New & Noteworthy

Citation

(2007), "New & Noteworthy", Library Hi Tech News, Vol. 24 No. 8. https://doi.org/10.1108/lhtn.2007.23924hab.001

New & Noteworthy

Open Library is Now Open

Aaron Swartz, Tech Lead for the Open Library project, has announced the launch of the Open Library demo site. The goal of the project is to build the world's greatest library, then put it up on the Internet free for all to use and edit. The project team has been working for several months on creating ThingDB, a brand new database infrastructure for handling millions of dynamic records; writing Infogami, a new type of wiki that lets users enter structured data; setting up a search engine (powered by Solr) to look through it all, and making the resulting site look good.

The Open Library demo site allows visitors take a guided tour of the site, try a sample search, view the full text of books (when available), examine the project's technology architecture, and subscribe to Open Library e-mail lists. Registered users are invited to join in building the Open Library, by helping to collect book data, and in designing and promoting the site.

Open Library demo: http://demo.openlibrary.org/

VUFind Open-Source Library Catalog Browser

Andrew Nagy of Villanova University announced in July 2007 the release of a beta version of their next generation library catalog browser, VuFind. It is open-source code under the GPL and hosted on Sourceforge. They had been working on the application for almost a year and for a few months had been working with some local schools to test the application and begin to build some install scripts.

The project website describes VuFind as a library resource portal designed and developed for libraries by libraries. The goal of VuFind is to enable users to search and browse through all of the library's resources by replacing the traditional OPAC to include: Catalog Records; Digital Library Items; Institutional Repository; Institutional Bibliography; Other Library Collections and Resources.

Currently out of the box, the software works with the Voyager catalog, but they are working on adding additional drivers to work with other ILS systems including open-source ILS such as Evergreen and Koha. Volunteers who are interested in building an ILS driver are encouraged to contact the developers. The software runs on Apache Solr, an open-source search engine, which offers both scalability and performance.

The software is available for download from the project website and a live demo of the software is available.

VUFind website: www.vufind.org

Villanova University catalog: http://research.library.villanova.edu/

Institute for the Future of the Book Releases CommentPress

The Institute for the Future of the Book has released CommentPress, a free, open-source theme for the WordPress blog engine designed to allow paragraph-by-paragraph commenting in the margins of a text. To download it and get it running in a WordPress installation, go to the dedicated CommentPress site, which provides everything that is needed to get started. This 1.0 release represents the most basic out-of-the-box version of the theme. Improvements and new features may be expected in an ongoing process.

From the if:Book blog: "This little tool is the happy byproduct of a year and a half spent hacking WordPress to see whether a popular net-native publishing form, the blog, which, most would agree, is very good at covering the present moment in pithy, conversational bursts but lousy at handling larger, slow-developing works requiring more than chronological organization – whether this form might be refashioned to enable social interaction around long-form texts. Out of this emerged a series of publishing experiments loosely grouped under the heading "networked books". The first of these, McKenzie Wark's GAM3R 7H30RY 1.1, was a wildly inventive text whose aphoristic style and modular structure lent it readily to "chunking". into digestible units for online discussion.

In the course of our tinkering, we achieved one small but important innovation. Placing the comments next to rather than below the text turned out to be a powerful subversion of the discussion hierarchy of blogs, transforming the page into a visual representation of dialog, and re-imagining the book itself as a conversation. Several readers remarked that it was no longer solely the author speaking, but the book as a whole (author and reader, in concert).

Toying with the placement of comments was relatively easy to do with Gamer Theory because of its unusual mathematical structure (25 paragraphs per chapter, 250 words or less per paragraph), but the question remained of how this format could be applied to expository texts of more variable shapes and sizes. The breakthrough came with Mitchell Stephens' paper, The Holy of Holies: On the Constituents of Emptiness. The solution we found was to have the comment area move with you in the right hand column as you scrolled down the page, changing its contents depending on which paragraph in the left hand column you selected. This format was inspired in part by a WordPress commenting system developed by Jack Slocum and by the Free Software Foundation's site for community review of drafts of the GNU General Public License. Drawing on these terrific examples, we at last managed to construct a template that might eventually be exported as a simple toolset applicable to any text".

