Reconsidering the Library Web Portal

Steven J. Bell has a thought-provoking piece in the Feb. 17th issue of Inside Higher Ed : "The Library Web Site of the Future". Bell's jumping-off point is an August 2008 Ithika Group report, "Studies of Key Stakeholders in the Digital Transformation of Higher Education, which showed, he writes, that "faculty no longer perceived the library as an important portal to scholarly information."

Another indicator of this trend is a 2008 Simon Inger Consulting report on "How Readers Navigate to Scholarly Content" which showed that the two preferred starting points for researchers are specialist databases and general Web search engines. Library web portals ranked below email journal alerts and publisher Web sites.

Despite the best efforts and intentions of librarians, researchers will "invent their own backdoor routes to the content" that they need, and librarians need to meet them where they are rather than to to force them to come through official channels. Rather than spending time and money tweaking the resource portal, he recommends highlighting the services we provide, e.g., "the community activities that anchor the library's place as the social, cultural and intellectual center of campus." He sees a lot of value in tools like LibGuides, since they embed appropriate resources immediately at the point of need, rather than expecting people to navigate the vast expanse of library content.

"From Linking to Thinking"

I attended the OCLC Symposium at ALA Midwinter 2009: "From Linking to Thinking: How We'll Live When Information Surrounds Us". The panelists were David Weinberger (Harvard Berkman Center fellow, author of Everything is Miscellaneous, etc.) and Nova Spivack (founder of Radar Networks, twine.com, and a leading figure in Semantic Web development, etc.). The moderator was OCLC's Roy Tennant (list owner of Web4Lib and XML4lib, columnist for Library Journal, editor of Current Cites newsletter, etc.).

My notes are a bit patchy, but I was able to fill in some gaps thanks to a "pre-conference conversation" transcript.

Evolution of the Web

• Transition from a Web 1.0 publishing medium to a Web 2.0 communication medium (Spivack); or: Web was primarily a communications medium from the moment it escaped Tim Berners-Lee's lab (Weinberger)
• Transition from directory structure (nodes arranged hierarchically) to more of a relational database structure.
  
• Web of humans morphing into Web of machines
  
• "Web 3.0" involves Web-based operating systems and "Web 4.0" is the "Intelligent Web" (Spivack)
• Emergence of "augmented reality", for example LED output and geo-aware cameras embedded in contact lenses that providing schematic overlays and commentary for objects in one's field of vision (Spivack). Similar to "Semantic Earth" idea (Weinberger).
• Emergence of the "Internet of Things" including not just Web sites and abstract concepts but physical objects giving and receiving information on the network ; the Web is "becoming the nervous system of the planet" ... "This is truly as if our species is evolving to a new level of collective intelligence." (Spivack); Weinberg is "more excited about the rise in human connectedness ... the mere fact that more and more humans are able to touch one another, in conversation and through their works, this is what's truly transformative."
  

Libraries and the Web

• The library as a "giant brain" firing in slow motion. Digitizing the contents will simply make it fire more quickly (Spivack)
  
• Library of the future will have "everything" digitized and available on-line, customized interface for individual user or group, intelligent assistance, and machine ability to detect and adapt to changing user needs (Spivack)
• As to whether we're losing our ability to negotiate long-form arguments (e.g., thinking in book-length format versus Web snippets), and whether this contradicts the idea that the Web is making us smarter. Perhaps there's some truth to it, but it's a fair trade-off. (He compared Plato's warning in the Phaedrus about relying on books rather than oral instruction and memorization.) We have to get away from the notion that intelligence is something specific to the individual brain, the important thing now is to be part of an "intelligent network". (Weinberger)
• Librarians should "scan the books already." Also we should do something about the fragmentation of literature in different journal aggregator databases. There should be a single integrated interface to all periodical literature owned or licensed by the library, as opposed to our users having to check EBSCO, JSTOR, WilsonWeb, etc., figure out which journal titles are indexed by which of these aggregators, and how to use their unique interfaces and search parameters. Also, that we should be more political in promoting open access (Weinberger)

(To be posted on CMS SharePoint site)

Conference on "Semantic Interoperability of Linked Data"

See posting on CMS Web log.

"A Unified Discovery Interface"

I posted something on the CMS blog about the new "Summon" service from Serial Solutions, the Andrew Nagy connection, and how it all relates to what David Weinberger said at the ALA 2009 OCLC Symposium.

Rochkind on the "State of the Future of Cataloging"

Rochkind is a fan of metadata and professional cataloging, but he worries about the future and for good reason. I've posted a summary of his recent comments on the CMS blog

Goal: VuFind via Ubuntu via VirtualBox on Mac

Yesterday I finally was able to get Sun's VirtualBox configured properly on my MacBook, and then install Ubuntu 8.10 as a guest O.S. My longer-term goal was to install VuFind using these installation instructions, but I got tripped up after the Oracle InstantClient download when I tried to execute "sudo pecl install oci8" and received the error message "Oracle client libraries not found". Steve Thomas reported a similar problem 5/27/08 on the vufind-gen discussion list. Wally Grotophorst's instructions may suggest a workaround, but at the moment I'm not even able to pull up my Apache home page..

