
BeautifulSoup
rdflib
Internet connection

DIRECTIONS

Open a new file using your favorite text editor.
Instantiate an RDF graph with a dash of rdflib.
Use python’s urllib to extract the HTML for each of the Times Topics Index Pages, e.g. for A.
Parse HTML into a fine, queryable data structure using BeautifulSoup.
Locate topic names and their associated URLs, and gently add them to the graph with a pinch of SKOS.
Go back to step 3 to fetch the next batch of topics, until you’ve finished Z.
Bake the RDF graph as an rdf/xml file.

NOTES

If you don’t feel like cooking up the rdf/xml yourself you can download it from here (might want to right-click to download, some browsers might have trouble rendering the xml), or download the 68 line implementation and run it yourself.

The point of this exercise was mainly to show how thinking of the New York Times Topics as a controlled vocabulary, that can be serialized as a file, and still present on the Web, could be useful. Perhaps to someone writing an application that needs to integrate with the New York Times and who want to be able to tag content using the same controlled vocabulary. Or perhaps someone wants to be able to link your own content with similar content at the New York Times. These are all use cases for expressing the Topics as SKOS, and being able to ship it around with resolvable identifiers for the concepts.

Of course there is one slight wrinkle. Take a look at this Turtle snippet for the concept of Ray Bradbury:

@prefix rdf: <http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#> .
@Prefix skos: <http://www.w3.org/2004/02/skos/core#> .

<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/b/ray_bradbury#concept> a skos:Concept;
    skos:prefLabel "Bradbury, Ray";
    skos:broader <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people#concept>;
    skos:inScheme <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics#conceptScheme>
    .

Notice the URI being used for the concept?

http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/b/ray_bradbury#concept

The wrinkle is that there’s no way to get RDF back from this URI currently. But since NYT is already using XHTML, it wouldn’t be hard to sprinkle in some RDFa such that:

<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"
    xmlns:skos="http://www.w3.org/2004/02/skos/core#">
...
<h1 about="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/b/ray_bradbury#concept" property="skos:prefLabel">Ray Bradbury</h1>
...
</html>

And voila you’ve got Linked Data. I took the 5 minutes to mark up the HTML myself and put it here which you can run through the RDFa Distiller to get some Turtle. Of course if the NYT ever decided to alter their HTML to provide this markup this recipe would be simplified greatly: no more error prone scraping, the assertions could be pulled directly out of the HTML.

Sony Charts an Open E-Book Path

2009-08-19T01:32:09+00:00

In the news recently was an announcement that Sony was dropping a propietary e-book format for its reader, and adopting the EPub format. The Intern...

Web-scale: Portfolio Director's Cut

2009-08-18T21:21:05+00:00

As you might imagine, I've been doing a lot of presentations about Web-scale lately...both the general concept and how it applies to the web-scale management services that my team is building for circulation and delivery, print and licensed acquisitions, and license and rights management.

Lots of people have been asking for copies of the presentation that I gave at ALA. I used to always have problems sharing slides. For one thing, the joke slides never work out of context; for another, I try very hard to avoid bulleted lists of things, also making context-less Powerpoint viewing difficult. Now I can gladly say, "Let's go to the video tape!"

OCLC Web-scale Management Services

Powerpoint, slides, and video all in one. Unlike movie directors, however, I find video of myself a bit hard to watch, so I hope the rest of you will enjoy it. There's a good Q&A session at the end that was actually my favorite part of the presentation. The presentation covers not only the general web-scale strategy and cloud computing platform, but also more specifics about the Web-scale management services Library Advisory Council, pilot participants, component functionality, and development timelines.

There are a lot of other great conference presenatations and updates available on the OCLC Presentations site--a little something for everyone.

Comment on Privacy, Borders, and the Internet by Edward Corrado (ecorrado) 's status on Monday, 17-Aug-09 17:48:11 UTC - Identi.ca

2009-08-17T17:48:14+00:00

[...] new blog post on privacy, the Internet, and borders: http://blog.ecorrado.us/2009/08/17/privacy-borders-and-the-internet/ [...]

Privacy, Borders, and the Internet

2009-08-17T12:47:44+00:00

I was reading an article about Facebook and Canada’s Privacy Commissioner today. In a nut shell the article says that Canada’s Privacy Commissioner doesn’t meet Canada’s privacy laws. Facebook apparently disputes this but whether or not it does or does not isn’t the point of my post. This article has reminded me of others before it, only the names have changed.

What happens is a social networking site or other Web site is created in one country and because citizens of another country use it, they seem to be expected to live up to the second countries privacy (or other) laws. Now I don’t know if Facebook has an operation in Canada or not, but I know that other past stories I’ve read had countries (or states) taking or threating legal action against Web sites that did not have any operations in their jurisdiction. This is just madness and has to stop. I’m not saying Facebook has the world’s best privacy model. I agree they should do more to protect users privacy but you can’t expect a Web site operator to know and follow the laws of 195 countries not to mention laws of various territories, states, etc. that make up these countries. As long as the privacy terms are disclosed and follow the laws of the country the site is incorporated in, it should be up to the user to determine if the privacy is adequate. With the never ending news stories of lost laptops with social security numbers and other personal data, the privacy of Facebook is not really a huge concern for me. I just figure that everything I put on there may at some point be seen by friends, enemies, criminals. people who couldn’t care less, employers, and my mom.

Really, what do you need for a Facebook account now-a-days, an e-mail address? Sure they say to use a real name but I know many people who don’t and you can easily get a pseudo-anonymous e-mail address. In other words, everything you post on Facebook is what you decided to make available to at least a limited public sphere of friends. Whenever you give something to friends such as a phone number or tell them a tale of your latest adventure you can, or should, consider that they will share that with their friends. No matter what the policy is, even if it lives up to Canada’s privacy policy (or any country’s policy) will not save you from yourself. Users of social networking and other Web sites need to keep this in mind and not post or share anything that they would have a problem with being public.

David James talks about Government transparency and the work of Sunlight Labs

2009-08-17T10:46:30+00:00

In my latest podcast I talk with David James of Sunlight Labs, part of the Sunlight Foundation in Washington, DC.

