Library Journal

Library Journal

VUFind Beta

Next-Gen library catalog browser, VuFind. It is now officially open source code under the GPL and hosted on Sourceforge. We have been working on the application for quite some time now, almost a year, and for the past few months have been working with some local schools to test the application and begin to build some install scripts.

Please have a look at the project website to download the software and you can even try out a live demo of the software:

http://www.vufind.org/

Roy Tennant’s review for VuFind:

http://www.libraryjournal.com/blog/1090000309/post/1050012105.html

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Article reading list from Debra

Web 2.0.
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,2068107,00.html
http://andrewkeen.typepad.com/ 

A New Type of Public Library
http://lisnews.org/articles/07/05/03/131244.shtml
http://librarian.lishost.org/?p=740
http://www.home.earthlink.net/~alysons/library.html

Metadata
http://interviews.lisnews.org/article.pl?sid=07/05/02/192230&from=rss
http://blog.wired.com/business/2007/05/metacrap_and_fl.html 

The Dewey Decimal System – obsolete?
http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0529nodewey0530.html#
http://libraryrevolution.com/2007/05/30/dewey-or-dont-we/ 

A couple of new search engines mentioned by Steven Cohen
http://www.zuula.com/
http://www.mahalo.com/Main_Page – “human powered search engine” 

Digital Library Federation Director wants Wikipedia/Library collaboration
http://marketing.lisnews.org/article.pl?sid=07/05/29/1140202&from=rss 

Unwanted books go up in flames
http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/05/28/book.burning.ap/index.html 

Biodiversity Heritage Library
http://biodiversitylibrary.org/About.aspx 

HEALTHmap – Global Disease alert mapping system
http://healthmap.org/ 

Publishers Warm to Google’s Book Search (NPR)
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=10712494 

Digital Library Discussion on NPR (may have much the same info. as the first link)
http://www.sciencefriday.com/pages/2007/May/hour1_051107.html Survey on use of 2.0 technologies done by Lexis/Nexis:
http://www.lexisnexis.com/about/releases/0980.asp According to Yahoo…”Search is History – Web Personalization is now key”:
http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/the_web/article1883175.ece 

This article is directly related to the conversation we had this morning about Google and digitization:
http://www.cic.uiuc.edu/programs/CenterForLibraryInitiatives/Archive/PressRelease/LibraryDigitization/index.shtml And

This one relates directly to the conversation we had about the future of the book:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/04/books/04book1.html?ex=1338609600&en=9b2634b869e0c8bd&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss 

Interesting article on the future of DC Public Libraries (Note: Library Journal will donate an interior makeover of the 85-year-old Southeast Branch, which will get new furniture, renovated bathrooms, shelving, a new ceiling, and books and computers, too. Kudos to LJ!)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/04/AR2007060401785.html

Books on Demand from Amazon.com:
http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/070531/20070531005308.html?.v=1

And just for grins – fresh from the You Tube press – it’s the Adventures of SuperLibrarian!!!
http://lisnews.org/articles/07/06/06/1840210.shtml 

Social Software/Web 2.0 online classes for librarians/library staff
http://www.oclc.org/capcon/membership/news/A_new_Maryland_progr.htm 

Welcome to the BIGWIG Social Software Showcase (@ ALA)
http://showcase.litablog.org/index.php/Main_Page 

Websites get results-oriented (from GCN) [Features NIH]
http://www.gcn.com/print/26_08/43511-1.html 

Two Days Without Dewey – successful opening of the “Deweyless” public library
http://lisnews.org/articles/07/06/13/0149229.shtml 

The Harry Potter Successor?
http://books.guardian.co.uk/news/articles/0,,2101079,00.html 

Google and Privacy
http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,132747/article.html?tk=nl_spxnws 

Search in general and Privacy
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9026638&source=rss_news50 

“Information Therapy”
http://lisnews.org/articles/07/07/10/2131238.shtml 

First Official Internet Library
http://lisnews.org/articles/07/06/25/0251213.shtml 

Print on Demand for Out of Print Books
http://lisnews.org/articles/07/06/24/2357216.shtml (partnership between Amazon, various libraries and Kirtas and features the Kirtas hands-off book digitization machine I saw at ALA http://www.kirtas-tech.com/products.asp- tres nifty!) 

