A few days ago OCLC and Google Books created a partnership that will allow uses of both services to benefit, and better locate library material. OCLC member libraries who already have agreements with Google Books will now be able to make their MARC records available through Google, which will increase the visibility of material. Basically this partnership will allow users of the web to search for books and other library material be guided towards specific library catalogs, which will then provide full access to books that are already part of Google Books. Ideally this set up will drive up traffic for libraries both online and in person. Web users will be able to access full text books from home, but those who wish to borrow the books will be able to see local libraries’ holding.

You can read OCLCs press release on the matter here.

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.

Not too long ago OCLC rolled out a new OPAC (Online Public Access Catalog) of sorts. This new tool known as WorldCat Local offers a three tiered display of cataloged search records, first from the local library, then the local consortia, and finally from the whole WorldCat. Including material continuously added to WorldCat.org, this new tool allows access to books, periodicals, individual articles, government reports, medical scholarship and educational material.

This three tiered approach will greatly increase the material that libraries can make available to their patrons. Now a patron can technically access holdings for the material they want, literally, from all participating libraries in the country. They can then easily request this material through interlibrary lending (ILL), usually for free.

For libraries this new tool will provide a personalized interface, it will allow for integration of WorldCat Local with their circulation records, and will permit inclusion of licensed full-text collections. Three major OPAC vendors (Innovative Interfaces, SirsiDynix and Ex Libris Voyager) are also being worked with to make WorldCat Local interoperable with their systems. Once this merger is achieved, the systems will allow for integration of services like ILL, and accessing certain online resources. In the future WorldCat Local hopes to also integrate a number of social networking services.

In an era where libraries and librarians grapple with new users who are more comfortable seeking information on Google than through an OPAC, and given that the traditional OPAC mainly retrieves books, a system like this one that can present a simple interface and that can aggregate information from so many different sources and in a variety of formats can really begin a trend of seamless and thorough searching.

The initial test runs included four universities, four public, two high school libraries, one state and one museum library. In the future libraries wanting to use WorldCat Local must have their holdings cataloged in WorldCat. The University of Washington was one of the institutions that first pilot-tested WorldCat Local, they have since made it their official OPAC. You can take a look at it through the library’s main page.

You can read an article on this from InfoToday.

Open Library is a new project starting out in San Francisco, CA, but global in scope. It aims at creating a single database for all book ever published! This massive project expects to function in wiki format and hopes to gather help from enthusiast all around the globe, much like Wikipedia has done in recent years. They are part of the Open Content Alliance.

The projects wishes to be complete open and free, allowing contributors to create and alter book records as the database grows. The final project will provide a form of authority page for each book, and will allow user to link back to this database as a reference, instead of having to link back to a corporate site.

The project is also working on getting libraries around the world to share their catalogs with them, although some, like the British Library are a little skeptical of the project, and therefore hesitant to release their catalog. The British Library in particular is nervous that the project might eventually become commercial; Right now the project receives most of their funding from the Internet Archive, but in the future they will be more reliant on donations, and a percentage of sales they help direct to book sellers. Google is also weary of this project, since basically both aim at gathering the same information, except Google doesn’t want to make it freely available.

As the project develops, the aim is to provide, searchable, digital copies of complete books, and in as much as copyright allows you might be able to download a complete copy or send it to a third party for printing. There is also the ability link to other project that can provide more information, such as Project Gutenberg to digitize cultural works. These digital copies will also help preserve intellectual content, if not physical books for the future.

You can read more about this project in an article from the BBC. Find out more about The Open Library project through the table of content of their website. You can also see a little presentation of what happens behind the scenes when digitizing book, along with a detailed explanation of the project.

You can view some of there demo projects, including The Koran, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and Harry Potter.

A recent file for copyright of Birkam yoga has attracted new attention to the Indian government’s efforts to safeguard their traditional knowledge. The Indian government has put a group together which is working on protecting material such as ancient texts written in Sanscrit, Urdu and Persian, yoga positions, and traditional healing practices. The Indian government has already set up a database for this knowledge called the Traditional Knowledge Digital Library (you need a member to use it), which will eventually function in English, French, German, Japanese, and Spanish. This project started back in 2001 with collaboration from National Institute of Science Communication and Information Resources (NISCAIR), the Department of Ayurveda, Yoga & Naturopathy, Unani, Siddha and Homeopathy, the and Department of Industrial Policy and Promotio. The project is expected to be completed in December 2008.

Such a massive project might initially seem unrealistic and daunting to tackle, specially since patents are usually given to “new” inventions, but given this increasingly growing practice by private companies to patent and restrict use to plants and practices that have been used for millennia, maybe this isn’t such a crazy idea after all.