We discuss the Labs’ work to increase Government transparency by making public sector data such as that disseminated via Data.gov more useful.

During the conversation, we refer to the following resources;

Amazon Public Data Sets
Apps for America 2
Capitol Words
Data.gov
e-Democracy Camp
Government 2.0 Camp
Jim Hendler and Li Ding podcast, talking about conversion of Data.gov resources to RDF
Vivek Kundra
Lexis Nexis
Mapumental video
MySociety
National Data Catalog
OpenCongress
OpenSecrets.org
Pew Charitable Trusts
Principles of Open Government Data
PublicMarkup.org
Read the Bill
Recovery.gov
resource.org
Sunlight API
Sunlight Foundation
Sunlight Labs
Sunlight Labs Google Group
Transparency Camp
Westlaw

This conversation was recorded on Friday 14 August, 2009.

For other Talis podcasts in this Nodalities series, see here

In my latest podcast I talk with David James of Sunlight Labs, part of the Sunlight Foundation in Washington, DC. We discuss the Labs' work to increase Government transparency by making public sector data such as that disseminated via Data.gov more useful. During the conversation, we refer to the following resources; Amazon Public Data Sets Apps for America 2 Capitol Words Data.gov e-Democracy Camp Government 2.0 Camp Jim Hendler and Li Ding podcast, talking about conversion of Data.gov resources to RDF Vivek Kundra Lexis Nexis Mapumental video MySociety National Data Catalog OpenCongress OpenSecrets.org Pew Charitable Trusts Principles of Open Government Data PublicMarkup.org Read the Bill Recovery.gov resource.org Sunlight API Sunlight Foundation Sunlight Labs Sunlight Labs Google Group Transparency Camp Westlaw This conversation was recorded on Friday 14 August, 2009. For other Talis podcasts in this Nodalities series, see here

Counting titles and authors

2009-08-17T02:10:43+00:00

By: dempsey

Categories: Analytics and measurement• Books, movies and reading ...• Identity management, IPR and e-commerce

The proposed Google Books settlement has created a strong interest in quantifying publications and authors, to get a better sense of the scale of impact. We have been looking at Worldcat and hope to publish an analysis later this year.

Here is an issue that came up this week: how many print books were published in the US since 1923, and how many authors were associated with those books? Here are some numbers, acknowledging that they provide good indications based on the data we have and what we can do with it, not definitive answers.

Print books published in the US in 1923 or later: 12,582,962
Unique personal authors: 3,685,778
Unique corporate authors: 977,679

Now, 'book' is a pretty vague term. This analysis uses the definition we used in the Anatomy of Aggregate Collections paper we published a few years ago, which analyses the collections of the orginal Google 5 libraries, which was as follows:

Although there is no unambiguous bibliographic definition of a book, libraries have often used monographic language materials as a proxy for books, and this practice is adopted for this study. More specifically, in the context of a MARC21 record, a book is defined as a language-based monograph, identified by the codes "a" and "m" in bytes 6 and 7 of the leader, respectively. For the purposes of this study, theses/dissertations and government documents are excluded from the analysis, since these materials are usually acquired and managed as separate segments of the library collection. Records describing books in print format were identified by eliminating all non-print formats, such as digital, microform, Braille, and so on.)

What we are counting are 'manifestations' (in FRBR terms), which might relate to 'title' in common usage. There would be more individual copies. We pull together authors as best we can.

Here is the ranked list of the personal authors by number of manifestations published in the US after 1923.

Shakespeare, William 1564 1616
Marsh, Carole
Twain, Mark 1835 1910
Rudman, Jack
Dickens, Charles 1812 1870
Jackson, Ronald vern
Bloom, Harold
Christie, Agatha 1890 1976
Stevenson, Robert Louis 1850 1894
Cowley, Joy

An interesting list; I have remarked on the Bloom phenomenon before.

Here is the ranked list of corporate authors:

society of automotive engineers
american national standards institute
national business institute
national learning corporation
foreign technology div wright patterson afb ohio
national bureau of economic research
sothebys firm
sotheby parke bernet inc
electric power research institute
naval postgraduate school monterey ca

It will be seen from the list of corporate authors that our working definition pulls in standards and art catalogs. Remember that we are not counting theses and government documents. This is a reminder that although we may have a common-sense notion of a 'book' based on an academic or trade publication, it actually requires some discretionary interpretation to bound the population of books in an operational way for this type of analysis.

And a final reminder: these lists are based on print books published in the US since 1923, not on an analyis of the whole of Worldcat.

The actual analysis was done by my colleagues Jenny Toves and Brian Lavoie.

Twitter Weekly Updates for 2009-08-16

2009-08-16T14:22:00+00:00

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Opening the Walls of the Library – SOA & web services

2009-08-14T14:40:36+00:00

It doesn’t happen often, but it is really nice when when you receive something produced for one purpose to find that it has been produced so well that it is good for so much more. Let me explain….

My colleague Andy Latham has been pulling together a white paper Opening the Walls of the Library – SOA and web services at Talis[pdf]. It’s main purpose is to support the marketing effort behind Talis Keystone, our SOA platform that underpins Talis Library Integration Services. To help explain those services, to the not necessarily technical people in library and other departments considering integration, he needed to explore the history, principles, and practical considerations of this approach. It is in this explanation, I believe that he has produced a document that is a great introduction to the application of SOA and library web services in general.

Because of it’s original purpose, and the fact that for obvious reasons the examples and case studies come from Talis products and customers, the document could be considered by some as being a bit marketingy. Nevertheless, if you want an overview of real-world issues (many of which are to do with people not technology), or business models, or web service functions, or why choose REST in favour of SOAP, in library SOA I can recommend this White Paper as an informative easy way in.

As Andy says in the conclusion:

SOA is not all about technology; SOA is a business journey that needs to follow a path with small commercial and technical steps towards a known vision of business maturity. Commercial and Open Source technology has paved a way for businesses to begin introducing an SOA strategy. Introducing an SOA strategy is as much of a technical challenge as it is an operational challenge as the technology will break down silos between teams, departments and organisations and conflicting business processes which worked well in the silo will need to be redeveloped to meet the new needs of the more agile business.

