Leddy Collection Policy White Paper
10 Dec 07
The Leddy Library has plans to revise its collection policy. The current policy was written in the early 1990s, and has only had minor revisions since.
Those who might be interested can follow some of our discussion on collection policy development through the Leddy Collection Policy White Paper, prepared using CommentPress, a WordPress template that allows commenting at the level of the paragraph.
(cross-posted from Leddy News)
Posted by pzed on December 10, 2007 at 2.58pm
how could I leave this behind
17 Jul 07
I’m working on a project in which my library is withdrawing a number of titles from its reference collection. The current phase of the project deals with print bibliographies, most of which were compiled in the 60s and 70s, are dusty, never used, and of almost no interest to scholarship.
I’m supposed to be giving the titles already identified (by others) for withdrawal a quick once-over, just because it’s been about three years since this project has been alive and kicking; but it’s turning out to be not so quick after all. I keep running into stuff like this. . .
Reisner, Robert George. Show Me the Good Parts: The Reader’s Guide to Sex in Literature. New York: Citadel, 1964.
. . . which includes this gem. . .
BODIN, PAUL. All Women’s Flesh. New York, Berkeley (paperback), 1957. 190 pp.
pp. 41-43: The man is mildly shocked when his wife runs off with his friend. Most of the surprise is why his friend should want her. He is comforted in his loss by many women, so he is in good shape. One source of solace is a waitress in a local restauraunt. He lavishes appreciative attentions on her slightly hypertrophied posterior. (66)
Who could withdraw such a thing? Not I.
Posted by pzed on July 17, 2007 at 3.52pm
Casserly, Developing a Concept
10 Apr 07
Casserly, Mary Frances. “Developing a Concept of Collection for the Digital Age.” portal: Libraries and the Academy 2.4 (2002): 577-587.
Casserly introduces what I find to be a compelling notion: “It is the abstract idea of collection—philosophy, purpose, scope and boundaries—that, as practitioners, we share with other members of the library profession” (577). Unfortunately, I didn’t get the sense that she really develops this idea through the article; or perhaps this is the forest, and I’m only seeing the trees. Casserly identifies four key elements that support the idea of “collection”: ownership, place, control, and permanence (579). Permanence is new, a reflection of the digital world, while the other elements make a transition from print to digital.
“Ownership” needs little explication, save the fact that generally speaking libraries have traditionally “presented users with only those resources for which the library assumed responsibility through ownership” (579), whereas now we are also in the business of providing access to off-site resources that might be owned consortially or accessed through licenses that give no actual ownership to the library in question.
“Place” in the context of collection management refers primarily to the library as storehouse (580). Casserly doesn’t directly discuss or even imply how the idea of place remains relevant to the concept of a digital collection, I suppose assuming that we can fill in the blanks for ourselves, although I’m not so sure we can assume that place is meaningless. She doesn’t seem particularly interested in the service or community aspects of the “library as place”.
By “control”, Casserly means inventory control at the basic level, quality control at a more conceptual level, and the assurance of content stability. Interestingly, she doesn’t mention bibliographic control, which functions at a significantly higher level than inventory control as she describes it.
Finally, “Permanence is a property of analog information resources that derives from ownership, place and control” (580). Permanence is inherent in paper and other physical information resources, but digital is inherently impermanent.
Casserly’s article by choice offers more questions than answers. Her introductory section, including the discussion of the four elements mentioned above, concludes with the following:
Most libraries select and manage digital formats within their existing organizational structures and in many these tasks are considered, by both management and staff, to be add-ons to existing responsibilities for analog materials. In these environments, practices grounded in characteristics, properties, and perspectives, such as ownership, place, control and permanence, which clearly do not pertain to digital resources, continue to define the concept of collection. (582)
I’m inclined to disagree. What may be happening is that these four ideas are themselves becoming hybrid, like the libraries they describe. Ownership and place especially can have both literal and metaphoric meanings that converge when the concept of a collection is considered. Control may be of even greater relevance in a digital context, as the complexity of our ownership and licensing situation increases. And permanence? Well, nothing’s permanent. Our paper collections may seem permanent, but they are really only longer-lived. Indeed, paper rots; in a digital environment where electronic archiving is carefully implemented, permanence may in fact be easier to achieve.
To give Casserly her due, she wishes to engage libraries with five questions to help develop the emerging concept of the collection, and I reproduce them here:
- What are appropriate and useful metaphors for your “library” and “collection” in the digital age?
- How will your library achieve effectiveness as it builds and manages the hybrid collection?
