Archive for the 'Library2.0' Category

Social tagging workshop at ELAG

Published on May 16, 2008 in Library2.0. 0 Comments

In advance of the ELAG workshop on social tagging I wrote a little bit on a wiki site in preparation for the workshop participant as a kind of introduction to the subject. Actually it was my idea to lure a few more participants to the workshop, but the low number of participants was resolved in another way. Since the the points raised fit well in the context of this blog I thought it might be worthwile to repeat those points here as well.

The title of the workshop Social tagging is a combination of two terms, tagging and social bookmarking. At first sight they don’t seem to be the most spectacular subjects to ponder over in the ELAG workshops. But when the constituency of your library is adding tags to all kind of video’s, photographs and websites, wouldn’t you at least not give them the possibility to tag you library resources as well? Is it already possible in your library OPAC? Well, what about the bibliographic databases that your library licences, why can’t users tag those items yet? If they are tagging ‘your’ resources already the obvious questions to ask are, which items are they tagging and what tags are they using. What can we learn from our users.

Can we use those tags from to improve the recall and ranking from our library systems? How should these folksonomies be combined, enhanced, complemented with our formal taxonomies?

If your users can tag any item on your library system, where should the tags and tagged items be collected. Should it be a homegrown system like they have developed at Pennsylvania University  Library (Penntags), Harvard Law Library (H2O) or recently at Michigan (MTagger), should we advise to use the tools developed by the big scientific publishers such as 2Collab from Elsevier, Connotea from Nature or Scholar from Blackboard? Or should our academics and their precious labour on tagging be shared on common bookmarking sites such as del.icio.us, furl and the like. Is CiteUlike or Zotero perhaps the best solution after all?

When it comes to saving library items we supported already reference management programmes such as EndNote and Refworks. What is the relations between social bookmarking sites and the very popular reference management programmes. RefWorks is much better than EndNote at handeling websites, but they haven’t been developed as social bookmarking sites yet. On the other hand, Connotea and 2Collab are social bookmarking sites that have some, reference management capacity but they don’t stand up in the competition to EndNote en Refworks in this respect.

LibraryThing is perhaps an odd case in this workshop, but has some very intriguing features. Some libraries are already using the tags and recommendations from LibraryThing in their catalog. Interesting, I am not aware of an example where items tagged in a library catalog and those tags being used to enrich LibraryThing. Perhaps it exists already. I don’t know yet. LT is to some extend a special case of a reference management software. It is only used for books. An awfull lot of books. It is therefore quite easy to add your own books to LibraryThing. At our university we are all the time confronted with organically grown collections of books that are not part of the library collection. Consider the idea that those collections of books were entered in LibraryThing, that we could use the collected LibraryThings from our constituency to see if a book we don’t have in our collection is somewhere on campus, rather than rushing to the order book button. LibrarThing from our trusted users as a natural extension of our catalog and library collection?

Those are the five lines along which I hope to ponder the theme of this workshop with a group of smart library people over the next three days. Lorcan Dempsey wrote recently on this subject as a new bibliographic tissue.

Linking from Catalog of Wageningen UR Library to Google Books

Published on April 8, 2008 in Library2.0. 0 Comments

Previously I announced that we made use of the Google Books API to link to the full text whenever possible. We only experienced two problems with this service. First, the quite frequent Google spam warnings, which have been partially resolved but still keep coming back. Second, we did not have the required OCLC or LCCN numbers for the pre-ISBN books in our catalog.

Thanks to OCLC Nederland this problem has been circumvented successfully as well. OCLC build a service which we feed the PPN (Pica Production Number) , which is available in our catalog and returns the OCLC number. We use that number to feed it into the Google Books API which determines the kind of electronic availability of those books which results in the right link and text on the catalog record. Peter described this in more detail. Just another Hooray for OCLC, since the service is now working.

A few examples are:

Even when the full text is not available on Google Books, the service can be usefull. In the following example of Hogg, R. (1884) The fruit manual, the electronic version of the 1860 edition is available on Google Books rather than the 1884 edition we have in our collection.

It took actually quite some effort to find these examples. Perhaps an inidcation of our unique collection?

Avoiding Google spam warnings

Published on March 19, 2008 in Library2.0. 0 Comments

Did I report yesterday about the -nearly obnoxious- Google spam warnings from the implementation of the Google Book Search API. Today a work around was implemented. The GBS API is proxied from our library catalog.

It appears to be working well from the campus as well now.

Peter has more on it. We will keep monitoring this service though. Anybody having advice?

Implementing the Google Book Search API at Library Wageningen UR

Published on March 18, 2008 in Library2.0. 2 Comments

Last Thursday Google announced the Book Search API officially. That created some excitement in the Dutch Library world as well. The public library at Delft -those DOK boys from the Shanachie Tour- has implemented it in their catalog using the static linking options to Google Books.

