According to the WorldCat Blog, the information stored in WorldCat will no longer be restricted to paying subscribers – the new WorldCat API (application programming interface) will allow web developers to retrieve information about books, videos, etc. in RSS or Atom format.

This is an exciting development for libraries and other educational institutions, who will now be able to create rich Web 2.0 applications integrating the information found in WorldCat!

WorldCat Local and WorldCat Local “quick start” are most effective when all of your library’s collections are represented in the WorldCat database. This webinar provides information on the types of batchload projects available to libraries preparing for WorldCat Local a WorldCat Local “quick start” and the steps required to successfully complete a batchload project.

Free

12/15/2009 (11:00 AM, US Eastern time)

12/16/2009 (4:00 PM, US Eastern time)

1/20/2010 (10:30 AM, US Eastern time)
For more information, visit: http://www.oclc.org/us/en/worldcatlocal/support/registration.htm

In collaboration with OCLC, Fuller has been exploring, customizing and testing a new discovery-and-delivery platform: WorldCat Local @ Fuller 
Please give the beta version a try and let us know what you think!

How does it work?
When a library user conducts a search using the new service, items that are available in our local library are shown at the top of the search results.
The service also displays information about libraries outside Fuller library to help users find resources in other WorldCat libraries that can often be requested through the library’s interlibrary loan service.
Our users will also be able to take advantage of the service’s expanded search capability that provides single-search access to dozens of familiar databases.

Through the new service, users can connect to the library to place holds on items that are currently checked out or to request a loan of an item from another library. They can also take advantage of social networking tools, including creating lists, reviews and making recommendations.

WorldCat Local is a discovery overlay system that basically allows a library to integrate WorldCat functionality into their OPAC. It incorporates Web 2.0 features like reviews, tags, user lists, and Amazon.com-like recommendations (e.g. books “also in this series” or “by the same author.” The reviews include editorial reviews (drawn from Library Journal, Publisher Weekly, etc.) and user-contributed reviews (drawn from reading-related social-networking sites like Goodreads, weRead, and of course, Amazon.com)

Case #1: WorldCat Local at University of Washington Libraries

University of Washington Libraries‘ homepage has one main search box mediated by WorldCat Local. I conducted a search for “in defense of food” (to find Michael Pollan’s book of that title). WorldCat Local shows book covers, which helps the user more easily identify a book they’re looking for if they know what it looks like. Clicking on the record for Pollan’s In Defense of Food, I saw listed a summary record; holdings information for UW, Summit Libraries (local consortium), and WorldCat (globally); a book review section, and a section for users to contribute tags (see screenshots below).

Reviews on WorldCat Local

Tags in WorldCat Local

The tags contributed for this book are:

• agriculture
• food
• food politics
• health
• nutrition
• whole food

As a user, I find the WorldCat page for each book to be quite long (it was eight page-lengths on my 14″ screen), but it’s nice having all the information in one place. The reviews would inform my decision to check the book out, and the tags give me a way to explore other books that other users thought were on similar topics.

Case #2: WorldCat Local at University of Delaware Library

University of Delaware Library homepage

The University of Delaware Library’s homepage has two separate catalog search boxes: one labeled “WorldCat Local: Search the University of Delaware Library and beyond…” and the other labeled “Search DELCAT only.” It looks like they’re not quite ready to get rid of their old OPAC interface. I wonder if some users would be confused by having to choose between the search boxes without knowing what the differences between the two are… there doesn’t seem to be anything on the homepage that explains the differences and why a user would choose one over the other.

I conducted the same search as above, for “in defense of food.” The resulting record for Michael Pollan’s In Defense of Food looked strikingly similar to the record retrieved through UW Libraries’ implementation. The main difference was branding and color scheme; otherwise, the Web 2.0 features were all the same: the same 393 editor reviews and user-contributed reviews, and the same tags. Like the record for UW, there are few contributors to the tags; the most frequent tag, “nutrition,” was chosen by 3 people. If WorldCat Local becomes as popular as LibraryThing, there will probably be more tag contributors; but for now, I would argue that the LibraryThing tags are more useful for resource discovery.

