The Distant Librarian

Books of enduring scholarly value

I found a link to this video on the TeleRead blog.  It's a 4:00 overview of how Cambridge University Press and Cambridge University Library are partnering to both bring back OOS press titles and to digitize library titles in a print-on-demand operation.  Nothing we haven't seen before, but a nice look into how some are working even w/o Google.

Top 100 Tools for Learning 2009

An emerging list of the top 100 tools for learning in 2009, as picked by 202 learning professionals (and possibly you!).  Pleased to note that I was aware of 87 of them, with most of the new-to-me ones being related to animation and course authoring systems.  I found it particularly interesting to note the changes between 2007-2009, with some obvious risers like Twitter and Slideshare, but some interesting fallers, such as Facebook drifting from 17 in 2007, to 24 last year, to 33 this year, Microsoft Word dropping from 10 to 22 to 42 this year, and Bloglines falling from 12 to 30 to 73 this year!

Well worth a few minutes to look over the list to see what might be useful to you.

After Losing Users in Catalogs, Libraries Find Better Search Software

The Chronicle of Higher Education has an article about next-generation catalogues.  While the article provides a pretty good background of the issue (IMHO), the comments provide an excellent summary of librarian psychology.  What's only touched upon briefly in the article is the ability for these new "web-scale index searching" tools to search so much more than traditional bibliographic data.  As I mentioned in last week's LJ webcast, at the University of Calgary we want to expose students to the collections of not only our library, but also our museum, archives, and locally digitized material, none of which appear in a traditional OPAC. 

Read those comments.  Where do you fall in your thinking?

Archive now available for Returning the Researcher to the Library: The Summon™ Service in Real Life

This past Tuesday I participated as a panelist in the the fourth and final Library Journal session in the "Returning the Researcher to the Library" series: The Summon™ Service in Real Life.  The archive of that webinar is now available for your listening pleasure .  Let me know how you think I did, and if you have any questions.

Webcast: Returning the Researcher to the Library: The Summon™ Service in Real Life

Library Journal and Serials Solutions are presenting the fourth and final session in the "Returning the Researcher to the Library" series: The Summon™ Service in Real Life.  I'm one of three panelists, joining librarians from Grand Valley State University and Western Michigan University in discussing why we're exploring the idea of Web-Scale Discovery (that appears to be what Serials Solutions has settled upon calling this type of product).  Personally, I'll be talking about our fairly-rare (can't say for certain that it's unique) organizational structure at the U of Calgary and why it begs for such a product, as well as touching upon some of the challenges we've experienced as we're exploring bringing up Summon.

You can find archives of the first three "Returning the Researcher to the Library" webcasts at http://www.libraryjournal.com/webcastsDetail.

Additional observations about unified discovery services

As Grand Valley State U works towards launching Summon, Laura at Llyfrgellydd posts some additional observations about unified discovery services.  I think all her points are valid; well worth the 2-3 minutes it'll take you to read.

Tune In September 2: The Google Book Scanning Project--Issues and Updates

Educause Live presents:
Topic: The Google Book Scanning Project—Issues and Updates
Date: September 2, 2009
Time: 1:00 p.m. EDT (12:00 p.m. CDT, 11:00 a.m. MDT, 10:00 a.m. PDT). International participants: You may wish to visit this external time-conversion website to calculate the start time in your time zone.
Duration: 1 hour

For about five years, Google has been scanning and indexing millions of volumes drawn from academic libraries and other sources worldwide. The project has been greeted with high praise but also with lawsuits. In the latter category, a judge will shortly decide whether to approve a settlement reached last year by Google and several organizations representing authors and publishers. The issues swirling around the settlement include the treatment of absent rightsholders, user privacy, and competition. This session will offer a status report on the project and explore both sides of these questions.

The event is free, but registration is required and virtual seating is limited. REGISTER NOW.

Participants:
Jonathan Band, Counsel, Library Copyright Alliance
Dan Clancy, Engineering Director, Google Book Search

Webinar: Defining Web-Scale Discovery: The Promise of a Unified Search Index for Libraries

Received the following email:

Date: August 18, 2009 • Time: 9:00-10:00 AM PDT (12:00 - 1:00 PM EDT)

Please Join Us for Part 3 of Library Journal's "Returning the Researcher to the Library" Webcast Series

“Why can’t I search the library the way Google searches the Web?”

Librarians have been fielding that question for more than a decade as popular general search engines have set new expectations for service, searching and responsiveness. The complexity of multiple formats and the sheer scale of library collections have proven formidable barriers to simple, speedy, single search box interfaces. However, a new technology called a unified search index—the core of the groundbreaker Summon™ web-scale discovery service—offers the promise of answering that question with “You can.”

Join us for an insightful panel discussion that explores the emerging framework of web-scale discovery and what distinguishes the unified search index from existing library technologies. Expert panelists Marshall Breeding and Eric Lease Morgan will define the unified search index, as well as web-scale discovery – both their mechanics and their impact on library users. This intriguing discussion will examine the library’s new ally in taking back its role as the starting point for research and exposing the expanse of its content riches.

