The Distant Librarian

Relais products go Open Source

This is interesting, at least to those of us who are using Relais for our Document Delivery system:

For Immediate Release
April 22, 2008
Relais products go Open Source

Relais International is excited to announce that we will be moving all or part of the Relais software to an open source model.

Why are we doing this?
Open source software has been a buzzword in the library community for several years now. There’s no doubt: open source is exciting. But many still don’t understand why.

Reliability
Open source software is peer-reviewed. It is exposed to extreme scrutiny, with problems being found and fixed instead of kept secret until the wrong person discovers them. This peer-review process results in a code base that’s more reliable than closed proprietary software. Mature open source software is as bulletproof as software ever gets.

Security
With proprietary software, source code is “closed,” and support and future development of the product rely on the success and resources of a single vendor.

In contrast, open source solutions rely on stable code bases developed and supported by many providers worldwide. As a result, libraries using open source products typically have more support options than those using proprietary software.

User Driven
Proprietary software vendors must focus on providing functionality improvements that meet the needs of the majority of their customers in a large and diverse market.

In contrast, open source software features emerge from the community of users that have paid for or developed and contributed them. This makes open source software user-driven--you decide what features are important and deserve attention rather than a vendor.

Innovation
When the code is open, users are free to innovate and improve the software to meet their needs. They can accomplish this either by joining the development process directly, or by using companies such as Relais International to develop their ideas. Free innovation also means that open source software has much faster development cycles when compared to proprietary

What are the implications for our customers?
Relais International will review all existing contracts and agreements; we will then provide customers with options for converting to a service agreement that incorporates support, maintenance and custom development.

Our aim is to make this transition with minimal impact to our existing customers with the exception of providing more options and flexibility for those customers who are interested in adding to and modifying Relais as you work to address the needs of your user community.

When will this happen?
The first modules to be moved to an open source model will be available before October 1, 2008.

There are a number of key decisions to be made as this process moves forward, including the selection of an appropriate license under which the Relais software (or part of the Relais software) will be available.  We will keep all customers informed of our progress and invite your comments and suggestions.

“We are fully dedicated to Relais, the company and the product” says Clare MacKeigan, Chief Operating Officer of Relais International.  “Our customers are the basis for our success to date and we want this to continue.  We anticipate that this decision will result in an even stronger more vibrant user community.  Each of our customers brings a unique perspective to the table, and by giving more options to capitalize on this we know that all of our customers will benefit.”

    

Nice arguments in favour of Open Source!

Oddly, I couldn't find this press release on their website...

Technorati Tags: ILL, Relais, Open_Source

Why Copyright? Michael Geist at the University of Calgary

Earlier this week, Dr. Michael Geist spoke here at the University of Calgary, on copyright, of course.  The title of his talk was Why Copyright? and was a discussion of both why copyright is a hot topic in Canada right now, and why it should be a hot topic.  With his permission, I recorded the talk using the same setup I did for the Prentice video, and here it is.

You can also download an mp3 of the talk, which is actually what I'd recommend.  There's really not anything vitally important visually in the talk, and my "camerawork" was particularly bad with the lighting and the angle.

Sorry for no added commentary from me here, just so damn busy these days :-/  D'Arcy has some thoughts at his place.  (thanks for the use of the Mic, D'Arcy)

Survey of Library Services for Distance Learning Programs

Primary Research Group is about to release the results of their Survey of Library Services for Distance Learning Programs. I participated in this survey and am supposed to receive a free copy - will let you know if it's worth buying, but here's what it covers.

This 145 page report gives extensive data, broken out by size and type of college, for public and private colleges, and for U.S. and Non-U.S. libraries. Among the more than 500 tables of data presented is information about: use of real time chat and virtual reference services for distance learners; percentage of libraries that offer special classes for distance learners; future plans to offer information literacy courses to distance learners; policies on providing web pages, blogs or listservs that specifically serve the needs of distance learners; number of interactive online tutorials provided to distance learners; state of relations between the library and distance learning instructors; percentage of libraries with equivalent of library orientation program for distance learners; the role that libraries play in distance learning orientation; percentage of libraries that maintain agreements with other colleges to offer library services to their students; percentage of libraries with an official liason to the distance learning program; percentage of libraries with a full time position devoted to distance learning; staff size for library distance learning staffs; policies on line item in the library budget for distance learning; evaluation of distance learners use of the library; evaluation of distance learners information literacy skills; distance learner attitudes towards the library; assessment of the reference needs of distance learners; electronic reserve policies for distance learners; spending on shipping costs to serve distance learners; library’s primary means of shipping books and other materials to distance learners; library staff responsible for serving distance learners; provision of remote assistance by the library in how to use the courseware management system; level of access to library databases provided to distance learners; copyright issues; annual salary of librarians devoted to distance learning.