Something to remember about issuing shell commands as root in Ubuntu: start with sudo -i, enter password; then, until otherwise instructed, shell will interpret all commands as coming from superuser. Prefacing individual commands with "sudo" doesn't work. Neither does "su".

Brad Wheeler on HathiTrust and the Importance of Librarian + Technologist Collaboration

Stefan K. cited a recent Chronicle.com letter to the editor by Pat Steele and Brad Wheeler of Indiana University, who write that the traditional rift between librarians and technologists is damaging both sides. They mention the HathiTrust shared digital repository as an example of successful collaboration between these two groups and across multiple institutions.

Wheeler gives a more detailed description of HathiTrust in his Jan. 6 interview with Library Journal Academic Newswire. For example, given the gargantuan size of the database, index "shards", metadata facets, and relevance-ranking algorithms can optimize system response time and enhance findability.

He mentioned that two of the HathiTrust partners, Michigan and Indiana, had already "benefitted tremendously from our past cooperation in the Sakai Project for open source courseware management software. Learning to work together across institutions to deliver production services is an important capability for the foreseeable future."

This seems like a point worth remembering as we track our involvement in the VuFind project.

2008 OSS timeline

LWN published its 11th annual timeline of significant OSS events, interspersed with quotations from key players. Here's one I liked from incoming Red Hat CEO Jim Whitehurst: "Open source is a way to focus on the customer, letting us grow, succeed, and change the technology landscape...all while doing something that is fundamentally good. Fighting for open standards and open formats. These things will change society. I'm thrilled to be here. "

OSS Lib Utilities from Texas A&M

Daniel Xiao and John Paul Fullerton mentioned three OSS library automation tools they've developed (lita-l, 7/7/08). I modified the LibCat one so that it works with Orbis. Haven't tried the others yet.

Terri featured in NYT

Per Jon Schwartz in the Nov. 29 Health section of the New York Times, researching health issues online is nothing new, but increasingly patients like my step-sister Terri share their experiences and knowledge through online peer-to-peer networks. "These expanded capabilities allow people to share information easily, upending the top-down path of information between doctors and patients. Today, said Clay Shirky, an expert in the evolving online world, patients are 'full-fledged actors in the system'."

Online Courses at UMass Lowel

• Log in to ISIS to view, change, course selections, grades, transcripts, etc. You may look up your ISIS User ID. Also, see the instructions on logging into ISIS Student Self-Service at Click on the link for “First Time ISIS Users”

• Retrieve online course username and password. Wait 1-2 business days after registration before completing this step. Click on the "Get Your Online Course Username & Password" link to do this.

• Learn how to access UML Webmail . Wait 3-5 days after submitting your registration to complete step. The University will automatically assign you a student.uml.edu email account upon registration and this is the address where all official University communication will be sent. Enter email address in the User Account field and self-chosen password in the Password field.

• Get textbook via online bookstore. Additionally, the on-campus bookstores carry limited supply of books for online courses.

• Log into online course. Click on the "Online Student Login". You will need the username and password that you created in earlier step.

• Access Unix account MSDNAA Online Software System after 9/11

• Review UNIX and Information Technology Certificate requirements. The former lists "90.267 C Programming" as a requirement, the latter as an elective. See also Certificate program for Web Design.

• Apply for Yale tuition reimbursement

Earlier post:

• Online computer-related courses, e.g., Intro to Unix, Spring 2008: Jan 28 to May 22, or start with the stable search page. First-time students need to submit registration form along with $30.

• And here's a link to the ViM manual and description of the 30-minute tutorial./li>

2009 Library Conferences

The 2009 ALA Midwinter conference is in Denver, Jan. 23-28. Bundled registration (for this and the Annual meeting) is $300 for division members, if paid by Sept. 30.

"Hamlet" and Wilder's "The Matchmaker" coming this summer

The Elm City Shakespeare Company is staging "Hamlet" and "The Matchmaker" at Edgerton Park this year. (Both productions were excellent ... cf. shakespeare.mit.edu for full text of Hamlet.)

Traverse City driving trip

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Or consider NorthWest Airlines BDL to TVC $400 each (per Travelocity 11/8/08)

RDF Book Mashup

"The RDF Book Mashup demonstrates how Web 2.0 data sources like Amazon, Google
or Yahoo can be integrated into the Semantic Web. ... information about books, their authors, reviews, and online bookstores ... can be used by RDF tools and you can link to it from your own Semantic Web data."