Preservation Week 2021

In 2005 the Institute of Museum and Library Services partnered with Heritage Preservation and performed the first comprehensive national survey of the condition and preservation needs of the nation's collections. With almost a quarter of the institutions surveyed reporting that they had no staff dedicated to collection care, the idea of Preservation Week was born to help libraries connect to their communities and promote the work that is being done to ensure the longevity of our shared collections. 

The last year has kept many of us from working with our collections on a daily basis, and the time for preservation work has likely been incredibly sparse. Which makes this annual awareness campaign even more important this month. So mark your calendars for April 25-May 1 and schedule the live (and free) webinars, check out the recordings from previous years, or take a look at the wealth of resources available and share them with your community. 

Here Come the Bots: Six Tips When Designing Your IR's Metadata for Improved Discoverability

Last week I attended a webinar about "the science of discoverability". Although it was aimed at librarians working with institutional repository (IR) content, it was an excellent reminder that the many best practices I followed as a web developer for our law school's Drupal site were applicable not only with repositories but also with LibGuides (and any other pages we wanted Google to find). Here are six tips to deploy when designing metadata for the bots and increasing your site's discovery:

1. Title Fields Are Important! In fact they are perhaps the most important field of any object or event metadata in your repository. Working as a web developer this was something we struggled with when other users would create webpages. The title did not always match or identify the content. Later on they inevitably call or email to ask why it isn't showing in Google's search results when they put in keywords that they think and assume will definitely retrieve their exact webpage that was literally just created - of course it doesn't work. Almost always the keywords they wanted Google to identify were not in their page title field (or URL). The same rings true for IR content. No matter how many other fields have the data or keywords, if the title doesn't it probably isn't good enough to be retrieved by Google (unless you have big bucks of course - then you can use Adwords to pay your way to the top of that results list as a sponsored item...but I doubt any of us have that kind of money for SEO, hah!).


2. HUMAN-Readable Is Better. This is not your library catalog. Your ILS is a (mostly) closed-off system. It was engineered by ONLY librarians who have strict cataloging rules passed down over decades of meticulous fine-tuning with a field for literally every-single-possible-bit of data. IR's are not an ILS. In the same way Google is not your OPAC. They do not and will never function the same way. Sure, you can use some of the same operators, and you may even form similar strings in each of the search bars. The difference is that Google's algorithm is not a 100% known entity. Most of Google's users are performing natural language searches. Your I.T. or metadata librarian's cannot get into Google's back-end and tell it what you want, what fields to provide searches for, what weight to give certain types of results, or how to display your results list. Google's algorithm not only likes but craves HUMAN-readable, NOT machine-readable. Craft the content in your fields for any given item, event, or landing page with this in mind. You really should design the data carefully. And the key here is not to overdo it! 


3. Don't Use Too Many Keywords. This relates to the last sentence of the last tip - don't overdo it. In addition to not getting overly wordy or technical in your fields, the field to especially watch out for is keywords. In Digital Commons there is a nice keyword field. When I first started adding content to our repository I no doubt went overboard with more keywords than I should have. Although too few could hinder discoverability, if the keywords are on point and you have two to four of them that are appropriate you will hit a sweet spot with Google's crawl. But beware of using too many. Google and other search engines will actually ping or potentially ignore your content (and in some cases as the webinar warned your entire site) for using too many keywords. Excessive metadata makes it assume this content isn't valid. So just be careful here. This doesn't mean you should never use more than four keywords. There may be occasions when less just won't cut it. Perhaps that one article or conference you just loaded is particularly interdisciplinary and really needs more terms. Keeping the majority of your content with three keywords or less will get search engines to take you more seriously and those few instances where you decided to use more keywords won't throw up red flags like twelve keywords for every single items in your repository would. 


4. Frequency, Consistency & Longevity. I can't count how often I was asked as a web developer when Google would crawl our site. This is a mystery to most everyone, and while you can request through some of Google's Webmaster Tools for a re-crawl there is no guarantee the speed at which that will happen. One thing is for sure, you will be re-crawled more often the more frequently and consistently you update any site, no matter what site it is. Long periods of no activity may result in flagging you as a dead site so regular adding or refreshing of content is the key here. Another related factor is longevity. This is simply the idea that the longer a site exists the more time it has had to be crawled, to appear in search results, and as a result to increase site traffic. Then the cycle returns to the beginning since the more site visits you receive from organic Google searches the more your site should rise in the results list as your site and its content becomes more closely associated with a variety of searches over time. Obviously a brand new site will take time to get there, but after many repeats of this cycle (with the help of your frequent and consistent care and feeding) this will happen naturally. 


