libraries as platforms for user-generated content?

Kathryn at Librarians matter poses an interesting question: Should libraries host user-generated content?

My first instinct is to say "of course not; we don't have the resources."

But is that really true? How much would it cost to set up a blogging environment for users, for example? A couple of old PCs? Running Linux, of course, which might incur some costs in terms of staff training. Some staff time to provide maintenance for the machines, generally police the content (if necessary), and provide (minimal) support for users? Bandwidth?

Sure, this might be beyond the means of many smaller libraries, but we're not exactly talking big bucks either. And with many libraries becoming part of large consortia, the costs could be shared with other member libraries.

So no, not impossible at all.

But what benefits could this provide?

Well, the biggest one I can think of is to serve the community: Libraries, and especially public libraries, are at the centre of a web of social and community relationships already. Sure, they're storehouses for books and the like, but that really is the shallowest reason for a library (you may as well pack all the books in boxes and send them to a warehouse if that's all you want out of a library).

Libraries are places where anyone in the community may come in and mingle and socialise (quietly, of course) with other members of the community. They are often places where local history is on display. They represent a physical manifestation of the local culture (microculture?) of a community. They already provide resources for local groups; not just bibliographic materials like books and periodicals and access to databases, but also meeting spaces and other resources. Local history groups and genealogy groups are often based at or run by local libraries.

So why not provide the means for the local communty to express itself through a trusted community web space?

assorted cataloguing bits #1

just a few quick links:

First: Nicole quotes an AutoCat post from Mac Elrod which in turn points to a blog post by Chris which points to the URL for a lecture by Francis Miksa Brian Campbell (phew! long sentence!). It's titled "The Genius of Library Cataloging and its Possible Future." It's in Real Media format and goes for a good 90 minutes.

I haven't listened to it yet, but folk have been talking about it so I should.

---

Second: Check out this post by Rory over at Library Juice; I know what I'd be telling that particular student!

---

Third: A couple of weeks ago I saw this post over at Chris' Cataloging Futures blog, which included the question

How much interest is there from publishers and book vendors in the area of metadata creation?

Now there's this study bit of work done by Karen Coyle; Titles in retail and publisher data. It's not a study, as Karen herself says, and

the numbers should be considered valid only for this particular set of data,

but it's a measured, thoughtful look at how various 'bits' of data are handled by library folk and by retailers/publishers. I agree that we have to do a lot more study on how other people in the bibliographic world use/create/share their metadata, and how we as cataloguers can use/reuse/share that metadata. Unfortunately most evidence we have on the topic is anecdotal. And anectotal evidence depends on individual experiences. As one of my old teachers used to say,

one person's opinion is no damned good.

Which is why we have an armed camp of folk who say that we can only ever trust metadata we produce ourselves because only we understand the metadata structures we use, and another armed camp of folk who say that we can simply import our metadata from elsewhere, and that anyone in the first armed camp is simply

"wishing for the return of the golden age of cataloging,"

whenever and whatever that was.

Not good, people. As much as I hate the word "progress" (whenever I hear people invoke "Progress" it mostly seems to imply a White Male Utopian idea of what the future should hold) that is exactly what we need. It's no good burying our collective heads in the sand and saying "we control our metadata," but it is just as bad to say "you're just burying your heads in the sand" and leave it at that. Study. Investigate. Theorise all you want. But produce results. Don't rely on anecdote and opinion and theory itself. Test your theories. And don't denigrate folk who are simply trying to do the best they can with the metadata that's available now, not five years from now.

---

Okay. I've calmed down some now.

Four: Chris posts about

the seemingly contentious section 4.2, "Realization of FRBR."

She points to an article that quotes a JSC study on FRBR Group 1 entities (here).

Really, I don't see why this should be a contentious issue at all. I'm a big fan of FRBR, but it is far from perfect (how does it deal with serials? how does it deal with losely-grouped works such as Arthurian Romances, or the Dead Sea Scrolls?). Now, this may well be anal of me, but if we're building a standard that will suit our bibliographic metadata needs for the next (say) 20 years, shouldn't we get right as much as possible right at the outset? Or do we want major reviews every 2 years or so? I'm sure that would keep certain folk employed in the longish term, but how does that help the rest of us?

Measure twice cut once, I always say.

---

Finally, this one's from Chris again: She's posted about the LC Working Group.... report, with links to the text of the report and how to send in comments, but remember

The deadline for submitting comments is December 15th.

so be quick.

Bigger? no. Better, who knows?

There's been a lot of interest lately in smaller computer systems, tailored to one purpose or another, rather than the make-it-bigger, make-it-faster, generic systems we've come to expect.

I'm thinking in particular about projects like One Laptop Per Child, and systems like the Asus EEE PC (which I'm seriously considering for myself!) or the Aleutia E1.

Maybe we're heading away from the how-much-can-I-do-with-a-computer mentality and towards what-do-I-need-a-computer-for? Needs-based computing?

WARNING! WARNING!

Just a heads up; it's possible very likely that I'll be posting less and less from now on; I'm not sure whether I'll be able to fit sleep, assorted geeky stuff (like upgrading my home machine to
Fedora Core 8), eating, procrastination, romance, and blogging into my schedule, so apologies in advance.

"The greatest living Englishman?"