India’s push to protect its traditional knowledge actually began a while back. In 2003 India proposed a law to fight “protect traditional knowledge and Western piracy [...] knowledge“. This proposal sought to encourage disclosure of traditional knowledge and reward those who help out. Once the information was gathered, it could be patented and thus protected from encroachment.

Earlier this month Suketu Mehta wrote an opinion piece in the International Herald Tribune where she points out the contradictions and complications with this process. She points out that knowledge in India has been protected through caste lines, not legal or economic ones, and that while piracy is common in India, often Indians get upset when Westerners make money of their traditional knowledge. In the end she comments that this new practice of wanting to claim ownership of everything is hurting those in the developing world. In 2005, under pressure from the WTO, the Indian Parliament passed a law making it illegal to make generic versions of patented medications. This in a national with over a billion people, many of which live in absolute poverty.

We’ll see where all this rush to put everything in private hands ends up…

You can see and read more on the subject from PBS; USA Today; BBC.

Later this year the project to create an Encyclopedia of Life will pick up speed for this ambitious project. The encyclopedia was first proposed by scientist E.O. Wilson who wished to see a type of “one stop shop” for information on the natural sciences; it’s aim is to be the next step up from an earlier project from the University of Arizona called the Tree of Life Web Project. With an initial founding of $12.5 million from the MacArthur Foundation, and the Sloan Foundation, yesterday the beginnings of this encyclopedia were formally revealed to the public. (The completed project is expected to cost $100 million, and take 10 years to complete.)

The idea is to collaborate with all the libraries and repositories in the world who gather information on the natural sciences and aggregate all this information in one location. Yet, as so many individuals have access to post their own material on the web, researchers are working on creating a new software program called “bots” that will trawl the web for further relevant information. The information found in this manner is to then be corroborated by scientist before linking or posting it to the encyclopedia.

A million books and 250,000 research papers from the Natural History Museum in Chicago will be available through the encyclopedia, with much more to come. And while the initial projection is just to gather existing information, the project’s leaders realize that todays technology allows for great collaboration. They realize that just anyone who gets a good picture while on a nature walk, or while bird watching will want to share their discoveries and the encyclopedia will allow for this as well. They also foresee a lot of comparative research to arise for the site.

As it stands, the Encyclopedia of Life has a few sample pages up which show the structure of what is to come. The idea is that every species will get it’s own page, including common and scientific name, type, an image, location, explanation, and even videos where applicable. Each page will also give credit to the creator and will provide sources and expert references. The project is starting off with the bigger species, and leaving amoebas and the like, that can’t always be so clearly defined into species for later on.

The encyclopedia also wishes to be free and in doing so is part of the Linking Open Data Project, which aims at making data available to everyone. There is more on this collaboration at AI3 (Adaptive Information, Adaptive Innovation, Adaptive Infrastructure).

The Guardian has an article about this project today. Boston.com had another article a few days ago.

26.02.08 - On Thursday the Encyclopedia of Life released the first 30,000 pages of information, with an expectation of close to 2 million more to come. Much of the initial information available here has been gathered through software designed to search the web for content. There is an emphasis on species that much is known about such as amphibians, fish and plants. You can read about this in a NYT article here, and from a BBC article here.

Earlier this week I attended a lecture that addressed social tagging and its use to libraries. Today more and more libraries and archives are trying to make themselves more visible by creating engaging websites, starting blog and posting photographs on flickr. While many of these are started to attract people to the library, it was fascinating to see the information that is coming out of these open spaces.

Take for example the Beyond Brown Paper site. This is a project based out of Plymouth State University, and it aims to digitize and preserve a photography collection about the paper mills that used to function in the area. The collection contains about 11,000 photographs that are gradually making their way on to their site. The fascinating thing is that the site allows for comments and collaboration, and this has brought new information to the project. Locals who used to work at these mills have seen some of the photographs, and through their comments have started to fill in the information gaps.

Item # 718 is an image of two men working on some equipment. The subject headings that were initially allocated are “Tightening, Securing lid on digester, Wrenches, Digester, and Burgess Mill.” In early March someone posted a comment giving us more information on what the digester does. Later in the month someone else identified one of the men in the photograph.

In cataloging, usually the more information we provide the better since it provides more access points to the item. But librarians, archivers and the like don’t know everything, so it’s fascinating that we can get help from the people who lived and experienced the history and documents we are trying to help manage. And while there can be a concern of people volunteering inaccurate information, I think the risk isn’t a serious one. Besides we can always acknowledge where the information came from.

A similar case was seen on flickr. Here someone posted their pictures of vacation in Newfoundland, which included a close up of a Humpback Whale’s tail. Another person who knew about whales was later able to identify this particular whale as one that scientist had been following under the “name” of HWC#2943, last seen in 1984!

You can learn more about this project and how it came about at maisonbisson. Bisson is also behind the Cook Memorial Library project which is also based on WordPress.

- Photograph used with permission-