The release of the OLE’s report, which I commented upon previously, plus vendor initiatives such as OCLC’s Web Services and Ex Libris’ URM, have served to raise the prominence of web services in the world of libraries. On a recent Library 2.0 Gang show about the OLE project it was clear, in the discussions between Andy, OLE’s Tim McGeary, Marshall Breeding and Ex Libris’ Oren Beit-Arie, that there is much more to integration than just technology.

I think it is fair to say that Libraries as a sector have not been at the leading edge of the SOA/web services debate. It is also fair to say that for whatever reason the UK seems to been a few years ahead of some areas in reaping the benefits of such integration in libraries. As Andy’s document shows, there is the potential for significant financial and organisational benefits when undertaking integration in this way.

“The 25,000 students at one of the largest Universities in the UK are now able to pay their library charges online using either debit or credit cards, enabling further efficiency savings for library staff and improving student services.”

“Getting relevant information from Voyager into personalised portal sites has been a key requirement for the University for some time….. By building a SharePoint integration we are maximising the positive impact of our new VLE and enhancing elements of the Library service.”

“The University of Salford is in the process of transforming the way that the identities of its entire user population are managed across all key systems in the organisation. An essential part of the solution employed (using Sun Microsystems’ IdM suite) is the transition and management of up to 23,000 Talis LMS borrower identities via Talis Keystone.”

To reap these sort of benefits in a sustainable way a library has to be aware of, and have, a SOA strategy. There is much in this white paper that can help those new to the subject to understand the issues. As someone who thinks he knows about these things, I also found it very useful for checking and clarifying my assumptions.

So as I say, a recommended read….

Technorati Tags: SOA,Web Services,OLE Project,Talis,Keystone,Integration

Trends and Barriers

2009-08-14T10:12:17+00:00

|This article first appeared in Nodalities Magazine, Issue 7

For anyone following the Nodalities blog, you may have read some of my recent posts discussing the trends boiling up around Web 3.0 (other buzzwords are available). The Mobile Web and upgraded connectivity in general; the rise of ubiquitous computing from chips in every product imaginable; Linked Data and the “Semantic Web” as an organising platform for this rising tide of data—these are three very broad trends seeing a lot of media attention presently. From where I’m standing, I tend to see the next great turning point of the Web as a convergence of some of these trends, and see it as a rise in the importance of and reliance upon data itself and data tools generally.

The mobile web is bringing new sorts of information to people, and they can make use of this info wherever they happen to be because of advances in devices ad connectivity. As phones and web-enabled devices get better, so to do the chips we seem to have embedded all over the place, and we can now begin to have a more clear picture of what we do through the information we gather from our heaters, cars, and pedometers. Also, as more objects become connected, the grunt-work of number-crunching and storage is becoming commoditised into big, efficient, utility-like cloud services, which host and work with our collected information much more effectively than the gadget in your hand could ever hope to do. Others, like us here at Talis, talk about the Semantic Web, which allows for an evolution from a bunch of connected documents to the explicit connections between bits of information.

Also fermenting in this mix is a strengthening trend of political transparency and a public, shared ownership of social data. Barack Obama’s new administration has clearly made this a priority with the launch and work around data.gov; and in the UK, Sir Tim Berners-Lee himself has been appointed to an Parliamentary advisory role. There is growing pressure to be able to have access to public data, and to see it as belonging to the nation’s people rather than allowed to be legitimately filed away in the great, locked bureau of the capitols.

So, picking up two fairly obvious trends here: Social, Public Data and Linked Data; it would seem to follow that people would begin to have access to previously unavailable information in usable, linked forms. And it’s certainly beginning, as articles elsewhere in this magazine have illustrated. But, what about other chunks of public data? What about when data comes from universities, institutions, scientific foundations and NGO’s? What about charities monitoring crime, CO2 emissions and family histories? Wouldn’t these make a useful piece in the web of social data? What resources have the governments themselves got, if they want to make their public-owned data available in a useful format?

These questions form a major part of the thinking behind Talis’ Connected Commons initiative (talis.com/cc). Basically, Talis has made its Semantic Web platform (including data hosting and access tools) available free of charge for any datasets made available to the public. In doing so, we’re hoping to remove the barrier of cost entirely to publishing interesting data in a Linked Data way. One major reason for this is to promote reuse and mashups of this interesting data, and for people to be able to “follow their noses” to the data that completes their projects. But, from a publishers’ perspective, this is important, because it’s removing a major reason not to bother with making data useful, if not only public. So, with this, data can be made public and useable and the developers and users get the benefit of public SPARQL endpoints and API access to interesting data.

To keep the data open and public, datasets need to make use of either the Public Domain Dedication and License (PDDL) or Creative Commons’ CC0 license. Ian Davis, in his article in this magazine, explains more about waivers and the Connected Commons, and there is a lot more about this particular initiative over on the Talis site (talis.com/platform/cc/faqs/).

In a recent interview with the BBC, Sir Tim said: “This is our data. This is our taxpayers’ money which has created this data, so I would like to be able to see it, please.” I wonder if initiatives such as Connected Commons will begin to remove excuses, hindrances, and obstacles? As public awareness of the importance of access gets hotter, this might become a political issue, as well as a pragmatic one. I hope that in the rush to publish data, and in the ensuing discussion and debate that follows, that the users, hackers and developers don’t get sidelined. I think the world is ready for its data back.

open to view

2009-08-13T23:48:32+00:00

I spent an hour checking out the HathiTrust API docs this morning; mainly to see what the similarities and differences are with the as-of-yet undocumented API for Chronicling America. There are quite a few similarities in the general RESTful approach, and the use of Atom, METS and PREMIS in the metadata that is made available.

