Librarian in a Box

Snow drifts

2011-01-24T19:58:00.000-08:00

Venturing away from sleep on a late snowy evening to plow the piles of email and revisit the new book I purchased to read awhile before donating to Milne; Business Model Generation by Alexander Osterwalder & Yves Pigneur - what caught my eye was the style it was written. Seems like the authors worked hard to put the web in print, nice to also see how it was co-created by 470 practitioners from 45 countries. Collaborative writing styles are growing nicely these days.

So too the blurring among publishing and internet forms, fascinating evolution, imagine how within 5 year sprints... how many new forms are created, some take off, and others fade away.

In this handbook, the challenge is to provide practical help for change agents...

business models & higher education may not as easily blur, but the notions of model canvas are nicely composed to visualize key terms like; customer segments, value proposition, channels, customer relationships, revenue streams, key resources, key activities, key partnerships and cost structure. The concept map as seen as a jigsaw puzzle nicely reinforces the text. More important are the questions that frame each section; customer segments - for whom are we creating value? I wonder how similarly designed this notion is with ACRL value report: http://www.acrl.ala.org/value/ "Purpose – The following review and report is intended to provide Association of College
and Research Libraries (ACRL) leaders and the academic community with 1) a clear
view of the current state of the literature on value of libraries within an institutional context, 2) suggestions for immediate “Next Steps” in the demonstration of academic library value, and 3) a “Research Agenda” for articulating academic library value. It strives to help librarians understand, based on professional literature, the current answer to the question, “How does the library advance the missions of the institution?” "

The value we deliver to customers or value proposition (bundle of products and services) and "reason why customers turn to one company over another" is an interesting read. While being a host of Q/A, Instruction, Access and Delivery, and IT/Info products and services, I find that one of the greatest values of libraries is their cooperative and engaging ways of innovation and problem-solving that leads end-user and colleagues alike to transformation. The stacks, study carrels, and classrooms frame what is happening. Univ. of Virginia libraries called it crossroads, which reminded me of the old roads in Brittany France; I imagine it to be more like all the sparkling of neurons in a brain - if we look for synergies, I think we often see them starting in libraries - is that a business model?

Well, got to the section on Newspapers: free or not free, and realize it's time for plowing through more emails with my snow shovel.

ILLiad Update – Genie Powell

2010-03-26T13:17:00.001-07:00

Genie says thanks to all attendee’s – biggest attendance ever.

Presentations will all be available on the website by next week, also some of the Int’l ILLiad Conference updates will be included on Atlas’ Facebook, twitter and flickr. "The official Twitter Hashtag for the conference is #illiad10 so feel free to follow along or add your own input if you're attending. We'll link to a stream of those tweets from the conference web site as well once the conference starts. And don't forget you can follow Atlas Systems on Twitter - we're @atlassystems . If you have any questions about the web site or the conference, send us an email at illiadconference@atlas-sys.com."

Other news; Atlas is hiring 2 positions; a developer and support person.

ILLiad 8

Old version had a few troubles...
People said ILLiad 8.0 was slow – opening a request in 7.4 fast, but 8, takes 10 seconds. It wasn’t a server or firewall issue, it was a layer around the server.

So Atlas fixed all that and it is as fast or faster than 7.4.
Reviewing cool new features; looking up users, viewing both borrowing and document delivery requests, and more.
Documentation site: ILLiad 8.0.6.0 release notes with lots of details.

But wait, it gets much better than that...
Atlas added a new feature, it came in the last update as new scripts that allow you to open a browser in ILLiad, and run a web service. What do these look like?

They add new tabs in ILLiad, along side the OCLC and holdings tab, the script tabs included in the recent ILLiad update include a Google and Google Scholar service for articles, and Amazon for loans. Actually, with a little simple programming, you can create actions to do with web services (within the ILLiad client)

Cool feature is that these web services can import data into ILLiad, I know - while looking at Amazon – click on Import, and the script can pull in the price – you pick field to fill.

These are extremely powerful new tools that can expand what ILLiad does – streamline the processing by automatically looking up the citation in various web services; Amazon, Google, Bing, Web OPAC (for call # and location), UPS, Netflix, Dissertations Express, and more...

Web OPAC searching – script if your ILS’s Z39.50 isn’t reliable.

Article requests now automatically have Google, Google Search, and can have your Open URL look up as threaded searches (no delays in a request opening) That means you can fill borrowing, document delivery, and lending requests for articles even easier now - no need to look up manually.

Shipments tab – UPS Tracking code allows you a quick look up for an item that was shipped.

Atlas will soon post the documentation to activate these scripts, and some instructions. More on Lua: http://www.lua.org/

Also, Atlas will create some Atlas approved folder for lua scripts - ideally the community shares them. We can share these to really make powerful service extensions and automate so many staff functions; manual searches in Amazon, Google, and digital library (output or input)?

There was much amazement at how seamless this all worked in ILLiad, but it also was amazing to see how people were struck with realizing they were given powerful keys to unlocking many manual web services workflows that complicated their lives. This changes the playing field for ILL - it is rapidly moving into the service request business in libraries - a request could be either an ILL or acquisitions request, but it also helps process that into reserves, digital libraries (receiving and input stages), and much more. Kudos to the Atlas Systems folks for their creativity - ILLiad was always flexible, but now, easily adaptive to web services makes our lives so much easier, with potential to transform the very nature of library functions; acquisitions, etc. Next week, we want to create a netflix tab, and a OCLC connexion tab, maybe a course management tab - wow, so much fun work ahead after a wonderful conference is refreshing - fun homework - let's change what and how we do things with cool lua scripts on tab at a time.

OCLC Update ILLiad Conference – Katie Birch

2010-03-26T08:16:00.000-07:00

Lots of updates on software, product developments, and what next ahead...

Introducing the OCLC team
Tony Melvyn – WCRS product manager
Christa Starck – Navigator product manager
Jennifer Corsi – Policies Directory product manager
Ed Davidson – Navigator/VDX
John Trares – ILLiad hosting
Julie Nye – Analyst
Katie Birch – Delivery Services portfolio manager

Policies Directory upgrade:
• More than 10 fixes based on feedback.
• 3 webinars – 725 attendees
• “Real-time” supplier status in testing. (Real-ish time) :-)

OCLC is working to help Document Suppliers in their changes:
• CAI – InfoTrieve – seamless to users, CAI no longer uses IFM in January, but they returned to IFM soon after. Official transfer Aug. 1, 2010. Retaining CAI as an OCLC symbol.
• British Library: 4 symbols; UKM, BRI, BLSTP, BLNPL – but BRI is the supplying symbol.
• BSB – GEBAY; Bavarian State Library; pilot ended in November, continuing as full lender.

360 degrees of Library Cooperation
• Greening ILL – Dennis Massie (former RLG group) sponsored a report: http://hangingtogether.org/?p=767 http://www.oclc.org/research/events/2010-01-15a.pdf
• May 6 webinar, http://tinyurl.com/ye5g5tl

Resource Sharing Survey – http://tinyurl.com/yc7yjlu
Feedback for creating a best practices program...
Best Practices – resource sharing and delivery services: http://tinyurl.com/yes8onp
Jennifer Corse is the contact for that project.

Delivery services survey results; 2/3 found home delivery somewhat valuable – survey from the Montana Direct and Better World Books OCLC Direct pilots. Working on a contract with Better World Books contract for a May install.

May – WCRS ILLiad sometime later

BETTER WORLD BOOKS
Loan: Returnables
• QUICK: New books $25, 1.7 million holdings, 2K unique items (no other libraries have this) IFM participants.
• BWBKS: All paperbacks & used books, $15, 150K holdings, 45 unique items. IFM participants.

