This web log announces itself as a place where professionals from the libraries, archives, and museums that make up the Research Library Group at the Online Computer Library Center (OCLC) can “talk about the intersections we see happening between these three different types of institutions.” There are two ways to access the site-from the OCLC’s main page: the sidebar presents the titles and links to recent postings, or from the Blog page of this site, which describes briefly each of the thirteen blogs it supports. Of the thirteen, this seemed the most interesting because, well, intersections can be interesting places.

This is a pretty new blog, just going back to the beginning of this year, but there are already hundreds of postings sorted into 18 categories, ranging from modeling new services to supporting scholarship. I am quite impressed by the quality of many of the postings- much energy and thought has gone into ones like this, for example, where the writer has taken the trouble to acquire and translate a PowerPoint from Japanese.

The site is clean and no-nonsense. In the sidebar, you get the mission, contributors, and archives of the site and that’s pretty much it. No links to Flickr photos or the like, although the postings themselves are generously adorned- although not overwhelmed by- hyperlinks and images. If you were new to this service/tool, well, you probably wouldn’t be here because you aren’t an information professional. This is a service set up by the pros for the pros, not for Worldcat patrons. Even still, there is no knocking its ease of use.

What is gratifying to see is that, judging by the comparatively high number of comments to its postings, I can see that this blog is viewed to be an important resource for real information sharing. This seems to contrast with most of the other blogs I’ve seen that really just add up to another avenue of one-way communication- broadcasting. It makes me think that to really achieve this level of interactivity, blogs might have to meet a real communication need for a fairly specific audience. I wonder if some of the other blogs I’ve looked at (not all of them reviewed here, of course) have just developed out of the ‘let’s jump on the blog bandwagon’ philosophy, with the result that they don’t especially distinguish themselves sufficiently from their main library site. These are just ruminations, of course.

As a developing information professional who isn’t sure whether he will end up working in an archive, museum, or library,(or even working at all) I have decided to subscribe to this blog to stimulate thoughts on employment goals and research topics.

Source: OCLC’s Cooperative E-News

“WebJunction has partnered with the State Library of North Carolina to manage Project Compass, a 12-month program funded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) to identify how unemployment is currently affecting individuals in the U.S., how state and local libraries are responding to meet urgent user needs for workforce resources, and how to facilitate conversations that will advance library services to best meet these challenges over the coming year.”

This announcement was just posted by Glenn Patton:

I wanted to call OCLC-CAT readers’ attention to recent updates to the Expert Community pages on the OCLC web site (http://www.oclc.org/us/en/worldcat/catalog/quality/expert/default.htm).  The pages have been updated to clarify that, following the conclusion of the experiment last August, the functionality remain in place.  Activity has continued to be strong over the past 4 months:

August 2009             19,890 replaces

September 2009  20,854 replaces

October 2009            23,794 replaces

November 2009   18,600 replaces

The recording of the Wrap-up webinar is also available on the updated pages.  If you didn’t get a chance to participate in one of the live sessions, click on “Recorded web sessions” in the navigation bar on the left and select “Expert Community Wrap-up Webinar” from the list.

If you would like to track your own institution’s statistics, log on to OCLC Product Services Web (http://psw.oclc.org/) and select “download records and reports”.   Select the report, “OCLC Product Code Detail Usage Report”.  You can either display the report or download it.  To track your Expert Community replace activity, look for the product code, ONT6390.  Statistics are available for July through October of this fiscal year as well as for February through June of last fiscal year.  November data should be available in the next few days.

On behalf of my OCLC colleagues, thanks again for your support of the Expert Community.

Glenn E. Patton

Director, WorldCat Quality Management

OCLC

Direct from the blog, Resource Shelf:

From an E-Mail:

We invite you to take a peak at the new Policies Directory before it goes live on the 13th. Click the URL below and use the following authorization/password to

Head to https://policies-preview.oclc.org

and use the authorization=100028264
Password=oclc

A few things to keep in mind –

+ You must use the demonstration authorization to log in. Your normal authorizations won’t work on this site. But, once you login you can search for your own library (or anyone else’s)

+ The data in the preview environment is several weeks old. It was copied from the current Policies Directory in mid October and has not been updated since.

+ The environment is not ‘live’. Changes made in this interface will not update the current Policies Directory.

+ A few changes are still in progress. For example, the Help files have not yet been loaded.

+ This preview site will be available 9:00 am to 5:00 pm EST through Friday, December 10th.

