hangingtogether.org

This is the the final posting in a short series, looking back on just some of what what’s happened in OCLC Research during 2012.

I think that 2012 must have been a banner year for new colleagues in OCLC Research, or maybe it just seems that way. I’ve already mentioned Max, but here are a few more.

We started off the year by welcoming Titia van der Werf. Titia works in our Leiden office, and focusses much of her attention on European partners and projects. She is also a welcome addition to the Mobilizing Unique Materials team.

Our European team was further bolstered by Shenghui Wang, who joined us in May. Like Titia, Shenghui works out of our Leiden offices. The focus of her work is on text and data mining, deepening our strengths in this area.

We are lucky to have one of OCLC’s Diversity Fellows working with us this year — Julianna Barrera-Gomez (based in our Dublin office) is working with Lynn Silipigni-Connaway and Ixchel Faniel on a variety of projects. We’re fortunate to have these talented young people working with us during their time at OCLC!

And speaking of new ideas, we had two colleagues who joined us in September and October for long visits. Takashi Shimada joined us as an OCLC Research Fellow. Taka (as he graciously allows us to call him) came to us from Keio University and spend time both in San Mateo and Dublin learning about activities within the OCLC Research Library Partnership, and helped us gain a better understanding and appreciation of the issues faced by Japanese research libraries. Simone Kortekaas from Utrecht University spent three weeks of her sabbatical in our Dublin offices, both learning and sharing. We welcome visits like this (whether long or short) because they help us know how our work can make an impact in a real world setting.

As we close out 2012, we look forward to 2013 and all we’ll learn during the coming year. We’ll be sharing it here with you, so stay tuned. We wish you a happy, productive, and peaceful year!

Taking a break from our end of year summary, which will continue next week after Christmas. Until then, happy holidays from us to you!

We are doing a mini series of blog postings to reflect on some of our accomplishments in 2012. This posting is the second in the series.

Each year, OCLC Research staff are honored in various ways. This year is no exception and in fact we seem to have had a bumper crop.

In March, Ixchel Faniel won the iConference Award for her paper “Managing Fixity and Fluidity in Data Repositories.” The paper was co-authored with University of Michigan School of Information Professor Elizabeth Yakel and two doctoral students, Morgan Daniels and Kathleen Fear. This is one of the many contributions that Ixchel is making to help us understand data repositories and digital curation.

In May, colleagues Lynn Silipigni Connaway and Patrick Confer won RUSA’s 2012 Reference Service Press Award for their article “‘Are We Getting Warmer?’: Query Clarification in Live Chat Virtual Reference.” Lynn and Patrick co-authored the article with research colleagues Marie L. Radford, Susanna Sabolcsi-Boros, and Hannah Kwon of Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey.

You can hold your applause for Lynn, because in November she won the ALISE/Bohdan S. Wynar Research Paper Competition for her article “Not dead yet! A longitudinal study of query type and ready reference accuracy in live chat and IM reference,” to be published in Library & Information Science. Lynn and Marie have done a lot to improve our understanding of chat reference (and in my opinion have done much to underscore the value of basic customer service in libraries).

In October, our colleague Jeff Young was honored as the 2012 Kent State University SLIS Alumnus of the Year, an award given to a graduate who has made a significant contribution to the profession. Jeff’s was selected because of his important work sing Linked Data to increase the presence and discoverability of library data and materials on the web. One of these days, Jeff should get an special award for helping to explain linked data to his colleagues, but we haven’t gotten our act together yet.

Research colleagues also continue to be your “friends in high places”: Lynn was elected to the ASIS&T Board of Directors; Brian Lavoie was elected to the Dryad Data Repository Board of Directors; Eric Childress was invited to join the NISO Content and Collection Management Committee; and of course Jackie Dooley began her term as president of the Society of American Archivists (we still do get to see Jackie from time to time, although most of her blogging these days is over at Off the Record).

Finally, OCLC Research received an award of a different kind — funding! In June, JISC extended funding for the project “Visitors and Residents: What Motivates Engagement with the Digital Information Environment?”. On our end, the work is being led by none other than Lynn Silipigni Connaway, who is working with David S. White from the University of Oxford. This project helps expand our transnational knowledge base about students and technology.

