So here, in the order I got them, with deadlines in bold:

1. ANSI/NISO/ISO 12083-1995 (R2002), Electronic Manuscript Preparation and Markup.

This is a periodic review ballot for the published standard, ANSI/NISO/ISO 12083-1995 (R2002), Electronic Manuscript Preparation and Markup. This standard is a national adoption of the international standard ISO 12083:1994. It is available for download from: http://www.niso.org/standards/iso12083-1995r2002/.

Comments on this standard are due to Cindy by May 13, 2009.

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2. Review of ANSI/NISO Z39.2-1994 (R2001), Information Interchange Format. This is a periodic review ballot for the published standard, ANSI/NISO Z39.2-1994 (R2001), Information Interchange Format. It is available for download from: http://www.niso.org/standards/z39-2-1994R2001/.

The international version of this standard ISO 2709, Information and documentation — Format for information exchange, was revised in 2008 to clarify the use of Unicode with UTF-8 encoding for records employing this standard. In appropriate places the term “octet” was used in place of “character”.

In accordance with NISO procedures, all review ballots are accompanied by a recommendation from the responsible leadership committee. NISO’s Content and Collection Topic Committee recommends a vote of “Withdrawal” for ANSI/NISO Z39.2-1994 (R2001), in favor of the use of ISO 2709. The NISO version (Z39.2) would continue to be available on the NISO website as a withdrawn standard.

Cindy’s deadline for comments on this review is May 12, 2009.

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3. Review of ANSI/NISO Z39.14-1997 (R2002), Guidelines for Abstracts. This is a periodic review ballot for the published standard, ANSI/NISO Z39.14-1997 (R2002), Guidelines for Abstracts. It is available for download from: http://www.niso.org/standards/z39-14-1997R2002/.

NISO’s Content and Collection Management Topic Committee recommends a vote of REAFFIRM for ANSI/NISO Z39.14-1997 (R2002). If reaffirmed, the Topic Committee will then study the standard more closely to determine if and why a revision might be needed for Z39.14. A reaffirmation now will provide additional time to do a more thorough study of this standard. You are encouraged to provide comments with your vote that might provide the Topic Committee with additional information regarding the possible need for a future revision. Please note that a revision can begin at any time after the reaffirmation of the current standard (with NISO voting member approval); it is not necessary to wait until the next 5-year periodic review.

Cindy’s deadline for comments on this review is May 11, 2009.

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4. Review of ANSI/NISO Z39.23-1997 (R2002), Standard Technical Report Number Format and Creation. This is a periodic review ballot for the published standard, and is available for download from: http://www.niso.org/standards/z39-23-1997r2002/.

If reaffirmed, the Topic Committee will then study the standard more closely to determine if and why a revision might be needed. A reaffirmation now will provide additional time to do a more thorough study of this standard. You are encouraged to provide comments with your vote that might provide the Topic Committee with additional information regarding the possible need for a future revision. Please note that a revision can begin at any time after the reaffirmation of the current standard (with NISO voting member approval); it is not necessary to wait until the next 5-year periodic review.

The deadline for comments to Cindy on this review is May 21, 2009.

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5. Review of ANSI/NISO Z39.26-1997 (R2002), Micropublishing Product Information. This is a periodic review ballot for the published standard, which is available for download from: http://www.niso.org/standards/z39-26-1997r2002/.

In accordance with NISO procedures, all review ballots are accompanied by a recommendation from the responsible leadership committee. NISO’s Content and Collection Management Topic Committee recommends a vote of REAFFIRM.

The deadline for comments to Cindy on this ballot is May 19, 2009.

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All comments to Cindy can be sent to her at HSLcindy@buffalo.edu. Expect another wave of announcements shortly …

Diane I. Hillmann
LITA Standards Coordinator

Here we are at the Paragon Bar

After much discussion, we moved the gathering to Johnny Rockets for greasy food of the best kind.

Fun was had by all.

• Why a feed?Automatic notification of a change on a website. The news comes to you.
• How a feed?There are software products available that can create RSS outputs. You also need reader to read an RSS feed. Currently IE does not have one native to it. However it is rumored that IE 7.0 will have one.
• Where a feed?You need to subscribe RSS feed
• When a feed? Examples of RSS feeds are:
  • Notice of changes in Library Services. For instance, a library can have a RSS feed for a specific classification of books, reference books or Resource Guides. This is one of the many ways that we can reach our patrons.
  • Vendors are beginning to provide RSS feeds: Proquest’s ABI/Inform and Compendex.
  • Can be used to inform the community of instruction activities.

A great session with the bigger picture of eResource management in mind. Useful for any librarian looking to manage a dispersed and disparate set of library data. Andrew and Stephen have got their mind around what it means to administer records of database subscriptions, ejournals and print journals while at the same time managing access and display issues for librarians and the users we work for. It’s an all encompassing system that reworks how we can manage our growing eResources and it will involve ALL departments in the library.

Andrew began with a review of Electronic Resource Management (ERM). ERM has been talked about for a while with little progress. The DLF as well as library vendors have started to put some thought into it. Companies and parties have also been looking to develop these systems. (Innovative Interfaces was first to market.) At its core, ERM is about re-envisioning collection management. For some heavy reading on the subject, check the DLF ERMI site (includes a link to DLF ERMI report). Andrew stressed that this was not something that happened overnight. There were rumblings of it around 1999… When it did get scoped out by an NCSU working committee, the E-Matrix had three objectives: managing acquisitions, providing access via discovery/display and collection management.

Stephen presented on scoping the data – deciding on what type of data needed to be included in the E-Matrix. It’s a large moving target, but it was limited to acquisitions data, licensing data, bibliographic data and subject (display) data. Both Andrew and Stephen emphasized that deciding what data they needed was the easy part. The contentious part was deciding what department would be the “authoritative data store” for the E-Matrix. (A role traditionally held by tech services and the Library OPAC…)

After a brief talk about licensing and acquisitions data (stuff that might stay behind the scenes a bit), Stephen continued with a quick rundown the data for the public interface of E-Matrix. And this is where it got pretty interesting if you’re thinking about how to display multiple facets of resources for your users. The ERM committee asked a group of public service librarians to come up with a vocabulary to use based on the following facets:

1. Container – type of resource (e.g., article database, online data set…)
2. Content – what is inside resource (e.g., images, citations…)
3. Aboutness – what is the resource about (e.g., general subjects – biology, education…)

Just seeing these facets was really helpful. We can get a rich set of access points for our resources if we used each of these options. And that was Stephen’s next point as he showed a mock-up of the public interface of the E-Matrix. It was pretty text-heavy, but it offered lots of access points via tabs, and multiple displays. (A user might need to spend some time there before really getting comfortable with it.) Stephen did a walk-through of the display of the two major components of the E-Matrix – Databases and Journals. Before handing it back over to Andrew, he mentioned some future directions like the ability for librarians to create custom pages with a simple html select and drop-down form. Very cool stuff.

Andrew did talk a bit about the back-end specs, Oracle, JAVA (JSP, Struts), PL/SQL database. The database scheme was flashed on the screen and it was complex. Over thirty tables, at least. “It’s a complicated problem” – Stephen. Andrew and Stephen aren’t sure how to share the code, but would like to. Boston College Libraries has been working on an ERM and they have a data dictionary and other documentation available at http://www.bc.edu/bc_org/avp/ulib/staff/erm/erm-db/. BC Library is not supporting – just offering documentation for those interested.

A great macro view of where libraries can go with managing eResources. And even if you can only use bits and pieces of the E-Matrix idea, you’re still going to be improving things. All kinds of information (including presentations) is available at http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/e-matrix/. For another take on the session, check Karen Coomb’s earlier post from her blog.

Both addressed the failings of tools like Google to capture and use important metadata, as follows:

• Gorman: Google lacks both precision and recall — it retrieves too many results, that are not the best results for the question at hand. [I would argue here that Google lacks access to the best results (buried as they are in proprietary and/or password-protected OPAC and vendor databases) so we and our vendors have set Google up to fail in recall. And if you consider that for ridiculously broad queries it retrieves only 30,000 hits among its seventy-bazillion indexed pages then perhaps it's not doing too badly on precision.]
• boyd: Google doesn’t distinguish relevance according to date, which particularly with blogs, can be misleading — "I still get daily comments on postings from 1997" — nor does it provide any indication of context or community — these comments come from people who randomly found her blog and of course aren’t interested in her or her research, but have wandered in by accident. "How do we create safe space?" if everything is indexed. [I would argue here that until Google gets around to becoming massively more complex, this might be why it's still necessary for librarians to hand-index the Internet, crazy as it sounds, to point people not only towards their topics of interest (websites generally) but perhaps also towards their communities of interest (blogs and forums).]
• Gorman: We need better metadata hand-encoded in pages. But maybe that’s not enough.
• boyd: We need better metadata automatically derived by search engines. But maybe that’s not enough.

Gorman in his luncheon speech and otherwise, lately seems to exhort librarians to band together with publishers of reliable information, against the tide of bloggers and full-text web search engines, to create a searchable corpus of the retrievable and reliable.

boyd in her keynote told us that librarians have in the past been accused of being intellectual property pirates themselves, and exhorted us to band together against the publishing establishment that now scorns bloggers and sues Google: "Librarians are some of the best defenders of civil liberties. Put on your eyepatch and say arrr!"

Okay, here are a few notes from boyd’s actual talk:

Like many digital media, blogging is a form of orality. It’s primarily communication, not publishing.

Blogs are persistent (they archive and their archives are indexed) but their content tends to focus on the moment. Blogs are worth looking at for the same reason libraries keep letters from the 18th century: they’re about people performing their lives, the modern equivalent of an archive of old letters.