- How will your library define efficiency in acquiring and managing the hybrid collection?
- How will your library establish and maintain a focus on collection content in the challenging landscape of scholarly communications?
- What commitment will your library make to collection permanence?
Posted by pzed on April 10, 2007 at 4.11pm
Kennedy, CD Policy for Digital Information Resources
10 Apr 07
Kennedy, John. “A Collection Development Policy for Digital Information Resources?” Australian Library Journal 54.3 (2005): 238-244. (also available online)
Kennedy asserts that the heyday of collection development policies has passed, for a couple reasons. For one, “collection development policies are closely linked to print materials in the minds of librarians. . . . For many professionals and paraprofessionals today, in particular those working in major academic and research libraries, it is digital resources that are of primary importance” (239). This is especially true in a case where a collection development policy will be developed locally, but the majority of big-ticket electronic resources are purchased consortially. However, Kennedy suggests a larger issue that explains the neglect of collection policies:
The very concept of collecting has been called into question as a primary activity of libraries. When increasingly the resources that the library makes available are ones which are not physically collected and brought within its walls but to which it provides access if and when they are needed, it would hardly be surprising if some came to regard a document that seeks to guide its collecting activities as of diminishing relevance. (240)
Of course, Kennedy is only setting up a straw man here and really wants to argue that collection policies are still relevant and worthwhile. He acknowledges that digital information is less tangible and more subject to change or even to disappear; that the “content of the [digital] collection may be more fluid that it ever was in any print collection subject to the ravages of theft and physical deterioration” (241). And although he doesn’t draw this conclusion directly, it may be that this fluidity is itself justification for the development of a policy document. He goes on to identify a number of key roles that a policy can play, all of which we have already seen, but which he hopes to place in a new context with respect to digital information: accountability, decision support, planning, communication, and protection for library staff.
Posted by pzed on April 10, 2007 at 3.21pm
Lee, Collection Development as a Social Process
10 Apr 07
Lee, Hur-Li. “Collection Development as a Social Process.” Journal of Academic Librarianship 29.1 (2003): 23-31.
Lee describes a case study analyzing collection development processes in a women’s studies collection through the 70s, 80s, and 90s. She starts from the “basic assumption. . . that collection development involves not only objective professional activities but also complex social interactions” (23). In the course of the study, Lee analyzes data culled from internal documentation of library activities, archival records that represent the make up of the institution and how it changed over time, and interviews with librarians involved in collection activities in the area:
The data revealed two distinctive points of view towards women’s studies and women’s collections: feminist, and non-feminist. The standpoint held by librarians on both sides of the issue colored their perceptions of user information needs and information seeking and, in turn, became part of their justifications for collection decisions. The feminist group took a women-centered collection approach and worked persistently to establish a separate library collection focused on women. The non-feminist group adhered to the traditional disciplinary model and objected to the proposal for a separate women’s studies collection. (26)
It’s important to point out that Lee does not characterize either side as being necessarily more valid than the other. She gives considerable attention to a fair treatment of the two perspectives in an effort to understand the biases inherent in each. Interestingly, she concludes that, “Neither of the conflicting positions on interdisciplinary inquiry in women’s studies was evidence-based” (27).
If there is an implication for collection policy development—in other words, for that process by which we might attempt to codify in a policy document how selection and other relevant collection decisions are to be made—it would fall somewhere between one of two poles. Arguably, a collection policy document could attempt to be the governing factor that would eliminate subjectivity by establishing criteria by which decisions would be made. However, I consider that naive wishful thinking. It would be much more interesting to develop a policy document that would recognize and accommodate the implications of Lee’s findings. These are the implications I have so far come up with:
- Collection development is contextual, within the institution, within society, and taking into consideration the individuality of the librarians, faculty, and students directly or indirectly involved;
- The influence of individual biases must be understood and allowed for;
- Political realities, both institutional and societal, will have an impact on decisions being made;
- A policy document will need to provide clear guidelines in terms of direction and expectations, but still allow flexibility for the librarians involved to act with autonomy.
I’m not sure if this article contributes to where I want to go in my thinking about policy development, but I think its important if only because it is a fascinating and well-evidenced case that describes the reality of how collection librarians behave much more accurately than most collection development policy documents I’ve examined.
