A Suivre?

OK – a final post on Mashed Libraries, and then I’ll shut up. It has been really good to see blog posts start to drift in reflecting on the day, including:

These posts all (I’m glad to say) reinforce that the event was well worth doing. I’ve also got some more formal feedback via a survey (thank you Survey Monkey), and although there are certainly things to learn, and not everyone has had a chance to complete the survey yet, the overwhelming majority of respondents said they would attend a similar event in the future.

So – what comes next? On the day, there was enough interest in running something again next year. To be honest I’d prefer not to wait a whole 12 months, but sometimes these things take longer than you’d like. On the day we started to get ambitious with talk of 2 day events, unconferences and the like. I know OCLC are interested in doing something like the WorldCat Hackathon in Europe – perhaps we could think of a joint event?

Have a think about it, and let me know 🙂

In the meantime, here is a final way to savour the Mashed Libraries UK 2008 event. Thanks to Rob Styles and Dave Pattern for the photos, and rather appropriately the soundtrack is a track called ‘A Suivre’ by AlFa.

The morning after the mash before

Yesterday was Mashed Libraries UK 2008 – the first in what I hope might be a series of Library Mashup/Tech events in the UK.

The idea of holding the event germinated while I was at ALA earlier this year, inspired also by the Mashed Museums event. I blogged the idea, and before I knew it, had offers of rooms, sponsorship and quite a few people saying they'd like to come along.

Some questions, and answers about the event:

Did it go well? I hope so. It was a bit like hosting a party – you spend the whole time worrying if people are enjoying themselves, and then when its all over, you’re knackered!

What did we do? I’d worried quite a bit about the structure of the day. I knew I had a real mix of people coming along and I wanted to ensure that everyone felt there was something for them. I’m not sure I completely succeeded, but I think the mix was OK.

The day started with some presentations from Rob Styles (on the Talis Platform) and Tony Hirst (on mashup tools like Google Spreadsheets and Yahoo Pipes). A third speaker was planned, but unfortunately unable to make it, so a few people agreed to help fill (Timm from Ex Libris, Mark from OCLC and Ashley from MIMAS – thank you)

What surprised me (but perhaps was not really surprising) was the extent to which these presentations set the agenda for the day – people tended to look at the stuff covered in these presentations. This isn’t a bad thing at all, but worth noting when planning this kind of event.

After the presentations (done by about midday) we broke for lunch, and people chatted etc. After this, I really left it up to people as to what they wanted to get on with. I’d collected some ideas on the Mashed Library Ning  beforehand – but on the day the content of the presentations influenced what people did much more than this.

I wasn’t sure how to ‘manage’ the more free-form part of the day – how to make sure that people weren’t left thinking ‘what on earth do I do now’, while still ensuring that people could get on with what they wanted. I think it worked – but perhaps others are better placed to say.

Some of the things that people did on the day were:

Mash along with Tony Hirst – Tony conducted a Gordon Ramsay style mash along using Yahoo Pipes to pull data from different bits of the Talis Platform, and trying to output locations of books plotted on a map. There were some problems, and the limitations of Pipes become apparent (as well as issues with aspects of the data)

Rob Styles and Chris Keene (Sussex) were aiming at something similar, but with PHP and Javascript, and additionally pulling in data from another Talis source ‘Silkworm‘ – a directory of library information (including more detailed location information)

Matthew Phillips (Dundee) and Ed Chamberlain (Cambridge) played around with output from the Aleph API and Pipes (unfortunately some real challenges with this one), and Matthew also showed off his use of graphical bars to illustrate overlapping journal holdings – in print and from various supplier electronically.

A few groups messed with Pipes and locations – finding the nearest Travel Agents, Museums and Pubs to a specific location.

David Pattern (Huddersfield) messed around with usage data, trying to see if heavy use of one book today meant that another title would be in high demand next week, to allow planning of moves of titles into Short Loan etc.

Nick Day (Cambridge) used WorldCat to look up identifiers for citations he had coded up in RDF from some PhD Theses.