PANELISTS
Marshall Breeding, Director for Innovative Technologies and Research for the Jean and Alexander Heard Library at Vanderbilt University
Eric Lease Morgan, Head of the Digital Access and Information Architecture Department, University Libraries of Notre Dame
MODERATOR
Andrew Nagy, Senior Discovery Services Engineer, Serials Solutions

To view on demand Part 1 and Part 2 of Returning the Researcher to the Library Series, register here:

    * PART 1: Understanding the Next Gen User http://www.libraryjournal.com/webcastsDetail/2140374033.html
    * PART 2: Building ROI through Discovery http://www.libraryjournal.com/webcastsDetail/2140391674.html

Sol on Discovering Discovery Services

Over at the Federated Search Blog, Sol has a great post called Discovering discovery services, where he explains what these new search products are, how they work, and how they differ from Federated Search.  I'll be including a link to this post when I introduce and open up our beta of Summon to our full staff later this week or next...

Summon: And then there were two

Last month Dartmouth opened its instance of Summon to the world, and now you can compare that to Summon at the University of Liverpool.  Read the press release at Library Technology Guides.

Wikipedia in the catalogue?

Image via Wikipedia

I learned from Eric Rumsey that the State Library of Kansas includes Wikipedia articles in their OPAC.  Here are some examples: http://topekalibraries.info/search/awikimedia. About 15 minutes later I saw that Aaron Schmidt posted on the DCPL Labs site that in a recent survey 88% "of people responded that they prefer the content from Wikipedia in the Catalog."  This is news to me - is this a fairly common thing these days?  Would our cataloguing department kill me if I suggested it? :-)

Ready to try Summon? Go ahead!

Dartmouth, one of the first two (I think) libraries to sign on as beta partners with Serials Solutions' Summon Unified Discovery Service, has opened the beta up to its entire campus community.  And you can search it too!  You'll find a prominent link on their home page, or you can jump directly to the search page.  A brief overview of the product for their users is also available.

So whattya think?  About the speed, relevancy, accuracy, or in general?  The University of Calgary is also a beta partner with this product; we've recently had our MARC records loaded, and are awaiting the inclusion of metadata from some of our other local collections before opening it more widely to our clientele.

Summon, Discovery

First Impressions

I finally got around to reading a couple of posts I'd squirreled away, and they turn out to be somewhat related.

Brian Mathews posts about 5 next-gen library catalogs and 5 students: their initial impressions.  Important to us here at the UofC as we continue to beta test Summon.  While admittedly not scientific, there are definitely things to note here.

And Sol at the Federated Search Blog posts What do you call that thing? Wondering if there's a solid mostly-universal term for those "things" we search that hold content.  Research Databases?  Sources?  E-resources?  Doesn't seem to be a consensus out there, unfortunately.  Last summer during a site redesign I changed the tab on our library site from "Research Databases" to "Online Resources", and the single biggest complaint over the first month was that folks couldn't find what they were looking for because the new terminology somehow didn't mean what the old terminology meant to them.

University of Calgary and BMJ Sign On for the Summon Unified Discovery Service

Ahh, I got scooped by Marshall Breeding!  I'd been watching what I assumed was the official Serials Solutions Press Release page before letting you know that the University of Calgary has signed on as a beta with the Summon Unified Discovery Service product from Serials Solutions, but apparently it's been released elsewhere, and you can read the press release on the Library Technology Guides pages.

The Summon team has given me permission to blog a bit about our beta experiences, which I hope you'll find interesting.  Not much to report yet though - we've given them all our MARC records, and they've harvested four of our OAI-harvestable local databases (dspace, contentDM, etc).  Right now our Metadata Librarian is working with the SS team on mapping our MARC records to the schema that underlies Summon - once that's done we'll be able to start playing with the product and OUR resources, and that's where the rubber hits the road for us - very eager to see how well these potentially disparate types of content work together in the Summon results.

Oh yeah, and apparently some content provider called BMJ is also now on board...

OCLC takes the OPAC to the cloud

Damn, this is shaping up to be an interesting year in libraryland. 

OCLC has announced that they're going to offer a fully online ILS (Integrated Library System).  As in, no desktop client for acquisitions or circulation, and Worldcat.org as the public interface.  The official press release is here, Andrew Pace has a short piece, and Marshall Breeding at Library Journal has a good writeup, in which he says, "While it’s too early to predict the numbers of libraries that will shift from traditional ILS products to services offered through WorldCat Local, the dynamics of the library automation industry will inevitably change. ... OCLC now will compete with such companies as SirsiDynix, Ex Libris, Innovative Interfaces, Polaris, The Library Corporation, Serials Solutions, and a myriad of other companies that offer ILS products, electronic resource management systems, link resolvers, federated search platforms and discovery interfaces."