For some reason I just love reading Stephen Fry. And recently he's been blogging about techy-type thangs (iPhones, portable music players, etc). Sure, he's one of them (a Mac user; sure OSX is based on FreeBSD, but it's not the same), but he's still okay in my book.

Anyhoo, Fry poses the question "Is Tim Berners-Lee the greatest living Englishman?" Me, I don't know about that, but I think he's pretty damned cool.

Even a parent's sick of you people.

This one was found on Jennifer's blog: http://fullmoon.typepad.com/chaos/2007/11/even-a-parents.html

And you know, I've seen the same thing in Dreary Olde Melbourne Towne. Carlos not happy.

Is it christmas?

This one
(http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TheSocialCustomerManifesto/~3/190988047/is-it-christmas.html) found
through the Social Customer Manifesto.

I dig.

What do conservatives spend their time thinking about?

Laugh? I nearly disgraced myself (in public too).

[please note: I'm sending this from my Google Reader account, so I don't really know how it will appear.

 

 

Sent to you by hermitcl via Google Reader:

 

 

What do conservatives spend their time thinking about?

via Feministe by Jill on 11/26/07

Amanda sends on this post, which provides Conservapedia's most-viewed articles list:

1. Main Page‎ [1,897,388]
2. Homosexuality‎ [1,488,013]
3. Homosexuality and Hepatitis‎ [516,193]
4. Homosexuality and Promiscuity‎ [416,767]
5. Homosexuality and Parasites‎ [387,438]
6. Homosexuality and Gonorrhea‎ [328,045]
7. Homosexuality and Domestic Violence‎ [325,547]
8. Gay Bowel Syndrome‎ [314,076]
9. Homosexuality and Syphilis‎ [262,015]
10. Homosexuality and Mental Health‎ [249,14]

And just when I thought I couldn't laugh any harder, I find this gem in the comments:

I don't want to stand in denial of equal rights and all of that PC stuff but then again I do object to enrolling my five year old in the gay straight alliance. If you are going to promote something as beneficial to all of mankind than you best not attempt to shove it up my ass like it or not. That kind of thing sort of like, well, breeds contempt and reactionary behaviors.

And here I thought shoving things up my ass would breed Gay Bowel Syndrome,* not contempt and reactionary behaviors. If only my mandatory pre-school GSA had set me straight!

 

 

Things you can do from here:

• Subscribe to Feministe using Google Reader
• Get started using Google Reader to easily keep up with all your favorite sites

 

 

Ouch! More! Ouch! More!...

This one's in the "huh?" category: A vest that causes pain when it detects a WIFI network. The idea, supposedly, is that this would cause a pain-map that would make it easier for the wearer to remember where he or she might get good reception.

I don't really think it'll be too popular (except maybe with the Venus in Furs set).

WorldCat Identities

I don't always like OCLC initiatives, but this one seems like a good idea; a WorldCat 'Identity' page for each author, with lots of useful details and access points to that author's works. I must have spent a good couple of hours just playing with it. Good one!

I hope they integrate it into WorldCat proper soon!

Library Juice Press, LLC : Ethay Ookbay ofway Almspsay andway ethay Ookbay ofway Overbspray

you may remember I posted about a project to translate the Bible into Lolcats: Well, do I hear Pig Latin anyone?

Library Software Manifesto

This one was found through Meredith's blog: She points to a post by Roy Tennant in which Roy proposes a set of points as a possible ILS customer Bill of Rights.

Now, Roy didn't make himself too popular with certain folks in the cataloguing community a few months ago (I won't go into that: If you're interested, check out the AUTOCAT archives), but as a [default] system administrator, this so-called Bill of Rights makes a lot of sense to me. Read. Absorb. Comment.

Ding, dong....

Well, after what seems to have been the longest election campaign ever, it looks as though the Little Man has lost government, and looks like losing his own seat to Maxine McKew. I'm glad and relieved. Especially relieved. Now we will see just what the Rudd government will be all about.

Automatic propagation of updated authority records?

[originally posted late on 24th November 2007, updated late on 26th November 2007]

An idea. For a while now I've been thinking it would be a good thing to have automatic propagation of updated authority records: We would need to have a central repository, and a system whereby records from that central repository could be spread to library systems everywhere.

Of course, NACO members currently have access to the NAF by FTP, but I'm talking about a system that would distribute individual records as they are changed and as they are requested, rather than the whole (5.5 million record) file.

Ideally, this would be an international (universal?) system, catering for libraries in all countries and languages (that is, not just the NAF). But how could it work?

Originally I though a system much like DNS could be put into place: A hierarchy of servers or repositories placed around the world, with changes moving from individual "host" nodes up the hierarchy to the 'top' level and then spreading to all nodes as requested. But recently I've been thinking more along the lines of package repositories.

Many Linux distributions use package management systems, going to a set of package repositories (often simply a set of mirror servers), in order to ease the installation and maintenance of software packages. Why couldn't a similar system work with authority records? Apt (or Yum or Slapt-get) for authorities!

So how would this work? Well, the authotity management system would keep a database holding information about authority records held by a particular library system. This authority management system would periodically (daily? once a week? once a month?) compare its database to an authorities server (or mirror thereof). If the local system had any new or updated authorities, these could be sent up the line for approval. Any local authorities that had become superceded by more up-to-date versions on the remote server, could be downloaded and imported into the library system; or perhaps a report could be prepared for the cataloguer or system administrator to accept before downloading and importing the new authorities.