Worldcat Direct requires a signature agreement at the policies directory. ILL Staff can select WorlCat Direct. Workflow:
1. BWB mails books to patron’s address (home, office, etc.)
2. Patron and library receive an email indicating that BWB has supplied the item.
3. Patron receives a prepaid return mailer supplied to the patron. 45 day loans.
4. Insert with every book indicating to the patron that the item has been supplied by their library, and details about how to purchase.
Interested: contact Tony Melvyn

Direct Request for Articles
• Enhanced workflow for licensed journal articles
• New OCLC Knowledge Base integrated with Worldcat
o Data ingest being developed for SFX and Serials Solutions initially
o Used to configure links to licensed articles
• New License Manager (L-MAN)
• WorldCat Resource Sharing and ILLiad
• No additional subscription required

Currently, Knowledge Base under test at OCLC, turn it on under WorldCat Resource sharing – preferences:
• No – not set up knowledge base, only want print journals.
• E within group – custom holdings – 1st group, E & P within group
• E across group – custom holdings (all groups), ignore P – E is most important

Borrowing Locally held...
Phase 1: know that you own it, route to review file.
Phase 2: know that you own it, route to review file, add a deep link provided to that article.

Features:
• Requests include all OCLC#s (FRBR)
• Deep link to article
• Multiple collections and holdings for various sources

Lending request...
Phase 1: ILL OK, NO ILL
Phase 2: add silent to the terms
Phase 2: add instructions “non-profit only”, print only, etc.

Phase 1: May 2010 - pilot libraries
Phase 2: August 2010
WCRS and ILLiad available at the same time.

Thank you to...: IDS Project, Ohio State U., Penn State Univ, Univ. of Chicago, North Carolina State Univ., etc.

Projects in Planning
• Policy directory: internal web service to enable view by ILLiad, VDX, and Navigator to pull data from the policy directory in those applications. Regional offices will contact libraries without entries to use a new form to add data via a web form.
• Deflection enhancements – IFM deflection, on order item deflection, LHR deflection
o How do our products work with Andrew Pace’s Web Scale Management system? Deflection service.

Wondering A’loud: Visioning the Future of Resource Sharing and Delivery – Glenn Sandberg & Paul Doty

2010-03-25T12:46:00.000-07:00

Glenn Sandberg says...
“The place to go, when you need to know” library slogan at Rutgers University Libraries.
How do you expand your services – and save cost – do more for less...

ILL should become the public face of the University libraries – raise your profile. It is important for people to understand what we do. We do a lot of work – we are busy.

Aug. 2007 Rutgers launched ILLiad – went to free ILL service to their users, that increased the work. Feb. ‘09 900 article requests filled, Feb ‘10 1,900 article requests filled. We now can scan our print collection and post to ILLiad and deliver to users fast – it is highly valued by users, they don’t want to see it go away.

Jobs are changing – reserve processing is changing as online content and online courses change the nature of the service – as these decrease over time, staffing can change.

Remaining relevant – we have done that.
• What are you willing to do for people? How far are you willing to go?

Delivering books to faculty? Purchase items? How far will you go?
• Free digitizing of articles from print holdings in remote locations/Annex only.

Paul Doty
eBooks and ILL – public service as the public face of the library.
Google Books: discusses that Google isn’t our enemy, Google is extremely useful for libraries. Libraries succeed when all of us are considered library users.

Collection is an integral part of the library – the collection is the face of the library. ILL makes that face malleable to users. In making a collection, a library identity – library collections are a service role to be made useful to a body of users.

Google Books and terms of the settlement – Karen Coyle, Robert Denton, implications on libraries. Printed book is the thing that gives users the most rights; DRM may seriously restrict the future of platform and user services.

Can ILL, by virtue of getting this material, be the agency that comes down on the side of the user – defending their needs and control?

Accessing print books rather than digital content – libraries as readers’ refuge. We are fostering a community of readers. Is the print book a better technology for delivering a sustained body of literature reading? Print value: First sale rights – easy to sell a book, but do you see used software stores? Attendees discuss the merits and challenges of ebooks.

Textbooks – what can we do to serve our users obtain textbooks? Leasing, cost, borrowing, work with publishers, there must be a strategy that can make sense. Cooperative collection development? Publishers sell loose-leaf (50% reduced cost), textbook donations, state of Maryland – asked Universities and Colleges look at what is purchased; if only 2-3 chapters, don’t require new editions.

Reading digital text and print text – future library collections? How do people read anymore?

Discussion of future of reading and textbooks.

Cyril’s note: Why do we buy so much used-less print reference collection when users want and need textbooks? We borrow so many textbooks for students at such a high cost, why not buy textbooks and place on Reserves instead? We need to work with faculty producing the print scholarship that will not be used by their future students?

Free for All! Interlibrary Loan and Open Access – Tina Baich

2010-03-25T11:12:00.000-07:00

Open Access Defined; Internet based, Free content, Free of most copyright restrictions
Does open access make scholarly communications less expensive and increase research impact?
Tina’s delicious tool: http://delicious.com/ILLFindingAids, in particular: http://delicious.com/ILLFindingAids/openaccess

False expectations: If more content is freely available, ILL requests will go down.
Users aren’t finding these options, so ILL is locating more of them.

Received about 400 requests / month for materials what we own, so if they aren’t finding those, they aren’t finding materials on the open web.

Borrowing requests fill about 10-14K / year

Open Access Requests @ IUP
Quarterly data shows roughly 8-70 requests.

ETD’s: Electronic Theses and Dissertations
OA Theses requests @ IUP: sources vary widely, not all found using Google.
Sources:
• Canada Theses Portal (interestingly, all the Canadian theses were found in institutional repositories, and not the Canada Theses Portal); CARL open archives metadata harvester.
• Ethos: British Library Electronic Theses Online Services http://ethos.bl.uk
People who use this, the end-user, must sign off on the request to protect copyright.
• Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations; 88 institutions: www.ndltd.org/

210 Open Access articles since Feb. 2009, distribution:
Predominately Freely access science journals, DOAJ, HighWire Press (not all is free: , J-STAGE are predominate.
PubMed Central: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/index.html

Rarely does she go to these sites because Serials Solutions indexes them and makes DOAJ / OA titles available by turning on the “Freely Accessible...” list of sources.

AO Articles not found in Serials Solutions, found on the web – wide and varied, found by a Google Search. Persee is an interesting European collection of OA journals, in particular French titles. Also the Free Library by Farlex which contains about 19M articles and books.

Example:
9 Google books found, 5 Internet Archive, 1 other websites.
OA Gov Doc requests @ IUP: 6 government websites, 2 Google books.

New FDSYS search system, to replace GPO Access: http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/

OA Conference Paper Requests @ IUP; all academic 9 http://www.allacademic.com/, conference related websites 5, author web page 2, defense tech. Info. Center 2, IR: 1

OpenDoar and OAIster are general resources.

Tracking the OA Requests
•Establish a lender address: add address – create symbol OPEN = open access and save
•Create a custom email and email routing rule – finishes as Delivered to Web in Borrowing – so they post PDF and send URL.

Lender and System ID – insert lender and change system ID to OTH.

Charles Bailey open access bibliography: http://digital-scholarship.org/oab/oab.htm

Getting to know all about you... ILLiad User Demographics by Stephanie Spires

2010-03-25T10:23:00.000-07:00

Getting to know all about you... ILLiad User Demographics – Stephanie Spires

Users Table
Every registered user has a record in the table; each record has a unique username, lots of fields for each user; status, department, street, email addresses, preferences, etc.

Getting to know them – means finding about them – their registration data and their use stats.

User table, transactions, and tracking table
Users are associated with Borrowing and Document Delivery transactions by username – each record has an associated username that links back to users table; each username has only one record.
Stephanie share the ILLiad diagram – useful, but it would be nice to update this and add the Worldcat Info table.
http://www.atlas-sys.com/documentation/illiad/content/ILLiadDatabaseDiagram.pdf

History and Tracking are similar, but history includes billing and supplier data.
Tracking is a short table, only TN#, DateTime, ChangedTo, ChangedBy

Transactions table is a big table; TransactionDate is last revision of the TransactionStatus.
From Tracking, you could see the changes in transaction for date/time stamps.