A nice list of useful (obviously done by a Librarian!) sources to start a review on Science 2.0:

• WorldCat: List: Science 2.0 / Open Science: http://www.worldcat.org/profiles/PFAnderson/lists/651073
• FriendFeed: Science 2.0: http://friendfeed.com/rooms/science-2-0
• Delicious: Science 2.0: http://delicious.com/tag/science2.0
• CiteULike: Groups: Science 2.0 / Open Science: http://www.citeulike.org/group/9932/library

Source: Emerging Technologies Librarian: http://etechlib.wordpress.com/2009/04/08/science-20-getting-started/

These are  research questions posed by my instructor for which we had to find answers.

Bask in the librarian’s goodness.

Question #1: My brother just saw Stalag 17 and now he wants to read a novel about POWs or set in a POW camp.  Can you suggest a good book or two, or author for him?

First, I needed to look up what Stalag 17 was, because I was not familiar with the title. I went to Wikipedia for a quick summary. After learning that it was a set in WWII, I decided to search “Stalag 17″ in Amazon.com to see if they provided any quick recommendations. I scrolled down to find a few customer recommendations, one of which was very helpful, namely, the book The Flame Keepers by Ned Handy. This is a true story about the Stalag 17 POW camp.

I also wanted to try to find some fiction books and authors, in case the brother would prefer that. I decided to focus on the public library, since it’s accessible to everyone. I went to the Web site for Seattle Public Library and did this search:

The first book that popped up on the list – The Yard Dog By Sheldon Russell – wasn’t what I was looking for. So, I scrolled down and clicked the subject that the library provided in the record entitled “Prisoner-of-war camps — Fiction”. This was useless. Apparently, this is the only record to which that subject points.

I decided to change to UW Libraries WorldCat to find more recommendations. When I searched using these terms,

the first book to pop up again was The Yard Dog. Again, clicking a similar subject category only brought up a few other books, and all of these were in other languages. So, I decided that perhaps The Yard Dog was worthy of recommending.

In conclusion, my recommendation would be these two books: The Yard Dog by Sheldon Russell and The Flame Keepers by Ned Handy

Question #2: I’m looking for a book about the War of the Worlds radio broadcast; I’d prefer something written soon after and talking about what happened, whether people believed it or so on.  Something written later would be a second choice.

For this question, I decided to start at WorldCat.org. To narrow the search to items published within 10 years of the original broadcast, I quickly searched “war of the worlds” in Wikipedia to get the original broadcast date. I was first taken to the record for the original novel by H.G. Wells. I navigated through Wikipedia to find the record for the radio broadcast by Orson Welles and found it. Once I plugged in the dates, this was my search:

Only one record was retrieved for this search, i.e. the book Panic: this is the Orson Welles broadcast that hoaxed America. This appeared to be only a transcript of the radio broadcast and wasn’t available anywhere close to Seattle.

Next, I clicked the “1938..1950″ search result link in this image:

This was one result that might be of interest to the person:

Still, this wasn’t exactly what they were looking for, so I continued by broadening my search to the subject “war of the worlds.” This brought up many more works, most of which were more recently published works. Next, I used the left hand “refine your search” box to look at older publishing dates. Although there were some archival materials at Bowling Green State University in Ohio from 1958 called “The Night America Trembled,” these wouldn’t be accessible to a Pacific Northwesterner and weren’t in book format.

So, the above image shows the search results page. The top result as well as other results in the top ten shown were pertinent to research interest.

Although these books are recently published, they directly relate to the person’s search interest. After presenting the books available on the topic, I would recommend that the person search for news and magazine articles from that time period to get the reaction of people right after it happened.

Question #3: I’m thinking about a new career as a funeral director.  Are there any new books coming out that would help me?

First, I searched “funeral director” as a keyword in WorldCat. Next, I narrowed my search to “non-fiction” items only. The search result page showed:

The first result on this page looked especially useful, given that it was published in the last three years and was written by the Institute for Career Research. In addition, some of the other results in the biography and memoir genres would be interesting, if they wanted to get a first person account of the profession.

Other than these selections, I would also point the person toward the Bureau of Labor Statistics Web site, which even has occupational outlook summaries for professions.

Question #4:Are there any books that are about, or mention, the idea of “greased information”?  I heard somebody use this term to refer to information that gets out in public and then moves around easily, can be shared, copied, moved, etc.

