Ever since watching a great demonstration at Internet Librarian about cloud computing I have been looking at the various virtual machines available on Amazon’s Elastic Computing service, including those made by Bitnami, JumpBox, and others. Currently, a virtual appliance for the open-source digital library program, Dspace, is only offered by subscription through JumpBox for $150 a year or $.02 an hour via Amazon’s cloud computing service. For many libraries, this is a much lower cost than many of the commercial options available for creating a digital repository (such as OCLC’s ContentDM).

I’m hoping that creating a digital repository for the law school will address several issues. For one, it could act as a “staging” area for faculty to host their research and scholarship before they submit to journals or SSRN. Secondly, it can be used by student law reviews as a centralized location to store materials for cite checking thereby reducing inter-library loan requests. And finally, it can be used as a digital archive for the law school thereby enabling access to historical materials that may be currently inaccessible.

One of the nice features of Dspace is that all records are XML-based using tags from Dublin Core. These records can easily be exported, converted into MARC records using an XSLT transformation, and imported into the OPAC.

Ex Libris (http://www.exlibrisgroup.com) is a leading provider of automation solutions for academic, national, and research libraries. Offering the only comprehensive product suite for electronic, digital, and print materials, Ex Libris provides efficient, user-friendly products that serve the needs of libraries today and will enable them to transition into the future. Ex Libris maintains an impressive customer base consisting of thousands of sites in more than 70 countries on six continents. Dynamic candidates with relevant education, experience, and technical skills are invited to join our team of over 400 professionals in the fields of programming, information sciences, support, implementation, sales, marketing and administration at 8 offices worldwide.

To support our growing customer base we are seeking enthusiastic and motivated individuals to extend our European Professional Services Team and fill the following positions:

Implementation and Training Consultant (m/f)

The role:

You will be a member of our European project implementation team and will take specific responsibilities and tasks during the implementation phase of our customer projects. Depending on the project scope you will provide e.g. system configuration, trainings, workshops, customer support, system analysis or conversion specification. You will also be involved in creating and maintaining training materials and implementation documentation.

Trainings and workshops will give you the opportunity to visit customer sites which are located in various European countries so travel will be required. Project languages are French and English.

What we are looking for:

highly developed communication skills

excellent analytical skills and enthusiasm for technical work and solution finding

talents in carrying out onsite or web based training sessions and presentations

team player with the ability to work independently with only little supervision

fluent French and English language skills

familiarity with industry standards such as UNIMARC, MARC21, Dublin Core, Z39.50, OAI

MS office skills

the following are desirable:

o Knowledge of HTML, XML, XSL

o Further language skills

o Experience with UNIX/LINUX and databases

Experience required:

Degree in Library or Information Science or equivalent work experience

At least 2 years of library (or related) experience

Experience in training delivery is appreciated

What we are offering:

Interesting and challenging position in information industry

Wide ranging responsibilities and challenging tasks with scope for personal development

Committed colleagues in an enthusiastic team

Intensive introduction and initial training

International work environment

The position is full time and based at our Paris office (France)

CVs and covering letters should be sent by traditional mail, fax or e-mail to

Ex Libris (Deutschland) GmbH

Ms Bianca Jarske

Gasstrasse 18, Haus 2

22761 Hamburg

Germany

Phone: +49 / (0)40 / 89 809 0

Email: bianca.jarske@exlibrisgroup.com

One of the courses I took while working on my master’s in library science was called simply “Metadata.”  This was in 1999 or so, and the issue of metadata as it applies to digital content was really starting to take hold.

The course introduced me to the Dublin Core metadata element set.  The Dublin Core (DC) is a set of fifteen elements, such as Title, Creator, Date, and others, and it is meant to simulate a basic library catalog record for electronic content.  It seemed at the time that its intention was to have website developers incorporate the metadata elements into their HTML, which could be queried by later users.  It’s a standard, and standards can be useful when you are describing content.

The thing is, most web developers won’t bother creating these metadata sets.  It requires additional effort, it probably doesn’t always seem clear how to build out the record, and due to the advent of Google, content creators don’t see the utility of cataloging their web pages.  Search has become the answer.

Now, though, people are using the DC to describe electronic resources.  In fields such as digital asset management and document management, people are beginning to see the value of creating fielded proxies to represent their information.  For example, in digital asset management you can create a DC record for a digital image.  Some DC fields, such as Creator and Date, are reasonably simple to create.  Others, such as Subject, are a little more difficult, but still, you can usually come up with some way to describe the image using keywords.

