Lorcan Dempsey

From HorizonMuseum

Selected RSS Feeds Museums Fresh and New(er) Ideum Museum 2.0 Museums and the Web Musematic New Media Initiatives Rhizome Libraries/Knowledge Management Lorcan Dempsey Research Buzz Hanging Together Stu Weibel Dan Cohen Learning Brainstorm Nonprofits NTEN NetSquared Social Computing Many2Many Collective Thoughts General Technology Ars Technica Google Alert "Museum Technology" Googlization of Everything BBC CNet News Engadget Forbes The New York Times O'Reilly Radar ReadWrite Web SlashDot TechCrunch Technology Review TED Talks Videos The Washington Post Wired Yahoo

Lorcan Demspsey

• Library resources on the web (Mon, 06 Oct 2008 09:59:43 -0700)
  Cambridge University Library has launched an interesting new website science@Cambridge. It provides the increasingly common metasearch experience across catalogue and licensed materials. However, around this it provides a range of contextual services, many of them feed-based and dynamic. What I thought was especially interesting was the focus on providing access to collections and to library staff within a fuller user experience. Here is the rationale: Science@cambridge aims to draw users into a virtual library space giving them immediate access to electronic information from their desktop, tools to help them navigate through the vast number of sources available, as well as on-line real-time help from library subject-experts.This development acknowledges that for many of those working in contemporary science the library is now largely a 'virtual resource'. Science@cambridge will increase access to and knowledge of scientific electronic resources. It will help users discover, search across and improve the use of science e-resources, generally and within discipline specific areas. [Latest News] At the top level there is a cloud-based navigation option, Yahoo Pipes-based feed aggregation of relevant feeds (podcasts, blogs), links to relevant other sites, a LibraryThing-based new books feature, and the now familiar addthis to your favorite bookmarking service. The structure carries through the subject pages, where there is also specific information about library services and a Meebo widget for online connection to library staff. I will be in Cambridge in a week or two and look forward to talking with the developers about where they plan to take this. I wondered about more local material, for example, showing articles, blogs, etc by Cambridge academic staff in the relevant subject areas. Looking at the site I was reminded of a quote from the BBC that I have used here a couple of times already - about a 'feed-based universe'. One of the issues that a site like this highlights is the boundary between the library resources (in the catalogue, metasearch application, and list of e-resources) and the feed/link based approach of the contextual materials. From a conceptual point of view, the widgetization adopted by Facebook, iGoogle and netvibes weighed strongly on our initial thinking. We wanted to build the foundation and DNA of the new site in line with the ongoing trend and evolution of the Internet towards dynamically generated and syndicable content through technologies like RSS, atom and xml. This trend essentially abstracts the content from its presentation and distribution, atomizing content into a feed-based universe. Browsers, devices, etc therefore become lenses through which this content can be collected, tailored and consumed by the audience. [BBC Internet Blog] Quick Bookmarks: del.icio.us  Digg   Google  Reddit   Furl
• Web 2.0 again (Sun, 05 Oct 2008 19:53:02 -0700)
  I have just got around to looking at Programming Collective Intelligence [O'Reilly][Worldcat] by Toby Segaran. This fascinating book demonstrates how you can build web applications to mine the enormous amount of data created by people on the Internet. With the sophisticated algorithms in this book, you can write smart programs to access interesting datasets from other web sites, collect data from users of your own applications, and analyze and understand the data once you've found it. [Programming Collective Intelligence | O'Reilly Media] I was struck by the foreword by Tim O'Reilly, where he discusses what he sees as distinctive about Web 2.0 as a concept (there is some overlap between the foreward and the blog entry from which I quote here). When Time Magazine picked "You" as their Person of the Year for 2006, they cemented the idea that Web 2.0 is about "user generated content" -- and that Wikipedia, YouTube, and MySpace are the heart of the Web 2.0 revolution. The true story is so much more complex than that. The content that users contribute explicitly to Web 2.0 sites is the small fraction that is visible above the surface. 