Possible uses that the developers see for this tool include: scholarly contexts: working papers, conferences, annotation projects, journals, collaborative glosses; educational: virtual classroom discussion around readings, study groups; journalism/public advocacy/networked democracy: social assessment and public dissection of government or corporate documents, cutting through opaque language and spin; creative writing: workshopping story drafts, collaborative storytelling; recreational: social reading, book clubs.

CommentPress: www.futureofthebook.org/commentpress/

Full blog posting of the announcement: www.futureofthebook.org/blog/archives/2007/07/commentpress_10.html

Phase 2 of Steve.museum Tagging Experiment Released

In July 2007, the Steering Committee of the Art Museum Social Tagging Project deployed the second phase of the steve.museum tagging experiment. The steve tagger open-source software is a key tool in their IMLS-funded study of the contribution social tagging and folksonomy can make to online access to art collections.

The group will be looking at variations of the interface to find out what encourages tagging and will be studying the results of tags, to see if they are: real words (using word net); terms from their discipline (using the AAT and ULAN); new to the museum (comparing to museum documentation); appropriate to the work of art (doing term-by-term review).

A demonstration of the tagging tool is available here: www.steve.museum/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=65&Itemid=66

Steve tagger: http://tagger.stever.museum

Steve museum project: www.steve.museum

New Version of Preservation Metadata Extraction Tool Available

The National Library of New Zealand (Te Puna Matauranga o Aotearoa) announced in August 2007 the open-source release of version 3.2 of its Metadata Extraction Tool. The Metadata Extraction Tool programmatically extracts preservation metadata from a range of file formats including PDF documents, image files, sound files, office documents, and many others. It automatically extracts preservation-related metadata from digital files, and then outputs that metadata in XML. It can be used through a graphical user interface or command-line interface.

The software was created in 2003 and redeveloped this year. It is now available as open-source software from (http://meta-extractor.sf.net/) under the terms of the Apache Public License.

The Library would be pleased to receive advice/feedback on new adaptors and/or functionality that the digital preservation community would like to see included in the tool. Questions can be sent to metadata-extract@natlib.govt.nz

To find out more: Visit the project homepage: http://meta-extractor.sf.net/ Read the information sheet: http://meta-extractor.sourceforge.net/meta-extractor-info-sheet.pdf Download the software: http://sourceforge.net/project/platformdownload.php?group_id=189407

OCLC to Redesign PURL Service

Online Computer Library Center (OCLC), Inc. and Zepheira, LLC have announced that they will work together to rearchitect OCLC's Persistent URL (PURL) service to more effectively support the management of a "Web of data". The software developed will be released under an open-source software license allowing PURLs and the PURL infrastructure to be used in various applications for public or proprietary use. OCLC and Zepheira are collaborating to extend the open and inclusive community of PURL users.

The PURL service has been hosted by OCLC for 12 years and provides persistent, stable World Wide Web (WWW) addresses for the international library and education community, government, business, and non-profit organizations, and private citizens. PURLs are Web addresses or uniform resource locators (URLs) that act as permanent identifiers in the face of a dynamic and changing Web infrastructure.

Instead of resolving directly to Web resources, PURLs provide a level of indirection that allows the underlying Web addresses of resources to change over time without negatively affecting systems that depend on them. This capability provides continuity of references to network resources that may migrate from machine to machine for business, social, or technical reasons. PURLs grew out of the long involvement of OCLC's Office of Research with the Internet Engineering Task Force Uniform Resource Identifier working groups.

Zepheira will redesign and build the new PURL service during 2007 to support greater flexibility, new features, and the scalability to face an increased demand for PURLs. The new service, which upgrades the existing services at purl.org, will also be hosted by OCLC. The new PURL software will also be updated to reflect the current understanding of Web architecture as defined by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). This new software will provide the ability to permanently identify networked information resources, such as Web documents, as well as non-networked resources such as people, organizations, concepts, and scientific data. This capability will represent an important step forward in the adoption of a machine-processable "Web of data" enabled by the Semantic Web.