Looking back on that course, I wish I had pursued the concepts a little more aggressively.  At the time I wasn’t thinking that I would pursue a career in digital libraries or a related field in which this kind of metadata knowledge would be useful.  I suppose I was imagining myself working in an academic library, probably on a reference desk, assisting students and faculty with their research.  Metadata seemed like an adjunct of cataloging, and although I took two semesters of cataloging and enjoyed many aspects of it, I didn’t imagine myself going into the descriptive side of library science.

Now, though, after years of working in a reference capacity (never in an academic setting, but still…) I’m feeling drawn to the descriptive arts.  I still don’t think I would want to be a cataloger, or a person who sits at a terminal all day generating DC metadata records.  I’d rather work on the systems that utilize the metadata, or assist resource owners in thinking of ways they can describe their assets.  There are a lot of possibilities, and I’m glad to see that metadata has taken hold in so many different fields.  It may not be glamorous, but when your users can find the information they need, and do it quickly, everyone stands to gain.  And that’s what metadata is all about.

L’Institut Catholique de Paris, établissement d’enseignement supérieur privé, recherche un(e) bibliothécaire pour son réseau de bibliothèques.

Caractéristiques du poste proposé :

Poste en CDI à temps plein à pourvoir pour septembre 2009.

Le poste comporte deux missions distinctes : une mission transversale commune aux 5 bibliothèques du réseau et une mission propre à une bibliothèque du réseau, la bibliothèque universitaire (bibliothèque de Fels)

Mission transversale :

Responsable du système d’information des bibliothèques : responsable du SIGB, de l’animation de l’équipe de projet pour la réinformatisation (prévue pour 2011/2012), elle assure la cohérence et le bon fonctionnement de tout le système d’information de la bibliothèque : le SIGB, le portail documentaire, l’accès aux ressources électroniques, etc…en collaboration avec le coordinateur SUDOC.

Elle participe à la réflexion sur le passage aux thèses électroniques ainsi qu’aux projets de numérisation de collections appartenant à la bibliothèque.

Elle veille aux évolutions technologiques. Propose des projets, des solutions et des améliorations à la Directrice, les met en oeuvre lorsqu’elles sont validées.

Est un interlocuteur du ou des prestataires extérieurs et du service informatique de l’ICP.

Elle participe aux clubs utilisateurs et aux associations professionnelles en rapport avec sa mission

Mission à la Bibliothèque de Fels :

Elle participe aux activités de la bibliothèque universitaire de Fels, en particulier : service public et formation des utilisateurs aux outils proposés, notamment aux bases de données documentaires.

Responsable du PEB, la bibliothécaire devra organiser la montée en charge de ce service attendue comme suite à l’entrée dans le SUDOC.

Qualités requises

Titulaire d’un diplôme professionnel la personne retenue maîtrisera les technologies informatiques documentaires : SIGB, Web 2.0, Web sémantique, numérisation

Elle aura une bonne connaissance des formats et des normes (MARC, Dublin-Core, EAD…) et saura utiliser les listes d’autorités (Rameau) et les classifications. Elle maîtrisera les outils informatiques bureautiques.

Elle aura le sens de l’organisation et du travail en équipe et saura faire preuve d’autonomie, de dynamisme, de rigueur et de polyvalence

Une expérience en bibliothèque et en particulier dans la gestion des systèmes d’information est souhaitée.

Adresser lettre de motivation et CV à :

Emmanuelle Dupont-Debaussart

Directrice des Ressources Humaines Institut Catholique de Paris

21, rue d’Assas

75270 – Paris Cedex 06

Ou par courriel : 

Nicole Soulier

Adjointe à la Directrice des bibliothèques

n.soulier@icp.fr

Last night’s supper was brilliant for a host of reasons, not least of which being the food served at the awesome Rules restaurant in London. I was there with, amongst others, Chris Condron – a wonderful man I met through Young Rewired State. Conversation ranged from the antics of Edward VII and Lillie Langtry to sentiment analysis (the former I am comfortable with, the latter I was fascinated by).

Anyone working in the world of digital media is used to the feeling of playing catchy uppy, adopting the look of the slightly baffled whilst trying desperately to keep up and learn. That was me last night.

