New & Noteworthy

Citation

(2009), "New & Noteworthy", Library Hi Tech News, Vol. 26 No. 9. https://doi.org/10.1108/lhtn.2009.23926iab.001

New & Noteworthy

Article Type: New & Noteworthy From: Library Hi Tech News, Volume 26, Issue 9.

California Library Launches SOPAC Website Integration

The Palos Verdes Library District (www.pvld.org/) working with the development team at YourLibrarySite.com (a website development initiative offered by CraftySpace CMS) announced in July 2009 the launch of SOPAC (social online catalog) integrated into a new Drupal version 6 website. This launch was one of the first public library adoptions of SOPAC outside of Darien Library in CT, where John Blyberg first developed this open source technology.

PVLD first began working with YourLibrarySite.com to develop a Drupal version 4.7 website, which launched in 2007. Discussions about the SOPAC integration began well over a year ago. “We were pleased to continue our relationship with PVLD, porting the original Drupal 4.7 website we developed to version 6, adding SOPAC functionality as the online presentation layer for their iii 2007 ILS, and of course customizing Drupal and SOPAC to meet PVLD's specific needs” said Joseph Muennich, CraftySpace partner and senior project director.

Custom development for the SOPAC integration included the creation of a flexible search widget that allows the developer to construct search strings used for searches across the website and PVLD's pre-existing WordPress blogs, as well as catalog searches. This search widget works for any URL-driven database searches. YourLibrarySite engineered the ability to pull in titles of recent WordPress blog posts onto the home page using RSS feeds. Drupal iframe functionality was improved to pull Google search results inside the website interface.

YourLibrarySite developed a number of SOPAC-specific upgrades for the PVLD project, including support for multibranch holds, incorporating the ability to select a home branch for any account, which then is the default for all holds – and the ability to choose non-default branch when placing a hold. An optional display of reader's checkout history was added, allowing users to turn checkout logging on or off. When it is on, they can view their history. Search speed optimization, which includes multithreaded search requests for quicker response was developed. This optimization can be fine-tuned to accommodate varying response times from different ILS installations. Additionally, “Download” links for audio books in the catalog were added.

PVLD SOPAC: www.pvld.org

Thesocialopac.net: http://thesocialopac.net

Project Conifer and Open Source

Project Conifer, the first academic consortium to be powered by Evergreen open-source library automation software, has gone live. Equinox Software Inc., “The Evergreen Experts,” oversaw data migration and software configuration and is providing round-the-clock ongoing technical support. Algoma University, Laurentian University, Northern Ontario School of Medicine, and the University of Windsor libraries make up this new consortium, which holds over 2 million bibliographic records. This is the largest bibliographic database currently being supported by Evergreen.

To view the new catalogues for these libraries, please visit http://algoma.concat.ca, http://laurentian.concat.ca, http://nosm.concat.ca, or http://windsor.concat.ca

Evergreen is powerful, highly scalable open-source library software. While Evergreen is best known for its unique ability to meet the needs of very large, high-transaction, multisite consortia, Evergreen also scales down to the smallest library sites. Since its debut in September 2006 as the software powering the 270-plus libraries of the Georgia PINES consortium, Evergreen has earned acclaim and praise from users worldwide, including a Technology Collaboration Award from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Evergreen now supports hundreds of libraries of every type – public, academic, special, and school media – in 12 states and two countries.

Evergreen information, including a list of all known Evergreen installations: http://evergreen-ils.org

Equinox Software: www.esilibrary.com

OLE Final Draft Report Available for Comment

A draft of the final report on the OLE Project is now available for community feedback.

With funding from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Open Library Environment project (OLE Project) convened a multinational group of libraries to analyze library business processes and to define a next-generation library technology platform. The resulting OLE platform is predicated on Service-Oriented Architecture and a community-source model of development and governance. Over 300 libraries, educational institutions, professional organizations, and businesses participated in some phase of the project. Using input from those participants, the project planners produced an OLE design framework that embeds libraries directly in the key processes of scholarship generation, knowledge management, teaching and learning by utilizing existing enterprise systems where appropriate and by delivering new services built on connections between the library's business systems and other technology systems.

Project members are now in discussions with potential investing partners who will develop and deploy this new library technology platform. Although this is an especially difficult time for libraries to launch new projects and commit funding for them, project planners continue to hear from the library community that it is more critical than ever to create the technology infrastructure that can help libraries serve as a primary nexus of scholarly information management.