80% of what matters is below, in the dark matter of implicitly-contributed data. [Programming Collective Intelligence - O'Reilly Radar] He talks about how Google's invention of PageRank was in many ways the defining moment for Web 2.0, as it was one of the first applications to mobilize 'implicitly-contributed' data, in this case the 'choices' or 'intentions' implied by links to webpages. No one would characterize Google as a "user generated content" company, yet they are clearly at the very heart of Web 2.0. That's why I prefer the phrase "harnessing collective intelligence" as the touchstone of the revolution. A link is user-generated content, but PageRank is a technique for extracting intelligence from that content. So is Flickr's "interestingness" algorithm, or Amazon's "people who bought this product also bought...", Last.Fm's algorithms for "similar artist radio", ebay's reputation system, and Google's AdSense. [Programming Collective Intelligence - O'Reilly Radar] I defined Web 2.0 as "the design of systems that harness network effects to get better the more people use them." Getting users to participate is the first step. Learning from those users and shaping your site based on what they do and pay attention to is the second step. [Programming Collective Intelligence - O'Reilly Radar] I have spoken about this 'implicitly-contributed' data as 'intentional' data, drawing on John Battelle's notion of Google's database of intentions', the progressively richer map of user choices it is amassing. In general, I think that we are too much occupied in libraries by the 20%, the 'user generated content', and not enough by network effects and the 'dark matter of implicitly contributed data' which drives ranking, relating and recommending on many sites. Incidentally, I remember thinking that the Time cover story was a clumsy attention grab. Related entries:The two ways of Web 2.0Tim O'ReillyIntentional Data Quick Bookmarks: del.icio.us  Digg   Google  Reddit   Furl
• Optimal disclosure of published materials (Wed, 01 Oct 2008 09:14:13 -0700)
  Simon Inger and Tracy Gardner released an interesting report a little while ago on How scholars navigate to scholarly content. This is a followup to a similar study carried out in 2005 [pdf], and one of the interesting strands of this report is an account of changes in that period. The focus is on how publishers should think about their network presence in light of changing network behaviors of scholars. They report that readers are increasingly more likely to land in a publisher's website from some other starting point (RSS, Google, A&I database, library portal, etc). This switches focus from navigation of the publisher website to effective disclosure (my word) to those other starting points. They suggest that the "most highly sought-after features of journal web sites are content alerting services, but not personalization and not search functions". They emphasizes the importance of link and data syndication strategies to increase the exposure of their content to their potential readers. There is much of interest in the specific results, and they have been collected into a readable and brief report. The conclusion provides a good summary. A key measure of publisher success is the usage of its e-journals, which can be maximised by influencing and enabling all the routes to its content. Library technology plays a key role in user navigation, as well as the more apparent starting points such as Google or major subject A&I databases. Publishers need to support all conceivable routes to their content through the web. This can best be achieved through the open distribution of XML metadata catalogues, through RSS feeds, collaboration with CrossRef, library technology vendors and through working with major gateways, A&Is and search engines. Just as was stated in 2005, as metadata distribution is maximised and users are able to choose more freely their preferred routes to content, many of the advanced features that users require are likely to migrate to their chosen gateways (or portals) leaving the publisher site ever more as a content silo, without the need for many of the advanced features that are currently present there. At the same time it remains true that publishers are under pressure from editorial boards, society members and perversely even from librarians, to create a high level of functionality and the publisher has to manage a careful balancing act to satisfy all of its constituencies. [How readers navigate to scholarly content PDF] One question I had as I was reading it. They make a distinction between A&I services and library web pages as starting points. When the former was made available through the latter, it was not clear to me which way it was counted. Some takeaways for me: The report provides good news for libraries, especially in relation to the important 'channeling' role of link resolvers. The authors report that nearly 60% of respondents were guided to e-journals by the library over 95% of the time. They note that this is an 'amazing result'. Disclosure to user workflows has been a recurrent theme of this blog, and I was interested in how this was a major theme of the report. Increasingly we have to build services around user workflow, rather than expect them to build their workflow around services. I recognized the truth of the last paragraph in the conclusions above, and smiled at the expanded version in the body of the text where it was noted that features sometimes had to be incorporated to support a 'political position with respect to societies and powerful editorial board members'. Related entries:In the flowDisclosureNetworkflow
