Catalogue quality

Catalogue quality has been on my mind over the past few days, probably  because I’ve been working on a file to send to LibraryThing so that we can use their wonderful subject clouds in our OPAC.  Quality is one of those amorphous words, but I suppose in this context it could refer to a number of things: how easy and productive your users find the OPAC, how full the catalogue records are, or how free of inaccuracies the catalogue records are. Of course all these viewpoints work together: if your catalogue records are inaccurate or overly brief the users can’t find the items they want so it doesn’t meet their needs.

In my case my library’s catalogue, like most, has been through a long history with different cataloguing standards and a number of data conversions, and time and cost were criteria as well as accuracy. Hence there are a proportion of ‘inaccurate’ records, some of which I’m picking up in my LtFL listing. I expect that Tim, Casey and co have some ’sanity-checking’ built in as part of their import routines, but I’m fixing the ones I discover as I go along – hopefully it will help out some students in times to come.  Most seem to be data conversion issues, with things like extra spaces having crept into various parts of the marc records.  It would be difficult to write a strict data definition for, say a 245 (title) field, as the potential content that most fields can hold is enormous, so with current MARC records and LMS structures it isn’t feasible to put more than broad rules in place.

Hopefully the problem will diminish as we download an increasing proportion of our records from external sources, as recommended by the recent Research Information Network report.  WORM (Write Once Read Many times) makes sense in a library context as much as IT. But I suspect most libraries have a similar problem of some lesser-quality older records hanging around in their databases. Maybe this will become of diminshing importance as time goes on, as undergraduate students these days seem to rely only on a small core of textbooks which are largely re-published regularly, but it will remain an issue for researchers. There is an undercurrent of dissatisfaction with the current data structures of  marc, and its successors are already being looked at. Maybe this is a something we can look at when we all come to FRBR-ize our catalogues when they get moved to XML?

Modelling the Library Domain workshop

I went along to the JISC ‘Modelling the Library Domain workshop last Friday (19th June) at the IET on the Embankment in London. it was a useful day, as I don’t often get the opportunity to stand back and look at what we’re doing and how it fits in with the changing world around us. That was the value of the model that we spent most of the day discussing, as it gives us a tool to do this.  It’s complex, so I won’t try to explain it in detail here – go to the project website and have a look at their papers to get a better idea than I could give you. However as a broad outline,  they see our business revolving around 3 ‘realms’ and their interactions:

• The Corporation is the organisations involved in the administration of knowledge assetts
• The Channel is the means by which these knowledge assetts are delivered to
• The Client, the person who accesses this information

I had difficulty with the word ‘Corporation’, as this is rather a ‘loaded’ concept with an Orwellian shadow, but I think there is value in splitting it up from the Channel with which it is normally combined as ‘the information service’. Increasingly in a Web 2.0/ Library 2.0 world we are only responsible for some of these Channels, which Clients want to use in their own ways, as combined iGoogle feeds, Facebook portals or whatever. I also have reservations on whether this model could be used in discussion with people outside the normal library sphere, as it might seem over-complex even though it is valuable in breaking conventional ideas of what libraries ‘do’.

For me as a practical person, the best part of the day was in the afternoon when we came to look at how the model worked in the context of some of the changes that are proposed or already happening in the information environment, such as sector-wide licensing for eresources or the avoidance of local cataloguing by using a single central bibliographic database. The model helped in understanding the perspectives of the different elements and how they would change as a result.

In a practical session which came as a welcome change to the theory, Dave Pattern gave a paper on his work using several years of data on user searches in his OPAC. I suppose this could be a demonstration of how the Client uses a Channel which then has influence on the Corporation, as there was a great deal of useful information on how users make use of the OPAC, with detail down to individual courses. This could then influence the Corporations relationship with the Client, thus going the full loop. Of course if libraries are to benefit from the sort of potential Dave is showing, we need more people with his creativity, instead of cutting back on library IT staff like some libraries (no names, but you know who you are!).

Past, present and future

Breaking the barriers

Yesterday I attended the  ‘Breaking the barriers‘ conference, organised by PTFS Europe and Ken Chad. It was an excellent conference, so many thanks to the organisers. It covered all aspects of Open Source within libraries, from full-scale LMS to catalogue enhancements, from a wide range of perspectives including conventional suppliers, developers and customers. The mark of a good conference is when the attendees go away excited and inspired by what they’ve seen, and from the people I spoke to yesterday that was certainly the case. I understand the Powerpoint slides should be available soon on Slideshare for those who couldn’t make it.