User Table provides all the demographic data that we are focusing on – looking at their use; Transactions table is important. Users and Transactions are matched by Username.

Using ILLiad 8 – search requests interface is on the ribbon.

Tip: Cleared column: B is cleared, BX is blocked.

PivotTable with exported Excel from ILLiad makes it easy to see the count of users by department or status. Who is using our services?

Search – custom search – custom request search
• Add a condition about Tracking.ChangedTo = Submitted by Customer
• Add a condition about Tracking.DateTime = Is between -select date range-

Custom searches can be saved. Idea – let’s share our cool custom searches by saving IRRP’s (saved – add them to the workflow toolkit) http://toolkit.idsproject.org/

Libraries in the Cloud: Sharing Resources at Web Scale – Chip Nilges

2010-03-25T06:31:00.001-07:00

Genie’s welcome - ILLiad10# is the twitter hash tag, feedback is important.

Genie’s story; Chip been at OCLC since 1994. Karen Oye was giving a presentation to OCLC about ILLiad. Chip asked if ILLiad was too good to be true “nothing is that good,” Genie admits – yes, ILLiad is that good.

User’s dilemma – confusing paths to information landscape – where is the library in this picture. Getting the library in the users’ workflow is important.

Cloud computing – pinnacle of hype-curve – computing platform – web-based applications with shared data and services.

KPMG report:

Infrastructure: Amazon web services

Platform: Google, Facebook

Applications: Sales force, Netsuite

? missed this slide, but the slides are available from ILLiad’s website.

Web scale value proposition – according to Amazon, cloud computing is a market shift away from % resources in infrastructure to initiative.

Data is the Intel inside
Shared platforms create network effects
Syndication creates web reach

From What is Web 2.0 – Tim O’Reilly

Aggregating data contributed by libraries – at a global level, data sharing arrangements have power to provide service to users – increasing access points. Argues that all the access points help users. Given how confusing the world is, gravitational pull towards library data would be nice – that is the problem.

Libraries worldwide: 1,212,383

Circulation / ILL: 4.9B

OPAC searches 105.6B

Annual transactions 5,265 transactions / second – pulling these transactions within a handful of commodity servers is possible.

OCLC Goal:

Help libraries to deliver their full capacity to the user at the point of need on the Web, in a manner that’s consistent with user expectations shaped by global Web brands.

Libraries and Web Scale: Where are we today?

Chip has nice slides showing timeline of library services 70s, 80s, 90s, etc.

Lots of disconnects in the systems that evolved, mass digitization projects creating a new access point. Collective collection emerging: Orbis Cascade Alliance, Open Library, Hathi Trust, Georgia public libraries...

We need to connect data – make a large collective collection.

User expectations are changing. OCLC’s Online catalogs report shows differences between user and librarian expectations. http://www.oclc.org/reports/onlinecatalogs/default.htm

So what is OCLC doing about web scale?

Data – syndication – services
Data: Make data work – available.

Worldcat has 169.9+ million records, 1.5+ billion holdings.
Unicode / languages supported
34 national libraries are loading records into worldcat.
Collective collection – integrating data that describes content;
Licensed digital content; databases, journal articles – Informatics; about 2M ebook records.
Special collections; archives & manuscripts, institutional repositories, theses & dissertations
Local library content being digitized; mass digitization projects, Google Books, Hathi Trust, Library digitized content. Worldcat synchronizes 12 million titles scanned from library collections. Archive Grid – database describing primary source materials and indexed in worldcat.org; OAIster moved into OCLC.
Registry growth 2007-2009: 70K records to 130K records.
Cataloging authors and researchers – OCLC Identities: http://orlabs.oclc.org/Identities/

Worldcat.org Syndication:

Over 9K registered affiliates through our self-service searchbox and open linking... Google, Yahoo, Bing, EasyBib, abebooks.com, Baidu, LibraryThing, etc.
Example of finding a worldcat record from google – not high up in ranking because data does not contain as much review content as other sites <- interesting dilemma for library systems – note; we should be able to work with our users in their workflow to help reviews; i.e. promote using links, programs, etc.
EasyBib www.easybib.com/ – helps students format references – they integrated Worldcat API.

Worldcat traffic: mobile 1%, direct access to worldcat.org 11%, worldcat local 34%, search engines 30%, etc.

Services: Worldcat.org, Worldcat local – traffic to openURL resolvers and requests significantly increased. Willamette University; ILL book requests up 270%.

2010 webscale: Circulation Components in alpha testing, acquisitions in development since early 2009; in the works; license management, etc. Unified selection and acquisitions; library, users, suppliers, data, etc.

Andrew Pace has a Web Scale Management team.

Constance Malpas – OCLC Research: Cloud-sourcing collection management: NYU libraries, ReCAP, HathiTrust. Team is looking at cooperative agreements – reduce duplication, maybe reduce cost by 20% potentially.

Harris study results:

End user services; web scale home delivery, survey results; lots of favorable survey results showing users interested in this, and even willing to pay for the cost of shipping, many using credit cards.
Get it from a library using Amazon makes sense.
Linking librarians in answer services – identifying authoritative resources to use, finding appropriate materials, etc.
If you can have one library card that could use at all participating libraries? About 65% say a global library card would be useful.

Rising sun – oops, I stand corrected, the Earth is spinning

2010-03-25T04:48:00.000-07:00

On the way to a lovely breakfast, it was nice to see the sun rising. Breakfast time discussion is always a great time to find out what attendees are hoping for when conferencing. At this table, two ILL librarians are attending interested in learning how to better utilize ILLiad, one is especially interested in how to customize the workflow, and another is interested in using ODBC connections to query the ILLiad database to develop reports. Implementing odyssey using a copier was discussed.

Nice to see how ILLers quickly turn their morning shop talk to focus on solving problems of the day – how do we solve this problem, shortcut this process, enhance user services, etc.

Back to coffee - have a great day ILLers.

Cyril

Dinner with Dan Specht

2010-03-24T22:31:00.001-07:00

Seafood and wine with Dan who struggled but successfully mastered eating pho with chop sticks; little more could do justice to a great dinner with many of the IDS Project, Dan Specht, Stephanie Spires, Christian Dupont (Atlas), Chuck (CCC), Jon (Nylink). Great discussions, ideas, funny conversations that don't belong in Cyril's blog; I will later include a photo of Dan for everyone's benefit.

Ed Rivenburgh (Director of SUNY Geneseo Milne Library & IDS Project) did a great job of introducing the IDS Project members, in particular, the Technology Advisory Group: http://idsproject.org/About/TAG.aspx - a fascinating group of very successful technologists from other libraries that work together to solve major challenges faced by IDS Project libraries, and sharing their solutions with other libraries. Sharing expertise in well defined projects that solve problems seems to work - albeit, it's a lot of work - no pun intended, but we are very impressed with this group (and that isn't the wine talking).

In the northwest, a similar kind of group is working with OCLC on the Navigator project. Seems like a strategy worth it's weight in gold. If these kind of inter-technology project teams work effectively, how do we support them? how do we connect the various groups? Developer networks get the programming talents talking, but team projects are distinct at crossing institutions and developing scalable successes. OK, time for sleep - thanks for dinner Dan.

Aquarium – ILL among fishes and dragons

2010-03-24T22:30:00.000-07:00

The pre-conference social sponsored by Copyright Clearance Center at the Aquarium was very fun. http://www.virginiaaquarium.com/Pages/default.aspx Took a trolley there and the ILLers had the run of the place, among the fishes and dragons: http://www.virginiaaquarium.com/animals-exhibits/pages/komodo-dragons.aspx

Great talking with everyone, colleagues from Texas, Buffalo, Notre Dame, Westminster, Ohio, and so many other locations. Some thoughts from discussions:

Some libraries are really struggling with staff shortages – this makes optimizing, streamlining, and automating so important, but they are faced with no time to make necessary changes. How can we all help each other out? Many features like Direct Request can be turned on quickly and save time to add others. Other ideas?