Everyone’s a critic right? Nevertheless, I’m just going to jot down a few thoughts about the API, mainly for my friend over in #code4lib Bill Dueber who works on the project. Let me just say at the outset that I think it’s awesome that HathiTrust are providing this API, especially given some of the licensing constraints around some of the content. The API is a good example of putting library data on the web using both general and special purpose standards. But there are a few minor things that could be tweaked I think, to make the API fit into the web and the repository space a bit better.

it would be nice if the OpenSearch description document referenced in the HTML at

http://catalog.hathitrust.org/Search/OpenSearch?method=describe

worked. It should be pretty easy and non-invasive to add a basic description file for the HTML response since the search is already GET driven. Ideally it would be nice to see the responses also available as Atom and/or JSON with Atom Feed Paging.

Another thing that would be nice to see is the API being merged more into the human usable webapp. The best way to explain this is with an example. Consider the HTML page for this 1914 edition of Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, available with this clean URI:

http://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/000206297

Now, you can get a few flavors of metadata for this book, and an aggregated zip file of all the page images and OCR if you are a HathiTrust member. Why not make these alternate representations discoverable right from the item display? It could be as simple as adding some <link> elements to the HTML, that use the link relations they’ve already established for their Atom:

<head>
<link rel="http://schemas.hathitrust.org/htd/2009#meta" 
    type="application/atom+xml" 
    href="http://services.hathitrust.org/api/htd/meta/mdp.39015056032132" />
<link rel="http://schemas.hathitrust.org/htd/2009#structure " 
    type="application/atom+xml" 
    href="http://services.hathitrust.org/api/htd/structure/mdp.39015056032132" />
<link rel="http://schemas.hathitrust.org/htd/2009#aggregate" 
    type="application/zip" 
    href="https://services.hathitrust.org/api/htd/aggregate/mdp.39015056032132" />
</head>

If you wanted to get fancy you could also put human readable links into the <body> and annotate them w/ RDFa. But this would just be icing on the cake. There are a few reasons for doing at least the bare minimum. The big one is to enable in browser applications (like Zotero, etc) to be able to learn more about a given resource in a relatively straightforward and commonplace way. The other big one is to let automated agents like GoogleBot and YahooSlurp and Internet Archive’s Heritrix, etc. discover the deep web data that’s held behind your API. Another nice side effect is that it helps people who might ordinarily scrape your site automatically discover the API in a straightforward way.

Lastly, I was curious to know if HathiTrust considered adjusting their Atom response to use the Atom pattern recommended by the OAI-ORE folks. They are pretty close already, and in fact seem to have modeled their own aggregation vocabulary on OAI-ORE. It would be interesting to hear why they diverged if it was intentional, and if it might be possible to use a bit of oai-ore in there so we can bootstrap an oai-ore harvesting ecosystem.

I’m not sure that I can still call this approach to integrating web2.0 APIs into web1.x applications Linked Data anymore, since it doesn’t really involve RDF directly. It does involve thinking in a RESTful way about the resources you are publishing on the web, and how they can be linked together to form a graph. My colleague Dan has been writing in Computers in Libraries recently about how perhaps thinking in terms of “building a better web” may be a more accurate way of describing this activity.

For reasons I don’t fully understand I’ve been reading a lot of Wittgenstein (well mainly books about Wittgenstein honestly) lately during the non-bike commute. The trajectory of his thought over his life is really interesting to me. He had this zen-like, controversial idea that

Philosophy simply puts everything before us, nor deduces anything. — Since everything lies open to view there is nothing to explain. For what is hidden, for example, is of no interest to us. (PI 126)

I really like this idea that our data APIs on the web could be “open to view” by checking out the HTML, following your nose, and writing scrapers, bots and browser plugins to use what you find. I think it’s unfortunate that the recent changes to the Linked Data Design Issues, and the ensuing discussion seemed to create this dividing line about the use of RDF and SPARQL. I had always hoped (and continue to hope) that the Linked Data effort is bigger than a particular brand, or reformulation of the semantic web effort … for me it’s a pattern for building a better web. I think RDF is very well suited to expressing the core nature of the web, the Giant Global Graph. I’ve served up RDF representations in applications I’ve worked on just for this reason. But I think Linked Data pattern will thrive most if it is thought of as an inclusive continuum of efforts, similar to what Dan Brickley has suggested. Us technology people strive for explicitness, it’s an occupational hazard — but there’s sometimes quite a bit of strength in ambiguity.

Anyhow, my little review of the HathiTrust API turned into a bit of a soapbox for me to stand on and shout like a lunatic. I guess I’ve been wanting to write about what I think Linked Data is for a few weeks now, and it just kinda bubbled up when I least expected it. Sorry Bill!

Why do we continue to silo our supply chains?

2009-08-13T19:27:51+00:00

Okay, so I have not been the most faithful blogger, lately. I was going to make an excuse about increased micro-blogging on Twitter or social activity on Facebook, but those have fallen rather dormant as well, so I have no good excuses. I do, however have some good news, and that is some guest postings from my friend and colleague, Matt Goldner.

So today, guest columnist, Matt Goldner, Product and Technology Advocate, contributes his thoughts on sharing systems and workflows to deliver a more effective experience to patrons. In his new role, Matt will be on the road visiting libraries to see what new things are happening in the community. I'm hoping he will be a frequent poster to Hectic Pace (Hectic Goldner?) and make up for my periodic slacking.

Take it away, Matt....

While attending the 2009 Information Delivery Services (IDS) Conference in Oswego, I saw a challenging presentation on a new service the project is building for the members. The Getting It System Toolkit (GIST) was discussed and demonstrated. The service offering itself was interesting and well thought out but it is the concept behind it that really challenged me.

For the last 12 years most of my focus has been on breaking down the silos users experience in trying to discover and access
library collections. The focus of GIST is instead to break down the silos that library staff experience in their supply chains for information selection, acquisition, accessioning and description. The truly radical part is the premise that libraries are simply another supply chain to each other and that the workflow between inter-library loan departments and acquisition departments should be broken down.

The end goal of GIST is for ILL and acquisition departments to use the same service to manage their selection and ordering process with the ability to also get the descriptive record into the systems it needs to reside in. I view this type of thinking as critical to the future of libraries. We often continue to maintain workflows and look for new systems that will support these old methods. Instead projects like GIST challenge some basic concepts and assumptions and give us the opportunity to change workflows to match the real needs of today's library.