5. Bots Like Quick Load Times. So since we don't really know when Google or other search engine bots will pay us a visit, how can we make sure that when they do they are finding us at our best? Load times are one big indicator. I know, I know... but there are SO many cool and flashy things we could embed into our content, right? Is that snazzy High-Res image of the latest guest lecturer too much for Google? What about our Issuu flipbooks of scanned symposia programs, or the YouTube video of the three hour panel? Each bit of multimedia needs a different approach here. If your IR system has native streaming this will help cut down on additionally embedded load times. If not, you may need to choose what is more important - the load time or the media keeping your traffic on your site. If traffic isn't a major factor, load times will increase by hyperlinking to the media instead of placing it on the page itself. The same could be true for embedded flip-book style PDFs. For images, as long as you use best practices for the proper resolution on the web you should not have to choose between a crisp, quality image and fast load times. Use the right format for image and other media files (choose MP3's for online streaming instead of WAVs of AIFFs). If you want or need to offer the highest quality original files to site visitors, hyperlink to that file's location instead of providing at their point of entry. This will keep load times up and still give visitors the option of access and retrieval. In the end, the faster your content loads, the more quickly it can be indexed. Bots are impatient - they are bots! Make them wait too long and they just keep moving. 


6. Site Maps Are Critical, Especially for "Dead" Collections. So your content is now in tip-top shape! It has excellent human-readable title fields and abstracts. It has good keywords, but not too many of them. You've even managed to build a beautiful page of content enhanced with multi-media, but you've been careful to follow best practices for these files and your load time is great. Now there is just one problem - this collection is an archive! It just so happens as a librarian you have created a collection of items that will never grow again because it is historical. How can you possibly be frequent and consistent with this set of data? Will Google eventually forget about you (even if the collection exists over a long period of time) because there is nothing to update? No! Not necessarily - this is where your site's skeleton, the trusty site map, comes into play. Depending on the system you are using a site map may be generated for you as you create new content. It never hurts to revisit this though. Particularly for sites that have been around over a long period of time, the site map (generated for you or created by someone else) may be pulling titles and other structural and organizational information that is either no longer accurate or appropriate, or perhaps it is just not as good as it should be. Revisit your site map every so often as a regular maintenance task. It is essentially an outline of your site and all that it contains, and as such can indicate where a collection or series title is not descriptive enough, is too descriptive, or is just not human-readable. Think back to tip #1 and #2 for human-readable fields (especially titles). Page summaries can help here as well. When you conduct a Google search, if a result appeared but had no description at all for the page are you going to take your chances with clicking through to that result, or are you more likely to choose the result that tells you what you will find there? Make titles, related page summaries for what it is about, and if possible even URL strings make sense and describe what you will find there. Adjust your sitemap and related descriptive data as needed, and monitor how your site (hopefully) rises in results over time, as well as how your traffic (hopefully) increases over time. 

Have more tips to share with TechScans readers that were not touched on here? What has worked for improving your website or repository's metadata, and how do you optimize your content for search engines? Share with us in the comments! 

GLA Conference Review: Workshop on Digitization for Small Institutions

A while back I did a post called What About Conferences? aimed at newer members as part of our "Quick Question" series. In that post I specifically talked about memories and experiences from state and regional librarian organization annual meetings. One of those (perhaps the organization I am most fond of!) is the Georgia Library Association. I have been actively participating in this state association affiliated with ALA, ACRL, and SELA since I attended my first GLC (Georgia Libraries Conference) in the fall of 2014. It has always been a welcoming and lively group with a crazy awesome mixture of library types and individuals.

Co-presenting at GLC 2019 with colleagues
Szilvia Somodi and Marie Mize.

What I love perhaps most of all about GLC is that you will find all levels of librarians there (not just "faculty-level" with "Librarian" in their title). The very best sessions I have attended often come from library staff. As a librarian who worked a few public libraries while studying librarianship, and as one with past positions which until recently were entirely "paraprofessional" or I.T. titles this is where the on-the-ground, behind-the-scenes knowledge and skills are found and shared: at the local events candidly. GLC isn't pretentious or intimidating like some conferences and their crowds can feel. It is also not overly techy like many I.T. and web developer conferences I have experienced where all you hear is jargon that feels distant and mysterious. There is a beautiful happy medium at GLC where you can network, actually learn, and find encouragement to follow your interests and grow as a librarian without judgement. It is here that my love of libraries grew stronger, although it took me a few years to get comfortable enough to sign up for one of the pre-conference workshops.