People are using the workflow toolkit http://toolkit.idsproject.org/ and finding solutions and optimizing tips useful – COOL.
Discussion of poor courier performance – what solution if the vendor is a sole supplier to an RFP? One radical idea is to get a statewide subscription to Google Books, and then use that to build competition to poor performing courier. Anyone have ideas to help a state that would like their courier performance improve?
Interest expressed in having IDS Project grow outside the state, or establish regional IDS’ – Maryland IDS and Kudzu/ASERL groups are using some of the IDS tools – but what other relationships exist.

ILLers have a unique and tremendous opportunity to transform the discussion across libraries and within libraries; centered on user services, fulfilling information needs by employing strategies that leverage data, resources, and a powerful network of strong partners - each hour at conferences like this, we have precious moments to work out collaborative solutions to the challenges we face, to be excited about the great successes we are all achieving (11M filled requests 2009 ALA), to establish the relationships to build stronger ties in an amazing network, unlike any other.

Special ILLiad meeting - an informal discussion group

2010-03-24T21:37:00.000-07:00

Great discussion, about 25 people participated in an informal afternoon group meeting designed to discuss ILL’s several key issues about the future of resource sharing; pay-per-view articles, direct request for articles, and lending e-books.

What makes these issues key?

Pay-per-view

Cyril opened the discussion with asking attendees who buys articles directly from publisher websites – almost everyone raised their hands, none seemed happy with their workflow; it’s obvious that ILL workflow is changing rapidly as emergent sources mature; purchasing prices are at times better than borrowing and/or copyright royalty, color PDFs, etc.

Lars Leon shared a model they are piloting; they are utilizing RapidILL: http://rapidill.org/ to route requests for articles they want to purchase from Elsevier online using institutional pricing (in the low $20s, while the royalty fees for an ILL that exceed 5 of 5 is $30+). They do this by simply exporting their list of 5 of 5 titles to RapidILL and making them appear as local only and local holdings – so their borrowing requests are kicked back as locally owned, but also shows obvious link to Science Direct. This saved considerable money, but the speed of service may have also increased the use to eat up any cost-savings.

Cyril shared that years ago he set up the Interlibrary Loan delicious website to include pay-per-view article suppliers, but in order to really integrate and streamline the workflow; a registry for pay-per-view websites is needed. As a group we discussed the criteria and workflow elements for integrating these sources, including the need for data such as price, delivery format, etc. An interesting issue came up that publisher idiosyncrasies exist – Wiley will subscribe you to the journal if you purchase a set number of articles online; other issues include challenges of registry and account management.

OCLC Direct Request for Articles

Great news from Katie Birch, OCLC – OCLC’s team is about to start beta testing their unmediated article request system that uses a knowledge base that works similar to IDS Project’s ALIAS http://www.oclc.org/news/releases/200929.htm; it will incorporate intelligent detect electronic holdings with ILL rights, and print holdings, and develop lender strings like direct request for loans; it will also allow libraries to load ERM data; ILL OK, ILL NO, and Silent (for local interpretation). Phase 1 testing is set for May, with Phase 2 testing in August; and this service will be offered at no additional cost (cool!). OCLC is attempting to work with SFX and Serials Solutions to make it easier to ingest journal article data for libraries to use this service. Hope everyone works well together, because we need all these projects to run smoothly to smooth out our workflow; and unmediated requesting of articles is GREAT!

Ebook lending

Perhaps one of the most uncertain ILL workflow is lending ebooks. Cyril led a discussion of the topic and shared screenshots of an evolving process developed to handle Springer ebooks that have ILL rights, as well as, workflow details used by Colorado Alliance, and Oregon State University. It was obvious that the attendees all feel challenged by ebook lending, and that no one had a best practice; similar to electronic journals – attendees stated the importance of securing ILL rights with ebooks – even though the process to lend them seems clunky, although not compared to paging, mailing and receiving returns. Attendees recommended talking with everyone; acquisitions and electronic resource librarians, publishers, etc. to work on this. The reason this is important, most packages, and Google Books subscription, do not allow ILL Rights – so more and more monographs are locked out from resource sharing. It seems obvious the problem is growing; more libraries are deflecting these, some books are ebook only, and the question is how to handle the workflow.

Question: Direct Request normalizes to print not the electronic book record? Because it is ISBN normalized to LC record, normalizing doesn’t always direct ILL requests to print record.

Consensus recommendation: educate ourselves with ILL rights on ebook packages.

Meeting open forum discussions:

Serial cut impact on ILL
Big packages are next to cut, this is problematic for ILL; we need to talk with vendors and make titles a la carte in packages.
Assessment of increases and decreases in ILL – what is causing trends that libraries are seeing?
Question: Should we continue to use the print record and not utilize the electronic holdings record in OCLC? Answer depends – check the cancellation reasons for requests placed on electronic holdings – are they being deflected by your partners? Highly likely, so depends on the data.
Some libraries are adding text to make users place requests thoughtfully / judiciously: “ILL requests generally cost between $5 to $50 / item, and is paid for your research and educational purposes by your library.” Discussion revolved around the desire for education and transparency, versus the need to not deter researchers.

For more information about the special ILLiad meeting - just send cyril@geneseo.edu an email for the brief minutes and handouts.

To share your ideas for less clunky workflow for pay-per-view articles and lending ebooks - please add your comments - thanks.

ILL Mentor & Training - IDS Mentor meeting

2010-03-24T11:18:00.000-07:00

Library to Library Mentoring discussion

Similar to WebEx www.webex.com/, the IDS Project mentors use GoToAssist: http://www.gotoassist.com to provide online support for libraries implementing or troubleshooting various ILL systems; ILLiad, ALIAS, GIST, etc. This may be leading to some service level dependency – what expectations are there during mentoring and following mentoring, expectations for mentee – graduating the process = ?

Local customization of ILLiad settings
Local web or word template customizations,

As libraries develop stronger cooperative relationships, distributed or centralized service agreements – the inter-dependencies become more significant, leading to the need to better define roles, schedule expectation milestones. In other words, training as groups of libraries are critical – what are the best practices and resources for training peers across libraries?

Besides IDS Project, there is the community ShareILL: http://www.shareill.org, Web Junction: http://resourcesharing.webjunction.org/ and RUSA STARS free workshops “ILL: Everything you always wanted to know”: http://www.ala.org/ala/mgrps/divs/rusa/sections/stars/publications/index.cfm

Tim Bowersox, coordinator of the IDS Project mentors is talking about developing a summer mentoring institute: meaningful and professional development training opportunity.

ILLiad International Conference - I'm here, I'm here

2010-03-24T10:55:00.001-07:00

It is great to be here in Virginia Beach.

Dan Specht reminded me a few times already, get that blog going, people want to know what is going on at the ILLiad International Conference: https://www.atlas-sys.com/conference/ConferenceSessions.aspx

This is not light duty, because I really can't be in every room watching everything, and although it will be my goal to listen to all the 125+ attendees, I doubt I can drink enough coffee to keep up with everything going on in Resource Sharing, ILLiad, and ILLiad libraries in 2 days; but here goes...

Just had lunch with Christian Dupont, Atlas – he was a great colleague I met while working at University of Virginia – he was the Director of Special Collections, and later joined Atlas to create Aeon: http://www.atlas-sys.com/products/aeon/ an exciting special collections circulation and request system that has a lot of similarities with ILLiad.

