After the Ticer course Stephen Abram gave the same presentation in Rotterdam for a group of Dutch, mostly public librarians. This sessions was recorded by the infamous people from DOK Delft. Really good to have this available for all librarians. It is a must see wake up call.
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It was a well packed day at Ticer yesterday. 4 presenters making five presentations. I have tried to blog the first impressions live, but network difficulties –had to install VPN and more difficult things- prevented to post the first presentation immediately.
Stephen Abram, as could be expected, urged us librarians to wake up. After he started to speak he seemed unstoppable. So now and then he posed a rhetoric question, but hurried on without awaiting any responses. Stephen used quite a bit of exaggeration but I think that was valid approach. He was quite sincere in warning us that it is really five to twelve, or perhaps already four. If we don’t want to become redundant in the future we have focus on our user’s needs rather than our librarian’s needs and adopt Web 2.0 tools in our roster. His list of 25 technologies is a good starting point. These we should master and preferably on a mobile device.
Marshall Breeding was perhaps the biggest contrast in presentation style to the Stephen Abram that you could imagine. Small and shy, but with a clear voice. He asked us first to complete his library web cats survey. The most important trend from his presentation was the increasing popularity of Open Source Systems. He presented very clearly the different shades of openness that exist. Open source is by no means a cheaper alternative than regular integrated library systems. The place to keep an eye on in the near future is the workgroup of OLE
Birte Christensen-Dalsgaard radiated library enthusiasm in her presentation. At first she she broke down the fallacy of library knowledge of our users, since most library users are perhaps the Drive in users, that really want to spend the least of time in the library or with the library systems. And this systems needs to be broken down and rebuild from the ground to offer more relevant and better information to meet users needs. That we have to datamine and model our user’s behaviour as closely as possible is not a problem to her. Privacy laws might be prohibitive, though. In her list of examples is Summa of course. Towards the end she pleads for standards, stands and standards of course, since libraries can’t go on this alone, standards will help to cooperate more fully.
The remainder of the afternoon was reserved for Herbert van de Sompel. Perhaps the most interesting presentations of the day, but about applications that are only at the horizon of practical digital libraries today. It is good however that somebody from the digital library research world came to share some of their research with library practitioners. It was Cliford Lynch who once wrote “Digital libraries”: this oxymoronic phrase has attracted dreamers and engineers, visionaries and entrepreneurs, a diversity of social scientists, lawyers, scientists and technicians. And even, ironically, librarians – though some would argue that digital libraries have very little to do with libraries as institutions or the practice of librarianship.“. His point was really to watch the pages of his research groups since a lots will be coming out the coming months.
This year the time keeping and discussion rounds were less strict than last year. A bit of a pity since I really enjoyed those last year. Sylvia van Peteghem did a beautiful round up of the presentations at the end of the day though.
Lynch, C. (2005). Where do we go from here? The next decade for digital libraries. D-Lib Magazine 11(7/8). http://www.dlib.org/dlib/july05/lynch/07lynch.html.
Stephen Abram had the honour to quick off the second day at Ticer. During the introduction he put successfully the finger on the areas where (Academic) libraries are failing when they don’t cooperate and provide services that are geared towards the needs of users.
An important point he makes is the classical opposition of librarians, who are text based learners to graphical user interfaces. Libraries are equipped for documentary information whereas the whole world is changing towards a multimedia information world. Libraries are on most occasions not yet equipped or prepared for this change in information formats. Where they are shy of graphical user interfaces they are also shy of multimedia.
The point he makes in his extensive introduction is that libraries should interoperate on a global basis, and immerse people in content. All because
“The world is going to change with or without you….
Get ready”
He goes on to explain the importance of the generation y, the younger generation who can multitask, cooperate and are trained at problem solving rather than learning facts. Those are our future users with needs completely different needs. “Who is archiving computer games?” he asks the audience. Simulations are the most important way of teaching in military and defense industries. YouTube movies and Podcasts for research and learning are on many occasions much more effective for learning than textbooks. “Whose study collections include podscasts or vodcasts?” He challenges his audience.
A prediction from Stephen is that an iPod like device will contain all content ever created by 2020, i.e. the complete Web in your pocket. The future is mobile and we better prepare ourselves for this fact. The real question that we should be discussing therefore is what a Web 2.0 or Library 2.0 application should look like in a mobile environment.