Blogging [in the diary sense I gather] is used as a way to feel out what is appropriate, to model bloggers’ own lives and then see the result. It’s a form of talking and performing in public. But then, because of the persistence of blogs, it’s different from talking to the public nearby. Blogs acquire a public dispersed not only in space across the web, but in time. [Imagine Anaïs Nin not realizing her diaries would be seen by everyone, and still seen now?]

Blogging contains a lot of remix — pulling in pieces of others’ communications. But then they serve as redistribution of intellectual property. What is fair use? What happens when a remix becomes popular — is it still fair use? It wasn’t too long ago that librarians were seen as pirates.

(Cf. Roy’s End of the World As We Know It in the opening keynote … darn good thing he didn’t include the song in his posting of his presentations!) [Note, shortly after this keynote I went to the Breaking out of the Box presentation in which Raymond Yee called scholarship itself a form of remix. What do you think of that?]

From the Q&A after the presentation:

One thing for librarians to know is, for bloggers, if it doesn’t exist online (can’t be linked to), it doesn’t exist.

People are getting into niches that are no longer about geography: There’s a huge decline in suicide rates among gay, lesbian, bi, transgender teens in the current generation because they are getting online young and learning they’re not alone. On the other hand, there are pro-bulimia and pro-cutting sites (although mental health professionals say it’s better that these sites are out there than for the bulimics and self-cutters to hide silently). Blogs (or the web at large) don’t really promote cross-cutting communities; people for the most part seek others with whom they have something in common.

Q: Libraries try to distribute information with a known level of reliability. How do we separate the wheat from the chaff among blogs?
A: Trying to separate it now is premature; what seems like chaff could be critical documentation of a period in time, in retrospect. Storage prices now allow us to save everything. It’s searching it that is still a problem. Metadata, context are lacking in our available search; there’s a need to learn to retrieve by quality indicators. Search engines don’t have this down yet.

Sue Thompson and David Walker of Cal State San Marcos gave us an excellent presentation, which focused on public computing and instruction labs as well as a Web page redesign in their new Kellogg Library. I am going to limit my focus to the public computing and instruction lab portion of the presentation for the purpose of this review.

Anticipating completion of the new library building in the winter of 2004 gave the team at San Marcos the opportunity to examine and plan out exactly how they wanted to approach the new technology that would be implemented in the building. Rather than just “install a bunch of computers and software” the librarians and IT staff worked together to define the use of technology in the library space. Historically, technology in the library is used to access the OPAC, databases and software applications. However since most patrons can now accomplish these activities from home, the team asked, “What is the purpose for coming to the library.” Important question!

The team at San Marcos came up with a technology plan, which focused around the goals of encouraging the use of library expertise in research and instruction as well as creating an environment supportive of the iterative research process.

The library went from 40 to 240 public computing workstations. Workstation placement and images were extremely well thought out to provide maximum access to resources as needed. Furniture was designed and chosen with an eye to making it comfortable to study and use workstations for a long period of time. Three instruction labs were created to support the library’s teaching mission. Each one has a customized layout and image to support different presentation styles and needs. Very interesting and popular is the “Collaboratorium” which was designed for group study and research. Lecterns and supporting equipment were designed and operate under a model that proposes that technology must support, enhance but not get in the way of instruction. Staff has found some of the most popular features in the new labs to be the desktop control of all peripherals through an in house application and instructor control of all training stations through Altiris Vision and MasterPointer. A highly specialized media edit station allows full audio and video creation functionality.

Very importantly Susan also discussed the unforeseen things that came up which included new responsibilities, which we probably all know too well such as microforms, laptop checkout, pay for print and adaptive technology. Hats off to the folks at Cal State San Marcos for coming up with a top notch and well-received technology integration plan in their library and big thanks for sharing their experience with us as well!

Jeske said that another reason that DPL signed with Overdrive was to get the downloadable audio books. When DPL began offering the downloadable audio books on January 3, 2005, every title was checked out within 24 hours; the library went back to Overdrive and bought more copies and negotiated unlimited checkouts for 50 titles. Many users either load these books onto their Windows Media pocket devices or burn CDs; the product does not work directly with Apple IPods.

There is a workaround for loading to IPods. Users first download the Overdrive audio books and then burn them to CDs. Then the users reload the audio books into ITunes and from there into their IPods.

There are some problems with the downloadable book and audio book market. Some publishers are resisting the movement, fearing that their content will be pirated. Other publishers that are producing downloadable books are signing exclusive deals with vendors, making it necessary for libraries to use multiple vendors if they want all the popular titles. The technical standards vary among publishers, too.

Libraries who chose to offer downloadable media must consider training numerous staff members to assist users.

Surveys and statistics at Denver Public Library show downloadable users want the same titles as print readers. Top circulating titles are the same as those on print bestseller lists – if they are available. If not, almost any downloadable books will do; classics circulate especially well; the demand is so great.

To see recent titles added to the Denver Public Library downloadable books collection, click here.

Levy asks us: how can we recognize and establish balance? We have an abundance of information sources, devices and technologies. When does this abundance lead to overload? We have an abundance of attentional choices. When does this lead to fragmentation? We lead full lives with full schedules. When does this become “busyness”? We largely subscribe to rapid action and response. When is this speed counterproductive?

Some of the negative consequences of this speed up and overload: physical and mental health, productivity, effectiveness and quality of work, job satisfaction, decision-making, social cohesion and capital, democratic governance, and ethics. Some people can thrive on a 24/7 informational diet, but many cannot.

Levy quoted the well-known Vannevar Bush article in Atlantic Monthly in 1945, “As We May Think,” in which Bush conceptually proposes the basic tenets of hypertext and digital computing as a solution to the problem of information overload (he called his proposed device a “memex”). Levy notes that we have done all that Bush proposed and more, but this has not solved the information overload, but arguably worsened it.

Levy’s basic idea is that we spend a lot of time using technology to find, gather, and consume information, but we have lost sight of the need to slow down and process the information—a time to contemplate the world (the Greek ratio vs. intellectus). This was a nice way to end the conference—a helpful reminder to take a breath, slow down, and be calm.

Karen Schneider of LII

A brief explanation of RSS (the operative word being syndication) and why to use it:

• create content — text, audio, video — in one place
• display it in many places — websites, podcasts, RSS readers, your own site, syndicated onto other sites

RSS Puts You Out There
"Ambient findability": "Related feeds" feature in Bloglines. The constant updating of the RSS reader that the audience is using means they’re constantly reminded of you and brought onto your site or even into your library catalog.

LII launched its RSS feed in spring 2004 and now has over 8,400 subscribers in fall 2005. In that time, accesses to the site have also doubled, largely driven by the RSS feed. From the user’s point of view, installing an RSS aggregator or using a service like Bloglines

• Saves time — don’t have to check multiple websites to find updates
• Gets to the point — only presents content that’s actually updated
• Lets me compare — find out which sources actually provide updates

John Law of ProQuest

An RSS feed of subscription database content can provide our audience with content in context. Usability studies at Rochester showed this context is important to students.

Examples: Integrating an RSS feed of new articles in a library web page; integrating an RSS feed of new articles in a course web page.

ProQuest is just starting to make available Custom RSS Feed (roll-your-own feed on a specific topic/keyword). Currently they offer a small number of preconfigured feeds that can be added to websites by their subscribing institutions. Well, that’d be fun. At our public library we subscribe to ProQuest Newsstand — newspaper articles fulltext — which would be a perfect candidate for allowing people to view daily updates!

In Q&A after the session, though, I think the authentication issue is still being resolved, so I don’t know how useful this would be for our library. Darn.

Back to Karen

What have libraries done with RSS so far? A few of the examples shown:

• Hennepin County — teen events updates
• Kansas City — news & events
• Kenton County Public Library — a long list including new-books lists
• Manitoba — recommended feeds list in a topic
• Ann Arbor District Library and Ed Vielmetti — his home page contains a list of what he’s reading and what he has on reserve at Ann Arbor (Karen remarks: "After all we do to protect patron privacy! But I like that option"
• Yorba Linda — seniors page incorporating an LII feed of new entries on Seniors topics

The first ones are examples of feeds you might provide; the last are examples of ways you and your patrons can incorporate feeds from other sources into your web pages. See also the RSS Creator presentation given as part of the Breaking Out of the Box session at this conference — RSS Creator makes a feed from a database search of new additions to a subscription database.

RSS4Lib strongly recommended.

Go where your users are! As Anne Lipow said, "It is not the users who are ‘remote’."

Some Q & A and commentary

What about the server load on our website when Bloglines picks up an update and now thousands of people hit our site? There is a don’t-recheck-until header that our RSS feed can send out, but not all the major aggregators respect that.

Vendors should include doing the work of RSS Creator so we don’t have to — provide a feed that works with our OpenURL link resolver.

We use del.icio.us to subject-index our feeds.

IE 7 has a built-in RSS reader, so odds are, this time next year we will have a lot more users of RSS since they’ll no longer have to install a separate aggregator. Aiieeeeeee!

How about adding a link to our RSS feed of new articles from a specific journal into our catalog record for that article? I like that! Just add another 856 field. "Subfield r." "No, subfield f!" Hmm, I sense an incipient controversy here. Has anyone brought this to MARBI’s attention yet?

Karen Schneider
Really Simple Syndication lets you create content in one place (text. audio, video) but display it in many places: RSS aggregators, websites (intranets, public websites). RSS puts you out there to the public—it puts you into search engines (Google, Technorati).