The lunch conversation was great – talking about the relationship between special collections and interlibrary loan – we talked about current efforts of the Rare Books and Manuscripts Section: http://www.rbms.info/ they are starting the revision of the Guidelines for the Interlibrary Loan of Rare and Unique Materials: http://www.ala.org/ala/mgrps/divs/acrl/standards/rareguidelines.cfm, also RLG efforts to share special collections: http://www.oclc.org/research/activities/sharing/default.htm

What is the future of special collection sharing? How can exhibits be shared, created as cooperative collections? How will the community of resource sharing and special collections and archives work together? Will we tether systems in ways that make library collections and exhibits more powerful and practical for users, for groups, for research? Great lunch talk over crispy scallops - thank you Christian.

Now attending the IDS Project mentor http://idsproject.org/About/Mentors.aspx meeting – discussion of mentoring visits with libraries – updating how libraries are mentored into optimizing ILLiad, using ALIAS, and other services, etc. The interesting part about mentor program is that a group of libraries are volunteering to drive/fly all over New York to help implement ILLiad with optimized settings, activate various customizations and services, and develop workflow toolkit entries. http://toolkit.idsproject.org/

Any other ILL Mentor programs out there? Please let us know.

Great discussion of experimenting with new models of training and service support – libraries working well together is in everyone’s interest. Cool effort.

Next is a special ILLiad project meeting – ad hoc discussion group that will talk about lending ebooks and how to incorporate pay-per-view articles in ILL workflow. So many great libraries and projects – kudos to all the ILLers for transforming library service.

More soon

Big Picture of Google Books & Libraries?

2009-10-03T03:44:00.000-07:00

Books served on a platter

Someone saw my listserv post about Google Books and ILL and asked what I “see as the ‘big picture’ if/when Google books really becomes operational...” (Great question, what do you think? to anyone who actually reads this blog)

Listserv posting...
Hello Everyone,

Wondering or interested in the future of resource sharing and the Google Books subscription? i.e. does the Google Settlement that allows access to copyrighted works in Google Books under license allow for ILL rights?

My question is...
...for institutions that will subscribe to Google Books, shall we ask for ILL rights - like we have been able to achieve with many publishers. (I want to add a big thanks to the many publishers that allow ILL rights for electronic content – you are wonderful!) So, if you are wondering too, when I asked Google, they said...

“Hello Cyril,
Thank you for your question. To learn more about the Google Books settlement agreement, please go to
http://books.google.com/booksrightsholders/. Because the settlement is awaiting Court approval, we're limited in our ability to discuss it with you. However, you are encouraged to contact the Settlement Administrator or Class Counsel, whose contact information is on the settlement website, for further assistance.
Of course, if you have questions about the Google Books Partner Program, please don't hesitate to contact us.
Sincerely,
Tom The Google Books Team

So everyone, if you are interested? Contact: BookSettlement@RustConsulting.com A court decision on the terms is coming soon. As always, your work and voices make a huge difference.

Google Settlement Details: (it’s only 141 pages – great reading J)
http://www.googlebooksettlement.com/r/view_settlement_agreement

Of particular note (highlight by me)…

Provided the ILL rights are there… We only need: unmediated requesting of this resource a priority and a wonderful LVIS (Libraries Very Interested in Sharing) library subscribe to it. “ Sent 9/25/09

You have some time to send the settlement administrators your thoughts; the settlement is undergoing revisions, so the Oct. 7th decision is delayed for a short while...

So, I shared some thoughts about the big picture recently at the NW Interlibrary Loan and Resource Sharing conference http://nwill.org/program.shtml in Portland, and I am uncertain if anyone agreed, so here goes some thematic big picture thinking... (First a few more sips of coffee...)

Google & Amazon will agree on how to share the marketplace of book distribution. Google and Amazon will cooperate enough so their competition does not reduce their effective huge distribution system, and their distribution system will likely shape the future of reading; much like iTunes (& their listeners) have shaped listening and sharing music.

From that perspective the disruption for libraries is likely to have several major consequences, probably the most noticeable...

“1st one to weed wins” or “the gutting of American libraries”
I have used both in describing the possible impact of a Google Books subscription model coupled with a just-in-time reality that the out-of-print book selling market and the print-on-demand market are growing and reducing the cost and time of books to at or below the cost of storing and/or borrowing materials. Add to that the various library based digitization programs. The first to weed applies only if a library wants to avoid the tremendous responsibilities of last-copy retention, which is a critical and challenging concept for library consortia to grapple – much like coordinated collection development policy making.

Of course it’s about space – but service wins
While libraries continually wrestle with the right service and space, the radical transformation of academic libraries will more than likely be determined by new competencies; project management and digital project/scholarship services are two examples, and how new service is designed within narrow niche opportunities and grown to fit and foster the future of higher education; which focuses on more research funding and entrepreneurial programs. Print collections will remain integral to the building, albeit as a new balance of function and look & feel, with some interesting project and exhibit based collections. While we are all busy reducing the size of our print reference collection, saying that it is a result of digital reference collections obfuscates the weight of an 8 year old service - Wikipedia’s impact on the context of information finding by users has been tremendous. We adjust the print footprint to the changing environment.

Where is reading and writing headed?
Because the future of reading is one of the most powerful determinants to the future of libraries, it might make sense to look at how others are shaping that future. We know that in the quest for the perfect ebook reader familiar vendors (Sony, Amazon Kindle, etc.) have busily wrestled and gambled to win a significant market share, while maybe more unfamiliar to us, the mobile phone group GSM World http://www.gsmworld.com/ collectively discuss strategies to make mobile phones the platform for content. While keeping an eye out for reading, you might as well watch writing as exciting convergence beyond paper annotations. A few project examples: Book Glutton: http://www.bookglutton.com/, Nines: http://www.nines.org/, Princeton Dante Project: http://etcweb.princeton.edu/dante/index.html,

There has to be an end to this blog, so here goes... it’s the cooperation scalability question.

Much like Google & Amazon settling down on strategic sharing of the marketplace of book distribution, can higher education similarly transform its institutional relationships and cooperate in new long-term strategic ways that focus the transformation of learning? Our struggles – organize cooperative efforts quickly and scale those efforts in large networks. Rather than 50 digital scholarship silos, agreement to scale 2-3 would certainly leverage the real strength of our scholars in the quality and scalable discourse needed across the globe. Arxiv http://arxiv.org/ is one of my favorite examples of a successful story of developing a disciplinary based solution that crossed the institutional boundaries, a significant barrier of scale and coherence for most institutional repositories.

Back to Google Books and ILL, the rest of this story is practical and not very practically technical...

If a library obtains a Google Book subscription, let’s hope that library’s has the ILL rights to share them with other libraries. Yes, a new type of proxy (VPN like tunnel) of a Google Book digital object must be technically created, and a new discovery system for resource sharing must either be created or adapted into current systems. However, this 'streamlined-clunky' version of Google Books gives libraries an important opportunity to continue to share resources (at lower cost than shipping print), and ultimately matches Google’s responsibility to do no harm... to libraries and their communities, not to mention Google’s library partners. Potentially as interesting; open URL knowledge base vendors have an opportunity to enable even easier resource sharing of electronic articles and ebooks than traditional ILL request management, but that and the future of pay-per-view (as a just-in-time acquisition theme) is for another time and another blog.

Author Receptions @ Library as Service?

2009-09-12T20:57:00.001-07:00

Geneseo Authors Day and the celebration of the Geneseo Authors Hall (a collection of faculty, staff and alumni works) at Milne Library got me thinking...

Authors are happy to have their works honored, and appreciate hearing authors talk about their works, and giving talks about their own work, so...

Why not invite faculty and staff that publish to have a 'free' reception at the Library?

Basically, set aside some foundation funds for small receptions at the Library to recognize works as they are produced. This gives the Library awareness when an author recently published works we want to collect, and helps the author market their work, all while honoring their work at the campus.