Today I hounded Chris for an explanation of sentiment analysis, and he gave me the following:

Crudely, semantic analysis gives you a non-statistical (unlike search engines) sense of what something (say, an article) is about.

Sentiment analysis uses semantic analysis techniques to measure that against a set of known criteria, eg is a text pro or anti something?

It’s already being used in the financial world. It could be a really cool tool (especially when run across live data [such as Twitter] rather than flat text articles) for brand management. Marketers can use it to test in real time the public’s reaction to a product launch.

Before rapidly handing me over to his much heralded colleague Dr Jarred McGinnis:

It’s a computer that analyses text for keywords and phrases and determines the positive or negative sentiment of the story. For example, “Paddington Bear sucks” would probably be determined to be negative where the statement “Paddington Bear is a hero” would be positive.

The technology is not very accurate but still useful. One example of its use is to monitor mainstream and social media for negative or positive trends with respect to your company or one of its products.

Now, I am rapidly becoming a huge fan of championing the ability of talented people whilst genuflecting to the power of the computer. As the work in my field diverges ever more on information, data and ontologies, so my respect for the statisticians and analysts grows; and my understanding of the limits of computers, and the limits of humans. I am not sure whether to proudly embrace my ever-increasing knowledge of librarian skills and understanding of the importance of cataloguing languages: Dublin Core and the like – or to run away. What I do know, is that it is increasingly important to spend time making sure that the human involvement in the digital revolution is carefully balanced with the awesome power of the computer.

So we come to sentiment analysis. Whilst doing my own homework on this tonight, I understand that it is essentially an ontology of words or phrases that are assigned positive or negative associations. Using this as a framework, you can throw a whole load of content at this wall of good and bad – and have it separated cleanly into positive and negative, using the brilliant processing power of the computer.

To give you an example that Dr J showed me http://www.newssift.com/index.jsp. Using the search box, I can put in a topic. The resulting page gives me bucket loads of information; the graph on the top left is the sentiment analysis, some useful MIS and source material is included and the main centre gives me the search results being analysed. I won’t do it for you, you go and play.

However, what has kept me most intrigued is the semantic search bit, (by semantic I mean refined associated search). Once you have run your initial search, the results page lets you add search terms to refine the results and gives you ever more detailed information.

Now, I don’t know how you would use this – I would say with a note of caution: this is just data being thrown at a pretty brutal analysis tool of positive and negative feeling (something a computer can only do by cataloguing good/bad feeling words against online content) – but it is the first step I have seen in digitally automating the mood of the nation on any given topic.

Please do let me know of other tools that you know of that have refined this further, (don’t google it – I already have!), and please do let me know your thoughts on this. I will certainly be playing about a bit more with this stuff.

L’Ircam propose un CDD pour effectuer la migration de son catalogue bibliothéconomique, cœur de son dispositif de bibliothèque physique et numérique, inscrit dans le Portail de la musique contemporaine et partenaire d’Europeana.

DESCRIPTION DU POSTE

La personne (h/f) recrutée sur ce poste effectuera une étude du paramétrage et des fonctionnalités existantes et souhaitées, puis la migration des contenus (contenus de la base Loris) et des interfaces (de catalogage, de circulation, de consultation et de moisson) vers le nouveau logiciel (Flora). Elle bénéficiera d’une formation sur les deux logiciels (source et cible) et sur les outils de migration.

PROFIL RECHERCHÉ

Connaissances requises

bonne connaissance d’un logiciel bibliothéconomique (de préférence : Loris et/ou Flora).

formats bibliothéconomiques (Unimarc en particulier).

Connaissances souhaitées

programmation Web (XML, PHP, MySQL, Javascript).

protocoles OAI, RSS.

formats Dublin Core, MODS.

Capacités

autonome, capable d’apprendre rapidement.

rigoureux, structuré et méthodique.

aisance relationnelle et capacité de travail en équipe.

CANDIDATURE

Prière d’envoyer une lettre de motivation et un CV détaillant le niveau d’expérience/expertise dans les domaines mentionnés ci-dessus (ainsi que toute autre information pertinente) à l’adresse électronique indiquée ci-contre : Michel.Fingerhut@ircam.fr

Référence : Flora

TYPE DE CONTRAT

Durée (CDD) : 10-12 mois (selon expérience et compétences)

Disponibilité : immédiate

Lieu de travail : Paris centre.