LII’s success with RSS

• LII’s e-mail newsletter has 15,000 subscribers and takes quite a bit of maintenance (the list, spam filters, etc.)
• RSS feed has 8,400 subscribers (minimal set-up and maintenance, no spam, no list management, users find it on the web, opportunities for new formats like audio)
• Access to the site has doubled in the last year, which Karen theorizes has a lot to do with the visibility RSS provides

Other cool things you can do with RSS: UPS & Fed Ex package tracking, weather reports, ego feeds (seeing what others are saying about you), new book lists, updates on circulation status of items, video blogging, podcasting, feeds from subscription databases.

How do you know how many people are subscribing to your RSS feed? There’s no one way. You can look in Bloglines to get an idea of how many people subscribe to your feed and that should give you a general idea.

Cool things that libraries are doing with RSS feeds:

• Events at the library
• Newly acquired/ordered items (can also see as a webpage)
• Newly arrived items (can also see as a webpage)
• Displaying local news headlines on the library’s website
• Some library users are using RSS to displaying the books they have checked out from the library
• The University of Manitoba Health Science Libraries has a page with recommended RSS feeds from their library and from other sources that they believe would be helpful to their users.
• David Walker has created RSS Creator to create RSS feeds for subscription databases and e-journals that aren’t providing feeds on their own.

RSS4Lib is a blog that discusses innovative ways libraries are using RSS feeds (and of course they have a feed)!

How to display Feeds on your sit e: Rely on someone else for the javascript code (Feed2JS, Feedroll, RSS Digest) or Roll Your Own

Helping Your Patrons’ Information Literacy with RSS

• Create a public aggregator of feeds for a specific audience
• Academic libraries could aggregate news for specific departments
• Public libraries could aggregate community news
• School libraries could aggregate news for class projects

John Law
ProQuest is offering RSS feeds for its subscription databases. Law stressed that access to content (which is critical to realizing its value). Users expect content in context.

ProQuest has a link on their homepage to their RSS feeds. Very specific subject areas have RSS feeds with the new articles in that area.

Libraries can display the newest article headlines (with links into the database) for targeted subject areas on their webpages (e.g. marketing and communications, advertising, etc.).

ProQuest is also planning on offering roll-your-own feeds, allowing users to create customized feeds. The user runs a search, then clicks on a “Create RSS Feed” link. The resulting feed will contain any new articles meeting the criteria of that search.

During the Q&A period, John Law also discussed authentication issues. The pre-defined feeds are delivered to anyone and require no authentication. Because the feeds contain the citations only (with a link into the database), they’re only authenticated at the point of linking into the database. The customized feeds are only creatable once you’re inside the database and already authenticated.

Another take on the session… You should also check Karen’s earlier post.

What’s a Native XML database exactly? Alan defines Native XML as a document storage and retrieval model where an XML doc is considered the basic unit of storage, the database is DTD or schema independent, and an XML-specific query language is used to manage, retrieve and display data. No relational databases or SQL here, kids.

Alan gave a nice, brief overview of XML, DTDs and then introduced the software used for his project. Textml is XML server software from Ixiasoft. He also mentioned Cooktop – some freeware that actually worked as a pretty robust XML editor.

Alan demoed how Textml works, showed query syntax and drew comparisons with SQL statements. Those of us used to SQL syntax (SELECT * FROM tablename WHERE keyword = things) This native XML stuff is a whole different ballgame – the query syntax matches xml syntax. (i.e., The query is actually another xml document. ) It’s verbose and a little intimidating.

Here’s an example based on the same query above:

<code><xsl :stylesheet version=”1.0″ xmlns:xsl=”http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform”>
</xsl><xsl :template match=”*”>
<xsl :apply-templates select=”tablename”/>
<xsl :value-of select=”things( )”/>
</xsl>
</code>

This example is not spot on, but you get the idea. SELECT * FROM … is looking pretty good.

So, how can applications use native XML? Alan showed how a pilot version of the NWDA (Northwest Digital Archives) is going to using native XML to manage, find and reuse archival finding aid content. Alan showed the XML index that runs the NWDA, well-formed xml document that map out the relationships between items and collections. We also got to see how XML can be used to create a pretty standard search and retrieval interface: find titles, free text search, browse records screen. Online XSL transformation creates the display for individual items. This could be a bottleneck if the XML doc gets large. People asked questions about retrieval performance and Allen pointed out that when performance in search and retrieval lagged it usually happened during the XSL transformation stage.

One of the more interesting tidbits from the session was the Adobe XML Metadata Packet (XMP). XMP is an Adobe metadata option based on W3C’s RDF which packages basic metadata and embeds it within pdf, jpeg, tiff (adobe type files). It’s really simple to add to Adobe documents. By using the document properties menu in Adobe Professional 7, you can enter your metadata. This is pretty cool stuff and could really be useful if one could begin a digitization project marking up pdfs, jpegs or tiffs with XMP. As proof of concept, Alan showed how to query using Textml and the XMP packet. XMP would be really easy to use with an Electronic Theses and Dissertation project or any project with a reliance on Adobe document types.

Other XML server software equivalents to Textml: Tamino, NATIX, and eXist (open source). Try a google search on “native xml server” for additional options.

It was another worthwhile session. Not sure I got my head around all of it… Oh well, it’s gettin’ late and I’m off for some food and grog.

Information Visualization is becoming increasingly important in online communication and instruction. When we look at the ways our users are consuming information, increasingly by choice, they do so visually. Virtual collaborative spaces are springing up all over the Internet as is the use of multiplayer online games coupled with the use of avatars and other visual persona, landscapes and environments. Why?

“Tell me and I’ll forget…
Show me and I may remember…
Involve me and I’ll understand.”
Ancient Chinese Proverb

Increasingly faculty is looking at ways of utilizing Information Visualization to represent traditional text based and flat structure information. We looked at several examples including a 3-D map from the Rumsey map collection, which was running on GIS software through Luna Insight. There is a plethora of possibilities when it comes to 3-D presentation techniques.

Current programming languages involving 3-D are primarily Virtual Reality Modeling Language (VRML)/eXtensible 3D (X3D) and Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG).

We reviewed some library OPACs that are currently incorporating some type of Information Visualization such as AquaBrowser. You can see an example at the Lexington Public Library

One of the most interesting applications of 3-D Visualization technology can be experienced by taking a look at Cubic Eye. CubicEye breaks out your browser window into a cube with each “wall” functioning as an independent browser window. Individual 3-D elements, if supplied on the Web page, can be rotated on the floor of the cube for further examination.

We also examined several 3-D projects in the humanities, which utilized 3-D technologies to recreate architectural and anthropological sites on the web.

We can utilize these tools in our libraries not only by making our users aware of what is available in terms of completed projects in their subject areas, but also by exploring and incorporating Information Visualization into our service delivery and instruction. The serious consideration and utilization of visual technologies will add an increased level of appeal and interest in a language our users are already fluent in and accustomed to using.

The general outlines of the project are familiar to most of us, having been presented previously: Google, as if by magic, since the technology is proprietary and they can’t tell us about it, is non-destructively digitizing the entire bound print collection at UM (and also portions of 4 other research libraries; New York Public Library, Stanford, Harvard, and Oxford) . The scanning is resulting in page images and OCR files, all up to agreed upon digital preservation standards that have been established by the library community. Michigan will receive its own copies of all the files created, and will be able to host them on their own servers and build them into new digital library services.

Dunkle made it clear that Google and UM are partners in this project – Google is not forcing the library to do anything it doesn’t want to do. She also pointed out that even though there are unresolved issues, such as the full impact that this fully dual digital/print collection will have on UM staff, the advantages of getting this huge corpus of digital texts are enormous.

Bunnell showed screenshots of the Google Print interface for public domain books, where users can page through the entire book online, and in-copyright books, where they can only see 3 (un-printable) snippets, but also get a list of how many times their search terms occur in the whole book; e.g. we are only showing you three, but your words occur in this book 57 times. Both the public domain and in-copyright views allow user to find the book in libraries or buy it. Bunnell also showed the interface for books submitted directly by publishers, which allow users to access considerably more than the snippets.

The questions were the best part of the program, since attendees brought up lots of pertinent points, such as – the interface for the books submitted directly from publishers does NOT include the “find in library” link (wonder why?); UM & Google’s approach to simply do everything is going to result in the scanning of a lot of bound journals, many of which certainly exist digitally already; although Bunnell assures us (as other Google representatives also have) that GooglePrint is NOT in competition with other, existing, robust, digitizing programs at many libraries and cultural institutions, surely funding for local digitizing projects is going to diminish as a result of Google’s massive efforts; and no, they won’t let us buy their technology. Also mentioned was recent OCLC collection analysis work on the Google 5 (reported in Sept. D-Lib http://www.dlib.org/dlib/september05/lavoie/09lavoie.html) that shows that about 60% of the books to be digitized in the project are only held by ONE of the Google 5, only 20% are held by two, and only 3% are held by all five. The shockingly high number is that 80% of the books in the Google 5 libraries are still in copyright, so even though the full text will be digitized, only the snippets will be available. Although it is probably more productive if we stop thinking of the visible part of in-copyright books as snippets, and start thinking of them as indexing – a point brought up by danah boyd in her keynote, and echoed by Rebecca Dunkle – danah said that she couldn’t wait for Google to finish digitizing so that more of the volumes lying around her house would be indexed; Dunkle related her experience handing over books retrieved from offsite storage to users who take one look at them and say “not what I expected”; she expects the snippets and keyword counts to reduce the number of times this scenario plays out, and feels this is just one of several outcomes that make the whole project worthwhile.