Of course, getting something like a global authority file up and running would need a concerted effort by libraries world-wide (probably through IFLA), it would need the cooperation of ILS vendors, and it would have to be funded by someone! So it probably wouldn't happen any time soon.

Obsidian Wings: Surprise! Vagina Dentata!

This one reminds me of of Snow crash by Neal Stephenson.

librarian.net » Why isn’t your headline “why the hell are women still earning less than men?!?!”

This one's from Jessamyn; She comments on a Library Journal article on the value of an MLIS (Master of Library and Information Science, I think), and asks why women are still earning less than men.

I also seem to recall some figures from years ago that stated that, though women made up something like 75% of library staff (I think it was an Australian study, so I'll say "In Australia", though it could have well been a study from the States), they earned something like 10% than men in the same or similar positions, and that only 45%(ish) of management positions went to women.

WHY?

LibraryThing for Libraries

this is one of the posts that should have gone out weeks ago, but procrastination is a harsh taskmistress. Anyway, here it is.

_________________________________

I've been a fan of LibraryThing for a while now: What could be better than cataloguing your own books?

Well, LibraryThing now has a service for libraries. I haven't had a chance to have much of a look at it yet, but it looks as though it's potentially a great service. Anyway, have a look.

On the death penalty

This one's from a few weeks ago: It's am extract from Julian Burnside's Watching Brief: Reflections On Human Rights Law And Justice.

Now, I don't normally have much time for layer-type folk, but I could read Burnside all the time.

Linux.conf.au

Well, i've just paid up my fees for Linux.conf.au in Dreary Olde Mel8ourne Towne early next year.

I'll tell you ALL about it. Actually, I'm really looking forward to it; especially the mini-confs on the Monday and Tuesday. So if you're thinking of going to either the Fedora mini-conf or the SysAdmin mini-conf, watch out for the idiot in black in the back row.

more on the LC Working Group ...

Updates updates updates:

Karen Coyle posted this

The session webcast is here (I hope to get to it today, but we'll see)

Enjoy.

Obama for President

Some of you may be wondering "Why does he talk about U.S. politics when he's supposed to be voting
in a week and a half?" Well, some of it has to do with the fact that I don't trust any Australian
politicians (or at least none of the ones I know of). Some of it has to do with what they're talking
about, and what they're avoiding talking about. Some of it has to do with the way the mass media
cover politics (and not just at election time). So basically I feel politically disenfranchised.
Then again, I often think of myself as an anarchist, so that should be nothing new.

The American presidential race, though, often draws my attention. Specifically, the progress of one
Barack Obama: A few weeks ago he discussed nuclear disarmament (as in GLOBAL nuclear disarmament,
not just North Korea or Iran or Pakistan). He also doesn't seem to rise (or should that be "lower
himself") to the typical political mudslinging we've all come to expect.

Now, he's proposed a Presidential Chief Technology Officer
(http://venturebeat.com/2007/11/13/exclusive-barack-obama-to-name-a-chief-technology-officer/ --
found through Meredith's blog:

http://meredith.wolfwater.com/wordpress/index.php/2007/11/14/cto-of-america/) to "ensure government
officials holds open meetings, broadcast live webcasts of those meetings, and use blogging software,
wikis and open comments to communicate policies with Americans, according to the plan."

Fancy that! Transparent government! Just as it should be (isn't is supposed to be government of the
people, for the people, and by the people? So why isn't anyone else saying stuff like this? Or is
this another quaint 18th Century concept we need to do away with?).

the Library of Congress’s Working Group on the Future of Bibliographic Control webcast

well, there was confusion, frustration, and from some quarters even what seemed like glee, when the
Library of Congress's Working Group on the Future of Bibliographic Control webcast failed yesterday.
Cataloguers everywhere tried to get a look, with no success.

Chris (http://www.catalogingfutures.com/catalogingfutures/2007/11/the-webcast-tha.html) reported on
the 10 minutes of footage she was able to see. No real surprises there: LC wants to cut costs, and
it's picked the cataloguing sections bear some of the cuts: CIP input will be completely automated
with no human input; LC doesn't get enough (or even any) money from libraries that use its records;
PCC doesn't have enough contributors, etc. Also, more positively, authority control, though thought
by some to be less important, is becoming more important.

Dianne Hillmann also commented (http://litablog.org/2007/11/13/success-and-failure/), but more on
LC's seeming new transparency:
"LC is attempting to keep people involved in the process, and webcasting is a good way to do that"

The report itself is scheduled to be released on the 30th November.

change of plan

okay folks -- change of plan

until now, i've been in the habit of sending interesting URLs to the blog as drafts, to review,
write up, and publish later. But later never seems to arrive (there are currently 18 items needing
attention in my "to publish" list, with more to come).

So I've decided to email item as posts directly, and polish them up (if necessary) later on. Expect
poorer posts. You've been warned.

Marion Scrymgour: Intervention is a weapon we know of old

Those of you in the land down under may well remember a National Sorry Day a few years ago (was it 2004? 2003?) when absolutely EVERYONE marched. Except for the Little Man, of course.

Well, here's a lecture worth reading, from Marion Scrymgour (whose father was part of the Stolen Generation).

Read. Digest. Comment.