Sounds pretty interesting!

A few thoughts in favour of the Google Books project

Charles Edward Smith has a brief piece in Educause Quarterly in which he points out why he thinks Google Books Search is a good thing.

A curious amount of unease surrounds Google's initiative to scan
thousands of books in major research libraries and make them available
online. Although I understand the concerns, I don't entirely sympathize
with them...

Technorati Tags: Google_Book_Search

Docutek vs IM

Dan Sich from the U of Waterloo has posted the slides from a presentation he just gave at the Ontario Library Association Super Conference.  The title of his talk was IM a Librarian: the Meebo, Skype-Unyte solution, and one really interesting slide kind of caught my eye:



Just FYI, check out the rest of his presentation for some good ideas and links on the subject.

Survey of Library Services for Distance Learning Students

Posted to the Web4Lib mailing group:

Primary Research Group (http://www.primaryreserch.com/) is planning to publish a survey of college libraries that provide library services to distance learning students. This survey is open to accredited colleges from all countries. Participants receive a free PDF copy of the estimated 100-page report. Data is broken out by type and size of institution for easier benchmarking. Participants are listed but responses are confidential. To take the 40-question survey: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=yX6WslbR6pWYfSaTsDC0Qg_3d_3d

James Moses, Research Analyst
Primary Research Group Inc.

Took me about 10 minutes to complete...

AAAS Says Science Will Remain in JSTOR

No real details, but Library Journal reports that:

Under pressure from libraries for its 2007 decision to pull its flagship publication, Science, from JSTOR, the popular electronic journals database, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) said today that it has reversed course, and that Science will remain in JSTOR. Citing a confidentiality agreement, AAAS officials issued only a brief comment: “AAAS and JSTOR are pleased to announce that we have concluded an ongoing discussion and have been able to reach an agreement to continue what has been a very productive relationship between JSTOR and the journal Science."

Yay.


Technorati Tags: JSTOR, Science, AAAS

Canadian universities’ resource sharing agreement extends from coast to coast

There are definitely advantages to working in a country with a smallish number of universities...

Toronto, Ontario: Effective January 2, 2008, Canadian university faculty, students and staff will now be supported by one Resource Sharing Agreement amongst institutions. The new agreement will extend standardized reciprocal interlibrary loan / document delivery privileges across Canada.

Read the full press release here:http://coppul.blogspot.com/2007/12/canadian-universities-resource-sharing.html

Technorati Tags: COPPUL

You think you've got it rough?

Going the Extra Mile: Supporting Distance Education at University of Alaska Fairbanks, Suzan Hahn, Lisa Lehman, Rheba Dupras

Abstract:
The Elmer E. Rasmuson Library at the University of Alaska Fairbanks has a long history of supporting distance education through state-of-the-art, remote access services. Harsh climate conditions (heavy snowfall and icing, high winds, and extreme temperatures), rugged terrain, limited road and telephone systems, and permafrost that prevents the installation of communications networks, all contribute to the challenge of delivering distance education. This article describes and explains the library's services while discussing the challenges of providing information access to a diverse student population living in an area covering over 500,000 square miles.

Journal of Access Services : Service Innovations for 21st Century Libraries Volume: 4 Issue: 1/2 Page Range: 1 - 28 ISSN: 1536-7967 Pub Date: 10/31/2007 doi:10.1300/J204v04n01_01

Sharing Files with FileUrls (beta)

Another possible document delivery service for very small operations.  FileUrls allows you to simply browse to a file on your desktop (250 MB Max), set an expiry date (1-7 days) and choose whether or not to password protect the document.  The file is then uploaded and a URL generated (very much like TinyURL) which you can then email to your recipient.  That's all there is to it.  (Thanks to HeyJude for the tip).