There was also the chance simply to soak up the atmosphere, wander round to see what others were doing, and generally chat and network.

Towards the end of the day Paul Bevan from the National Library of Wales talked about how they were engaging with Web 2.0, and the different challenges that they faced compared to ‘academic libraries’. (and sadly we were lacking attendees from the public or commercial library sectors)

A collection of pictures from the event is forming on Flickr, and I took some video footage on the day, which I hope to turn into something – I’ll post it here when it’s done.

What would you do differently? I’d remember that a room full of people with laptops needs lots of power points. The room we had unfortunately only had 6 – but with a bit of help from the local support staff, and a local Maplins, this was sorted out before people ran out of juice

I’d also remember that you need to order Vegan options for Vegans (I’m really sorry Ashley – hope you did get something to eat)

Thanks to? Thanks to Imperial College for letting me spend time organising this; UKOLN for sponsoring it (without whom, there would not have been cake); Paul Walk (of UKOLN) for encouragement and arranging the sponsorship; David Flanders (Birkbeck) for sorting the room, local details, and generally being helpful; all the presenters; and everyone who came along and contributed to the day.

In Summary? I didn’t really have any huge expectations of the day – I wanted it to bring together a group of interested people, and do some interesting things. I hope that the people who came along felt that in the main we managed this.

I can definitely see potential for different kinds of events that perhaps focus on more development, or on training – if you weren’t able to make it, then you might consider going to the JISC Developer Happiness days in February next year, which include an introductory day to develop skills, as well as a 2 day coding session (with prizes).

I think overall I can say Mashed Library ’08 was a success. I’d like to do another library tech event in the new year – so if you are interested, keep watching, or drop me a line.

 

Photos courtesy of Dave Pattern, via Flickr

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Infrastructure, Infra dig

Yesterday I attended the first meeting of the new JISC Resource Discovery Infrastructure Taskforce.

I enjoyed the day, and the Task Group is bringing together a great set of people who all had an incredible amount to contribute to the discussion.

The day was much about establishing some basics – like agreeing the Terms of Reference for the group – and also about getting some of the issues and assumptions out in the open. I'd been asked to prepare a 10 minute presentation titled 'What if we were starting from scratch'. Paul Miller from Talis also presented. Originally there had been a suggestion that Tim Spalding of LibraryThing would also present, but that didn't happen in the end (which was a disappointment)

My talk is available via Slideshare, but at last look, the speakers notes were not displaying properly, so I'd recommend using the 'download' option to get the powerpoint file, as the Speaker's Notes are essentially the script of the talk (although without my witty improvisations).

One of the things I struggled with as I wrote the talk, is that I knew what I wanted to say in terms of what a 'starting from scratch' approach might look like, but I had no idea of how this linked to user need. This may seem a bit backwards – perhaps arrogant? – in a world where we recognise that serving the user need is paramount, but even during the day we seemed to come up against this problem more than once – how does the infrastructure relate to the user? Are they aware of it? Do they care what it looks like? How do they inform it?

After researching and thinking, I eventually hit upon Ranganathan's 5 Laws of Library Science as a way of thinking about the user need and still relating it to the infrastructure. If you have seen (or remember) the 5 laws:

  1. Books are for use.
  2. Every reader his [or her] book.
  3. Every book its reader.
  4. Save the time of the User.
  5. The library is a growing organism.

Then I really recommend you read the full text of Ranganathan’s original book – as the thinking behind these laws are so much more important than this plain statement of them.

One final thing on the presentation – in it I describe a linked environment that I say is ‘not necessarily the web’ – I think this is true in terms of what I’m describing and for the purposes of the presentation. I want to state though that in reality, if we are implementing something along these lines the linked environment would absolutely have to be the web – there is no point in coming up with something separate.

Overall the discussions on the day were very interesting, and really just emphasised how much there was to discuss:

  • How does discovery relate to delivery
  • Are we talking about discovery via metadata or other routes (e.g. full-text searching)
  • What is good/bad about what we’ve got
  • Are we talking about any ‘resource’ or just ‘bibliographic’
  • What does ‘world class’ mean in the context of resource discovery

Some of this may seem trivial, and some fundamental, but I guess this is what happens when you try and tackle this kind of big issue.

