The Distant Librarian

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? :-)

Yet another followup post on Harvard and EBSCO linking

Peter Murray at Distruptive Library Technology Jester (aka DLTJ) has done a bunch of reading and thinking about the recently-hot issue of Harvard Business School Publishing charging extra to allow the use of persistent URLs in course reserves and content management systems. in his post, EBSCO in Cahoots With Harvard Business Press, he goes in to detail about how Harvard is likely determining whether links are coming from course reserves or a CMS, and looks at EBSCO's terms of use and privacy policy.   He concludes with he following unanswered questions:

And what is EBSCO's role in this? Isn't a library's contract with EBSCO, not Harvard Business Publishing? Is EBSCO earning more revenue from this HBP license requirement to enable deep linking to article content? If so, isn't that just an incentive for EBSCO to do the same with other high-profile publishers?

To me it sounds as though we can complain all we like, but both EBSCO and Harvard are legally covered.  I guess one more question is how much bad publicity do they want to receive over this policy?

I encourage you to read Peter's entire post.

A little more info on the Harvard linking BS

Following up on yesterday's post about Harvard Business School Publishing not allowing PURLs within EBSCO, I received an email from a librarian at a small school who pointed out that the following appears at the bottom of each HBS publication within Business Source Premier/Complete:

"Harvard Business Review Notice of Use Restrictions, May 2009 Harvard Business Review and Harvard Business Publishing Newsletter content on EBSCOhost is licensed for the private individual use of authorized EBSCOhost users. It is not intended for use as assigned course material in academic institutions nor as corporate learning or training materials in businesses. Academic licensees may not use this content in electronic reserves, electronic course packs, persistent linking from syllabi or by any other means of incorporating the content into course resources. Business licensees may not host this content on learning management systems or use persistent linking or other means to incorporate the content into learning management systems. Harvard Business Publishing will be pleased to grant permission to make this content available through such means. For rates and permission, contact permissions@harvardbusiness.org."

He also mentioned that HBSP had leaned on his school and when they decided not to pay, EBSCO turned off the ability for them to create PURLs for that publisher.

So how does Harvard BSP know whether a given link is being used for "private individual use" or for within electronic reserves, electronic course packs, a syllabi, or within a learning management system?  I guess if the link is openly available on a website they might come across it, but there should be no way they'd even be aware that a link was being used from within a learning management system, right? 

I'll let you know when they contact us; has your school lost the ability to create persistent links to HBSP publications? 

Harvard Business School Publishing not allowing UK libraries to build PURLs in EBSCO - are we next?

Just read a couple of deeply troubling posts at Libreaction and the library staff blog at the University of Lincoln in which librarians are crying foul over what appear to be mafia tactics by Harvard Business School Publishing.  According to the Libreaction post:

For a few years now HBSP have been requesting payments of as much as £15k pa from several UK academic business libraries simply for the privilege of making persistent links to HBR articles on reading lists and VLEs.

The links in question are being made to EBSCO's Business Source products (which provide HBR in full-text), however, it is Harvard rather than EBSCO who have approached librarians directly for additional payment.  Thus far these demands for extra monies, which are being requested on top of the EBSCO subscription, are, as mentioned above, merely part of a 'pilot scheme', however, HBSP plan to roll it out to all EBSCO subscribers in due course.

Thus far, all UK librarians who have been offered the 'opportunity' to pay this additional sum have unsurprisingly turned it down, and as a result have recently had the ability to make persistent links to HBR turned off by EBSCO.

I have the vaguest of recollections of hearing something about this a year or more ago, but it's so vague as to have possibly been a bad dream.  But seriously, what's going on here?!?  I just checked, and I can still create persistent URLs to Harvard Business Review within Business Search Complete. 

Here's a scary PDF flyer in which Harvard Business School Publishing

...is excited to offer the opportunity to upgrade your existing annual subscription to EBSCOhost to a new level that allows for use of HBR articles for course use... If you choose not to upgrade your current EBSCOhost at this time, please reiterate to your faculty and students that your license with EBSCOhost allows them to access HBSP content only for research purposes. If you choose not to upgrade, please be advised that EBSCO may disable the ability to persistent link to HBSP content at your institution.

Give me a break!  This is ridiculous!  According to both blog posts this is coming from Harvard, not EBSCO. 

What do you think about this?  Surely we're not going to let our UK colleagues get rolled, only to find that we're next!

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

Citations your way - beta test SiteCite

Andrew Pasterfield, one of our library programmers, has built a tool for himself that you might also find useful.  Site Cite allows you to bookmark websites with a URL of your choosing, so you can recite it to another person w/o having to look it up.  As long as you can remember the URL of the service (http://sitecite.net) your username and the short tag you gave the page, you can tell someone the site to visit from memory.  Once you've used it a few times all you'll really need to remember is the tag.  "Hey, go check out the latest information about the Perigrine falcons that nest near the library at sitecite.net/ppival/falcons"

It's got a nifty autocomplete feature that'll help you discover tags you've already used- as you begin to tag something it'll let you know if you've tagged anything else with those starting letters.

Definitely a beta right now - many features still to come according to the amusing FAQ.  Needs a bookmarklet or Firefox extension before I'll consistently use it, but I can see the potential.  Check it out!