"Persistence of identifiers is a key attribute for resources on the Web; W3C's Technical Architecture Group place[s] it at the core of the Architecture of the World Wide Web. PURLs have long been useful as a way of managing the reality of document migration; this update will support the identification of non-document resources important to the Semantic Web. As we continue to bring the capabilities of the Semantic Web to a wider Web community, it is crucial to be able to make consistent and stable references to non-networked resources. This update to the PURL infrastructure will help to make the Semantic Web a practical reality," said Ralph Swick, Technology and Society Domain Lead, W3C.

More information on the PURL service: www.purl.org

VRA Announces Release of New Core Version

The Visual Resources Association (VRA) announced that the release version of VRA Core 4.0 is now available. Core 4.0 Beta was released in December of 2005. After testing and input from the cultural heritage community, improvements were made that resulted in the release version.

For those who have already begun using Core 4.0 in its beta version, the Core 4.0 website contains a document entitled "Explanation of changes between VRA Core 4.0 beta version and VRA Core 4.0 release version".

VRA Core was developed and is maintained by the Data Standards Committee of the Visual Resources Association. Questions about VRA Core can be directed to datastandards@vraweb.org

VRA Core 4.0 Release version: www.vraweb.org/projects/vracore4/

VRA website: www.vraweb.org/

Making Digital Archival Images Available to the Visually Impaired on the Internet

Alliance Library System (ALS) is pleased to announce "Audio Description Illinois", a new website with information on how libraries can use various techniques to make digital archival images available to the visually impaired on the Internet. ALS received a grant from the Illinois State Library, a Division of the Office of Secretary of State, using funds provided by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the federal Library Services and Technology Act.

Grant funds were used to develop and provide training for libraries across Illinois receiving digital imaging grants. Although the training sessions have been completed, the website is a rich resource for any library or agency interested in audio description (AD). "Libraries and the web are hostile places for people with vision problems", stated Kitty Pope, Executive Director of the ALS. "Through audio description, they can enjoy the same access to historical photographs. The description can also enhance the experience for a sighted person viewing digital photos".

Audio description is the descriptive narration of key visual elements of live theatre, television, movies, and other media to enhance their enjoyment by consumers who are blind or have low vision. AD is the insertion of audio explanations and descriptions of the settings, characters, and action taking place in such media, when such information about these visual elements is not offered in the regular audio presentation.

The Audio Description Illinois website contains recordings, power points, and handouts from training sessions offered, examples of audio description of digital archives, best practices information, and a set of links to other resources on audio description. As the libraries which received grants do audio description for their photos, these will be placed on the website. Another website with examples of audio descriptions for digital archival photos is the Alliance Library System/Mid-Illinois Talking Book Center project "Illinois Alive! Early Illinois Heroes and Heroines: A Multimedia Montage" at www.illinoisalive.info/

Audio Description Illinois: www.alsaudioillinois.net/

LuraTech and LexisNexis Partner on Digital Historic Maps Project

LuraTech, Inc., a leading provider of open, ISO-compliant JPEG2000 and PDF/A technology, announced in June 2007 that they have been partnering with LexisNexis to create and publish the new LexisNexis US Serial Set Maps Digital Collection, using the LuraWave JP2 Image Content Server, Enterprise Edition. LexisNexis is expanding its Congressional archives with the US Serial Set Maps Digital Collection which will provide access to more than 56,000 map records containing nearly 70,000 individual map sheet images when complete. Almost half of these maps contain color or fine detail and are being scanned as high-resolution imagery from the originals.

The maps digitization effort, conducted in cooperation with the University of Maryland, is the latest step in LexisNexis' ongoing commitment to building a complete, repository of Congressional information. The maps in this new collection, some of which represent the first geologic, soil, and population maps of many states and territories, are being conserved, encapsulated, and scanned from the US Serial Set collection housed at the University of Maryland Libraries.

