Gone playlist

I have it on good authority that creating quirky playlists based on my metadata counts as digital humanities work. This list might best be described as a case of accidental digital humanities. I was looking for a particular song (Now she’s gone by The Marshall Tucker Band); and the resulting list of songs containing the word “gone” made a pretty awesome playlist. What’s not to love about a playlist that has The Kingston Trio and Eminem? Plus there’s a slightly obscure Dylan song, just like on most of my more carefully curated playlists.

• Tuesday’s Gone : Lynyrd Skynyrd
• Something Gone Wrong: Chickenfoot
• Already Gone : The Eagles
• Now She’s Gone: The Marshall Tucker Band
• Gone : John Hiatt
• Long Time Gone: Crosby, Stills & Nash
• Where Have All The Flowers Gone?: The Kingston Trio
• (Long) Gone: Kenny Wayne Shepherd
• Gone Going: Black Eyed Peas
• When You’re Gone: The Rolling Stones
• Gone: Ben Folds
• Now You’re Gone: Buddy Guy
• Gone: Golden Smog
• Gone Again: Indigo Girls
• Four Days Gone: Buffalo Springfield
• Gravity’s Gone: Drive-By Truckers
• The World Gone Wrong: B.B. King
• The Thrill Is Gone: B.B. King
• Gone For Good: The Shins
• Katie’s Been Gone: Bob Dylan & The Band
• Now That You’re Gone: Ryan Adams & The Cardinals
• Never Been Gone: Carly Simon
• Too Far Gone: Emmylou Harris
• NYC – Gone, Gone: Conor Oberst
• Gone Daddy Gone: Gnarls Barkley
• Good Man Gone Bad: B.B. King
• Done Gone Blue: Los Lobos
• The Animals Were Gone:Damien Rice
• Gone Gone Gone (Done Moved On): Robert Plant & Alison Krauss
• The Child Is Gone: Fiona Apple
• Long Time Gone: Dixie Chicks
• Long Gone Blues: Billie Holiday & Her Orchestra
• Since You’re Gone: The Cars
• Now That You’ve Gone: Chicago
• When I’m Gone: Eminem
• Get Gone: Fiona Apple
• When We’re Gone Long Gone: Emmyloun Harris, Dolly Parton, and Linda Ronstadt
• Joshua Gone Barbados: Tom Rush

What could we do in a month?

A regular non-librarian reader (and author of the always interesting and sometimes controversial Butch Wonders blog) suggested some topics in a comment on my 2011 in Review post, and I thought I should try to tackle some of them.
The suggestion that has me pretty well stumped is to write about “what changes you would make to the library if you had one month and an unlimited budget”. I can think of plenty of things I would do with unlimited budget, but none of them could be done in a month.
Off the top of my head, some challenges that we might be able to solve with unlimited resources (time AND money) would be (in no particular order):

1. Develop and deploy the killer app for Federated Searching — something that would allow for search and retrieval across all the various silos of content (Library Catalog, licensed databases, e-book packages, digitized collections, etc., etc.); AND would have an awesome interface that would make sorting through the inevitable massive results lists intuitive and intelligent. (Note: I think there is tremendous potential for Linked Data to eliminate the need for federated searching; but that is a very, very, long term project.)
2. Work through our cataloging and processing backlogs, so that all the awesome resources we have acquired over the years are discoverable and available for use. Like most major libraries, we have plenty of foreign language materials, rare books, special collections, and other non-standard materials that require individual cataloging by an expert. If I had the funding, I’d hire every out-of-work cataloger I could find, and have them catalog the heck out of everything we have. Heck, if I really had unlimited funding, I’d pay for everyone else’s backlogs to get cataloged too.  (Note that the need for support for traditional metadata work is a pretty clear theme in comments about What’s Happening at Harvard.)
3. Digitize everything–especially everything that is in the public domain or that we have rights to. Add good metadata to everything we digitize and make it discoverable and accessible through our catalog and through Google and other public search engines.
4. Do a massive lobbying campaign on behalf of Copyright reform. I wonder how much moola it would take to buy the votes needed for effective Copyright reform? (I’m kidding…about buying votes, not about copyright reform).
5. Buy up all the publishers whose outrageous pricing is decimating library collections budgets, and create a new sustainable system of scholarly publishing.

