Memory Archive is an online project that is gathering memoirs from everyday people. The site allows you to search for memoirs indexed for particular words (either in the title or in the text), or you can brows various collections through category pages (here is an examples of the category page for “places“). Another good way of browsing through the site is with the “Random” bottom at the far left of the page.

Some of the writings I saw were fairly short, being made up of no more than a paragraph or two, while others went on for much longer. Some comment on life changing events like the San Francisco earthquake, while others reminisce on some of life’s simples pleasures, such as getting a new kitten.

Currently there are close to 1,300 memoirs, and growing. The site allows you to contribute from their main page, and warn people that entries are edited for format issues, and will index as needed. Once an entry is up, it will not be modified again unless the creator specifically requests a change. Under the page giving teachers ideas of how to use this site in the classroom there is also a cautionary note reminding users to be careful about including personal information in their narrative.

While looking around the site I was very pleased to see that there is talk of expanding the project to into languages other than English. Currently there are proposals to gather memories in French, Polish, and Russian.

I started out being hesitant to go down the road that is making OPACs and other library related tools look more like Google, Amazon.com and the like, but the more I learn about what these new tools can achieve the more I’m growing to like them. One of the latest examples of these new initiatives is The Commons, the Library of Congress‘ (LOC) Flickr page. The collections’ subtitle perfectly summarizes this project, “Your opportunity to contribute to describing the world’s public photos collections.”

LOC has started out by making two collections available on Flickr, the first titled 1930s-40s in Color, and the second one is News in the 1910s. The idea behind this project is to make these collections available to much larger groups of people that those who can actually visit the LOC. Second the fact that users can add tags to these photos as they please means that they have more accessible than they had previously been. Library of Congress Subject Headings are very useful to people who know how to use them, but can be rather frustrating to those who don’t. For example LOC uses “cookery” while cataloging cookbooks. How many of us would have guesses this to begin with? Being this the case, having user provided tags in everyday language and spelling can help make material more accessible. The user provided tags on Flickr are doing just this for these two collections.

Both collections hold material for which that LOC has determined to have “no known copyright restrictions.” LOC defines this label in two ways; Material for which copyright has not been renewed, or material from the late 19th and 20th century for which there is no evidence of a copyright holder. (You can read more about LOCs copyright standards here.)

Image info here.

01. 27. 08 - There is a similar collection of photographs of the battle at Normandie on Flickr. The collection includes close to 3,000 images documenting the event; information and tags for this collection are all in French. This was a project led by Conseil Régional de Basse-Normandie (Regional Council of Basse-Normandie) in 2004, for the D-Day 60th anniversary. The photo source for the project is the Archives Normandie 1939-1945. You can access the Flickr collection here.

Photograph credits are with the “Conseil Régional de Basse-Normandie / National Archives USA”

Image info here.

During the same Hot Topics Discussion mentioned below I also heard a presentation about the implementation and use of LibraryThing at a public library by Kate Sheehan, Coordinator of Library Automation at the Danbury Public Library. Sheehan described how the library has integrated LibraryThing, a site which allows users to create bibliographies, plus rate and reviews books. The idea is that this added content will provide library users with more context when it comes to deciding what to check out next.

Similar to the recommendations on Amazon.com, LibraryThing allows users to see what other users have been reading, and if they liked it or no. The advantage of this system is that actual human beings (as opposed to algorithms) are providing the context and making connections. If you ever bought something on Amazon.com for a friend on a subject that does not interest you, the site will forever continue suggesting things on this subject. By contrast users of LibraryThing can actually help you choose related material that might interest you.

Sheehan also described this partnership as an addition that can make the OPAC “fun.” She found that she and others at the library could know be found “browsing” the catalog and spending long periods of time doing so. One interesting review can open up hundreds of possibilities and before long your list of “to read books” could make you wish you had more time to read.

In terms of implementations Sheehan said its been amazingly easy and the process was completed in a very short amount of time. Once up an running, each month the library provides LibraryThing with a list of all new additions by ISBN, which LibraryThing will then provide information for. Once a year the library gathers information on weeded books and LibraryThing is again notified of these changes.

The library’s catalog has not become part of LibraryThing, instead it gathers information available at the site. When opening the record of a particular book, in addition to the expected information you will also find suggestions for similar books, and a tag cloud of related subjects. Clicking on one of these tags will take you to more suggestions of material tagged with this category, as well as related categories. Here is an example of one of these records.

One issues that particularly caught my attention is that the Danbury library patrons are not necessarily the ones providing the rating and reviews (unless they happen to have an account with LibraryThing). I wonder how different these reviews and tag clouds might turn out if it were only the patrons providing input.

Kate Sheehan is the author behind the Loose Cannon Librarian blog.

During ALA Midwinter I attended a Hot Topics Discussion Group titled “Tag You’re It: A revolution in patron-library interaction”. The first presenter was Jennifer Sweda, cataloging librarian at the University of Pennsylvania Libraries, she talked about PennTags, the ongoing project in social tagging in their library catalog.

