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When I first read about OCLC moving into the ILS market with a cloud-like product I had the same concern that I do about SaaS- lack of control of library data. When a library owns its servers, along with all the expense and trouble of maintaining them comes the benefit of local access and increased control. While I understand the thinking that goes into SaaS and like services (mainly the expectations of having to fund an IT staff otherwise,) I think (and hope) the future trend is towards library automation systems that rely less on arcane expertise combined with the increased technical knowledge of future librarians. Although, as a soon-to-be-graduating MLS student, I am disappointed by library schools not encouraging, mentoring, creating programs that produce librarians with systems expertise. That’s a gripe for another day.

Re OCLC entering the OPAC market: the “Quick Start” version of WorldCat Local is free to WorldCat subscribers. It basically provides an interface similar to worldcat.org but sorts the results first by location then by relevance. It’s the paid “full” version that incorporates EBSCOhost into the search results. I’ve been thinking about using the Quick Start as an alternative WorldCat database interface rather than a “new catalog.”

why you can’t google a library book…

The January 22 Guardian has an interesting article called “Why you can’t find a library book in your search engine: Finding a book at your local library should just involve a simple web search. But thanks to a US cataloguing site, that is f…

What has happened to RDA? I did a significant amount of study on RDA while in library school. Yet it seems to have vanished. Among the many goals of RDA was to make library catalogs google-able (or at least available on the open internet in some fashion).

FYI, Guardian made an online ‘amendment’ to this article on January 30th.

[…] can read the rest of this blog post by going to the original source, here […]

If you want chatter look at autocat archives, as they have been talking non-stop about it.

And mostly with hostility. Meanwhile, on LibraryThing or, say, among the Open Library people, almost ever one is in favor of it. There’s some sort of sad lesson there. What you hear is too much about where you’re hanging out…

And there is another wonderful lesson in there, Tim. You need to completely define the problem you are trying to solve before you pose it.

And I say that out of love. Really.

Oh, that went through! Well, anyway, I’m glad to share more thoughts with you if you want to get a hold of me, Tim. (Passive-agressive, I know, but I’m doing 4 jobs at the present.)

Bullshit.

Wikipedia. PHP. Perl. Democracy.

Deschamps’s First Law of Innovation:

If an idea is on the right track, the problems will begin to proclaim their existence.

Deschamps’s Second Law of Innovation:

All problems are people problems.

Um, whoa. Thanks for working toward a consensus. Eek.

Sorry, but this carping is just pathetic. Yes I started a project without knowing fully what it was for and how it should work. I thought it might be useful to see what other people thought.

I’m not speaking of OSC. I’m speaking of LibraryThing, and it’s currently employing nine people—three of them librarians. We figured it out as we went along. And that was *good*.

You do NOT need to “completely define the problem you are trying to solve before you pose it.” That is an excuse to do nothing. It is, in a word, bullshit.

Tim, I’m not sure why you call my comment “carping”. Perhaps you’ve confused it with other comments you’ve read elsewhere.

My point is that your call for action confuses classification schemes, subject thesauri, and folksonomies. It’s not clear which you’re trying to build and they are distinctly different.

But calling another’s well-meant criticism “bullshit” won’t make you any friends. Good luck with the project.

Hey… Tim… ouch… these are people on your page. I had to say when I read it I thought, this is a fly-by idea. You have many of these and I don’t mind reading them; sometimes they’re quite interesting. But you’re lashing out at people who are now doing what you want them to do: turn the ideas over in their head, run ‘em up the flagpole and see who salutes ‘em, etc.

Karen,

The sentence I was responding to was: “You need to completely define the problem you are trying to solve before you pose it.”

It would follow that I should not have posed this topic—that I should have shut up and that asking people to develop an idea “in the open” shouldn’t be attempted. That is the opposite of running things up the flagpole, or turning ideas over, and therefore the opposite of both reasoned discussion and what libraries need.

Check out last night’s Uncontrolled Vocabulary for an ‘interview’ and discussion with Tim about the OSC - http://uncontrolledvocabulary.com/2008/07/09/uncontrolled-vocabulary-49-the-systems-can-be-gamed/

My general opinion - I love projects that develop organically like this. Experiment, explore, discuss, change things mid-stream until they work, then change them again when you discover another way they can work. It’s exciting and creative and will shake things up. Will it be a success? Dunno yet. But it will definitely be a fun trip!

So far, I’m enjoying the discussion, and learning a lot, in the group - http://www.librarything.com/groups/buildtheopenshelvesc#forums

Scot can speak for himself here, but I believe we have patched this over. Apparently I misunderstood what he was saying. Although I’m not quite sure how, I’m sure this was a misunderstanding.

