New & Noteworthy

Citation

(2005), "New & Noteworthy", Library Hi Tech News, Vol. 22 No. 5. https://doi.org/10.1108/lhtn.2005.23922eab.001

New & Noteworthy

ConnoteaSocial Bookmarking Services for Academics

Connotea is a free online reference management service for scientists created by Nature Publishing Group. Connotea is a place to keep links to articles and web sites a researcher uses, a place to find them again, and also a place to discover new articles and web sites through sharing links with other users. By saving links and references to Connotea they are instantly on the web, available to the researcher from any computer, and the researcher can point friends and colleagues to them. In Connotea, every user's links are visible both to visitors and to every other user, and different users' libraries are linked together through the use of common tags or common bookmarks.

Connotea recognizes links to certain web sites, and automatically collects the bibliographic information for the article or book that is being linked to. In addition, a researcher can organize a personal collection of references and web sites by simply assigning tags – that is, categories or labels – to the links saved. A bookmark can be assigned as many tags as wanted, and the tags can be almost anything, including phrases. This is different from the conventional approach of organizing papers into hierarchical folders, and makes the collection much easier to navigate. It takes away the need to put an article in just one place, and removes the frustration of having to hunt through sub-folders.

Connotea was created by Nature Publishing Group's New Technology team. The ideas behind it come from del.icio.us, a general collaborative bookmarking service. Connotea takes this concept and adds some features to tailor it to the needs of scientists.

CiteULike is an online academic bookmark management service based on del.icio.us, developed independently to Connotea. CiteULike is a free service to help academics to share, store, and organize the academic papers they are reading. A tool specifically designed to work with academic papers, CiteULike automatically extracts the citation details to create a bookmark in the user's collection of citations. The user can export the collection of citations to either BibTeX or Endnote to build it into a bibliography.

Connotea: www.connotea.org/CiteULike: www.citeulike.org/del.icio.us: http://del.icio.us/

FAOSelf-Learning Module on Digitization and Digital Libraries Released

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) has recently released a self-learning module on "Digitization and Digital Libraries". This was developed jointly between FAO and Unesco with the support of the National Centre for Science Information (NCSI) at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc). This module is intended to train librarians and other information specialists in the conceptual and practical bases for the digitization of collections, and in the creation and provision of access to digital libraries.

This module is part of the Information Management Resource Kit (IMARK) initiative of FAO, which has been developing a series of interactive self-paced learning modules, related to information management since 2001 for delivery on CD-ROM (www.fao.org/IMARK/). The first IMARK module on "Management of Electronic Documents", which covers the collection, archiving, management and dissemination of electronic documents and associated images was released in November 2003 and has been received quite well, notably in the Asian region.

The "Digitization and Digital Libraries" module provides 31 lessons concerned with the creation and sharing of digital library collections. Lessons cover topics such as copyright issues, electronic formats for text and images, metadata and subject indexing, preservation of digital material as well as a comprehensive overview of the creation and management of digital documents. The module expands upon several of the topics covered in the module "Management of Electronic Documents" mentioned earlier. The 31 lessons (each roughly of 30-40 minutes learning time) are organized in six units: Unit 1: Conceptual Overview; Unit 2: Electronic Documents and Formats; Unit 3: Metadata Standards and Subject Indexing; Unit 4: Creation and Management of Digital Documents; Unit 5: Creation and Sharing of Digital Libraries; and Unit 6: Example of Digital Library Software – Greenstone. The module uses Flash and XML technology for retrieving and presenting the lessons.

In addition to the lessons themselves, the module provides the learners with access to an internal search function and a technical glossary, as well as with on-board and on-line reference materials, including relevant non-proprietary software applications and tools. The module also contains several additional resources, including Greenstone Digital Library software, three thesauri related to Agriculture and a digital imaging tutorial. The module CD-ROM is available free of charge.