This time we mean it! - Google to sell e-books

The New York Times is reporting that Google plans to begin selling ebooks by the end of 2009.  "In discussions with publishers at the annual BookExpo convention in New York over the weekend, Google signaled its intent to introduce a program by that would enable publishers to sell digital versions of their newest books direct to consumers through Google. The move would pit Google against Amazon.com, which is seeking to control the e-book market with the versions it sells for its Kindle reading device."

TeleRead has a couple of posts around this announcement as well.

I'm betting it will be USA-only.

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."

Implementing Federated Search at the University of Wyoming

This brief article is very similar to our experience implementing 360Search here at the University of Calgary.

Implementing Federated Search at the University of Wyoming.  Michael L. Nelson, Mary Ann Harlow, and Cassandra Kvenild.  ONLINE, Vol. 33 No. 2 — Mar/Apr 2009

Reviews and comparisons of ebook readers - Link Dump

All this week I've noticed a large number of other bloggers posting their thoughts on various things related to ebooks; Kindle for the iPhone, other iPhone readers, dedicated ebook readers, etc.  Here's the list that I've got:

• Further thoughts on the Kindle iPhone experience
  "As the market opens up, more choices will appear. That's all for the good. A few years ago it would have been hard to conceive of reading Dostoyevsky on my cell phone, but it has come to pass. Imagine what the next 5 to 10 years will bring."
• iPhone App Watch - Are you ready for some eBooks? (Iceberg Reader, Kindle)
  "And that's really the important thing: I'm reading again."
• Comparing Ebook Readers (Sony, Kindle, iPhone/Touch)
  "Overall, I feel like we are with ebooks at the place we were with digital music a few years ago."
• Common Craft Kindle Books: Better on the iPhone
  "We were excited to see that our Kindle Books are in color look better on the iPhone than on the Kindle, thanks to the nice iPhone screen."
• Ebooks in Your Pocket (iPhone readers)
  "I wouldn’t dare try to guess the exact future, device, platform, or timeline, but I think it is pretty clear that we’re nearing some kind of tipping point for ebooks."
• PALINET Leadership Network wiki - Kindle experiences
• Scrollmotion eBooks for iPhone

Access BlackBoard CMS from the iPhone / iPod Touch

Not quite yet, but according to a video posted on TUAW, The Unofficial Apple Weblog, BlackBoard has developed an application to access all Bb content via the iPhone / iPod Touch.  Bb says it's currently under review by Apple, so it could appear most any time.  It'll be a free download.  Not many Bb fans in the comments of the TUAW post!

Unified Discovery Services

As we continue to charge towards the Taylor Family Digital Library here at the U of Calgary, the idea of unified discovery services is suddenly popping up frequently in casual (work) conversations and meetings.  This is especially relevant at the UofC as our umbrella organizational structure is called Libraries and Cultural Resources (LCR) and consists of the Library, Archives, Museum, and University Press.  We desperately want to be able to allow our users to search across all our collections, not just bibliographic. 

One of the products we're interested in is Summon, by Serials Solutions.  I just watched a 5-minute marketing video, and liked what I saw (though of course that's the purpose of a marketing video, eh?).  Primo is another example of this newish type of beast, and just earlier this week at the Code4Lib conference Bess Sadler of UVa presented Blacklight as a unified discovery platform (slides in PDF).  Holy cow, I just stumbled across Blacklight when trying to come up with any more examples for this post, and I think I'm in love! 

<post hijack>http://blacklight.rubyforge.org/

Blacklight is an open source OPAC (online public access catalog). That means libraries (or anyone else) can use it to allow people to search and browse their collections online. Blacklight uses Solr to index and search, and it has a highly configurable Ruby on Rails front-end. Currently, Blacklight can index, search, and provide faceted browsing for MaRC records and several kinds of XML documents, including TEI, EAD, and GDMS. Blacklight was developed at the University of Virginia Library and is made public under an Apache 2.0 license.

Try using Blacklight in a UVA Library experimental interface. Download the source code. And join the mailing list to stay updated on new developments and releases.</post hijack>

Ok, where was I going...  Crap, I got so sidetracked by Blacklight that I completely forgot where I was going with this post.

Well, I guess stay tuned.  There are some starter links for you to explore.  Are you guys coming along for this ride, or do you only care/need to search bibliographic records?

How to Embed Almost Anything in your Website

I've had this open on a tab to digest for exactly one month - time to pass it on.  :-)  Amit at Digital Inspiration writes about How to Embed Almost Anything in your Website.  Including RSS Feeds, High Quality or HD YouTube, mp3, Flickr, Picasa, Google Calendar, and more.

3 services to monitor website changes w/o RSS

Here are three free services that will monitor changes to websites and notify you by email when they do change.

• Watch That Page
• ChangeDetection.com
• Follow That Page

Read my feed for free (on the Kindle)

And more Kindle news.  Earlier this month I found out my blog was available for purchase via the Kindle store.  MakeUseOf.com has a post about how you can subscribe to RSS feeds on the Kindle for free using Kindlefeeder.com.

Act fast though, as the following notice appears on the kindlefeeder home page:

Someone has brought it to my attention that scheduling feed delivery on kindlefeeder.com may violate the Amazon Kindle's terms of service. Please read this blog post on TeleRead for details.

I've written Amazon's legal department for clarification. Until I receive a response, kindlefeeder.com's automated delivery feature will remain available.