Michel Fingerhut

Ircam – Centre Pompidou

Directeur de la Médiathèque

1, place Igor-Stravinski

75004 Paris

Internet geroz eta gehiago web semantikara gerturatzen ari da. Orain dela hilabete gutxi googelek adierazi zuen mikroformatuak kontutan hartuko zituela beraien bilaketetan.

Beraz, geroz eta garrantzitsuagoa da zuen web orrialdea kode egokia izatea. Hau lortzeko, modu erraz eta azkar bat, Dublin Core motako metadatuekin zuen web orrialdea osatzea da. Horretarako, Dublin Core metadata Creator aplikazio sinple honen bitartez zuen web orrialdearentzako beharrezkoa den kodea sortzeko aukera izango duzue.

Dublin Core metadatuak era desberdinetan adierazi daitezke. Nik aurkeztutako bertsio honek, era sinpleenan adierazten ditu. Dena dela, aurrerago osatuko dut web orrialdea aukera ezberdinekin.

Hemen duzue helbidea. Sortu Dublin Core metadatuak zuen orriarentzat!!!

http://www.egoitzgonzalez.com/dublincore

Kathleen Fear, a spring graduate of the Master of Science in Information program at SI, will be honored in August at the annual conference of the Society of American Archivists with the Theodore Calvin Pease Award. The award  recognizes “superior writing achievements by students of archival studies.”

Kathleen’s paper, “User Understanding of Metadata in Digital Image Collections,” was cited for its innovation, scholarship, pertinence, and clarity of writing. The SAA will publish it in the spring 2010 issue of American Archivist. Kathleen wrote the paper as part of her independent study work at SI.

In her paper, Kathleen examined the usefulness of Dublin Core metadata for nonexpert users searching in digitized image collections. She sought to gain insight into the kinds of information users rely on when searching for images and to identify the vocabulary that best expresses that information.

The SAA award selection committee noted, “The ingenious research methodology of this study and its review of existing literature attest to the scholarship of this paper. It uses three research methods, a survey, focus groups, and searching/usability testing techniques to collect and triangulate data as evidence to answer the central research questions and to address issues of validity and reliability. Its research question is innovative; as it evaluates both a schema and a population not studied before, that is, how undergraduates use and understand Dublin Core metadata elements.

“It is relevant to many repositories mounting digital collections in a more-product-less- process and has implications for metadata application, one of the more costly aspects of publishing digital materials online. The findings clearly point to problematic elements in Dublin Core that effect how images are viewed as evidence (or not), but, in an age of archivists looking for ways to be more economical, this study does show the utility of the minimal Dublin Core.”

Associate Professor Elizabeth Yakel nominated Kathleen, who will return to SI this fall as a student in the doctoral program.

The award subcommittee is consisted of Mary Jo Pugh, chair and editor of American Archivist; Katherine Salzmann, Texas State University; and Lori Lindberg, San Jose State University.

DC-2009 is now open for registration…

2009-07-22, We are pleased to announce that the online registration for DC-2009, the ninth International Conference on Dublin Core and Metadata Applications, to be held in Seoul, Korea, 12-16 October 2009, is now open. Early bird registration is open until 31 August. Also, the preliminary program is published with the main elements of the program for the event. A further version of the program with additional details is scheduled to be published in early August.

The official website is at: http://www.dc2009.kr/.

Anyone who uses Twitter and has to cram thoughts in to 140 characters knows that technology doesn’t always mix well with “semantic meaning.” That reminds me of an old Hollywood story (here’s a version from Wikipedia):

Cary Grant is said to have been reluctant to reveal his age to the public, having played the youthful lover for more years than would have been appropriate. One day, while he was sorting out some business with his agent, a telegram arrived from a journalist who was desperate to learn how old the actor was. It read: HOW OLD CARY GRANT?

Grant, who happened to open it himself, immediately cabled back: OLD CARY GRANT FINE. HOW YOU?

Washington Technology magazine has a long (overly long) feature today about semantic computing, entitled “Open Government Looks for New Technologies.”  It has nothing to do with Cary Grant, but I have a few minor quibbles with the article (written by a freelancer from New York).