IMARK web site: www.fao.org/IMARK/Digitization and Digital Libraries module: www.fao.org/IMARK/modEintro_en.htm

MCDU ProjectMARC Content Designation Utilization Project Under Way

The University of North Texas (UNT)-Texas Center for Digital Knowledge (TxCDK) has announced a project investigating the coding of information in MARC records from the OCLC WorldCat database. The Institute of Museum and Library Services is funding the project with a National Leadership Grant of $233,115. TxCDK Fellows Dr. William E. Moen and Dr Shawne D. Miksa, both from the UNT School of Library and Information Sciences (SLIS), are the Principal Investigators of this project entitled "MARC Content Designation Utilization: Inquiry and Analysis" (MCDU Project).

During the course of the two-year project, Drs Moen and Miksa will investigate the extent of catalogers' use of MARC 21 from an empirical perspective and will provide the first publicly available data on its usage. In the Z-Interoperability project, funded in 2003 by another IMLS National Leadership Grant, Dr Moen discovered strong indications that only 36 of the approximately 2000 MARC fields/subfields accounted for 80 percent of all utilization, and that less than 50 percent of the available fields/subfields occurred even once in the records. These preliminary findings have important implications for library catalogers, standards developers, and people involved in the machine generation of metadata. The Online Computer Library Center (OCLC) initially agreed to supply 1 million records for this project. After further discussions, however, OCLC agreed to provide the project with all of its approximately 55 million bibliographic records. This development will significantly increase the accuracy of the research results. The OCLC WorldCat database contains unique bibliographic records shared by more than 50,000 libraries in 84 countries and territories around the world. For this project, only those records which are created by OCLC member libraries and contain original cataloging will be examined. The MARC records will be placed into study samples based on format of the material and record date-of-creation. The format-specific samples will allow determination of content designation use among similar types of records. The date-of creation samples will intersect with project activities to document how MARC content designation use by catalogers has changed over time.

The project has three goals: to provide empirical evidence to document MARC21 content designation use; explore the evolution of MARC content designation for patterns of availability and adoption/use level; and investigate a methodological approach to understand the factors contributing to current levels of MARC content designation use and relationships with the cataloging enterprise.

The results of the research will be disseminated to the LIS community through periodical publication of findings, including a methodology that could be applied to similar studies of utilization of MARC or other metadata schemas. The MCDU Project group will also work on designating a set of "core elements" based on occurrence in the samples and comparison with PCC and FRBR initiatives core record recommendations. A database application containing MARC 21 content designation specifications is currently under construction that will allow for the analysis of trends and patterns. This tool will be made available to the LIS community after the project's completion.

Details of the MCDU Project can be found at www.mcdu.unt.edu

KOHA Version 2.2.2 Now Available

The new version of Koha (2.2.2) is available for download. Koha was the first open-source Integrated Library System (ILS). Developed initially in New Zealand, in January of 2000, it is currently maintained by a team of volunteers from around the globe.

Koha includes a full catalog, opac, circulation and acquisitions system. Koha 2.2 is more than 247,000 lines of code, developed by more than 30 developers (excluding translators). With the 2.2 version, Koha is now a mature product, with many features. It's used in more than 50 libraries including academic, public, school, and religious, and has demonstrated scalability (from one to eight branches, and from 1,000 to 300,000 items). For more details on Koha 2.2.2 read the Release Notes at: http://sourceforge.net/project/shownotes.php?release_id=294626

Koha demos: www.koha.org/drive/Download software: http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=16466

NISO Open URL Standard Now Available for Download

The OpenURL standard, NISO Z39.88 – 2004 The OpenURL Framework for Context-Sensitive Services, has been approved by the NISO Members and is available now for free download from the NISO site. ANSI approval is pending. In light of the importance of this standard to the community NISO is making this near-final version available.

NISO Standards web site: www.niso.org/standards/index.htm

NDNPNational Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP) Grants Announced

The Library of Congress and the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) have announced that six institutions have received more than $1.9 million in grants in the National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP), a new, long-term effort to develop an internet-based, searchable database of US newspapers now in the public domain. Two-year projects in California, Florida, Kentucky, New York, Utah and Virginia each will digitize 100,000 or more pages of each state's most historically significant newspapers published between 1900 and 1910. When completed, digitized newspapers will be made freely available through the Library's Web site.