Congratulations to everyone, and best wishes for continued success in the new year.

As I’ve been learning more about how to use Hadoop via streaming, I discovered that I frequently needed an easy way to review records identified by a particular process. For example, my colleague Karen Smith-Yoshimura has recently been wanting to locate MARC records that have particular characteristics. She provides me with the set of characteristics she wants to use as a filter, and then I edit some existing Python code to perform the filter and find the records. In some cases as few as 8,000 records are pulled out from the more than 250 million records that now comprise WorldCat.

But then those records need to be viewed in some way. At the end of my process I gather up the output records into a file that consists of one line per record. In some cases I only output the OCLC number, but in other cases the entire record will be output following the OCLC number. Even in those cases, however, the line always begins with the OCLC number. That enables me to set up a simple process for reviewing the output.

To do this I wrote a simple CGI program that finds all of the files ending in “.txt” in a certain directory and lists them for the user to select. When the use clicks on a particular filename, the program parses the file, taking the OCLC number and setting up a couple links. One link is to the raw MARC record as it is stored in our HBase WorldCat table, and the other link takes the user to the record in WorldCat.org. I also send along a parameter that enables OCLC staff to see the XML or BER version of the record in WorldCat.org. Therefore, reviewing the records that are output by a Hadoop job is as simple as dropping the output file into a directory and going to that directory with a web browser. A few clicks is all it takes.

I had a very enjoyable conversation today with Martyn Wade, National Librarian and Chief Executive, of the National Library of Scotland. He made me aware of the relatively new legislation that updates the purpose and functions of the National Library. The library had been operating under legislation that dated from 1925. The new legislation positions the Library to fulfill the kind of role that the citizenry and other national and higher education institutions expect in the digital age. The legislation is brief, to the point, seems actionable and aims to be ‘future-proof’. It’s worth a quick look at 20 very generously-spaced pages. I was particularly taken with a subheading under NLS Functions:

NLS is to exercise its functions with a view to—
(a)encouraging education and research,
(b)promoting understanding and enjoyment of the collections,
(c)promoting the diversity of persons accessing the collections, and
(d)contributing to understanding of Scotland’s national culture.

I’m not aware of other library mission statements that explicitly call out the need to ensure that their collections are enjoyed. I like that very much.

In passing Martyn mentioned the library exhibit called Going to the pictures: Scotland at the cinema. In connection with this exhibit on the library’s Facebook page there was an opportunity to “Scot-ify” famous lines from the movies – Scotland at the Cinema Strikes Back. It’s ongoing and has been very successful. It’s charming and funny. Worth a look. Postcards made from some of the submissions will, of course, be available for sale in the library shop.

We’ve made our application to SXSW to present what we think Infotopia could look like.

If you wanted to understand our SXSW proposal in an image it you could use the one below:

If you wanted the same understanding as video, you could watch the one below:

And finally, if you wanted to vote for us, and secure this presentation’s actualization you can click on the image below. (You’ll have to make a SXSW account unfortunately).

Thanks
Max Klein @notconfusing Merrilee Proffitt @merrileeiam

Today marks the 7th anniversary of this blog (and the first time we’ve noted it here). We’ve marked a lot of changes over the last 7 years, and we also have a lot of stats to share. By the numbers, we’ve had 673 posts (make that 674) and 741 comments (why are you so quiet?); thanks to Spam Karma and reCAPTCHA we’ve trapped almost 95,000 spam comments; according to Feedburner, we have 1860 subscribers (you are in good company!).

When we started the blog in 2005 our original contributors were Jim, Günter, Anne, and me — all voices from the Research Libraries Group and our Member Programs division. Karen and Constance started posting in late 2006, and were joined in by Brian, who we gained after the merger between RLG and OCLC. Dennis joined our ranks in 2007, along with new additions Roy and Jennifer. In 2008, we added John (who added British spelling and a Scottish voice) as well as Ricky. Jackie joined in 2009. Bruce started contributing in 2011 with a short lived but popular (according to our stats) series called “What We’re Reading”. Nancy also lent her voice to the choir in 2011, to introduce the new OCLC Research Library Partnership. And in 2012, we’re pleased to have Max join our ranks.