Our application developers were also very interested in this new toy and made a first step of implementation for the books in our catalog based on the ISBN numbers available. Where we had Amazon book covers already available, kept these (eg. The genetic diversity of cacao and its utilization), on many occasions we already linked to the fulltext of books but could now include the Google Book cover to the catalog as well (eg: Return to resistance : breeding crops to reduce pesticide dependence). However the most interesting cases are of course those books available at the library, but which have now fulltext links through Google Books as well (eg: Illustrated guide to integrated pest management in rice in tropical Asia).

We have not reached the full potential of fulltext linking to Google Books yet. Our current implementation is based on ISBN only. So all books before 1965 have not yet been linked to Google Books. Our problem is quite simple, in the Netherlands we are not using OCLC numbers in the Central Dutch Catalog, albeit PICA is currently 100% part of OCLC. We are using Pica Production Numbers instead. So we have inquired in Leiden (OCLC the Netherlands), and they are inquiring in Dublin (OH) to get at PPN to OCLC conversion table or whatever. After we have resolved this little problem we van continue to link the older books as well.

Another problem we encountered is that the GB API results into spam warnings quite quickly and requires you to fill out a captcha. With the GB API implemented at in our catalog we run at the university quite quickly into problems. All traffic from the university has the same IP address, that of the firewall, which Google identifies quite quickly as illegal activity. I suspect other universities will experience similar problems. At home however, it works swell.

Eric Lease Morgan’s digital information landscape

Published on January 7, 2008 in Digital library and Library2.0. 0 Comments

During the Ticer’07 summerschool ‘Digital Libraries à la Carte’ I First met Eric Lease Morgan. He was an excellent instructor, making the techie stuff more palatable.

With much interest I noted one of his recent lectures cited in Current Cites. His lecture “Today’s digital information landscape” has some thoughtful points on future libraries, librarianship and above all catalogs. Here are some interesting quotes selected from the various parts of his lecture

On MARC and XML “MARC is a Gordian Knot that needs to be cut, and XML put into it’s place.”

On databases and indexes “They are two sides of the same information retrieval coin.”

On exploiting the network “A rising tide floats all boats. The tide of network computing is certainly upon us. Let’s make sure our boats are in the water.”

On institutional repositories and open access “Acquisitions departments are not necessarily about buying content… An acquisitions department is responsible for bringing collections into the library.”

On the next generation catalogs “More importantly, a “next generation” library catalog will provide services against the things discovered. These services can be enumerated and described with action statements including but not limited to: get it, add it to my personal collection, tag & classify it, review it, buy it, delete it, edit it, share it, link it, compare & contrast it, search it, summarize it, extract all the images from it, cite it, trace it, delete it. Each of these tasks supplement the learning, teaching, and research process.” And “Collections without services are useless. Services without collections are empty. Library catalogs lie at the intersection of collections and services.”

Morgan concludes with “The principles of collection, organization, preservation, and dissemination are extraordinarily relevant in today’s digital landscape. The advent of the globally networked computers, Internet indexes, and mass digitization projects have not changed this fact.”

Worth reading as a whole.

Reference
Morgan, E. L. (2007). Today’s digital information landscape. Infomusings. http://infomotions.com/musings/digital-landscape/.

Elsevier launches 2collab

Published on November 28, 2007 in Library2.0. 5 Comments

First a disclaimer. I have been playing around with 2collab for some time already since my library is a developing partner for Scopus (Elsevier). My first reaction to the initiative by Elsevier to develop 2collab was a bit hesitant. I agree with David Rothman that there are already plenty (scientific) bookmarking tools available. However none of the exisiting bookmarking tools have satisfied my needs to date. Certainly not del.icio.us, even though I use that quite regularly.

On my Dutch blog I have pleaded a couple of times already for thomson to develop a good hybrid between EndNote (or any other reference manager from their stable) and a bookmarking site like del.icio.us. They have come up with EndNote web, which I consider as a complete disaster. I love the ease of adding bookmarks to del.icio.us, but really need the quality output and versatility for each and any “journal style” to produce a sufficient reference list of bibliographic references and websites alike. 2collab does a fair job at that. It is partly based in ScienceDirect and Scopus as well, and therefore imports easily from those two databases (of course the range of databases needs to e expanded). Apart from that they have those similar buttons which del.icio.us offers to import any websource from your web browser.

On the export site, 2collab shows some above average options as well. Albeit is is not a reference manager formatting for any journal style yet. They offer a RIS export, and that helps a lot. Of course Unalog and CiteUlike does that as well as well. At the end of the day we are therefore still dependent on EndNote (or any other reference manager) for producing the versatile output I need. But I do hope that Elsevier sees here some scope for further development.

Another question is of course the market Elsevier wants to address with a product like this. My impression is that social tools or bookmarking haven’t really taken on at the academy yet. So they are still way ahead of the curve. Interestingly, an investigation at the university of Amsterdam showed that most scientist cared about secrecy more and were not interested in sharing their resources whatsoever.

