Libraries : Holdings Standards. Interesting post from Catalogablog:

Holdings Standards

The Feb. issue of Computers in Libraries has the article "An Introduction to Holdings Standards by Shirley Lincicum.

"It used to be that you didn't need to know much about standards for holdings data unless you were a cataloger. That's all changing now. This overview explains what you need to know, and what these standards have in common with electricity."

Good to see that standards are starting to pop up for non-bibliographic data stuff like holdings and aquisitions. That will go a long way toward developing new standards that resemble more of a METS-like XML record than a traditional MARC record, which has no way to inherit or relate to administrative metadata directly inside the bibliographic description. [inSilico - A Princeton University Library metadata and digital library blog]

  1:17:37 PM   [Feedback ]  

Libraries : RSS Calendar.

I've been waiting for something like RSS Calendar to be created for a very long time. Here's the details:

"RSSCalendar is an exciting new way for individuals and organizations to share their calendars with family, friends, and colleagues - utilizing the latest in "Really Simple Syndication" (RSS) technology, including RSS channel creation and aggregation. Not only is RSSCalendar easy to use but it is also easy to administer, and setup is a snap. RSSCalendar is well-suited for a variety of uses, including:

* Individual calendars
* Company calendars
* School calendars
* Organization calendars
* Team calendars
* City calendars"

Imagine what libraries can do with this technology. Not only can they easily set up a calendar, but their patrons can grab the RSS Feed of the events and read about them in their aggregator. This can also be used for librarians to communicate with each other about events, meetings, etc. I'm going to try this out tonight... (link via Michael Fagan's Del.icio.us Bookmarks)
[Library Stuff]

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Libraries : More on the UK report. Kevin Davies, UK MPs Debate Open Access, Bio-IT World, July 27, 2004. Excerpt: "The report – 'Scientific Publications: Free for All?' authored by British Members of Parliament and published earlier this week – concludes that research findings should be made freely available to fellow researchers and the public alike. The MPs criticized the traditional scientific publishing model, in which libraries and individuals are forced to absorb steeply rising subscription costs....The committee endorsed the alternative 'open access' model, championed by journals such as PLoS Biology and the Journal of Clinical Investigation, which requires authors to cover the costs of publishing, but in return makes the text of the published papers fully and freely available online....The UK report urges British universities to establish a network of computerized 'institutional repositories,' which would store all UK-based research papers." (Thanks to Gary Price.) (PS: Actually the report does the reverse. It would mandate institutional repositories and encourage experimentation with OA journals funded by processing fees paid by authors or their sponsors.) [Open Access News]  1:15:31 PM   [Feedback ]  

Libraries : UK launches Research Libraries Network. The UK is launching the Research Libraries Network and funding it with £3 million. From yesterday's press release: "A new national initiative - the Research Libraries Network (RLN) - announced today, is set to transform the way research information is collected, organised, preserved and accessed across the UK. The RLN will bring together the UK's four higher education funding bodies, the British Library, the National Libraries of Scotland and Wales and the eight members of Research Councils UK to develop the UK's first national framework aimed at addressing the information needs of researchers....Initially the RLNA's work is likely to include feasibility studies and market research to shape the longer-term programme. Early emphasis is likely to be on improved knowledge of and access to existing resources (for example, by developing search tools and 'union catalogues' which give a single point of access to a number of different collections). Future potential workstreams include collaborative work on developing and preserving digital archives, maximising access for professional researchers to key collections, and working towards collaborative development of collections to ensure access to the widest possible range of research materials." (Thanks to Gary Price.) [Open Access News]  1:15:05 PM   [Feedback ]  

Libraries : OA developments in Australia. Colin Steele, World's knowledge base should be open to all: Are you free? Australia well placed to react to UK open access initiatives, unabridged edition of an article from the Australian Financial Review, July 26, 2004. Excerpt: "University and institutional researchers create a large part of the world's knowledge base. Researchers tend to give away their intellectual output free of charge to large multinational publishers who generate hundreds of millions of dollars of profits annually....[But things are changing.] Less than a week after a US Congressional Committee called for open access to research funded by National Institutes of Health, Britain's prestigious House Of Commons Science and Technology Committee has issued a major Report: Scientific Publications: Free for All?...In Australia Open Access developments have been ahead of the international pack....The National Scholarly Communications Forum (NSCF), a body sponsored by the four Australian learned Academies, has provided important leadership in this area....The NSCF recommends Australian research accessibility to be widened through open access research initiatives within institutions, particularly through the encouragement of institutional repositories, including the adoption of universitywide policies to collect and archive institutional research output, for example in connection with RAE exercises and the adoption of further open access mechanisms, such as open access journals and not-for-profit electronic publishing." [Open Access News]  1:14:39 PM   [Feedback ]  

Libraries : Publishers correct "myths" of OA. Setting the Record Straight About Academic Journal Publishing, the Professional/Scholarly Publishing (PSP) division of the Association of American Publishers (AAP), July 2004. An attempt to correct four "myths" about subscription-based journals spread by OA defenders, apparently modelled on the BMC page of anti-OA myths.