The premise is in the subhead: “Web 3.0 could help make Obama’s dream of government transparency a reality.”  The article goes on to give a basic – very basic – primer on semantic tagging and its potential application in government uses. Underline that word, “potential.”

Aside from the new Data.gov website’s use of minimal Dublin-Core metadata, there’s no actual government use cited. In fact, despite the premise, the article actually contains more evidence that government agencies are actively shying away from adopting semantic approaches. A spokesperson for GSA is typical, saying only that ““We are monitoring the situation as the technology matures; it is not factoring into our business requirements at this point.”  And a spokesperson for the site at www.Recovery.gov, now controversial for the manner in which it was contracted out, says they are “focusing on other priorities.” 

In fact the article entirely omits those few sections of government which to my knowledge are actually making good early-adopter use of semantic approaches: the intelligence community!  There are other efforts as well sprinkled across civilian agencies; the article’s author would have done well to quote one of the active semanticists in Washington itself (see here and here for some resources).

The real advances in semantic technologies are coming not in government, but in the commercial sector – of course.  (The article makes no nod to efforts like Twine or Bing’s use of semantic search from Powerset and other research.)  We can all agree that it is early days yet for semantic technologies in government use. Articles like this one pop up periodically promising great things; here’s one from back in 2006 with the same basic message: “Semantic Web Ready for Prime Time.”

Perhaps it’s too much to hope that tech-publication editors maintain a bit of historical context the next time someone pitches a breathless article hyping “new technologies.”

In fact, the editor might have noticed that, directly contradicting the entire premise of the headline and intro paragraphs, the money quote comes right at the tail end of the article, with one of Washington’s most prominent open-government advocates poohpoohing any near-term semantic focus entirely:

The time and effort required to tag and describe the government’s vast data holdings represent another adoption challenge. Clay Johnson, director of Sunlight Labs, expressed concern that the government might become preoccupied with formatting data rather than releasing it. Sunlight Labs is an open-source development team that launched as a project of the Sunlight Foundation, an open-government advocacy group in Washington. “I would hate to see them get bogged down in trying to make their data Semantic Web compatible before it even sees the light of day,” he said.

Oh, and one more minor quibble: the full subhead of the article reads: ”Web 3.0 could help make Obama’s dream of government transparency a reality, but he’ll need a second term to see it happen.”  As of today, President Obama is beginning only the second six-months of his first year of his first term. An increasing proportion of the country appears already to believe he’s not doing too well. 

Let’s not get ahead of ourselves with planning for the second term’s agenda, before making progress on the first.

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We on the OTTER project are gradually working our way through various issues and challenges surrounding implementation of our project. I have written elsewhere about the challenges of developing evaluation criteria. Another matter of concern to me is the question of “metadata”. The importance of this piece of information to data retrieval goes perhaps as far back as the days of the library catalogue. The term is generally understood to mean “data about data”. Stated differently it refers to a structured piece of information about another item of information. This added piece of information, called metadata i.e. beyond or behind the data, is seen as bringing the added benefit of increased accessibility, usability tracking, migration of data objects to successive platforms and providing evidence for system improvement. Up to this point metadata is meaningful to me. However, beyond this point one begins to wander into a world of “meta data standards” with different emphases and foci such as:

• Dublin Core (DC)
• Text Encoding Initiative (TEI)
• MARC
• Encoded Archival Description (EAD)
• Data Documentation Initiative (DDI)

Whilst these standards are universally recognized, their applicability within a particular context remains a matter of confusion. The extent to which these standards evolve to cater for the ever increasing types of digital resources is also unclear.  For the OTTER team, we have been trying to answer two basic questions regarding metadata:

• Which metadata standards should we apply to our Learning Objects (LO) to make them OERable?
• What level of granularity is acceptable to make the OER accessible and repurposable?
• How much is enough and how much is too much?

I have read elsewhere that the JISC has decided to take a new approach to metadata where rather than mandate standard metadata application profile; the decision is left to projects to make for flexibility.  This to me is a reason way to resolve the current dilemma. What needs to be guarded against though is a situation where “flexibility” will compromise “accessibility”. If this happens there would be more metadata matters to resolve.