I know libraries do this, so I am interested in hearing your suggestions; one of the important parts is how to best market this service offering and get faculty, staff, and even alumni to participate?

Focal point - such as the Geneseo Authors Hall
Regularize author events and receptions
Correspond event times with campus events; before faculty senate, lectures, gallery events, etc.
Publish the citations in a distinctive publication, website, etc. (We are currently working with LibraryThing and evaluating an article citation tool)
Free food, coffee, tea, (I know, it just has to be said though)

Other suggestions?

Some of the related ideas that may interest you is something I want to see developing this next year; a reading garden @ Milne. Suffice it to say that by connecting readers and writers, in a variety of formal and informal spaces, venues, etc. strenthens the connection that libraries are a vibrant part of creation and dissemination of creative/scholarly works. BUT that is one of the reasons why we love to work in libraries. Best wishes.

Getting It System Toolkit (GIST)

2009-03-16T20:15:00.000-07:00

Hello Everyone,

Just want to mention that a team at SUNY Geneseo and with the help of others will be developing a new toolkit, this one is a bit different from the Workflow Toolkit: http://toolkit.idsproject.org/ (Which has recently upgraded significantly by our new IDS Librarian, Tim Bowersox)

The Getting It System Toolkit (GIST) will be a set of tools to reconceptualize the acquisition and ILL workflows with new adaptable selection practices, automated criteria, and new tools that attempt to better serve users, libraries, and diversifying cooperative collections.

The basic details of GIST version 1, planned for release this summer, are available at: http://idsproject.org/Tools/GIST.aspx

We are very interested in hearing your comments and suggestions, more on this soon.

Best regards,

Cyril

Text to Speech - Amazon and Rights-Holders

2009-03-02T11:40:00.000-08:00

The power of voice, albeit even HAL's to go along with it's one red eye, is tremendous.

Voice is what makes Amazon's decision to change Kindle 2's "Experimental" Text to Speech Feature option for Publishers and as a result to Readers so darn interesting.
See: http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=176060&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=1261092&highlight=
I really like their positive statement "We believe many will decide that it is."

Having done some OCR and text to speech work - for research purposes only, during my ILL days in Portland State University, I realized how enabling technology can make creative works - and how much the user can determine use. Trapping text within a format used to be simply the result of the technology of the day; paper, microform, PDF, etc.

Increasingly, the Digital Rights Management of today, as expressed by efforts of various rights holders / interest groups, are trapping text with no definable due date - short of the actual technology becoming obsolete.

I give kudos for Amazon's use of Nuance technology to empower readers to listen to creative works because combining the sounds and words enhances learning - which is really one of great success stories of humanity and creative works.

If the day of buying each type of use of a creative work is the future, the measures for wringing all the profit possible in publishing economics will continue to lead locked content towards obscurity. Thank goodness for all the alternatives.

Just a few cents for free - read, listen, paint it if you like...

Adding to the Get It picture - a chart...

2009-01-19T08:09:00.001-08:00

Great question about the graph Jennifer, so here is a snippet of detail to add...

What this shows only 5 titles from the graph, but should illustrate a few points of what we are discussing about sense-making with ILL and acquisitions.

For the titles "A pilgrimage to Kashi" and "Contemporary Indian writings" the cost to purchase and borrow are close enough to purchase, but more importantly, the # of libraries in Worldcat that hold the title are below 10. Acquiring these titles would diversify the collection and meet our user's needs - irrespective of various other selection factors; publisher, LC#, etc.

For the title "Blood and honour" the economic reason is simple, $5.99 to buy, or $25 to borrow - no brainer - twice. Actually, it's $5.97 new and $0.01 used depending on the edition. So, this one is a worth purchasing, but may or may not be worth collecting. The Library can decide, if shelf space is more important than this popular (Amazon reviews are very high for this title), than the Library decides either to give it to the user (and save lots of money over borrowing it - treating it like a copy), or to discard it to Better World Book, B-Logistics, etc. and maybe get some money back from re-selling the title.

"Confederate Catholics at war" may be an opportunity to acquire if it's in the LC# range we want to grow in, and an opportunity that is supported by 2 of our researchers, however, this one depends on collection building profiles - which ideally are machine readable.

Lastly there is "Classic garden structures", which just for the cost is worth buying, and because I love gardening (hate weeding though), I think we should acquire it and shared it with the three people who requested it.

Hope this chart and this helps illustrate some of the factors worth exploring as new workflow and user interface design of the Get It System. Appreciate hearing your suggestions as well - please post a comment; thanks.

The Get It System: sense-making design thoughts

2009-01-15T18:42:00.000-08:00

Gave a few presentations recently on the topic of Interlibrary Loan and Acquisitions, or rather, Get It - What increasingly makes sense is to change the operational assumptions we make about how library's process ILL requests. While resource sharing continues to be a very cost effective way to handle requests for materials not owned by the local library, the real costs of borrowing sometimes exceeds the cost of acquiring. This is especially evident when real costs are applied, i.e. lending charges, copyright royalty fees, this makes purchasing alternatives such as books (from Internet book markets) or articles (from publishers) a great strategy. This graph shows some real cost of ILL for book titles borrowed by Geneseo, where lending libraries charged fees (rent) for books, juxtaposed with Amazon prices and sorted by the number of libraries (in green) holding the title. These are just three important variables within the design requirements needed for a Get It system, a next generation ILL/Acquisition system.

For anyone curious about some of the titles in the graph, here are a few examples that may be of interest...

So, what I am sharing is a bit of the fun realities that happen when processing requests to borrow items users ask for.

I could also show how many articles that are borrowed, which may cost $10-15 because of lending charges, plus the cost of paying royalty fees of about $30 per article, exceed the cost to buy the article directly from the publisher... but for this post, I want to stick with books...

When the price of new and used books is lower than the cost to borrow, it makes sense to buy the item - depending on the strategies that makes sense to your library, i.e., I may want to buy books that are under $30 and held at fewer than 10 libraries in Worldcat, etc. In fact, we can all think of lots of strategies that would make sense for this design; Desirable LC#, Publisher, all the fun knowns - please post replies with your favorites.

To make these variables useful and valuable, the Get It System could learn from a useful tool called Book Burro: http://www.bookburro.org/

Example of how it searches a highlighted ISBN on any website in Firefox and provides an elegant and useful result set.

While these are a few thoughts about the future of a Get It System, the design requirement phase is underway, so any suggestions are very welcome.

Why is this so important?

One reason: What is increasingly evident is that library monograph budgets are in steep decline, which leads borrowing activities to increasingly request materials outside their cool and free friendly library groups, to libraries that charge lending, I mean rental fees. By getting it if it costs (and makes sense), the cost-benefit is that you fulfill the user's request and diversify your library groups holdings. I promise to fill in lots of blanks here, but that is the short answer to what the heck is a Get It System, much more later - comments and suggestions are very welcome. Best wishes.

Discovery to Delivery as Cycle

2008-10-02T19:57:00.000-07:00

While Discover to Delivery is much focused on in our literature, I am wondering what value and possibilities we might find from Delivery to Discovery.

When searching Amazon, the end-user value of the reviews is significant, add to that the rating of the suppliers are also highly valued. What are some library or academic equivalents?

If reviews are useful, should we promote it in our tools and workflow?

How about adding an ILLiad customization to the email pickup notice that directs readers to write reviews... like
“Interested in writing a review on this material? Worldcat review: ht tp://www.worldcat.org/oclc/<#ESPNumber>?tab=reviews#tabs“

This could be similarly done as a post return email notice. (For an example of an actual worldcat review, click here: http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/34617796?tab=reviews#tabs )

Some libraries add survey questions to the bookstraps they add to ILL books, or books ordered as Purchase on Demand - that's great too, but how can we make the rating part of the automated update process that loads ranking data upstream to the network?

