I posted about the new Library 2.0 Gang Podcast a little while ago only to find that I had jumped the gun. Now it is really really available - so check it out - subscribe - and listen often

You can listen to it via Library Journal or the new Library 2.0 Gang page hosted by Talis.

In this issue, we spoke with Aaron Swartz about the Open Library and other Code4Lib conference topics. You can check out my blog post summarizing what Aaron spoke about at the conference if you want more information.

Technorati Tags: library 2.0 gang, talis, library journal, open library, code4libcon2008

Elizabeth McKinney de Garcia, Program Director of Georgia PINES talked to us about how PINES decided to develop their own open-source ILS, Evergreen. Georgia PINES is made up of 49 public library systems which equates to 275 facilities and bookmobiles sharing a joint bibliographic database of nearly 9 million books.

About PINES

The PINES library card is free to residents of Georgia and can be used at any PINES library as if it were their home library. In addition, materials can be returned to any PINES library - how convenient!! ILL is available through entire system for card holders at no charge. All libraries in the system have the same policies so that patrons all have the same experience no matter what library they’re at.

In FY07 the system had more than 540,000 intra-pines loads as compared with just 6,000 in FY00. Patrons like the convenience of one system.

There is one easy to use interface across the board. Users have dramatically increased access to one centrally administered statewide combined library collection.

Time for a Change

When they looked at their contract with their vendor they found that they were writing their policies around the system (once again a reference to the culture of work arounds). In the end they had a bunch of silly policies such as how to enter a person’s name (last, first). They also found that their system was coming to a screeching halt because of the load of the users hitting the system at the same time. In short, it wasn’t meeting their needs.

After talking to nearly all the vendors they found that there really was no place for them to go - in short, they were cornered into making their own system.

Enter Evergreen

The entire development process took a little under 2 years. They had to decide where to put the line - their libraries had never been able to use acquisitions or serials so they didn’t develop that in the initial program. In short, their ILS was designed by librarians for libraries.

Georgia PINES went live in September 2006 with their new ILS, Evergreen. Unfortunately (or fortunately) the first day they had so many hits they came to a screeching halt - this was probably because of all of the press that was sent out to librarians!! Since then, things have been great.

Why Open Source

Elizabeth referred to open source as the difference between renting versus owning. By “owning” the software we’re responsible if the AC goes out or the roof leaks, but it’s a great place to be! We get what we need and we get what we want - don’t have to hope that in 2010 the feature we want will be up for a vote. In the end “owning” leads to an increase in control!

Conclusions

Another create example of how open source can solve a great many problems for libraries. I particularly like Elizabeth’s analogy of owning versus renting. In the end everyone owns the rights to the code behind the open source product, leading to more freedom and innovation.

I can give a personal example of this. When I was renting, I had to live surrounded by boring white walls and abide by rules like no pets and be considerate of your neighbors. Now that I own, I get have a house full of colorful walls and barking dogs!! I’m still considerate of my neighbors, but I don’t have to worry about playing music late at night or having the dogs wake up barking at 5am.

In short - owning your own place is a lot of hard work, but it leads to a more comfortable home (at least in my place).

Technorati Tags: evergreen, georgia pines, valenj, open source

John Stromquist, Executive Director of the WALDO Consortium talked to us about their decision to go with the Koha ILS and LibLime. WALDO is a multi-type library consortium. Of their membership, there are 12 full members (this means they have a shared ils), 11 associate members (this means they share a union catalog), 500+ regular academic members, and 400+ public members. WALDO helps libraries with vendor contracts, John said that “anything that saves librarians time is worth it.”

WALDO’s ILS History

From 1983-2004 the WALDO libraries used the PALS ILS (an open source forerunner that was owned and operated by librarians), but support was dropped in 2004 and they had to find a new alternative.

They decided not to follow the traditional procurement process for libraries which is to write the biggest RFP you can imagine - no less than 12,000 questions will do - the problem with this is that the vendors can lie faster than you can write - the problem with this is that after the fact you remember the things you forgot. This didn’t sound like the best option for finding a solution for their member libraries.

Instead they decided to assess the marketplace for the top 2 or 3 vendors, interview current customers (what a great idea), negotiate contracts with top vendors, and then make the award to vendor with best overall contract offering. The problem was that the second ILS they chose also ended up being sold out.

For the next decision making process, the executive board found other legacy systems equally undifferentiated and really not worthy of a migration efforts - what else could be considered? They decided that they needed to seriously consider open source - especially after Georgia PINES success with Evergreen, like WALDO, they are a large consortium with heavy loads.

Choosing Open Source

Requirements:

• functionally equal to current system
• hosting services
• software maintenance (bug fixing)
• applications development
• 24 x7 help desk

Tipping points in choosing open source:

• open source model itself - control and collaboration
• standards based architecture
• modern development capability (younger and capable of rapid development - have to be careful what you say to josh
• because you make a suggestion and he goes home that night and implements it)
• protection against vendor lock in

If they didn’t go with open source:

• outsider ownership of legacy companies
• troublesome legacy business models
• near certainty of migration anyway (if you stay with the vendor you have)
• diminished service levels (people aren’t happy with the level of service and they’re very vocal about it)
• likely impact of open source commercial vendors (if they don’t go with open source, what will happen to legacy systems as open source becomes popular?)