The OLE Project and Draft Final Report are already generating discussion within the library community: http://commentary.exlibrisgroup.com/2009/08/ole-unanswered-questions.html

OLE Final Draft Report (pdf): http://oleproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/olereportdraft26july09.pdf

Post comments: http://oleproject.org/final-ole-project-report/

Amigos Library Services Partners with Auto-Graphics

Auto-Graphics, Inc., providing library automation solutions for over 36 years, announced in August 2009 a strategic partnership with Amigos Library Services, a not-for-profit, membership-based organization dedicated to serving libraries primarily in the southwestern USA. The partnership provides Amigos Library Services with distribution rights to Auto-Graphics' AGent suite of library automation solutions, which includes AGent Resource Sharing, a robust interlibrary loan (ILL) and consortial borrowing solution, and AGent VERSO, a complete integrated library system (ILS). In addition, Amigos library members that select an Auto-Graphics product will receive AGent Iluminar, the new Flex-based patron user interface that provides a more visual and interactive user experience to facilitate social networking, effortless navigation and “drag and drop” customization capabilities for an improved user experience and administrative workflow.

“We are proud to be able to offer our member libraries products and services from a company like Auto-Graphics, which is an industry-leader in providing customized ILS, ILL, and Resource Sharing solutions for libraries,” said Robert Watkins, associate executive director at Amigos.

Amigos member libraries benefit from the rich depth and breadth of the non-profit's member discount consultation and training programs, which are designed to promote library cooperation and resource sharing and to strengthen libraries as leaders in their communities. These libraries will now have the opportunity to purchase Auto-Graphics library automation solutions, which are currently used in more than 6,000 libraries across North America, with consulting and training support provided by Amigos library system.

“We look forward to working with a trusted partner like Amigos Library Services by co-biding strategic RFP opportunities for state and regional projects,” commented Paul Cope, president of Auto-Graphics. “We see this effort as a way to expand in a new region by offering the local library communities cutting edge automation solutions from a trusted partner with whom they are already familiar and who is aware of their needs.”

Amigos Library Services: www.amigos.org

Auto-Graphics, Inc.: www.auto-graphics.com

JSTOR and University of California Press Announce Current Scholarship Program

University of California Press, the not-for-profit publishing arm of the University of California, and JSTOR, the preservation archive and research platform that is part of the not-for-profit ITHAKA, today announced that they will work in partnership – and encourage others to join them – to make current and historical scholarly content available on a single, integrated platform, to provide a single point of purchase and access for librarians and end users around the world, and to ensure its long-term preservation.

Beginning in 2011, current content from all University of California Press published journals, including those from scholarly societies, will be hosted on a redesigned JSTOR platform. Faculty and students around the world will be able to access all licensed content on JSTOR – current issues, back issues, and a growing set of primary source materials from libraries – easily and seamlessly. JSTOR's nearly 6,000 library participants worldwide will be able to license the Press's current journals, either individually or as part of current issue collections, together with JSTOR back issue collections in a single transaction. The journals will also continue to be preserved in Portico, the digital preservation service that is also part of ITHAKA.

The Current Scholarship Program – as the effort will be known – grew out of a long-standing relationship and dialogue between UC Press and JSTOR who share an understanding of the problems facing scholarly communications and a deep desire to work together to craft a sustainable publishing model that embodies academic values. The effort was also informed by research conducted by Ithaka S R, the strategy and research arm of ITHAKA, over the past several years and the group's ongoing work to understand and develop sustainable business models and support innovation in the development and dissemination of digital scholarship.

Driving the partnership is an articulated set of principles, among them: supporting the broad dissemination of quality scholarship through affordable and sustainable means, promoting fair and transparent pricing, facilitating seamless access to authoritative content of all kinds, and ensuring reliable, long-term preservation, and access to scholarship. Organizations interested in joining the Program in the future – whether commercial or non-commercial – will be encouraged to embrace these fundamentals as well.

In addition to easing access to scholarly content, the redesigned JSTOR platform will also offer enhanced functionality to support the publication of new digital scholarship. Working with Atypon Systems, whose Literatum technology is underlying both JSTOR and UC Press's current platforms, the new platform will provide for the delivery of multimedia content, increased personalization features, and new navigation and visualization features. This development will help authors and their publishers take better advantage of technology in the creation, explication, and impact of their work.

