OCLC and the Dark Side

I guess this is what happens when you piss off library techno-dorks. Lovin’ it.

So much for that quiet policy change…

Via SHARE Library Consortium Technology Planning Committee

Hushing Librarian

Found at Waxin’ & Milkin’.

Mercedes-Benz banks on library humor

I think it’s rather frivelous to debate how libraires, librarians, and their patrons are portrayed in our (and other) cultures. I just think it’s sort of awesome that libraries are still, in our collective unconcious, associated with intelligence.

Also, I quite shamelessly go to the library to get coffee. All the information I really want I’d have to research myself. =\

I’ll hold you to it, Senator.

Dear Mr. [X]:

Thank you for contacting my office regarding your support for Library Services Technology Grants to States program funding in the Fiscal Year 2009 Labor, Health and Human Services, Education Appropriations Bill. I appreciate learning of your interest on this issue.

As a nation, we have many varied interests and priorities. One of the most challenging tasks Congress has is to adequately fund these priorities in the interests of all Americans. As the Senate proceeds with the Fiscal Year 2009 appropriations process, rest assured that I will take your comments into consideration.

Thank you again for writing. Please feel free to contact me again regarding this or any other matter of concern.

Sincerely,

Arlen Specter

I will indeed, Senator Specter. (Encouraging, yet evasive… Touché.)

Tub of Books

Found at Point of Focus.

Good Resources Never Die

Do you ever find yourself returning to a comfortable or “old-timey” information source to answer a question? How many resources are their that have been around for decades or centuries and are still useful today?

A friend will be staying with us during the weekends this summer before he moves away to attend graduate school. I wanted to get him a copy of the key to our apartment and initially thought of simply going down the street to the Home Depot. I instead decided that I would like to use a local locksmith, because it is my duty to support the small guy during our recess…er, I mean economic slow-down.

In this age of technology-based solutions I came across a novel solution for finding local locksmiths. The phone book. Although there are web-based phone books, I have found them to be incomplete and providing inadequate search functions. Some of the services even require you to pay for an address. What better way to locate the local community of locksmithing professionals than with the husky enemy of christ-powered performers?

The phone book would not be applicable with long distance numbers, but I think it’s a great way to find local businesses which are integral to a thriving community. Do you have any examples of traditional resources that outperform sources like the world wide web? Feel free to post examples in the comments.

What is OAI and why should you care?

The Open Archives Initiative, commonly abbreviated as OAI, is a “body that promotes standards in archiving which allow systems to operate successfully together and exchange information.” (Dictionary of Information and Library Management) Founded by Michael Nelson, Carl Lagoze, and Herbert Van de Sompel, the OAI first launched in October of 1999. The Initiative’s funding comes from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Coalition for Networked Information, Digital Library Federation, Microsoft Corporation, and the National Science Foundation. (Reitz, Open Archives Initiative) Since its inception, the Initiative has been linked conceptually to the idea of open access in scholarly publishing and the creation of institutional repositories. For this reason it has garnered considerable support from information and library science professionals. However, increasingly effective, mainstream alternatives to the OAI’s framework have resulted in published authors not participating in the Initiative. As well, vendors may be dissuaded from participating in OAI repositories due to digital copyright concerns.

Although the above definition for OAI is good for a general understanding of the Initiative, it does not provide a comprehensive understanding of the topic. At its core, the OAI promotes interoperability between different systems by supplying a rigorous set of standards that facilitate the sharing of digital information. While the name OAI suggests the idea of a permanent repository for digital or digitized media, the word “archive” is in fact used as a synonym for “e-prints”. (Reitz) The two definitions of archive should not be confused, because while the former is focused on artifacts and artifactual value, the latter’s goal is to increase scholarly communication by creating easier digital access to research. Although the two are not mutually exclusive, this distinction is vital to properly understanding the OAI.