LexisNexis is using LuraWave JP2 Image Content Server (ICS) to both convert their digital, historic collections of more than 56,000 maps into the standard JPEG2000 image format and provide web-based viewing features for the maps without any barriers, additional software or browser plug-ins. LuraTech's ICS offers several advanced web-based viewing features that allow end users to pan, zoom, and turn pages.

"We chose the Enterprise Edition because we wanted more flexibility and scalability", says Andrew Laas, Product Manager for the LexisNexis US Serial Set Digital Collection. "LuraTech's open API allows us the flexibility to connect to our existing systems and databases, create our own workflow processes, and run across multiple machines. As a whole, LuraTech's solution is extremely scalable and provides us with a cost effective and robust way of delivering our JPEG2000 map collection images and associated metadata via the web to our customers".

Additionally, LuraTech recently debuted their new LuraWave JP2 ICS Standard Edition imaging software tool kit, which gives organizations with smaller digital archives the ability to create, store, manage and share High-Res JPEG2000 image stores, and deliver image and metadata content through customized websites without Plug-Ins or advanced programming skills. The Standard Edition offers the same engine as the Enterprise Edition, to convert JPEG2000 images to JPEG and delivers them "on-the-fly" to the end user's, browser-based viewing application. The simplified software tool kit allows the creation of customized viewing applications with advanced image-viewing features, such as panning, zooming and page turning, and eliminates downloading delays.

LuraTech website: www.luratech.com/

LexisNexis US Serial Set Digital Collection: www.lexisnexis.com/academic/serialset/

Espresso Book Machine: Digital to Paperback in Less than 15 Min

On Demand Books (ODBs) LLC is planning to become the first company to globally deploy a low cost, totally automatic book machine (The Espresso Book Machine), which can produce 15-20 library quality paperback books per hour, in any language, in quantities of one, without any human intervention. This technology and process will produce one each of ten different books at the same speed and cost as it can produce ten copies of the same book. As of August 2007, ODB has three machines deployed (one in a Midtown branch of the New York Public Library, one at the World Bank InfoShop in Washington DC, and one at the Library of Alexandria in Egypt).

ODB is also finalizing technology to access a vast network of content that can be accessed and produced via The Espresso Book Machine Network. The content of this library will reside in numerous locations from a multitude of sources. The system will accept multiple formats, and fully respect licenses and rights.

To see a video of the alpha Espresso Book Machine: www.ondemandbooks.com/perfectbook.mov

More information: www.OnDemandBooks.com

New Paper on University Publishing Available from Ithaka

In July 2007 Ithaka, an independent not-for-profit organization with a mission to accelerate the productive uses of information technologies for the benefit of higher education worldwide, released a report entitled "University Publishing in a Digital Age". This report is freely available for download.

Scholars have a vast range of opportunities to distribute their work, from setting up web pages or blogs, to posting articles to working paper websites or institutional repositories, to including them in peer-reviewed journals or books. In American colleges and universities, access to the internet and World Wide Web is ubiquitous; consequently nearly all intellectual effort results in some form of "publishing". Yet universities do not treat this function as an important, mission-centric endeavor. The result has been a scholarly publishing industry that many in the university community find to be increasingly out of step with the important values of the academy.

The paper argues that a renewed commitment to publishing in its broadest sense can enable universities to more fully realize the potential global impact of their academic programs, enhance the reputations of their institutions, maintain a strong voice in determining what constitutes important scholarship, and in some cases reduce costs.

This report was a collaborative effort between Laura Brown, the former president of Oxford University Press, USA, and Ithaka's Strategic Services group. It was sponsored financially by Ithaka and JSTOR. The Strategic Services group of Ithaka specializes in gathering, analyzing, and sharing information on topics at the intersection of higher education and technology.

Paper (pdf): www.ithaka.org/strategic-services/Ithaka%20University%20Publishing%20Report.pdf

Paper and Reactions: www.ithaka.org/strategic-services/university-publishing

Ithaka website: www.ithaka.org/

Dealing with Data: New Report on Data Curation Available from JISC

A new report "Dealing with Data: Roles, Rights, Responsibilities, Relationships" charts a practical path forward and will help all stakeholders plan the next steps in data curation. The report, by Dr Liz Lyon, Director, UKOLN and Associate Director, DCC, is strategically positioned to provide a bridge between the Research Information Network's high-level Framework of Principles and Guidelines for the stewardship of research data, and practitioner-focused technical development work.