A list of the changes to the Policies Directory are included here http://www.oclc.org/info/policies/

Source: OCLC

Besides the macros supplied with OCLC Connexion Client (I specify the Client because I haven’t worked extensively with the Web interface–any who have, please add your thoughts), there are many more available for you to add.

We’re lucky in the Chicago area to have two of the most productive macro experts in the North Suburban Library System–Joel Hahn of the Niles Public Library District and Harvey Hahn, of Arlington Heights Memorial Library until his recent retirement. Walter F. Nickeson of the Rochester University Libraries and Merry Morris have also contributed numerous macros.

So, where to find them? OCLC’s Connexion Client macros page includes links to Joel Hahn’s macros, Merry Morris’ simple macros, and Walt Nickeson’s macros; the Connexion Client guide Basics: Use Macros (also listed below); macro lessons for beginners; and materials from Harvey and Joel Hahn’s June 2005 ALA session on using Connexion macros.

Want to go deeper? Basics: Use Macros is a huge resource with which you can spend many happy hours. It includes extensive instructions on the creation and use of macros with OCLC Connexion.

One caution that I’ll mention here: Create your own macro book or books for any new or modified macros you bring into Connexion, whether you create the macros yourself or find them elsewhere. The two OCLC-supplied macro book files, OCLC.mbk and Dewey.mbk, may be overwritten during Connexion software upgrades, and if that happens you’ll lose anything of yours that was stored in those books.

And one more useful resource: Joel Hahn’s Better Living through Macros includes step-by-step instructions for loading macros into Connexion from various sources and “OCLC Macro Language for the Complete Beginner” (OML is a Basic-derived programming language).

‡biblios.net is a free browser-based cataloging service with a data store containing over thirty-million records.  It grants the user a “nonexclusive right to use Data under the terms of the Open Data Commons Public Domain Dedication and Licence.”

I searched for Cluetrain Manifesto and came up with ten MARC records, including this one:

Typically when a library obtains a book, they go to OCLC to obtain the record.  Then the cataloger might add data specific to their library – for example an 099 local call number if it doesn’t use Dewey or LC.  OCLC is not free, however.  Also, the library cannot edit OCLC records.  It is not a collaborative effort, but a hierarchal procedure.

‡biblios.net, however, makes it possible to have collaborative records.  In the case of Cluetrain Manifesto, for example, there were 10 records from which to choose.  The library could choose whichever record suited its needs, and in fact submit a different record if it so chooses.  This is harnessing the collective intelligence – the “wisdom of crowds.”

Even a source seen as “authoritative” is not necessarily always correct.  Back in the 1960s when my husband was a teenager he was clamming in the bay near Westhampton with his father.  A small airplane caught its pontoons on some electric lines and crashed in the bay.  There was no one else around, so he and his father rowed over to the airplane and rescued the occupants, leaving them on the shore.   In the next issue of the local paper in the fire department blotter was a story about how the fire department had rescued the occupants of that plane!  This is just one example of why one cannot rely on any resource by itself as “the truth.”

Collective cataloging (like what is beginning to happen on ‡biblios.net) and moving away from a system where one source is seen as canonical, is perhaps a path to greater overall accuracy than the current dependence on traditional cataloging procedures and systems.

I would encourage you to listen to the podcast produced by the Library 2.0 Gang entitled The Cataloging Services Landscape, where they discuss this issue and the ramifications of a more competitive cataloging landscape to libraries.

News Release
 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

 NEW STATEWIDE INTERLIBRARY LOAN SYSTEM TO PROVIDE BETTER SHARING OF LIBRARY MATERIALS

 AUSTIN, Texas – The Texas State Library and Archives Commission, assisted by its Interlibrary Loan Task Force, has selected a new statewide interlibrary loan system, improving service to library customers in more than 500 Texas public libraries.

 TSLAC has selected the WorldCat/Navigator platform from the Online Computer Library Center (OCLC) to be the basis for interlibrary loan in Texas public libraries. Interlibrary loan provides a tool for libraries throughout Texas to share items such as books, CDs, DVDs, and journals in order to better serve the needs of their communities. Library users, regardless of where they live in the state, can locate needed materials then ask their local librarians to get the items through interlibrary loan (ILL).

 ”The WorldCat/Navigator platform offers a customized, comprehensive solution that will be easy to implement in all sizes of libraries, plus it will be a great benefit to all Texas library users because it allows them to see materials available throughout the state and not just at their local libraries,” said Peggy D. Rudd, TSLAC director and state librarian. “We look forward to working with OCLC and the library community to improve library services to Texans.”

 OCLC’s WorldCat database provides library users with the ability to locate and request items in libraries worldwide.  The Navigator platform allows library staff to easily process and monitor their customers’ requests.