• The silos of the LAMs (Sun, 28 Sep 2008 18:32:21 -0700)
  Libraries, archives and museums have different curatorial traditions and professional outlooks. In the digital environment, correspondences grow, around both the management of surrogates and of born-digital materials. Based on workshops in five RLG partner institutions, my colleagues have released a report [PDF] on institutional collaboration between libraries, archives and museums. The project that forms the basis of this report began in 2007, when RLG Programs initiated work on the program, Library, Archive and Museum Collaboration. The goal of the program was threefold: to explore the nature of library, archive and museum (LAM) collaborations, to help LAMs collaborate on common services and thus yield greater productivity within their institutions, and to assist them in creating research environments better aligned with user expectations?or, to reference this report?s title, to move beyond the often-mentioned silos of LAM resources which divide content into piecemeal offerings. [Beyond the Silos of the LAMs Collaboration Among Libraries, Archives and Museums PDF] Update: See G
• Supporting research data management needs (Sun, 28 Sep 2008 12:32:43 -0700)
  Several recent reports discuss the evolving environment of institutional research data management with particular reference to library issues. Here is a list, with a quote from each and a comment or two. Skills, Role & Career Structure of Data Scientists & Curators: Assessment of Current Practice & Future Needs. Alma Swan & Sheridan Brown (Key Perspectives Ltd) [summary page][full report PDF] In some ways, I found this the most interesting of the crop as it provided some new perspectives for me. The aim was to consider education and career paths for those involved in data curation activities. One of the interesting outputs is a definition of some terms which correspond to different roles. Data Creator Researchers with domain expertise who produce data. These people may have a high level of expertise in handling, manipulating and using data Data Scientist People who work where the research is carried out ? or, in the case of data centre personnel, in close collaboration with the creators of the data ? and may be involved in creative enquiry and analysis, enabling others to work with digital data, and developments in data base technology Data Manager Computer scientists, information technologists or information scientists and who take responsibility for computing facilities, storage, continuing access and preservation of data Data Librarian People originating from the library community, trained and specialising in the curation, preservation and archiving of data [Skills, Role & Career Structure of Data Scientists & Curators: Assessment of Current Practice & Future Needs : JISC] Identifying Factors of Success in CIC Institutional Repository Development - Final Report. Carole Palmer; Lauren C Teffeau; Mark P Newton. [summary page][full report PDF] Here is how this report is characterised by the authors: "This case study documents the investments and progress being made at three operational IRs at doctoral research institutions to provide a provisional baseline for determining realistic goals and promising approaches for IR development at similar institutions." Palmer and her colleagues at the Center for Informatics Research in Science and Scholarship at UIUC have assembled considerable research capacity in this area, and are doing major work to explore the evolving intersections of information management and changing research behaviors. This is the report of a year long comparative study of institutional repository development at three CIC institutions. Interestingly, in light of the Swan/Brown study, a major part of the analysis is around the various roles that have emerged to support development, management, policy and liaison issues. (Note: see Dorothea Salo's favorable review of the report.) Within the cases, there were strong indications that IRs can make important contributions to scholarship, particularly in solving specific information visibility, management, or access problems experienced by faculty. At the same time, some of the assumed benefits of IRs are perceived as redundant by scholars who practice other forms of open access dissemination, or are considered risky by the standards of some disciplinary cultures. In general, the basic aims of universities in investing in IRs?to collect, preserve, and provide access to their research output?seem misleadingly simplistic compared to what IRs are actually attempting to accomplish, and what they will need to do to identify and successfully implement functions that are not redundant or risky and of high value to faculty. While the cases show lower levels of participation by humanities faculty and academic units, the traditional role of the research library as the laboratory for humanities scholarship is recognized, but exploration of the potential for IRs to better