Samuel Nikoi (2 July 2009)

Maria das Dores Rosa Alves

Marcia Izabel Fugisawa Souza

Resumo

A tecnologia da informação tem possibilitado o desenvolvimento de aplicações e metodologias de tratamento descritivo, como é o caso dos padrões de metadados, permitindo novas abordagens práticas para a organização da informação, principalmente em meio eletrônico. A adoção de padrão de metadados propicia a interoperabilidade entre aplicações e o compartilhamento de dados entre sistemas. Baseado nesse pressuposto, foi realizado um estudo da correspondência entre o padrão Dublin Core e o Formato MARC21, visando fornecer subsídios para o desenvolvimento de ferramentas de conversão de dados oriundos da catalogação. A maximização de esforços na integração e intercâmbio de dados, bem como a istematização das relações entre esses padrões, propiciam o reuso de conjuntos de metadados na mesma organização.

Disponível em:

http://revista.ibict.br/pbcib/index.php/pbcib/article/view/728

Acesso em: 27 jun 2009.

El 4 y 5 de junio pasados se llevó a cabo en la Universidad del Rosario ,Bogotá, la Primera Conferencia Nacional e Internacional: Integración de contenidos digitales a través de redes académicas avanzadas. La conferencia se desarrolló en el marco del Proyecto Biblioteca Digital Colombiana (BDCol) cuyos objetivos son:

Diseñar e Implementar un modelo conducente a la conformación de la Biblioteca Digital Colombiana que integre repositorios o bibliotecas digitales que permita dar acceso y visibilidad a los contenidos de la producción académica y científica Colombiana utilizando la red de alta velocidad RENATA.”

En este proyecto participan actualmente las siguientes universidades colombianas: Universidad del Rosario, Univerisdad Nacional, Universidad de la Sabana, Universidad Minuto de Dios, Universidad de la Salle, Universidad de Antioquia, Universidad Eafit, Universidad de Medellín, Universidad del Norte, Universidad Autónoma del Caribe, Universidad Autónoma de Occidente, Universidad Icesi, Univerisdad Santiago de Cali. Pueden acceder aquí a una presentación sobre el proyecto BDCol.

Algunas de las interesantes presentaciones de esta conferencia fueron:

• Presentación BDCol (resultados, avances, estado actual del proyecto) por Edwin Montoya
• Experiencia del IBICT Brasil.“Arquivos abertos: modelo para integração de repositórios digitais” por  Helio Kuramoto
• “ACCESO ABIERTO como Herramienta útil en las Bibliotecas Universitarias” por Carolina Botero
• Iniciativa Europea DRIVER, por Alicia López Medina (representante de DRIVER en España)
• Taller sobre Metadatos (Dublin Core) por Laureano Felipe Gómez
• Taller sobre DSpace por Arley Soto

Or, more acurately, LibraryThing. LibraryThing is a great little website, and most librarians are already familiar with it. In a nutshell, its designed to let the average person in on the cataloging game: you can organize your books, catalog them, get recommendations, and compare with others. Think of it as what OPACs could be if they were totally user driven.

The vast majority of users on LibraryThing are individuals with large book collections: people who want to discuss books, find new ones, revisit old favorites. Individuals arn’t the only members though. There is a small, though growing, community of small academic libraries, research libraries, and research groups and societies using LibraryThing. I would know: I’m the maintainer of one of them.

The decision to use LibraryThing in lieu of an OPAC was a decision made before my time with The Bead Museum (TBM). The fact of the matter is that the museum has a very limited budget, and the library gets the smallest piece of the pie. It’s not exactly a new story: libraries that are part of a larger organization generally have trouble getting funding, at least they do when the overall organization is small (see: my alma mater). LibraryThing was the rather ingenious solution: a research library is worth next to nothing if researchers can’t access the materials. With no OPAC, there’s no way to figure out if the library is worth the trip. By putting the entire catalog up on LibraryThing, the library gets exposure, catalogs the materials, and can give the public access.

Is the cataloging a first rate job? Hardly– LT wasn’t designed to replace MARC records. They don’t contain all of the Dublin Core fields either. However, they do have the classification number, subject tagging, and the general publication information. When your library isn’t exchanging records with other institutions, do you need much more? Not really. Now, I’m a bit of a cataloging nut, and my fervent hope is to set up a database catalog with all the records in proper Dublin Core format. I think it will be necessary if the library– and museum– ever reach beyond their current base of operations. Do I think it’s worth while to pay up for the MARC records? No. For starters, abotu 3/4 of the collection is held in other libraries, and if you want the full MARC record World Cat is a click away. I need germane information that is imminantly searchable, and for that Dublin Core suits my purposes. Added bonus? I can write Dublin Core encoding– MARC is very hard to learn.