Survey on trends in document delivery for distance education

Michele D. Behr writes to the OFFCAMP list:

For a presentation at the upcoming Off Campus Library Services Conference we are researching trends in document delivery fordistance learners. We are investigating factors that may impact use of document delivery services, i.e. level of automation, marketingefforts, number of electronic journal subscriptions and e-books, etc.  We have developed a brief survey to gather information fromother institutions which provide document delivery services to their distance education communities.

We will be asking for statistics concerning your institution’s electronic journal subscriptions, numbers of e-book titles, documentdelivery statistics for distance education students, and student enrollment over the past five years. Gathering those statisticsahead of time or having access to them while you are filling out the survey may be helpful.

If you do not have the information to answer a question you may skip that question. Please answer as many questions as accurately asyou can.

We estimate that you will need 15-30 minutes to complete the survey.

The survey is available here: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=7CV0tkSiaz6HWekmOqadEA_3d_3d

We will be collecting responses until November 21, 2007.

Your response to this survey will be very valuable to our research, and we appreciate your participation in sharing this informationwith us. Please contact us with any questions or comments about this survey.

Sincerely,
Michele D. Behr
Julie L. Hayward
Western Michigan University
Kalamazoo, MI
michele.behr(at)wmich.edu

It only took me about 10 minutes, though I did have to stop to dig out my historical statistics...

Two interesting developments from ProQuest re: Dissertations

A colleague passed along the following links you may also find of interest:

1. ProQuest CSA has arranged with Google and Google Scholar to allow indexing and searching across bibliographic data for graduate works published in 2005 and forward.
2. PQDT Open is an online repository of dissertations and theses published on an open access basis. The full text – in PDF format – of each open access graduate work is available to any researcher for free.

(Thanks for the info, Saundra)

Technorati Tags: Dissertations, ProQuest

Self-destructing email

  BigString 
  Originally uploaded by ppival

Saw this post at Ars Technica describing a service called BigString that allows one to send self-destructing email.  They do it by sending an image of whatever text you type, and then depending on the parameters you set, make that image (still actually hosted at BigString) expire after a certain time.  What intrigued me about this is that we're about to launch a post-to-web document delivery service here that supposedly does something similar.  Once the recipient has printed the article once it's deleted from our servers.  I was curious to know if BigString could be used as a poor-man's post-to-web document delivery service.  Alas, only text entered at the site can be converted and tracked, so no way to scan an article and send it through the service.  Neat idea though.

ARL White Paper on Interlibrary Loan

Stephen Abram points to a recently-released white paper on interlibrary loan, from ARL.  You won't find any actual numbers in this 4 (barely)-pager, but you will find some interesting trends.  ILL for returnables (books) is generally up, according to statistics from several sources, but ILL for non-returnables is generally pretty far down.  There are some possible reasons for these trends discussed. 

I found it interesting that in the preamble the author made it sound that ILL is quite the restrictive service; I've always thought of it as an enhancing service...

"Research and academic libraries provide ILL services only to their own clearly defined user community. Since ILL services are costly to operate, libraries attempt to control the volume of lending requests that they handle. Research and academic libraries set up reciprocal arrangements with very specific and limited numbers of partner libraries. Fees are charged to libraries not in those consortial arrangements to set up a barrier for non-reciprocal sites and discourage use of interlibrary loan."

What she writes is all true, it just sounds as though we're really begrudging the service!

POD Friday!

Couple of really interesting developments in the print-on-demand world today:

1. Amazon has partnered with four (soon to be more?) libraries to digitize public domain books and then sell them in paper to consumers.
   See coverage from:
   
   • The Centered Librarian
   • ACRLog
   • Chronicle of Higher Education
   • Original Press Release
     
   
   
2. The New York Public Library appears to be the first in the nation to have a print-on-demand machine in house.  Ooh, U of Alberta up the road is getting one this fall.
   See coverage from:
   
   • Engadget
   • O'Reilly Radar

Hmm, combine these two technologies (and a heavily-modified copyright law) and you've got a new way to deliver monographs to your distance students!