The first myth and its correction will give you an idea of the document's quality. The first myth is that "[traditional publishing], relative to open-access publishing, hinders the progress of science and medicine and reduces the benefits to the public." To show that this proposition from the PLoS web site is false, the document asserts that subscription-based journals add value, including date stamps and peer review (conceded, not at issue) and that they are more widely read than OA journals (conceded, not at issue). The answer simply misses the target, which is especially troubling since the authors got to pick the myth to which they wanted to respond. The claim in the PLoS quotation was that conventional journals hinder progress "relative to" OA journals, not that they hinder progress absolutely or offer nothing of value. Moreover, when the document points to the valuable features of conventional journals, it seems to forget that OA journals have all of them (date stamps, peer review, disseminating research, and archiving) with the possible exception of marketing. [Open Access News]

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Libraries : AAU position on the NIH OA plan. The House Appropriations Committee Enters Scholarly Publishing Fray, AAU CFR Weekly Wrap-Up, July 30, 2004, pp. 1-2. An unsigned story reporting the committee action and the AAU stance on it. Excerpt: "AAU has not taken a position on the substance of the proposal contained in the report language, but the association believes that a congressional prescription for scholarly publishing is unwise and unwarranted. However the debate over public access is decided, the quality and reliability of scholarly publishing should remain the first priority. A congressional mandate requiring a specific business model for the scholarly publishing enterprise prejudges what should be an internal, transparent deliberation by the academic and scientific communities. That process should examine the full range of options for controlling costs and increasing access to scholarly publishing while preserving its quality and reliability. Publishers are exploring different options, and outside groups or the government --no matter how well intended-- should not prematurely pick winners and losers."

(PS: There are two objections here: that there should be no federal mandate and that this mandate will force journals to adopt a specific business model. I respond to both in today's issue of my newsletter: "I've heard publishers complain...that this federal mandate will force publishers to adopt an open-access business model. But in every case, these publishers misunderstood the proposal. It proposes OA through archiving, not OA through journals. OA through archiving will have consequences for journals, but it will not require journals to convert to OA business models....Some publishers object that we should 'let the market work' and not turn to a federal mandate. One problem with this objection is that scientific research and its dissemination are permeated by government spending and government policies. Hence, this is not a market in any ordinary or classical sense at all. For example, in most countries (certainly in the U.S.) most funded scientific research is funded by governments, most scientists work at public institutions and are paid by governments, and most subscriptions to subscription-based journals are purchased by public institutions and paid for by governments.") [Open Access News]

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Libraries : Can one copyright a digitized copy of a work in the public domain?. On the LibraryLaw Blog, Peter Hirtle and Klaus Graf are discussing whether digitized copies of works in the public domain are themselves in the public domain or can be copyrighted. The narrow focus of the discussion is on faithful digital scans of public-domain images, but the general question also applies to digitized copies of public-domain texts. [Open Access News]  1:13:30 PM   [Feedback ]  

Libraries : Changing business models in STM publishing. David Worlock, Changing Business Models in the Scientific, Technical and Medical Publishing Market, a presentation at the OECD conference on the Information Economy, June 3, 2004. Worlock shows how non-OA publishers compete with each other and how the non-OA models overall compete with OA models. He sees five key questions for evaluating the prospects of OA journals: "Is 'author pays' economically viable? Will commercial publishers be forced to follow the OA pioneers? Is there room for hybrid models? How will commercial STM publishers be affected? What are they doing to counter the threat?" (Thanks to Colin Steele.) [Open Access News]  1:12:27 PM   [Feedback ]  

Libraries : MS Security Updates RSS Feed.

Have not seen this on any other library-related blogs and it is a couple days old, so thought I would throw it out there (via Microsoft Watch):

Get Your Microsoft Security Bulletins Via RSS

"Microsoft is offering an RSS feed for its security bulletins over on TechNet, as several bloggers have noted. Expect to see lots more new RSS feeds from a variety of Microsoft teams in the coming months."

The actual MS page has the RSS feed near the bottom.

[TechnoBiblio]  1:11:19 PM   [Feedback ]  

Weblogs : Read this article - not this one.

A couple libloggers (or should it be two b's?) pointed to this article, "Weblogs: Do they belong in libraries?" without praise for it.

Even so, I think it is worthwhile if only for the fact it led me to this article in the same issue - "Towards Library Groupware with Personalised Link Routing".

According to the article:

"In this article we make a simple case for library groupware as a unifying service model across disparate information environments. We consider the distributed, personalised collection development model that groupware would serve, and propose an architectural model which might provide a first step in an evolutionary path from today's commonplace digital library services towards integrated library groupware."

Jeez, that's all?

This brief article presents an overview of the converging methods of information sharing that are outstripping the library's current technological toolkits- even as we try to keep up through adapatations- that will lead to "user bypass" unless those tools change to meet user's needs. In their words:

"The common thread running through these innovations is that each new service helps individuals move and connect more kinds of information from more diverse resources through the various information communities in which they participate. We are still at a stage where each innovation adds value within a well-defined community or information context, even while we are learning that we will have to meet the needs of users who regularly move between formal and informal communities, and between public and private contexts. Before long, our ability to meet these users' needs will be limited by our inability to allow users to create and connect information sources and services as they see fit."

The only downside of this article? I think I went to library school with two of the authors and I feel very, very small in the grey matter department after reading it. Who ever thought you could have library school classmate envy?

[TechnoBiblio]  1:09:50 PM   [Feedback ]