I've just been learning about searching OPACs in my cataloging class and reading articles about how OPACs might be going the way of the dinosaur unless they can meet user's needs and the technological changes we're all experiencing. So another article in American Libraries, April 2008, caught my attention. It's called "Backed by Internet Archive, Entrepreneur Takes on OCLC." Is there really a kind of "war," or maybe a better word is competition, between OCLC and OPACs and the internet? The title makes it sound that way.
The entrepreneur in the article is Aaron Swartz, who's only 21. But he's very experienced when it comes to the internet. At the age of 14, he helped write the RSS feed format. (I have to admit that until recently I didn't even know what RSS feeds were.) Apparently what he's challenging is OCLC's subscription based World Cat system. This reminds me of a previous blog about public domain and the internet. It sounds like Aaron is part of the movement to make as many books and other materials freely available to the internet user as possible. He is starting a free online book catalog called Open Library.
He says that he first became interested in this idea when he was browsing through book stacks in his local library. He came upon many books he'd never heard of. It turns out they were out of print books. Publishers weren't interested in promoting them because they weren't in print. Amazon wasn't selling them. And "libraries had their catalogs hidden behind Google-unfriendly OPACs." He wants to create a website with a page for every book. Possibly internet users will end up adding to this website much like they do to Wikipedia. And he wants to link the site to Wikipedia and maybe LibraryThing.
A lot of the funding for this project comes from Internet Archive and the Open Content Alliance. Internet Archive has been scanning books for libraries, but wanted books to be made more widely available to the general public.
It seems that the two don't necessarily have to be in conflict - OPACs and this new Open Library. A project like this will promote books and that seems to be in line with what libraries try to do. I hope the two will find ways to work together in making information about books available to an even wider audience. Hopefully OPACs will not go the way of the dinosaur, but will become part of the new technology revolution. Perhaps this kind of cooperation will serve to bring more people to libraries - on the web and in person- creating more book lovers and readers than ever.
I'm trying to imagine how much the internet will have to grow to accommodate all the information in all the library OPACs all over the world. And in World Cat. It's all pretty amazing.
Monday, October 13, 2008
Sunday, October 12, 2008
Blogging from Iraq
I didn't mean to let this much time go between blog posts, but the Jewish High Holy Days intervened. I've been looking through some Library Journals and an American Libraries magazine for ideas for technojournal. I must be learning something in this GSLIS program, because now many of these articles catch my eye where before they wouldn't have because they were about subjects I didn't understand or have a clue about. I did know what a blog was - vaguely. But now I'm doing one.
So something in American Libraries from April 2008 stuck out at me on page 25. On the bottom left there's a small box called "Blogging from Iraq." It has a picture of Army captain Adrian Massey in his uniform and an explanation about his blog. He's been blogging from Iraq for the Public Library of Westland, Michigan. He's from there and the director Cheryl Napsha asked him to blog about his experiences. She was hoping his blog posts would help her patrons understand what the soldiers are experiencing on deployments in Iraq. I thought that was an amazing idea. So I checked out the westland.lib.mi.us link. And sure enough, I was able to find the link to Captain Massey's blog.
I read some of his posts and found out that he is coming home from his deployment soon. The last post was Sept 8, 2008 and was called "Trouble Sleeping." In early September, he and his soldiers had been in Iraq for 13 months with 2 months to go. I learned that they had originally been stationed in Baghdad and then moved to Baquba. I saw some of the photos on his blog - of him getting a coin of achievement from General Petreus, of he and his first sergeant taking a break and having a smoke. I read about how they needed to take this break because the two of them are totally responsible for the 114 soldiers under his command.
Reading Sergeant Massey's blog was very moving for me. My daughter is in Iraq, too, - her third deployment. Hers is for 15 months also. But she isn't coming home for another 9 and a half months since she left 5 and a half months ago. My daughter is a captain too. Of about 100 soldiers. I've met her First Sergeant, a man near his retirement from his years in the army. A man my daughter trusts. Her battalion moved too - from Kirkuk to near Nasariya.
But my daughter doesn't blog. She sends me very short emails and I get an occasional, very occasional, phone message from her. Once in a while a letter. So it meant a lot to me to read Captain Massey's blog. It's almost like hearing my daughter talk to me. Telling me more about her life in Iraq than her two sentence emails reveal.
So something in American Libraries from April 2008 stuck out at me on page 25. On the bottom left there's a small box called "Blogging from Iraq." It has a picture of Army captain Adrian Massey in his uniform and an explanation about his blog. He's been blogging from Iraq for the Public Library of Westland, Michigan. He's from there and the director Cheryl Napsha asked him to blog about his experiences. She was hoping his blog posts would help her patrons understand what the soldiers are experiencing on deployments in Iraq. I thought that was an amazing idea. So I checked out the westland.lib.mi.us link. And sure enough, I was able to find the link to Captain Massey's blog.
I read some of his posts and found out that he is coming home from his deployment soon. The last post was Sept 8, 2008 and was called "Trouble Sleeping." In early September, he and his soldiers had been in Iraq for 13 months with 2 months to go. I learned that they had originally been stationed in Baghdad and then moved to Baquba. I saw some of the photos on his blog - of him getting a coin of achievement from General Petreus, of he and his first sergeant taking a break and having a smoke. I read about how they needed to take this break because the two of them are totally responsible for the 114 soldiers under his command.