Table of recommended project management
software from DLF's awesome wiki.

This year I finally did it, and I am so glad that I did! The workshop held Wednesday October 9 in Macon,GA gave myself and my colleagues an excellent excuse to spend more time together. It was a long day but definitely worth the trek. Digitization for Small Institutions was presented from 9 am to 12 noon with a short break in the middle of the session. The two presenters opened by talking about the Digital Library of Georgia (DLG) and right away shared links to resources including a toolkit for Project Managers from the Digital Library Federation (DLF): https://wiki.diglib.org/DLF_Project_Managers_Toolkit. For folks new to using a project management tool, this wiki has an excellent table of recommended software with summaries of each, links to them and pros and cons side by side. Many of the tools you expect to find are here (Jira, Asana, Trello, Slack, Google Suite) although I was personally disappointed that KanbanFlow was not included (insert sad-face emoticon here), there were a few I had not yet heard of or tested out which is ALWAYS exciting.

Photo from my messy notes of a favorite, useful visual.

In the first hour I quickly learned more about DLF, DLG and DPLA (Digital Public Library of America). This was an extremely interesting portion of the workshop that served as the backdrop for the rest of the session's more detailed "how to" segments. Although I had heard of and visited each of the aforementioned DL sites before it had been quite a while since I had taken a moment to just learn more about them and familiarize myself with the "why" of each site and their respective purposes. This seemed particularly relevant after I returned from the conference as we prepared for Open Access Week just a few weeks later. I did not realize how many wonderful resources DLF made available for free online. The project manager toolkit wiki is invaluable, and even if you are not working on projects that will eventually feed up into a DL site, the kit contains so many best practices and tips that it could be useful for many types of digitization projects. One such best practice was this 5-step process (as seen in my messy note photo here): 1. Selection & Planning, 2. Metadata Creation, 3. Prep & Scanning, 4. Post-Processing (crops & edits), 5. Ingest & Preservation (into institutional repository). Before we had a short intermission the attendees were divided into break-out groups of 3 to 4. In this form we discussed why we were there, what projects we were undertaking and what our role was at our institution. Another takeaway takes me back to what I love so much about GLC: there were more staff than librarians in attendance, and a surprising number of public library or museum attendees.

Slide dissecting "Title"

For the rest of the workshop we were shown workflow charts (I LOVE a good visual aid for wrapping my head around a process and grasping a project's big picture) and given what might as well have been a micro-course on metadata terms with a focus on descriptive data, and specifics on Qualified Dublin Core. There was even a little LinkedData talk! What was most helpful about this section were the slides that included specific examples of Title fields. You know a session is worthwhile when you can take that nugget of info back and start using it immediately at work when you return. This was that particular nugget for me!

Hands-on Digitization Station

I was able to share in my breakout group and with the entire group of presenters out loud the challenges of a certain project I have been collaborating on in our library for properly and efficiently archiving thousands of photographs. Lucky for me our project is dealing with media that is already digital, and I already have a space that exists and is ready for hosting the images and metadata (Digital Commons). It was super cool to hear the stories and challenges of others, including what types of media they are digitizing, organizing and archiving to make accessible to their patrons. Not everyone has a repository in place, and not everyone has the staff or tools to achieve their goals right away. This workshop also provided a hands-on station to practice digitization before you left the room. I love that the session enabled everyone, even those interested in the topic (lots of MLS students were there too) but not currently working in a place or role that allows them to get their hands dirty to do just that!

I left the workshop feeling inspired and with an added confidence for the project waiting for me back in the office. Many of the tips I gained from the workshop I am currently utilizing this very week. I had such a wonderful experience that I will certainly sign up for future pre-conference workshops next year! In particular I have enjoyed taking part in GLA's interest groups like Technical Services and Information Technology, and their division sponsored activities like the Academic Library Division, the New Members Round Table Division, and the Paraprofessional Division. What local, state or regional organizations would you recommend to AALL TS-SIS and OB-SIS members who may be from the same area of the States that you are? Share with us in the comments below and link to the association, group or conference!

Preservation Week April 21-27

Preservation Week, April 21 – 27, is drawing near.  Law librarians play a key role in preserving legal information and scholarship for the benefit of future generations.  In a print environment, preservation may be as simple as protecting the binding of a book, repairing a ripped page, or ordering multiple copies of a well-used title.  With the birth and growth of digital documents, the task becomes more complex and difficult to achieve, especially for smaller institutions and establishments.  Without adequate resources to undertake the needed work, digital legal information becomes especially vulnerable to technological obsolescence and potential degradation over time. 

