up2date

OLE final report

OLE final report (pdf) :

Executive Overview

With funding from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Open Library Environment project (OLE Project) convened a multi-national group of libraries to analyze library business processes and to define a next-generation library technology platform. The resulting OLE platform is predicated on Service Oriented Architecture and a community-source model of development and governance. Over 300 libraries, educational institutions, professional organizations and business participated in some phase of the project. Using input from those participants, the project
planners produced an OLE design framework that embeds libraries directly in the key processes of scholarship generation, knowledge management, teaching and learning by utilizing existing enterprise systems where appropriate and by delivering new services built on connections between the library’s business systems and other technology systems....

NYT's subject headings

From the ResourceShelf :

The New York Times and Its 30,000 Tags (You Can Call Them Subject Headings)

A few weeks ago we posted about a new prototype from the New York Times named “Custom Feeds.” It allows users, for free, to create “custom built” RSS feeds of NY Times content that make use of the actual tags (aka descriptors, subject headings) that humans use when meta-tagging (aka indexing). At the end of the post we even made special note that The Times took the time to point out they still uses human “meta-taggers.”

Today, the wonderful Tara Calashain has an excellent post about how The NY Times making all of the their controlled vocabulary (subject headings) available to the public. Eventually 30,000 of them will be available. As of today, approximately 5,000 personal name headings (aka tags) are online. Tara also points out that each of the 5,000 names have direct links to RDF and XML data at DBPedia* and Freebase. She also explains that you can download the complete file of names (something a developer is likely to do) or browse and view each recrord one at a time.

Given that we’re not developers we’re going to browse them (in HTML format) online. You can view the 5000 names here. Just like the LC Authorities file has reference value by sometimes providing birthdates, when a name was first used, or a snippet about a heading the NY Times files do much the same thing.
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Webcast: "Digital Literacy, Digital Storytelling and The Role of The Academic Librarian"

From : LearningTimes Network - "Library Online Community" :

Steven Bell and John Shank, co-founders of the Blended Librarians Online Learning Community and their guests, Ellysa Stern Cahoy and Anu Vedantham, invite you to join them for the live webcast, “Digital Literacy, Digital Storytelling and The Role of The Academic Librarian” which will take place on Tuesday, November 10, 2009 at 3 pm. EDT. 

Event Description:
An emergent trend in higher education today is the ever-increasing number of faculty who are allowing students to create video and multimedia projects as an alternative to the traditional research paper. This session will explore the current and future roles academic libraries and librarians should play in this environment. The topics covered in this session are: digital literacy and the librarian’s role, working effectively with faculty on assignment design, and digital storytelling & video assignments and the academic library’s support role.

'Cataloguing Services Landscape'

From the Library 2.0 Gang | ALA TechSource :

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About a year ago dust started to stir on the surface of this stable landscape, when OCLC caused a curfuffle with their move to redefine their record reuse policy. Then in January, open source library system vendor announced ‡Biblios.net, a free cataloguing service in which you can share with other libraries. In the last few weeks we have had SkyRiver arrive on the scene. Not much visible on their site yet, but according to press releases they hope to deliver quality at a lower costs - so things are a changing.

Unfortunately nobody was available from OCLC, ‡Biblios, or SkyRiver, to help talk through what these moves might mean. Nevertheless Gang members Marshall Breeding and Frances Haugen were on hand to explore the ramifications of these moves and what a more competitive landscape might mean for the players in this market.

'Bookless Libraries?' - Inside Higher Ed

News: Bookless Libraries? - Inside Higher Ed

When does a library cease to be a library?

What started as a debate over whether brick-and-mortar libraries would survive much further into the 21st century turned into an existential discussion on the definition of libraries, as a gathering of technologists here at the 2009 Educause Conference pondered the evolution of one of higher education’s oldest institutions.

“Let’s face it: the library, as a place, is dead,” said Suzanne E. Thorin, dean of libraries at Syracuse University. “Kaput. Finito. And we need to move on to a new concept of what the academic library is.”

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Despite the objections of “a minority of very loud faculty members,” Thorin said, the days of wandering through the stacks are over. “People,” she told the audience, of whom many were librarians, “the world has changed, and so have your students, and so have your faculty!”

Richard E. Luce, director of university libraries at Emory University, countered that just because libraries are transitioning from print to online does not mean they will cease to be libraries.

“The issue is really about library as place, whether you need the bricks and mortar,” Luce said. “So let’s look at that.” Why did thousands of college technologists come to Educause? “To interact with one another — to talk, to collaborate, to think, to communicate, to be with one another,” he said. “Isn’t that what we do in our best libraries?”

UofC press offers free e-book of the month

Now, may the Library have a copy?

From their blog :

Beginning this month we will offer a free e-book each month. If you'd like to give our Chicago Digital Editions a try, or if you just want to score some good reads, check in regularly for the free e-book of the month. And for all our currently available e-books, see our list of e-books by subject.

This month's selection is The Birthday Book by the Roman writer Censorinus.

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List of all magazines in Google Books

From the Inside Google Books blog :

"I'm happy to announce that last week I coded up a page on Google Books that lets you browse the available magazine titles. You can view the page here."

N.B.That would be all 45 magazines in Google Books. No, that's not a typo : forty-five.

future of Integrated Library Systems webinar

from the BlogJunction (WebJunction) post :

ILS webinar moderated by Marshall Breeding

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On December 10th at 1:00 Eastern join us for a discussion of Integrated Library Systems (ILS) and the trend toward customizability through Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) with library systems expert Marshall Breeding and representatives from leading vendors in the field. We’ll discuss new features and capabilities available in the most modern library software, and what it really means for these tools to be “customizable.”

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Cengage (formerly Gale) CEO on info. portals & textbks

It's always interesting to me to read about our vendors as they're presented in publishing (non-library) context. This article in Publishing Perspectives, "Cengage CEO Ron Dunn on Re-imagining Information Portals and TXTBKS".Discusses Cengage's new moves into portals and compressed (condensed?) textbooks.

ACRL e-learning events

From the email :

Implementing Online Teaching and Learning: Using Moodle and Other Web 2.0 Features (Online Seminar: November 9 - December 5, 2009)

Electronic Collection Development for the Academic E-Library (Online Seminar: November 9 - December 5, 2009)

Introduction to Taxonomy Development (Live Webcast: November 10, 2009)

Blended Librarianship: Learning Management Systems for Libraries (Live Webcast: November 17, 2009)

Complete details are available on the ACRL e-Learning Web site. For more information about ACRL e-Learning opportunities, contact Margot Conahan at (312) 280-2522 or mconahan@ala.org.