Turning the Pages 2.0 (UK Libraries Digitization Initiative)
http://lisnews.org/articles/07/06/22/1546217.shtml 

[For Grins] Nina  Katchadourian’s  Book Sorting System
http://college.lisnews.org/article.pl?sid=07/06/21/1626238&from=rss 

More Library 2.0
http://marketing.lisnews.org/article.pl?sid=07/06/20/127217&from=rss 

OCLC Capcon’s new digs (and classes)
http://www.oclc.org/capcon/membership/news/Look_out_ahead%E2%80%94new_s.htm 

Garisson Keillor’s “Love Letter to Libraries”
http://lisnews.org/articles/07/07/12/1820253.shtml 

VuFind (from Steven Cohen’s Library Stuff)
“VuFind is a library resource portal designed and developed for libraries by libraries. The goal of VuFind is to enable your users to search and browse through all of your library’s resources by replacing the traditional OPAC” (via)
http://www.vufind.org/ L

ink to Library Conferences to 2015 – from Jessamyn @ Librarian.net
http://homepage.usask.ca/~mad204/CONF.HTM 

Just for Grins – Die-Hard Harry Potter Fans for sure!
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/19/AR2007071900484.html 

For those with too much time on their hands
http://ask.metafilter.com/67303/How-do-you-refer-to-a-female-librarian-in-Welsh 

More from Steven Cohen’s Library Stuff
Webinar (August 7, 11 to 12 EDT) for those who want to learn more about RSS (including creating one)
http://librarycareers.blogspot.com/2007/07/free-your-content-rss-for-libraries.html 

A perspective on the place of technology initiatives in libraries:
http://www.librarian.net/stax/2088/do-library-users-care-about-our-new-initiatives/ 

BISAC replacing Dewey?
http://www.techsource.ala.org/blog/2007/07/raising-arizona.html 

New Trends in People Search
http://www.librarystuff.net/2007/07/25/finding-people/ 

Librarian News Podcast – “Uncontrolled Vocabulary”
http://uncontrolledvocabulary.blogspot.com/ 

E-book “Revolution”
http://lisnews.org/articles/07/07/24/1428234.shtml 

An official “Ink Library”
http://lisnews.org/articles/07/07/24/1426259.shtml 

Challenges of preserving digital documents – UK
http://geek.lisnews.org/article.pl?sid=07/07/24/1424243&from=rss 

C-Net gives library resources a boost
http://lisnews.org/articles/07/07/24/1423230.shtml 

Gaming in Libraries – some controversy
http://www.librarystuff.net/2007/07/24/gaming-at-library-questioned/ 

Institutional Reports for CCDO: National Library of Medicine

National Library of Medicine
Report of Activities
ALA Annual Meeting
June 2007

2007 edition of the NLM Classification

The 2007 edition of the NLM Classification was released on April 19, 2007. It incorporates all additions and changes to the schedules and index from April 2006 through March 2007. The PDF version, originally launched October 2006 has been updated with 2007 classification data. The 2007 edition also includes a revised animated tutorial (Quick Tour) on searching the NLM Classification. For more detailed information see: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/pubs/techbull/ma07/ma07_classification.html

Bibliographic Standards and Cooperative Cataloging

Resource Description and Access (RDA) Development
NLM continues to represent the Medical Library Association in the review of Resource Description and Access (RDA). Major activities included review of the draft of chapter 3. Overall we found the organization and structure of the chapter very difficult to follow, and that it did not meet its stated goal of being written in clear, plain language.

CONSER standard record
After the date for implementation was left unresolved at the midwinter CONSER meeting, NLM went ahead with an early implementation of the CONSER standard guidelines on March 1, 2007. NLM did not contribute to or edit records in the CONSER database between March 1, 2007 and June 1, 2007, although all our serial records were made available in OCLC. Special coding in the records will allow OCLC to identify the records and add them to CONSER now that the community as a whole has adopted the new standard. According to the catalogers, the new rules were learned easily and quickly, and in general things have been going smoothly. Even seasoned catalogers did not feel that any essential information was lost, and that the new rules would cut back quite a bit on cataloging time, once everyone was comfortable with them, especially for original records. Decisions as to which fields to edit on copy cataloging are still somewhat problematic but not more so than the problems encountered with AACR1 records (of which there are still large numbers in OCLC).