More information about the Current Scholarship Program: www.jstor.org/page/info/about/programs/currentScholarship.jsp

Mellon Foundation Awards Grant for Collaborative University Press E-Book Project

Four university presses have received a planning grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for a collaborative university press e-book project. The grant, to be administered by NYU Press on behalf of collaborating presses at the University of Pennsylvania, Temple University, and Rutgers University, will fund multifaceted research into the feasibility of developing a consortium of university presses to deliver e-books to libraries on a shared platform. The participating presses will select and hire one or more consultants who will survey librarians about their evolving needs for digitally available scholarship, and appraise technology vendors, purchasing models and partnerships, and delivery platforms.

The initiative will differ from existing e-book ventures in that it will be run by and for scholarly publishers, with a primary focus on the needs of university presses and their library customers. Other notable features of the consortium include:

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  A large number of university presses, a minimum of ten in the first year, but with a plan for significantly larger scale, adding five to ten in each successive year over a five-year period.

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  The presses that would launch this project would represent a mix of sizes.

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  The goal would be to launch with a minimum of 10,000 e-books, both backlist and frontlist, with a plan for annual additions.

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  Initial focus on the library market with the possible expansion to students for classroom use, and, depending on the consultant's recommendation, later to individual consumers.

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  Multiple delivery models and purchase/subscription options, giving libraries the flexibilities they seek, including selection by subject area, year of publication, and patron-driven features.

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  Possible bundling with print or print-on-demand editions should the libraries find this useful as we make the transition from print books to e-books.

For university presses, this is the ideal time to launch a new e-book initiative. The need is clear, and no vendor has emerged to fill it to the satisfaction of the academic publishing or library communities. The consortium envisioned by the four partner presses is an ambitious but practical way for scholarly publishers to address the changing landscape for the dissemination of scholarship.

The co-principal investigators for the grant are Steve Maikowski, Director of NYU Press, and Marlie Wasserman, Director of Rutgers University Press.

Full press release from NYU: www.fromthesquare.org/?p=563

Sony Adopts EPUB Format

In an effort to take the confusion out of digital book formats, Sony announced in August 2009 its plan to convert its e-Book store to the industry-standard EPUB format by the end of the year. Adopting an industry-standard format and Adobe Content Server 4 (ACS4), a popular, cross platform server software solution that copy protects downloadable e-Books, allows Sony to make its e-Book store compatible with multiple devices and its Reader devices open to multiple sources for content.

“Our intention is to lead by example,” said Steve Haber, president of Sony's Digital Reading Business Division. “Our Readers have long supported industry-standard formats such as EPUB and PDF. Now, what is quickly becoming the de facto standard for e-Books will be available in our store.”

Sony's Reader was the first dedicated reading device to support the EPUB format, the International Digital Publishing Forum's (IDPF) XML-based standard format for reflowable digital books and publications. The standard was developed with the participation of more than 60 companies and organizations and was unanimously approved by IDPF members. EPUB has gained acceptance among major trade book publishers with dozens of publishers already producing the majority of their e-Books using the standard.

“A world of proprietary formats and DRMs creates silos and limits overall market growth,” Haber continued. “Consumers should not have to worry about which device works with which store. With a common format and common content protection solution (DRM), they will be able to shop around for the content they want regardless of where they get it or what device they use.”

Current Readers from Sony, models PRS-505 and PRS-700, supported EPUB and reflowable PDF documents via Adobe Digital Editions 1.7 software. Recently announced digital readers – the Reader Pocket Edition, and the Reader Touch Edition – will both support the EPUB and PDF formats out of the box when they go on sale later in August. Sony will also provide an update path for owners of the first edition Reader, model PRS-500, so early adopters of the Reader will be able to enjoy this benefit as well.

Through the e-Book Store from Sony (ebookstore.sony.com), users can access new releases, best sellers and more than one million free public domain books from Google. The Google titles, already in EPUB format are optimized for the Reader. From Sony's e-Book Store, Reader owners with a store account can download and transfer any of these titles to their Reader, while new e-Book Store users can access available titles after setting up an account and downloading Sony's free e-Book Library software.

Sony is also committed to working with local libraries throughout the country as they make the move to digital books. Sony Readers are compatible with the industry-standard formats that libraries use for their digital collections, so consumers can download perennial favorites and new releases from their local libraries.

