Announcing the Year of Cataloging Research Website

In response to "On the Record" (the final report created by the LC commissioned Task Force for the Future of Bibliographic Control), the American Library Association and the Association for Library Collections and Technical Services (ALCTS) are highlighting the need for research in bibliographic control by declaring 2010 the Year of Cataloging Research.

The Year of Cataloging Research website is now available at http://faculty.washington.edu/acarlyle/yocr/index.html. While the spirit of the Year of Cataloging Research embraces all research relating to bibliographic control (including metadata, classification theory , social tagging, etc.), the information posted on the Year of Cataloging Research website may be restricted to that specifically related to library metadata, cataloging, classification, and catalogs.


Posted by Allyson Carlyle on Autocat, March 3, 2010

This Book is Overdue!

You've probably already seen the reviews for This Book is Overdue!, the new book by Marilyn Johnson. Johnson apparently became interested in librarians when writing her previous book, The Dead Beat: Lost Souls, Lucky Stiffs, and the Perverse Pleasures of Obituaries and coming across the obituary for Henrietta Avram, the mother of MARC. By most accounts, an enjoyable read about a rapidly changing profession.

Westlaw shipments

A funny post from the Law Librarian Blog:

Some law libraries have been experiencing, ah, problems with West's shipping boxes. They're empty! Thanks to CRIV taking action, West figured out why.

Dear Colleagues:

I want to thank you for your recent comments alerting us to the issue of customers receiving empty boxes from us. In response to your feedback, we have examined our processes; following is a summary of the root causes and resolutions we have implemented.

We believe the primary reason for the empty cartons was inadequate carton glue. We have since worked with our adhesive vendor to implement changes to our packaging and shipping process to ensure the correct glue is available and properly applied.

We also found that the book feeder on the packaging line occasionally misfeeds books, causing empty boxes to be sealed and mailed. To remedy this, we installed an electronic eye on the machine to detect boxes without books and remove them.

Lastly, we contacted the United States Postal Service (USPS) to understand the USPS package handling equipment and processes that could impact the integrity of our packaging.

I appreciate the feedback we have received from this group and apologize for the frustration this issue has caused. Please know we take your comments seriously and are working to remedy this situation.

Anne Ellis
Senior Director, Librarian Relations
Thomson Reuters

(Emphasis added.)

Ha!

Open Bibliographic Data

Catalogablog reports that the Working Group on Open Bibliographic Data has a wiki to support their efforts. It's purpose is to:

1. Act as a central point of reference and support for people interested in open bibliographic data
2. Identify relevant projects and practices. Promote best practices as well as legal and technical standards for making data open (such as the Open Knowledge Definition).
3. Act as a hub for the development and maintenance of low cost, community driven projects related to open bibliographic data.

A further discussion of open bibliographic data can be viewed here. Apparently, there really are not many sources of open bibliographic data -- but if you think about it, that's not much of a surprise. The Library of Congress data is free of copyright within the United States, but not outside of it. I think the thing is, it's not an inexpensive thing to make a catalog













Discovered through Catalogablog.

User Experience (UX)

Amanda Etches-Johnson, who was asked to speak about User experience at the LITA Top Tech Trends at ALA Midwinter, discusses new trends in User Experience on her blog, Blogwithoutalibrary. Generally what she's interested in is the user experience of library websites, and particularly in the emotional experience, or sort of holistic experience, library users have when using our websites. What seems to be happening more and more is that users are coming to websites from mobile devices, and many websites now have special mobile versions for browsing with mobile devices. Since our catalogs are viewed as part of the library website, this is something for us to consider. How would our catalogs best work on a mobile display?

New Metadata Blog - Call for Bloggers

Below is a call for bloggers for a new Metadata Blog, which may also be of interest to our readers.

*Call for Bloggers: Information about Metadata wants to be Shared*   

Do you have an interest in metadata and digital library projects? Have you recently read a good article on the subject? Have you developed a new project or workflow? Have you attended a workshop or conference of interest to the community? Would you like to connect and get your name out to other metadata librarians?   If so, become a contributor to the Metadata Blog: http://blogs.ala.org/nrmig.php.  

The official blog of the Association for Library Collections and Technical Services (ALCTS) Metadata Interest Group has traditionally been used to advertise and report on events at ALA conferences.  We are expanding our focus to keep the metadata community informed throughout the year on related research, projects, and events.  Contributions can include summaries of articles or research, links to educational opportunities, calls for papers, descriptions of interesting projects, conference reports, requests for assistance, or anything else of potential interest to the community.  Posts may contain original content or link to existing content, as appropriate.   

What are the requirements to become a contributor? 

-Have knowledge, interest, or experience in metadata and/or digital library projects. -Be willing to write at least one post for the Metadata Blog during 2010 (more are welcome!) 

-LIS students and new librarians are encouraged to participate.   

If you are interested, contact Kristin Martin, Blog Coordinator for the Metadata Blog at kmarti@uic.edu.  Please provide some brief information on your background and ideas for contributions.  Initial posts to the blog will be reviewed prior to posting.  After that, contributors will be able to post directly to the blog as new information comes up to be shared.   

-- Kristin E. Martin 

Metadata Librarian 

Catalog Department (MC 234) 

2-390 Richard J. Daley Library 

University of Illinois at Chicago 

801 S. Morgan 

Chicago, IL  60607 

312-413-5052 

312-413-0424 (Fax) 

kmarti@uic.edu  

(AUTOCAT; reposted with permission)

RDA Toolkit will be available in June 2010

According to the RDA Online website, the RDA Toolkit will be available in June 2010.

In addition to including RDA, the RDA Toolkit "helps you navigate from AACR2 to RDA—the new, unified standard for resource description and access, designed for the digital world and an expanding universe of metadata users." 

Check out the website, which also includes detailed US pricing. At the bottom, pay special attention to last paragraph, with instructions to send email to rdatoolkit@ala.org to be added to a mailing list for information about free trials, special introductory offers, and product updates.