When I first read this question, I immediately thought of the term “viral,” which has become a popular term for referring to information that travels throughout the Web extremely quickly and gains popularity that can be measured by relevance search engines like Google. So, I did a search for these keywords: viral AND information AND digital. These were the results:

The article “The Paradigm of Viral Communication” immediately caught my eye. However, I also wanted to use the term “greased information” in a search, in case it had special relevance that the term “viral” didn’t capture. But, when I did a keyword search for “greased information” in WorldCat, there wasn’t a single result, which was somewhat surprising. I decided that this term “viral” was more appropriate and I delved into my previous search results a little more to find some particularly good sources.

The article “The Paradigm of Viral Communication” ended up focusing on marketing campaigns, which might be interesting to the person, but not necessarily. Somewhat schizophrenically, I quickly jumped to a Google search of the term “greased information” and a Google Book result popped up in the top five results. When I clicked the link, this is what the page showed:

The “snippet,” as Google calls it, directly dealt with this idea of greased information. So, I would recommend this book – Computer ethics and Professional Responsibility By Terrell Ward Bynum and Simon Rogerson – to the person. Also, just from my own knowledge, I know that Malcolm Gladwell has made millions of dollars by popularizing “social epidemics,” which relates to this topic. So, I might recommend checking out his book The Tipping Point. Gladwell might have cited other authors from whom he derived his ideas, although he is known for playing fast and loose with attribution.

Finally, since we have established that these terms – greased information and viral – refer to phenomena in the digital media environment, I did a search more focused with terms like digital media, viral and networks. I found this result, which would be useful if the person were looking for academic sources of information, particularly in the fields of business and advertising:

Question #5: What’s the original publication date of Heinrich Mann’s Man of Straw (in German)?

First, I went to Amazon.com to see if I could use the “Look Inside!” function to find publisher information for the original publication date. This didn’t yield in any good results, so I quickly shifted to WorldCat, because I thought I could find a copy in German that might have original publication information. Here is an image of my search terms:

The result of this search brought up only one result, a book entitled Der Untertan: Roman, which I could only assume translated to “Man of Straw.” The publication date shown for this record is 1998. Not satisfied that I had arrived at a definitive answer, I did a title search in WorldCat for “Der Untertan” and quickly realized that 1998 was definitely not the original publication date.

I clicked on an edition from 1976. The record didn’t give me any information on the original publication date, so I still didn’t know if this was the original publication date. However, I remembered that I can click the “View all editions and formats” button in a record for the book, and organize results by oldest edition first. The oldest date now was 1914. There were scant details in this record, but obviously I was getting closer.

I decided to go back and look at the links to the search tools Dr. Janes provided on the course Web site. I decided to try the European Library catalog. This was not a good catalog for searching due to its interface, slow results pages and few details.

Finally, I resorted to Google Book Search, the god qua corporation of searching, and, lo and behold, they had a result that was a digitized book from 1918. I clicked on that result and I was able look at the publisher page, which showed this:

The simplicity of this publisher page and the fact that it shows a publication date for this edition along with another date, i.e. 1914, makes me believe that this second date is the actual original publication date.

Si un acquéreur trouve sur une page web une référence d’ouvrage, et si cette référence fournit l’ISBN, il peut désormais (avec LibX) basculer en un clic sur un site Zotero-compatible fournissant ladite référence).

Mais très souvent il ne trouvera que le titre et l’auteur (peut-être aussi l’éditeur et l’année, mais la combinaison Titre+Auteur devrait suffire).

LibX permet aussi, de la même manière que pour l’ISBN, en utilisant le menu contextuel, de basculer sur le site en interrogeant Titre+Auteur.

Pour cela, il faut que chacun des “catalogues” paramétrés pour l’ISBN le soit aussi pour “Keyword” (correspondant à une recherche Titre-Auteur-Sujet dans une base).

Voir un exemple de paramétrage pour WorldCat : vidéo – 5 min (avec son)

Pour paramétrer une nouvelle base (par exemple WorldCat), il faut donc :

1. aller sur la base et lancer une requête contenant un titre, un auteur et un ISBN (oui, je sais, c’est une requête absurde).
2. récupérer l’URL de la requête
3. dans cette URL, remplacer le titre et l’auteur par : %Y, et l’IBSN par : %i
4. aller sur l’interface de LibX

Dans l’interface LibX, pour une édition existante,

1. créer un nouveau catalogue (onglet Catalogs & Databases) par “Bookmarklet” (ou mettre à jour un catalogue existant).
2. Cocher Required Settings pour afficher les champs obligatoires, et dans “Bookmarklet Search Options”, cliquer sur Change pour cocher “Keywords” (et en face : cocher CtxtMenu)
   
3. Retourner dans l’onglet My Editions et cliquer sur “Build Edition” pour reconstruire une extension Firefox/IE, puis aller sur la page de test réinstaller cette extension.
   