Cataloging Efficiencies

Title abbreviations
Rather than independently assigning title abbreviations for every indexed serial title, beginning March 1, 2007 NLM accepts the abbreviations assigned by the International Standard Serial Number (ISSN) Centre, with only slight modifications to conform to NLM standards. The ISSN key title abbreviation is stripped of all punctuation except for parentheses around a title qualifier. The first letter of each word is capitalized. Subfields are not included in the abbreviation. Because NLM uses a single record approach in its cataloging, ISSN qualifiers for specific formats are dropped.

Discontinuation of 242
Starting March 1, 2007, NLM is no longer providing cataloger-supplied translated titles (MARC 242 field) in bibliographic records for materials written in Chinese, Japanese, and/or Korean. Chinese, Japanese and Korean are the only non-Roman scripts for which NLM has historically supplied translated titles. The ambiguity of transliterated titles in these languages is less of a problem now that users can view and search the vernacular scripts in LocatorPlus®. Translated titles in records created prior to March 1, 2007 will remain in the records.

Medical Text Indexing (MTI) Experiment

NLM completed a pilot project to determine the feasibility of using the Medical Text Indexer tool (MTI) for subject cataloging. MTI has been used for article indexing since 2002. Rather than being a totally automated process, the tool provides indexers with a list of suggested subjects for an article, and the human indexer can select the appropriate terms. Because indexing and cataloging needs are somewhat different, the Cataloging Section worked with the Lister Hill programmers to adapt the default settings and best configure MTI for cataloging.

The pilot project had two phases. The first looked at already cataloged records and compared the MTI suggested subjects with the ones that had been assigned by a cataloger. The second phase had two catalogers (one very experienced and one new) who were given new material to catalog along with the suggested headings from MTI. In both phases, it was found that MTI matched the headings selected by catalogers about 61% of the time. The study did not report how often MTI suggested headings missed by a cataloger in phase I, but in phase II both catalogers agreed that MTI sometimes included appropriate headings they had not considered. Both catalogers asserted that the headings supplied by MTI still needed human review, and subject analysis time was not necessarily shortened. The newer cataloger did feel he was exposed to more of the vocabulary available in MeSH that he otherwise might have known. Unsurprisingly, MTI did better with technical/clinical material than with social sciences or historical items. Somewhat surprisingly, including tables of contents and summary/abstract data for MTI analysis did not improve the results over using titles alone.

NLM plans to continue its investigation of MTI as an assist to catalogers. Further work is needed to see if the product can be directly connected to Voyager for real-time subject assistance, rather than the batch processing mode that was used for testing. While we do not see fully automated subject analysis replacing human judgment, MTI is potentially a valuable training tool for new catalogers and an assist for experienced ones.

Consolidation of Approval Plan for Eastern Europe and Former Soviet Union

A major enhancement to the NLM approval plan for Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union was implemented in early 2007. After many years of discussions, our current vendor East View Information Services has agreed to expand coverage to include Hungary, Czech Republic, Slovakia, and the nations of the former Yugoslavia. This means that NLM will be able to consolidate under a single vendor its acquisitions program for Albania, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Estonia, Georgia, Hungary, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Moldova, Montenegro, Romania, Russia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Serbia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan – in sum, all of Eastern Europe with the exception of Poland for now. The result is expected to be greater efficiency in acquisitions with less selector time needed to identify publications from these countries and acquisition sources in this region and more timely acquisitions via the extensive resources of the vendor.

Recompetition of Serials Subscription Contract

The RFP for the serials subscription contract, to be awarded for subscription years 2008-2012, was posted from April 23-May 29. The contract covers periodical subscriptions for the U.S, Canada, the U.K., Western Europe, Australia, New Zealand and selected other countries. The review process is underway.

Journals Working Group

NLM has appointed a working group to address the increasing incidence of publications with differences between the electronic and print editions of journals. Differences include such things as additional articles in the online edition that are not included in the print edition, summary articles in the print edition with full articles only in the online edition, supplemental data only available in the online edition, publishing pattern variations, pagination differences for the same article and language differences. NLM is examining its role in helping users identify the differences in content as well as the potential impact on ILL practices and on NLM’s mission to serve as an archive of biomedical literature.

Electronic Resources Management System

NLM continued to review the fields available in Meridian and make final decisions about usage. In particular, a determination was made that the DLF ERMI data elements related to interlibrary loan are not sufficient to meet NLM’s needs. Therefore, NLM decided to redefine several fields in Meridian in order to achieve the desired granularity on ILL rights. These local changes were documented and forwarded to the ERMI II group as a recommendation for enhancement of the ERMI standard. Version 2.0 of the Meridian software was recently installed on a test server. Planning is underway for additional licenses and titles to be added to the database after version 2.0 has been implemented in production.