John mentioned the same thing that Bob did, not many academic libraries are using open source. Right now, open source seems to be used more in the public arena, but WALDO wanted academic library support since that was their primary audience.

They had demos of both Koha Zoom and Evergreen. Koha Zoom presented the best architectural fit for WALDO by offering data and policy independence for each library. John also chose Koha because it was a more mature package overall.

Working with LibLime

WALDO and LibLime worked collaboratively during the initial meetings after making their decision. One day was spent with the librarians talking, sharing their needs with the LibLime folks and the other day was spent with LibLime addressing those needs and telling the librarians what they could do.

After these meetings, LibLime came back to WALDO to work with 6 libraries to make note of all of the requirements to meet their needs.

WALDO set pretty high expectations on LibLime, but the company stood up to the test and came back with what was requested in time. In the end, the time and cost proposals looked favorable to those at WALDO and so they made their final decision.

The Future

In addition to their contract for support with LibLime, WALDO is also paying for over $600,000 worth of development (course reserves - call slip processing - music collection requirements), $200,000 of which is being held for other uses like an ILL module. All of the development that has been planned will be done by August 2008 and then shared back with the community.

In addition to this initial development plan, WALDO is asking new subscribers to contribute to an open source development fund. The initial contribution level will be at 15% of direct subscription service costs. In the end the funds could exceed hundreds of thousands of dollars, all to be put toward developments that will later be shared with the entire Koha community.

Conclusions

John’s talk was pretty impressive. When you see the amount of money being thrown into proprietary systems that are fostering the culture of work arounds that Josh mentioned, and then you see what that same money can do in the open source environment, it’s amazing!! I’m really excited to see what other consortia like WALDO to for the open source community over the next few years.

Technorati Tags: waldo, valenj, koha, liblime, open source

After talks by Joe Lucia, Bob Molyneux and Joshua Ferraro we had a Q&A sessions at the VALE symposium. I’m going to put these in note format so that you can hopefully follow who said what:

Q: One person’s enhancement might be another person’s bug - how do you control that with open source?
A:

• Joe - the release process depends on who gets to commit final changes to the code base - the community needs to figure this out over time - not every enhancement necessarily has to be released to the common code base
• Josh - depends on the project - in the Koha community the community votes on a release manager and that manager gets to decide what’s included in the release

Q: Can you give us an example of what you mean by peer review process?
A:

• Joe - VuFind is a great example - the community is not large get - peer review is dependent on what works well among experts - academic versus non-academic is not an issue as it is in journal peer review
• Josh - two types of peer review - one from the user perspective and the other from the developer’s perspective
• Bob - it’s not a formal process like journals - it happens in the community by peers - but not an editorial board

Originally uploaded by nengard

Q: Can you explain more what kinds of staff changes need to be made to support open source?
A:

• Joe - staffing changes may be at the expense of some librarian positions - but it’s a necessity - it becomes the smart thing if you’re invested in your infrastructure - need to have a technological staff in house that can handle these new systems
• Josh - you have to have technologists involved - they don’t have to be in the library - but they have to be involved - no vendor lock in means you can start with a company and move on to supporting it yourself if you so choose
• Bob - library schools teach IT separate from the library people - you need to teach it both at the same time - there is no reason to have either or (like me) - there is no a critical mass of librarians with these skills because library schools are not turning them out - and this failure has occurred during the golden age of libraries - the patrons are beating their path to our door - but we don’t have the skills - it’s a shame that Josh had to to what he had to do in creating a company to ease his frustrations

Q: People are talking about the ILS going away, why are we developing something new if that’s the case?
A:

• Josh - circulation is not going away - acquisitions is not going away (whether it’s print or electronic materials - they have to be acquired in some way) - cataloging is not going away - these are core functions of the library - the only difference is that with the open-source ILS the community drives the innovation - the community decides what they need and the products are developed to meet those needs - this means we have a more timely product
• Bob (great analogy) - one author writes an article about a problem and then another librarian comes around reads it and sees something the first author missed and writes another article - and the original writers says “thank god - you figured it out” - it’s the many eyes theory (me: this is like my developing at Jenkins - i always had many eyes) - the open source ILS is a more valuable ILS because of this

Technorati Tags: open source, valenj, ils

Bob Molyneux of Equinox was second to speak at the VALE Symposium the other day.

Bob started by filling us in on the state of the open-source software US public library market which is only about 1%, give or take. He didn’t have the data for academic libraries yet, but he was sure it was less than the publics.

That said, a new wind is blowing and big consortia like MassCat, WALDO, Indiana open source ILS initiative, and the Michigan library consortium are all looking into open-source alternatives. The first biggy to switch was Georgia PINES using the Evergreen system that they developed to “scratch and itch” as Joe put it.

What we learned from PINES

Library users like access to the large virtual library - they don’t care about our politics or the difficulties under the hood. Patrons will also bypass libraries without access to consortial resources in favor of libraries with that access. Bob welcomes us to the long-tail

Bob states that “we [libraries] have failed.” We have let our libraries become information silos - separate, barely communicating collections of information - “and Google is eating our lunch.” The logic of IT is to break down silos and to integrate these collections. Unfortunately, we have these problems because of several reasons - some our fault and some the fault of others. Two biggies on this list are that our legacy vendors lack vision and we as librarians lacked vision.