"four concrete ways the OPAC can NOT suck, and you can help"

This one's from the Disruptive Library Technology Jester (found through Librarian.net)


It's a discussion of four schemes to enhance OPACs (for non-library folk, that stands for Online Public Access Catalogue; it's what you use to find books in a library).

It's about making the OPAC NOT-suck. All good.

you know you're in trouble when . . .

Time for a sex joke. From xkcd.

Fast Fictions!?!

Just discovered a podcast (dating back to 2005) of Fast Fictions, the pseudo-legendary 3RRR radio show. "The Bod and the Dog go Pod."

Scary stuff. Just hearing the theme brought memories of many a wasted Monday night. Ah, them were the days . . . It was definitely weird to hear David the Body and James the Hound Dog once more.

There seem to be 6 episodes available from Roocast, the most recent recorded some time in mid-2006, at a guess.

Of rabbits and Prime Ministers

I know I said I wouldn't be posting much on the Austalian federal election campaign, but I couldn't help myself. This one was found through Chaos Theory. Read.

Incidentally, there was an article on todays Age about the lack of humour (well, wit really) in the current crop of Asutralian politicians.

How the West got lost

I never thought much of Malcolm Fraser until well after he stopped being Prime Minister (look at his hair! He looks like an earlier incarnation of Jeff Kennett). However, he's proven to be a person of unusual worth and humanity (in my opinion).

Here's part of a lecture he recently gave at the University of Melbourne Law School. Read. Digest. Comment.

Melbourne in the rain

Water from the sky,
dripping down my umbrella.
Melbourne in the rain.

We've had a glorious amount of rain over the last day or two in Dreary Olde Melbourne Towne. Parts of Gippsland report 100 mm. Carlos happy.

Cars on Hoddle Street,
spray rises from their tyres.
Carlos getting soaked.

New OCLC Report about Sharing Online

The Shifted Librarian reports that OCLC (in their wisdom) have released the results of a survey on Sharing, Privacy and Trust in Our Networked World. Read. Digest. Comment.

[some time later]

And here are Karen Schneider's comments on the survey.

libraries, Google, OCA and the New York Times

This one's been waiting in my To-do pile for a couple of weeks: The other week I posted this one, and a coincidentally the New York Times published an article (front page, no less) on several research libraries' decision to reject offers by Google to scan their collections (for the article and comment go here and here and here)

[some time later]

And here.

Books from the Espresso Machine

Interesting post from Nicole: Publishing (well, okay; printing) and scanning on demand!

dis/integrated library systems

I found this intriguing; we've been using integrated library systems (ILSs) for years, but what is a disintegrated library system (DLS), and what does one look like?

Read with me: This one from Lorcan Dempsey, and this one from the Panlibus (Talis) blog.

A thought on the library literature

Angel comments on the idea that most library literature is written by individuals to gain or maintain tenure. Actually, that's probably the case for most professions or disciplines. Academics write the articles while everyone gets on with the job. We thereby lose out on others' valuable and unique experiences and insights.

To some extent the blogosphere is helping to spread that experience around.

ALA President-Elect and the Future of LC Cataloging

Chris from Cataloging Futures reports on testimony before the US Congress (PDF) by Jim Rettig (ALA president-elect) on the declining quality of Library of Congress cataloguing:

Traditionally, the Library of Congress has served as a de facto national library, upon which thousands of libraries across the country rely for bibliographic records and services to the blind and physically handicapped, among other things. Countless users rely on the Library's records every day to find the books and materials they need.

And we should say libraries worldwide: LC is the largest and most influential library in the Anglo-American library world.

Unfortunately, LC is not the US's national library; its mandate is first and foremost to serve Congress. And we forget that in the library world at our own peril.

on the upcoming Australian federal election

I haven't yet posted on the upcoming (24th November 2007) Australian federal elections for 2 reasons:

1. Back in 1999 the Kennett government was set to be returned for another term in Victoria. All the polls agreed. It was even likely that the government might be returned with a greater majority. Except The Kennett Liberal/National government did not win the elections (much to my relief). And so, I now find it difficult to take the current poling seriously.
2. I do not believe a Rudd federal government would necessarily be any better than a Howard government: As I see it, politicians (regardless of nominal party ideologies) are interested in only two things; gaining power, and staying in power.

Basically, the choices are these:

1. vote Howard back into office, or
2. get rid of him

I do not see Rudd as any sort of saviour (though I'm sure many Labor pundits do), but ANY change must be seen as a good thing, in this case.

"“Everyone’s Guide to By-Passing Internet Censorship for Citizens Worldwide”" in Disruptive Library Technology Jester

This one looks interesting: As the title suggests, it's a guide (in PDF) for nontech users on how to circumvent internet censorship. Will comment once I've read it.

Davey Pattern: Sue the libraries!

I was going to go all serious and earnest and all about IP (that is, intellectual property) with this post, but instead I'll point you to this one from Davey Patter (who just happens to be a dead set genius).

tip: read the cartoon.

2 thangs

Okay.

Two thangs.

Firstly, I want to change the look of the blog: Would anyone mind if I change the font to some nice monospace typeface? Say a nice Courier?

Secondly: I'm thinking of making up a new black rag/jolly roger over the next few days. I'll post it when I've got it.

That is all.

