Packed house which was to be expected. It’s like E.F. Hutton when Roy and Andrew speak. (Do you remember that commercial?) And on top of that, everyone has an interest in OPACs – reference librarians, access services librarians, catalog librarians, etc. Lots of energy and opinions in the room.

Roy Tennant
Hoping to kill off the word OPAC. It harkens back to public access as an afterthought.

What catalogs do well:
(I’m just talking about a finding tool)
1. Inventory control
2. Known item searching
3. Location searching(within four walls)

What they don’t do well:
1. Any search beyond known item
2. Searching anything beyond books
3. Displaying results by logical groupings(FRBR) – show complextiy when needed
4. No faceted browsing
5. Relevance Ranking
6. No recommendation services

How did we get here?
Automation began in back room – let’s automate circulation
Moved into public areas as afterthought
Optimized for our own needs

Key Problems:
-conflated management with discovery purposes
-created stovepipe systems (data goes in, but hard to get out)
-abdicataed responsibility to vendors (disempowered)
-slow to expoit new oppostuinities
-collaboration on building software between libaries

Assertions:
-library catalog is finding tool among many
-acknowledege limitations of catalog
-users may want to broaden search outside of library collection

Future of catalogs:
-one system among many (interoperable)
-function well alone
-refocused on local inventory (limit to what is in your building)
-It will not be the central search tool for library

Signs of life:
Bibliographic Services Task Force (UC)
LOC – Changing nature of catalog and integrations with other discovery tools
Open Source PINES consortion – demo.gapines.org
RedLightGreen – redlightgreen.com (concepts of FRBR, subjects displayed with first search result)
OCLC Research – Curioser (drill down by publisher, language, date, type)
UC San Marcos – MetaLIB – books by availability (no time limit, 24 hours, 5 to 10 days)

Andrew Pace
NCSU Libraries Catalog

State of catalogs – obsessed with authority searching
NextGen OPAC – visual search, clustered search
NCSU Search results “narrow by” shown on left (Topic, Genre, Format, Language, Region)
*each user link begins to drill down – introducing complexity at the point of need

Pursuit of Features:
-Speed
-Relevance Ranking
-Faceted Browsing
-spell checking
-Automatic stemming (child brings up children)

Purchase Decision:
-Authority infrastructure underutilized
-lots of broad topical keywords

Technical Overview:
-Endecan ProFind co-exists wiht Sirsi Dynix Unicorn ILS and Web2 online catalog
-Endeca indexes MARC records from Unicorn
-Endeca ProFind software
-Full details at http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/news/libraries.php?p=1998&more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1

Did someone say MARC is dead?
-Endeca likes flat file for ingest

Yes, flat files with limited to needed fields. I think it’s great that they are re-thinking MARC. It really opens up some opportunities to repurpose our data.

Endeca Catalog search (http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/catalog/)
3 search tabs, default to keyword
10 dimensions of MARC data

Challenges:
-Using LCSH like it’s never been used before
-Using LC classification
-Integration with Web2 (the NCSU web
-Creating featuritis (scoping project)

Usabilty Testing:
-around 150,000 searches, a large test group
-most used dimension is LC classification, next used dimension is subject:topic

Future Plans:
-FRBR-ized display
-Patron generated taxonomy?
-Death of authority searching

Andrew mentioned that we need to find a way to get our ILS, ERM, open web, repositiories to play together – this is just a start…

And I have to quote one of his closing lines: “And nobody in that vendor hall can sell you a product that will allow you to get your ILS, ERM, open web, repositiories to play together.” Amen.

It was an informative session and I’ll be taking away some new ideas for digital library applications. Some new maxims:
1. introduce complexity at point of need
2. test basic access points with your users and stick to them across your applications
3. store your data in a readable/writeable format (flat file)
4. prioritize single manifestation of work during first result – let user select type of work later
(Hamlet – the work -> Users select the play, movie, screenplay, etc.)

Michael Stephens
Provided a quick look at current 2.0 trends
Gamers are entering our workspace
Remix Culture – Remixing library data
37% of library have blogs – “Our work is not done.”
Dream, plan for your users and have fun.

Amanda Etches-Johnson
Presented a survey of old library technology plans; a fun juxtapostion because the old stuff reads like the new library 2.0 evangelism
“It’s nothing new; it’s an evolution – new tools to fulfill our visions”
subject guides becoming wikis
newsletter becomes blogs
html becomes rss
virtual reference becomes IM
RSS – repurpose our content
* bring out the social

Aaron Schmidt
Painted a picture of web 2.0 – reimagining the social fabric of the web
Revitalized OPACS – WPopac
Google Office – Writely, Gmail
Questioning Google policies in china – threat to the social web?
Digg – votes for best content
Mashups – Google Maps api
Bluetooth Watches
Origami project (MS) mobile computer
Myspace.com – meeting teens where they are
Yahoo Messenger – new version
2.0 – people in our online libraries