OLS v. ILS

The open-source ILS (OLS) may look similar to our old systems, but under the hood it’s completely different - it’s modular and the code is being shared - even between possible competitors like Evergreen and Koha, simply to make both systems better - we’re not just duplicating what has already been done, we’re fixing the wrongs of our past.

Conclusions

Another great talk! I love the idea of libraries breaking out of their silos and sharing information for the good of the people - or as Joe would have said for the good of the “commons.” I agree that I’d rather search a group of libraries at once than just one local library at a time. When in library school I used to love using DIALOG because I was able to search multiple databases with one search, eliminate duplicates and get citations all in one easy action - why should our catalogs be any different?

Technorati Tags: valenj, evergreen, open-ils, equinox, open source

This week I was lucky enough to attend an event at The College of New Jersey entitled Next Generation Academic Library System Symposium and hosted by VALE (Virtual Academic Library Environment of New Jersey). The goal of this day was for the members of VALE to decide if they wanted to join in on a shared open source ILS community.

The program started with an intro to Open Source by Joe Lucia, University Librarian, Villanova University and President of PALINET Board. Joe started off by letting us know that he thought of himself as an Open Source Evangelist - which made me say “hey, that’s my job!” Throughout his talk, Joe quoted so many great resources that it was hard to keep up. The video and slides should be available online soon (I’ll keep you posted) - but for now, here’s my summary.

Joe called his presentation a thought piece on why open source makes sense for libraries. I did a review of literature for Drexel that was pretty similar to this - but I have to say that Joe found some better resources and makes some better arguments than I did in my paper.

He started off by talking about the concept of the “commons.” Libraries exist to support and extend the commons for the community we serve - particularly the intellectual commons which fundamentally valuable to support access and innovation. — The commons can be a physical location like streets & parks - but is more related to ideas - like the theory of relativity and writings out of copyright in the public domain.

He recommended reading The Wealth of Networks by Yochai Benkler. Benkler says that the “commons” refers to a particular institutional form of structuring the rights to access, use and control resources.

The library as a commons

Libraries are situated within the domain of three commons

• they provide their communities with open access to intellectual and cultural resources - no single individual controls or uses up the resources of a library
• our resources are accessible to anyone who walks in - accessibility to all translates into “open stacks”
• open source is an extension to our culture of openness

The next book that Joe recommended to us was The Success of Open Source by Steve Weber. (start updating your wishlist - that’s what I’m doing).

Open Source & Libraries

If anyone should be doing open source anywhere - it’s us!! Open source shares our values & missions!!

We need to open up our sense of what we’re about - open source software with the “library space” enhances the library as a center for participatory culture and collaborative enterprise.

What is open source?

• open source can be commercial - but is not proprietary - the commercial entities neither own nor control access to the code base
• most good applications begin because a developer needs to “scratch an itch” - a response to something that has to be done that can’t be done with available solutions
• it’s typically built on or extends what’s already been done
• when it’s successful it’s modular - not a big monolithic package
  • this then results in a development process that can be scaled to a very rapid update process because you’re just updating pieces instead of the hierarchical approach of the monolithic packages
• “to many eyes, all bugs are shallow” (from the Cathedral & the Bazaar) - if lots of people are looking at the code base it’s gong to get pretty lean and pretty clean pretty fast because anyone who seeing something wrong will fix it

Why not switch?

Some librarians are surprised to find the open-source products can cost a similar amount to the proprietary solutions. Joe argues (and I agree) that the issue isn’t the cost - but how the costs are distributed and what control you have over it - there is a greater investment in development for open source than there is for actual support. This means that you’re paying for improvements to the application when you’re paying for open source and with the proprietary stuff you’re paying to have someone answer the phone and read through a script with you (sorry that was my negativity - not Joe’s - based on recent experiences trying to get support).

Librarians will often ask “open source sounds all really nice idealistically - but how are we going to do it?” Libraries are sitting on a lot of assets that they invest in proprietary software it’s a matter of how you redirect the money you’re already paying for technology into a different arena. It’s not “can we do it?” it’s “how do we do it?”

Why not take 25% of what we currently pay to propriety software and put it into open source- that would be a significant beginning - could initiate a revolution in library technology. What an amazing idea! I love it - in fact John from WALDO mentions something like this in his talk (which I’ll summarize after this one). We may even need to re-allocate positions to technology development where possible - if we change where we’re putting money it will improve our work flow within the library. Having technologists on staff will make all the difference.

We need to deepen the culture of technology collaboration and resource sharing in libraries - and stop worrying about what’s in our little baskets and start sharing - there is a competition among libraries - who does such and such better - we need to get away from this. I always found this funny - I think of libraries as places to share information - and yet I often find libraries or librarians who are unwilling to share resources.

Joe ended with: “It can be done, and we can do it!”

Conclusions

What a great talk!! Joe did an amazing job of revving the audience up for the rest of day. I also think he gave us a lot to think about and a lot of great resources to check out regarding open source and how it fits into libraries. Keep an eye out for his slides and video!! It’s well worth a look!

Technorati Tags: open source, libraries, valenj

I recently spoke with Aaron Swartz and other Library 2.0 Gang members about the Open Library and other Code4Lib conference topics.

You can listen to it via Library Journal or the new Library 2.0 Gang page hosted by Talis.

You can check out my blog post summarizing what Aaron spoke about at the conference if you want more information.

Technorati Tags: library 2.0 gang, code4libcon2008, open library

Trevor Owens talked to us about Zotero. The slides are already online and the video should be there soon.