Sony Reader: www.sony.com/reader

EBSCO Offers SUSHI Software Development Kit

EBSCO has developed an open source software development kit (SDK) for developing clients and servers for the Standardized Usage Statistics Harvesting Initiative (SUSHI). The SDK will assist content providers in implementing SUSHI – a key requirement for being compliant with Release 3 of the COUNTER (Counting Online Usage of Networked Electronic Resources) Code of Practice for Journals and Databases.

Oliver Pesch, EBSCO's chief e-resource strategist and co-chair of the NISO SUSHI Standing Committee, said, “One of the goals of the committee is to facilitate adoption of the SUSHI standard – now a requirement for COUNTER compliance. EBSCO is pleased to be able to contribute this SDK.”

The SDK includes .Net classes that will facilitate working with COUNTER 3.0 data and SUSHI 1.6 services. Whether the intended solution is a SUSHI client or server, these classes will provide the groundwork to allow developers to focus on the logic rather than implementing the standard. The SDK, which contains documentation, source code, a sample client, and a sample server, can be found at: http://code.google.com/p/ebscosushisdk/

Says Pesch, “We recognize the important role usage data plays in the decision making process for the library community. Since SUSHI is such a pivotal technology for managing usage data, offering this SDK is our way of encouraging timely adoption of this standard by content providers.” SUSHI will be an integral part of EBSCO's Usage Consolidation module, a new service that is being added to ERM Essentials TM, the company's e-resource management system.

SDK Software Download: http://code.google.com/p/ebscosushisdk/

SUSHI: www.niso.org/workrooms/sushi

EBSCO: www.ebsco.com

File Information Tool Set (FITS) from Harvard University Library

With the increase in web archiving and other born-digital projects that introduce new formats and genres to our digital preservation repositories, it is becoming more important that our tools support a wide range of file formats. In particular, our file format identification, validation and metadata extraction tools should work with a broad range of formats and genres. There are a number of these file tools in existence, but none of these tools individually can both support a wide range of formats and extract the technical metadata necessary to fully characterize digital content.

In the fall of 2008 Harvard University Library began development on the File Information Tool Set (FITS) in response to this need. FITS acts as a wrapper around multiple open source file format identification, validation and metadata extraction tools. FITS invokes and manages the output of these tools. The native output from these tools is converted into a common format, “FITS XML”, compared to one another and consolidated into a single XML output file. The tools currently wrapped by FITS are:

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  JHOVE.

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  Exiftool from Phil Harvey.

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  National Library of New Zealand Metadata Extractor.

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  DROID from the UK National Archives.

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  Ffident from Marco Schmidt.

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  File Utility.

In addition, FITS includes two original tools: FileInfo and XmlMetadata. There are a number of tools that will be evaluated for incorporation into FITS in the future, including:

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  Apache Tika.

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  JHOVE 2.

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  Aduna Aperture.

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  MediaInfo.

FITS is written in Java and is compatible with Java 1.5 or higher. FITS can be invoked by its command-line interface or through its Java API.

FITS produces a ”status” value for each format identification it makes. When the status is SINGLERESULT, all tools that were able to identify the format agree on the file's format. When the status is CONFLICT, there is more than one purported format identified for the file. Because FITS combines the output of multiple tools it has to be able to handle conflicts among the tool's output when they do not agree. It handles this conflict in many ways:

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  Tool output is normalized before it is compared for conflicts. For example, one tool might report for a file format that it is “PNG”, while another tool may output it as “Portable Network Graphics”. In another example, one tool might output the resolution unit as “2”; another tool might output it as “inches”. These values are normalized in the XSLT file that converts the tool's native output to FITS XML before the FITS XML for each tool is compared to each other.

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  Users configure a tool ordering preference. In cases of format identification conflicts, the format identified by the preferred tools will determine the format FITS reports.

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  Tools can be excluded from reporting on particular formats and/or on particular metadata elements if its output is found in testing to be incorrect or buggy. This is very useful for incorporating a tool into FITS because it is good at some things without having to accept known unreliable information from the tool.

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  FITS consults a configurable “format tree” to know when two reported formats for a file are not really conflicts because one of the formats is a more specific form of the other format. For example the format tree documents that the OpenDocument Text format is a more specific form of the Zip format. If a file is identified as being in both of these formats by FITS tools it is not reported as a conflict because technically they are both correct. Instead the more specific format, OpenDocument Text, is reported as the format.