PHM3: The Google Proposition - Challenging our Identity, Furthering Our Mission?

This one puts forward an interesting idea: What if Google (in all their wisdom and with all their millions) were to purchase a publishing house somewhere? And what if they were to provide that publisher's catalogue free of charge (as long as you don't mind a few ads) to anyone on the web? (which unfortunately does not yet mean anyone)

What if authors everywhere were to flock to this new movement in publishing? What if the entire publishing output of the world were to be retrospectively made available for free? Where would this leave libraries?

Well, folk have been running around predicting the end of The Library for years now: A dozen years ago the mass popularisation [is that a word? it is now] of the Internet really put the scare into a lot of folk.

Me, I'm excited. I didn't get into librarianship because of the cardigans and the hair in a bun (though they can be pretty sexy on the right person): What other occupation lets you provide free (or as near as) access to information for anyone that comes along? The concept of The Library is damn near Anarchic in nature (except of course of for corporate libraries, which hoard information for their owners) and suits my socio-politico beliefs quite nicely thank you.

Of course, the "Google as owner of world's publishing output" idea is also very scary: We'd be putting all our biblio-eggs in one basket. Sure, Google seems to have so far been one of the more responsible corporate entities out there, but they are still a corporation: Their main aim is still profit. If at some time in the future they have a change of heart, or if financial circumstances force them to sell their catalogue, or if any of a million things go wrong, what then for the world's bibliographic heritage?

What we would need would be diversity: Of formats, of sources, of repositories. Yes, even quaint old flattened leaves of dead wood. And all this information would not be free, though it might come close.

What we need to tackle is information as property, but I'll leave that for another post. Until then I'll keep the Black Rag flying.

mind maps based on wikipedia articles

This site produces mind maps (that is, structured overview models for a given
information topic) based on Wikipedia articles: I haven't explored it too deeply, but it looks interesting.

PS: It looks as though I'm using this blog as a means to remember interesting sites.

the bible in lolcats: a translation project

. . . I'm not sure about this one . . . but for some reason it just tickles me. Although I'm not sure what it adds to the field of biblical translation . . .

online meditation rooms

This is a new one for me. I'm not even sure I get the concept. Anyway, it's got some cool pseudo-ambient music playing (can ambient music ever be cool? And can you believe there's a Wikipedia article on coolness?)

turing test?

If you've never seen it, head over to xkcd: It's stick-figure geek humour.

on torture

I was going to write a big old post on torture and the end of democracy (as though we can call this tawdry thing being pushed on us "democracy"), but really all I need to do is to point you to these:

http://obsidianwings.blogs.com/obsidian_wings/2007/10/another-reason-.html

and

http://bitchphd.blogspot.com/2007/10/enough-funny-go-read-this.html

all of a sudden all of those lines don't sound so funny . . .

This one found on Feministe:

Quoting:

Mark Crispin Miller, the author of “The Bush Dyslexicon,” once made a striking observation: all of the famous Bush malapropisms — “I know how hard it is for you to put food on your family,” and so on — have involved occasions when Mr. Bush was trying to sound caring and compassionate.

By contrast, Mr. Bush is articulate and even grammatical when he talks about punishing people; that’s when he’s speaking from the heart. The only animation Mr. Bush showed during the flooding of New Orleans was when he declared “zero tolerance of people breaking the law,” even those breaking into abandoned stores in search of the food and water they weren’t getting from his administration.

Somehow all those gaffes don't seem so amusing any more.

on MARC

this one's from one of the blogs I read: Nicole points to a posting by Chris Schwartz on the future of MARC.

MARC is a sore point amongst cataloguers (or at least in the Anglo-American context): There are armed camps both for MARC and against it.

MARC itself is a data standard, or rather an implementation of a data standard (ISO 2709). It has been used for over 30 years in the library world, initially devised to print catalogue cards from bibliographic data, then used mostly to transmit bibliographic data between systems (for example, between different libraries, or between libraries and their users, through the Z39.50 retrieval protocol; if you've ever used EndNote or similar software to search library catalogues, you've more than likely retrieved MARC records).

I know of no library automation system that uses MARC to store data. MARC data may be imported into an ILS, but the system then parses out that data and stores it within its own database architecture (for example into records within a set of tables in a relational database system).

Now comes point number one. Repeat after me. Systems do not store data as MARC records. Got it? Good.

The problem the anti-MARC factions ignore, is that MARC is also used as an interface language (if you like) for cataloguers: Cataloguers like to think in terms of MARC tags and subtags and indicators. Instead of thinking of additional authors, we thin of "700" tags. Instead of thinking of titles we think of "245"s. Instead of thinking of subjects we think of "650"s. Or "630"s. Or "610"s. Or "600"s.