Vidéo – quelques remarques d’utilisation pour conclure (2′25 – avec son)

Quelles URLs ?

• Pour Amazon : http://www.amazon.fr/s/ref=nb_ss?__mk_fr_FR=%C5M%C5Z%D5%D1&url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=%i%Y
• Pour WorldCat : http://www.worldcat.org/search?q=kw:%Y+bn:%i&qt=advanced
• Pour le Sudoc : Vous allez rire, je n’ai pas réussi à faire entrer dans LibX une URL contenant à la fois la recherche “Keyword” (%Y) et la recherche ISBN (%i). Je veux dire qu’une telle URL peut être obtenue dans le Sudoc, mais elle faisait bugger l’installation de l’extension. J’ai donc dû créer, à côté d’un catalogue “Sudoc ISBN”, un autre catalogue “Sudoc – Titre-Auteur”… En voici l’URL :
  http://www.sudoc.abes.fr/DB=2.1/CHARSET=UTF-8/SRCH?IKT=1016&TRM=%Y

Voir le résultat pour mon extension, qui comprend donc :

• lien ISBN vers mon opac
• menu contextuel ISBN vers Amazon, WorldCat, Sudoc
• menu contextuel Titre-Auteur vers Amazon, WorldCat, Sudoc

Conclusion

Après tous ces paramétrages un peu complexes (mais depuis le début je trouve la configuration de LibX complexe), on peut enfin proposer aux acquéreurs une extension LibX qui :

• permet de cliquer sur un ISBN pour savoir si nous avons déjà l’ouvrage
• permet de sélectionner un ISBN puis par un clic droit basculer sur une base d’ouvrages proposant forcément l’ouvrage sous une forme Zotero-compatible
• permet de sélectionner une combinaison Auteur-Titre pour basculer avec la même facilité.
• A noter : un acquéreur ayant installé LibX peut estimer inutile d’avoir WorldCat, Amazon, le Sudoc et Google Books, par exemple. Il peut lui-même, dans les préférences LibX, n’enrichir son menu contextuel que de certains de ces rebonds.

Et donc ainsi exploiter pleinement Zotero comme gestionnaire de paniers pour acquéreurs, en combinaison avec Moccam-en-ligne.

Si vous ne vous en sortez pas mais que l’objectif vous semble désirable, vous pouvez travailler à plusieurs sur une même extension LibX.

Partagez-la vôtre avec moi ! (44” – avec son)

Les 5 étapes listées lors du 1er billet sur LibX et Zotero pour acquéreurs sont donc “assumées”. Mais j’ai manqué d’honnêteté en les listant : il reste encore ce qui est en amont de la 1ère étape, la manière dont sont trouvées les références.

Là-dessus, il n’y aura jamais de solution “ultimate” (pour reprendre une expression de Shaun le mouton). Mais j’espère faire bientôt des propositions sur cette question aussi.

Plusieurs billets antérieurs essaient de reconstituer une chaîne de traitement pour les acquéreurs, en utilisant des outils adaptés (au besoin en les adaptant) et en essayant de fluidifier tout ça.

Résumons :

• Etape 1 : la veille. L’acquéreur trouve sur Internet (notamment par des fils RSS adaptés, ou en s’abonnant à Vigilibris ou Electre) des titres intéressants à acheter
• Etape 2 : le panier. il constitue dans Zotero un panier à partir de toutes ces sources pour constituer sa future commande
• Etape 3 : l’export du panier. il exporte les ISBN de son panier Zotero grâce à un format “bibliographique”.
  A noter : je n’ai pas du tout exploré dans ce circuit les potentialités de la gestion de paniers en ligne avec Zotero 2.0. Ce serait à creuser.
• Etape 4 : la récupération des notices il met cette liste d’ISBN dans Moccam-en-ligne pour en récupérer les notices (même billet Zotero-Moccam)
• Etape 5 : le chargement dans le SIGB.