FITS is available to the public under the LGPL license. Harvard University Library (HUL) plans to use FITS in production in 2010 within its ingest service, but is making an early release of it available now for testing at: http://fits.googlecode.com. Additional tools are being written at HUL to convert FITS XML into MIX, textMD, documentMD, and other technical metadata schemas.

The public is invited to download and try using FITS. Any issues using it can be reported on the FITS website on the Issues web page (http://code.google.com/p/fits/issues/list).

For more information, see the FITS website: http://fits.googlecode.com/

“Final Draft” Version of the EAC-CPF Schema and Tag Library Released

Archival description includes information about the content, intellectual and physical attributes of the material, as well as information about the context of their creation and use. The context of the creation and use of material is complex and multilayered and may involve individuals, families, organizations, societies, functions, activities, business processes, geographic places, events, and other entities. Primary among these entities are the agents responsible for the creation or use of material, usually organizations or persons. With information about these agents, users can understand and interpret the records more fully since they will know the context within which the agents operated and created and/or used the material. Contextual information about these agents can be used either as a component within descriptive approaches that fully integrate contextual information into descriptive products, as archives have traditionally done, or as an independent system that is linked to other descriptive systems and products that focus on content.

Encoded Archival Context – Corporate Bodies, Persons, and Families (EAC-CPF) primarily addresses the description of individuals, families and corporate bodies that create, preserve, use and are responsible for and/or associated with records in a variety of ways. Over time, other types of contextual entities may evolve under the larger EAC umbrella, but currently its primary purpose is to standardize the encoding of descriptions about agents to enable the sharing, discovery and display of this information in an electronic environment. It supports the linking of information about one agent to other agents to show/discover the relationships amongst record-creating entities, and the linking to descriptions of records and other contextual entities.

The EAC Working Group has announced the release of the EAC-CPF schema and Tag Library on 21 August 2009. The EAC-CPF Schema is a standard for encoding contextual information about persons, corporate bodies, and families related to archival materials using Extensible Markup Language (XML). The standard supports the exchange of International Standard for Archival Authority Records – Corporate Bodies, Persons, Families (ISAAR (CPF)) compliant authority records.

The 21 August release will be a “final draft” version of the EAC-CPF schema and Tag Library. The final draft version is being released to provide the international archival community an opportunity to test the schema and review the Tag Library in order to provide corrections, comments, and suggestions to the EACWG for its consideration before the final release. The final draft version of EAC-CPF will be available for review for 60 days, and the final version will be released soon thereafter.

EAC-CPF homepage: http://eac.staatsbibliothek-berlin.de/

California Digital Library Announces Web Archiving Service

Researchers and scholars now will be able to delve into archived Web sites captured by the California Digital Library's Web Archiving Service (WAS). This new tool enables faculty, researchers and librarians to capture, curate and preserve Web sites, thus creating permanent archives available to researchers everywhere. The social history of our times is now being preserved in archives as rich and varied as the contentious 2003 California recall election, hundreds of California state Web archives, the Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp Web archive and the Middle East Political Sites archive. New archives continually are being built and published and will appear along with the current archives, available at: webarchives.cdlib.org/.

Ready access to these publications cannot be taken for granted. Web pages and documents are as easy to change or remove as they are to publish. When sites are redesigned, when new administrations take office, when policies or organizations change, we witness the wholesale disappearance of information. State and local Web publications particularly are at risk. In many cases, these documents no longer are available in print, and libraries are challenged to continue their historic role as cultural memory institutions in the digital environment.

CDL's WAS is the result of a 4.5-year grant awarded by the Library of Congress National Digital Information and Infrastructure Preservation Program (NDIIPP). The program's mission is to develop a national strategy to collect, preserve and make available digital content, especially materials that are created only in digital formats, for current and future generations. Working with partners at the University of North Texas, New York University, Stanford University and the campuses of the University of California, the California Digital Library has built a service that is easy to use and allows librarians to begin preserving information that was slipping away.

The California Digital Library provides digital library development and support for the University of California libraries and the communities they serve. The Web archives are available to the general public, and use of the WAS is not restricted to the University of California campuses.

More information from CDL: http://cdlinfo.cdlib.org/blog/2009/07/08/public-access-to-web-archiving-service-goes-live/

CDL web archives: http://webarchives.cdlib.org

Core Message Set Defined for NISO Circulation Interchange Protocol (NCIP)

NISO's NCIP Implementers Group has defined a core set of nine messages that is recommended for a minimal implementation of NCIP (ANSI/NISO Z39.83-2008, NCIP, Parts 1 and 2). The NCIP standard addresses the need for interoperability among disparate circulation, interlibrary loan, and related applications.