Clearly, none of the above are one month projects. Perhaps I am suffering from a failure of imagination, but I just can’t come up with anything big and exciting that we could accomplish in just 1 month … except make some ground-breaking acquisitions. And adding more awesome, rare, expensive stuff to our collections just adds to the challenges listed above.

Anyone out there got some great ideas? What do you think a large academic library should/could do in 1 month’s time, with unlimited budget? You know, just in case some donor decides to give us a bundle of cash with that kind of Project Runway like restriction on it …

Stanford explores Linked Data

The Report of the Stanford Linked Data Workshop (July 2011) is now available (also available via CLIR).

The Stanford University Libraries and Academic Information Resources (SULAIR) with the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) conducted at week-long workshop on the prospects for a large scale, multi-national, multi-institutional prototype of a Linked Data environment for discovery of and navigation among the rapidly, chaotically expanding array of academic information resources. As preparation for the workshop, CLIR sponsored a survey by Jerry Persons, Chief Information Architect emeritus of SULAIR that was published originally for workshop participants as background to the workshop and is now publicly available. The original intention of the workshop was to devise a plan for such a prototype. However, such was the diversity of knowledge, experience, and views of the potential of Linked Data approaches that the workshop participants turned to two more fundamental goals: building common understanding and enthusiasm on the one hand and identifying opportunities and challenges to be confronted in the preparation of the intended prototype and its operation on the other.

My favorite outcome of the workshop was the Value Statement consisting of 7 “pithy” statements on Why Linked Data Approaches are Worth Modeling/Prototyping (p. 20 of the Workshop Report):

1. Linked open data (LOD) puts information where people are looking for it – on the web
2. LOD can expands discoverability of our content
3. LOD opens opportunities for creative innovation in digital scholarship and participation
4. LOD allows for open continuous improvement of data
5. LOD creates a store of machine-actionable data on which improved services can be built
6. Library linked open data might facilitate the break down the tyranny of domain silos
7. LOD can provide direct access to data in ways that are not currently possible, and provides unanticipated benefits that will emerge later as the stores of LOD expand exponentially.

Here at Stanford, we have appointed Phil Schreur, Head of the Metadata Department, to be the Master of Linked Data Projects. Phil will be working with Jerry Persons (our Chief Information Architect emeritus), Michael Keller (University Librarian) and eventulay Hugh Glaser (University of Southampton) to generate a model for a sizable prototype of a discovery/navigation environment based on Linked Open Data.

Stanford Libraries will also continue to pursue our alliance with Metaweb/Freebase in transcoding our bibliographic facts to URIs. We will continue sending HighWire micro-data to Schema.org, which then finds its way to DBpedia. We are also exploring linked data collaborations with the British Library, the British Museum, and JISC.

Linked Data = Rationalized Serendipity

The more I learn about the potential of Linked Data, the more I am convinced that Linked Data’s biggest payoff for scholarship will be that it will rationalize and democratize a certain kind of scholarly serendipity.  The scholarly value of serendipity usually comes up in discussions of browsing, and in calls for maintaining large, open, physical collections of library materials.

Scholarly serendipity generally involves the unexpected discovery of some connection among people, places, things, or concepts that others have not yet discovered. 

Serendipity, by its nature, is unpredictable, time-consuming and elitist.  One pictures the mythical lone humanities scholar prowling the stacks, sifting through piles of archival material, chatting with librarians, archivists and other colleagues, all the while (perhaps unconsciously) hoping something she reads, hears, or sees triggers the realization of a here-to-for unknown connection.  Linked Data will speed up that process by exposing the relationships between entities on the open web.  Linked Data will also make the process more rational, as the relationships in a Linked Data environment are transparent, replicable, and based on explicit factual connections between entities.

Following links in a linked data environment will not only make serendipity more efficient, but also more democratic.  In the current information environment, access to the resources and the time needed to make the kinds of serendipitous discoveries that drive scholarship is distributed unequally, with many key scholarly resources available only to scholars at elite institutions. In an Open Linked Data environment, the relationships between entities are exposed to all. For example, the connection between Buckminster Fuller and the Monterey Jazz Festival is currently discoverable only to those with access to both of those archives at Stanford, plus access to the other archives and materials that make up the connecting chain, plus the time to wade through all of them. That particular chain of connections, and any number of other chains of connections, can now be exposed to all once each relationship in that chain is published as an RDF statement in an Open Linked Data environment.