Reading Sergeant Massey's blog was very moving for me. My daughter is in Iraq, too, - her third deployment. Hers is for 15 months also. But she isn't coming home for another 9 and a half months since she left 5 and a half months ago. My daughter is a captain too. Of about 100 soldiers. I've met her First Sergeant, a man near his retirement from his years in the army. A man my daughter trusts. Her battalion moved too - from Kirkuk to near Nasariya.
But my daughter doesn't blog. She sends me very short emails and I get an occasional, very occasional, phone message from her. Once in a while a letter. So it meant a lot to me to read Captain Massey's blog. It's almost like hearing my daughter talk to me. Telling me more about her life in Iraq than her two sentence emails reveal.
Friday, October 3, 2008
Digitization and public domain
I got an email at work the other day about a "call for action to protect the public domain" at a recent event organized by the Boston Library Consortium, Inc. The people in attendance were from the research and academic communities. I'm not sure if people from public libraries were there, too. But apparently this is becoming a bigger concern - protecting the public's rights to access materials that are in the public domain. (This does not refer to items that are under copyright.)
I gather what is happening is that as more and more materials - books, documents, records - are being digitalized, sometimes they are not as widely available to the public as they could be. The examples in the email were that when the Google Book Project digitizes items, these are only available through the Google search engine. And Google has digitized at least one million items. I guess that Google sets the charge, but the email didn't mention what this was.
The Internet Archive works in cooperation with the Open Content Alliance to digitize volumes from library collections- the cost is about $30 for a volume or $.10 a page for the half a million items it has digitized. I wasn't totally clear on this, but it sounds like this may be a one time fee to the library, and then the materials are "accessible universally." One project the Internet Archive is taking on is the scanning and electronic preservation of a quarter of a million pages of Massachusetts state laws from 1620 on. They are doing this in collaboration with the State Library of Massachusetts and the University of Massachusetts.
I hadn't realized this could be a problem. That a company or some institution could take on the digitization of a book or document and then not make it widely available. This whole issue reminds me of open source versus proprietary software. It seems that there is a concern out there, especially among librarians and professors at academic institutions, that they need to set standards for the digitizing of items, and make sure that these standards include assuring accessibility to the scanned items for everyone.
The email ended by saying that the people at the conference have "blazed a trail" for all institutions, libraries, and museums to use in order to work together to make knowledge accessible to everyone. That this knowledge should be "unrestricted by choice of technology, location or socio-economic status."
If an item were digitalized, and the digitalized version was only made available through a certain technology, then one might say - well, a person could still access the printed version. But I could imagine several scenarios where this would be difficult, if not impossible. A person could be too far away to access the printed copy. Or the printed copy could be so old or in such bad shape, that it isn't available to view. In these cases, as in others that I haven't thought of here, the only version of the item possible for the person to view would be the digitized one. Therefore, if there was limited access to the digitized version, this would be a problem if the goal is to make knowledge accessible to all. I suppose another group could also digitized the same item and then make it available to all, however, this seems like a waste of resources. So I can see why the people at this event are concerned. Save on resources, digitize the item once, and make it widely available. A fee would be charged to cover costs and labor. I could see where academic institutions, museums and other institutions could work together to do the above. I suppose that's why this gathering was convened.
I gather what is happening is that as more and more materials - books, documents, records - are being digitalized, sometimes they are not as widely available to the public as they could be. The examples in the email were that when the Google Book Project digitizes items, these are only available through the Google search engine. And Google has digitized at least one million items. I guess that Google sets the charge, but the email didn't mention what this was.
The Internet Archive works in cooperation with the Open Content Alliance to digitize volumes from library collections- the cost is about $30 for a volume or $.10 a page for the half a million items it has digitized. I wasn't totally clear on this, but it sounds like this may be a one time fee to the library, and then the materials are "accessible universally." One project the Internet Archive is taking on is the scanning and electronic preservation of a quarter of a million pages of Massachusetts state laws from 1620 on. They are doing this in collaboration with the State Library of Massachusetts and the University of Massachusetts.
I hadn't realized this could be a problem. That a company or some institution could take on the digitization of a book or document and then not make it widely available. This whole issue reminds me of open source versus proprietary software. It seems that there is a concern out there, especially among librarians and professors at academic institutions, that they need to set standards for the digitizing of items, and make sure that these standards include assuring accessibility to the scanned items for everyone.
The email ended by saying that the people at the conference have "blazed a trail" for all institutions, libraries, and museums to use in order to work together to make knowledge accessible to everyone. That this knowledge should be "unrestricted by choice of technology, location or socio-economic status."
If an item were digitalized, and the digitalized version was only made available through a certain technology, then one might say - well, a person could still access the printed version. But I could imagine several scenarios where this would be difficult, if not impossible. A person could be too far away to access the printed copy. Or the printed copy could be so old or in such bad shape, that it isn't available to view. In these cases, as in others that I haven't thought of here, the only version of the item possible for the person to view would be the digitized one. Therefore, if there was limited access to the digitized version, this would be a problem if the goal is to make knowledge accessible to all. I suppose another group could also digitized the same item and then make it available to all, however, this seems like a waste of resources. So I can see why the people at this event are concerned. Save on resources, digitize the item once, and make it widely available. A fee would be charged to cover costs and labor. I could see where academic institutions, museums and other institutions could work together to do the above. I suppose that's why this gathering was convened.
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