The OAI’s main vehicle for increasing scholarly communication is OAI-PMH, or the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting. (Metadata is, at its most basic, information about information.) Metadata harvesters locate and aggregate metadata from different data sets. While this at first may seem confusing, there are many easy-to-understand examples. If I wanted to integrate MBooks, Google Books, and CMU’s Million Book Project into my own catalogue, all I would have to do is “point” my metadata harvester at their repositories to gather the information. With the OAI, Dublin Core is usually used as the scheme for metadata. Afterward, when searching my OPAC, users would be able to locate the metadata – in record form – within my catalogue and be linked to the content at the original repository’s site. This is impressive not only because it can widely diversify an institution’s collection, but also because none of the files (besides metadata) have to be stored locally. The largest OAI catalogue is OAIster, which provides access to approximately 15 ½ million records. (University of Michigan) The search engine indexes material from over 900 contributors. (University of Michigan)

I am skeptical, however, of OAI-PMH. First of all, acquiring metadata is not as simple as pointing your harvester at an information source. Permission must be asked and granted, and there is no guarantee that more contemporary and valuable information will come without a fee. The majority of the works in the digital repositories listed above are either in the public domain or have been digitized as “orphan works”. They may lack currency, not reflect advances in science and society, and not represent a holistic collection of knowledge. Also, scholarly material, especially in the hard sciences and articles being prepared for publishing,may not be as likely to be freely available.

A second concern hinges on digital preservation and continual access. If institutions are simply collecting metadata about e-prints and other information resources, this means that there may only be one institution with an actual electronic copy. If that copy and its backups were lost, access to the full text – one of the main concerns of the OAI – would be undermined. Author David Weinberger advocates an item being in more than one place at the same time in Everything is Miscellaneous through the use of metadata; however, it may make more sense for an item to be in more than one place literally, through duplicate electronic copies. A related concern is that the status of currently free full-text materials owned by private and/or corporate institutions may change. As a result, access to such materials would disappear overnight. This is significant because most high-profile mass-digitization projects are being spearheaded by companies such as Google, rather than consortia of libraries, archives, and academic institutions. A possible solution to these problems is the LOCKSS (“Lots of Copies Keeps Stuff Safe”) project. Like the name implies, redundant (and decentralized) storing of information could allow for more permanent and reliable access to this information, something that the Open Archives Initiative inherently neglects by its metadata-centered design.

So far I have addressed predominantly digitized book collections in relation to OAI metadata harvesting. However, the original and continued focus of the OAI is on e-prints, or research and journal articles. As Peter Suber stated, “OAI-compliant archives are already here and already useful”. (Suber, May 2) So why then have they not challenged commercially offered databases? The answer is that scholars must not only be convinced of the value of OAI to include their works, but also that OAI repositories must be filled with quality materials that exploit the benefits of the OAI standards.

Depositing research in an OAI compliant repository is arguably not a priority or norm in the scholarly world. In OAIster, I searched for several of my instructors from library school. Of the five, only three had articles in the catalogue. For many authors, putting a paper on their personal website can be seen as the equivalent of depositing in a repository. Not only have they achieved open access, but using Google, or some future search engine with similar functionality, will allow users worldwide to find their work. The argument against this is that OAI’s use of fielded metadata allows for precision searching. (Suber, March 2) However, relevancy algorithms and properly executed XML effectively perform the same function as fielded searches. The question of whether search engines or OAI catalogues are superior is a highly contentious one, and there is little besides opinion in the scholarly literature to substantiate one side over the other. Peter Suber points to the following statements as examples of library and information science professionals’ unfounded preference for OAI:

“But OA-OAI archiving enhances visibility more than Google indexing does.” […] “Scholars doing serious scholarly research look in specialized scholarly tools and resources before they look in Google.” […] “Archiving will give an eprint a permanent or persistent URL.” […] “OAI-compliant searching tools refresh their indices faster than Google.” (Suber, March 2)

These assertions are flawed for many reasons. First, they ignore the use of e-prints by non-scholars. Second, they make broad, sweeping generalizations about Google, scholarly research methods, and OAI searching tools; these statements do not hold true in all cases. For every assertion of the OAI’s superiority, Suber – a proponent of the OAI – can find many convincing exceptions.