What is it?

Zotero is a Firefox add on that lets you:

• store items and take notes
• bring in attachments
• drag and drop into the collection and tag things if you want
• archive entire webpages and highlight text and add sticky notes

Pages that support Zotero have an icon that appears in the address bar in Firefox (like the RSS icon)

State of the Community

• Hundreds of thousands of users
• 2288 discussion on Zotero forums
• 23 language locals all user contributed
• 80k views on quick start guide last month

Get Involved

• Make your tools play nice with Zotero (just a note - Koha does)
• Make your campus a Zotero campus — offer support and promote Zotero among students
• Get your hands dirty and extend Zotero
• Get things to work with Zotero by having them generate COinS
• See who’s recommending Zotero and tell people about it!!

Stats from the Room - and the Future

Trevor asked us a few questions to see how many people were aware of/using Zotero:

• How many people here have used Zotero - almost all hands
• How many are in institutions where Zotero is supported - not many hands at all
• How many are in institutions where other management tool is supported - lots of hands

After these results, Trevor stated: “Okay, this has to change!” He’d love to see more academic institutions using Zotero, the future of the tool hopefully includes moving from being just a client side app in your browser to being an entire suite of tools. They’d love to have a reliable set of syncing plugins for tools like del.icio.us, and plugins for MS Word and Open Office.

He pointed out the SIMILE page at MIT, a project that

seeks to enhance inter-operability among digital assets, schemata/vocabularies/ontologies, metadata, and services. A key challenge is that the collections which must inter-operate are often distributed across individual, community, and institutional stores. We seek to be able to provide end-user services by drawing upon the assets, schemata/ vocabularies/ ontologies, and metadata held in such stores.

Lastly, he mentioned that Zotero will be introducing something in collaboration with the Internet Archive entitled, Zotero Commons, in the opes of encouraging a new type of openness.

More can be found about this at Dan Cohen’s blog:

I’m pleased to announce a major alliance between the Zotero project at the Center for History and New Media and the Internet Archive. It’s really a match made in heaven—a project to provide free and open source software and services for scholars joining together with the leading open library. The vision and support of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has made this possible, as they have made possible the major expansion of the Zotero project over the last year.

Conclusions

I have to admit that I don’t use Zotero that much - I have it installed, but never took the time to explore it. My cousin swears by it and can’t live without it - and others have said the same thing - maybe I should start poking at it. Trevor’s presentation was great and taught me a lot and made me want to learn more about Zotero and how I can use it to my advantage.

Technorati Tags: code4lib, code4lib2008, zotero, code4libcon2008

PLA is coming upon us very quickly! I just wanted to let you all know that I’ll be there probably at the booth most of the time - so stop by and see me. I also want to bring your attention to the Koha Interest Group meeting that we’re holding.

Time and Place
Date: Thursday, March 27, 2008
Time: 3:30pm - 5:00pm
Location: Hyatt Regency Minneapolis (Greenway Ballroom on the 2nd floor)
Street: 1300 Nicollet Mall
City/Town:Minneapolis, MN

You can join the event on Facebook or see more information on the LibLime site.

I hope to see some of you there and meet some new people

I have created a set on Flickr with a ton of pictures from the recent Code4Lib conference in Portland - as you see - I didn’t get out of the hotel much, but I did review each restaurant we ate in.

Technorati Tags: code4lib, code4lib2008, yelp, flickr, code4libcon2008

In Andrew Nagy’s presentation From Idea to Open Source, he took us through the process of creating VuFind, an open-source OPAC replacement/Library portal.

At Villanova, they wanted to develop a portal for library patrons that would let people search the catalog, the article databases and digital library all in one - and keep it separate from the ILS. The goal was one single interface for all library resources in order to minimize the learning curve associated with having many different interfaces.

After doing some asking around, they quickly found that many other academic libraries were having the same problem - so the question became - why don’t we do it together? Why not make this an open-source project so that others can participate and benefit from the work of others?

The Goal

At Villanova, they wanted to build a system that would work with any ILS (including Koha & Evergreen - which Andrew called “our open source cousins”) and needs to work on a variety of platforms (Linux, Windows, etc).

The goal was not to replace the ILS, keep the ILS to do what it does best - but change the web app our patrons use so that it better meets their needs and expectations. VuFind uses the ILS to pull live holdings data from and either harvest bib data (if the ILS doesn’t provide direct database access) or query existing index (mostly used on the open-source ILSes which provide a way to let you in to search directly).

By having this top layer in addition to your ILS, you can easily change ILSes in the future without disrupting your patrons or changing the way they’re used to working. All this, just by separating the OPAC from the ILS.

Making it Open Source

The next step is to take this open source and share it - Villanova is not the marketplace to sell/support software. Andrew made a call to the audience to help build a collaborative community around VuFind so that this project can take off and be successful. Since other institutions are interested in it it would be a shame for Villanova to keep it to themselves - this is why open source is the next logical stop for the project.

In order to do this decisions have to be made, the right tools need to chosen. Some options were Sourceforge and Google Code. Right now, the VuFind team chose Sourceforge - they don’t find that it has all of the tools they need, but it was a good first step in making the project shareable.

The future vision includes having a local SVN or CVS and using a tool like JIRA, TRAC, Bugzilla, etc. These options lead to true freedom, but require a hosting institution.