However, the one thing that I came away wondering overall was ‘what do we mean by infrastructure’? (luckily I think I’m clearer on Resource Discovery, otherwise we’d be in real trouble!)

Dictionary.com has the following definition of infrastructure:

  1. the basic, underlying framework or features of a system or organization.
  2. the fundamental facilities and systems serving a country, city, or area, as transportation and communication systems, power plants, and schools.
  3. the military installations of a country.

Ruling out the last one (I hope) as not relevant, I think the first two definitions sum up the problem. On the one hand, infrastructure can be seen as the very basic framework. If you talk about Infrastructure in the context of Skyscrapers then you are talking about the metal frame, the foundations, the concrete etc. This seems to me like meaning (1) above.

On the other hand, in terms of urban planning infrastructure might refer not just to underlying frameworks (e.g. roads, sewers) but also basic services (e.g. refuse collection, metro system)

I think that when we talked about ‘resource discovery infrastructure’ some people think ‘plumbing’ or ‘foundations’ (this includes me), and some think ‘metro’ or ‘refuse collection’.

To take a specific example, is a geographical Union Catalogue like the InforM25 Union List of Serials part of a resource discovery ‘infrastructure’ or is the ‘infrastructure’ in this case the MARC record and ftp which allows the records from many catalogues to be dumped together, merged and displayed?

Going back to the question of how the user relates to the infrastructure – you can see how I (as a user) relate very much to the mass transit system that is provided where I live – but I don’t care about the gauge of rail on which it runs (perhaps I should, but I don’t)

The group is planning another meeting in the New Year, and definitions are one of the things we need to talk about – I think the question of what qualifies as Infrastructure needs to be close to the top of that list.

Doing the Library Mash

Registration for Mashed Libraries UK 2008 have now closed, and I’m really looking forward to the event next Thursday (27th November).

I’m really pleased that we’ve got about 30 people coming, from all over the UK (and a couple from further afield).

Although registration is closed, you can still contribute to the day, by joining the Ning at http://mashedlibrary.ning.com and posting ideas to the forums – you never know, someone attending might pick up on your idea and do something with it – and if not, then there is always the next Mashed Libraries event (I hope)

For those coming, I’m looking forward to meeting you all, for those not able to attend look for updates on this blog, on the Ning, the CILIP Update, and perhaps other places.

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Starting from Scratch

I’ve recently received (and accepted) an invitation to join a new JISC taskforce looking at Resource Discovery Infrastructure. The scope of the group (to quote from the draft Terms of Reference) is:

Serials, books, archives/special collections, digital repository content – we acknowledge that the group will have to prioritise areas of work because of their different levels of maturity. For example an approach might be agreed for books and serials and then later down the line repository content might come into play. The Task Force will discuss the scope and how best to deal with it at their first meeting.

  • Gain an overview of current activity and library infrastructure.
  • Identify the requirements for the UK further and higher education, in terms of current priorities and visions for the future
  • Articulate how requirements should be met.
  • To consider appropriate business models.
  • Oversee related studies and scoping work.
  • Identify how to take forward the implementation of an infrastructure to meet the future vision.
  • Work with key partners/stakeholders.
  • Develop a communications plan.

At the first meeting on the 25th November (which seems to be approaching rather quickly) I’ve agreed to give a presentation on What would we do if we were starting from scratch? I’m slightly nervous, as the others who have been invited to present are Tim Spalding from LibraryThing, and Paul Miller from Talis, and so I’m looking to say something appropriately visionary!

So, rather than rely purely on my own imagination, I thought I might as well ask the world – what if you were starting from scratch? Leave a comment, or trackback with your thoughts.

FRBRing RDA

There has been quite a bit of traffic on the RDA-L listserv which essentially became a debate on whether RDA was needed, and whether MARC was so bad after all.

I struggle with discussion about RDA and related areas of FRBR and FRAD, and have wished out loud (more than once) for a ‘Dummies guide’ that would explain it all in easily digestible chunks.