The above is part of thinking about what questions do we want to ask our users, and how might they not only better inform our decisions, but aggregate and scale effectively. However, with that - it's time to call it a night. Bonsoir

Google Books - full view by the numbers

2008-09-12T12:42:00.000-07:00

So I was taking a look and finding some interesting stuff about Google books today...
If you use the advanced search feature and limit to Full View only you can have some fun with the date, say you select 0001-2008, the result is: 2,300,600 (Interesting, a few days ago it was 1.4M). Something is funny, so let's do the math...

If I search year by year, from 2000 to 2008, there are a total of 35,885 Full View books, but when I search 2000 - 2008 in the advanced search, there are 28,300, so either I am only calculating 7,585 incorrectly twice, or I need to better understand how Google counts or limits work.

However, moving away from search result consistency and accuracy, and back to the real question behind my Google Books search... What's there by date range...

Date range # Full View Books
2000-2008 28,300
1990-1999 16,400
1980-1989 3,649
1970-1979 2,013
1960-1969 924
1950-1959 771
1940-1949 534
1930-1939 589
1920-1929 123,600 (Obviously, a correlation with Public Domain)
1910-1919 266,600
1900-1909 525,600
1850-1899 1,090,599
1800-1849 419,600
1750-1799 67,990
1700-1749 14,880
1650-1699 3,846
1600-1649 1,723
1500-1599 2,027
1400-1499 273
1300-1399 450
1200-1299 178
1100-1199 0
0001-1099 1

So what is the oldest book?
Drum roll... It was published in 1055....
OK, you have to find out by clicking on the link: http://books.google.com/books?id=t4vgeIvyVqwC&printsec=frontcover

Some takeaway thoughts from my little adventure searching and looking:

Using MyLibrary in Google Books is very COOL provided you don't mind letting Google know even more about you and you and you... (You know what I mean)

Review service is very easy to use.

I LOVE that you can easily report page view problems (Although the link is buried on the right side while viewing pages) This is the kind of Delivery to Discovery value feedback that I want to post about soon later.

Date issues for limits - the limit isn't clarifying which calendar system you use

Pretty bizzare mix of materials, and I do like the utilities and services available from Google Books - I only wish it would allow us customizing our holdings and branding, oh, and be able to provide context and highlight seminal works.

Enough pondering on a slow Friday at the reference desk. Have a great weekend everyone.

Language Computer in the Library

2008-09-04T17:07:00.000-07:00

I was asked if the Library would purchase a Rosetta Stone Spanish Level 1 & 2 for $323.10 at Amazon and make it available on a standalone computer in the library.

First thought... What a great idea? (budget troubles aside)...

Second thought... How would we market this resource well and not make it another expensive reference like item that is rarely used... discovery, space, context and convenience matters. Knowing that this is a tool you want to listen to means headphones, but repeating the sounds means an interesting conversation in the study carrel next door, or a music practice room - which doesn't lend to discovery very well.

So, I ponder on...
How have others managed this resources...

I turn to searching online - the Internet first...
I was quick to find that Rosetta recently discontinued it's online offering: http://www.fcpl.org/information/general/rosetta.htm However, there are still some libraries that are able to offer the online service: http://www.lib.az.us/extension/rosettastone.cfm

Distracted - because I am working late tonight, I wonder into asking and searching, what are some other language learning environments like?

A brief search nets...

Wikiversity is text based: http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Spanish
MP3 based: http://www.cnr.berkeley.edu/ucce50/ag-labor/spanish/
Wow, mouse over triggered audio: http://www.languageguide.org/espanol/grammar/
And the BBC, one of my favorite library websites, I mean news website: http://www.bbc.co.uk/languages/spanish/lj/ (found this searching delicious tags of spanish)
Free/Commercial: http://www.studyspanish.com/pronunciation/vowel_a.htm
Had to also check out YouTube to find a variety: http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=learn+spanish&search_type=&aq=f

So having performed all these searches to select several resources of interest, I finally turn to the catalog... 13 hits from doing a search learn spanish using the catalog and find the most relevant title is the last on the list, can you guess my treasure...
2 discs. 33 1/3 rpm. mono. 12 in. - a 1958 phonodisc. Worldcat.org offers an improved list, with a 1990-1992 cassette on the top of the list.

Clearly, discovery may be an issue... So I conclude my late night work thinking...

How important is learning a language to our users, and as a result, to offering a library service?

Public libraries tend to make language learning resources a highly visible resource, but what are academic libraries doing?

What partnerships make sense with our Foreign Language departments & their labs, and other academic departments interested in Spanish?

Questions to discuss with my fantastic colleagues at Geneseo - but to anyone out there... what works well, what ideas do you have? Thanks.

Technical Services as ER - TV metaphors for Libraries

2008-05-31T07:42:00.001-07:00

I was pleased to see such a fun and creative video done about Technical Services: http://www.ahml.info/vlog/default.asp?ID=49

The analogy of an emergency room is an interesting one and makes me wonder what might apply for other library service videos, such as; reference, instruction, circulation, etc.

CSI maybe an ideal TV expression of our roles in reference and instruction; I mention that because Kim Davies Hoffman and other librarians, working with the Education department at Geneseo chose CSI as a theme for a very successful instruction program with high school students last summer. http://library.geneseo.edu/~kdhoffman/YoungScholarsAcademy.htm

Anyone have other ideas from TV might work for our roles, teaching, services, etc.?

Best wishes, Cyril

Marketing online books looses it's separate shelf at Microsoft

2008-05-29T11:27:00.001-07:00

Some interesting news about Microsoft’s wonderful Live Search Books service. http://blogs.msdn.com/livesearch/archive/2008/05/23/book-search-winding-down.aspx
Looks like their Book index is going away, and we just have to find those free full-text books in their general search engine.

Why am I sharing it?
There are lots of books and articles requested by ILL that are available online for free.
Although I more frequently find free full-text books in Google Books, I am happier with the free color full-text books, some new titles, and search results in Live Search Books. According to Microsoft, Live Search Books and Live Search Academic has digitized 750,000 books and indexed 80 million journal articles. I don’t think Google has published how many titles they have in Google books yet, but that would be interesting. Anyone know?

This news also makes me wonder about the competition and future of mass digitization. One of the most interesting aspects of mass digitization is one of the outcomes, a co-existence of free and fee works. Mass digitization is not only making works available online for free, the works are also being made into reprints for fee. Libraries can now upload their digitized public domain works into Amazon (relatively cheaply for about $99/book), and have them reprinted on demand (appears like any other book in Amazon’s search) If purchased, Amazon as publisher (see Book Surge: http://www.booksurge.com/), takes care of printing, binding, and sending to a customer, and the library gets a % of the market sales. The specific benefits to resource sharing – free online or an answer to the problem of trying to borrow early editions that are increasingly being locked away as rare and medium rare books.

If you want to see examples of this service, just open up Amazon and search for books with “Michigan Historical Reprint Series” to see several thousand titles. A number of universities are now involved in this type of service – any comments from them?

Tips on searching for free online books:
Google Books: http://books.google.com/advanced_book_search (Search - Full view only)
Microsoft (old location): http://search.live.com/books
Open Content Alliance: http://www.archive.org/details/opencontentalliance
Project Gutenberg: http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page
International Children’s Digital Library: http://www.icdlbooks.org/ (one of my favorite catalogs)
UPenn: http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/

Anyone want to share their searching tips/locations?

Best wishes,

Cyril

Like a moth to a Kindle

2007-11-23T20:57:00.000-08:00

Amazon's Kindle - the new e-book reader (and more) is out, well, sort of, initial demand out paced supplies. Curious: http://www.amazon.com/gp/mpd/permalink/m2S5YCKCJJ64W8

First thoughts; great use of mobile phone platform to support the networking of electronic books. While it will be interesting to see how people adapt to this new form of book, what impresses me is the scope of Amazon's content delivery service.