Positives of Open-sourcing

• collaborative code sharing
• idea sharing
• university gets national attention (good for the university - and shows the directors that it’s worth spending time on)

Negatives of Open-sourcing

• mailing list support - requires time that you may not have
• facilitate communication - also takes time
• possibility of people not have things unanswered due to time constraints
• time involved with marketing - getting the word out (the true success of an open-source project is word of mouth) - requires traveling and schmoozing
• project switching is expensive (we all have other jobs - jumping from our primary roles to assist in VuFind is time-consuming & thus expensive)

Where VuFind is now

Most importantly, we need easy ways to install the software. Everyone knows about the famous Wordpress 1 minute install - this should be the goal. The product requires easy install and integration, strong user interface and strong functionality before it will be widely adopted (I’d argue that the interface is pretty strong already - just a few more tweaks and it’s there).

When open-sourcing a project you need a roadmap for organization, to keep the process agile and to communicate with the community so they know what you’re doing from time to time. The start to this is the VuFind site and Sourceforge, but as Andrew said, not everything needed can be found in Sourceforge.

Conclusions

I’ve seen Andrew talk a few times about VuFind and I think this was the best of all of the talks I saw. It showed me how I can help, it showed me that there is a plan and a pretty mapped out one for VuFind. I see this as a viable option for librarians looking for a way to to integrate searching of all of their collections in one easy to use, clean, interface.

Technorati Tags: vufind, code4lib, code4lib2008, code4libcon2008

Jonathan Brinley, Edward M. Corrado, and Jodi Schneider talked to us about the Code4Lib Journal, a project that had been talked about for years but never implemented until recently. The moral of this story is stop talking and just do it.

They decided to use an agile development philosophy, which basically means don’t over-engineer complicated rules and procedures your might never need - just work on what you need now and the rest will come.

Blog v. Journal

So, why did they choose to do a Journal instead of a blog? In short they chose a journal because it comes with a bit of a stamp of approval that some people need in order to move up the ladder at their workplace - in particular among those in academia.

Where to start?

Get an ISSN - Code4Lib Journal - 1940-5758. They thought this was going to be a crazy process, but it’s just a one page form with a few questions. I’ve actually applied for a few ISSNs - two for work and one for my blog - which Ed Corrado suggested we all go out and do since it’s so easy - but I can tell you that they will turn you down! and if they don’t - let me know and I’ll try again.

Other details

They decided to have rotating coordinating editors so that not one person was in charge all of the time. They also decided to have a public listserv - c4lj-discuss@googlegroups.com - so that everyone can follow along with discussions about the journal.

Articles can be sent in several different formats - right now the editors have worked with almost all of them. They then use WordPress as a publishing tool because it has a flexible templating engine that allows you to make a site not look like a blog and allows for private posts, public posts and public pages. It also comes with stats and other neat plugins that make it the right tool for them to use now - because their agile it may not always be the tool they use.

They’ve gotten their journal listed is DOAJ & Ebsco and it is also being blogged about which is bringing traffic to the site (however - just a note to bloggers for some reason trackbacks aren’t working yet - so post comments on the articles as well). Along those lines, they’d like to see more comments on the journal site - Code4Lib is a community and they want the journal to reflect that.

Overall an interesting talk with some great ideas for publishing a journal online with free tools available on the web.

Technorati Tags: code4lib, code4lib2008, code4lib journal, code4libcon2008

What a great way to open a conference like Code4Lib. The first keynote was presented by Brewster Kahle of the Internet Archive.

Brewster started by reminding us that the reason he was there talking to us and the reason he is working on the Internet Archive is because the library metaphor easily translates to the Internet - as librarians we’re paid to give stuff away! We work in a $12 billion a year industry which supports the publishing infrastructure. With the Internet Archive, Brewster is not suggesting that we spend less money - but that we spend it better.

He started with a slide of the Boston Public Library which has “Free to All” carved in stone. Brewster says that what people carve in stone is taken seriously - and so this is a great example of what libraries stand for. Our opportunity now is to go digital. Provide free digital content in addition to the traditional content we have been providing. I loved that he then said that this is not just a time for us to be friendly together as librarians - but to work together as a community and build something that can be offered freely to all!

He went on to say that what happens to libraries is that they burn - they tend to get burned by governments who don’t want them around. The Library of Alexandria is probably best known for not being here anymore. This is why lots of copies keeps stuff safe. Along those lines, the Internet Archive makes sure to store their data in mirror locations - and by providing information to the archive we’re ensuring that our data is also kept safe and available. This idea of large scale swap agreements (us sharing with the Internet Archive, us sharing with other libraries, etc) in different geographical regions finds us some level of preservation.

How it started

The internet archive started by collecting the world wide web - every 2 months taking a snap shot of the web. Brewster showed Yahoo! 10 years ago - ironically a bit of data that even Yahoo! didn’t have - so for their 10 year anniversary they had to ask the Internet Archive for a copy of what their site looked like! He showed us the first version of Code4Lib’s site and exclaimed “Gosh is that geeky!” because it was a simple black text on white background page.

While it may have seemed a bit ambitious to archive the web, the Wayback Machine gets about 500 hits a second. And it turns out that the out of print materials on the web are often just as valuable as the in print information on the web. People are looking for the way things were for historical or cultural research reasons and this tool makes it possible.