We’ve been through a lot together in the late seven years — new hires and departures (Günter, Anne, and John); weddings and births; illness; grants; papers published, webinars given, conferences planned and attended. Lots of phone calls, across many timezones. Too many emails to count. But through it all we’ve been hanging together. On that note, I’ll leave you with a a link to our very first post, for an explaination of our name (a declaration of dependence), and a link to Roy’s post Of Rivers and RLG where he makes the connection between rafting, teamwork, and riding the rapids of change. This blog is and has been about that change, and about how libraries and archives can make the transition together, without falling out of the boat. Thanks for being along for the ride.

Our recent meeting in Philadelphia, Libraries Rebound: Embracing Mission, Maximizing Impact, was, I think, quite successful. It made me think about what it takes to create a successful event.

Of course, content matters. It’s important to come up with a topic that addresses concerns of the potential attendees, enlist the right speakers, and gather an engaged roomful of participants. We had it all. A capacity crowd joined together to discuss three topics: improved research support, aligning special collections with mission, and using space as a distinctive asset. The fact that these topics brought together a mixed crowd of top-level administrators and special collections and public services managers added to the synergy of the event. We often recruit expert speakers from outside our community to spark new ideas and approaches, but the vast majority of the speakers for this meeting were experts from our own community, the OCLC Research Library Partnership.

The first topic, directly supporting researchers, drew on the experience of David Shumaker, Catholic University of America; Tracy Gabridge, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; and Kurt de Belder, Leiden University. The reactor panel consisted of Chris Bourg, Stanford University; Liz Chapman, London School of Economics; and Dana Rooks, University of Houston.

For the second topic, aligning special collections with the institutional mission, we enlisted Fran Blouin, University of Michigan; Lisa Carter, Ohio State University; and Tim Pyatt, Penn State University Libraries. Reacting were Steven Mandeville-Gamble, George Washington University; Rachel Hart, University of St Andrews; and Matt Reynolds, East Carolina University.

During the third session, exploiting space as a distinctive asset, we heard from speakers Andrea Will & Wayne Gehrke, Group 4 Architecture, Research + Planning, Inc.; Sarah Pritchard, Northwestern University; and Shawna Sadler, University of Calgary. Reacting to them were Chris Banks, University of Aberdeen; Simon Neame, University of British Columbia; and Lorelei Tanji, University of California, Irvine.

And kicking off the whole event was Scott Walter, DePaul University, whose framing remarks provoked many interesting discussions over the the two days — just what you hope for from a keynote speaker!
We’ve had a number of questions about how we put the panels together. We assigned one person to coordinate each of the panels. First we looked hard for speakers who were out in front of the topic. Second, we sought knowledgeable people as reactors, expecting both to hear about their take on the topic and for them to raise provocative questions. Third, we trust our audience to weigh in and broaden the discussion. We talked with each of the speakers and reactors individually before adding them to the roster. As the event drew near, we got them together on conference calls, for the speakers to set expectations, coordinate what they would cover, and determine sequence; for the reactors, to let them know what they’d be reacting to and giving them guidelines. Then we sat back and watched it happen!

Oh, and another key ingredient for a successful meeting: flawless logistics! A great venue (Bellevue hotel), tasty catering (the circus snacks were a favorite), a welcoming reception (thanks to Ron Brashear and colleagues at the Chemical Heritage Foundation), and blissful ignorance of the myriad behind-the-scenes details that Jeanette McNicol handled seemingly effortlessly.

So here’s the recipe, courtesy of Merrilee:
First, establish theme and objectives
Then, add program and speakers
Next, mix in location and venue
Sprinkle in some reception and activities
Serve results in blog postings and on website*
Follow up with evaluation**
Repeat as necessary

* We’ll have a few more blog posts about the meeting and soon the presentations and recordings will be online. Watch this page.
** We have issued a survey to the in-person attendees and to those who streamed it remotely. Feedback about this event will make the next one even better.