When a persuasive argument cannot be made for one tool over the other, why should scholars participate in an OAI compliant system? The answer is that a service like Google does not detract from the value of OAI, that the systems need not be mutually exclusive, and that OAI has the potential to offer a superior search experience should mass-collaboration be achieved. (Suber, March 2) Were mass-collaboration achieved, users would have access to substantial, cross-disciplinary databases of scholarly literature. Inappropriate materials would be excluded, decreasing the information overload so often experienced by users of search engines. This would also reduce the likelihood that users not versed in information literacy would utilize incorrect or flawed information resources. While David Weinberger suggests that information professionals “give up control” and “filter on the way out, not on the way in”, the OAI intends to do the exact opposite. (105, 102) In doing so, they hope to create bastions of knowledge known not only for their intellectual integrity, but supreme usability.

To enhance the value of OAI compliant repositories, Suber identified ten goals which information professionals should work toward. They include: working against the Ingelfinger Rule (a stipulation in contracts that prevents publishing of already available research), persuading all open access journals to participate, persuading publishers to supply metadata for their materials regardless of whether the documents are copyrighted or not in electronic formats, archiving “raw and semi-raw data, not just articles that interpret or analyze data”, and finally creating an open access citation index. (Suber, March 2) Other goals Suber listed have already been achieved in part, including making “postprint archiving […] a condition of research funding” (now true of government-funded research) and the depositing of theses and dissertations (true of many colleges/universities). (Suber, March 2) While these measures would predominantly ensure a steady flow of current material, I think that the most exciting goals are those involving publishers and the creation of a citation index. These two factors will make OAI compliant catalogues discovery tools par-excellence by creating a massive, deep (predominantly full text) index of serials and monographs, effectively removing the need for sloppy federated search engines which are inhibited by the proprietary structure of commercial databases.

The Open Archives Initiative relies on standards, which Roy Tennant has gone so far as to describe as the “engine of interoperability”. By utilizing such standards to organize information, the OAI is working to increase access to scholarly materials. Although the system has flaws and has not yet gained mainstream acceptance, it is clear that the potential exists for OAI-compliant technologies to radically transform the publication of academic research and, as a result, scholarly communication. Hopefully this transformation will mirror the value which served has guided the Initiative over time, open access to information.

Bibliography:

• “Open Archives Initiative”. Dictionary of Information and Library Management, 2006. Retrieved March 28, 2008 from http://www.credoreference.com/entry/6525181
• Open Archives Initiative. Open Archives Initiative. Retrieved April 16, 2008, from http://www.openarchives.org
• Reitz, Joan M. ODLIS: Online Dictionary for Library and Information Science. Libraries Unlimited. http://lu.com/odlis/odlis_o.cfm#oai (28 March 2008).
• Suber, Peter. “The Case for OAI in the Age of Google.” SPARC Open Access Newsletter, May 3, 2004. Retrieved March 28, 2008 from http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/newsletter/05-03-04.htm#oai-google
• Suber, Peter. “Top 10 priorities for the OAI community.” SPARC Open Access Newsletter, March 2, 2004. Retrieved March 28, 2008 from http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/newsletter/03-02-04.htm#oai-priorities
• Tennant, Roy. “The Expanding World of OAI.” Library Journal, 15 February 2004, 32.
• University of Michigan (2008). OAIster | Home. Retrieved April 16, 2008, from http://www.oaister.org
• Weinberger, David. Everything Is Miscellaneous: The Power of the New Digital Disorder. New York: Times Books, 2007.

Video of Leadership Symposium at ALA Midwinter 2008

For those of you who didn’t get a chance to go to ALA Midwinter 2008 in Philadelphia, here are some highlights from the symposium – conspicuously sponsored by OCLC – on “New Leadership for New Challenges”. The symposium centered on “sharing leadership, readiness for change, team structures and assigning responsibility, nurturing nonprofit networks, [and] sustaining impact”.