Note that besides being a key resource for buying new and used print copies, Amazon has been moving into electronic copies for quite awhile; besides acquiring a French company that produced Mobipocket http://www.mobipocket.com/ , which targets book sales for PDAs and phones, Amazon added some articles, chapters, e-books, etc. from publishers to their online marketplace.

Why I say scope...
Amazon's is working with the complete content distribution picture - besides marketing new & used print...

From the digitization services (as provided by Kirtas & Amazon: http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=176060&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=1018605&highlight= )

To the reprinting services (really a publishing service) as provided by Amazon's BookSurge http://www.booksurge.com/ - which reformats electronic books to those of us who want to write in the margins with pencil/pen. By the way, BookSurge services can have a very significant impact on library services, such as ILL borrowing; buying reprinted medium-to-rare books in lieu of significant efforts to borrow an original, and even collection development / ILL - for selection and finding sources for self-published works.

OK, back to the Kindle...
It will be very interesting to see it and competitor products; Sony's e-reader, smartphones and various distributors, such as Fictionwise: http://www.fictionwise.com/ .

How will these new devices and services drive new behaviours and opportunities for both our users and libraries?

It is also very interesting to see the free access to Wikipedia via Kindle. Essentially, Kindle is not a free web browser, however, you have to wonder why free wikipedia? Is it because it provides valuable context and connection for the worlds of books and life? Is wikipedia a selling point?

Lastly, one has to wonder...
Will Kindle be a 'free' 10 ounce interface to the Amazon marketplace, so we can carry an online world store with us everywhere?
& secondly, what additional fee based services may be tacked onto the Kindle over time?

Looks like I will just have to wait to find out - best wishes.

Reciprocal Faculty Borrowing Program - Let's do more...

2007-10-13T12:03:00.000-07:00

Hello Everyone,

A few weeks ago, one of our faculty members was told that in order to check out at a nearby library, they would need to obtain an OCLC RFBP card from their home institution first (then return to check out the books in their present hands). The reference department had cleaned house recently, so those RFBP cards weren't available, but the process of obtaining new cards and helping this user made me wonder why hasn't this program evolved. OK, first the basics...

This is a borrowing program that over 100 libraries signed on years ago. It originated from an OCLC reference advisory committee, and it basically enables authorized card carrying faculty members to check out from participating libraries - provided they get the card before they drop by the library. If you are wondering if your institution is on the list - I added the link to the program list on SHAREILL's network page:
http://www.shareill.org/index.php/Library_networks_and_consortia Note: OCLC will update this 1999 website with the following details and more:
Details about the program: from OCLC's Online Publication #46a http://cyril.oberlander.googlepages.com/OCLC-Online46a-RFBP.pdf
What does the card look like?
http://cyril.oberlander.googlepages.com/OCLC-RFBP-BorrowingCard.pdf

When I asked the ILL Listserv for feedback on the program, it's obvious that about one maybe two cards are issued every year - so marketing this program hasn't exactly reached the faculty population, or the library staff that are usually surprised by questions about RFBP.

While this program seems revolutionary for the time, we can do more...

How about the resource sharing wings of IFLA and ALA take their lead from the rethinking resource sharing initiative http://www.rethinkingresourcesharing.org/ and enhance this type of program with more libraries, less hurdles, more systematic and authorize more users.

A most wonderful librarian, in talking about the need for reviving this program recently wrote "Of course, my real dream is to create a national library card that we can use at any library in the country. Now *that* would be a real service for the library user!" I agree and further, I think we could even create a global library card - now that is a card I want in my wallet! Lastly, in many ways, ILL serves as a virtual global library card with a relatively expensive add-on paging & delivery system; expanding any direct reciprocal borrowing program seems a good idea all around.

So I feel it's worth asking:
Can we use the ILL system like consortia circulation borrowing system?
Basic authorization, accouting, and even tracking systems can help us approve and enable direct borrowing of users, provided the ILL system were tweaked a bit. If so, we might expand the idea of ILL to include visiting circulation services.

What do you think? Shall we expand our ideas of ILL to enable direct & convenient resource sharing? Shall we make this our cooperative 2008 resolution?

Distance Education ILL Service

2007-07-09T20:32:00.000-07:00

One of the most interesting challenges to the effectiveness of Library Services is Distance Education or remote user services. Not surprisingly, we have to see this as an opportunity to think outside the box, and think outside we must. I have on several presentation used a skit to show how the hold for pickup model for Interlibrary Services doesn't quite cut it for many users, and in the case of remote users, the double delivery dilemma (3Ds) makes even less sense. 3Ds means we borrow a book from another Library, handle it and re-ship it to our user's home; when they re-ship it to us, we re-handle it, and re-ship it to the lending Library (make sense??)

This makes services like Denmark's Books To Your Doorstep, and pilot's like OCLC's Montana Worldcat Delivery so important to consider. However, it isn't just a case where direct borrowing or Direct Delivery makes sense, in fact, we found that sometimes the numbers tell a different tale. Angie T. at UVa Library helped us look at our DE ILL requests, and we found that for about 6% of our requests that could be purchased - could be purchased for only $1 and rush shipped for less than $4. So, do we treat this as an ILL borrow, or an ILL copy - we purchase the book for the user. Interestingly enough, several colleagues have said this idea doesn't quite sound right; first because of procurement policies, and the other is a disdain for purchasing books for users (a format thing we have - ILL can pay up to $60 per article (lender fee + copyright)) and just giving it away... Good news, our Procurement Office has said it's OK, because it makes economic sense - and so we can test and compare cost, speed, and customer satisfaction.

So, what are we to do with the idea of purchasing books for our users? Comments/Suggestions?

The added irony of this idea is in the testing, I purchased several $1 books for myself to evaluate what dollar books in "good condition" really meant. In most cases, they were Library withdraws and many from Better World books. Is this resource sharing with a third party vendor?

Rethinking Access Service

2007-07-06T20:29:00.001-07:00

Ever wonder why Access Services conferences are far and few between? I do? While Interlibrary Loan conferences and regional meetings are consistent, I haven't really seen many on the suite of Library services on Access Services. Today, after talking about this with a colleague at UVa Library, I want to see a conference or forum (like the Scanning Forum) that addresses the need for Access Services at Libraries to face punctuated equilibrium strategically.

We might see the Rethinking Resource Sharing Forum and org as a model for addressing the need to rethink Access Services... Why?

Access Services is transforming; with consortia circulation systems, they increasingly deal with Interlibrary Loan issues. Access itself is diversifying; equipment, study rooms, services, delivery options, format challenged, remote user services, source options (buying, renting, etc.) and more.

Access Services Librarianship is chaotic? Many have said that Access Services is suffering some de-professionalization, similary, others say that Librarian positions are facing the same pressure.

Can Access Services both manage the day to day operations of the Library and transform itself at the same time?

Should we take up planning an Access Services forum for 2008? Potential Topics:

Circulation - Reference Interviews & Hybridization
Electronic Reserves - Print Reserves
Service Convergence - ILL, Reference, Just-in-Time Acquisitions, etc.
Fines - True cost of overdue Fines
Automating workflow - renewals, etc.
Recall vs. ILL
Distance Education & Remote User Delivery Services
Hold for Pickup or Deliver to Home
Storage
Administration
Managing Facilities
Customer Service
Training & Staff Development
24 hour schedules

Others?

Are others interested in the idea of an Access Services conference or rethinking forum? Let me know. cyril.oberlander@gmail.com

Why Librarian in a Box?

2007-07-06T20:10:00.000-07:00

You decide:
a. You are visiting this site from a box like screen - the evolved TV.
b. Historical resonance from my days of producing video series for cable access called Art in a Box.
c. Refers to the reality that we work in a large box, but we strive to work beyond boundaries.
d. Idea of having a webcam kiosk at Pionner Square in Portland, OR to ask questions of Librarians.
e. All the above