For more information on GIST: http://idsproject.org/Tools/GIST.aspx

-Matt

The Greatest Challenge Facing IT

2009-08-13T13:50:46+00:00

by Lee Feigenbaum and Mike Cataldo

|This article features in Nodalities magazine, Issue 7

As the old adage goes: Time is money.

Ultimately, information systems are about saving time. One could argue that technology enables analysis that facilitates competitive differentiation or improved product quality, but the fact of the matter is that these things and others could all be done without computers; they would just take much, much longer.

A lot has been said and written about information overload. Ultimately, though, the issue with ever-expanding data is that the data we need becomes hidden in mountains of other data. Typically, these mountains take the form of relational databases where the data is neatly stored in rows and columns, and we find the data in one of two ways. Either we directly look up data by its “address” within the database, or else we use a simple text search. But if we don’t know what table or column the data resides in, we can’t look it up. And as the quantity of data grows, text searching the mountain of data itself yields a mountain of results. Combing through these results then compromises the real benefit of information technology: time savings.

This leads to the greatest challenge facing IT organisations across industries: how to provide users the data they need when they need it, visualised in a way that is understandable and useful. Or put more simply: get the right data, for the right people, at the right time. Traditionally, this is much easier said than done, as the data lives in multiple databases, exists in various formats, and no user interface exists to present the information in a way that is helpful to the user.

Typically, the approach to solving these problems involves some sort of data warehouse. Atop the warehouse, we’d probably deploy a business intelligence (BI) solution to surface the answers to common queries to the people who need them.

Another tactic might be to install a document management system that stores documents in a central repository, where employees can use search and basic metadata to better locate individual pieces of information.

Or we might build a portal to allow people to view the right data from multiple silos in a timely fashion. By defining a collection of portlets as views into specific sources of data, we can provide a one-stop location for people to view information from business-critical data sources.

Pursuing any of these typical solutions means spending 6-18 months at a time solving a single problem. And even worse, all of these approaches are doomed to obsolescence from the start. As requirements change, the fixed schemas and the complex ETL processes inherent to data warehouses must be recreated from scratch. The canned queries and views that define BI- and portal-based approaches must be constantly re-evaluated. And the limited search and query capabilities of a document management system mean that new requirements demand a new installation.

In short, traditional approaches all suffer from the dreaded Shampoo Syndrome: the only workable long-term solution is to constantly lather, rinse, and repeat. And when we do, we just create another mountain of data, another place where what we really need can hide.

The solution is to find data by its meaning rather than its location

The key to eliminating many of the inefficiencies of today’s information technology solutions is to access data by its meaning—what it is—rather than its location—where it is. With meaning, we can quickly find what we need simply by describing what it is. This enables information to be shared and consumed at the data level, a paradigm known as data collaboration.

With data collaboration, the data is much more granular, more accessible, and more consumable. In contrast, data warehouse, BI, and portal solutions, in addition to contact tracking (CRM), supply-chain management (SCM), employee management (HR), and all-in-one enterprise bundles (ERP), all fall into the category of data containment. While these applications (commonly known as data silos) excel in capturing extremely structured data, they make it almost impossible to get the data out to be re-used by other users and in other applications.

Document management systems, on the other hand, attempt to make information more shareable, but essentially end up creating many mini-silos in the form of Word documents, PDFs, Excel spreadsheets, or Web pages. This is the world of document collaboration, in which information is readily shared, but the data we need is locked within the min-silo.

Data collaboration is the best of both worlds. By combining the ease of access to information that is the hallmark of document collaboration with the highly structured nature of data from data containment solutions, we can begin to answer the IT challenge. The key to success is to ensure that the meaning of every data element is surfaced so that it can be easily accessed by any person or application that needs it.

Data Collaboration and the Semantic Web

It’s no coincidence that the technology standards developed over the past ten years in support of Tim Berners-Lee’s vision of a Semantic Web are the key elements for building data collaboration solutions. For as with data collaboration, the Semantic Web relies on explicitly capturing the meaning of data. As such, the core Semantic Web standards pave the way for:

Flexible, define-as-it-arrives, data structures
Explicit relationships that travel with the data
Data that is accessed by its definition rather than its address
Distributed query

As with all standards, Semantic Web technologies lay the groundwork that makes improvement possible. It is up to application developers to build solutions that make the standards practical.

Practical Data Collaboration to Solve IT’s Challenge

Cambridge Semantics is one of the first companies to develop practical business solution enablers based on Semantic Web standards. In short, the Anzo products allow businesses to layer a semantic fabric over existing data that:

Virtualizes the data so that it is accessible by its description regardless of location.
Lets users create their own views of data.
Fills in the views by traversing the fabric and picking out the relevant information.
Keeps everything in synch by allowing updates that occur anywhere to update information everywhere.

The Right Data…

At the heart of the Anzo suite of products is the Anzo Data Collaboration Server. This acts as a central gateway that provides a consistent interface for applications to read, write, and query RDF data, regardless of the actual source of the data. While RDF provides the flexibility to incorporate new data as it is virtualised, it’s all for naught without the proper adaptors for existing data sources. To facilitate access to the right data, the Anzo Data Collaboration Server can connect to data sources including LDAP directories, HTTP-accessible Linked Data, and standard relational databases.

But perhaps one of the most useful connectors is Cambridge Semantics’ Anzo for Excel. With Anzo for Excel, data inside spreadsheets with arbitrary layouts can be linked into the Anzo Data Collaboration Server. By breaking down the walls of spreadsheet mini-silos, Anzo for Excel weaves information from thousands (or more) spreadsheets scattered across a business, dramatically increasing the availability of the right data.

…For The Right People

Getting the data in front of the right people relies on three things: context, security, and “reach”.