As an outgrowth of the soon-to-be-completed US Newspaper Program, a coordinated effort by individual states to inventory, catalog and selectively preserve on microfilm local newspapers, the NDNP will eventually support projects in all states and territories to select and digitize significant newspapers published between 1836 and 1922.

The following six institutions received the first NDNP grants to digitize papers in their respective states from the first decade of the twentieth century: University of California, Riverside, $400,000; University of Florida Libraries, Gainesville, $320,959; University of Kentucky Research Foundation, Lexington, $310,000; New York Public Library, New York City, $351,500; University of Utah, Salt Lake City, $352,693; and Library of Virginia, Richmond, $201,226.

NDNP web site: www.loc.gov/ndnp/Technical guidelines: www.loc.gov/ndnp/ndnp_techguide.pdf

YaleTo Develop AMEEL

The Yale Library has announced that its proposal to develop A Middle East Electronic Library (AMEEL) has been funded at a level of $750,000 over four years. This grant was awarded under the US Department of Education's Title VI TICFIA (Technological Innovation andCooperation for Foreign Information Access) Program.

Under the four-year term of the AMEEL grant, which begins as of 1’October 2005, Yale library staff will lead and coordinate, in conjunction with publishing, library, and other partners around the world, a collaborative virtual library project that will make available important Middle Eastern resources, in a four-part initiative: it will: develop an infrastructure for digital content, from diverse sources (freely available as well as publisher licensed) to be integrated into AMEEL; digitize key journals on and about the Middle East, with particular emphasis on fully searchable Arabic texts; build and expand capacity for Arabic full text scanning into US and other libraries through workshops developed and led by experts in this area; and develop technologies and protocols to facilitate interlibrary lending between the USA and Middle Eastern libraries.

Key partners in this new initiative will include, among others: The Bibliotheca Alexandrina (Alexandria, Egypt), which has developed the most advanced Arabic OCR techniques in the world today); the Universitaets-und Landesbibliothek of Sachsen-Anhalt (Halle, Germany), with its advanced development of a Middle East portal including extensive journal tables of contents; JSTOR (New York, USA); and publishers such as Brill Academic Publishers (Leiden, The Netherlands); Multidata (Beirut, Lebanon); and Oxford University Press (UK). Other libraries in the USA and Middle East will collaborate on this project. The Yale Library is also adding its own staff and technology resources to this significant cost-sharing arrangement.

Project AMEEL is the logical next phase following the Library's currently funded (through September 2005) Title VI project, Online Access to Consolidated Information on Serials (OACIS). OACIS is a database of journal and serial holdings from a group of seven initial US partners plus a now-growing number of both domestic and international libraries. The OACIS database currently holds some 46,000 bibliographical records representing approximately 13,000 unique serials titles; it has become a key discovery source for students, scholars, and librarians seeking for information about serial titles, bibliographical information, and holdings searchable in both roman and Arabic alphabet (see www.library.yale.edu/oacis). Project OACIS will now serve as an integral part of AMEEL, enhancing content delivery to selected serial titles. Closer to the October launch date, project staff will develop an AMEEL web site.

Planning and Implementing Project MetadataFor Effective Resource Management

A paper by Marty Kurth, Greg Nehler and Rick Silterra entitled "Using Controlled Vocabularies to Manage Resource Relationships: The KMODDL Experience" was submitted to the Dublin Core 2005 conference. Written about the NSDL and IMLS-funded Kinematic Models for Design Digital Library (KMODDL) project metadata planning and implementation, it is a good example of what intelligent project metadata should accomplish. The preprint is available in the Cornell University Library DSpace collection.

The KMODDL exemplifies digital collections in which groups of objects are versions of the same resource and which resources are related to one another taxonomically. Other objects in the collection are supplementary materials that explicitly cite the primary KMODDL resources. To manage the complex relationships among KMODDL objects while maintaining the DC one-to-one principle, metadata developers established controlled vocabulary encoding schemes that linked related objects. The solution implemented enables users to find all versions of a resource and all supplementary materials that cite the resource in a single search.

