Dear NGC4LIB Friends,
Yesterday I was whining to a friend that I haven't been able to keep up with this listserv; she suggested I stop whining and do something about it. So, I did.
Below you will find a summary of sorts from the last 10 days or so of the list. If we like such a tool, perhaps we could cooperate to collectively make such a summary on a regular basis. Perhaps this could develop into further uses; I won't limit the possibilities by mentioning any one in particular.
Here are a few warnings/admissions of how I worked:
1. I did not think much about formatting
2. I did freely use text from postings without citation (though I tried to give a date that contained a posting)
3. I am sure I missed some postings
4. I tried not to include particularly technical details
5. I tried to link points to our mission of discussing/defining the Next Generation Catalog
6. I am sure each of you could have done a better job
I hope that such a tool as this can help keep us motivated and directed in our quest for better catalogs.
~Alex
NGC4LIB Summary : Saturday 15 September 2007 – Friday 28 September 2007
Topics
1. As a Library ‘decision maker’
a. Background : How can/do catalogers and “systems people” work together to develop the NGC?
b. 9/17 : New metadata vs. legacy data ; AACR2 made pre-AACR2 headings unfindable. The NGC will rely on proven standards that preserve metadata and access from the past; otherwise, it will suffer experimental disasters.
c. 9/17 : Who is the envisioned users of the NGC – catalogers, reference librarians, patrons – and how can/should we target their use? ; The NGC should have the potential for various interfaces to serve different users in different ways ; In developing the NGC, we should conduct field studies for library user input.
d. 9/20 : Catalog records are separate from the catalog interface. When considering the NGC, we must remember the distinction between content and presentation.
e. 9/20-9/21 : Libraries / LIS doesn’t always realize that other fields need to learn about the standards, which are generally not freely available (needing to pay for AACR (http://www.aacr2.org), as opposed to freely accessible W3C standards (http://www.w3.org). More open discussion of authority control methods will help build a stronger NGC.
2. Google Book Search within the OPAC
a. Background : Eastern Michigan has integrated Google Books into the catalog : http://portal.emich.edu/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?BBID=58902 ; links to the electronic version are particularly to rare or restricted access materials.
b. 9/17 : Eastern Michigan checks Google Book Search for the OCLC # and display the link if there is something available (Full text, Preview, More info.) and has no volume limiting problems since a November [2006] inception.
c. 9/17 : LibraryThing and “Google Book Search Search” : http://tinyurl.com/34satk : GBS ID is an impenetrable “hash” – protects Google’s hold on its scans ; New Bookmarklet developed by Tim Spalding for scanning GBS
3. The portable catalogue
a. 9/18-9/19 : Because access to handheld internet-capable devices will increase, the NGC will function well on the expected little screen area, with a variety of software, and under slow data connections.
b. 9/20 : Eric Hellman calculated that 559,440 Grisham novels would fit on a 60G iPod.
4. Link resolvers as loosely coupled systems for holdings?
a. Background : How should the NGC handle serials holdings? What standards can be developed so that vendors, link resolvers, local holdings, et al. can work together?
b. 9/19 : NISO/EDItEUR Joint Working Party (JWP) for the Exchange of Serials Subscription Information has developed ONIX for Serials coverage statement, a machine-parsable XML structure for transmitting holdings. Background: http://www.niso.org/news/SerialsExchange.html ; ONIX: http://www.editeur.org/onixserials.html
5. Is iTunes an NGC?
a. 9/19 : “more than half of the nation’s top 500 schools use it [iTunes U] to distribute their digital content” : http://www.apple.com/education/itunesu/ What can we learn about metadata and usage and interoperability with iTunes and iTunes U?
6. Publication : Next generation Library Catalogs : http://tinyurl.com/35ekxk ; http://techsource.ala.org/ltr/
7. data vs. “data structure”
a. 9/20 : … ‘we’ve had this discussion so many times before’ … Karen Schneider wrote about this topic here: http://tinyurl.com/35n4at
b. 9/20 : Work vs. Manifestations – bibliographic records now represent manifestations; how can the NGC build a work record collectively? See Martha Yee on FRBRization (http://repositories.cdlib.org/postprints/715/)
c. 9/21-9/22 : The NGC will not be constrained by early data structure definitions, as one poster noted, the library world needs to Expose its structured data, Enhance its data structures, and Exploit its data, data structures, and expertise
d. 9/21 : MARC as a bad container : (1) arbitrary limitations for information stores (tag length) and information stored (field length), (2) Presentation information is mixed with content (think ISBD punctuation like “/” in 245 ; (3) MARC is not the data structure of the rest of the world, today’s common language in the computing world is XML ; Also, MARC poorly expresses hierarchy within a record (an XML format (such as MODS) has no trouble with expressing hierarchy within a record)
e. 9/21 : Semantic web articles -- http://blogs.talis.com/nodalities/2007/09/the_semantic_web_is_everyone_c.php -- warning against creating silos of data that are not inter-operable.
f. 9/21 : We could analyze and criticize ISO standards (like ISO2709 and Z39.2), but in building the NGC, we will define the new technical aspects; social and economic factors are the problem.
8. Artificial intelligence
a. 9/24 : Google Blog posting on AI/IR, particularly work by Amit Gruber which considers documents not as “bags of words”, but instead “imposes a temporal Markov structure on the document” to model document structure and context. http://googleresearch.blogspot.com/2007/09/openhtmm-released.html
9. Conferences
a. 9/20 : 2008 South by Southwest Interactive Conference ; Austin, TX : vote for the panel for discussion of future of libraries and information generally : http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/ideas/view/295
b. 9/24 : Ohio Historical Society Library and Archives, ALAO – Oct 25-26. http://www.alaoweb.org/conferences/conf2007/index.html
10. Jobs/Positions
a. 9/17 : University of Michigan University Library Web Systems Department : Service Integration Librarian. http://www.lib.umich.edu/hr/employment/websystems.html
Received on Wed Sep 26 2007 - 00:32:19 EDT