Speakers included George Needham (VP of Member Services, OCLC), Leslie Crutchfield (Managing Director of Ashoka), and Dr. Rush Miller (Director of the University of Pittsburgh Library System). Crutchfield is the co-author of Forces for Good: The Six Practices of High-Impact Nonprofits and Miller co-author of Beyond Survival: Managing Academic Libraries in Transition. I have only read the latter book and, despite being rather sensationalist in diction, the authors take a progressive stance when it comes to library management.

You can stream the entire presentation here. (But only in Internet Explorer… bizarre!) George Needham, in addition to four other OCLC staff members, run the blog It’s all good. They are not mindless drones and have a pretty good sense of humor, so I suggest subscribing to it.

:: Bibliography ::

OCLC. New leadership for new challenges [OCLC]. Online Computer Library Center (OCLC), Inc. http://www.oclc.org/info/newleadership/ (19 April 2008).

Pitt upgrades Zoomify interface for Audubon’s Birds of America

I wrote an earlier post about the University of Pittsburgh Digital Research Library’s newest image collection, Audubon’s Birds of America. In it, I criticized their use of the tool Zoomify to display their scans of John James Audubon’s famous set of ornithological plates. If you take a look at the collection now, you will notice that the Zoomify window can be resized by the user. Although not a complete fix, this feature certainly makes the website more useable; I applaud the DRL for implementing the change.

There has been a discussion – here and over at PhiloBiblios – about the $300 fee for ordering a print from the collection. Was Pitt using Zoomify to control the rights to their images by limiting the public’s access to the full images? The move to improve Zoomify has waylaid this fear, in my mind. If anyone wanted to, it would be relatively easy to grab an entire plate to either print (at a place like Kinko’s) or post on the internet. However, it is important to note that the University stresses “Digital files are not for sale.” [1] (The bold is theirs.)

Now the question seems to be whether the print Pitt offers is – to put it blunty – overpriced. And if so, if it is ethical for Pitt to overcharge in the name of recouping their digitization expenditures. (They do seem to have a monopoly on the business. If you take a look at eBay, you’ll find that the online auction site is flooded with small, low quality Audubon reproductions starting at about $10.)

My response to this is that Pitt claims their reproductions are near facsimile quality. (With that said, I’m sure Walter Benjamin is rolling over in his grave!) This means that, in all likelihood, printing these images does cost significantly more than one would suspect. Although I can’t offer any figures on how much materials and labor cost, I don’t think the ratio of actual to sales price is obscene. (Nothing like the markup associated with CDs.)

As for the fee helping to recoup losses, Pitt hasn’t attempted to justify the price using this trope. (Although if they were to comment on the price, I’d wager this would be the first defense they’d employ.) As I don’t think the price is exorbinant – you are purchasing a high-quality luxury good, after all – and because I like the idea of libraries branching out to become more economically sustainable, I don’t have a problem with this. There is a (mis)conception that academic libraries are black holes when it comes to money: the budget/grants go in and “nothing” comes out. I guess this could be used to accuse me of adopting a business mindset when it comes to library management. I don’t think that’s necessarily true, however.

On a slightly related note, I’m seriously considering having the little buggers on plate 134 tattooed on my flank. Talk me out of it, library folk! ;-)

Bibliography:

1. University of Pittsburgh. “audubon_reproductions.pdf.” Audubon’s Birds of America at the University of Pittsburgh. University of Pittsburgh. http://digital.library.pitt.edu/a/audubon/audubon_reproductions.pdf (14 March 2008).

Because two wasn’t enough…

Word on the street is that TNT is producing the third installment of “The Librarian” starring everyone’s favorite washed up ER actor Noah Wyle! Oh boy. Apparently, this is Johnathan Frakes’ (Commander Riker) second crack at directing the franchise.

From seat42f.com “THE LIBRARIAN: THE CURSE OF THE JUDAS CHALICE opens with a restless Flynn attempting to assimilate back into his career as the Librarian at the New York Metropolitan Library after many adventures abroad.” Just like Dennis Kucinich!

Bibliography

Kane, Paul . “Presidential Run Done, Kucinich Is Fighting to Keep Seat in House.” Washington Post, 2 March 2008, . http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/01/AR2008030101217.html?hpid=topnews (7 March 2008).