Audio

The Grateful Dead started a tradition in the 60s of allowing people to record their concerts and share them with others - this tradition of tape trading caught on and lots of bands were doing this. Following in this tradition, the Internet Archive decided to offer unlimited storage and unlimited bandwidth for free to any band who wanted to provide recordings of their concerts to the archive. It’s a bit different than tape trading, but an amazing idea! They are getting 1 or 2 bands a day - around 30,000 concerts now and it’s working! Overall the community is building the best metadata Brewster’s ever seen - beautiful work supported by a community - just what I love to hear!!

This shows that librarians can provide a role other than providing information - they can provide back end storage for information. By giving people like these bands a place to store their music for free, the Internet Archive made it so that concerts are now available online for those in search of them!

Moving Images

1000 movies that are out of copyright are available via the Internet Archive. Interestingly, the things that are popular are movies you can’t get any other way - movies you wouldn’t expect people to be interested in at all - government films, social behavior films like the ones you saw in high school when you had a substitute teacher - they’re fantastically popular. Brewster theorizes, and I tend to agree that people are using these videos as research tools to see what things were like culturally at different times in history.

Brewster is a follower of the “it’s easier to apologize than ask permission” philosophy and it has worked very well for him and the organization. You probably have a closet of video tapes that are just waiting to go online - so put them online and if people ask you to take it down - take it down. One example that most of us have probably seen are the Lego movies. Brewster found this genre of movies fascinating - but he mentions that if it weren’t for the free storage on the archive (pre-YouTube) these movies may never have been so widely spread. He described this as, we as the library supporting a community that had no home before. We’re here to put things of shelves and give things away - so why not put things online and give them away?

Television

The Internet Archive only has 1 week of TV available so far - 9/11 - 9/18/2001. This shows a full picture of what people were watching during that horrible week. (update: I may have misunderstood - as I view the archive site I see more than just this….)

Apparently there is someone in North Carolina out there recording TV non stop on 20 channels in DVD quality. Apparently it costs him about $15 per video hour to digitize and has over 50,000 videos in his archive. You can’t get just one point of view (need multiple channels) news may say it’s fair and balanced - but it’s not - you don’t just want John Stewart as your archive of news

Software

Not much because of licensing issues - it’s doable - just not legal yet.

Text

This is where Brewster see the biggest opportunity for traditional libraries to participate. We have in our charge the responsibility to distribute print/books.

We, as librarians, have to work very hard on text. Look at what we did with journals - we handed them to many corporations and now we have to rent them back from them if we had never let it happen in the first place we wouldn’t be wondering how to digitize our journals now. The same thing is going on with monographs now - we’re handing them over to corporations - we should be doing this ourselves instead and the Internet Archive wants to help.

There are 26 million books in the Library of Congress - one book is about 1MB that’s 26TB in the Library of Congress. For $60,000 you could have the entire Library of Congress digitized.

Brewster’s goal sounds like a simple one - “one webpage for every book ever published.” What would it take to do this?

First off, we’d have scan a whole heck of a lot of books - and get the catalog data.

The archive has experimented with a few methods, first they worked with the million book project - they shipped their books to India and they learned not to ship their books to India. Brewster recommends that you have the Indians scan the books they like - but keep your books to yourself. Instead they found that for 10 cents a page they could scan their own items in house. They came up with the scanner and have a person turn the pages of the book - they tried the robots but they weren’t great (may be better now). At the University of Toronto this method produces a million pages a month.

So, for the cost of copying a page at Kinkos you can digitize it and add MARC records and share with the world. Most importantly it’s being done by librarians - our of the corporate sphere. We need to demand the right to give our books away - not have our books owned by corporations who will rent the content to us with exceptions tied to it.

Some quotes from Brewster: “Please help support these scanning centers while they’re up and running … take collections that you’ve got and have them digitized and start building services around them.” If we’re going to build one web page for every book, we’re going to have to scan a lot of books. One option of a service you could add is a scan on demand link to your catalog. Have patrons click this link to have a book scanned - same cost as ILL - might as well scan it and put it on the web for anyone to use.

Then you can provide your digital copies via ILL, Brewster states: “I don’t know what loan means in the digital world - but let’s figure it out!” Why wait for someone else to tell us?

Next, let’s scan all the microfilm. Someone came up to Brewster after one of his talks and said - “we’ve done this before - it’s called microfilm.” So why not digitize our microfilm as well? For less than 10 cents a page they can do all microfilm. The Internet Archive is actually doing a large scale microfilm scanning project right now using the Carnegie model. Apparently Carnegie would build your library for you if you promised to stock it with books and materials. So the The Kahle/Austin Foundation will donate a microfilm scanner to your organization for X years if you the library will keep it up and running for X hours a week. This only costs labor and time and no money has to change hands. In the end we’ve digitized all of our microfilm and made it more accessible.

This made me think of a question - if years ago people said you should microfilm everything and now everyone’s saying you should digitize it - what’s to say that in another 50 years there won’t be another format? This sounds to me like a never ending loop - but at the same time it sounds like such an obvious progression given the technology we have and the types of users we’re dealing with.

Next, we need better selection - right now we’re just digitizing whatever we’re handed - this means we don’t have full collections. Because of this the Internet Archive now has 90 sponsor collections - “We need help!”–Brewster asks that we pick an area of cataloged material and share that digitally - think outside of your own library. For some reason librarians seem to think that they’re only responsible for digital copies of materials they have in their own library - keep digital copies of things from other libraries - why only have digital copies of items you have in print? You want a full collection on your area of study for your library. This was something I was working on at the Seminary. I was finding digital copies of materials I thought would be of interest to our students and importing those OCLC records into our catalog. Just another way to provide access to data.