In 2003 attendees at a conference sponsored by the Georgetown University Law Library and the American Association of Law Libraries recognized the challenging landscape and the need to establish long-term archiving and preservation support to institutions charged with overseeing legal collections.  To address the concerns, conference participants established the Legal Information Preservation Alliance (LIPA).

 In 2005, LIPA commissioned a white paper, Preserving Legal Materials in Digital Formats.  In 2006, members released the first Strategic Plan with an updated version following in 2009. These documents laid the foundation and created a structure for the consistent development of new projects and services for member libraries.

Today, LIPA is a non-profit consortium of over one-hundred academic federal, state and public law libraries dedicated to the preservation and accessibility of legal information through collaboration, education, and advocacy.  Ventures include LawArXiv, Law Review Preservation Program, Legal Information Archive, and PALMPrint.  Information professionals will find a list of digital preservation resources on the website, as well as a BLOG featuring preservation tips.

LawArXiv One Year Anniversary Report

It hardly seems like it's been over a year since we posted about the launch of LawArXiv. LawArXiv now houses nearly 700 open access legal articles. The organization has published a One Year Anniversary Report.

Some of the highlights from the report:

• 89% of the submissions to the repository are from Cornell, one of the developers of the platform
• The majority of the submissions deal with intellectual property law
• A process for batch uploading of articles was developed in April 2018

Goals for the coming year included:

• Adding the ability for institutions to use their branding on their submissions
• Setting up subject-based email alerts
• Adding a data field for the institution of the article author

Digital Scholarship Guide

One of the project the Labs team at the Library of Congress worked on in 2017 was developing a guide for digital resources. The guide was rolled out in 7 posts this year on The Signal, but is now conveniently available as a single document, the Digital Scholarship Resource Guide.

This document is a fairly comprehensive look at what digital scholarship is and how to get a project off the ground, from digitization basics to file storage and preservation to document analysis and assigning metadata to analysis projects with digital data.

If you'd prefer the original posts, here they are:

1. Why Digital Material Matters
2. Making Digital Resources
3. So now you have digital data...
4. Text Analysis
5. Tools for Spatial Analysis
6. Network Analysis
7. People, Blogs and Labs

Long-term Survival of PDF/A Files

PDF/A is widely marketed and regarded as a preservation file format. However, a recently published article, “PDF/A Considered Harmful for Digital Preservation” by Marco Klindt serves as a prudent reminder that the PDF/A file format is not a comprehensive solution for preservation in itself.  

For digital information to exist in the long term, the data that comprise the information content needs to remain discoverable, machine readable, and renderable for human consumption. If preserving digital content means that we are planning for the potential reuse of data, a computer needs to be able to read and extract this information in the future. However, there are significant challenges to preserving PDF files in the distinction between what the human eye can read and what a machine can interpret and extract.  

PDF/A is intended to serve as the long-term archival version of PDF files. However, as the author notes, while PDF/A is marketed and widely adopted as a preservation format, “comprehensive policies regarding the use of PDF in archives seem to be rare” and “using PDF/A as a container for files complicates preservation workflows and might be considered an additional risk.” PDF documents preserve the visual appearance, structure, and format of the original document, but this comes at a potential cost for the reusability of data. A PDF/A document created at Level A (accessible) conformance is designed to improve a document’s accessibility through the use of tagging to markup the structure and content of a document, which in turn should help support both visibility and reuse. However, in its current version, PDF/A-3 still presents multiple challenges.  

Klindt discusses the risks and shortcomings through observations of existing inadequacies and challenges with the creation and reuse of PDF/A documents. The risks identified here undermines confidence in the suitability of PDF/A for long-term preservation. A few of the challenges discussed include impediments to text and content extraction in addition to information loss during the creation and conversion process. It is worth noting that while the author acknowledges PDF/A validation issues has been largely addressed by the creation of veraPDF, an open-source PDF/A validator, he argues that validation is a “necessary condition” but does not mitigate risks to future reuse of content. 

An understanding of these risks and shortcomings of PDF/A for preservation purposes underscores the need for comprehensive strategies and policies at the institutional level to safeguard digital content within a flawed archival solution. There are a number of useful, previously published resources on PDF/A cited in this article, including the National Digital Stewardship Alliance (NDSA) report on The Benefits and Risks of the PDF/A-3 File Format for Archival Institutions, and a National Information Standards Organization (NISO) Information Standards Quarterly article, “Preserving the Grey Literature Explosion: PDF/A and the Digital Archive”.  The PDF/A-4 standard is expected to be published sometime in 2018. 