KMODDL project: http://kmoddl.library.cornell.eduPreprint: http://dspace.library.cornell.edu/handle/1813/699

AMeGA Project Final Report Published

The Library of Congress is pleased to announce publication of the final report for the Automatic Metadata Generation Applications (AMeGA) project. The final report can be found on the Library of Congress web site for the Bicentennial Conference on Bibliographic Control for the New Millennium, which seeks to provide leadership to libraries and other information centers in confronting the challenges of networked resources and the web (http://www.loc.gov/catdir/bibcontrol/actionplan.html).

The AMeGA research project pursed three main goals:

1. 1.

   Evaluate the current automatic metadata generation applications (in the following categories: document presentation software, tools created specifically for metadata generation, and online library cataloging modules for creating metadata).

2. 2.

   Survey metadata professionals to get a consensus on which aspects of metadata generation are most amenable to automation and semi-automation.

3. 3.

   Compile a final report of recommended functionalities for automatic metadata generation applications.

The final report was reviewed and endorsed by the project's Metadata Generation Task Force (MGTF).

AMeGA Project web site: http://ils.unc.edu/mrc/amega.htmFinal report: www.loc.gov/catdir/bibcontrol/lc_amega_final_report.pdf

METALIS ServiceFor Open Access Literature in Library and Information Science

METALIS, a free web service, is a system of service providers that harvest metadata about papers in Library and Information Science from several OAI-PMH compliant repositories. Its main features are: a search tool with advanced search options, filters and sorting; and an experimental service for the creation of dynamic links to resources related to search results.

METALIS was created by Zeno Tajoli within CILEA's AePIC Team and is based on existing open source software.

METALIS is available at: http://metalis.cilea.itAePIC (Academic e-Publishing Infrastructures CILEA): www.aepic.it/CILEA (Consorzio Interuniversitario Lombardo Per La Elaborazione Automatica): http://www.cilea.it/

Digital Broadband ContentNew Report from OECD

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)'s Working Party on the Information Economy Digital Broadband Content Panel has released a report on Digital Broadband Content, based on panel sessions and government presentations from a meeting in June 2004. The panel was designed to analyze and discuss changing digital broadband content value chains and business models and help identify new challenges and issues facing the development and delivery of digital content. Three sectors presenting different dynamic characteristics of digital content development and delivery were presented and discussed in detail: scientific, technical and medical publishing, music; and online computer and video games.

Report: www.oecd.org/dataoecd/53/39/34579763.pdf

Amazon.comAcquires BookSurge LLC

Amazon.com, Inc. has announced it has acquired BookSurge LLC, a leader in inventory-free book printing and fulfillment, based in Charleston, South Carolina.

BookSurge maintains a catalog of thousands of titles that can be printed on-demand and are available for sale on Amazon.com. BookSurge offers its inventory-free book fulfillment network to publishers through BookSurge Publisher Services and to authors through BookSurge Publishing. In addition, retailers, wholesalers and distributors can leverage the BookSurge Direct wholesale platform.

"Print-on-demand has changed the economics of small-quantity printing, making it possible for books with low and uncertain demand to be profitably produced," said Greg Greeley, vice president of media products for Amazon.com. "BookSurge makes it possible to print books that appeal to targeted audiences, whether it's one copy or 1,000. Our new relationship with BookSurge will provide Amazon customers an ever-expanding selection of titles that are not available through other channels. Thanks to print-on-demand, "out of print" is out of date."

Some examples of the variety of titles available on demand through BookSurge include foreign language books such as the Arabic-language version of the international bestseller The Da Vinci Code and Perez and Martina: A Puerto Rican Folktale, by celebrated Latina librarian Pura Belpre. In addition, BookSurge offers selections from New York Times bestselling author Robert Morgan, as well as popular non-fiction works, including books produced by the Museum of Modern Art.

Founded in 2000, BookSurge serves thousands of authors, publishers, retailers, distributors and wholesalers by helping to realize potential revenue on out-of-print titles by printing books and fulfilling book orders more affordably. BookSurge sells books worldwide through a robust Global Publishing System (GPS) software platform and a network of affiliates with fulfillment facilities worldwide.

www.booksurge.com/