Technorati Tags: Amazon, Libraries, POD, Print-on-demand, Kirtas, BookSurge

Interview with BookSwim

I mentioned BookSwim a couple of months ago.  Being sold as Netflix for books, it's still not available to the public, but Joe Wikert has a brief interview with co-founder George Burke that you might find interesting.


Technorati Tags: Books, NetFlix

BookSwim - NetFlix for Books

Michael Stephens at Tame the Web points to an upcoming service called BookSwim that will launch the 1st quarter of 2007.  Basically they're going to do the NetFlix thing for books - for a subscription fee (amount unknown), you can enter your name in a queue for one of their 80,000 titles and they'll ship you the book to read.  Keep it as long as you like, then ship it back (no cost to you either way, other than your subscription fee).

I'm conflicted.  I'm definitely not their target market, as I'm a heavy user of the local public library system, which has an excellent collection.  Maybe for the rural folk?  So maybe it's a good idea, but  will it work as well as NetFlix?  Aren't DVDs a lot cheaper to ship than books would be?  And storing inventory will be a challenge with books - they're all different sizes, unlike DVDs.  BookSwim has a brochure (PDF) that compares their model with that of traditional bookstores and libraries and has a few iffy claims (their books are always in excellent condition while libraries are at best "good" condition - not sure how they'll guarantee that one unless they're replacing worn books).

I don't think I'm knocking it just 'cause I'm a librarian; I don't feel threatened, and I think I think it's a good idea.  Just not sure it's going to fly.  Keep an eye on 'em.


Technorati Tags: Libraries, Netflix

CFP: Journal of Access Services

I'm on the board of editors for the Journal of Access Services, and one of my roles is of course to drum up business.  There's a special issue coming up you might want to consider: Best Practices in Access Services.  Laurie the Librarian has all the details.  Deadline is Feb 1, 2007.


Technorati Tags: JAS

Tim says Book Search Should Work Like Web Search

Tim O'Reilly, long a proponent of Google Book Search, has a post in which he laments the fact that books housed in the different book scanning projects (Google Books, OCA, Amazon Search Inside) are not searchable by search engines other than those provided by their hosts.  Surely it will only be a matter of time before these databases are included in the link resolvers and their brethren?


Technorati Tags: Google, Books, Scanning, OpenURL, Umlaut

Free Online Books

Rich at eContent has pointed to two interesting sources of free books in the past week.  The first is to a site called FreeLoad Press that sounds really familiar, but I didn't blog it before so I must've not seen it before ;-)  From the site: "Thanks to our sponsors, you can "freeload" e-textbooks and study aids for some of your college courses in Business, Math and Computer Applications."  I haven't had a chance to look past the list of titles, but Rich says there are ads on the first page of each book, but that's it.  If you're supporting students in Business, Math or Computer Applications, you might want to have a look.

The second post is about WikiBooks, "a collection of free, open-content textbooks that you can edit."  Interestingly, a number of these books are also available as a downloadable PDF.  You can still edit these books, but there's a disclaimer that, "The HTML files show the current state of the book - the PDF Editions are often out of date relative to the HTML files."  Very interesting.


Technorati Tags: eBooks, wikis

Canada Post Library Book Rate extended to Jan 2008

CLA today announced that Canada Post will extend the current Book Rate until January 2008.  That's great, though what actually impacts my department is the last little paragraph in the press release (PDF) that reads:

Recognizing that some smaller libraries have had challenges in implementing the new electronic tools, Canada Post has also extended the deadline for libraries to convert to electronic tools from September 30, 2006 to January 15, 2007.

I don't think it was the smaller libraries that have had challenges, I think it was the bigger libraries that kept finding their address books deleted!  Regardless of the reason, it's great to have a little extra wiggle room to find the best way to implement the electronic shipping tools into a distance-delivery workflow!


Technorati Tags: CLA, Book_Rate, Document_Delivery

Download books for free from Google Book Search

Business Week and BoingBoing both alerted me to the fact that you can now download public domain books in their entirety from Google Book Search!  I haven't visted GBS for a while, but when I went to check it out tonight I see that there's a new search option radio button to limit to Full View titles.  If you choose this and run a search, you'll get material that the publisher has made available in its entirety, but not available for download, and you'll also get the downloadable public domain stuff.  I chose a title that turned out to have been scanned from the New York Public Library - Conversations on Canada: Written for the Massachusetts Sabbath School Society.  I see someone's blurry fingers on a couple of early pages, and then nothing but nice clean PDF scans.  Turns out, despite what the BusinessWeek article says, the PDFs are not text-searchable (at least the two I tried weren't).  Google attempts a little education by including the following disclaimer as the first page of each downloaded book:

This is a digital copy of a book that was preserved for generations on library shelves before it was carefully scanned by Google as part of a project to make the world’s books discoverable online.