Context. It’s not enough simply to have the right data. People must have access to views of the data that depict exactly what they need to see, whether it be an executive dashboard, a regional summary map, or a customer-by- customer detailed report. Cambridge Semantics’ visualisation product, Anzo on the Web, allows the same information to be rendered in many different ways via semantic lenses. Lenses provide context-appropriate user interfaces to render a particular type of data, meaning that the right people see the right data in the right way.

Security. In many ways, security is the converse of context. While context ensures that the right data surfaces properly to the right people, robust security makes sure data does not surface to the wrong people. The Anzo Data Collaboration Server provides security by layering a role-based access control model atop the semantic fabric. All data access is gated through this security model, which defers to the permissions schemes of legacy data sources where appropriate. The result is that only the right people can ever see (or change) the right data.

Reach. The right data needs to be able to be brought to the right person, whether that person is a technical staff member, a line-of-business manager, a “power user,” or a senior executive. As such, the software must be within reach of all users, without the need to call on IT. Research analysts must be able to collect and share spreadsheet data themselves. Anzo for Excel reaches these users by allowing spreadsheets to be visually linked with just a few clicks. Supply-chain managers must be able to drill through data on warehouses, suppliers, and distributors on their own terms. Anzo on the Web reaches these users via a simple and customisable faceted browsing paradigm, whereby anyone can add their own filters, add their own lenses, query their data however they like, and save the results to re-run later or share with colleagues.

…At The Right Time

Finally, it’s not enough to just bring the right data to the right people. It also needs to be done in a timely fashion.

First, data access against existing data sources is accomplished via federated (distributed) query. SPARQL is explicitly designed to enable queries that access multiple data sources at once, and the Anzo Data Collaboration Server includes a SPARQL engine that does exactly that. By querying the source data directly, Anzo eliminates the cycle time typically associated with a data warehouse’s ETL processes.

Second, data updates performed via the Anzo Server are broadcast out in real-time to anywhere the data resides. This means that if a value is changed in a spreadsheet cell, the value instantly updates anywhere else it appears, including Web pages or within a relational database. This is essential as many spreadsheets, Web pages, and databases will share the same piece of data with confidence as semantic tools are made available to users across the business enterprise.

Data Collaboration in the Days to Come

Imagine a world in which this challenge has been solved. End users—whether knowledge workers, line of business managers, or executives—can simply draw a picture of what they want to see and then choose the data that should fill in the picture. Within minutes rather than months the right data shows up on the right people’s screens. Now imagine that the data is live as well: you make a correction to the data and your changes are reflected in real-time in whatever legacy database or application the data comes from. You’ve managed to maintain a single source of truth for your key information assets, while still preserving existing investments in legacy systems and applications.

What sounds miraculous is possible today, in software such as Cambridge Semantics’ Anzo. By combining the revolutionary enabling capabilities of Semantic Web standards with solid, practical engineering, we open the door on a completely new paradigm for enterprise software: data collaboration.

Lee Feigenbaum is VP of Technology and
Standards and Cambridge Semantics and cochairs
the W3C SPARQL Working Group.

Mike Cataldo is currently CEO of Cambridge
Semantics and a veteran of multiple technology
start-up companies.

Time it is a flying

2009-08-13T11:49:05+00:00

So we are into August already and it seems like Avery just got out of school for the summer and now she has only a few weeks till she goes back. Anyway things have been crazy through the last part of July and the beginning of August.

The end of July always has the La Vigna Family picnic and that always means a lot of work for most of my family, getting the games together for the kids and getting the property cleaned up and ready. This year was no different…well yea it was…it rained most of the week before the picnic so most of the work was compressed into Friday. Thursday was the worst of the rain and of course that was the night most of my cousins and I went to see a concert at the Blueclaws Stadium in Lakewood, NJ.

Tim Montague, Ira Bilancio and William Bilancio

The bill consisted of Willie Nelson, John Mellencamp, and Bob Dylan. It was an interesting show. My cousins Tim & his wife Meghan, Henry and Ira all enjoyed the show in the rain. Henry, Ira and I spent all of the night down on the field just talking through Willie Nelsons set and then rocked through John Mellencamp. Bob Dylan came out and totally confused me. The band he has is great and sounded tight, but then Bob starts singing and I couldn’t understand a word he said, but that is the mystery that is Bob Dylan. We enjoyed the whole night rain and all. It was good to be at a concert with my cousin Ira who we don’t see enough of and when we do it’s not long enough.

The day of the picnic turned out great even though it was a little bit hot, but the people that made it had a good time. I shared the announcing and running the games with my 2 uncles, Dean and Fran. It was fun running the water balloon toss and of course the watermelon seed spitting contest. We raised some good money selling this years calendar and Dean and I caused some controversy in the family with the 50/50 this year. So I say that the 2009 La Vigna Picnic was a success and we are already planing the 2010.

Carolyn has had the surgery on her foot so they could get some samples of the bone to see if there is any infection in the bone. We haven’t heard yet back about the lab reports. We have been back to the doctors many times so they can change the dressing. So we hope to get a negative report back about the infections so they can close up the wound and we can move on to the fall without any more foot issues.

Avery is driving now…..with a licensed driver in the car of course. She is getting better each time we go out, so I think if we keep her schlepping Carolyn all over the place while she is not allowed to drive.

Well that’s it for now…not much going on with me other then work and more work and Karma.

SHERPA to YODL-ING: Digital Mountaineering at York

2009-08-12T13:32:09+00:00

Julie Allinson and Elizabeth Harbord describe the development of digital repositories for the University of York.

Research Data Preservation and Access: The Views of Researchers

2009-08-12T13:32:09+00:00

Neil Beagrie, Robert Beagrie and Ian Rowlands present findings from a UKRDS survey of researchers' views on and practices for preservation and dissemination of research data in four UK universities.

Overlay Journals and Data Publishing in the Meteorological Sciences

2009-08-12T13:32:09+00:00

Sarah Callaghan, Fiona Hewer, Sam Pepler, Paul Hardaker and Alan Gadian introduce the OJIMS Project and discuss the impact of overlay and data journals in the meteorological sciences.

Collecting Evidence in a Web 2.0 Context

2009-08-12T13:32:09+00:00

Ann Chapman and Rosemary Russell describe the challenge of collecting evidence for a study of how Web 2.0 is being used in the UK HE sector.