It demonstrated how Open Source is emerging within libraries, with or without encouragement from conventional suppliers and institutional management. There was a paper from Bob Molyneaux of Equinox which showed how OS LMS have become an accepted part of the LMS market in the US, and are now customarily considered during the initial market survey during the procurement procedure. I think we’re lagging behind slightly in the UK on this, as demonstrated by the supplier presence at the conference. Ex Libris and Talis both gave presentations – very different ones reflecting their different approaches – but both demonstrating committment to this new way of doing things. The old supplier-customer relationship is already dying, with some suppliers cutting back their support desk facilities at a time when customers need more support than ever.  Other LMS suppliers were conspicuously absent – I won’t name anybody, you know who you are…..

The keynote was given by Charles Leadbeater, of ‘We-think’. He gave his usual inspirational talk, pointing out how Web 2.0 is going to change most businesses (read libraries) over the next 5 years, but we don’t really know how. He pointed out that his 9 year old son, ie an emerging user, wants 3 things: to enjoy, to communicate, and to do, and all of them at times of his own choosing. We need to meet these needs, and to my mind Open Source is a way of doing so while avoiding the stagnancy which has crept into some corners of the library market. Things are already changing, witness the sudden appearance of link resolvers, federated searching and catalogue interactivity in the last seven or eight years, and the pace of this change is only going to accelerate. Conventional proprietary software looks like it may not always be the best way to solve the challenges facing us.

Ex Libris marketing

In his new blog, Carl Grant (President of Ex Libris North America) includes an image from Ex Libris new marketing campaign. Rather cheekily, the tagline is ‘Is your library trying to redefine what it means to be innovative?’  (note that is innovative with a small ‘i’).  Taking the reference further,  the illustration is a “depiction of a black-box ILS exploding into a rainbow of new and open-platform options that can be supplied by Ex Libris”.

It sounds rather like someone has been listening to one of those late-night Systems Librarians competitive grumbling events held normally on the last night of  system conferences….  This is targeted marketing aimed at building a potential customer group through being ‘in the know’, something I’ve not seen before in the Library world. Very clever, but when we all live in glass houses quite dangerous!

PTFS and Evergreen

Interesting announcement from PTFS overnight that they are now partners for Evergreen software in Europe. PTFS were already offering to set up and maintain Evergreen in Europe, as they could for any OS software, but this formalises it and gives it the ‘official seal of approval’ -a sort of Approved Reseller status in a way, which should boost confidence in potential customers. I’ve not heard anything for a while about the spat with Koha either, so hopefully that has been smoothed out.

News from OCLC

Just when I thought things were returning to the normal calm, OCLC have stirred them up again.  A press release announces that they are planning a web-scale library management system. I’d never really figured out Worldcat local, as it seemed  a duplication of what most of us already have available, but as the first part of an LMS it makes perfect sense: the catalogue is the first thing most users see, and the second part is circulation, which is what OCLC are working on at the moment and hope to be testing this summer. The complexity and cost of many LMS are beyond what many libraries need, and if they are members of OCLC already I can imagine the announcement being of great interest. It complements OS nicely, as somewhere to go for those libraries who can’t afford or justify the expense of local support. One to watch with interest!

Twitter

As someone who never uses one word where 160 would do, I’ve never been convinced by Twitter. But now I am.

Sun again

For IBM read Oracle.  IBM’s bid to buy Sun that  I blogged about a while back fell through and it has now been announced that Oracle is to buy them instead. A more natural match in my view, for what its worth.  A lot of Oracle systems already run on Sun hardware and both are industry standards for high quality.  There must still be concerns for rival companies like Sybase, many of whose systems also run on Sun hardware,  as well as the Open Source alternatives, however.

Swan stops traffic

Just driven into work, as usual with the radio on. At this time it is normally interrupted by traffic warnings, but one was a little different. Traffic entering and leaving Shrewsbury by the English Bridge was beng warned that it might be delayed by a large swan (I did wonder whether the swan wasn’t very good at directing the traffic…).  It’s good to be reminded occasionally that the word is bigger than the office!

IBM to buy Sun?

According to the BBC news website IBM have been in talks to takeover Sun. This is a real sign of the financial slowdown – at one time Sun were making massive profits, and it has long been one of the technological leaders in the IT industry.  To be taken over by IBM would probably lead to big changes as both companies overlap in big sectors of the market. I wonder what would happen to Solaris, Sun’s version of Unix? Or even to Java? I think Sun also has big stakes in MySQL and PostgreSQL, the 2 core OS DDBMS – would IBM choose to continue this when it might take sales from IBM’s own DB2? Another story to watch with interest….