What I found interesting from the last developments in 2collab that they were expanding the networking opportunities as well. Making groups, adding profile information and sharing information. I know it is contradictory to what they found in Amsterdam, but for our students working in groups it would be a welcome tool. We only have to wait a short while before we will see the integration possibilities with other Open Social applications. I think, and hope.

I see definitely some interesting devlopments going on here. Elsevier 2.0 appears to be somewhere around the corner. They seem to have developed a better, more versatile bookmarking tool than most scientific bookmarking tools too date. If they keep up their commitment, it will be a very interesting tool to watch and play with and a company to watch too.

Some other reviews of 2collab are posted by SciLib and bbgm

RSS what a mess, publishers have made of it

Published on November 22, 2007 in Library2.0. 13 Comments

Web 2.0 is in vogue. Library 2.0 seems even hipper.

One of the consistent examples for a good 2.0 library is the implementation of RSS feeds. RSS-ify your news items, your latest acquisitions and more. A logical extension of a RSS-ified library is a feed for each and every journal in the catalogue. Perhaps not a good idea to make them for each and every journal yourself, but as an aggregator of services the e-journals catalogue is a good place to offer them. So far so good. Where do you get them? At the publishers sites of course. That is where the pain starts. I only whish there was some logic, some coherence, some consistency in the way publishers would offer RSS feeds for new journal content.

Some examples?

American Chemical Society publishes Journal of agricultural and food chemistry the feed looks like http://pubs.acs.org/wls/alerts/rss/jafcau some illogical journal abbreviation specifies the journal. With ACS you could have expected a RSS feed based on the CODEN at least. Let alone for ISSN.

Biomed Central publishes BMC Complementary and Alternative Medicine the feeds of most BMC journals are based on the journal title but in this particular instance the feed is http://www.biomedcentral.com/bmccomplementalternmed/rss/

Blackwell publishes Ecological Entomology the feed looks like http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/action/showFeed?ui=0&mi=0&ai=wn&jc=een&type=etoc&feed=rss, the jc=een refers to the journal under investigation.

Cambridge Journals publishes Experimental Agriculture the feeds is the following … Oops. Your can’t. You get the following message: To continue this action you will need to login to CJO with your username or password. If you are a new visitor please register here.

Elsevier has a similar problem as Cambridge has. You need to be logged in to the ScienceDirect platform to subscribe to some feeds. Many feed options, yes that’s true. But simple RSS feeds on new journal content is a bit more difficult than straightforward.

Oxford has a great journal in Annals of Botany. Oxford offers a range of feeds for the journal, but the current issue feed looks as follows http://aob.oxfordjournals.org/rss/current.xml, i.e. based on some sort of journal abbreviation.

Sage publishes amongst others the Journal of information science the feed is to be found at http://jis.sagepub.com/rss

Springer is the publisher of Scientometrics which RSS feed is to be found at http://www.springerlink.com/content/101080/?sortorder=asc&export=rss where the number in the feed has no relation whatsoever to the ISSN.

Taylor & Francis has amongst others the journal Acta Agriculturae Scandinavica, Section A - Animal Sciences which feed is to be found at http://www.informaworld.com/ampp/rss~content=t713690045. Don’t be mislead, the last number is not an ISSN. The ISSN of this journal is 0906-4702 (to be found is the XML page behind the feed)

Wiley Interscience publishes the Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology. It’s RSS is to be found at http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/rss/journal/76501873. It looks deceptive, but the number at the end is not the ISSN of course. Those are 1532-2882 for the paper edition and 1532-2890 for the electronic form.

So many publishers, so many different RSS feeds. Hello wake up! We as libraries are their customers. We have to make clear that this is not an acceptable policy. Of course we can wait for yet another player in the information provision chain to sort it out for us. But what is needed is some simple and logic reasoning. We don’t need to invent yet another DOI system or an open URL system. A basic URL for a journal’s feed should look like this:

http://<base url>/<ISSN>/feed

Where the base url is something like the url of the publishers or aggragtors platform. Something like www.springerlink.com or www.sciencedirect.com. The ISSN is preferably the paper issn -since that is available in most catalogues. If not that an e-issn is required. And the feed should end like <feed>, wether RSS 0.92, 2.0 or Atom. Deceptively simple, yet not a publisher has thought this up.

Come on publishers agree with each other and standardize on a standard for journal content notifications.

After Penntags, there is Pennvibes

Published on November 13, 2007 in Library2.0. 0 Comments

Meredith Farkas blogged about Pennvibes a day or so ago. A library environment based on Netvibes, iGoogle and Pageflakes. So far nothing online apparently. Nothing? A keen colleague of my has made his favourite Pennvibes page already. Please note the addition of my Dutch blog on that page. Isn’t it wonderful?

hattip: Hubert