I do apologize for the language. I have been getting it rather hard from various quarters. This would be fine if it were about ideas, but I am offended by constant necessity to imply I am an ignoramus—that I don’t know the difference between tagging and classification, and have never looked into the history of the field. Having spent two years obsessed with these issues, this line of attack just ticks me off. Good grief, I’ve personally interviewed the catalogers at the Athenaeum and Forbes Library, and a scholar of dead classifications, to understand the Cutter Classification better. Give me some credit, at least until there is some solid evidence.

I also liked the suggestion that I take the time to read David Weinberger The latter ticked me off something fierce. I not only had one of the first ARCs, but I’ve read it three times, have two separately underlined copies, ordered a case of the book and gave them out at librarians at conferences and have had extensive online and off with David. He even sent me draft articles to comment on.

But sometimes I should try humor instead of sleen. My wife suggested “I got his numbah. How do you like them apples?”

It seems to me that the ongoing RDA process (I almost said “death spiral”) is a fine example of what happens when you try to anticipate all of the implications of a major change before you start working on it. It satisfies neither traditionalists nor the Web 2.0 crowd, which probably means it qualifies as a successful negotiation…but doesn’t answer to anyone’s aspirations.

"Bob has many years of experience in TV news and public relations, and his ideas were down to earth and told with a nice leavening of humor."

We need humor when dealing with a crisis. Some people don't agree, but I say What would you rather have - someone looking at you saying doom and gloom or someone that can find the silver lining?

Amy, thanks for writing about our new Bookshelf features! Regarding the display order, I think we've made a change now that should display them in the same order as they were on Shelfari. It turns out that Shelfari doesn't include the date added in its export files, and that's why the order was different in JacketFlap. We've made a change to display your books in the order that they appear in the export file. Please take a look, and let me know if it's right now.

Tracy

My story is pretty boring-I ordered it on Amazon and it came Sat. afternoon. My friend who is visiting from NY had hers sent here.

I did notice a couple of our teenagers with their copies in church. Not all churches have banned HP. ;)

Borders lost my on-line reservation - so I was stuck to non-pre-order status which was horrible. Borders would not guarantee me a copy that night, so I had to go over to B&N who did.

However, the catch was that I was last of what felt like all 8.3 million people.

Jason and I ended up picking the book up from Ralphs after I took Jason out of the B&N environment, where I was afraid he would start beating people.

By any wild chance, have you tried goodreads.com they are like myspace, but with a purpose.

Thanks for mentioning Shelfari. I work on the web site and love the community there. You'll see my shelf at www.shelfari.com/dhanley

Don't know if you saw the Harry Potter contest on Shelfari though. You could win an author-signed first edition of Sorcerer's Stone. Just submit your review and have your friends vote for it.

www.shelfari.com/harrypotter

I didn't work that night but the brave souls who did said we closed our doors at 2:30 AM and they stayed until 4:30 trying to straighten up. We had a big reserve list but by Saturday morning we chucked it. Anyone who wanders in with $22.75 can have a copy.

I'm trying very hard to avoid spoilers since I won't get to read it for another week.

"Not all churches have banned HP."

Local church here not only wrote a fantastic pamplet based on HP, but served the queue with free coffee, and gave out bookmarks.

I was very impressed. (Though it's a mistake drinking coffee that close to midnight - v. hard to get to sleep afterwards.)

not so big on Potter mania, so skiping that,

>I'm interested to hear how people think Shelfari measures up to LibraryThing.


don't know Shelfari, but am liking Librarything. Do a follow-up post in a couple weeks, maybe? compare the two.

Facebook is stupid, IMO; gives me an opportunity to interact with people I know in real life...online.
bah.

Harry Potter? Never heard of him. Just kidding. I'm waiting my turn, as we are passing around the book. My God-child (who waited on line at midnight to purchase it) has it now and is almost finished. One other person in the queue next, then me. I wonder how long I can go a-blogging without stumbling across the ending.

I work at a Waldenbooks in NY, and our Harry Potter party was fantastic (despite the overwhelming number of loud, loud, children, but I suppose that's how they are). I was impressed to see so many adults in costume with or without kids in tow. Our reservation list was almost picked up completely within the first 36 hours.

When another store closed, their reservation list transferred to us, and we had a lot of people drive in to our Potter party from the area of the other store. Since there's not a B&N near us (or a Borders Super), our only local competition was Wal*Mart & the grocery stores--most of whom were sold out by Sunday morning (we still had plenty).

As a bookseller, the actually event was fun (I was on register all night), but the preparation for it was miserable.

We went to the one chain bookstore in town (I know, power to the indies, but I'm not even sure if we have an indie), a Books-a-Million, and it was fantastic. Maybe a third of the people there were under-eighteens.

They didn't do reservations at the BaM: in the month leading up to it, you could buy a voucher. Then, on release night, you just handed in the voucher and got the book. My mom was near the end of a line that snaked through the entire store and we got out of there in less than thirty minutes.