Institutional Repositories for Creative and Applied Arts Research: The Kultur Project

2009-08-12T13:32:09+00:00

Andrew Gray discusses institutional repositories and the creative and applied arts specifically in relation to the JISC-funded Kultur Project.

The Historic Hospitals Admission Records Project

2009-08-12T13:32:09+00:00

Sue Hawkins and Andrea Tanner describe a ground-breaking Web site using children's hospital admission registers.

E-Curator: A 3D Web-based Archive for Conservators and Curators

2009-08-12T13:32:09+00:00

Mona Hess, Graeme Were, Ian Brown, Sally MacDonald, Stuart Robson and Francesca Simon Millar describe a project which combines 3D colour laser scanning and e-Science technologies for capturing and sharing very large 3D scans and datasets about museum artefacts in a secure computing environment.

Archives 2.0: If We Build It, Will They Come?

2009-08-12T13:32:09+00:00

Joy Palmer discusses some of the opportunities and tensions emerging around Archives 2.0, crowd-sourcing, and archival authority.

The Norwegian National Digital Library

2009-08-12T13:32:09+00:00

Marianne Takle describes the National Library of Norway's digitisation strategy and how the National Library is taking on a key role in the country's digital library service.

Missing Links: The Enduring Web

2009-08-12T13:32:09+00:00

Alexandra Eveleigh reports on a workshop on Web archiving, organised by the DPC, JISC and UKWAC at the British Library in July 2009.

The Second International m-Libraries Conference

2009-08-12T13:32:09+00:00

Keren Mills reports on a two-day conference exploring and sharing delivery of services and resources to users 'on the move,' via mobile and hand-held devices.

Why Pay for Content?

2009-08-12T13:32:09+00:00

Charles Oppenheim reports on the half-day event organised by the Publishers Association at the Faraday Lecture Theatre, Royal Institution, London on 24 June 2009.

JISC Digital Content Conference 2009

2009-08-12T13:32:09+00:00

Michelle Pauli reports on a two-day conference on digital content held by JISC in South Cerney over 30 June - 1 July 2009.

Open Repositories 2009

2009-08-12T13:32:09+00:00

Adrian Stevenson reports on the four-day annual Open Repositories conference held at Georgia Tech in Atlanta, GA, USA over 18 - 21 May 2009.

Content Architecture: Exploiting and Managing Diverse Resources

2009-08-12T13:32:09+00:00

Jane Stevenson gives a personal view of the recent UK conference organised by the International Society of Knowledge Organization.

Eduserv Symposium 2009: Evolution or Revolution: The Future of Identity and Access Management for Research

2009-08-12T13:32:09+00:00

Shirley Williams reports on the Eduserv Foundation Symposium which took as its theme investigate the intersection between identity management, access management and scholarly research collaboration across institutional and geographic boundaries.

Digital Consumers: Reshaping the information professions

2009-08-12T13:32:09+00:00

Muhammad Rafiq offers us a detailed review of a work which examines digital consumers from both an historical and future perspective.

GLUT: Mastering Information Through the Ages

2009-08-12T13:32:09+00:00

Martin White enjoys a random walk through a historical survey of humanitys quest to classify and categorise information.

Libraries Designed for Kids

2009-08-12T13:32:09+00:00

Sara Wingate Gray considers a practical guide to implementing design change in childrens libraries and how to manage a consistent approach.

Ariadne Newsline

2009-08-12T13:32:09+00:00

News and Events

Editorial: Passing of a Seasoned Campaigner

2009-08-12T13:32:09+00:00

The editor does not introduce Issue 60.

Building A Civic Semantic Web

2009-08-12T10:15:08+00:00

By Joshua Tauberer
| This article features in Nodalities Magazine, Issue 7

Technology is a new key player in government accountability and transparency. It’s our own defense against the threat of government information overload. Take the U.S. Congress: More than 10,000 bills are on the table for discussion at any given time, and Members of Congress are taking campaign contributions from thousands of sources. How can a representative be accountable if his legislative actions are too numerous to track? How can financial disclosure root out conflicts of interest if the interesting ones are buried deep within piles and piles of records? The thread to transparency isn’t shear volume, however. It’s the complex network of relationships that makes up the U.S. Congress, and that makes it an interesting case for applying Semantic Web technology.

What the Semantic Web addresses is data isolation, and this is a problem for understanding Congress. For instance, the website MAPLight.org, which looks for correlations between campaign contributions to Members of Congress and how they voted on legislation, is essentially something that is too expensive to do for its own sake. Campaign data from the Federal Election Commission isn’t tied to roll call vote data from the House and Senate. It’s only because separate projects have, for independent reasons, massaged the existing data and made it more easily meshable that MAPLight is possible. The Semantic Web makes this process cheaper by addressing meshability at the core. The more government data that is meshable, the easier it is to investigate connections across independent data sets, research the dynamics of the system, or teach others how Congress works.

Innovating the public’s engagement with Congress by applying technology has been the motivation behind my site www.GovTrack.us, a free congress-tracking tool that I built and have been running since 2004. GovTrack amasses a large XML database of congressional information, including the status of legislation, voting records, and other bits, by screen scraping official government websites that have the data online already but in a less useful form.

If “metadata” is tabular, isolated, and about web resources, the Semantic Web goes far beyond that. It helps us encode non-tabular, non-hierarchical data. It lets us make a web of knowledge about the real world, connecting entities like bills in Congress with Members of Congress, what districts they represent, their population demographics, etc. We establish relations like sponsorship, represents, voted, and population across entities of many types. A web lets us ask new questions, and from there transforming their answers into visualizations. And because the Semantic Web is a generic platform for all data, I actually think it has the potential to radically and fundamentally transform the way we learn, share information, and live—but that’s still a bit far off.