2017 DLF Forum and NDSA Digital Preservation

In October, I attended the 2017 Digital Library Federation (DLF) Forum and the National Digital Stewardship Alliance (NDSA) Digital Preservation conference for the first time. The core theme of the 2017 Digital Preservation conference is “Preservation is Political” but both events touch on the preservation of cultural heritage material and digital information through political changes and across boundaries.

Jason Eiseman wrote an excellent blog post on both affiliated events for the Law Librarians of New England (LLNE) blog so I will not provide another recap here. If you are also interested in viewing recordings, slides, notes, and photos from the events, in addition to keeping up with the latest Forum newsletter, the DLF has posted links to these resources in its November 22, 2017 Blog and News post, DLF Forum Recap and Working Group News. The post highlights Forum activities of all active DLF working groups. I will just highlight here the work of a few of those groups potentially of interest to TS members.

At the DLF Forum, I attended the Assessment Interest Group (AIG) meeting. This group is very welcoming and encourages anyone who is interested in getting involved to take part—there is no membership requirement. Of particular interest to TS members may be the AIG subgroup, Metadata Assessment Working Group. The Metadata group is currently working on developing a framework for assessing descriptive metadata, building a repository of metadata assessment tools, and creating a clearinghouse of metadata application profiles. More information about the group can be found on their wiki page and information on their current projects can be found on their toolkit page.

Another group of potential interest is the Government Records Transparency and Accountability Interest Group. During the group’s Forum working lunch meeting, members discussed planning for future projects and creating subgroups around issues related to sharing public information, education, advocacy, documentation, and potential special projects. The interest group will be making plans for its participation in the second annual Endangered Data Week.

Other groups of potential interest to TS librarians include the Linked Open Data Zotero Group and Born-Digital Access Group. DLF groups of interest to librarianship in general include the Digital Library Pedagogy Group, Technologies of Surveillance Group, Labor Working Group, and Project Managers Group. You can learn more about all working groups at the DLF Groups page.

Disaster Resources for Cultural Heritage

The fall brings us hurricane season and extended drought conditions have led to what feels like a never-ending wildfire season. But this year has brought us more than the natural disasters that we "expect." Earthquakes and flooding have also brought recent devastation to North America. In many places the recovery efforts are still focused on survival essentials. In the weeks since these disasters have hit there have been numerous resources shared for when efforts can turn towards our cultural heritage. Current President of the Society of American Archivists, Tanya Zanish-Belcher, has compiled a list of resources to assist in funding recovery project dealing with libraries and archives. Check out her blog post for more details. 

Preservation of Electronic Government Information Project (PEGI)

A recent article in Against the grain highlights PEGI - the Preservation of Electronic Government Information Project.  This project is a two year initiative designed to address the growing awareness of the "serious ongoing loss of government information that is electronic in nature." Participants include the Center for Research Libraries, the Government Publishing Office, the University of North Texas, the University of Missouri, and Stanford University.

Historically, the print production workflow for government information helped insure that content was sent to NARA, GPO and depository libraries for preservation. Now that most government information is disseminated digitally, production workflows are variable, resulting in a larger volume of  "fugitive" publications.

According to the PEGI project narrative, the focus of of the project is "at-risk government digital information of long term historical significance." The project proposes focusing on "activities of triage, drilling down into agency workflows ... and undertaking advocacy and outreach efforts to raise awareness of the importance of preserving digital government information."  The project intends to undertake a comprehensive environmental scan, provide recommendations for information creators, and create and educational awareness and advocacy program.

A final goal is to create a PEGI Collaborative Agenda to identify collaborative actions to "make more electronic government information public, preservable, and preserved in multiple environments that include distributed sites in academic libraries and other heterogeneous locations that are indexed, contextualized and usable."

Open Access Legal Research Repository, LawArXiv, Launched

The movement toward open access continues in legal research with the launch of LawArXiv.  LawArXiv will provide provide open source, open access archives for legal research. This non-profit venture seeks to provide platform that is owned and controlled by the scholarly legal community. LawArXiv will accept preprints and post prints where the author has the copyright on their work.

The LawArXiv repository was developed jointly by the Legal Information Preservation Alliance, the Mid-American Law Library Consortium, NELLCO, and the Cornell Law Library, with the Center for Open Science providing the technological infrastructure via its Open Source Framework. The COS platform also serves as a preprint service, allowing organizations to control their branding, licensing requirements and taxonomy.