Comme Shaun l’a bien vu (mais je prétends m’en être rendu compte dès la rédaction du billet sur Zotero pour les acquéreurs), il y a un souci à l’étape 1 : lorsque je trouve une référence intéressante, c’est rarement (ou au moins : pas toujours) sur un site Zotero-compatible (rappelons tout de même qu’il est très facile quand on tient un blog ou un site web d’insérer une référence d’ouvrage avec Zotero, et que ça rend la notice téléchargeable par les internautes utilisant aussi Zotero).

Donc il faut trouver une manière de basculer rapidement depuis le site contenant la référence vers un site me permettant d’exporter cette référence.

C’est là que je propose LibX.

LibX démultiplié

Souvenez-vous : LibX permet de rendre un ISBN cliquable de manière à ce qu’il pointe vers votre catalogue.

Mais

1. rien ne vous empêche de pointer vers une autre base que votre catalogue. Par exemple : le Sudoc, WorldCat, Google Books, Amazon.
2. rien de nous empêche de paramétrer plusieurs catalogues.

Que se passe-t-il si vous paramétrez plusieurs catalogues ?

Pour exploiter les ISBN comme rebonds vers des bases d’ouvrages, LibX vous propose deux méthodes :

1. l’autolink : le navigateur reconnaît un ISBN et le rend cliquable. S’il y a plusieurs catalogues paramétrés, il ne pointe que vers le 1er
   
2. le lien dans le menu contextuel : les préférences LibX permettent de choisir d’afficher un ou plusieurs des catalogues paramétrés
   Ce qui  permet de voir :
   

Rappel : pour afficher la pop-up “LibX Preferences”, cliquez (clic gauche) sur l’icône LibX présente au bas de votre navigateur, et choisir la ligne “LibX Preferences” :

Bon, et maintenant ?

Si vous paramétrez Amazon, WorldCat et le Sudoc, par exemple, sur les critères ISBN, vous pouvez être sur n’importe quelle interface contenant un ISBN, et ainsi connaître d’un clic la disponibilité, puis, si vous n’avez pas l’ouvrage, la possibilité de basculer (en sélectionnant l’ISBN puis en faisant un clic droit) sur une autre base zotero-compatible, vous permettant ainsi de charger la notice aisément.

Pour paramétrer ces trois bases, il faut :

1. créer pour chacune un nouveau catalogue “Bookmarklet (URL Template)”,
2. sélectionner ISBN dans les champs interrogeables et indiquer les URL suivantes :
   1. Amazon : http://www.amazon.fr/s/ref=nb_ss?__mk_fr_FR=%C5M%C5Z%D5%D1&url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=%i (le %i indique où l’ISBN est à placer pour structurer une URL de requête)
   2. WorldCat : http://www.worldcat.org/search?qt=worldcat_org_all&q=%i
   3. Sudoc : http://www.sudoc.abes.fr/DB=2.1/CMD?ACT=SRCHA&IKT=7&SRT=RLV&TRM=%i

   Sauf pour le Sudoc, les URL indiquent qu’il faut faire une recherche “Tous champs” dans laquelle placer l’ISBN

Voir la vidéo (3-34 – muet)

Limites

La sélection de l’ISBN peut parfois être pénible du fait qu’il soit rendu cliquable. Vous pouvez donc être amené à désactiver l’autolink (décocher la case dans les préférences LibX). Les ISBN ne seront plus cliquables, mais vous pourrez les sélectionner plus facilement (par un double-clic gauche).

Ne nous leurrons pas : sur de nombreux sites seuls le titre et l’auteur seront fournis. Donc pas de recherche ISBN possible.

Cette question fera l’objet du prochain billet..

We are always looking for the next great idea and we think you have it!

A Suggestion Box has been installed in the library and now the only thing it needs is your ideas.

Where?

• Look to your right when you walk in. It is mounted on the wall next to the New Books Board.

I don't really understand electricity, either!

Okay, gray matter….stretch yourself! I can say I’d heard of proxy servers prior to taking this class, but I don’t think I’d dealt with link resolvers.

I checked with our tech guru who keeps the Colorado Correctional Libraries Intranet up and running, but she told me she didn’t use either.

I think I’ve mentioned I don’t live in what would be called, by any stretch of the imagination, an urban area. So…there aren’t too many large public libraries or university libraries in this here neck of the woods. Or, perhaps I should say plains. It’s not real woodsy around here.