The Texas State Library and Archives Commission will cover the annual cost to operate the interlibrary loan system, which is provided free to Texas public libraries and their communities. A pilot program for the new service will begin in January. TSLAC is accepting nominations for participating libraries. TSLAC will begin phasing in the service statewide starting September 2011.

The task force, comprised of members of the Texas library community, was instrumental in selecting the WorldCat/Navigator solution, which was chosen through a rigorous competitive purchasing process.

 The task force evaluated the recommendations from an interlibrary loan study conducted by the Bibliographical Center for Research and was charged to recommend a new interlibrary loan program for the state of Texas. Requirements of the new service were that it be patron-centered, maximize the use of technology, enhance visibility of library holdings, encourage resource sharing and promote efficient delivery.

 Beverley Shirley, Division Director Library Resource Sharing
Texas State Library and Archives Commission  bshirley@tsl.state.tx.us
 For more information about the ILL program go to www.tsl.state.tx.us/ill or contact Mike Avila, LRS Public Information Specialist at mike.avila@tsl.state.tx.us or Sue Bennett, TexNet Coordinator at sbennett@tsl.state.tx.us.

I was able to attend the recent OCLC webinar. There were four presenters: Karen Calhoun, Jean Godby, Ted Fons, and Glenn Patton. Lasting just a little bit over an hour, there was enough time for presenters and questions. The topics covered were a general overview of our diverse universe and the role of RDA in that universe. How OCLC wants to go beyond MARC21 and in particular its current projects on crosswalking metadata schemas. Then there was more information about how OCLC plans to set aside a working space for the libraries testing RDA.

In general, I found the presentations good but mostly a rehash of information already available on OCLC and RDA. The webinar seemed a good opportunity for OCLC to get the pulse of the community in regards to RDA and OCLC’s role with RDA. This was achieved through the use of user polling.

The first poll was about RDA’s objective. The leading response was that: “RDA will be more responsive to users’ finding, identifying, selecting, and obtaining wanted information from library catalogs and similar tools”.

The second poll was about how people are preparing for RDA or not. The leading response was that people were using a combination of methods to prepare for RDA including revamping cataloging policies, taking webinars, reading about new developments, or attending workshops.

If you were not able to sign up for the webinar, OCLC has a recording the information. You can also view the PPT slides.

Cataloger’s Desktop 3.0 is now available. It is a major modernization of the popular web-based subscription service. Desktop is the Library of Congress’s integrated, online documentation service with the most important cataloging and metadata resources. The re-systemization of the service features a significantly enhanced bibliographic web-based toolbox.

 

Desktop 3.0 now operates with FAST Search & Transfer’s ESP platform, greatly expanding the search and information discovery techniques available. InfoSolutions, the Crestview Hills, Kentucky web product developer that has supported Cataloger’s Desktop for the past 6 years, worked with LC staff on the re-systemization.

 

Updated quarterly by the Policy and Standards Division and available to users 24-7 through the Cataloging Distribution Service, Desktop provides access to more than 280 electronic manuals, cataloging and classification standards, procedures, and metadata resources. Desktop 3.0 now adds more new operational enhancements to the service than ever before.

 

Major Enhancements

Desktop 3.0 incorporates the most up-to-date searching and navigation,

including: fuzzy matching, finding/excluding similar resources, dynamic drill-downs, contextual analysis, search relevancy, remembering search histories, query federation, facetted search drill-downs, and a search engine that adapts to a user’s search behavior. “Desktop 3.0 takes advantage of state-of-the-art search and navigation techniques which help users find exactly what they need faster and easier than ever before,” said Bruce Johnson, Cataloger’s Desktop product manager.

 

New work environment and interface enhancements include a subscriber-customizable interface, intuitive resource organization, visual clues and icons to help users conceptualize the nature of a resource and see how it interrelates with other resources, RSS feeds from the Library of Congress and other sources, drag-and-drop shortcuts, pages built on-the-fly based on result sets, and automatic alerts to changes in Desktop’s resources.

 

“Cataloger’s Desktop 3.0,” said Beecher Wiggins, director of the Library of Congress’s Acquisitions and Bibliographic Access Directorate, “is a good example of the Library’s continuing commitment to catalogers everywhere.” To that end, catalogers will soon have ample opportunity to see Desktop 3.0 for themselves.

“Cataloger’s Desktop 3.0 will be demonstrated continually in the Library of Congress exhibit booth at the ALA midwinter meeting in Boston in January 2010,” announced Dr. Barbara Tillett, chief of the Library of Congress’s Policy and Standards Division. “To help users make the most of the new product enhancements,” she added, “Library of Congress staff have been busy creating an array of helpful documentation.”