A slightly smaller but still sizable gaggle of us headed over to Johnny Rocket’s afterwards for cheap noshes and those long, deep discussions you only really get with your buddies at conference or other places where you kick back and discuss the state of librarianship and the world, not to mention the role of the narrative voice in blogging. I with my middle-aged stomach am still burping french fries and onion rings, but it was a delightful, unforgettable dinner. Librarians really are the best people in the world.

Updated link! The presentation slides are available at: http://mamajama.com/uo/lita.ppt
That contains all the details he mentioned about technical pieces to put together your streaming capability for relatively low cost. I’ll just mention a few items from the talk which aren’t fully obvious from the slides.

Basically, the rationale for doing streaming is (a) Everybody’s doing it and (b) Libraries potentially have better content to offer than Everybody. There is an explosion of multimedia content out there but much of it comes from the same big entertainment and web publishing companies — AOL, Yahoo Music, Disney. Now when you view a TV show you see a note on it saying you can see outtakes at aol.com. “These behemoths are driving this bus.”

We got an overview of some of what’s going on today in multimedia on the web. “If we’re going to dip our toes in this multimedia sea, we have to see what else is swimming around there.”

What do Monica Lewinsky’s secrets have in common with Victoria’s Secret? In 1998 President Clinton’s deposition before a jury was webcast and a million people tuned in. In 1999 Victoria’s Secret had another webcast to which a million people tuned in. These have in common that when that many people tuned in at the same time to view the stream, it choked the available pipe. Failed terribly because no one could reach it. Now there are events such as the shuttle launch or Live Aid where 5 million people can simultaneously tune in and 95% of them can successfully reach the stream. The difference is that edge servers rather than central webcast farms are doing the streaming so the work is now distributed to many servers.

One of the movies we watched was a streamed lecture from a NASA archive. The audio was virtually inaudible. There are new technologies coming out like Streamsage and Speechbot aimed at capturing and indexing text from audio. But bad audio thwarts these technologies.

There are other new video indexing tools coming on the scene: Google, Yahoo, Truveo. Google only searches video submitted to it, Yahoo only retrieves video mentioned in RSS Feeds. Truveo goes out and indexes video all over the web. Searched for: Pon the river — which is a dance you do in Jamaica. Google and Yahoo can’t find it but Truveo can. (I tried it out today. It’s in beta. Give it a try and see what you think.)

Some of the best ideas I took from this were about combining audio or video with a “slide push” for distributing tutorials, lectures, conference presentations over the web. (Using audio-only works if you’re trying to save bandwidth and have interesting slides to look at!) The presentation slides are coordinated on a timeline with the audio or video. For this, Microsoft Producer will now do for free what it used to cost $2,000 – $15,000 to do.

“Not only is it not cost-prohibitive, you can do it, it’s not rocket science!”

Anne Donohue and Debbi Schaubman of the Michigan Library Consortium spoke today on the new developments at the Michigan eLibrary, commonly known as MeL. Begun as a gopher at the University of Michigan in 1993, the web site has gone through many phases and now has several important services for the people of Michigan. The newest are MeLCat, a statewide library catalog, and MeLDelivery, a statewide delivery service. MeL also has a new user-friendly design.

Though I reside in Illinois, I have been using the Reference Desk at MeL for years; as a reference librarian I have answered numerous reference questions with its links to free web sources. I always look on the MeL Databases with envy; the Michigan State Library provides many more databases for its residents than the Illinois State Library and makes them easier to access. Illinois and other states should take note.

Donohue and Schaubman were proud of the new design, which includes a new federated search box. The results of this search point to both open access and authentication access resources; Michigan residents can use their drivers license numbers or library card numbers to get into the resources that require authentication; parents can set up MyMel accounts for their children to give them access.

The speakers spent much of their time discussing MeLCat, which is still adding libraries. Illinois is actually ahead of Michigan in the development of a statewide library catalog, but the Michigan model looks a little friendlier and shows status on most items. Building MelCat has given the state the opportunity to go into many smaller rural libraries and teach computer skills to the library staffs. Residents can get into MeLCat and place holds on items to be delivered to their home libraries.

In the near future, the Michigan Library Consortium will be expanding services on MyMeL and continuing to add libraries to MeLCat. Its focus groups continue to look for more services for Michigan residents.

E-Rate

• Library participation continues to slide. Over 30% are eligible, but only 7% participate in E-Rate (I think I got the #s right). The application process is seen as too complicated and the discount is too low to off-set the workload involved.
• We’re facing threats to E-Rate money.
• ALA is lobbying to simplify the program, change the way poverty is measured, and try to get E-Rate back to doing what it was intended to do.

CALEA (Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act)

• The law states that carriers must re-engineer systems to assist law enforcement with wiretapping. The law had exceptions. It did not apply to “information services” or “equipment, facilities, or services that support that transport or switching of communications for private networks.” (e.g. the Internet and private networks).
• Now lawmakers are attempting to amend the law to extend this to apply to broadband information services.
• ALA has been meeting with the FCC and lawmakers to try to get libraries exempted from this law.
• On September 23rd, the FCC released a Notice of Proposed Rule Making laying out who would be covered by the CALEA extension. It will have a serious impact on libraries in terms of cost and staff burden (the amended law requires a 24/7/365 contact at the library to respond to wiretap requests). There are serious privacy and security concerns with this proposal, and libraries and ALA will be fighting it heavily.

ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) and Internet “Governance”

• ALA has been quite silent about ICANN, and the speakers emphasized that this is something that will need to change.
• There is a big US vs. international issue here. Since the US dominated the scene for a long time, there’s a sense of ownership and control that can’t be sustained in an international environment.
• The World Summit on the Information Society concluded that greater international involvement is necessary and proposed four scenarios for governance structures.
• ICANN just voted to approve the .xxx domain, which is the first content-defined domain (for sexually explicit material).
• The US Government is largely rejecting all international findings and opinions, and continuing to attempt to act independently to control things.

Alan Cornish of Washington State University Libraries walked us through some excellent XML basics, stuff that grounded me in topics I’m a little shaky on, through examples of XML code, illustrations and hands-on use of an XML editor, and examples of how applications use XML, with an emphasis on digital collections. The handouts are real keepers, and include references to articles about native XML. Google up TEXTML when you’ve got a minute to see an interesting tool Alan demoed.

McKiernan describes feeds as automated web surfing. Feeds are sent immediately after something new is posted to the site so the site’s users can know about new content instantly. This is the strength of feeds.

RSS is called so many different things on a website…feed, XML, RSS, syndication, syndicate this site, etc. This identity crisis is part of why most users don’ t yet know what RSS is, much less use it.

ListGarden was mentioned as a useful open source option for creating your own RSS feeds.

McKiernan bemoaned the fact that IE does not have built-in RSS functionality. Firefox, Safari, and Opera has RSS functionality. I’m hearing a lot of anti-IE talk at the forum, which is not surprising at all given the audience.

Many different people and organizations are embracing RSS feeds—politicians, publishers, news organizations, and the library world.

Uses for RSS in libraries mentioned were e-journals, new materials notification in libraries and archives, user instruction, and subscription database content. McKiernan shows us what some libraries are doing with RSS already, and encouraged us to keep going. McKiernan then touched on podcasting as an aspect of RSS that has potential in libraries to extend the library’s reach into “the audio.”

(I took too long eating my cake and talking so I arrived a little late to this session.)

Susan Thompson is up first.
California State University-San Marcos is a relatively new campus and they have just completed a new library building. One of their major considerations was developing a building that would support a large amount of technology for their students.

They took special care with their classrooms, which they call labs, paying attention to lighting, projection screens, and versatility of the rooms. A collaborative classroom which has round tables provides an area conducive to group work. The instructor has a control screen on their computer that controls all of the components of the classroom, including screens, lights, and to even control and manipulate the student’s computers.

Not only did the Kellogg library install over 240 computers, but they also created media edit stations for their students. This is an interesting idea and one that I think is not very common. (This brings the library into the grey realm of computer lab vs research area. Many libraries are both, though most of us wish it were closer to one side or the other.)

With all this technology, the library wanted their users to be able to use their technology in the places that were the most comfortable for them. They decided to make sure that the wireless network within the library was completely saturated, even within the staff areas and to the areas directly surrounding the library. In the end, they had to hold off on complete saturations because of building costs, but an original plan of having power and plug-ins still provided access throughout the building. I hope that eventually they are able to go back and add more wireless nodes for their users.

The library was going to need some major IT support that the library could not provide for themselves. Campus IT became their partner, though this meant that they did have to give up a measure of control over their library systems.

David Walker is next.
In addition to their new building with new technology, they library needed a web site and infrastructure which would support this mission of technology access. The library wanted to use their web site as a promotional tool for their library. They did not necessarily want to include library news but highlight information that students and users actually want. They have a “spotlight area” which is basically a banner ad that runs at the top of their website and they change it often. They use it to advertise different library services or exhibits. The ads are slick, well done, simple, and get the information across. The user can actually click on the ad and receive more information on the service, exhibit, or building pictured. David puts a plug in for iStock Photo, which allows people to download pictures for a limited cost.

The Kellogg Library also began using SFX and Open URL to make access their electronic holdings easier for their students. They are not completely satisfied with the way SFX and the catalog are interfacing together, so they have created a new program which will place all of the information for the article the user needs on one screen. They even include a help area which descibes exactly how to find the article. The screen actually walks through the physical actions needed to find a print version of an article, complete with maps. (What a great idea!)

Started out with questions; who is thinking of it as an access technology? Who is thinking of it as a preservation technology?