The next step according to Brewster is to build the catalog and “we finally need to do this FRBR thing - come on guys, it’s not that hard!!!” Even if the digital copy of the book isn’t available yet, it makes sense to provide pages for the book with catalog data that pulls information from sites like Amazon and other book information sites.

Code4Lib - Day 1
Originally uploaded by nengard

When the books are available, we need to work on our displays. Many of our displays are lacking. We need better search functions, open APIs to allow people to re-purpose our data in ways that make sense for them. We also need to make book images with pages that flip, provide the ability to zoom in and printable. In fact the Internet Archive offers a service where people can print books out from their service in real paperback looking formats.

Code4Lib - Day 1
Originally uploaded by nengard

Another option is to use the One Laptop per Child as an ebook reader. The kindle handles ASCII formats okay - but not the types of images that we’re creating for our digital collections.

Conclusions

We have to work together on building this! We can’t just check back in a year and see what’s happening - instead of waiting for others to do the work - why not contribute? We want to be able to build some great services that will allow people to bulk download these materials and re-purpose them if they want.

One way is to join the Open Content Alliance - there are over 80 libraries now. It’s free to join, you just have to contribute.

The next step is to get service layers in place - this is where the code4libers come in. We have the skills to make the Internet Archive even more accessible and valuable.

Questions & Answers

Dan Chudnov asked what he called “tough questions” - now that some companies like Reed Elsevier are trying to change their business models from journal sales to other routes, is there an opportunity to go and buy up their journal services so we get our data back?

Brewster’s answer: there is a way to do this - some people are trying - until it comes to the point where they aren’t making money any more we’re going to have to keep scanning ourselves

Dan’s other question - is power an issue?

Brewster - power is costly, but not running out any time soon.

Another question: the data is only good as long as the disks are still spinning - how do you make it last for years?

Brewster: the question is a good one - the real way to have long term preservation is to have access - access drives preservation. dark archives lead to data being lost. we have to replace our machines every few years to keep up. tapes suck! have you ever tried to read them back??? if there are at least 5 copies - 5 organizations then I can sleep

Real Conclusion

“if you’re frustrated enough - please come and help!” — Brewster

What an amazing way to stop! What an amazing way to start the conference! So many people were completely inspired, I can’t wait to see what comes of this talk - I hope some amazing APIs start popping up!

[update] Video online [/update]

Technorati Tags: code4lib, code4lib2008, internet archive, code4libcon2008

I will write up my summary of Koha Camp soon - but for now, check out my pictures from yesterday and today (and future Code4Lib conference pictures) on Flickr.

Technorati Tags: code4lib, code4lib2008, code4libcon2008

Code4Lib here I come! I’m in Portland - after two planes and 2 screaming babies, I’m ready to geek out with my fellow code4libers. I’ll keep you all posted as I learn great new things!!

Technorati Tags: code4lib, code4libcon2008, code4lib2008

So far, here’s my spring schedule:

• Open Source for Libraries: All Grown Up — Greater Philadelphia Law Library Association (GPLLA), March 5, 2008
• The 2.0 Office: More Than Just Wikis & Blogs — South Jersey Regional Library Cooperative, Voorhees, NJ, March 11, 2008
• Attending PLA Annual Conference, Minneapolis, MN - May 24 - May 28, 2008
• Open Source for Libraries: All Grown Up — Central Jersey Regional Library Cooperative, Princeton, NJ, April 2, 2008
• Attending Computers in Libraries - Alexandria, VA, April 6 - April 9, 2008
• Moderating Open Source Track — Computers in Libraries, Alexandria, VA, April 9, 2008
• Panelist — Drexel University Libraries’ Scholarly Communication Symposium, Philadelphia, PA, April 16, 2008
• Attending NJLA, Long Branch, NJ - April 29 - May 1, 2008
• The 2.0 Office — NJLA Annual Conference, Long Branch, NJ, May 1, 2008
• Intranet 2.0 — NJLA Annual Conference, Long Branch, NJ, May 1, 2008
• Online Office Tools — Princeton Public Library Tech Talks, Princeton, NJ, May 6, 2008
• The 2.0 Office: More Than Just Wikis & Blogs — Central Jersey Regional Library Cooperative, Princeton, NJ, May 22, 2008
• Attending SLA Annual Conference, Seattle, WA - June 15 - June 18, 2008

I expect more to change over the next few months, but I just thought I’d share this list with you all! Keep and eye on my schedule online to see if things change - or if you’d like me to come talk to your library or organization.

This is an interesting sounding event hosted by NFAIS at PALINET headquarters:

The Internet, search engine technology, and the growth in electronic resources have significantly changed both the publishing and the library environments. And a new, born-digital generation of information seekers is accelerating the pace of change as they embrace technology and integrate it into all aspects of their lives. This evolution from a print to digital information environment is forcing all those involved in bibliographic control for information access and retrieval to rethink traditional practices and procedures – even to rethink the concept of journals and issues! How does digital article-by-article publishing impact library acquisitions and cataloging as well as processing by traditional abstracting and indexing services? How can user-generated be leveraged to enrich bibliographic services? Can librarians and content providers collaborate in the creation and sharing of bibliographic data? What new forms of bibliographic control are emerging? And what opportunities does the future hold for the traditional players in bibliographic control?