Only after about 90 minutes het gets down to his 25 technologies that will transform Academic Libraries in the near future:
- Mobile
- Presence management – Twitter
- Tagging – Delicious
- Scrapbooking – Zotero, Connotea
- Personal Homepages
- Microblogging – Twitter (again)
- Social content – Wikipedia, Knol
- Public Social Networking – Orkut, Facebook, MySpace
- Private Social Networking – Plaxo, LinkedIn, Ning
- Social Network Integration – f8, opensocial
- e-Books and devices
- eLearning – Blackboard, Sakai, AngelLearning
- XML
- Cloud Software – Yahoo, Google, Bebo
- RSS groups and readers – Bloglines, Google Reader
- iTunes, MP3
- Podcasts & Screencasts
- Streaming Media
- SEO and GIS
- Federated Search
- Custom Search
- Next Generation content
- DRM
- up to you
- Humans as the Competitive Edge
An intended powerpoint, which is actually different from the one presented can be found at Stephens Lighthouse.
van de Sompel describes his project simply as doing Web 2.0 type of things with scholarly communication with additional stuff to add to the value chain of scholarly communication. It is geared towards the machine readable web.
The ORE project brings together URI, RDF and Vocabularies. It has all to do with the semantic Web. The beta version of ORE was published June 2008. Best part of that document is the primer to understand what the project is really about. The primer though, will be completely rewritten by the end of September to make it less technical.
More info at:
Van de Sompel, H. and C. Lagoze (2007). Interoperability for the Discovery, Use, and Re-Use of Units of Scholarly Communication CTWatch Quarterly 3(3): 32-40. http://www.ctwatch.org/quarterly/articles/2007/08/interoperability-for-the-discovery-use-and-re-use-of-units-of-scholarly-communication/
Birte starts her presentation with the vision that libraries can develop intelligent systems that are able to follow you, knows your different profiles and knows where you are. She is not shy of data mining to achieve this objective.
Federated versus Integrated search
In the definition of Dalsgaard Federated search is something that Metalib does. i.e. Searching different information silos simultaneously and merged the results on a single screen. Federated search was nice solution, but ranking is lously,
With integrated search all content is harvest and indexed within a single system and search by users with any kind of tool. With integrated search you are able to rank in theory much better. However, it will not come easy. You have to balance the relatively “thin” metadata catalogue records and fulltext information. Where will the catalogue record be of a journal like Nature, which is a very important term in the life sciences. It remided me of an article by Tamar Sadeh (2006) which uses different definition than use by Birte.
Federated search is typically associated with:
• Database approach
• Queries
• Based on Z39.50 protocol
• Structured
• “Exact” match
Integrated search is typically associated with:
• Search engine approach
• Natural language
• Large Volume
• Statistical approach
In Denmark they have carried out a data mining experiment with library lending data to develop a recommender system. To their own amazement they privacy policy police did not object, but wherever you are trying to data mine and model data on users privacy problems might crop up.
Interesting point she argues that we need different search systems for different research questions. A common search is a known item lookup, which is completely different from an explorative search on a new subject. Perhaps we need different search engines for these questions, and not expect one system to handle those very different questions.
Realizing that we actually need different search engines, we need to develop the library system as a modular approach.
Towards the end she gets back to the paradigm of Robin Murray: Synthesize, Specialize, Mobilize.
Reference:
Sadeh, T. (2006). Google Scholar versus metasearch systems. High Energy Physics Libraries Webzine(12). http://library.cern.ch/HEPLW/12/papers/1/
Christensen-Dalsgaard, B. (2008) The Intelligent catalogue. http://www.tilburguniversity.nl/services/lis/ticer/08carte/publicat/christensendalsgaard.pdf
Breeding noted that the investment into Open Source ILS was last year about 10% of the market and will be about 25% of investment this year in
As examples of OS ILS het mentions
Koha – commercial support from LibLime
Evergreen – Commercial support from Equinox
OPALS – commercial support from Media Flex
NewGenLib – Open Source ILS for the developing world.
Next he goes on to explain the different shades of green that can make a system Open Source. In many cases an open API layer allows libraries to configure and manipulate the system to their liking. Breeding pleads for the development of universal API that can applied towards different ILS. Het talks about the Berkeley Accords.
Rethinking the ILS
Traditional ILS model is not suitable for hybrid libraries where print and digital come together. The classical ILS focuses on Cataloging + Circulation + OPAC + Serials + Acquisitions, whereas nowadays integration includes link resolvers, full text, federated search and Electronic resource management. However the foundations of ILS were carved in stone in the 1965 and still stand their time. We should be pushing the standards constantly. The influence that Google has had on our users is that they expect to do full text searches. Libraries are still worrying about Metadata, users want the data.