I’ve also struggled with the recent discussion on the RDA-L listserv since so much of it is along the lines of “There is nothing wrong with MARC – so what’s the point in changing”.

I have concerns about RDA, and about FRBR and FRAD – but I find the argument that we don’t need to implement them because MARC is fine just as it is depressing – if there is one thing I’m pretty sure of, it is that MARC is not OK. MARC is so not OK for where we need to be now with metadata that I don’t really know where to start. The issues with MARC have also been widely discussed on the NGC4LIB listserv, and rehashing the arguments again seemed pointless – so I didn’t bother joining in the discussion, leaving others to fight it out.

However, I did have a private correspondence with one of the participants, and I thought I ought to put some of the thoughts I expressed there into a blog post – both to air them publicly, and so I know where I’ve put them.

I should probably start by saying that I don’t regard myself as an expert in the area of metadata, so I’m quite happy to be corrected if I’ve misapprehended anything. I have to admit that I’m not even quite sure that my ‘problems’ with RDA are really actually anything to do with RDA, but perhaps more to do with how it is likely to be implemented.

I guess that the main issue that I have is that if we are really going to change the ‘silo’ nature of library data, we need a system of metadata that embraces linked data as a fundamental principal. As far as I can see, RDA does not do this. Although it does open up the possibilities of linking data, it doesn’t make it fundamental – and I believe it really needs to.

I can see that some of RDA – the work done by Diane Hillman, Karen Coyle et al on vocabularies – sets up the possibility of using linked data – but I just don’t think it is going to be enough. I’m very supportive of this work, and think it may be our best chance for RDA to realise some of its potential. However, the risk that I see is that RDA is implemented, but fundamentally not much changes.

The other problem that I have is that RDA is ‘based on’ FRBR and FRAD – and although I very much believe in the concepts behind FRBR and FRAD, I’m worried by some aspects of using them as the basis for RDA. For a start, I’m not convinced that having a conceptual model necessarily means we should bake the conceptual entities into our Resource Description rules

Secondly, I think FRBR and FRAD are OK, but I’m not sure they are really robust enough to base real world resource description on them. There are inconsistencies between FRBR and FRAD – see the discussion about ‘people’ from the DC-RDA listserv earlier this year. I think some of the things FRBR says about what counts as a separate Work are odd – e.g. two films of the same play are different works. I realise that others would disagree with me on this – which is fine, but seems an inevitable consequence of trying to apply a conceptual model in this way. Others have expressed their issues with the FRBR model in more detail and more eloquently than me – notably the work that Martha Yee has done.

I guess the way I would put this is that I believe we should create Resource Descriptions in such a way that it is possible to view them in a FRBRised way. I don’t think this is the same as starting with FRBR as a way of describing resources. I have to admit to being in two minds about this – sometimes I am convinced of the strength of the FRBR entities as fundamental to how we catalogue, and sometimes I feel that we should focus on FRBR at the presentation end, not at the resource description end. I guess that what I am sure about is that a Resource Description framework has to support the ability to display things in a FRBRized display (much more than the current situation), but I’m not sure that cataloguing in a FRBRized way is necessary to achieve this.

If these concerns all seem a bit hand-wavy and general, then I apologise – it is because they are. It could be that a good real-world implementation of RDA will overcome my concerns – but realistically I think we will see the minimum effort expended, with maximum backwards compatibility, and that will result in something that isn’t much more than MARC + AACR3 🙁

My own (vague and not at all thought through!) vision of how resource description should work is that it needs to embrace the concepts of ‘linking’ and ‘crawling’ (and is, I guess, semantic web-ish at heart). Always link when you can, and ‘crawl’ the data to build your catalogue and indexes. The way I think about it, library ‘catalogues’ would become a bit like the Google ‘copy’ of the internet – built by crawling a web of data – however, by taking advantage of the structured data available in catalogue records, it could provide more than just keyword searching.

I suspect that some of the ideas here need more thinking through, and expansion, but hopefully this is enough for now as a basis for more thought and discussion.