We went around 9:45 just to be involved in the Pottermania, and at 11 I busted out the video camera and asked people who they thought would die and whether or not Snape was evil. The atmosphere was pure fun, little kids weren't screaming any more than big guys dressed as Slytherin Quidditch players, and I think we waited longer in line for mocha frappes than we did for the book. Apparently two of my best friends were there, but it was so crowded I never saw them.

I know, as far as costumes go, we had an amazing Dumbledore, an equally amazing Voldemort, two very good Trelawneys, a hilarious Mad-Eye, and several rather halfhearted Tonkses. But it was a blast.

I've been happy with library thing, but would be interested to hear what people like about Shelfari.

I am a pariah. Alas! I have never read a Harry Potter book.

::: ducks head in shame :::

I went to my first Harry Potter party in Northfield, MN. They blocked off four blocks of the main street downtown and had their own version of Diagon Alley. There were alot of people dressed up, I even brought along a cloak from my renaissance costume and wore it later when the evening began to cool. There are pictures here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/northfield_mn/sets/72157600931491260/

The children on the right (boy & girl) in the first photo are my friend Kirsten's kids who I was with. I had a lady borrow my cloak for a picture because it was her 70th birthday that day. We watched the first movie on a large blow-up screen in the middle of the street until almost midnight. Kirsten, who had gotten her ticket in line earlier in the evening, waited to get her copy of the book that night. I went home and bought mine the next day at Target in Northfield, even though I had one delivered to my home too. I started it Saturday night after getting back from my high school reunion and finished it in the wee hours of Monday morning.

I'm on goodreads - let me know if you're there!

I was thinking about you as Kath, Angel and I stood in line for our book that night! I told them all the story about you having Book 5 thrown at your head by an angry customer. *happy sigh* Why is it that story amuses me so much?

Lauren and I also reminisced about how you helped us get through that last day or so before Book 6 was released.

I bet that night you were sitting around thinking, "Gee, I miss dressing up like a witch, working till 2am, and then coming in again early the next morning to sell more Harry Potter books!" Admit it.

I work in a bookstore in Malaysia, but wasn't working on the release date. The night before I did go to a pre-launch party hosted by a rival bookshop, though. They had lots of games in which you could win HP goods, and a Best Dressed Witch contest. I didn't stick around, but I noticed that there was a really impressive Mad-Eye Moody in the crowd. As for my own store, on the release date we had the Fat Lady at the entrance, and the first 13 people to give the correct password (hints were given in the local paper) get free books. The first 1000 customers get a quill pen, and I'm sure there were more stuff, but I was just too eager to go home and start reading by then.

Shelfari doesn't measure up, to me.

Import functions don't work. They don't answer queries, etc.

[…] Jessamyn at Librarian.net has a very relevent post about libraries who cannot afford to join in, and how it affects the WorldCat users in those communities.  […]

I’m not sure it solves the problem of the digital divide, but I can tell you that Idaho libraries were in that situation where they recognized that the tools OCLC (and WorldCat) provides can be useful and helpful in delivering service to their customers. Unfortunately, it was impossible for those libraries to afford membership with OCLC so they could access those tools.

A few years ago the Idaho Commission for Libraries worked with OCLC to develop a statewide program (through OCLC’s Group Services program) whereby unlimited statewide access was negotiated. Because it is such a great benefit to the state’s residents, about half the costs are covered at the State level. The remaining costs are shared (propotionately by size of library) by libraries that want to take advantage of the huge discount. The smallest libraries pay just $300 a year for unlimited access to OCLC cataloging and ill. The entire state has access to a statewide catalog that is really a subset of WorldCat.

The result now is that when a user searches WorldCat.or or Google (”Find a Book”) or use the link from our LiLI Program (www.lili.org), they actually get links to those those small, rural libraries in our state.

It doesn’t solve the digital divide, but it has made it possible for a lot of our rural libraries to take advantage of the tools that, previously, seemed as if they were only accessible to large libraries with bigger budgets. Is it perfect? No. $300 is still too much for some libraries. Are we in a better place than before? Are we improving? Yes.

That digital divide? One of our biggest challenges with it is not OCLC, it’s connectivity. How do you get high-speed Internet access to locations with outdated phone lines that go down when it snows?

I should have added your “monoculture leads to famines” quote. I don’t think it was original, but I’d never heard it, so it’s yours as far as I am concerned.

[…] Original post by unknown   […]

Thank you for mentioning this Jessamyn. The two consortia that I used to work with in South Texas could never afford OCLC membership (and they will likely never be able to afford it). As a result, patrons using “World”Cat are directed either to academic libraries or to public libraries that are a four hour drive away. I now work in Canada and there are very few Canadian public libraries that are members of OCLC - so the “World”Cat label really sticks in my craw.