It has survived long enough for the copyright to expire and the book to enter the public domain. A public domain book is one that was never subject to copyright or whose legal copyright term has expired. Whether a book is in the public domain may vary country to country. Public domain books are our gateways to the past, representing a wealth of history, culture and knowledge that’s often difficult to discover.

Marks, notations and other marginalia present in the original volume will appear in this file - a reminder of this book’s long journey from the publisher to a library and finally to you.

Usage guidelines
Google is proud to partner with libraries to digitize public domain materials and make them widely accessible. Public domain books belong to the public and we are merely their custodians. Nevertheless, this work is expensive, so in order to keep providing this resource, we have taken steps to prevent abuse by commercial parties, including placing technical restrictions on automated querying.

We also ask that you:
+ Make non-commercial use of the files We designed Google Book Search for use by individuals, and we request that you use these files for personal, non-commercial purposes.
+ Refrain from automated querying Do not send automated queries of any sort to Google’s system: If you are conducting research on machine translation, optical character recognition or other areas where access to a large amount of text is helpful, please contact us. We encourage the use of public domain materials for these purposes and may be able to help.
+ Maintain attribution The Google “watermark” you see on each file is essential for informing people about this project and helping them find additional materials through Google Book Search. Please do not remove it.
+ Keep it legal Whatever your use, remember that you are responsible for ensuring that what you are doing is legal. Do not assume that just because we believe a book is in the public domain for users in the United States, that the work is also in the public domain for users in other countries. Whether a book is still in copyright varies from country to country, and we can’t offer guidance on whether any specific use of any specific book is allowed. Please do not assume that a book’s appearance in Google Book Search means it can be used in any manner anywhere in the world. Copyright infringement liability can be quite severe.

About Google Book Search
Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and to make it universally accessible and useful. Google Book Search helps readers discover the world’s books while helping authors and publishers reach new audiences. You can search through the full text of this book on the web at http://books.google.com/

Neat!



Technorati Tags: Google_Book_Search, Public_Domain

Amazon for home delivery of items to library users?

Sarah passes on a great idea from Helene Blowers to use Amazon Library Processing to ship books to the end user, and when s/he's done, the book will be returned to the library and thus be entered into the circulating collection.  I like that idea a lot.  It's very similar to what we've been trying to do in COPPUL, which is get a direct delivery project off the ground.  Cut out the middleman library when a distance student requests an item that ends up being filled by another consortial library.  Instead of the U of A shipping to the U of C, then us ship to our student, we'd love for the U of A to be able to ship directly to our student.  But hey, if we're going to buy the item, why not have Amazon ship directly to them, since the book's completely pre-processed.  Of course any of the library vendors could offer this as an option, but Amazon seems to have the stock and the ability to ship quickly.  Anyone know if they're as fast for library-processed material as they are for "normal" stuff?  Near as I can tell, Library Processing isn't available (yet?) from Amazon.ca


Technorati Tags: document_delivery, Amazon, Libraries

PrinterAnywhere for Document Delivery?

Amit posts about a new product/service called PrinterAnywhere (beta), that allows one to send a print job to any printer that's connected to an online WinXP computer.  Interesting idea.  Got an international student?  Why not send a print job consisting of a requested document directly to her printer?  The service is free, but requires Windows XP on both ends - we run Win2K here, so I can't try it, and the website is just amateur enough that I'd hesitate recommending that you try it, but if you want to, it's there.


Technorati Tags: document_delivery

Brief Survey on Document Delivery / Interlibrary Loan

Michelle at Western Michigan University has a very brief survey on how your students access Interlibrary Loan and Document Delivery systems at http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.asp?u=120282309518.  It's only 8 questions long - can you take a moment to fill it out for her?


Technorati Tags: document_delivery, surveys