“In order to be really good as a librarian, everything counts towards your work, every play you go see, every concert you hear, every trip you take, everything you read, everything you know.” – Allen Smith, PhD
Bibliotheka is a site that gathers digital files of books in Spanish. The collections can be searched by title, author, and subject. Files can also be browsed through larger topical categories such as art, science, poetry, or religion.
Individual entries include a brief description of the piece, art cover, file size, genre, and two different options for download. There is also space for users to comment on the piece.
Here’s an example of what you will find for Isabel Allende.
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.
A few librarians in Guatemala have set out to create a directory of Guatemala’s librarians in wiki format. The project is still quite new and with only a few entries, but they already have a number of enthusiasts offering their help either with providing content or helping with the technology needed.
As most wikis, the project is meant to be collaborative, and everyone is encouraged to contribute. The front page also offers a few links to existing projects which provide some information on Guatemala’s libraries; these include UNESCO, The Universidad de San Carlos de Guatemala, and a project through the International Center for Scientific Research.
The Commonwealth of Learning (COL) is a collaboration, started in 1989, of the 53 Commonwealth head’s of state to promote open and distance learning (ODL), as well as sharing resources and technologies. COL works with government officials to promote information and communication technologies (ICT) as a means to impact the areas of education, learning for livelihoods, and human environment.
One of the projects launched by the COL is the WikiEducator, a website that gathers people who believe education should be free and available to all. They aim at helping users plan, and develop educational projects, especially those based on free content. Through their Learning4Content program they are working at conducting workshops, train educators, and develop free educational content. At times all of this work is done virtually, other times participants have been able to meet to collaborate.
COL also helped coordinate the development of a Virtual University for Small States of the Commonwealth (VUSSC). During its initial stage, the VUSSC will focus on creating courses in Tourism and Hospitality, and Small Business Management.
The COL understands that millions of children worldwide have no access to basic education, and many more are taught by poorly trained teachers, and study in schools with few resources. Estimates are that about a billion adults worldwide are illiterate, or have received a very rudimentary education. And while COL focuses on the Commonwealth countries, it aims to help improve opportunities for all adults, children and the generations to come.
I truly love the “radical” idea behind these projects, that education should be free and accessible to all! May the Commonwealth of Learning continue with many more great projects!
Earlier this week Footnote.com and the National Archives and Records Administration offered a new Interactive Vietnam Veterans Memorial. The actual memorial consist of two large granite walls inscribed with the names of over 58,000 American casualties of the way, the online version, which was created by combining over 2,000 photographs of the actual site, make the walls searchable from your home computer. The new version also allows you to link each name to the person’s service record, and add content to the record.
This project is different from a previous one called The Wall, which is maintained by the veterans of the 4th Battalion 9th Infantry Regiment. The Wall originally went online back in 1996, and has been evolving ever since. The Wall allows you to search by name, but in addition offers links to “Today’s Wall Birthdays” and “Today’s Wall Causalities,” and provides some basic facts of the war.
The physical Vietnam Veterans Memorial is located in Washington DC, was designed by Maya Lin, and holds 58,249 names, it is managed by the National Park Service U.S. Department of the Interior. Each day rangers gather items left at the site (except food and flowers), which are then tagged and taken to the Archive for future preservation. Although the full archive is not open to the public, selections of it are on display at the American History Museum.
The Interactive Vietnam Veterans Memorial site does warn that is has been experiencing high traffic, so connections might be slow.
You can read more about the online Vietnam Memorial from an article in Wired Magazine here, and read the Wikipedia entry here.
Stanford law professor Larry Lessing has come up with a new tool (still in beta) to try and keep the USA government clean and honest. The Change Congress aims to enlist the help of volunteers across the country to keep track on their representatives’ responses on a variety of issues, and then make this seemingly abstract information, concrete through Google mash-ups. Lessing wants congress representatives to commit to four different issues; 1) to promise to not take money from lobbyist and Political Action Committees (PAC), 2) support publicly financed elections, 3) help pass legislation to stop spending money on questionable projects in their districts, and 4) to help make Congress a more transparent place over all. Candidates who wish to be measured by these guidelines can do so by filling out a form on the website.
It is hoped that the project will have bi-partisan appeal, and that volunteers across the country will participate. The project anticipates that there is wide ranging dissatisfaction with congress in general, and that this energy can be channeled into making congress a more accountable place for all of us.
You can read more about this project from an article in Wired Magazine here. You can read Lessig’s blog here, and his Youtube page 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.)
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”
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.
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.
Amazon.com just launched a new electronic reader called Kindle. This new device is said to hold as many as 200 books and weights only 10.3 onces. Its screen seems to have addressed the common complaint with other e-readers, that of having a back lit screen; Kindle requires outside light to be used. In terms of reading with Kindle, allows the users to access a dictionary while reading and can scan other books for related information. Virtual pages can be marked for later reviewing, and Kindle will automatically save your place in the book.
Kindle is entirely wireless so users do not need the use of a PC to order and download books. Wireless access costs will be included in the tag price, but there are additional fees to access online newspapers and blog, as well as extra charges to access personal documents on the device.
On the positive side an instrument such as Kindle can allow us to carry a large amount of reading material with us at any time, and it gives us the possibility of renewing this collection from anywhere in the USA (The technology -EVDO- used for wireless connectivity is much more common in the USA than in other countries). In libraries we could pre-load these devices to check out several books to patrons at the same time. From an environmental perspective we can help save a few trees by accessing reading material in electronic form.
Still electronic books disconnect us in a way from the culture of books and reading. Many of us choose books by their covers, and are enamored with worn down books which have obviously been read my many people, two aspects that an electronic book reader doesn’t incorporate. Literature purist fear that a device such as Kindle will eventually incorporate a number of Web 2.0 features that will encourage users to “scan” information instead of truly being engaged with the book.
I think books are integral parts of so many people’s lives. I love carrying a book around in my purse, and how I eventually wear them down, and I’m sure that in some way books will always be around (I can’t imagine reproducing the experience of looking through a good coffee table book on an electronic device), but things are changing, and in a way I support whatever facilitates reading. Still at around $400.00 a piece I figure we are still a long way away from seeing everyone on the subway holding Kindles instead of books.
You can read more about Kindle from an article in the BBC. WBUR’s On Point had a show on Kindle this morning, you can access the podcast here.
11.28.07 - Last Thursday the BBC printed an article commenting on how high sales have been for Kindle. The devise sold out on the Amazon.com website soon after being released. The article continues to note that customers who have received their Kindle already, many give it a rating of only 2.5 out of 5. In general people are upset at having to pay for content that is freely available on the web.
02.03.08 - I was just reading a blog entry on Tinfoil Raccoon explaining that technically speaking libraries will be in violation of Kindle’s Terms of Use policy if they lend out the machine to patrons. You can read the full explanation here. The blog has a number of other entries on Kindle.
Bibliotheka is a site that gathers digital files of books in Spanish. The collections can be searched by title, author, and subject. Files can also be browsed through larger topical categories such as art, science, poetry, or religion. 
