RDA IFLA Satellite Conference Summary

Summarized on The Bib Blog (York University Libraries Bibliographic Services) by Tim Knight.

http://www.yorku.ca/yul/bibserv/blog/?p=172

(Cataloging Futures)

Reconceiving Research Libraries for the 21st Century

This new title from the Council on Library and Information Resources, No Brief Candle: Reconceiving the Research Library for the 21st Century, is composed of a series of provocative essays, the proceedings of a lively and informed symposium earlier this year in Washington, and a set of recommendations extrapolated from both. While several of the subject headings are familiar—scholarly communication, peer review, preservation of data, and e-science—the conclusions and recommendations are not. The consensus derived from these efforts was unambiguous in calling for more aggressive intervention to better structure and manage the challenges we face.

http://www.clir.org/pubs/reports/pub142/contents.html

(Library Link of the Day)

OCLC/RLG Partnership Highlights

Annual Highlights of the RLG Partnership and OCLC Programs and Research Now Available

Read this overview of significant initiatives undertaken from July 1, 2007 through June 30, 2008.

In the course of the year, staff from OCLC Programs and Research, along with hundreds of staff from RLG Partner and other institutions, invested their time, effort, thought and expertise across a broad range of activities described in our work agenda.

More information

2007-08 Annual Highlights Document www.oclc.org/programs/about/updates/2007-08annual.pdf (.pdf: 1.2MB/5 pp.)

Work Agenda www.oclc.org/programs/ourwork/

OCLC ResearchWorks www.oclc.org/research/researchworks/

(Lorcan Dempsey's weblog)

Metadata for Digital Collections Online Workshop

November 10-December 12, 2008

This five-week online workshop provides a substantial introduction to creating and managing descriptive metadata for digital collections in libraries, archives, and museums. It includes hands-on exercises in creating metadata for digital images using Dublin Core, MODS, and VRA. Participants will be introduced to commonly-used controlled vocabularies for digital collections, as well as to XML, OAI, metadata harvesting, mapping, and interoperability. The workshop will also cover metadata standards selection, project template creation, and documentation in the form of best practice guides and application profiles. No prior experience with metadata is required. Enrollment is limited to 30 participants.

Steven Miller is a Senior Lecturer at the UWM School of Information Studies. He teaches a graduate course in Metadata, has given numerous conference presentations and continuing education workshops on metadata, and has served as the Chair of the ALA ALCTS Metadata Interest Group and Co-Chair of the Wisconsin Heritage Online Metadata Working Group.

To read this and register:

https://www4.uwm.edu/sois/epayment/courses/index.cfm?a1=browse&notify=TRUE#pdi107

(OLAC-LIST)

Helpful Ideas for Batch Loading Vendor Records

In case you missed it at AALL in Portland, the blog Cataloging Futures, gave kudos to Yael Mandelstam's presentation on Loading Vendor Records:

"If you work with batches of vendor-supplied bibliographic records (or actually any type of batchloading of data), you'll want to take a look at Yael Mandelstam's presentation, Demystifying Batchload Analysis [pdf].

Via TS/OBS Hit the City of Roses"

Free Covers from LibraryThing

LibraryThing is making nearly one million book covers available for free. It is pretty simple coding to grab them. Thanks Tim et al.

Read more on the LibraryThing Blog

Open Library Environment Project

The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has awarded a $475,700 grant to the Duke University Libraries to lead an international team in the design of "a next-generation, open-source library system." The project, dubbed the Open Library Environment (OLE) Project, seeks to develop a "design document" for an alternative to commercial Integrated Library System (ILS) products.

Read more at: http://oleproject.org/

(Library Journal Academic Newswire)

OCLC Crosswalk Web Service Demo

OCLC Research Launches Crosswalk Web Service Demo

Developers who need to translate metadata now have access to a new demonstration service.

Developed by Senior Research Scientist, Jean Godby, and Consulting Software Engineer, Devon Smith, OCLC Crosswalk Web Service translates metadata records from one format to another and will process up to 500 records from all requests per user, per day. With the aid of the WSDL file, users can develop a client to access the service, which is available on the OCLC ResearchWorks Web site for an undecided duration.

The service was developed to handle the increasingly complicated interoperability needs of OCLC and the greater library community. It has been made available to the public to gather feedback on the API that developers use, the set of formats supported (specifically, what is missing from the set), as well as specific mappings, such as incorrect or missing mappings.

Developers translating metadata are invited to use OCLC Crosswalk Web Service and are encouraged to provide feedback.

http://www.oclc.org/research/announcements/2008-07-28.htm

(OCLC Abstracts)

ALA conference materials wiki

For finding ALA annual conference materials, here is the wiki:

http://www.presentations.ala.org/index.php?title=Main_Page

It doesn't seem to be a comprehensive collection though.