Of course, cataloguers don't really think in MARC: Cataloguers have become used to a parsed version of the MARC record, where the bibliographic data is neatly arranged in a page-like layout. This is not MARC. This is the bibliographic data, pulled from the database system, and arranged . For example, most cataloguers might look at something like this

000	00878cam a22002771a 450
001	10347858
906	__ |a 7 |b cbc |c oclcrpl |d u |e ncip |f 19 |g y-gencatlg
005	20060316181511.0
008	751210s1965 enk 000 1 eng
035	__ |9 (DLC) 66070332
010	__ |a 66070332
015	__ |a GB66-4853
035	__ |a (OCoLC)1888047
040	__ |a DLC |c FU |d MdU |d Uk |d DLC
041	1_ |a eng |h fre
042	__ |a premarc
050	00 |a PZ3.S2494 |b Nau5
100	1_ |a Sartre, Jean-Paul, |d 1905-1980.
240	10 |a Nausée. |l English
245	10 |a Nausea / |c Jean-Paul Sarte ; translated from the French by Robert Baldick.
260	__ |a Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England : |b Penguin, |c 1965.
300	__ |a 252 p. ; |c 19 cm.
500	__ |a Translation of: La nausée.
700	1_ |a Baldick, Robert.
985	__ |e OCLC REPLACEMENT cdsdistr
991	__ |b c-GenColl |h PZ3.S2494 |i Nau5 |t Copy 1 |w OCLCREP

(taken from the Library of Congress catalogue) and say "That's a MARC record." In fact, the MARC record looks like this:

00876cam 22002771a 450000100090000090600450000900500170005400800410007103500210011201000170013301500140015003500190016404000260018304100130020904200120022205000200023410000350025424000220028924500780031126000570038930000210044650000320046770000210049998500300052099100480055010347858 a7bcbccoclcrplduencipf19gy-gencatlg20060316181511.0751210s1965 enk 000 1 eng  9(DLC) 66070332 a 66070332  aGB66-4853 a(OCoLC)1888047 aDLCcFUdMdUdUkdDLC1 aenghfre apremarc00aPZ3.S2494bNau51 aSartre, Jean-Paul,d1905-1980.10aNausâee.lEnglish10aNausea /cJean-Paul Sarte ; translated from the French by Robert Baldick. aHarmondsworth, Middlesex, England :bPenguin,c1965. a252 p. ;c19 cm. aTranslation of: La nausâee.1 aBaldick, Robert. eOCLC REPLACEMENT cdsdistr bc-GenCollhPZ3.S2494iNau5tCopy 1wOCLCREP

Not exactly human-readable, is it?

So here comes my point number two. Again, repeat after me. Cataloguers do not really use MARC. Got it? Well okay.

There are alternatives to MARC, some even built from MARC (MARC-XML come to mind). But what many cataloguers imagine when they look at MARC-XML (and the anti-Marc lobby haven't exactly disabused them of this), is that they'd have to work on records at the XML level. Why? We do not work directly on MARC now, why would we have to work directly with XML in the future? that's what interface designers do; they design applications that allow us to work on the records without ever seeing what they really look like!

[carlos sleepy]

. . . and here's one that's very relevant for those of us who keep reading until 3 in the morning and then have to get up again for work 4 hours later:

Cheat on the Need to Sleep

It seems that a 15 minute powernap at lunchtime is all we really need! Of course, we've been hearing that for yars from various sources. However this is the first time I've heard anyone mention caffeine within this context! I may, at some stage, try this out.

a bit more on statistics and their misuse

A couple of weeks ago there was a piece published on the New York Times about the "happiness gap" between men and women. A lot of idio . . . people posted comments on the NYT site (and also on Digg and other sites I'm sure).

Anyway, once you've read that article, have a look at this and this; they're both responses by Mark Liberman (a linguist, no less) at Language log. Interesting stuff.



-----------------------------
[5 minutes later]

. . . and there's this one too (also from Language log)

surveys and statistics and politics

A final Age article for tonight:

First, let me just say that I don't like statistics. Or rather, I don't trust people who try to convince me of something by quoting figures. In order to trust statistics I need to know about sample sizes, about questions asked, about demographics . . . I need to know about the methodology behind the figures. So do 7 out of 10 dentists. Or chiropractors. Or window cleaners.

So anyway, what we have here is a situation where two opposing opinions are being justified by different sets of figures. Dig it:

In 2005 the Australian Government introduced WorkChoices; an amendment to the Workplace Relations Act 1996. You can read all about that here.

So anyway, there was a study on the effect of WorkChoices on the Australian working population: The study was titled Australia@Work: the Benchmark Report (click here if you want to read the report (.PDF)) and it was authored by the Workplace Research Centre at the University of Sydney. The report was funded by both the Australian Government and Unions NSW.

Now, it seems that the Government was not happy with the report's findings:

The Age reported yesterday that the survey of 8343 people had found employees on individual contracts introduced under the Government's WorkChoices scheme worked longer hours for $100 less weekly pay than those on collectively negotiated agreements.

Why would the Government be unhappy about that? On the eve (we expect) of a federal election?

The story prompted a political storm, with Mr Hockey [Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations] attacking the authors, from the Workplace Research Centre in Sydney.

He said centre director John Buchanan and report author Brigid Van Wanrooy were "former trade union officials who are parading as academics" and that "I'm not sure that this institution is known for academic rigour".

Well, he is a politician. If you don't like the message, you can probably get political mileage from attacking the messenger.

Mr Hockey said that ABS data showed that workers on Australian Workplace Agreements "earn nearly twice as much as people on awards". Prime Minister John Howard also said that the ABS "tell us that people are better off under AWAs".

Hmm. Well, if the Australian Bureau of Statistics says you're right, you must be right! Or are you?

But the ABS's assistant director of labour employee surveys, Valerie Pearson, said the survey Mr Hockey had referred to "was conducted only six weeks post WorkChoices".