PennTags is a social bookmaking tool developed at UPenn which allows that university’s community to contribute to the library catalog by adding their own tags and comments. The system is integrated and works along side the information regularly found in a bibliographic record (bib. record). Tags added by patrons do not exclude traditional subject headings (usually LCSH - Library of Congress Subject Headings) added by a cataloger, but can serve as a complement to LCSH and may provide a more complex classification to the material.

When I say complex I mean to say that they can add several layers of nuance that LCSH cannot achieve because of their purpose. LCSH began in the USA’s Library of Congress whose main purpose is to make material in the Library of Congress accessible to Congress and others involved in government. They cannot pass judgment in how material is classified, and their strength lies in classifying material from the USA, as opposed to material about the rest of the world. LCSH also do not cover every single subject needed for thorough classification, new subject headings can be added to LCSH but it requires time, and a critical mass of material on the subject. According to the rules of classification a book or other material being cataloged must be at least 20% on a particular subject before a LCSH can be added on the subject, thus other subjects only briefly mentioned will not be noted in the bib. record.

LCSH are excellent at classifying material for their main user group, but for material falling outside these parameters it makes sense to explore other options. PennTags allows patrons to add their own tags to material in the catalog which can help complement the LCSH classification. The system allows users to highlight small aspects of a work, add new terminology that has not yet been added to the LCSH system and they can “pass judgment” on the material.

Being able to highlight small aspects of a material can help someone find an obscure note in a book that the subjects headings did not note because it is discussed in less than 20 % of the book. New terms such as “Third World Feminism” can be added to provide nuance to a bib. record, instead of just using “Feminism” or “Women”. Users can also note whether material is “high brow” or “low brow,” a passing of judgment that LCSH cannot provide.

PennTags allows users to view all the material which has been tagged by a particular user whose judgment they like, or who is also working with material of interest (here’s an example by a user known as dkelly). Tags provided by the university community can also add richness to bib. records in subject areas on which librarians might not know much about. This can also help when cataloging grey literature, which often falls through the cataloging cracks. Users can also use the system to create “projects”; here they can aggregate information on a subject of interest and classify it to their likes. An example of these projects is wellske’s project on “1935-1945 Films, Philadelphia Film History“.

Currently PennTags is in Beta version and has only been released to a handful of users in the community. Releasing the Perl based script to the Open Source community has also been discussed. It was mentioned that the system is still too new to put out in the world, but also that the point of open source is not only to release script for the benefits of others, but also to benefit from additions the community can provide. Being the case those involved with PennTags wondered how this script to be used collaboratively with other academic institutions so that patrons in either place could benefit from additions done elsewhere.

You can take a look at PennTags here. Unless you are part of the UPenn community you won’t be able to add tags to their library catalog, but in case you are interested, instructions on how to do so can be found here.

Image info here.

Yes! You can enjoy the opera at the movie theater! Last season Peter Gelb, director of the Metropolitan Opera began this amazing project of doing live broadcast to a number of HD movie theaters across the USA and around the world. Tickets do cost about twice as much as regular movie tickets, but this project is still bringing extraordinary cultural events to a much larger audience that those who can afford regular opera tickets.

Presentations also include some behind the scene takes, allowing the audience to see how the sets are installed and some of the makeup and props used during the production. During the broadcast of Hansel and Gretel, Renée Fleming also provided background commentary and short interviews with the two main singers and the stage director, giving the presentation a very interesting and well rounded approach.

During the presentation I attended today, we did have some technical difficulties with the sound during the second part of the show, but people after the theater was notified, the rest of the presentation went very smoothly. All in all is was a great experience and I was delighted to be able to access a world class cultural event at an affordable price.

For more information on the Metropolitan Opera’s HD presentations check out their website. On the left you will find a link to buy tickets in the USA or around the world. Other countries participating in this project include Canada, the UK, Australia, Germany, Japan, among others.

On Friday, January 4, 2008, Tom Ashbrook, presenter of WBUR’s On Point interviewed Peter Gelb about this project. You can listen to the interview here.

The Boston Public Library (BPL) has joined forces with PublicResource.org and the Internet Archive in order to begin digitizing the library’s large collection of government documents. This project has first envisioned by Mr. Carl Malamud and Mr. Brewster Kahle, the founders of these two collaborating organizations. Mr. Malamud hopes to eventually digitize the entire USA government document collection, which holds around 100 millions pages. The project is expected to take two years, at a cost of $6 million.

This project also hopes to gather a number of other digital collections which are already accessible online, but at a cost. The intent is to buy access to these collections and make their content freely available to everyone. The BPL wants to begin this project by digitizing their holdings relating to the Committee on Un-American Activities hearings from the 1950s, as well as a substantial collection of Congressional Hearings recently donated by Harvard.

In the future the BPL wishes to begins their own digital archive for holdings relating to local Boston and Massachusetts documents.

Here’s to hoping that initiatives such as these continue to prosper, and to make government more accessible and transparent.

You can read more about this from an article in the NYT here.