 

To help users optimize their use of Cataloger’s Desktop 3.0, a battery of learning aids and practical tips are now being developed and will be accessible online shortly. These include a series in webinars in both English and Spanish, free online training files, PowerPoint presentations, and “at-a-glance” how-to handouts.

 

For more technical details visit www.loc.gov/cds/notices/desktop09.pdf

.

Visit the Cataloger’s Desktop website at www.loc.gov/cds/desktop .

 

October 19 through 23 is…

Photo credit – Courtesy of http://www.openaccessweek.org/ – All rights reserved – Copyright 2009

SPARC (Scholarly Publishing and Research Consortium) is the organizer of Open Access Week.  Information about SPARC Europe is here.

The concept of open-access journals distributed on computer networks worldwide (at no cost to users) when I was earning a MLS degree (in 1991) would’ve seemed not only unlikely to ever happen in this world, but might have caused one’s graduate school peers and instructors to wonder if you needed to visit a psychiatrist – and soon!

But that world which might have seemed fantastical in the early-1990’s has indeed come to fruition through the determined efforts of many hundreds of librarians, scientists, researchers, administrators and volunteers worldwide. It is an exciting time to be an information professional.

A long-time advocate of open-access scholarly publications, Peter Suber has written an overview about the meaning and purpose of Open Access (OA), and has described this international project well.

Celebrate Open Access Week 2009 by visiting these wonderful sites:

• OIASter which provides 23,090,000 articles from 1,500 sources.

• BioMedCentral offers 202 journals on its website.

• Public Library of Science (PLoS) publishes seven peer-reviewed journals.

• PubMedCentral, an open access journal archive.

• JISC (Joint Information Systems Committee ), National Library of Medicine and the Wellcome Foundation are collaborating on the Medical Journals Backfile Digitisation Project.  A list of journals being planned for digitisation is here.
  

• OpenDOAR: Directory of Open Access Repositories (a digital directory of international archival sites).

• DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals

• Hindawi Publishing - See their list of Open Access journals in Medicine.

____________________________________

Here are other links to Open Access sites from around the world:

• Open Archives Initiative
• OASIS: Open Access Scholarly Information Sourcebook
• Open Access Directory (hosted on the Simmons College server) provides a link to Periodicals which frequently publish about Open Access
• SPARC Open Access Newsletter
• DSpace
• Registry of  Open Access Repositories (ROAR) which currently lists 1,509 members.  See a list of the registered institutions at ROAR MAP.
• FAQ Sheet: What Librarians Can do to Promote Open Access
• Created for Open Access Week 2008, and sponsored by PLoS, watch a brief video of Dr. Ida Sim, faculty at UCSF, discussing the value of scientific research published in open access journals.
  

____________________________________

Want to learn more about metadata? First, what is NISO? Here is an excerpt from their “About” page:

” NISO, a non-profit association accredited by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI), identifies, develops, maintains, and publishes   technical standards to manage information in our changing and ever-more digital environment. NISO standards apply both traditional and new technologies to the full range of information-related needs, including retrieval, re-purposing, storage, metadata, and preservation. “

Text excerpted from: http://www.niso.org/about

NISO staff have published a group of freely available reports about metadata.  The following two reports are brief and useful: one, a  20-page report about metadata (2004), and “Metadata Demystified: A Guide for Publishers” (2003).  Because somebody has to organize all this stuff!

In an effort to briefly describe the process of indexing and organizing open-access documents from a myriad of global sources, I refer to the Dublin Metadata Initiative created by OCLC (Online Computer Library Center). The final NISO document, “Dublin Core of Elements” * was approved in 2007 by a consortium of library and technical folks assembled by OCLC.

(My librarian-colleague has assured me today that this is all anyone will want to know about this topic.  Be pithy for heaven sakes!)

____________________________________

* Note: The Dublin Core refers to the city of Dublin, Ohio where OCLC corporate headquarters  are located (not Dublin, Ireland).  Development of core standards originated during a 1995 invitational workshop at OCLC; “core” because its descriptive elements are broad and generic, intended for use to describe a diverse range of actual or virtual resources.

The Dublin Core Metadata Element Set (NISO Standard Z39.98-007) is a vocabulary of fifteen properties used by indexers to describe individual items before adding these records to shared digital catalog files.  Standard elements to describe an individual work or item would include (for example) title of the resource, creator of the resource, subject or topic of the resource, format of the resource, etc.