I did, however, consult with a colleague who is the library director at a community college about 20 miles down the highway. She isn’t using a proxy server right now, but here’s what she told me: 

Yes, I have worked with a proxy server in the past.  A proxy server/service is merely a computer that authenticates users and then allows them if they authenticate properly, to pass into a proprietary service such as a database.  This could be something run off of your local server or it can be a service that you purchase from another vendor.  Generally any tech person who runs a local server is able to install this software and set it up.  The great thing about this type of service is that you do not have to maintain a list of patrons or edit on the backend to allow folks in.

 It works like this: 

1. patron clicks on link to look for an article. 
2. They are asked for a username/password (typically)
3. If they enter the correct info, they are passed onto the database
4. The database recognizes the URL they are coming from and allows them into the database
5. The patron is able to complete their search and logs out.

 I have not worked much with a URL Resolver, but the concept there is that the resolver software goes through the webpage or library catalog and tries each 856 or http: link listed and if it encounters a 404 Error, then a report is sent back to you noting there was an issue with that weblink/webpage.  Consequently, you can go in and just fix those that don’t connect properly.  It’s a real time-saver in that you don’t have to go through each and every active link trying them to see which ones don’t work.

 Both, in my opinion, allow us to do the necessary parts of our jobs which is providing services to patrons without having to manually maintain them all the time.

 Me again. Okay, so when I log onto ESU’s Blackboard and visit the online library, all I need to do is give my username and password, and Viola! I can get into any of the databases that the library subscribes to, all from the comfort of my home.

Many of  the public and school libraries in this area have an EBSCO database subscription that they can access from home by logging in with a username and password (the same one for everybody), so when the proxy server encounters that username/password combination, it lets the connection through because it has previously been given the “okay” that it can be trusted, even though it’s not coming directly from the library.

The Link Resolver is a bit more difficult for me to understand. Basically, I think that this special software will search a website (say, the local public library’s) and try each link that is listed. If an error comes back and the software isn’t able to access the link, it then informs the librarian that there is a problem with that link. Sounds good to me. I can’t imagine having an employee periodically check each and every link on a website. That could be extremely time- consuming and not a very efficient use of time.

From what our instructor posted, I think link resolvers also can be used to attach some sort of information to a web address, such as the location of a book. I am wondering if this is how WorldCat works? A searcher can look for a specific book on WorldCat and be taken to the record for that book in a specific library’s website.

Then again, I could be totally wrong!

My final Statistics and Evaluation Section Standing Committee meeting took place this afternoon. We had quite a few observers, which is testament either to the excitement surrounding the work we are doing or to some very sad lives.

I reported briefly on two meetings I’d attended on IFLA’s behalf during the year:  International Book Statistics project meetings under UNESCO’s auspices in Paris then in Amsterdam; and a similar European Expert Meeting on Book Statistics organised by the Tiele Foundation, also in Amsterdam  (within its World Book Capital City programme).

We then turned to activity over the coming year. First up is the Global Statistics for Advocacy programme we’ve agreed to produce; we now propose to run the workshop in several parallel sessions in an all-day off-site workshop in Gothenburg next year. New project leader Tord is raring to go and already has a blog about it.

The Emetrics SIG format is discussed: either very brief (5 minute) presentations followed by discussion, or invite the serials group (who want us to jointly sponsor a pre-conference on measuring e-journal use, which we don’t think we can take on, other than to provide advice on content) to discuss the result of their pre-conference in a wider setting.

The Libraries Serving Print-Disabled People section has also agreed the project bid on performance measures; we’ve given them Sebastian’s and Maria’s contact details and are now awaiting their next move. We may want to present the outcome from the project in a session next year, but if so it would be a bid for an extra session over and above our ‘entitlement’ to a 2-hour slot.

We agree that our main programme should focus on outcome measures for the Gates Foundation Global Libraries projects. One of the program reviewers is among our observers and offers to help, via his colleague and our member Michele Farrell.

Frankie Wilson reports that the Science and Technology Section is interested in staging a joint session with us.

In the closing minutes I mentioned under AOB the work I’d persuaded OCLC to do on data mining in the Worldcat database to examine cultural diversity – how many original books and translations are published in each country each year in all the different languages? Timothy Dickey at OCLC has produced reams of data which is now looking for a research student or two, or three, to make use of it.  Several members are keen to know more, so it’s just as well that I happen to have sample data on the laptop.