Contributions from the audience: what are people interested in?
-Someone who just bought JPEG2000 is wondering about how to use it.
-People who are interested in archiving issues
-People who are using ContentDM are using JPEG2000, there are a few of those folks here.
-Can we use it for newspapers?
-VidiPax has customers who are asking about Motion JPEG2000 …
-What are the performance issues
-LuraTech
-ExLibris, who OEM’s the AWARE product
-Endeavor

Attributes the presentation in part to Robert Buckley, Research Fellow at Xerox; some of Peter’s slides are from Buckley’s presentation.

Key Messages:
Will begin with an intro to the format.
Talk about the “value proposition”
Opportunities for collaboration

What is JPEG2000?
Wavelet-based image compression standard. Same ISO that worked on JPEG worked on this. 2000 was the year that ISO officially passed part 1 of the standard.

Conception:
-Improve the performance of JPEG
-Add features and capabilities not available with Basline JPEG compression.

What is required to adopt a new technology?
1) Knowledge

JPEG2000 is one standard but it has evolving number of parts.
—–
Part 1) the core image coding part, was passed in 2000, followed by Part 2, which was extensions. Part 3: Motion JPEG2000. 4) Conformance Testing 5) Reference Software 6) Compound image file format. Blah blah more parts…

Image codestream compression architecture: PART ONE

Wavelet Transform: see slides from XEROX (Peter is trying to get the rights to redistribute those). The format divides image data up into discrete blocks by size, by resolution, etc. so that parts of the codestream can be accessed to get derivatives of the image at various sizes, resolutions, etc. very efficiently. When all of the pieces, or blocks, are reassembled, the original image results.

Can deliver JPEG 2000 images:
Progressively by size
Progressively by resolution
Progressively by Quality

JPEG2000 optimizes compression across the entire image, rather than by spatial blocks as JPEG does.

Color management in part one is based on sRGB color space. The people who were at the table during the time that discussions were happening, and they felt sRGB was good enough.

Part 2, JPX is more capable. It supports other color spaces, full ICC profiles
—-
Image components

Part 1 (JP2) supports 1- or 3-component images, plus optional masks; all JPEG 2000 compressed. 1 would be b/w only, 3- components would be RGB.

Part 2 (JPX) supports anything for which there is a color spec, for example multispectral photography. Getting beyond just the Red, Green and Blue spectrum.

FILE FORMAT ARCHITECTURE

Initially, JPEG group only specified the compression, and didn’t address the file format. There were negative outcomes, with a proliferation of different JPEG file formats.

This time, decided to focus on the file formats.

A JPEG200 file is a sequence of boxes with 3 fields each:
-length L
-type T
-data D

With such a file format, an application can read through the block (box) and figure out how long it is, skip over the L component to the type and see what kind of info it is. If it isn’t interested in that data, it has all of the information it needs to skip over it entirely.

BASIC JPEG2000 file:
-Begins with JPEG2000 signature file (declares itself as a member of the JPEG2000 filefamily)
-File type box
-Header box (image and color params)
-codesstream box (actual image data)
-Metadata

METADATA
You can pretty much put anything you like in it; allows for two types:
-XML box, any XML-formatted metadata
-Any other kind of data (UUIC boxes), voice annotations, TIFFs, PDFs, etc.

JPEG2000 FILE FORMAT FAMILY
-JP2 (JPEG 2000 Core)
-JPX (Extensions)
-MJ2 (timed sequence of JPEG2000 images). Not coded with interframe differences
-JPM (JPEG2000 Multi-layer). Documents where different parts of the image might be coded differently; for example, a newpaper article where the text can be bitonal but the photograph rgb.

Motion JPEG2000 was recently adopted by Digital Cinema initiative: this will be the way movies are going to be delivering content to movie theaters.

JP2 HEADER BOX: TECHNICAL METADATA LIKELY TO BE ENCODED
-image header
-Bits per component
…

There has already been an initiative to map the JP2 headers to TIFF (see the American Memory site for info on TIFF headers.
Some things that don’t have direct mappings in the TIFF header to JP2 header info can possibly be mapped to Dublin Core instead.

Protection
-Security. JPX introduces a digital signature Box, containing a checksum or digital signature
-Part 8 supports selective encryption and conditional access for the codestream.
For example, you could password-protect a certain layer of your JPEG2000 file. This may not necessarily be advisable for long-term archiving, but could perhaps be useful for secure transit between archives.

Error resilience
Variable length coders like JPEG2000 are vulnerable to errors that cause loss of synchronization. In Part 1, optional start of packet (SOP) synchronization markers are defined, so that an application reading in the file could resynchronize.
-Part 11, which deals with JPEG2000 for wireless, defines methods for protecting the codestream from errors in noisy environments.

Losing a certain amount of data from a JPEG2000 image will yield a loss of some kind, but it will not be as catastrophic as loss of data from the middle of, say a JPEG or an uncompressed TIFF or a TIFF with compression. Every chunk of data and compression in JPEG2000 is applied across the entire image. You don’t have chunks of data that correspond to what we think of as chunks of an image, that is, a block with X,Y coordinates.

JPM – Multilayer JPEG2000 for compound document images.

JPSearch. Provide clear understanding of the image retrieval process. The library community should be active here.

——————–

JPEG2000 Practice in Archives and Libraries

What is required to adopt a new technology?
2) Is JPEG2000 better enough technology? This is the key question that we should be asking ourselves.

WHY USE JPEG2000?
-Open standard; royalty-free use. Write and encoder and decoder and pay royalties to noone. There are no patent issues for the encode/decode. The vendors can license their software. Writing an encoder is harder than writing a decoder.
-One asset supports multiple derivatives; one file for both lossless and lossy data.
-Region-of-interest (ROI) on coding and access. Can specify that certain parts of the image are very important and should be encoded at higher quality, for example.
-Easily handles large images. (Peter’s example: ERMapper brought very very large diskpacks with a 10 Terabyte image and browsed it as a JPEG2000 file).

Architecture for access and archiving with JPEG2000
-Part 9
Peter’s working on the architecture piece; capture and management of JPEG2000

JPEG2000 in use:
National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP)
-Objectives and constraints

UConn’s Charles Colson project
Annotated Melville’s manuscripts
Received a grant for preservation treatment and digitization.
Have embedded various types of metadata: TEIheaders (XML data), PDF (UUID data), and the entire EAD finding aid to provide the context, so the user can tell where this came from.

—–
What remains?

What is required to adopt a new technology?
3) Confirmation (dialog, and people to test, is this where we should be going? And Peter thinks this is better enough than what we have been doing. Harvard and LC are also starting to do this.

Final questions
Has anyone endorsed this as a standard? Library of Congress has put it on par with TIFF as a storage standard.

Archive groups haven’t endorsed it yet.

Is this replacing EXIF data? Will camera vendors do JPEG2000? Yes, there will be some new digital cameras this Christmas with JPEG2000 support.

Roy Tennant, CDL

Breaking out of the box is using an API to create own interface; allows deeper integration of other types of activities (querying dictionary service to check spelling, for example).

Why do it? greater interface flexibility, can do things vendor doesn’t support. Changes to interface can remain unchanged when new versions of application are released.

CDL and the talk today is about the MetaLib X-Server, but there are others that offer similar functionality.

CDL’s vision is of many search portals. No one-stop shopping. Many services for many different audiences. This is often very problematic with a vendor product out of the box. Particularly difficult because the tool out of the box ships with a lot of little fragments of XML, etc. that make up the interface, so making even minor changes required a lot of hunting and correcting.

Also, the code was crap. Very substandard.

AT CDL, metasearching is not just about searching databases, but about searching other things, including OAI-harvested data, crawled earth sciences websites, etc, RSS feeds or new articles and resources, etc.

Showed a wireframe of a metasearch app. Showing examples of image search, etc.

Diagram of applications … see PowerPoint from this preso.

———-
Michael McKenna CDL: Using SOAP and XML to access Metalib

Use the HTML interface from MetaLib as little as possible.

Currently, X-Server supports basic services; an XML interface (basic request/response, modeled on web services), a core interface to metalib to do querying of database, data preso to other apps.

Basic services:
-Login (this is an application connection)
-User authentication (different from login, which is an application accessing rather than a person)
-Retrieve resources
-Search resources
-Retrieve search status report
-Combine results sets
-Retrieve search results

Metalib’s two interfaces: /v (vanilla) and /x (XServer):
-When there is an upgrade, there is a certain amount of fixing involved: with an upgrade with /v, 196 files changed, 2,354 files changed across all campuses. Not just the 10 campuses, but multiple departments and libraries within those. The upgrade script for /v saves and markes changed files. Would have to “diff” to find out what those changes are.
-With /x, never ever have to change the UI. May require mods to the Common Framework (CF) layer (more on this bit later in preso).

Development Methodology
Over 60 people on staff (more than 20 are developers) who are working on this. Potentially anyone could make a change and it would affect all. Like to use source control to track this.
-With /v, cannot use CVS easily. Had to use very close tabs on the changes
-With /x, much easier to test and prototype, synch with checkin server without making any changes to the back end.

For example, to customize simple search, have to change the following:
-/v many fragments of docs to be updated. MANY MANY fragments
-/x interface will go to jsp pages; edit one .jsp file.

Common Framework
Integrated interface for CDL managed info services. Packaged for internal use by the various campuses.

See ppt for the diagrams of the
-Application layer
-Manager layer
-Service layer
-Client layer
-User interface

CF integration
Used existing modules as templates, modified them to act as metasearch interfaces. Then sits alongside other applications at every layer (see list, above). A complete Metalib search “slice”

Logic Flow:
-Connect
-Authorize site (once person has logged in to a site, the site tells other apps about what the user has access to, so they can just authorize the site)

Michael took us on a detailed walk through the layers, using the diagram of the system layers and slices.