The next generation ILS should be based on a Services Oriented Architecture wich consists of many small granular modules that complete the tasks.
Towards the end het makes mention of the Open Library Environment (OLE) project sponsored by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation where they are rethinking the next generation of library systems.
It took me some hassles, but I have finally a wi-fi connection in the lecture room at Ticer. Stephen Abram has finished his presentation which was schedulded for 60 minutes, but took some 90+ minutes. I will blog some of his presentation later, but in the mean time some of his planned presentation can be found at his blog. All the time of his presentation was well spent. Right now I am listening to Marshall Breeding on library systems.
In Norway they have build a national digital health library. And what is really special about it, everybody in Norway, I mean everybody with internet access, is allowed to read, browse and download all medical journals. It is based on the national contracts for higher education and with a small additional fee to cover the national access.
Think about it. If all higher education institutions cover the main costs already and there is not much of an additional market to be expected, why not. If in the Netherlands for instance a publisher of scientific journals has already contracts with the universities and research universities, than there is not much of a market left, so why not open up access to the IP range of the whole country.
It takes some courage to develop and implement such a model.
I was much impressed by the fact that they managed to do this. As information junkie I dwell on this idea.
Kjell also showed the implementation of the portal to host all these journals and databases and it was interesting to see that they used the federated search and clustering engine of Vivisimo.
If I now had only a Norwegian proxy server to my availability.
Theo van Veen explains that the new infrastructure for the European Library services infrastructure started about two years ago. Web users have become accustomed to Google, Del.icio.us and Flcikr type of application for quite some time already. That means that libraries have to lower their barriers as well to encourage the users to use the library systems.
Library systems have to perceive, interpret and respond to user requests. He illustrates these new services on a demo machine where he translates the abstracts of a record as an option from a menu that appears onmouse over. Het actually lists about 15 different type of services hat re available in this way. An option to is follow on service which triggers a speech service that reads out the translated abstract. All responses can generate new requests. His demonstrator is full of nice little tricks.
The user can make service descriptions themselves, but the systems should learn from the user interactions with the system. It will add some intelligence to the portal.
At the end he comes the legal issues. TEL can’t be held responsible for what users are doing, so they try to work with trusted partners.
The portal is in in a test phase available at http://dev.theeuropeanlibrary.org/vga/SRUportal/
A presentation by Library Waaijers on open access at the university. His presentation has been used in the Dutch congress to celebrate the opening of the library in February. His presentation is therefore already available.
Leo takes the research article as an example, and explains the publishing and peer review process. In which authors normally pay with handing over their copyrights. In a newer model authors pay in cash for the review process. In brief these are the two publishing models.
The quality construct of academic journals is grounded in the impact factors. And Impact Factors are debated to say the least. On the latter he quotes Michael Mabe from Elsevier:
“Extending the use of the journal impact factor from the journal to the authors of papers in the journal is highly suspect; ……[impact factors] are not a direct measure of quality and must be used with considerable care.”
He shows us the Sherpa/Romeo categorization of copyright contracts. Reasearhcers want their articles to be published in high impact journals, that have high circulation and easily reused and presented on websites and cv’s. Preservation also matter to the researchers.
According to Leo it is time to act. The publishers won’t act. Authors, research funders and policy makers are acting al have acted. In the powerpoint of Leo he mentions (and links) many of these statements.
Leo then draws a call for proposal for Wageningen University as follows.
“Annually, WUR produces N articles in (sub) discipline Y. A consortium comprising WUR, the Ministry of Agriculture, FAO, NWO wants to tender the reviewing process for these articles under the following conditions:
- The reviewing process must be independent, rigorous and swift.
- The reviewing may be anonymous, named or open (to be decided on).
- All N articles will pass the reviewing process.
- As a result of the reviewing the articles are marked 1 to 5.
- Articles with marks 3 to 5 are accepted for posting in the Wageningen institutional repository and for immediate open publishing in Wageningen Yield 2.0 (in WUR house style).
- Subsequently authors may publish their articles in any journal.
- In their appraisal procedures for staff and research projects members of the consortium will weigh articles with marks 3, 4 and 5 as if they were published in journals with impact factors 3, 8 and 15 respectively (figures are nominal and subject to disciplinary calibration).
- The national library of the Netherlands will take care of the long term curation of the accepted articles
Proposals for a three year contract should be sent to ……The allocation of the contract will be based on the best price-performance ratio.”
Really interesting, but wonder when the time is there we actually get this idea sold.
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