While some might flinch at the idea of making scholarship (especially humanities scholarship) more efficient, I am convinced that every time technology makes some part of the scholarly process more efficient, it frees us up to spend time and brain power on more complex tasks that can’t be accomplished by technology alone.  I am convinced that Google did not kill library reference, but instead freed librarians up to provide more in-depth research consultation. I am similarly convinced that the realization of an Open Linked Data environment will free up much of the time and brain-power that scholars currently use on the time-consuming and unpredictable quest for serendipity, enabling them to devote increased attention and thought to interpreting those connections in new and creative ways that advance our understandings and appreciations of the world.

All about Linked Data

Freebase & Stanford University Libraries and Academic Information Resources (SULAIR) are working together to create RDF triples involving Stanford’s holdings to test a large prototype of a Linked Data discovery environment

Linked Data describes a method of embedding semantic information into metadata so that objects on the web can be linked in intelligent ways by automated agents and software designed to guide readers to useful related information that they might not otherwise have discovered. Linked Data is a component of the Semantic Web.

Below are some suggested readings, presentations, and videos for learning more about Linked Data.

Very good Wikipedia entries (with lots of references):

• Linked Data
• Semantic Web
• Resource Description Frameworks (RDF).

Why Linked Data?:

• In By Any Other Name, Chuck Henry of CLIR explains the meaning behind attempting linked data projects.
• Presentation by Professor David Nicholas, Director of CIBER on information behaviour of the researcher of the future

From Tim Berners-Lee, who first envisioned a semantic web:

• Tim Berners-Lee’s TED Talks on Linked Data:
  • The Next Web of open, linked data
  • The year open data went worldwide
• Tim Berners-Lee, James Hendler, and Ora Lassila on The Semantic Web in Scientific American, May 2001
• Tim Berners-Lee Linked Data

On the Potential of Linked Data:

• In The Pew Internet and American Life Report, The Fate of the Semantic Web, “some 895 experts … predict the likely progress toward achieving the goals of the semantic web by the year 2020.”
• The Nuts and Bolts of Opening Government Data in the Spring 2010 Issue of JISC’s Digital Content Quarterly
• Daniel Chudnov Texas Conference on Digital Libraries keynote: Better Living through Linked Data

On Government Information and Linked Data:

• Short post by Ed Sommers of Library of Congress on the 5 stars of linked data
• Sommers on research ideas for library linked data
• A set of links and posts on linked data and government information at Free Government Info

LibraryThing’s Tim Spalding on Social Cataloging and Libraries

At the end of his recent What is Social Cataloging presentation at LIANZA, Tim Spalding of LibraryThing assures us that social cataloging will not result in end of the world scenarios such as teenagers in their underwear cataloging our books, dead kittens, or the end of traditional cataloging. Tim has posted Just the LIS/ranting/inspiration parts! on Vimeo, and it is definitely worth a listen.

I think the idea that social cataloging means “the end of intellectual structures rooted in the limitations of the physical world” is a very important concept. Tim may be overestimating the power of social cataloging to topple the physical paradigm that has ruled libraries for so long, but I do agree that it is time (past time, probably) for a paradigm shift. Social cataloging will hopefully hasten the shift.

Despite sharing some of Tim’s “doom-iness” about the future of libraries, I am encouraged by the fact that many libraries, including my own, are already doing things like exposing their catalog records to Google and other search engines, and allowing linking and bookmarking of catalog records.

Stanford’s new discovery environment SearchWorks does both these things. SearchWorks is based on Blacklight, an open-source application that was originally written at University of Virginia. VuFind is another open source tool, developed at Villanova University, being used by a number of libraries to leverage Web 2.0 in a library discovery environment. I don’t know much about PennTags, but it is an example of a major university library experimenting with social tagging of library materials.