Issues, which they are working with the vendor on:
-Limited buffer sizes. Being fixed by ExLibris
-Limited number of databases that can be searched. Need to balance speed vs. coverage
-Issues with response time and timeouts

Future
-Finish service implementation
-usability studies
-write client layer
-write UI
-Beta rollout will be fall/winter 2005

Other thoughts about future
What happens when MetaLib releases entirely new Web Services? Or if ExLibris fails?
Make some changes at the management layer

———-
David Walker
Web dev. librarian @ CSU San Marcos

Actual preso and the handout are radically different: is now talking about RSS Creator

The problem with Journals & RSS
-RSS ideal for journals? Timely content, high interest among faculty. A TOC alerting service, whether email based or other, is a traditional type of service.
-Problem is that few aggregators or publishers offer these. If they do, they still have to be discovered, collected and maintained. If they do exist, they probably link back to the publisher’s site.

Showed an example of a feed from the Journal of Toxicology, a link back to the publisher’s page. This doesn’t take into account whether or not the library subscribes to or otherwise has access to the ejournal already.

RSS Creator
-TOC alerting servcie: wanted to create this but there was no budget and no staff time to maintain. Focus is on undergrad activity @ San Marcos, this is probably of more interest to faculty.

Diagram of network model: SFX, Databases, Metalib

In SFX, there is a data export tool. Could export all of the journal subscriptions, which db’s have full text, etc.

This knowledge base is exported. Then, the RSS creator ingests the file, breaks it apart, makes a db of the holdings.

When a user visits the RSS feed, Metalib passes off a request to the database or databases, passes back the journal info as XML, transforms it and creates RSS. For first time to create feed, takes 5-10 seconds. User gets an RSS feed. Info is cached on the server. Cron jobs on windows server to go back to db to check for new articles.

When user clicks on an article link, they get the standard SFX interfaace. Includes links to ILL options, since the journals that CSU San Marcos subscribes to are limited to supporting the curriculum. Interests of faculty are potentially much broader.

Advantages: BIG — all the content in databases. Can represent 20,000 – 40,000 feeds. EASY —
[sorry, missed the next two advantages]

Challenges: MULTIPLE DATABSES indexing for journals that are abstracted in more than one. SELECTIVE INDEXING for db providers that index unevenly: some content from some journals, everything from others. TIMING AND UPDATING — how often to you back and refresh. SFX KB doesn’t contain everything, and contains minimal data; enough to create a feed, but not sure that it’s enough to find the journal to begin with; has title info, etc., but not necessarily subject data to enhance discovery of journal titles. REQUIRES A SECURE LOGIN — these are subscription databases. Sitting as an intermediary between user and subscription content. A lot of RSS clients are not set up to handle authentication so they can’t get in. BIGGEST CHALLENGE IS FACULTY USE OF/knowledge of RSS. The RSS client solves a huge problem, alleviates the need to write an email disseminator, for example, but getting faculty to start using an RSS client, and one that handles the authentication, is a struggle.

Future developments:
First beta release in October, will promote to select faculty. Are also exploring topical feeds which actually uses metasearch. Shibboleth and auth. to other CSU campuses

————-
Raymond Yee
UC Berkeley

Live demo of Scholar’s Box at Berkeley: not possible due to no wireless access in Conv. Center

Problem to solve: giving scholars seamless access to research material: any type of content from any research, package up and go.

Attempting to demonstrate whether or not solving this problem is useful, and if it is, how difficult would it be?

Scholar’s Box is a desktop app written in Python.

First presented with a search screen and an option to select repositories to search, and terms to enter.

One search results are returned, can drag and drop into own collection. Copying and pasting traditionally on the web results in a loss of the metadata. The goal of this project is to make it easier to gather the materials along with the metadata … attribution, etc.

Showing results of a MetaLib search/integration. Hope to provide end users with easy access to the scholarly research.

Have hooked up to Flickr and can mine content from Flickr site. Raymond is very interested in the idea of personal digital repositories, so is using Flickr to build one and has about 11,000 images in Flickr at ths point. Uses the XML interface to Flickr to mine and remix data.

The Scholars Box can then export the data in any number of different packages: an OpenOffice presentation, etc.

——–
Q&A

Question about the upgrade process. How do you keep up with release notes and make enhancements so that you don’t have an application that’s stuck, not taking advantage of new functionality.

Answer from Mike: have a number of checks they run to check for changes in the interface. Checking some sample queries to see what changes have been (# of databases, # of results returned, etc.).

Comment/question from the ExLibris guy: goal is to make it possible for the institutions to do what they want, integrate with own services, etc. This will be an idea that is expanded with other products, including DigiTool, etc.

Comment/Question: has been watching metasearch evolve over years, at first wondered if this would take off as an idea at libraries. Now believes that it will and that it will be very important, equal in importance to catalog. Question about whether it will be easy for other schools to gather and adapt this code, given the existing difficulties, even for large schools, to comment and share code. David: yes, and will use SourceForge to share, will make sure it’s documented. Raymond: not sure; ScholarsBox is still a thought piece, not sure how useful it will be to others. Mike: for Common Framework, thinking of Open Sourcing it but it’s pretty large. XTF full text index/search tool has been pushed to SourceForge already. Thinking about breaking off other pieces and sharing them.

A nice session from yesterday that had the feel of an XML workshop. Beth offered a quick introduction to XML and XSLT (XML stylesheet transformations) and then got into the nitty gritty as to how Los Alamos is applying the technology.

Some of the highlights:

Beth mentioned one of the themes Roy Tennant’s keynote: agility. When speaking of agility Roy was talking about our need to develop applications and systems faster, but to do it in a way where different pieces of our applications can be re-used in different contexts – a modular approach moving away from the proprietary, vendor-specific model. (The poor OPAC was the whipping boy example again.) Anyway, Beth’s point was that XML enables the modular approach and and allows us to take data and re-purpose it.

Currently, Los Alamos work-flow looks something like:

1. Work with vendors to buy data
2. Transform the data with XSLT into MARCxml
3. Create search and retrieval applications to display data to users

Most of us wouldn’t have the personnel, to do this type of work in house, but it’s an intriguing idea. In many ways, we outsource work and are bound to programmers outside of the our industry to make our applications. Beth’s point was that we can start to take more control and empower from within. She pointed out that by spending a day or two teaching Los Alamos metadata librarians how to use XML and XSLT, she was able to bring those parties with intimate knowledge about metadata into the programming process – cutting out intermediaries.

The rest of the session got into the “how to” side of things. I don’t want to make your eyes gloss over…

Strengths of XML – valid, well-formed, can be transformed into many different objects

Drawbacks of XML – bloated file size (a simple, delimited text file transformed to MARCxml blew up to nearly 3 times it’s original size).

XML Tools and tips:

• Altova XML spy – good for coding and modeling, mapforce component of software that can start to crosswalk between XML schemas
• Browsers – IE and Mozilla have XML rendering engines that can read XSL stylesheets, great for debugging
• References: check Standard XML libraries at SourceForge, get stylesheets at TopXML

It was a long and rich session and I’m really only scratching the surface. Check out the full version of the talk at http://library.lanl.gov/lww/articles/LITA2005/Presentation/

Michael Gorman likes cataloging. His talk focused on the challenges of metadata schemes in libraries and other information finding environments. Gorman terms this emphasis on metadata “the third way” – an alternative to expensive and time consuming full cataloging and search-engine-esque free text searching.

But the third way is not necessarily a good way, says Gorman. AARC2 and MARC are complex because the world is complex. The rules and subdivisions arise from reality—a real representation of the human record. The coherence and control of the vocabulary is core to making information organized and accessible.

Gorman contends that on the opposite end of the spectrum, search engines like Google give you more hits than you can deal with, in no useful order, no guarantee that all received items are relevant, or that all relevant items have been received.

Consistency and standards for metadata are lacking. From discipline to discipline, standards and formats range wildly. This is metadata’s failure.

Gorman says that cataloging’s historical failure can be found in two fatal flaws:
• The mechanisms by which cataloging information was conveyed (printed media)
• The lack of uniformity in cataloging formats (different element sets, data standards, and orders)
If, with present technology, we can continue to address these two flaws, cataloging could have a new renaissance, Gorman believes.

Gorman seems to believe that “the third way” (useful metadata) is ultimately impossible—that our choices truly are either firm cataloging or free text searching.

The NISO Metasearch Initiative was discussed as an important factor in motivating metasearch service providers to offer more effective services and to deliver services that distinguish their services from free web services like Google.

Implementation considerations
• Training of librarians
• Deciding what you want to display on the results pages
• Creation of categories
• Inventory of databases
• Customization of the out-of-the-box services
• Marketing
• User instruction
• Assessment of what’s working and what isn’t

They conducted a user survey before implementing metasearch to determine what their expectations were (importance of databases, expectations of finding useful resources). They also conducted a survey of other libraries/librarians offering metasearch to learn more about their experiences.

She started by telling us that she was a bit disappointed by yesterday’s keynote from Roy Tennant encouraging us to regain our rightful place as the guardians of the world’s knowledge (note: that was not my take on Roy’s talk at all, perhaps she heard a different Roy than I did). She told us that library hegemony (in the form of this gatekeeper identity) is no better than Google hegemony and that we should not subscribe to the same closed-fisted elitism that we criticize Google for. The crowd’s reaction to this upfront criticism was mixed…many arms were crossed and lips were pursed. Personally, I found this honesty refreshing and telling of how the public (especially the young) probably views libraries and librarians. Sad, but true.