What would help to solve the digital divide problems that you so eloquently discuss are: 1) OCLC eliminating or drastically reducing membership fees, 2) OCLC stopping its attempts to hold members’ MARC data hostage, 3) OCLC opening access to its records and systems by outside vendors and open-source operations (though, to be fair, there is some of this going on as can be seen in there OAI project).

[…] Jessamyn at Librarian.net has a very relevent post about libraries who cannot afford to join in, and how it affects the WorldCat users in those communities.  […]

I’m not sure it solves the problem of the digital divide, but I can tell you that Idaho libraries were in that situation where they recognized that the tools OCLC (and WorldCat) provides can be useful and helpful in delivering service to their customers. Unfortunately, it was impossible for those libraries to afford membership with OCLC so they could access those tools.

A few years ago the Idaho Commission for Libraries worked with OCLC to develop a statewide program (through OCLC’s Group Services program) whereby unlimited statewide access was negotiated. Because it is such a great benefit to the state’s residents, about half the costs are covered at the State level. The remaining costs are shared (propotionately by size of library) by libraries that want to take advantage of the huge discount. The smallest libraries pay just $300 a year for unlimited access to OCLC cataloging and ill. The entire state has access to a statewide catalog that is really a subset of WorldCat.

The result now is that when a user searches WorldCat.or or Google (”Find a Book”) or use the link from our LiLI Program (www.lili.org), they actually get links to those those small, rural libraries in our state.

It doesn’t solve the digital divide, but it has made it possible for a lot of our rural libraries to take advantage of the tools that, previously, seemed as if they were only accessible to large libraries with bigger budgets. Is it perfect? No. $300 is still too much for some libraries. Are we in a better place than before? Are we improving? Yes.

That digital divide? One of our biggest challenges with it is not OCLC, it’s connectivity. How do you get high-speed Internet access to locations with outdated phone lines that go down when it snows?

I should have added your “monoculture leads to famines” quote. I don’t think it was original, but I’d never heard it, so it’s yours as far as I am concerned.

Thank you for mentioning this Jessamyn. The two consortia that I used to work with in South Texas could never afford OCLC membership (and they will likely never be able to afford it). As a result, patrons using “World”Cat are directed either to academic libraries or to public libraries that are a four hour drive away. I now work in Canada and there are very few Canadian public libraries that are members of OCLC - so the “World”Cat label really sticks in my craw.

What would help to solve the digital divide problems that you so eloquently discuss are: 1) OCLC eliminating or drastically reducing membership fees, 2) OCLC stopping its attempts to hold members’ MARC data hostage, 3) OCLC opening access to its records and systems by outside vendors and open-source operations (though, to be fair, there is some of this going on as can be seen in there OAI project).

I recognize that WorldCat is a good tool, but right now it’s a pain in my butt. I work in a university library and have been put in charge of adding all of our serials holding information to WorldCat… all 40,000 of them… one by one. I’m going a bit crazy here! I’ve done 10,000 so far and have been working on it for countless months. I just hope someone out there will use the information I am putting in!

It is not just small public libraries that feel this. Here at the Lunar and Planetary Institute, a world-class library of planetary geology, we can’t afford OCLC membership. Even though it would benefit scholars around the world. Patrons come from Egypt, South Africa, Australia, and so on to do research here.

Much of what I catalog in not in OCLC, I know because I check Open WorldCat. Yet $1200.00 a year for membership is not in the budget. That is another journal we would have to cancel.

Another place I feel this lack of access is that I can’t contribute to NACO unless I join OCLC. Yet here I am with the authors. They all stop in at least once a year.

So my not being able to afford OCLC hurts not only my library but other libraries and researchers as well.

Yes, it’s not a panacea. On the other hand, I’m intrigued by what OCLC might mean when it says it’s working with ILS vendors to make all this work.

If this opens up proprietary systems to the outside world even a little this will be worth it.

SaraD–the holdings information is truly useful! Don’t give up. But 40,000 is a terrifying amount–phew!

This is a really interesting post and I have to agree with Thingology both that OCLC has lots of nice people working on great projects, and that their business model seems to rely too much on “owning” the data that libraries create about their own collections. I think it hampers libraries who are non-members AND those who are members.

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And here I was hoping for the email informing me that a memo was forthcoming.

Here’s one of those places where I’m pretty sure Tim an I both agree: I had a need to vent some painful feelings, I used my blog as many people do, and I felt better.

For Tim, the show must go on. He’s got his hands full over there, and he knows that if he ever needs me for anything (even his Great One, milk/sugar) I’ll be there in a second.

Thanks for the kind words. And you’re quite welcome, I loved giving you my best. Now, most importantly, everyone please continue to support LT! No other bibliophile sites can even come close to touching it, and it’s all because of YOU!

[chris]