Voyager

NLM upgraded to Voyager 2006.2 at the end of March. This new release included a number of outstanding bug fixes for NLM. The final graphics created as part of the LocatorPlus Redesign project were implemented in LocatorPlus in the upgrade. An electronic link to WorldCat was also implemented in LocatorPlus records.

Open WorldCat Participation

NLM is now a participant in Open WorldCat, and the LocatorPlus public interface has a link in each bibliographic record to allow users to “Find other libraries that own this.”

Digital Repository Planning

In January 2007, the NLM Digital Repository Working Group (DRWG) completed the development of functional specifications for an NLM Digital Repository and identification of policy and management issues related to the creation, design and maintenance of the repository. By identifying high level functional requirements and policy considerations, the DRWG endeavored to outline an infrastructure and bring a standards-based approach to the management, preservation and access of NLM’s existing and future digital resources. The NLM Digital Repository is needed for access to and preservation of digital content not covered by PubMedCentral and the NIH CIT Videocast project. A Digital Projects Technical Group has been established to coordinate the development of a digital repository and provide a technical review of LO digital projects. The requirements have been approved and the next step is an evaluation of commercial and open source software identified by the DRWG to identify a commercial system or open source software (or components of both) to be used for the repository.

Disaster Planning

NLM has created a Library Operations Continuity of Operations Plan (COOP) Working Group charged to develop a plan to ensure the performance of essential functions during an emergency and to provide for resumption of normal operations when the emergency has ended. The plan will become a portion of the overall COOP plan for NLM and is being considered in terms of existing plans for collection emergencies and defined essential functions. From the technical services perspective, the components being considered include the receiving, storage and routing of library materials during processing interruptions and the tasks that support the indexing process. The continuity of indexing is one of the NLM responsibilities to provide systems and services to health professionals, researchers, educators, students and the public, as well as for the member libraries in the National Network of Libraries of Medicine. Technical Services staff, in cooperation with the Indexing staff, has already revised the procedures for the essential task of XML citation review to support indexing so that this task can be accomplished with a totally online workflow. Designated essential staff in TSD has been equipped for mandatory telework upon activation of emergency procedures. The working group has been charged to complete their Continuity of Operations Plan by December 31, 2007.

PC Skills Assessment and Training

Technical Services Division developed and administered a PC Skills Assessment Survey. Supervisors and computer support staff had identified a core set of computer skills for all staff to master in order to do their tasks and keep up with changing technology. The survey asked staff to access their computer knowledge and expertise on a variety of computer tasks in various software packages with the intention of identifying and assessing PC skills training needs. The results were given to each supervisor and staff member and are being used to identify preferred training methods and resources for priority training.

Personnel

The Technical Services Division has created a Systems Office in the Office of the Chief, under the direction of Jennifer Marill, Deputy Chief, TSD. Five systems librarians from the TSD sections (Cataloging, Selection & Acquisitions, and Serial Records) have been transferred to this centralized Systems Office. The Systems Office is responsible for managing the Voyager ILS, LocatorPlus, Meridian Electronic Resources Management System, Encompass IndexCat and other related systems. TSD systems librarians also support other Library Operations’ Divisions and functions, including indexing and interlibrary loan. Systems Office staff will also be involved in the development of the NLM Digital Repository. The integrated nature of these systems led TSD management and systems staff to determine that TSD and the Library would benefit from the formation of this new Office operating at the Division level. The new structure will provide improved coordination of systems needs and activities to help the Library meet the challenges we face in this changing digital environment.

Alice Jacobs, Assistant Head of Cataloging, retired on March 31, after 31 years of service with NLM. NLM will be recruiting to fill this position in the near future.

Over the past six months, the Selection Unit has been reduced by 50% with the retirements of four veteran selectors. We are currently in the process of recruiting for four selectors and are concentrating on individuals with the following language expertise: French, Russian, Japanese or Chinese. While the most recent vacancy announcement closed on June 7th, we plan to continue recruitment until all vacancies are filled.

The Serial Records Section is actively recruiting for two acquisitions librarians

Submitted by Dianne McCutcheon