support humanities research processes has not yet been prioritized. [Identifying Factors of Success in CIC Institutional Repository Development - Final Report. PDF] No brief candle: reconceiving research libraries for the 21st Century. CLIR. August 2008. [summary page][full report HTML PDF] This report comprises papers from a CLIR Symposium held in early 2008. The closer engagement of the library in changing research and learning behaviors was a consistent theme, as was the emergence of a variety of institutional data issues. And this is a central concern of Rick Luce's contribution: A New Value Equation Challenge: The Emergence of eResearch and Roles for Research Libraries. As might be expected from such an event, the focus is on broad forward-looking service and policy issues. Ithaka's 2006 studies of key stakeholders in the digital transformation of higher education. August 18 2008. Ross Housewright and Roger Schonfeld. [summary page][full report PDF] This white paper reports findings from Ithaka studies of researcher attitudes to information management and sources. There is also some polling of librarian attitudes. The studies were carried out in 2000, 2003 and 2006, so this report charts changes in that time. The focus is on published materials although there is one section on what the report calls 'digital repositories'. Still, the vast majority ? almost two-thirds ? of faculty members are not even sure if their institution has a digital repository and less than a third of those aware of a campus digital repository report having ever contributed content to it. It is clear that these repositories have not become embedded in faculty workflows; in fact, many faculty are not even aware of their existence. Faculty of all different disciplines and across different size institutions were relatively equally unaware if their institution has a repository.Based on these findings, in the absence of mandates or strong campus-wide leadership commitments, we do not foresee institutional repositories yielding a transformative influence on the business side of journal publishing. Other types of digital repositories, especially those for storing images and special collections, are much more likely to continue to grow in importance at all types of institutions. [Ithaka's 2006 studies of key stakeholders in the digital transformation of higher education. PDF] Quick Bookmarks: del.icio.us  Digg   Google  Reddit   Furl
• Flexibility may not be a good design goal (Fri, 26 Sep 2008 15:35:02 -0700)
  Jerry McDonough has written an interesting and important article about XML, interoperability, and the social context of standards making: Structural Metadata and the Social Limitation of Interoperability: A Sociotechnical View of XML and Digital Library Standards Development. Drawing on a number of examples he presents a strong conclusion: The digital library community seems to face a dilemma at this point. Through its pursuit of design goals of flexibility, extensibility, modularity and abstraction, and its promulgation of those goals as common practice through its implementation of XML metadata standards, it has managed to substantially impede progress towards another commonly held goal, interoperability of digital library content across a range of systems. [Structural Metadata and the Social Limitation of Interoperability: A Sociotechnical View of XML and Digital Library Standards Development] For example, he discusses how greater abstraction in design creates greater optionality in use: ... the implementation of highly abstract elements for the definition of structure provides a tremendous amount of flexibility to document encoders; there is a vast number of potential encodings of any given object in METS, with variations possible in depth of structure (do I limit my structure to musical movements or do I provide structural information to the measure level?), labeling (you say TYPE="book", I say TYPE="monograph"), and arrangement (should the Lord of Rings film trilogy be encoded as a single METS file? Three METS files? Three METS files for the individual films and a fourth representing the abstract notion of the Trilogy?). This can lead to significant variation in encoding practices, even between two institutions dealing with remarkably similar material and using the same metadata standards, as noted by (DiLauro et al., 2005).[Structural Metadata and the Social Limitation of Interoperability: A Sociotechnical View of XML and Digital Library Standards Development] He discusses the conflicting goals of control and connection. The ability to control, to respond to local needs and conditions, promotes flexibility. The ability to connect, to efficiently exchange, promotes constraint. The library community has emphasized flexibility in its standards making and in the past this may have made some sense: the actual exchange of data was quite limited. However, if we expect data to flow efficiently between systems and services then this becomes problematical and greater constraint is beneficial. Via Evan Owens. Quick Bookmarks: del.icio.us  Digg   Google  Reddit   Furl