For a while, I thought we were the only organization using LT as their public catalog; in fact, we’re nowhere close. The University of Oklahoma Art Library, the Harris County (TX) Archives, The Ancient Near Eastern program at UC Berkely, The Balto Bead Society, as well as a smattering of Church Libraries and other society libraries are all cataloged on LT.  And maybe its the fact that, in my Intro class/Library Bootcamp, the practical library uses of LT were glosssed over that made me so surprised. I mean, we went over LT, we made accounts, we all went “oooh.” But here’s a Web 2.0 technology that can be used by big libraries and small, and those uses were NEVER touched on. Not once. It was “oh, put your library up! Talk with other bibliophiles!” Well, quite frankly, all my friends are fans of the written word– I don’t need to dig up even more on the internet, I can barely keep up with the friends I have. I want to know WHY Web 2.0 is important for libraries: and it better be for more reason than “It looks cool.” I mean, you can use LT’s top 100 to figure out what’s popular, you can have it as another facet of your OPAC– part where people can leave comments and reviews and likes and dislikes and it’s not in there with the actual metadata. If the schools actually went over the slightly “outside the box” uses that Web 2.0 technologies have, I think there wouldn’t be such an odd ball relationship between technology and the library.

So there it is: how one small library is maintaing a user friendly, interactive OPAC for $20 a year. We couldn’t be happier– and isn’t THAT what Web 2.0 technologies are all about?

We may remember the experimental lcsh.info site that published the LoC vocabularies on line in SKOS. Well, while lcsh.info was closed down at some point, the official version is now up and running at http://id.loc.gov/authorities/.

This is great news. This means that all items in the LoC subject heading have now a stable, dereferancable URI; the URI refers to a (SKOS) Concept and is linked to broader and narrower terms. The implementation follows the LOD principles; the URI can be dereferenced in an HTML browser providing an RDFa annotated HTML page. To take an example, the subject heading for “Semantic Web” has the URI: http://id.loc.gov/authorities/sh2002000569#concept; dereferencing it leads to an XHTML+RDFa page. The RDF content can be accessed describing the concept in SKOS, providing a link to, eg, the concept of World Wide Web. This vocabulary gives a stable target to characterize the subject of various entities using, eg, the Dublin Core “subject” term. The site provides a search page and the whole dataset can also be downloaded in RDF/XML or n triples.

This is a huge service of the Library of Congress to the Semantic Web community. Thanks to Ed Summers and anybody else who took an active role in it!

El programa permite importar, almacenar, exportar, clasificar, catalogar fotografias. En este ejemplo hemos utilizado (por su alta calidad tecnica y expresiva) una fotografia de Kurtxio alojada en Flickr

El programa extrae de forma automatica los datos EXIF de la fotografia en cuestion

Estos datos (metadatos)  pueden modificarse o añadirse metadatos nuevos

La pantalla de catalogacion permiet añadir conceptos y datos referente a la fotografia, permitiendo utilizar Dublin Core o una descripcion tradicional

La fotografia se usa bajo Licencia de la imagen

El programa permite importar, almacenar, exportar, clasificar, catalogar fotografias. En este ejemplo hemos utilizado (por su alta calidad tecnica y expresiva) una fotografia de Kurtxio alojada en Flickr

El programa extrae de forma automatica los datos EXIF de la fotografia en cuestion

Estos datos (metadatos)  pueden modificarse o añadirse metadatos nuevos

La pantalla de catalogacion permiet añadir conceptos y datos referente a la fotografia, permitiendo utilizar Dublin Core o una descripcion tradicional

La fotografia se usa bajo Licencia de la imagen

El programa permite importar, almacenar, exportar, clasificar, catalogar fotografias. En este ejemplo hemos utilizado (por su alta calidad tecnica y expresiva) una fotografia de Kurtxio alojada en Flickr

El programa extrae de forma automatica los datos EXIF de la fotografia en cuestion

Estos datos (metadatos)  pueden modificarse o añadirse metadatos nuevos

La pantalla de catalogacion permiet añadir conceptos y datos referente a la fotografia, permitiendo utilizar Dublin Core o una descripcion tradicional

La fotografia se usa bajo Licencia de la imagen