NCIP – which was revised in 2008 to include greater extensibility and improved self-service and error handling – was conceived as a toolkit-style standard with no minimum requirement for compliance beyond the use of at least one of the 45 messages. This has led to confusion and an impression that NCIP is difficult to support. By defining a Core Message Set, the NCIP Implementers Group has provided a simple roadmap needed for a basic implementation. The group believes that the NCIP Core Messages support the majority of the current functionality for resource sharing and self-service applications. Responding applications need only implement this set of messages, which reduces the effort needed to become NCIP compliant. Initiating applications may still use additional messages, but the definition of a core set of messages will increase interoperability and enable librarians to expect support for a common baseline workflow.

The messages in the core set are: Accept Item, Cancel Request Item, Check In Item, Check Out Item, Lookup Item, Lookup User, Recall Item, Renew Item, and Request Item.

“The Core Message Set changes the future for NCIP. Instead of a huge number of messages and little commonality among implementers in the messages they've used, we now have a simpler starting point for new and current vendors,” stated Gail Wanner, Chair of the Implementers Group and Resource Sharing Specialist, SirsiDynix. “Having this basic list of messages will make it much easier for librarians and vendors to begin supporting NCIP since it takes the mystery out of where to begin.”

The NCIP Implementers Group, which has semiannual meetings and monthly conference calls to discuss maintenance and implementation issues, is also looking to update the NCIP website with additional resources, considering a move to a continuous maintenance model, creating a checklist to identify vendors who have implemented specific messages, and aims to streamline the profile template. The NCIP Maintenance Agency is EnvisionWare, led by Rob Walsh, President.

Librarians and vendors who wish to learn more about the NCIP Implementers Group are invited to visit at: www.ncip.info

NISO Ballot on Recommendations on Physical Delivery of Library Resources

A ballot was presented in August 2009 to NISO Voting Members to approve a new work item on the Physical Delivery of Library Resources. This proposal, submitted by Valerie Horton, Executive Director, Colorado Library Consortium (CLiC) and subsequently approved by NISO's Discovery to Delivery Topic Committee, aims to develop a statement of best practices related to the delivery of library materials. This project will build on the efforts of three recent projects: Moving Mountains, Rethinking Resource Sharing's Physical Delivery Committee, and the American Library Association's ASCLA ICANS' Physical Delivery Discussion Group.

The proposal suggests recommendations be developed in the areas of packaging, shipping codes, labeling, acceptable turn-around time, lost or damaged materials handling, package tracking, ergonomic considerations, statistics, sorting, a set of elements to be used for comparison purposes to determine costs, linking of regional and local library carriers, and international delivery. In order for this item to be approved so that a Working Group can be formed to pursue this work, a minimum of 10 percent of NISO's Voting Members must express interest in this new work item. A full list of NISO Voting Members can be found at: www.niso.org/about/roster.

The full proposal can be viewed on the NISO website at: www.niso.org/standards/ballots. Public comments are welcome. Use the NISO

website comment form at: www.niso.org/contact

New Data on Online Video, Wireless Internet Use from Pew Internet Project

An April 2009 survey by the Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project shows that 56 percent of adult Americans have accessed the internet by wireless means, such as using a laptop, mobile device, game console, or MP3 player. The most prevalent way people get online using a wireless network is with a laptop computer; 39 percent of adults have done this.

The report also finds rising levels of Americans using the internet on a mobile handset. One-third of Americans (32 percent) have used a cell phone or Smartphone to access the internet for emailing, instant-messaging, or information-seeking. This level of mobile internet is up by one-third since December 2007, when 24 percent of Americans had ever used the internet on a mobile device. On the typical day, nearly one-fifth (19 percent) of Americans use the internet on a mobile device, up substantially from the 11 percent level recorded in December 2007. That is a growth of 73 percent in the 16 month interval between surveys.

The report, entitled “Wireless Internet Use,” also found that African Americans are the most active users of the mobile internet. Nearly half (48 percent) of African Americans have at one time used the internet on a mobile device, and on the average day 29 percent go online with a handheld – both figures are half again the national average. Moreover, the growth in mobile handheld online use on the average day since 2007 for African Americans is twice the national average – 141 percent for African Americans vs the 73 percent average.