"The only thing that would have been picked up in the survey was any AWAs negotiated in that six weeks," Ms Pearson said.

Oops! So much for using figures! Anyway, one good thing to come out of all this:

Dr Buchanan

[director of the Workplace Research Centre]

said yesterday that he would consult a defamation lawyer over the comments to "explore legal options".

"Saying we've concocted stuff is very serious for academics … I'd prefer a retraction, but I'm sick and tired of the way they're bagging academics," he said.

Good on him. And who knows? Maybe he'll end up owning Joe Hockey's website!

. . . see, the Yanks should elect THIS dude as their next prez

another one from the Age:

It seems that Barack Obama has proposed banning nuclear weapons. Period. Not banning nuclear weapons in Iran. Not searching for Weapons of Mass Destruction in Liechtenstein.

PRESIDENTIAL hopeful Barack Obama overnight proposed eliminating all nuclear weapons, saying the US should greatly reduce its stockpiles to lower the threat of nuclear terrorism.

Best idea I've heard in a long time.

more on the Australian government and immigration

got a couple of articles here from the Melbourne Age

first one's about the Immigration Minister's decision to not accept African refugee applicants until July 2008:

"We have detected that there have been additional challenges in relation to some of the people that have come from Africa over the last few years," he told reporters in Melbourne.

"We know that there is a large number of people who are young.

"We know that they have on average low levels of education, lower levels of education than almost any other group of refugees that have come to Australia. We know that many of them, if not most of them, have spent up to a decade in refugee camps and they've spent much of their lives in very much a war-torn, conflicted situation.

Gee, do you think that might be why they're refugees?

"And on top of that they have the challenges of resettling in a culture which is vastly different from the one which they came from," he said.

And that is different to what other (non anglo-celtic) immigrant groups face . . . how?

The other article is an opinion piece by Ray Cassin on the Australian Citizenship Test: It seems I'm not the only one that thinks its main (and possibly only) purpose is to keep out . . . foreigners!

He says that the "Becoming an Australian Citizen" booklet

includes the information that might be expected in an elementary civics course: the basic structures of Australian government, the rights and freedoms that sustain liberal democracy, an outline history of the nation, and so on. But there is much more, such as the facts about Bradman and the laureates, and Phar Lap and Evonne Goolagong, too. We are not just asking new citizens to demonstrate their capacity for participation in a democratic process, we're asking them to soak up all of the wider culture. The message is not "this is how you become one of us", but "to become one of us, you must become just like us".

How is knowing about a dead horse going to make someone a better citizen? Why not ask them to list the ten last winners of the Melbourne Cup?

Maybe the whole strategy is to give people like me (who are [WARNING! UNDERSTATEMENT ALERT!] not likely to vote Liberal/National) some kind of a brain embolism from hearing about rubbish like this. Infuriated to death. Nice way to go.

my response to "The Semantic Web as a large, searchable catalogue: a librarian’s perspective"

I think I'd be better off not responding: I'm sure the authors put a lot of time and effort into the article, but I really don't see how it adds anything to the semantic web discussion. It's the same old thing Berners-Lee and company have been saying for the last 10 years or so. The web is broken and the semantic web is the way to fix it. Librarians (read "people who work with metadata"; though to many cataloguers the term "metadata community" is seen as something alien) have the skills, so they will sort it out.

And to be fair, some of the progress towards the semantic web has been done by librarians: OCLC developed the DCMI. Of course, that was years ago; what's been done recently?

It seems to me that most of the talk about the semantic web had pretty much dried up by a couple years ago. Then we had the Web 2.0 business spring up out of the woodwork: Social bookmarking; social networking; RSS (though rally it was around before the whole 2.0 hoopla); CSS (ditto); wikis; blogs; tags and folksonomies; AJAX and rich internet applications; and so on. These distracted us for a while (okay; I'm still distracted; and libraries have and could further benefit from many useful apllicatons of 2.0 technology), but it seems that people are going back to the old question: How do we impose order on the internet?

This, I think, is why the semantic web will remain a pipe-dream for a long time yet: In order to impose order on the internet, one must first ask "whose order?"

The Semantic Web as a large, searchable catalogue: a librarian’s perspective

I haven't read this one yet, but it looks as though it may be interesting. I'll post a response when I read it.

THE BEST post I've seen in a LONG time

Head on over to Bitch Ph.D. and have a look at this post. Brilliant.

The Australian Citizenship Test

On the 1st of October 2007, it will become necessary for most people who apply for Australian citizenship to pass the Government's new citizenship test.

Now I have a number of of problems with this (I'm not going to go into this in any length (because of how infuriating I find it)):

• Firstly, there is an inherent unfairness here: Why do new applicant have to pass this test? What about people who were granted citizenship a month, six months, six years ago? Why don't they need to pass the test? What about people who, through being born here, were granted citizenship at birth? Why don't they need to pass this test? If it is needful for prospective citizens to pass this test, shouldn't it be needful for all Australian citizens? If I thought a citizenship test might make people better citizens I might suggest a certain group of people that could benefit
  