COS has established a preservation fund of $250,000 to ensure the archive will survive for at least 50 years should the COS be forced to curtail its operations.

For more information, see the COS press release or visit the  LawArXiv site.

Who's Responsible for Digital Preservation?

Many libraries are currently being restructured and rethought to support new campus goals, in response to concerns, or as staffing levels change. That doesn't mean that our core functions change - we're still here to describe materials, provide access to items in a variety of formats, and assist or manage the preservation of materials. What is less clear as we move forward is who is really responsible for what, especially when it comes to digital preservation. Should that the library handle it or should it fall under the realm of the IT department, a different department within your institution, or even an external department or company? These questions are hard enough to answer, but as we take on new roles, both comfortable and unfamiliar, finding the solution has become even more challenging.

To help answer the questions Harvard Library's Digital Repository Service (DRS) has recently produced and shared documentation of how the management of digital assets is being handled. There is a blog post available describing the process of developing documentation and the full document is available on the DRS wiki.

Review of the Recommended Formats Statement

The Library of Congress has initiated its annual review of the Recommended Formats Statement and is again calling for feedback. The Statement was initially written in 2014 and after several years of updates this year the process will take on a more focused approach.

Concerns about file formats have dominated the conversation in the past, so there is a specific request for the review of metadata including the potential incorporation of the work of Federal Agencies’ DigitalGuidelines Initiative (FADGI) and the Library of Congress' archiving of podcasts. An additional focus this year is to review the coverage of Websites, as this was the first year for inclusion, and Software and Electronic Gaming and Learning. If you have feedback on any of these topics, or a different aspect of the Statement, please send your comments to the appropriate party by March 31 as revisions will begin in April.

Ensuring a Future for the Digital Scholarly Record

Recent decades have brought significant changes to the way we store scholarly research. The printed end-product is no longer guaranteed, nor is it necessarily what the researcher is looking for. Many law journals are following the trend in academia and moving to a predominantly, or solely, digital format. With this transition comes a change in thinking as to the best way to manage the archives of these journals and ensure that there is a scholarly record for the future. The Keepers Registry at the University of Edinburgh “acts as a global monitor on the archiving arrangements for electronic journals.” The registry strives to identify and work with archiving agencies who have taken on the stewardship of the electronic journals and serials – the aptly-named “Keepers”— and create a network to preserve them for the future.

The Keepers Registry works with the understanding that no single institution can do this on their own and stresses the importance of a collaborative effort. The group meets to address the growing concerns of its members and to help shape the vision for preserving and ensuring perpetual access to this digital content. This past summer, after a meeting of Keeper institutions, a plan was developed to tackle this international challenge: Ensuring the Future of the Digital Scholarly Record.  

To read further commentary on The Keepers Registry, see Mike Ashenfelder’s article in The Signal.

Fall Fashion from .gov: A New Look for the Library of Congress and a New View of Government Open Source Projects

Source: https://www.flickr.com/photos/artcomments/382733093

Cold weather inevitably means trading out summer garb with new looks and new fashions for autumn and winter, and this year .gov is getting in on the action with a huge homepage redesign for loc.gov as well as the launch of a new repository site for federal agencies open source projects that gives us a peek behind the curtain at their custom codes.  So let’s celebrate our own mini .gov fashion week with a closer look at both of these projects as they strut down the catwalk…

Library of Congress Homepage Redesign

The web team at the Library of Congress has been hard at work transitioning their online collections into a new, more consistent format that’s both mobile friendly and allows for faceted searching. To help promote and encourage access to all of this content, they’ve created an entirely new homepage for loc.gov that is more dynamic and offers more ways to highlight their extensive collections, services and programs. 

Highlights include:

• A top carousel that displays topical content and will be updated monthly
• A trending section that includes top searches, recently published blog posts and featured items
• A section about “Your Library” that gives you information for planning a visit, provides access to online reference services, and lists current exhibitions and upcoming events
• A free to use and reuse section towards the bottom of the page that features items from the digital collection that are freely available for you to use in your own projects

To learn more about the homepage, check out their recent blog post or go directly to the new homepage.

Code.gov

The White House Office of Management and Budget recently launched code.gov to serve as a repository for federal agencies’ open source projects and to serve as a one-stop shop for exploration, improvement and innovation on the existing code for a variety of government platforms. The code and resources on this site can also be used by other government agencies to assist in implementing new policies, designing metadata schemas to build code inventories, and creating successful open source projects.