• TagCrowd: yet another tag cloud generator (Fri, 26 Sep 2008 06:20:20 -0700)
  Several services will now generate tag clouds for you based on a submitted URL or text. I suppose these make ideal 'cloud' services (ho, ho, ...). I have just come across TagCrowd. Here is what it makes of this morning's CNN home page. It is pretty clear what is on folks' minds! arrested bailout battle blog business campaign cars cats child cnn cnnmoney colombia com deaths debate egypt ends evangelist forum hemingway house ireport kyle living local makeup mccain meade news palin police politics popular porn presidential probe purring robin stories storm strengthens suspects talks terror tonight tropical tv updated video world created at TagCrowd.com Via the University of Cambridge Science Portal via the Arcadia Project. Quick Bookmarks: del.icio.us  Digg   Google  Reddit   Furl
• Dublin Core in Berlin (Thu, 25 Sep 2008 23:20:47 -0700)
  A wide range of presentations from the Dublin Core conference held this week in Berlin is available. Much of general interest about the use of metadata in different domains and the semantic web, and lots of specific descriptions of tools, techniques, and initiatives, .... Quick Bookmarks: del.icio.us  Digg   Google  Reddit   Furl
• QOTD: your friendly public library (Sun, 21 Sep 2008 17:37:44 -0700)
  A UK colleague sent me a pointer to this discussion of directions at Camden public libraries which includes this comment about public libraries by novelist Beryl Bainbridge: Camden Town novelist Beryl Bainbridge said yesterday: ?Why do they want them to be friendly places? They?re meant to be sacred. I bet you?d really impress young people if you had really old museum exteriors with lots of old books and silence. Make things accessible and people don?t want them. I hate modernity.? [Camden New Journal - News: Mike Clarke | Flick Rea | Beryl Bainbridge | Jonathan Miller | Alan Templeton | Doris Lessing] Quick Bookmarks: del.icio.us  Digg   Google  Reddit   Furl
• Worldcat on iPhone (Fri, 19 Sep 2008 17:23:02 -0700)
  Several colleagues have commented on the view of Worldcat optimized for the iPhone/iTouch created by our colleague Bruce Washburn. It is a nice use of the Worldcat Search API and it pulls data from Worldcat and Worldcat Identities. As I don't have a Safari browser or an iPhone to hand, I am cheating by showing you how it looks in Chrome ... Related entries:Mobile access againWorldcat and the iPhone (Jim on HangingTogether) Quick Bookmarks: del.icio.us  Digg   Google  Reddit   Furl
• The flatpack wealth of nations (Fri, 19 Sep 2008 16:43:36 -0700)
  Robert Crawford's poem Digital Library, St Andrews, finishes with these lines .... Where laptops open like thick-leaved books The flatpack wealth of nations. I know this because I listened to him talk to John MacColl in the latest PARCast ... Robert Crawford, Professor of Modern scottish Literature at the University of St Andrews, and well-known poet, talks with John MacColl about scholarship, the importance of digitized archives and the inspiration his poetry derives from new technologies.The discussion includes details about the scholarship which supported "Scotland's Books," a recently published book about the history of Scottish literature, and a forthcoming biography of Robert Burns. Also included is Robert's description of the importance of digitized archives as well as the pleasure of working with paper in archives such as that at St Andrews, with hundreds of years' worth of undigitized materila still to be charted. [Crawford Podcast [OCLC]] Check out Robert Crawford's Worldcat Identity page. This is the ninth PARcast. Earlier interviews were with Richard Ovenden (Bodleian Library, Oxford), Jackie Dooley (Consulting Archivist, OCLC Programs and Research), Ken Hamma (then Executive Director for Digital Policy and Initiatives J. Paul Getty Trust), MacKenzie Smith (Associate Director for Technology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Libraries), Jenn Riley (Metadata Librarian, Digital Library Program, Indiana University), Dennis Meissner (Head of Collections Management, Minnesota Historical Society), Jeremy Frumkin (Head of Emerging Technologies, Oregon State University), Mark Dimunation (Chief of the Rare Book and Special Collections Division, Library of Congress). Quick Bookmarks: del.icio.us  Digg   Google  Reddit   Furl
• Generations (Thu, 18 Sep 2008 10:19:02 -0700)
  We have been having some internal discussion about the usefulness of the 'generational turn' in much recent exploration of reading, media consumption, and learning and research behaviors. It is impossible to move without bumping into a discussion of netgen, natives and immigrants, Y or X, screenagers, the Google generation, and so on. I incline to Andy Powell's scepticism, and not just because because I have a significant birthday coming up ;-) He suggests that attitude is more important than age, although in response one might wonder about the influence of age on attitude. Anyway, I also liked Dave White's presentation of the terms 'resident' and 'visitor' (as alternatives to 'native' and 'immigrant') that was the occasion of Andy's post.