Why is data such a big challenge? Whereas articles or books have, until recently, been fairly standard formats across disciplines, data have always been diverse, with some disciplines using rich textual sources, others using massive petabyte datasets, and still others using data that changes by the second. The range of stakeholders involved is wide, too, with important roles for funders, institutions, JISC, and others if the aim – well managed and usable data – is to be achieved.

The report reviews the variety of data, and arrangements for its curation and use, across disciplines. The work of funders, national data centres, institutional repositories, learned societies, and the Digital Curation Centre are all documented, with a view to identifying (as the report's subtitle says) the "roles, rights, responsibilities and relationships", that are emerging as important.

The report's recommendations offer a practical way forward in this area, where the sheer scale of the task can be daunting. JISC and others are already taking forward work in a number of the areas highlighted, such as the costs and benefits of data preservation, and offering discipline-specific guidance to the sector. Further work is planned, including the development of a "Data Audit Framework" to enable all universities and colleges to carry out an audit of departmental data collections, awareness, policies, and practice for data curation and preservation.

The final report is available at:

www.jisc.ac.uk/whatwedo/programmes/programme_digital_repositories/project_dealing_with_data.aspx

JISC Funds Registry of Licenses Project

The Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) Integrated Information Environment Committee has agreed to sponsor a pilot implementation of a license registry. The project started in March 2007 and will run for two years.

The project will establish the user requirements for a License Registry able to integrate effectively with the JISC information environment and then to design, build, test, and deploy a pilot based on the requirements. The registry will enable key elements of licenses to be made available so that a user can be provided with license information at the point of use without additional human intervention. A license registry is an essential element in the technical architecture necessary to support such functionality. The registry proposed will enable those significant license terms to be made machine interpretable.

The project will be managed by the University of Loughborough, in association with Rightscom Ltd, EDITEUR, Naomi Korn, the Open University, and Oxford University press.

Project description: www.jisc.ac.uk/whatwedo/programmes/programme_rep_pres/shared_services/project_license.aspx

DLF Releases Aquifer MODS Guidelines Levels of Adoption

The Digital Library Federation (DLF) Aquifer Metadata Working Group announced in July 2007 the release of the DLF Aquifer MODS Guidelines Levels of Adoption. The Levels of Adoption document is intended to supplement the Digital Library Federation/Aquifer Implementation Guidelines for Shareable MODS Records, released in November 2006 under the auspices of the DLF Aquifer initiative. The Shareable MODS Guidelines represent a record-centric view of Aquifer's goals, whereas it is often helpful to set priorities for metadata creation with a user- and use-centric view. The newly released Levels of Adoption document describes five general categories of user functionality that are likely to be supported by following specific recommendations from the Guidelines. It attempts to provide additional guidance to MODS implementers in the planning process by documenting what sorts of functionality is possible when certain elements of the Guidelines are followed.

These documents, together with a forthcoming FAQ for implementation, were written primarily to assist institutions preparing metadata for aggregation via the DLF Aquifer initiative, but the Working Group expects they could also be useful in preparing metadata for other aggregations, or for using MODS in a local environment. Comments on the Levels of Adoption are welcome and can be sent to any Working Group member. Contact information for Working Group members is available from the Levels of Adoption page.

DLF Aquifer Levels of Adoption: http://wiki.dlib.indiana.edu/confluence/x/q24

DLF Aquifer Implementation Guidelines for Shareable MODS Records: www.diglib.org/aquifer/dlfmodsimplementationguidelines_finalnov2>006.pdf

DLF Aquifer Initiative: www.diglib.org/aquifer/

The Role of Gaming in Libraries: New White Paper from Syracuse Library Game Lab

Many libraries are integrating gaming into their offerings for users, targeting younger members of the community. Libraries are bringing in teenagers through gaming programs who have not visited since their parents brought them to story time and many are being exposed to other library services in the process.