The code of this site is a part of the new federal source code policy, which requires agencies to release at least twenty percent of their custom code as open source. Currently, there’s almost fifty different projects available, organized by agency, and more will be added in the coming months.

To learn more about this project, check out fedscoop.com’s recent post or go directly to the site itself.

Review of OAIS (ISO 14721)

The ISO standard for an Open Archival Information System (OAIS) Reference Model will be up for its 5 year review in 2017. This standard lays out the framework for an archive that will maintain the long term preservation of information and make this information available to a designated community. More information about OAIS is available from the Society of American Archivists’ Glossary of Archival and Records Terminology.

To prepare for this process, which involves making revisions to ISO 14721 and the identical text in the Consultative Committee for Space Data Systems (CCSDS) documentation, at 650.0-B-1. The process of revising these standards is complex, so the review process has already begun. If you would like to take part in the review, or just keep yourself appraised of its progress, you can access the information and documentation at the OAIS five-year review website.

Project COUNTER Wants to Hear More from You about Hidden Metrics!

With the increasing diversity of scholarly communication systems providing us with a constant influx of new ways to share information with one another, search out content and access materials, traditional usage statistics may fall short in telling the story of the value of research and scholarship – from the perspective of those conducting the research and producing the scholarly pieces, those providing online access to these works, and those using the associated usage statistics to inform collection management decisions and calculating cost per use.

Publisher’s content can be scattered across multiple platforms, including institutional repositories and scholarly social network sites as well as aggregators such as EBSCO and ProQuest, so single platform usage metrics may be limiting.  Additionally, alternative metrics such as likes, shares, tweets and citations on Wikipedia can communicate important information to both consumers and providers.

In response to the landscape changes that result in increasingly hidden usage, COUNTER is working with Information Power Limited to undertake research into a new method of reporting called “Distributed Usage Logging” which enables publishers to provide reports on “total usage” regardless of where that usage happens. Such reports could also provide more details in the emerging altmetrics field, such as shares and tweets.

At this point, COUNTER needs your help!  They’d like to discover what additional data would be useful to YOU, as librarians, institutional repository managers, publishers and vendors.  So take a moment to fill out their survey and let your voice be heard. It consists of short question and should take no more than ten minutes to fill out.

https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/K5HC8B3

I reached out to Lorraine Estelle, Director of COUNTER, and she provided me with some background information about the project as well as a link to the following slideshow presented at the Fall SSP Seminar on September 16, 2015 at Washington DC:

CrossRef Distributed Usage Logging Pilot from Victoria Rao, MS

For additional information about hidden usage and metrics from a law librarian perspective, check out what some of our AALL colleagues have to say:

• Assessing Altmetrics: Why law librarians (and law schools) should care about altmetrics. Mark Popielarski, AALL Spectrum, 19:2 (2014) http://www.aallnet.org/mm/Publications/spectrum/archives/Vol-19/No-2/altmetrics.pdf
• Altmetrics: How to For Using the “Invisible Metric”. Katie Brown, AALL Annual Meeting presentation, 2014 http://www.slideshare.net/KAtieBrown1/altmetrics-how-to-aall-2014
• Altmetrics: Documenting the Story of Research. Collister, Lauren B. and Timothy S. Deliyannides, Against the Grain, 28:1 (2016) http://www.against-the-grain.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/fea_collister_deliyannides_v28-1.pdf
• Telling the Story of Research: Altmetrics at Pitt. Collister, Lauren B. and Timothy S. Deliyannides, AALL2go webinar, 2016 http://www.aallnet.org/mm/Education/aall2go/webinars/2016/aallwebinar201609.html

Be sure to respond to the COUNTER survey by October 15^th!  

Your responses will help formulate developments in this area of work, and results will be shared in summary format on the COUNTER website.

Watch the Librarian of Congress Ceremony Live Tomorrow!

14^th Librarian of Congress Incumbent, Carla Hayden
Image from Wikipedia

The Library of Congress (LC) will stream Carla Hayden’s swearing-in on its YouTube channel on Sept. 14 at noon EDT. Hayden, who will become the 14th Librarian of Congress, will take the oath using the Lincoln Bible from the LC’s collection. The video will have closed captioning.

This historic ceremony marks not one, but two milestones: Hayden is both the first woman and the first African-American to serve as Librarian of Congress.  