• Which brings me to the next issue: Why is it necessary to introduce this test now? Is it because Australia is receiving less Northern European migration and more from the Indian subcontinent, the Middle East, and East Asia? People who are seen as other, who are seen as being less likely to understand our way of life? If that's the case, who benefits from the test? Is it the people who have to undergo it? Is it the nation? Or is it really the ruling parties? In the 1998 federal election the Howard government was startled to find that, despite years of multiculturism pushed by successive (mostly Labor) governments, there was a significant sector of the population that was not happy with multiculturalism, not happy with people seen as different. The One Nation party gained appoximately 9% of the vote in 1998, mostly at the expense of the governing Liberal/National parties. So what did the government parties do? They co-opted this newly-rediscovered racist vote. And so for the 2001 elections we had Tampa and the Children Overboard. Then we had the confusion over SIEVX. Then the Pacific Solution. The government parties benefited from all this at the polls and comfortably retained government. Is this new citizenship test a way for the government parties to reactivate the racist vote?
• And just on this electioneering topic. if this test is so important for the wellbeing of the nation, why was it not introduced earlier? Why is is that this new test (and its accompanying ad campaign, and its accompanying glossy booklet) comes just weeks before a Federal election is due?
• And as to the information provided for prospective examinees . . .
  

Agh, I'm too angry to continue this post. But at least I'm not the only one that feels strongly about it.

. . . and while we're talking about ebooks . . .

i often hear complaints that ebooks are not user-friendly; that it's difficult/uncomfortable to read books off a screen; that the feeling of a book (holding it in your hand, turning the pages, etc) is as important as reading the thing.

About 3 years ago I bought a Sharp Zaurus SL-5500 PDA. I don't use it as a PDA, but rather as an ebook reader: I find it is very comfortable to use. It has a nice large screen, and it runs Linux!

It's dead simple to get books for it (the Opie Reader application can read all sorts of file formats, but i normally only use ASCII text files or hypertext files) from sites like Project Gutenberg or any of the dozens of online text archives, newsgroups, blogs, online versions of newspapers, and so on, and so forth.

the Zaurus is now getting a little beat up and scratched, and some of the buttons don't work properly any more (evidence of heavy use, in this case), so i've been thinking of getting a replacement of some sort. Unfortunately, ebook readers are hideously expensive (I'm thinking especially of the electronic paper readers such as the Sony Reader), and PDAs are overkill (and hugely expensive) for what i need (especially the ones with screens big enough to read a book comfortably).

on the death of books

A friend and colleague (hi Therese!) has posted a page on the future of books, including links to various digitisation and ePublishing projects.

She also mentions a book I'm shamed to admit I hadn't heard of: The book is dead (long live the book) by Sherman Young from Macquarie University. It sounds interesting.

The blog about the book about the . . . about books is here.

Anyway, Therese's page also has a link to this video (I seem to recall seeing a mention of this on various blogs several months ago, but I never saw it at the time). It runs for 9 min. 20 sec., and it might be a good idea to play it with no sound in a background window first (otherwise you'll get a lot of stops and starts while the video segments download; people on dialup, I suggest you don't even bother).

Karen Schneider article on Wikipedia

CIO have posted an article by Karen Schneider on the culture (she calls it "corporate culture", I think "organisational culture" might be a better fit) of Wikipedia. Please read. It's interesting.

It's good to see that we have (at last!) moved away from the Wikipedia vs Britannica debate.

i didn't know! Can I send some flowers?

this one's from a few days ago, but i only heard about it today (thanks Crystal!): it seems that GW Bush has declared Nelson Mandela dead (perhaps by decree?).

Need I say anything?

bad timing

I was in the City today with a couple of friends. Walking down Burke St, just down the hill from Parliament, I saw someone who resembled federal opposition leader Kevin Rudd. Jokingly, I turned to my friends and said "Hey look! Isn't that John Howard?"

It turns out it really was Kevin Rudd. If only I'd held my joke in a few seconds longer, he might have heard me. Damn!

'Scroogled', by Cory Doctorow

[meatspace location: work]

Just came across this story by Cory Doctorow, from Radar.

I actually got to it because a friend (hi Zane!) sent me a link to this: It seems that MySpace and Facebook have plans for user data to be used for "targeted advertising."

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New word learned

[meatspace location: work]

Learned a new word today: Spime.

It was coined by Bruce Sterling (about the only cyberpunk author I missed out on back in the age of cyberpunk), and is taken to mean an object with a defined location in space and time, but also with a story (for example, not just a book itself, but what the book's about, who's selling it, how it was reviewed by all sorts of people, who's seen a review of the book, who's got it on their bookshelf, and so on, and so forth). In other words, it is not just the object itself, but how it interacts with its environment, and how its environment interact with it. Or at least that's my understanding of it.

How did I come across spimes? I'm currently reading Peter Morville's Ambient findability (and yes, I know I should have read it a good couple of years ago, but at least I'm finally reading it).

a begining

[meatspace location: home]

Well, this is not the first time I start a blog, nor will it likely be the last. Hopefully I'll stick at this for a while longer than the last few times.

Now, most pieces of writing should have a purpose: Entertainment, education/instruction, whatever. The purpose of this blog, in particular, is for me to explore (with your assistance, hopefully) various themes and issues to do with the nature and practice of information, of politics, of ethics/morals, of philosophy/science/religion/how-we-got-here/what-we-do/why-we-do-it, and whatever else enters my little old mind.

Hopefully this will be an interesting exploration, hopefully it will be an entertaining exploration, and hopefully it will be a lengthy exploration. We will see.