In order to explore games in libraries, researchers from the Syracuse University School of Information Studies, the American Library Association and the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana are working together. As the project grows, Director Scott Nicholson hopes that it will attract other researchers: "The advantage to having a common place to gather, both physically and virtually, is that it allows us as a group of researchers to explore gaming in libraries more effectively than if we were all working individually. Our connection with the profession through the ALA will allow us to focus on the most important issues with the scholarly rigor that good science demands".

Other researchers involved with the process are Ian MacInnes and R. David Lankes, both from the School of Information Studies at Syracuse University and David Dubin, from the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana. These researchers are tackling early problems of the development of a classification structure for games and determining the public good served by the library providing gaming programs. George Needham, VP of Member Services at OCLC, has been speaking on gaming in libraries for several years and brings a perspective from the largest worldwide library cooperative to the project. In addition, Jenny Levine, from the American Library Association, has considerable experience with gaming in libraries and will be bridging the research with the practice of librarianship.

To extend their current work, the researchers are working to secure funding to build a research laboratory at the Information Institute of Syracuse, where they can replicate the gaming programs currently put on in libraries and explores new program ideas. The researchers wish to explore the effectiveness of different types of gaming activities – not only video games, but also physical face-to-face games like board and card games – with different socioeconomic and age groups. In addition, the laboratory will be portable so that results can be tested in local libraries. The results will be disseminated to libraries as a guide to selecting gaming activities for a particular demographic profile and program goal.

The first white paper with the results of the public library survey has been posted. In this survey, the researchers contacted 400 public libraries and asked them about what type of gaming they support. This paper, The Role of Gaming in Libraries: Taking the Pulse, can be found at: http://boardgameswithscott.com/pulse2007.pdf

Library Game Lab at Syracuse: http://gamelab.syr.edu/

Three New Reports from Pew Internet Project on Online Video, Broadband Divide

A survey conducted by the Pew Internet and American Life Project finds that after exhibiting strong growth between early 2005 and early 2006, home broadband adoption in 2006-2007 continues to grow, though at its slowest rate in recent years. As of March 2007, 47 per cent of adult Americans say they have a high-speed connection at home, up from 42 per cent in early 2006. Among individuals who use the internet at home, 70 per cent have a broadband connection while 23 per cent use dialup. Home broadband adoption in rural areas, now 31 per cent, continues to lag high-speed adoption in urban centers and suburbs.

The growing adoption of broadband combined with a dramatic push by content providers to promote online video has helped to pave the way for mainstream audiences to embrace online video viewing. Three-quarters of broadband users (74 per cent) who enjoy high-speed connections at both home and work watch or download video online. Fifty-seven per cent of online adults have used the internet to watch or download video and 19 per cent do so on a typical day. The Pew Internet Project's first major report on online video finds that video viewers who actively exploit the participatory features of online video, such as rating content, posting feedback or uploading video, make up the motivated minority of the online video audience. Young adults are the most active participants in this realm: overall, just 8 per cent of adult internet users say they have uploaded video content online, while 15 per cent of internet users ages 18-29 have contributed video.

A related public policy paper from the Pew Internet Project examines recent Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) rankings of per capita broadband adoption rates showing the USA falling behind in the rankings, and discusses why it will be hard for the US to close this broadband divide.

Broadband Adoption in 2007: www.pewinternet.org/pdfs/PIP_Broadband%202007.pdf

Online Video: www.pewinternet.org/pdfs/PIP_Online_Video_2007.pdf

Closing the Broadband Divide: www.pewinternet.org/pdfs/Broadband%20Commentary.pdf

EBLIP4 Conference Full Papers Available

The Evidence Based Library and Information Practice Conference (EBLIP4), held 6-9 May 2007, featured themed sessions on evidence-based practice in academic libraries, school library media, healthcare, special libraries, and evidence-based methodology. The program provided a forum for the presentation of high-quality research papers and posters as well as discussions of the transformative role of evidence-based practice in the library and information science profession.

Full papers from the conference are now available on the EBLIP4 website at: www.eblip4.unc.edu/