Want to learn more about the journey?  Check out this round-up of resources from the past few years:

·        Carla Hayden Swearing-In to Be Broadcast on YouTube – September 2, 2016
Library of Congress on the upcoming event

·        What the ‘First Black Woman’ Librarian of Congress Means – July 18, 2016
Time magazine on the milestone firsts of Hayden’s confirmation

·        Five Things to Know about Carla Hayden, America’s First Black, Female Librarian of Congress – July 13, 2016
Fusion.net offers a few interesting facts about Hayden and what her appointment means

·        The Library of Congress Gets a History-Making New Leader – July 13, 2016
The Atlantic’s take on Hayden’s confirmation

·        Senate Confirms First Black Female Librarian of Congress – July 13, 2016
The Hill’s take on Hayden’s confirmation 

·        “No” on Nomination of Carla Hayden to Be Librarian of Congress – July 13, 2016
Heritage Action for America takes issue with the president’s nomination

·        Obama Taps Baltimore Library Chief Carla Hayden to Lead Library of Congress – February 24, 2016
NBC News on Carla Hayden’s nomination by President Barack Obama

·        What Law Librarian Want to See in the Next Librarian of Congress – August 3, 2015
3 Geeks and a Law Blog on what the American Association of Law Libraries hopes to see in their next Librarian of Congress

·        Finding a Librarian of Congress for the Digital Age – June 23, 2015
Information Today’s take on James Billington’s retirement and the skills and expertise desired in his future replacement

·        Nation’s Librarian Champions Digital Age – December 23, 2014
Learn more about James H. Billington and his tenure at the Library of Congress

Prefer to watch instead of read?  Take a moment to meet President Obama’s Nominee for Librarian of Congress through this short video, posted on The White House’s YouTube channel in February of 2016.

Programming Ideas for AALL Austin 2017? Now Is the Time to Share Them!

As the TS-SIS liaison to the Annual Meeting Program Committee (AMPC) for Austin 2017, I'd like to remind everyone that crowdsourcing on the IdeaScale platform is now open for AALL members to submit program ideas for the 2017 annual meeting in Austin!

The platform can be accessed here: AALLAnnual Meeting Program Ideas.

In order to participate in crowdsourcing, you must create an IdeaScale account. Your AALL website credentials won't work and even if you used IdeaScale last year, you may still need to create an account to participate this year. I've used it myself and can promise that it's is super easy to add your own ideas and browse and vote for other ideas that strike your fancy. 

It's important to note that submitting program ideas on IdeaScale does not translate in to any obligation! Crowdsourcing is intended to help the AMPC generate a list of must-have program topics that the AMPC will commit to deliver next July in Austin. This is NOT the formal program proposal process, so don't be afraid to just submit a word, a run on sentence, a list -- whatever it takes to get your idea in the mix. 

The formal program proposal process comes later and TS's Professional Development Committee will be available to help you and serve as a resource during the process.

If you have any questions about the AMPC, the proposal process, IdeaScale, or anything related to programming for Austin 2017, please email me at amoye@charlottelaw.edu!

Say Goodbye to THOMAS…

From http://sd.keepcalm-o-matic.co.uk/i/keep-calm-and-say-goodbye-thomas-1.png 

THOMAS.gov, the online legislative information system, officially retired July 5^th, completing its multi-year transition to Congress.gov.

THOMAS originally came on the map in 1995, launched by the Library of Congress as a bipartisan initiative of Congress. Over the years, the system has been updated, but eventually its essential foundation couldn’t accommodate the desires and expectations of modern users – somewhat similar to our cataloging-world outgrowing the framework of AACR2 and beginning fresh with RDA. The Congress.gov system, launched in beta in September 2012, offers mobile-friendly access, single search across all collections and all dates, meaningful persistent URLs, faceted search, and other new features such as videos explaining the legislative process.

All available THOMAS data is available to users at Congress.gov, and both Thomas.loc.gov and www.thomas.gov now redirect visitors to Congress.gov. Although many THOMAS URLs will be automatically redirected, updating your links is a recommended best practice, as THOMAS URLs that are not redirected to a specific page will go to the Congress.gov homepage – so don’t forget to update your bookmarks, Libguide links and more. You can find a chart providing Congress.gov URLs for popular THOMAS pages as well as additional information about link updating and redirects at https://www.congress.gov/help/faq.  

Want to learn more about Congress.gov?  The Law Library of Congress offers webinar and in-person orientation overviews of Congress.gov focused on searching legislation and Congressional member information as well as highlighting new Congress.gov features. To register for a webinar, complete their Seminar Form here (http://www.loc.gov/law/opportunities/congress-form.php).