The death of one of the significant library leaders of the last generation was announced last week. Joe Rosenthal,who I knew during his 1979-1991 tenure as the University Librarian at Berkeley, died in early April. We interacted a lot because he was instrumental in the establishment and then early operational days of the The Research Libraries Group. My colleague, Karen Smith-Yoshimura looked up Joe’s WorldCat Identities page, and among his “most widely held works” is this one:

The Research Libraries Group; proposals for cooperation among the libraries of Columbia, Harvard, and Yale Universities and the New York Public Library by Joseph A Rosenthal ( Book )
1 edition published in 1973 in English and held by 70 libraries worldwide

For a long time I had a dog-eared copy of that spiral-bound piece of work that Joe did while the Associate Librarian at Berkeley. It seems not to have survived the many intervening moves. I am pleased to see that a copy is noted in the Guide to the Research Libraries Group Records courtesy of the Stanford University Libraries Department of Special Collections and University Archives.

In any event, I remember doing a lot of work with Joe in the early days of RLG. He was smart, sardonic, and always a bit prickly. Given his origins in cataloging he had deep and strongly-held opinions about what should be done and built that were shaped by his elite library career. He stuck with it and helped build the organization. At the end of the day he was the one who’d invite me for a drink. I’ll toast him this evening. Jim

More from the ARL news:

Joseph A. Rosenthal, 1929–2012 Read the rest of this entry »

Back in October we were excited to announce the final step in a project on which OCLC Research worked with the University of Cambridge – the release of their library catalog data as both MARC21 and as Linked Data. They worked with us and implemented our provisional recommendation to use an Open Data Commons Attribution license for the data release, which include data that was derived from WorldCat. While we are working to finalize and formalize that recommendation (it was a major discussion item at last week’s OCLC Global Council meeting) other institutions have been working on their own data releases.

Today the Harvard University Libraries released their library catalog of more than 12 million bibliographic records. This release furthers the mandate from their Library Board and Faculty to make as much of their metadata as possible available through open access in order to support learning and research, to disseminate knowledge and to foster innovation and aligns with the very public and established commitment that Harvard has made to open access for scholarly communication. I’m pleased to say that they worked with OCLC as they thought about the terms under which the release would be made. Although Harvard Libraries did not ultimately accept our recommendation about the ODC-BY license, the approach chosen by the Harvard Libraries takes into account some of the primary aspects of OCLC’s recommendation.

Specifically, our discussions acknowledged the Harvard mandate as well as what was most important to the OCLC cooperative – receiving attribution and making others aware of the cooperative’s norms and expectations of one another in regards to data derived from WorldCat. And again I’m pleased to say that our Harvard colleagues took the cooperative’s desires into account. The dataset is being released subject to the Creative Commons Public Domain designation (CC0) but Harvard requests that subsequent use provide attribution to Harvard, OCLC and the Library of Congress. They also request that users be aware of and act in a manner consistent with the OCLC cooperative community norms and provide a link to those norms. We think this is a well-intentioned and executed compromise.

It’s true we don’t think that public domain dedications for data derived from WorldCat are consistent with the OCLC cooperative’s norms as expressed in the WorldCat Rights and Responsibilities (WCRR) statement, particularly at Section 3.B.5. We also recognize that the WCRR statement is not a legally binding document and that interpretations of these community norms within the cooperative may differ. Releasing data is ultimately the choice of the OCLC member institution as are the terms. Would other members of the cooperative consider the release of the Harvard dataset under these terms and conditions bad acting and a risk to the long-term viability and sustainability of WorldCat? Probably not, particularly with attribution, and awareness and responsible treatment of WorldCat-derived data being requested so prominently.

Our discussions and this outcome are evidence that interpretations of community norms within the cooperative may differ. The mandates of institutional mission, the imperatives of emerging local policy, national and supra-national structures may all contribute to a differing view and legitimately demand precedence. In our discussions with Harvard we acknowledged that their direction was their choice. Their mandates took precedence. They acknowledged the cooperative’s concerns and responded as a responsible cooperative citizen by requesting attribution, and awareness of and adherence to the community norms of the OCLC cooperative. The discussion was frank and mutually supportive. After all, OCLC like its member institutions is in the early stages of large shifts in data technology and policy. There are inevitable tensions and conflicting goods that will need to be reconciled over time. The process in which we are engaged will if we continue to work together with good will, ultimately lead to a new suite of best practices that balance the common good and institutional sustainability.

Image: Member of the Charles River Basin Community Sailing Club Enjoy an Evening Sail