“The notion of a digital divide for African Americans has some resonance when thinking about the wireline internet,” said John B. Horrigan, Associate Director of the Pew Internet Project and principal author of the report. “But when you introduce the mobile internet, the picture changes and African Americans are the pace setters.”

The report also found a growth in a broader measure of mobile engagement, as more Americans in 2009 were turning to their handheld for non-voice data activities. The activities probed were: sending or receiving text messages, taking a picture, playing a game, checking email, accessing the internet, recording video, instant messaging, playing music, getting maps or directions, or watching video.

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  In 2009, 69 percent of all adult Americans said they had ever done at least one of the ten activities vs 58 percent who did this in late 2007.

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  In 2009, 44 percent of all adult Americans said they had done at least one of the non-voice data activities on the typical day, up from 32 percent in 2007.

When asked to assess what mobile access means when they are away from home or work, about half of wireless users cite staying in touch with others or being able to dig for information on the go. However, some say such access lets them share content with others as they go about their daily lives. Specifically, among cell phone or wireless laptop users:

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  Half (50 percent) say it is very important to them to have mobile access in order to stay in touch with other people.

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  Nearly the same share (46 percent) says they mobile access is very important for getting online information on the go.

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  One in six (17 percent) say mobile access is very important to them so they can share or post online content while away from home or work.

Wireless internet access using other devices, though much less common than with laptops or handhelds, has a foothold among some Americans. The April 2009 survey found that:

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  45 percent of adults have iPods or MP3 players and 5 percent of all adults have used such a device to go online.

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  41 percent of adults have game consoles and 9 percent of adults have used it to access the internet.

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  14 percent of adults have a personal digital assistant, and 7 percent of adults have used it for online access.

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  2 percent of adults have an e-book (i.e. a Kindle or Sony reader) and 1 percent of adults have used it to get online.

Overall, 17 percent of adults have used at least one of the four access means listed above to go online.

Full report: http://pewinternet.org/Reports/2009/12-Wireless-Internet-Use.aspx

Another recent research report from Pew finds that the audience for online video sharing sites like YouTube and Google Video continues to grow swiftly across all demographic groups, far outpacing the adoption rates of many other internet activities. As the audience for online video continues to grow, a leading edge of internet users are migrating their viewing from their computer screens to their TV screens. At the same time, more cell phone users are opting for the convenience of watching video on smaller screens via their handheld devices.

According to the April 2009 survey by the Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project, the share of online adults who watch videos on video-sharing sites has nearly doubled since 2006. Fully, 62 percent of adult internet users have watched video on these sites, up from just 33 percent who reported this in December 2006.

Over time, online video has also become a bigger fixture in everyday life, garnering 19 percent of all internet users who use video-sharing sites to watch on a typical day. In comparison, just 8 percent of internet users reported use of the sites on a typical day in 2006.

Full report: http://pewinternet.org/Reports/2009/13 – The-Audience-for-Online-VideoSharing-Sites-Shoots-Up.aspx

OCLC Announces Winner of OCLC Research Software Contest

David Walker, Library Web Services Manager at California State University, submitted the winning entry in the Third OCLC Research Software Contest. Mr Walker's winning submission is Bridge, a set of services to provide a configurable and customizable full record display made up of WorldCat services. These services provide the ability for an individual library to customize the full record display of WorldCat records to their particular situation.

The contest judges were impressed with how Mr Walker was able to provide a set of very useful methods to enhance WorldCat services from the perspective of individual libraries. The software architecture, code, and documentation also were impressive. As the contest winner, Mr Walker will receive a check for $2,500 and a visit with OCLC researchers and others in Dublin, Ohio (USA).

The Third OCLC Research Software Contest ran from mid-April through the end of June. Its goal was to encourage innovation in the use of OCLC web-based services for libraries. Entries were judged by a panel of expert practitioners and academicians from OCLC and the library/information community:

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  Kevin Clarke, Coordinator of Web Services, Belk Library and Information Commons, Appalachian State University.

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  Thom Hickey, Chief Scientist, OCLC.

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  Tod Matola, Software Architect, OCLC.

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  Ross Singer, Interoperability and Open Standards Champion, Talis.

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  … and winner of the Second OCLC Research Software Contest, Roy Tennant, Senior Program Officer, OCLC Research.

More information on David Walker's Bridge is available at: http://library.calstate.edu/bridge/

Contest Overview: www.oclc.org/research/researchworks/contest/