The event takes place on the 28th of March and if you register on or before March 8th, you get a discount.

Technorati Tags: NFAIS

Are you attending Code4Lib this year? If you are - I encourage you to attend Koha Camp.

Technorati Tags: code4lib, koha

I was lucky enough to win a scholarship to attend Code4Lib last year - and to be on the committee that chose this year’s winners - so I’m happy to announce that the winners have been chosen:

We are happy to announce the winners of the Oregon State University / Code4lib Scholarships.

The OSU / Code4lib Gender Diversity Scholarship was awarded to Deborah Mouw, Electronic Resources Specialist at Western Michigan University Libraries.

The OSU / Code4lib Diversity Scholarship was awarded to Ranti Junus, Systems Librarian for Web Services and Electronic Resources at Michigan State University Libraries.

In addition to congratulating the winners, the search committee would also like to thank all of the applicants - we had a record number of applications for this year’s scholarships, and there were many deserving candidates, of which we could only pick two winners. We are greatly encouraged that each year the number of applicants and the overall quality of the applicant pool continues to grow and improve.

There were so many amazing people to choose from, the committee had a hard time making up their minds. I hope to see some of you try again next year! Congrats and see you both at Code4Lib (since I’ll be there again this year).

Technorati Tags: code4lib

The first library unconference in Upstate New York will be held on March 4-5, 2008 at the Holiday Inn, Carrier Circle, East Syracuse, NY.

This from the unconference wiki. Sounds exciting - and like it’s being announced a little late in the game.

Technorati Tags: unyunc

I didn’t think I’d get to attend this year, but I will be there with bells on! I am registered, hotel booked and have already volunteered to moderate the Open Source track on Wednesday. You can see my schedule as it develops on the CIL 2008 Wiki. Can’t wait to see all of my “online” friends again!

Technorati Tags: cil2008

I only went to the exhibit hall for 1 hour on Saturday - that’s about all the time I could spare - but Todd had an interesting observation from him stay at Midwinter that makes me smile:

After walking around the exhibits this afternoon, I noticed the the crowd around the LibLime (open source library software service providers) and the general lack of crowd around the traditional vendors. Maybe just a sign of the times.

The booth that LibLime had was absolutely awesome! And there was an amazing crowd there even late on Saturday! If you’d like to see the booth I uploaded some pictures to Flickr (they aren’t that great - but you’ll get the idea).

Technorati Tags: ALAMW08, liblime, Midwinter08

I’m registered - are you?? Check out the program and details at the official site.

The conference will be held at the Embassy Suites Downtown Portland. A single suite is $150 per night, which includes full breakfast and free happy-hour. To make reservations, please call the hotel directly at (503)279-9000 and let the guest representative know that you are with the 2008 Code4Lib Conference.

Technorati Tags: code4lib08, code4lib2008

Join NFAIS for its: 50th Anniversary (1958 – 2008)

The cut-off date for the early bird conference registration fee is only days away - Tuesday, January 8, 2008!! The conference, scheduled for February 24-26, 2008 in Philadelphia, PA, is for all information providers – publishers, librarians and educators - who want to learn more about the user behavior and expectations that are driving the new information order and the technologies, business practices and strategies that are required to adapt products and services to a new generation of information seekers.

The Conference theme - The New Information Order: Its Culture, Content and Economy will look at how the rapid adoption of information technology is creating a user-centric, technology-driven society with its own unique culture, value propositions, behavior and economy, and will highlight the opportunities that are available to all who are willing to adapt to the New Order. The preliminary program, registration forms and general information are now available at: http://www.nfais.org/2008_Tier_Program.htm.

Highlights include:

• Trends that are driving the new information order from noted author David Weinberger, (Everything is Miscellaneous: The Power of the New Digital Disorder ClueTrain Manifesto, etc.)
• Emerging technologies and the future of information discovery
• User perceptions of the value of content based upon recent surveys from Outsell, Inc.
• Corporate and library business practices and revenue models that reflect the culture of today’s information society
• The geographic shift in the information economy and the opportunities offered by China as a new source of content
• Strategies for success in the New Information Order form the perspective of corporate, academic and government executives

This 2008 NFAIS Annual Conference will be a very special event as NFAIS will be marking the 50th Anniversary of its founding. The City of Philadelphia will proclaim the opening day, February 24, 2008, as “NFAIS Day,” the Gala celebration will be held in the ballroom of the historic Academy of Music, the oldest grand opera house in the U.S. that is still used for its original purpose, and the meeting itself will be held in the Park Hyatt at the Bellevue, a national historic hotel. Join us and find out how your organization can thrive in the New Information Order!

For more information, contact Jill O’Neill, NFAIS Director of Communication and Planning (jilloneill@nfais.org or 215-893-1561) or visit the NFAIS Web site at http://www.nfais.org/events/event_details.cfm?id=44.

Technorati Tags: Conferences/Presenting, NFAIS, nfais2008

Last year I was lucky enough to win a scholarship to attend the Code4Lib conference. Now it’s your turn to give it a whirl. The announcements are up at the Code4Lib site. There are 2 scholarships - one for minorities and one for women.

Good luck to all! It’s a great conference!