OCLC Cooperative eNews This monthly eNewsletter provides updates for U.S. members and participants regarding OCLC Membership news, Support and Training updates, and information about upcoming conferences and events. Publication begins October 2009, and it replaces the former OCLC Eastern Connection and OCLC Western Dispatch monthly eNewsletters. 

Subscribe here

ColinAndShort have this very useful and funny website on RDA at: http://sites.google.com/site/codlinandshort/home.

All the links are real and lead to not just chapters of RDA but also to OCLC’s work with RDA, ONIX and FRBR for example.

The presentation makes for an enjoyable read and definitely less intimidating than the very dry texts that are usually presented on RDA and FRBR.

I’ve been doing a lot of research lately into Libraries and their adoption of web 2.0 principles/technologies and also Enterprise 2.0. In my research I have come across some excellent information which I am going to share to those of you who are interested.

These resources all come from the Online Computer Library Centre website in the reports section. I cannot stress how complete, in-depth and useful these resources are. The OCLC team conduct huge environmental scans and collect masses of data on Library usage, social networking, emerging technologies, perceptions of libraries and so on with plenty of statistics and graphs to support their studies.

The website contains the following studies (of which can all be downloaded from the website in PDF format):
(Particularly useful documents to the Library 2.0 assignment for INB students are marked with *’s)

• Online Catalogs: What Users and Librarians Want *
• Sharing, Privacy and Trust in Our Networked World *
• College Students’ Perceptions: Libraries & Information Resources **
• Perceptions of Libraries and Information Resources (2005) **
• 2003 Environmental Scan: Pattern Recognition **
• Libraries: How They Stack Up
• Five-Year Information Format Trends (2003)
• 2004 Information Format Trends

You can visit the reports homepage here.

Hope this helps others completing the Enterprise 2.0 RFP assignment as well as anyone looking for information and data to back up Library 2.0 implementations.

I just learned from the OCLC-CAT listserv that OCLC is offering a new webinar on OCLC and RDA at no cost. I’ve pasted the information below.

OCLC Updates and Special Offers: Cataloging and Metadata

Register to attend the webinar, “RDA and OCLC”

RDA, Resource Description and Access, is the new cataloging standard that will replace AACR2. RDA offers libraries the potential to change significantly how bibliographic data is created and used. The RDA publication is scheduled for formal release later this year. To help you learn more, OCLC is offering a webinar titled, “RDA and OCLC.”

Choose the date and time that’s most convenient for you and register to attend one of the sessions listed below.

During the no-cost, live webinar you’ll learn about:

*   Ongoing work at OCLC that relates to RDA concepts, including bibliographic relationships, linked data and mappings to and from other data structures

*   OCLC’s involvement in the development and testing of RDA

*   Work being done at OCLC to support implementation of RDA

*   Other resources that will help you prepare for the implementation of RDA

Tuesday, October 27, 2009, 11:00 AM Eastern Time Register >><http://visit.oclc.org/t?r=896&c=1821045&l=25684&ctl=2AE7E48:A3CA66107A102934F7CD615066AF9FC0B99A427DD10DD538&>

Friday, October 30, 2009, 1:00 PM Eastern Time Register >><http://visit.oclc.org/t?r=896&c=1821045&l=25684&ctl=2AE7E49:A3CA66107A102934F7CD615066AF9FC0B99A427DD10DD538&>

More information about RDA is available on the Joint Steering Committee for Development of RDA Web site<http://visit.oclc.org/t?r=896&c=1821045&l=25684&ctl=2AE7E4A:A3CA66107A102934F7CD615066AF9FC0B99A427DD10DD538&>, the OCLC Web site<http://visit.oclc.org/t?r=896&c=1821045&l=25684&ctl=2AE7E4B:A3CA66107A102934F7CD615066AF9FC0B99A427DD10DD538&> and on Metalogue<http://visit.oclc.org/t?r=896&c=1821045&l=25684&ctl=2AE7E4C:A3CA66107A102934F7CD615066AF9FC0B99A427DD10DD538&>, a cataloguing and metadata blog.

Lots of crazy stuff going on in cataloging this week, from the Library of Congress finally coming to the table regarding the subject heading “Cookery” [pdf] to a new bibliographic utility in the market to compete with OCLC. Plus I’ve been finishing up a 4-part series of blog posts in response to reader commentary talking about how I started cataloging and directions from there.

But all of those things pale compared to the official announcement today that our Head Librarian is resigning. She’s moving on to new & better things, but I confess I’m anxious about what will happen now–especially since the library director already has some “ideas.” That’s probably the part that scares me the most.