To explain her idea of what blogs are, boyd compared blogs to paper. Some people use paper to write grocery lists, print photographs, keep journals, write novels, etc. Blogs work the same way—there are many different species of content.

boyd criticized Gorman’s “Revenge of the Blog People” as inflammatory and uneducated. She emphasized that blogs are not just diaries and amateur journalism (the two examples given to discredit blogs and bloggers). Some bloggers do use their blogs for journalism…and quite a bit of blogging acts as an alternative commentary on issues and events. She also refuted Gorman’s criticism of blogs as being interactive and allowing commentary. The commentary mechanism of blogs is what makes blogs unique—allowing anyone to have a voice.

Blogs are not about publishing; blogs are about sharing. Blogs allow you to share your thoughts and ideas without having to chop them up to fit the ideas of the editors of a printed publication.

Blogs allow people to find others who have things in common with them. As such, they put themselves out in a very visible public space. Bloggers view the benefits of being out in public as outweighing the risks.

boyd also noted that blogs are saturating search engines. If your blog is prolific, your individual posts become top search results (above published works and other prominent websites) simply because more people are linking to the blog posts and viewing them than the other types of resources.

She also discussed memes—the tendency of one idea that’s important to one blogger being replicated on blog after blog after blog. She then tied this to the relatively new remix culture (fan fiction, mixing political statements with music tracks). Remixing is a new method of expression and commentary, which she termed cultural consumption and communication….not necessarily “art.”

She closed by saying that Google and remixers and bloggers are not the enemies of librarians. We all share the same goal of distributing information. Let’s remember that.

Danah does not hold back and she starts her talk by chastising librarians for some of our anti-Google stances and takes some swings at Michael Gorman for his remarks against “blog people.”

“Librarians should not be the sole gate keepers of information.”

People detest the gatekeeper and librarians present themselves as the only “real” gatekeepers. There are people squirming in the audience. Danah is challenging us and what we believe is “our” place. (I hope that some people will leave this session thinking about what we do and how we do it from a different point of view.)

Blogs have greater increased the sheer amount of information out on the web. They are evolving and therefore are targets for those who do not understand the medium. The inflammatory rhetoric of those who rail against blogs are used to reduce the relevance and worth of blogs. Bloggers can provide alternatives to the MSM (main stream media).

Danah likens blogging to speech where we write and share on the fly. It is our thoughts out loud. (This is one of things that has drawn me to blogging. It is a way to share all the thoughts in my head, to get them on “paper” so that they no longer float around and clog up my neurons.) Blogs are an ongoing knowledge base, a continual conversation between the blogger and their audience.

Blogs are forcing us to renegotiate social boundaries. Searches put things in conjunction that would not appear in the course of normal life. This has led to some people getting fired.

Blogs redistribute power. They allow people to discover and explore different ideas. She ends with a plea that we support others engaged in the fight for civil liberties. Danah Boyd calls us to be better.

Mark Phillips from the University of North Texas Libraries spoke to a small gathering of LITA librarians who found their way to the remote Convention Center Meeting Room C1+C4 about web harvesting government information. If you imagine that it is a simple thing to do, you are wrong!

Why would you even consider harvesting data from government websites? 96 percent of federal government information is now digital and much of it is not archived; much of it is disappearing at the direction of bureaucrats who do not know or follow any archiving directives.

The University of North Texas Libraries (UNT Libraries) was contracted by the Government Printing Office (GPO) in 1997 to begin harvesting the web pages of government commissions that were filing final reports and agencies whose functions were ending. The result is the CyberCemetery, which archives the websites of 42 defunct agencies and makes them available for public use.

In theory, the GPO tells UNT Libraries when a commission or agency needs a final harvest so nothing will be lost. In reality, many bodies have disappeared without notice; their web pages which were stored on private industry servers often disappeared before anyone at GPO or UNT was aware of their demise. UNT tries to find the data secondarily through sources like the Internet Archives, but often much is lost.

In 2004 the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) approached UNT Libraries about conducting an end of presidential term harvesting of federal information with the results to be sent to the California Digital Library. UNT first declined but then accepted when asked a second time. The project was very time sensitive. Phillip’s department had only a month to prepare and another month to do the harvesting. NARA provided UNT with a list of URLs that any good government documents librarian could tell was incomplete, so Phillip’s department had to go to other sources to collect URLs. They also had to get software for the harvest, set up computers, and decide on procedures. Phillips described this operation.

Problems began to crop up as soon as the harvesting began. NARA had promised that necessary notices and permissions would be given; notices may have gone to management administrators in government agencies, but many server administrators knew nothing when they discovered their files being massively copied. Phillips got many angry calls ordering him to cease and desist. There were other technical problems. By the time of the presidential inauguration, UNT libraries had only captured about one-third of the federal web data, but it was still more than NARA had said they would find.

Phillips did not have a digital presentation, but numerous documents on his department’s work can be found at
http://www.library.unt.edu/digitalprojects/documentation/publication.htm.

I have been reading for years about the problems of disappearing federal information. Phillip’s presentation gave it a whole new twist. We have plenty of reasons to worry.

Sean opens by talking about Pong, the Atari game that many of us grew up with, and makes the point that even though it is simple; it is still engaging.

When we first started building web sites, we could envision the entire site in our heads, but now the complexity of the web and our sites are overwhelming (attributed to Peter Morville). I think this is sometimes the reason why our websites get out of our control and we end up with web sites, or tutorials, that do not make sense.

Though we have to divide the labor because of the size of our sites, we also need to make sure that we do not become so specialized that we lose sight of the mission of the web site and organization. The mission has to be balanced within the structure of the library or even the tools themselves. Sean gave the perfect example of the iPod which basically uses a technology we have had for years, downloading files from a computer, and creates something “new,” portable music.

“Users don’t know what an index is. Even when they are looking at it.” Developers have to pick structures that make sense and can function within the structure. Tutorial systems should be meaningful and they should be tested.

There are questions that we should ask (based on Ranganathan’s PMEST) What are trying to teach people? What is it made from? What activities take place around the tutorial? Where will users do the tutorials? How will things change over time?

Tips for designing:

Our users should always know what to do and they should not have to guess
There is a diversity in our users and we should recognize that
Avoid jargon
Consistency
There should be a place for feedback

Tutorials are often similar to web sites, but they stand alone from most web sites. They are complex, require other tasks or tools, often require interaction from users, they have to be accessible, require frequent revision, use a digital tool to describe a digital tool, and coordination from many sources.

Scalability

Using effective file structures/structures that make sense
Use style sheets
Design with expansion in mind
Use relative font sizes and scalable graphics (this makes it easier to make changes later on and will allow different browsers to view things correctly)
Use fluid layouts

Portability

Make it easy and make it vanilla. In order for a tutorial to be portable it must be simple.
Reduce HTML tags
Reduce image file sizes
Is it printable?

Sean makes a good point here because to reach our users, which are often undergraduates in Academia, we need to think about what kind of devices they might be using to view the tutorials. Will they be on a desktop in the library or in their dorm room? Will they view it on their phone or blue tooth device? Could they listen to it on their iPod?

The future of tutorials includes RSS, podcasts, wikis, blogs, and CMS tools.

Sean’s main theme: design for use, test, design for the future, test, keep the mission in mind, and test

Michael wrote and released some open source software that he created for his library with a GNU General Public License. He recommends that before releasing open source software, you think about the release process as a whole and about permissions needed from your institution before releasing something as open source.

New Books List is being used by over 300 libraries in 34 states and 9 countries. New Books List is a suite of applications written in PERL. It’s fully automated and provides a list of recently added items to the ILS. The end user interface is web-based, and it was designed from the start for patrons, not staff. It integrates with the ILS web catalog (Voyager only).

Easy to Install: Make it easy to customize the library-specific aspects of the software. Minimize the pre-requisites.

Documentation: Create a website about the software with downloads, a demo, and FAQs. Create a list of institutions using your software to help encourage similar institutions to implement it.

Marketing: Use websites, mailing lists, conference presentations, articles. If the software tacks on to an existing piece of vendor software, the vendor may promote it as well.

Support: Realizing that you probably have a full time job, only the most basic support is expected. If your documentation is good enough, you can avoid most configuration and installation questions.

Enhancements: Focus on enhancements that help your own library (since your library pays your salary, after all).

Release: If you used any of your employer’s resources (e.g. paid work time, funds, computers, collaboration with fellow staff) then your institution most likely owns the copyright to what you have created. You will need to petition them to be able to release what you’ve created as open source. Your organization may want to attempt to license and sell the software, while you may have grand designs of giving it away for free. Have a game plan in place before pleading your case, be clear about what you want and why, and add context about the open source movement.

Roy Tennant from the California Digital Library opened the LITA Annual Forum with a rousing discussion of the Googlezon world takeover. The always engaging and enthusiastic Roy began his session by noting that the theme of the Forum, “The Ubiquitous Web,” apparently does not apply to the conference hotel, where each of us has to pay $9.95 per day for wireless access. Hear hear!

Roy’s presentation started with a brief self-created video set to REM’s “It’s the End of the World As We Know it.” The video chronicled the start-ups of Amazon and Google and how they and their branch projects have since affected the world of finding information, products, and people, and ended with a series of projections for the future, including the merger of Google and Amazon, the creation of the “Library Alliance” of OCLC, RLG, LC, and the DLF, and Microsoft taking over a great deal of previously free content and re-packaging it as a premium for-pay service.

Roy tells us that libraries have our eyes on the long haul…not just on moving fast. He cautions, however: “If you’re comfortable you’re not paying attention.”

If you can’t beat ‘em join ‘em. Search engines are all well and good, but they don’t always serve our users in the best way possible. Roy highlighted the OCLC Open WorldCat project and OpenURL as a way to get libraries’ resources and information into search engines.

