Getting It System Toolkit (GIST)

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

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...

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

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

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

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

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.