Looking back over that, there really is excitement over the work we’re doing and I’m going to miss it. The coup-de-grace comes  later that afternoon in Claudia Lux’s farewell address as demitting President of IFLA, reviewing her theme of ‘Libraries on the agenda’. She singles out our section for the way in which we’ve responded to that by getting statistics on the agenda.

Smug just doesn’t begin to describe it.

Some reflections on the Industry Symposium held by OCLC at the IFLA conference 2009 in Milan.

An often expressed notion on the IFLA conference is that libraries need to go where their users are. In terms of scientific libraries, scholars and (future) students, this is to be very likely Google and Co.

In order to reach them in these environments where they search for information an integration of their local holding data and bibliographic records into Google had been proposed by allowing search engine robots to harvest all that data. Of course this approach won’t be very productive if every single library undertakes actions in this direction on its own. Just imagine a user who wants searches for a book about Rocket science and finds itself in front of a Google result page which contains OPAC-Records of thousands of libraries. He’ll never get to the book or the content.

That’s why a mediator is needed between the single libraries and Google. Some people suggest that OCLC’s Worldcat could fulfill this role as a mediator and in fact they already posses an impressive and constantly growing database with nearly 150 million records and even more holding information from libraries all around the globe.

So now the idea  is that a user searches for a book with Google or Google Book Search. Then he finds a link to the Worldcat-record-page of that book in the search results. On this particularly Worldcat-page he finds a lot of information about the book and can locate a library in his surroundings where he could go to borrow it. In other words: a single library reconnects with its users they lost to Google and Co. through Worldcat.

Unfortunately there are some stumbling block in the way yet that need to be removed first to make this idea truly work. First of all the Worldcat records need to be harvested in order to make them findable. But to date Google only harvests a tiny fraction (about 3.5 – 4 million) of the 150 Million Worldcat’s records. To be fair though these harvested records represent in large part the most widely held items in the Worldcat. But this number is definitely too small to successfully fulfill the desired harmonic interplay of Google – Worldcat and the single libraries.

But even harvesting all Worldcat records will not necessarily be enough because we know from user studies that the first 10 results are where the user look and click. This means that Worldcat records also need to appear within these first 10 records otherwise they won’t get any attention and no user will find its way to the collection of each single library and its collections. According to Matt Goldner, Product and Technology Advocate of OCLC, to date especially or mysteriously only Spanish Worldcat records are ranked very high by Google whereas the probability to see records in other languages within the first 10 results is actually very low.

He points out though that the current situation still leads a constantly growing stream of users to Worldcat and to the libraries. He states further that by offering these users valuable and useful services and contents there might be a real chance to actually draw them from away from Google towards Worldcat as their first starting point when they search for information.

I must honestly say that this idea seems to miss the point a little bit, because the fundamental idea here still remains to reconnect at best all users with their local library collections through the Worldcat and not only a minority who searches for the records Google indexed from Worldcat.

The bottom line of all that to me is that sometimes the things are not that easy as they might seem or as they are described. In this particular context of integrating library records within Google we are dealing with huge challenges that won’t be easy to overcome, such as Search Engine Optimization for bibliographic record and foremost to get Google and Col to harvest and index the whole Worldcat dataset . Regarding the latter I’ll ask myself at which cost for libraries this might be achieved.

OCLC announced a new feature to WorldCat:

“A library search feature is now available to WorldCat users. Users can search for libraries by name/keyword, location or zip/postal code – and refine their search results by library type, such as Public Library or Academic Library (results via the ‘Library type’ filter on the top-right of the results set).

The order of library search results will vary depending on the type of search that is conducted:

- If ‘zip /postal code’ is used to search, libraries in that code will be returned. The results will be ordered by proximity to the zip/postal code center.
Please note: At this time, the WorldCat library search is unable to include libraries in nearby cities and in some cases nearby zip/postal codes- enhancements to this feature are planned in the near future.

- If library name/ keyword is used to search, results will be ordered alphabetical by all libraries with that search term in the library name.

- If specific location search is used, such as ‘city, state’; results will be listed alphabetical by library name within that location.

Google Maps have also been integrated into the experience to make it easier to find a library near you…”

Your WorldCat search experience just got better! Users can now search all of our OCLC electronic resource services. Integrated search results currently include resources from the library catalog and NetLibrary™ eBooks and eAudiobooks.

The interface for WorldCat Local is similiar to Encore.  Do your search then refine it with a variety of tools which include year, language, audience, format and etc.

Give it a try and let me know what you think by submitting your comments.