***AND THEN THE EMERGENCY EVACUATION ALARM WENT OFF (NO JOKE).. THE AUDIENCE ALL STOOD UP AND BEGAN TO EVACUATE THE BUILDING. THEN THEY LET US BACK IN ALMOST IMMEDIATELY AND ROY STARTED UP AGAIN…I HAVE A THEORY THAT SECRET GOOGLE OPERATIVES PULLED THE ALARM TO QUASH ROY’S SUBVERSIVE EXPRESSION***

Back to the presentation.

Take the concept and run. RedLightGreen uses a simple search box and relevancy ranking, much like Google, but also uses controlled vocabulary in a useful and visible way. They also use FRBR to collapse multiple bibliographic editions into one record (usability rocks)!

Stop putting lipstick on pigs. Stop spending energy tweaking systems that are clearly outmoded (e.g. library catalogs). Focus this energy instead on creating new systems that work well. A revolution must occur, and those of us in library technology are the ones who can push this kind of revolution forward.

Be user-focused. Libraries tend to focus on creating systems that work for us as librarians and not for our users. Roy quoted his popular maxim: “Librarians like to search. Everyone else likes to find.” Minimize the number of clicks to get from the library’s homepage to library-licensed content. Do usability testing—testing mock-ups or beta sites. Roy advises doing this for small as well as large scale projects.

Keep what works. Example: OpenURL Resolvers. OpenURL Resolvers do one specific thing, and it works. Interoperable components can be easily mixed and matched, and this is key.

Fix what’s broken. Instead of giving us a grocery list of what’s broken, Roy gave us homework: to go back to our home and search Amazon, then search our library’s catalog. Which do we prefer and why? What could we do differently to make our resources work for our users? We need to talk to our users about what they like and dislike about our catalog. Roy also discussed naming: what meaning does Lexis-Nexis have for non-librarians? “While we’ve been happily automating the back office, we’ve let the front office languish.” We need to build tools that maximize the power of our licensed databases, while minimizing the pain users must experience to get access to those resources.

Strive for efficiencies. Roy says we need to learn from Amazon. If Amazon had to MARC record each of their items, they would have failed. We also need to streamline things that are routine: acquisition and circulation. Automate circulation through self-check-out.

Foster agility. The need for agility stems from uncertainty. Roy encourages a flexible taskforce structure to deal with new projects and needs in the organization.

United we stand, divided we fall. We need to collaborate with book publishers, libraries doing digitization projects (let’s all have access to that data!), and search engines much more than we have.

The presentation ended with a slide of the Nancy Pearl action figure standing in front of the vanquished Godzilla-Googlezon. Roy believes that the values we hold dear as librarians are what make us unique and valuable to our communities. We are beholden to our users, not to profit or corporate structure. This is why he continues his work, and this is why he encourages us to continue ours.

• Forum / bulletin board (BBS) software
• Blogs
• RSS
• Wikis
• Instant messaging (IM)
• Podcasting

An extensive handout booklet was provided that contained virtually the entire presentation; look for it to appear on the LITA website. Also there were handouts from Educause Learning Initiative with brief intros to videoblogging, wikis, podcasting, and social bookmarking (as on del.icio.us or its open source cousin de.lirio.us).

Chang’s focus was on how to use these tools to support internal communication and collaboration among staff, on an intranet, as well as to support instructional & public services in the library, on an outward-facing website. A big reason her institution went with open source tools was that they’re a low-cost alternative to proprietary products and yet don’t require extensive in-house programming expertise and time: these wheels have already been invented, and the in-house effort is limited to customizing the software and training internal users.

I’ll avoid repeating the content that will be available in the online handouts and just report a few sidenotes:

In implementing a staff wiki for collaborative maintenance of documents, an initial hurdle was people’s reluctance to overwrite the items posted by higher-ups in the organization. Newer and younger staffers are less likely to have this worry. (The youngest students and staffers are apt to be already exposed to all these technologies and more; Chang noted that 4th and 5th graders in some places are now encountering blogs in their schools, as reported in Edutopia magazine’s articles on blogs in education.)

A difficulty with wikis from a systems management perspective is that they tend not to allow the fine-tuning of access levels and content areas that blog software supports out of the box. However, they’re much better than blogs for situations where you need to track revision history (policies, procedures, etc.).

Chang remarked on a convergence she is seeing among different communication tools: the Miranda IM client she displayed has blog-posting and RSS feed-reading extensions.

A popular topic for the audience was podcasting. Chang suggested public libraries could use this even more so than academic libraries, for example, to deliver recordings of storytimes. This made me laugh, imagining the logistics of setting up a children’s librarian to record a usable edition of a storytime (which is frequently interspersed with activity games like clapping hands and running around the room).

Chang wrapped up her session with a demo of installing and testing WAMP5 (a web server and database packaged up for easy installation on a PC) and b2evolution (blog software), as well as demoing the process of recording for a podcast.

Fun phrase of the day: “gadget-driven services” — How much of our services (asked Chang) are driven by the gadgets we have?

On entering the Marriott, please go upstairs to the second floor to find the Forum meetings. There’s a map of the meeting rooms on the hotel website.

You’ll also want to sign up in your room or at the front desk for your Internet access. This will also entitle you to a passcode for access to the lobby wireless.

If you would like to join us and you get a ticket, drop a line to me in the comments here, email me, or find me Friday and we will arrange a meeting place. I’ll be wearing a Serenity ringer t-shirt and a big goofy grin.

• Saturday, October 1, from 5:30 – 7:30 p.m.
• Marriott Arcadia Room

All LITA Forum attendees are welcome. SLIS Associate Director Linda Main will host. Stop by, say hi, and grab some munchies!

Join us for the Blogger Networking Dinner at 6 pm on Saturday, October 1st at the Hotel Montgomery Lounge , aka Paragon Restaurant & Bar, which is supposed to have free wireless access bleeding in from the lobby. Because San Jose has wireless across downtown, we will have the option of enjoying the beautiful California weather by taking the party outside. The Montgomery Lounge is just around the block from the San Jose Marriott so those staying at the conference hotel will be able to walk to the evening’s gathering.

You do not have to be an active blogger to join in the fun. The more the merrier. Just sign up at the registration desk when you get to the conference, so that we know how many people to expect.

1. Get high speed internet in your hotel room for $9.95 a day or
2. You can get wireless internet, available in the conference area and lobby for $9.95 a day.

These two services are exclusive of each other and you do have to pay for them separately, unfortunately for us. If someone has better information, feel free to leave a comment.

Go back five years to the LITA Forum in Portland, Oregon. I arrived the day before the opening session, dropped off my bags at the hotel, and caught the light rail to the Portland Art Museum. It happened to be a day the museum was running a food drive for the local shelter program. The admissions clerk told me that I could save the $10.00 admission fee if I walked to the Safeway on next block and brought back a couple of items for the drive. I did and got in the museum for the price of canned corn and fruit cocktail. I enjoyed seeing a big show of the Hudson River School painter Frederick Edwin Church’s landscape paintings. There was also an exhibit of early Soviet painting that was very grim.

In 2001 the LITA planners brought the forum to Milwaukee the very week that the Milwaukee Art Museum dedicated its beautiful new wing designed by Santiago Calatrava. On exhibit at that time was a fantastic collection of colorful glasswork by Dale Chihuly, which fit very nicely in the bright white gallery space. I also saw my favorite contemporary work in the museum, the very lifelike Janitor by Duane Hanson.

At the LITA Forum in Houston, I spent four or five hours in the Museum of Fine Arts. It was again great timing as there were two big shows. The first was an exhibit of French Impressionists and the second was a large part of the Phillips Collection from Washington, D.C., which was on loan while its home was being remodeled. I saw many Renoirs, Van Goghs, Monets, etc. I also saw a show of quilts from Gee’s Bend.

I do not remember there being any special shows at the Chrysler Museum of Art in Norfolk during the 2003 LITA Forum, but my visit was still very memorable. The admissions clerk insisted on checking whether I qualified for free entry because I was a member of the Art Institute of Chicago. Sadly I did have to pay to get in, but I got a free audio tour. The woman in charge of handing out the audio tour devices told me about all her favorite pieces in the museum and how to find them. She was right about there being a great collection of art glass. I also enjoyed the galleries of European art, including the painting titled Saint Philip by Georges de La Tour. The Chrysler museum had the friendliest staff I have ever met.

Last year I went to the Saint Louis Art Museum, which had just installed a 37 foot long wood and mixed media work by Leonardo Drew called Untitled #45. (Rust was a major ingredient.) I was more impressed by the beauty of the building than the museum collection. Built for the 1904 World’s Fair, the marble-covered museum is on top of a hill overlooking Forest Park. There were good displays of European and American painting, and I particularly liked Winslow Homer’s The American School. The St. Louis Art Museum is always free to visitors and worth a visit.

This year many of us are going to San Jose, which means we can go the San Jose Museum of Art. It is free to visit and it appears to be in easy walking distance of the Forum hotel. The San Jose Museum of Art is a relatively new institution, founded in 1969, and its collection includes works of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. It has had permanent displays only since 2003 and puts a lot of effort into its shows. Currently it has Brides of Frankenstein, a show of works by contemporary women, who use video, robotics, the Internet, computer animations, and other digital and traditional media. It sounds like an appropriate experience for LITA librarians at a forum in Silicon Valley. I’ll see you there.

Register online, or get your printed registration form in to the LITA office, by August 15 and save $50.

Preconferences include Open Source Communication and Collaboration Tools, Building Digital Library Collections with the Greenstone Librarian Interface, and Moving Image Collections.

More information on the LITA website