Tim is absolutely right that libraries must recognize the limits of practices rooted in a physical books paradigm and move beyond them. I’m encouraged to see that many leading libraries are already well on the way towards embracing new social tools and new ways of thinking about organizing information. A part of me reacts to Tim’s presentation with “Doesn’t he realize all the cool Web 2.0 stuff libraries are already doing?”; but a bigger part of me welcomes “rants” from library outsiders like Tim Spalding that keep pushing us in the right directions.

OCLC withdraws proposed policy on use of WC records

From OCLC news release:
“OCLC has formally withdrawn the proposed policy. A new group will soon be assembled to begin work to draft a new policy with more input and participation from the OCLC membership.”

The withdrawal of the proposed policy, and reaffirmation of the 1987 Guidelines for the Use and Transfer of OCLC-Derived Records, was based on the recommendations of The Review Board on Principles of Shared Data Creation and Stewardship.

Jay Jordon, President & CEO of OCLC promises the new group will develp “a record use policy that reflects both the rights of individual libraries and the needs of the cooperative to sustain and grow WorldCat for future generations.”

Sounds good to me.

OCLC review board recommends withdrawal of OCLC records policy

From blog.ecorrado.us:

The OCLC Review Board of Shared Data Creation & Stewardship has posted the presentation slides and a recording from their update to Members Council on May 18. I haven’t been able to connect to their streaming server, but the PDF shows, that among other things, they have recommended to “Formally withdraw the proposed policy” on WorldCat record use.

Great news indeed!

See also: All your OPAC are belong to us.

Great debate on Google Books

Peter Brantley has posted the text of an email debate on the inherent utility of Google Book Search (GBS), involving Paul Duguid of the Information School at UC Berkeley, Danny Sullivan from Search Engine Land, Tim O’Reilly from O’Reilly Media, and Donald Waters of the The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

It is a long post, but well worth reading. Key nuggets include:

• Paul Duguid: Google tended to assume that its algorithms made their metadata irrelevant. It learned–though the assumption still makes problems for those trying to use GBS for any kind of research.
• Tim O’Reilly: Many people seem to be under the false impression that algorithms and metadata are mutually exclusive approaches. In fact, both play essential roles.
  For too long, metadata was the only game in town: if you wanted to find something in a large collection, you could only search the metadata, not the data itself. Now that you can actually search the data AND the metadata, you can build interesting new applications more powerful than either alone.
• Danny Sullivan: I guess as I said, it depends on how you look at the service. If you view it as a book curation resource, it has huge deficiencies. If you look at it as allowing you to search every word in millions of books, it’s an amazing new resource. Not perfect, but seriously – who would have thought we’d have that type of capability just a few years ago before it started.

All your OPAC are belong to us

OCLC has announced a new Web-scale, full service library management system.

From the OCLC press release:

OCLC is connecting the content, technology and expert capabilities of its member libraries worldwide to create the first Web-scale, cooperative library management service…This new library service design will support library management for print, electronic and licensed materials built on a new, Web-scale architecture that provides streamlined workflows and cooperative solutions.

As reported by Marshall Breeding in Library Journal, “This new project, which OCLC calls “the first Web-scale, cooperative library management service,” will ultimately bring into WorldCat Local the full complement of functions traditionally performed by a locally installed integrated library system (ILS).”

More from Andrew Pace, Executive Director for Networked Library Services at OCLC.

I’m all for web-scale solutions, interoperability, and cooperative platforms, and I’m happy that this service will be “free” to those of us with a subscription to OCLC First Search. But, I wonder if anyone besides the folks at LibraryThing are worrying about the monopoly issue? The folks at LibraryThing write that:

The move casts new light on its [OCLC's] Policy defenses. OCLC isn’t “curating” library records; it’s leveraging them to enter a new market. It wasn’t “protecting members’ investment,” it was investing members’ money, intended to support OCLC’s core mission, to build a new service. WorldCat isn’t a “switching mechanism” to local catalogs. It will replace them.

I can’t help but think if this kind of service were being offered by a different commercial entity (say one whose name starts with “G”), the library world would be up in arms. I’m not saying we should be up in arms, I just think we would be. Tell me what I’m missing here, ‘cuz the folks at LibraryThing have a compelling argument …

Update: Looks like others are asking Tough Questions on OCLC’s Competitive Advantage and Data Policies.