• Naming opportunities (Thu, 18 Sep 2008 09:05:33 -0700)
  [warning: retrospection ahead] In a longish and intermittently productive professional writing career, I have had lots of opportunities to come up with titles for publications. With variable results. Some I like. Full disclosure captured, I thought, the gist of the report to which it is attached [pdf]. This was a study into the extent of the retrospective catalog conversion challenge in UK libraries and archives. The rationale was similar to the 'hidden collections' discussion. If the existence of particular collections is not disclosed, they may not be discovered, and their value to research and learning is diminished. Some were awful. A Utopian place of criticism? was a rather opaque title for a rather dense article. It is an example of the strained literary allusion that is more of an indulgence for the authors than a helpful hook for the reader. Some were mis-timed. Libraries, networks and OSI was a well-received contribution. Despite the advice of colleagues, I was reluctant to drop OSI from the title because a lot of work had gone into the OSI bits. As it turns out I should have heeded the advice. Interest in OSI had peaked and gone into decline by the time the second edition came out. Its impact would have been greater if it had been called Libraries and networks, or somesuch: OSI got in the way. Note 1: An early lesson in the importance of brand. Note 2: How many current readers know what OSI was ;-) Anyway, this nostalgic note was prompted by the appearance on my desk of No brief candle: reconceiving research libraries for the 21st Century [pdf] [worldcat] from CLIR which despite the strained literary allusion in its title has some interesting contributions to which I will no doubt return in these pages. Quick Bookmarks: del.icio.us  Digg   Google  Reddit   Furl
• Public library value (Wed, 17 Sep 2008 16:04:20 -0700)
  I wrote a blog entry from the fine public library in Cheyenne last year. I was interested to come across an article mentioning this same library in this week's Economist. Laramie County?s libraries are the best of an excellent lot. Their flagship is a three-storey, zinc-clad edifice in Cheyenne, a town best-known for its annual rodeo. In addition to a third of a million volumes, the building contains well-equipped meeting rooms and computer labs. It has a large area oriented towards teenagers which is often busy, in part because of the librarians? tolerant attitude to food. In all, about three-quarters of Laramie County?s 86,000 residents hold library cards. [Public libraries in Wyoming | Why cowboys read | The Economist] And this being the Economist there is a punchline .... This attention to outreach and meeting local demands is partly the legacy of a long campaign to build Cheyenne?s library. In 2003, after more than ten years? work, the librarians managed to put an initiative on the county ballot that allocated $27m in additional sales taxes to the new building. Tax increases are always a tough sell in Wyoming, so the librarians were forced to find out exactly what the people of Laramie County wanted for their libraries, and give it to them. In southern Wyoming, at least, an excellent library system was not built in the face of resistance to public spending. The interesting truth is that it is excellent precisely because of it. [Public libraries in Wyoming | Why cowboys read | The Economist] I am reminded of a piece I have quoted before from Eleanor Jo Rodger in the September 2007 Library Journal. Creating value for our host systems always involves three things: Librarians must understand their host systems; they must understand the source of their claim to being a legitimate part of their system; and they must do their work well so the system is better because they are there. It's usually far more a matter of asking and listening than it is of telling and pleading. Also relevant is the recent OCLC membership report From Awareness to Funding: A study of library support in America. Related entry: Knowing about libraries and services in the network Quick Bookmarks: del.icio.us  Digg   Google  Reddit   Furl
• Power grab (Wed, 17 Sep 2008 12:33:32 -0700)
  Posting is light this week. We have been without power at home since the weekend as the remnants of Hurricane Ike passed through Ohio. I write blog posts in the morning between the children heading off to school and coming in to work, or in the evening. Not at the moment ;-) As I have mentioned before, we live beside a branch of Columbus Metropolitan Library. It is on a different circuit and has power. It is hopping, as people come to 'fill up' on power ... here is what the Columbus Dispatch had to say this morning .... Like moths to a flame, Clintonville residents converged yesterday on a corner of Whetstone Park for a collective power trip.The Whetstone branch of the Columbus Metropolitan Library and adjacent lighted tennis courts were literal beacons of light last night in a neighborhood otherwise bathed in dark. [The Columbus Dispatch : Whetstone library keeps residents charged] Quick Bookmarks: del.icio.us  Digg   Google  Reddit   Furl