So for the purposes of my tinkering with the Semantic Web, GovTrack creates an RDF dump of its database (13 million triples) covering bills, politicians, votes and more using a mix of existing schemas and some new ones that I created. I chose URIs for entities in the Linked Open Data tradition, HTTP-dereferencable URIs that resolve to self-describing RDF/XML about the entity. Two good examples are for Senator John McCain and for H.R. 1, the economic recovery bill passed earlier this year. The HTML pages on GovTrack itself tie in to the RDF world through
tags: bill pages include the URI I coined for the bill, for instance.

I also have a sometimes-working-sometimes-not SPARQL endpoint set up, SPARQL being the de facto query language for RDF. SPARQL lets us ask questions of the data, such as how did politicians vote on bills (see example 1). The SPARQL endpoint runs off of a “triple store”, the equivalent of a relational database for the semantic web, which is underlyingly a MySQL database with a table whose columns are “subject, predicate, object”, i.e. a table of triples. (It uses my own C#/.NET RDF library: http://razor.occams.info/code/semweb.) The RDF/XML returned by dereferencing the URIs is actually auto-generated by redirecting the user to a SPARQL DESCRIBE query (i.e. http://www.rdfabout.com/sparql?query=DESCRIBE+%3Chttp://www.rdfabout.com/rdf/usgov/congress/111/bills/h1%3E) using URL rewriting in Apache (for a robust solution, see my explanation at the end of http://rdfabout.com/demo/census/). For more about GovTrack’s RDF data, see http://www.govtrack.us/developers/rdf.xpd.

When data gets big, it’s hard to remember the exact relations between the entities represented in the data set, so I start to think of my area of the Semantic Web as several clouds. One cloud is the data I generate from GovTrack. Another cloud is data I separately generate about campaign contributions from data files from the government’s Federal Election Commission (FEC): 10 million triples. This cloud relates politicians to election campaigns and elections, campaign donors with zipcodes, and contribution amounts. A third data set is based on the 2000 U.S. Census, 1 billion triples. The census data has population demographics for many geographic levels, including states, congressional districts, and postal zipcodes (actually “ZCTA”s but we can put that aside). (For more, see http://rdfabout.com. Through the Census cloud the data is linked to Geonames and the rest of the the Linked Open Data community.)

I’ve related the clouds together so we can take interesting slices through them. The GovTrack data connects to the FEC data through politicians. The Census data connects to the GovTrack data through states and congressional districts (the regions represented by senators and representatives) and to the FEC data through zipcodes. That means we ask questions that go beyond one data set such as: what are the census statistics of the districts represented by congressmen, are votes correlated with campaign contributions aggregated by zipcode, are campaign contributions by zipcode correlated with census statistics for the zipcode, etc.? Once the Semantic Web framework is in place, the marginal cost of asking a new question is much lower. We don’t need to go through heavy work of meshing two data sets for each new question once the data is already in RDF with connected URIs.

Figure 1

My dream is to be able to plug in SPARQL queries into visualization websites like Many Eyes, Swivel, and mapping tools and instantly get an answer to my question in a compelling form. For now, some copy-paste is necessary. Let’s take an example. Did a state’s median income predict the votes of senators on H.R. 1, the economic recovery bill? Perhaps the senators from the poorest states, likely the most affected by the economic trouble, were more likely to want economic stimulus. This query takes a path through two of my clouds, depicted in Figure 1. The SPARQL query mimics the picture: each edge corresponds to a statement in the query. Except the real query is more complicated (it’s given at http://www.govtrack.us/developers/rdf.xpd). It is complicated not because RDF or SPARQL are inherently complicated, but because the data model that I chose to represent the information is complicated. That is, I made my data set very detailed and precise, and it takes a precise query to access it properly. If you run it on the SPARQL form on that page, get the results in CSV format, copy them into Excel, and run a correlation test, you’d indeed find a moderate correlation between median income and vote, but in the direction opposite to what we expected. (I know why, but I’ll let you think about it.)

Figure 2

Another interesting case is whether campaign contributions to congressmen mostly come from their district, or if they get contributions from sources far away. The SPARQL query listed in example 2 extracts the relevant numbers for Rep. Steve Israel from New York: for each zipcode, the total amount of campaign contributions he received from individuals with addresses in that zipcode in the last election. Figure 2 puts these values on a map, with congressional districts overlayed as well. A form where you can submit a SPARQL query like these examples and see the results instantly on a map would be incredible for data investigation.

So what is government transparency, practically speaking? It’s more than just information disclosure. Transparency means the public can get answers to their burning questions. The more questions they can answer from a dataset, the more transparency it provides. We can have more transparency without necessarily more disclosure but instead with the ability to apply better tools. Meshing and querying government datasets with RDF and SPARQL could be a new way to reach new heights of civic engagement and public oversight.

Example 1

Get a table of how senators voted on all of the Senate bills in 2009-2010:
PREFIX rdf: <http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#>
PREFIX rdfs: <http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#>
PREFIX bill: <http://www.rdfabout.com/rdf/schema/usbill/>
PREFIX vote: <http://www.rdfabout.com/rdf/schema/vote/>

SELECT ?bill ?voter ?option WHERE { ?bill a bill:SenateBill . ?bill bill:congress "111" ; bill:hadAction [ a bill:VoteAction ; bill:vote [ vote:hasOption [ vote:votedBy ?voter ; rdfs:label ?option ; ] ] ; ] . }

Example 2

Get total campaign contributions to Rep. Steve Israel by zipcode:

PREFIX fec: <http://www.rdfabout.com/rdf/schema/usfec/>

SELECT ?zipcode ?value WHERE { ?campaign fec:candidate . ?campaign fec:cycle 2008 . ?zipcode fec:zipAggregatedContribution [ fec:toCampaign ?campaign; fec:amount ?value ] . ?zipcode fec:zcta ?uri . }

Looking For the Killer E-Book Ecology

2009-08-12T02:18:10+00:00

Apple's iPod, their iTunes Store, and their 99 cent price point revolutionized digital music. Without these breakthroughs, which created an ecology...

Breaking the Chain of Deception

2009-08-11T07:18:07+00:00

I just returned yesterday from ten days of vacation, tanned and if not rested, exactly, then at least refreshed. So that explains both my hiatus on...