Bill Spence
Very funny piece; used humor to point out that what’s old (1.0) is not necessarily dead
2.o vs. 1.0 – Is it really better?
USB is dominant format (He did not see a floppy used during first day of conference)
OS – DOS is not dead
Notepad – “I use it every day!”
Pine is not dead
Browsers – had a demo of Mosaic

Darlene Fichter
Framed discussion of library 2.0 with Tim O’Reilly definiton of Web 2.0
Web 2.0 = small pieces loosely joined, read/write web (from O’Reilly)
content development – participation from our users
long way home to an article – music interlud from Supertramp showing awful process of finding an article (played to big laughs…)
“embrace it (new web 2.0 technologies) – become a digital native”
Digital Read/Write Participants
Learning with others outside the field (sociality of what we do)
tolerance for “not in control”
library 2.0 = books and stuff + radical trust + participation

Marshall Breeding
Sobering take on current library applications
OPACS – our search technologies lag, new user expectations
Don’t count on users starting with us – this is a Google World
Libraries must build own search and retrieval interfaces – effective, elegant interfaces
Push library content into other information spaces – SOAP and web services
New interfaces – AquaBrowser library, Endeca Guided Search
Library adoption of new software occurs at glacial pace….
Web 2.0 – beware of Gartner Group hype cycle of new tech (http://www.riarlington.com/hypecyc.html)
Fundamental mission of libraries is at stake – what is role for libraries in discovery process?
Focus on the strategic, not the cool.
“There are many Del.icio.us side courses, but focus on main course.”

Stephen Abram
Always a lot of fun and this was a call to act and live in our user’s information environments
Get out of the box!
Live in user’s environment
“Libraries are about the experience, not search.”
Build some intelligence into the interface
Keep systems open (canning wireless example…)
Become part of MySpace and Facebook communities

Food for Thought (because I didn’t livebog this):

It is what it is… I’m down with some of the program, but I think we have to know our channels. Are communities like MySpace receptive to a library component? To me, it feels like approaching a group of kids playing on a street corner and asking them if they need to use the library. It’s about context and recognizing the expectations of the community. Yes, libraries need to be active in places outside of our traditional settings, but intruding on a space where we are not expected could and will have negative consequences. Maybe library 2.0 is about informed participation in our user’s spaces.

Another reaction… I think Marshall is right on in calling for “building our own library applications.” Andrew Pace and Emily Lynema of NCSU took it upon themselves to reinvent the OPAC (http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/catalog/). Thanks to both of them for giving us a new vision. But, I think we also need a grassroots effort. I’m talking about building simple apps and sharing the code. I’m talking about introducing web development approaches (Read AJAX) and finding ways to teach others how to do it. It won’t always be easy and sometime our heads might hurt. At the same time, I feel we have to start learning this programming stuff somewhere. CIL seems like as good a place as any to introduce difficult concepts and start to tease out the “how tos”.

And one final thought, each of the panelists spoke about the importance of “becoming a digital native” (Darlene Ficter). Calling for librarians to experience the common applications of our user’s digital existence – FaceBook, MySpace, Yahoo Music, etc. This a a great, solid concept. I would add that as we immerse ourselves in these environs, we should start to look for web conventions, interface design choices, classification models that we can apply to our library applications.

Second day of the conference and my first post… It’s been busy, but exhilirating. This was a good session that really worked to bring together the possibilities of web 2.0 for libraries. Lorcan began by emphasizing the need to make bib data work harder; of releasing the value from Library Marc and IsO markup.

Lorcan framed the conversation by using the definition of web 2.0 from Tim O’Reilly. Web 2.0 is:

1. flat applications – apis and mashups, rss, web services; lightweight service composition
2. rich interaction – AJAX, smooth applications within browser
3. data is new functionality – collection, exploitation of metadata and bib data
4. participation – social networking, social tagging

Lorcan walked through how these web2.o features are appearing in OCLC research applications.

Lightweight Service Composition Example
audience level grease monkey script – algorithm ranks book according to worldcat holdings (library holdings indicate type of audience – children, adolescent, adult, research…)
http://www.oclc.org/middleeast/en/research/projects/audience/default.htm

Rich Interaction Example
Livesearch of LCSH – FRBR inspired results, narrow by Dewey attributes. Brings smooth interaction of AJAX to searching bib records. Creates an application that is very responsive to user request (The new web site tools and technologies session talked about the “how to” of AJAX yesterday. Look for those slides on the conference web site – http://www.infotoday.com/cil2006/Presentations/ .)
http://lcsh.orhost.org/

Data is new functionality example
FictionFinder – interface that supports searching and browsing of fiction works in worldcat;
algorithm about most purchased books by library dictates display order, faceted browse by work; created special indexes (fictitious character, literary form…)
http://www.oclc.org/research/projects/frbr/fictionfinder.htm

Lorcan closed by calling for libraries to enable people to prospect our data – keep them around. We must imagine new ways to mine our data to show different filters and views to our users.

Jason A. Clark for LITA