Posted by pzed on April 10, 2007 at 2.25pm
code4lib: final thoughts
2 Mar 07
code4lib2007 was held in Athens at the University of Georgia’s Centre for Continuing Education. It’s Friday, the conference is over, and I’m now sitting in Hot Corner, a funky little coffee shop where the wireless is free but the coffee is significantly over-priced. I’m pretty much wiped out by the conference. Assuming I remembered to tag them all correctly, there are currently 20 entries in my code4lib category (this will be the 21st – that’s not counting the preconference). The 20 minute limit per session is brilliant. Really, nobody needs more than 20 minutes to say what needs to be said, especially at a geek conference where everything’s online and if you don’t know somebody, you know somebody who does. The 5 minute lightning talks make this point even more boldly.
If I have one complaint, it was with the food. I was disappointed, but I’ve been South enough not to be surprised, that the meals were quite dissatisfying from a vegetarian perspective. It is possible to create yummy meals with enough variety that a vegetarian can get something to eat, but it doesn’t happen very often around here. Breakfast this morning was sausage on biscuits, bacon on biscuits, ham and cheese croissants, bagels, sugary muffins, juice, and coffee. Yesterday I watched a more strict vegetarian than I build herself a cheese sandwich out of hamburger condiments because the meal was burgers, hotdogs, fried chicken, and macaroni salad.
Otherwise the conference center was comfortable and the room was very well laid out for presentations. Ample power was available, and after a few glitches on day one, the wireless worked well enough.
Content-wise, apart from feeling a little overwhelmed by the sheer number of presentations, I am excited by a couple things. Perhaps, on a personal note, I was most excited that at no time during this conference did I feel like the presenters were speaking a different language. I’ve learned a lot since Access 2002, my first library geek conference. As far as what people actually said, I think the most exciting development is the way in which a cluster of technologies for indexing, searching, and presenting documents and representations of documents are coming to maturity. There appears to be some money behind open source ILS development, and some first-rank talent as well. There are neat things happening in terms of presentation of results and data visualization, and the exciting potential for a social layer built on top of library data. Seamless authentication remains a huge hurdle, but we can dream.
So I’m very glad I came. I got a heck of a lot more out of this conference than simply an opportunity to be with Jodi on my employer’s ticket. I’m going to need to learn a lot more about how to implement some of the things I’ve seen as part of a music project I’ve been planning. I also couldn’t help but notice the potential usefulness of much that was presented to projects my library’s web team has talked about. And now, once Jodi is done teaching at 3.30, I get a weekend holiday in the sun.
Posted by pzed on March 2, 2007 at 3.31pm
Lightning Talks 4
2 Mar 07
[I left LT4 early, so not all talks are represented here]
Andrew Darby, Ithaca College Library: Adopting an Orphanware Project
keen on fixing subject guides using Pirate Source (E Carolina U)
ECU released with “download now” link, later pulled
AD fixed it up to his liking, wrote an article on it, augmented admin views
received a request for his code, but of course his was based on ECU’s
wrote ECU and received permission to redistribute, has since received permission to release under GNU-type license
Ryan Wick, Oregon State U: EAD PDF Generator
server-side, no client/editor setup needed
designed to assist archives in making PDFs from finding aids
automatic series outline/toc
support for external links
future plans
– better EAD support
– enhanced container list display
– possible cusomization
related work
– http://paulingcatalogue.org/; output to Adobe InDesign
Tim Dohohue, U of Illinois: IDEALS
http://www.ideals.uiuc.edu/
DSpace archive
wanted to allow researchers to submit in any format
used OpenOffice free api to build document converter
– Word to PDF
would like to generate a better preservation format (DocBook XML, OpenOffice Writer perhaps)
basic Java programme
command line script available outside DSpace
future plans to create disseminator for DSPace: rather than storing all formats in DSpace, do conversion on download on the fly
– would be a delay for larger files
Ralph LeVan, OCLC Research Office: Identities Project
extract identities from WorldCat
http://orlabs.oclc.org/Identities/
– timeline
– alternate names
– audience levels
– works about
– related names
would like to add ability to link from bib records
Tito Sierra, NCSU Libraries: Best Bets: Improving Search to High Demand Resources
analyze search log to see what people search most
build a custom index
integrate with web site search to bring most common to top
top 100 queries (NCSU Lib website) are 30.2% of all searches
include alternate keywords feature (eg. lexus to lexis)
quick search module based on 50 total Best Bets
implementation: small xml files
forces popular results to top
can create for items that may not be included in your search crawl
keyword field enables misspelling/synonym matches
custom description displays
Best Bets account for 16.6% of search clickthroughs
local logging of all serves and clicks
can use click % to improve service
Nicole Engard, Jenkins Law Library (Philadelphia): Intranet
nice, light, clean, friendly interface
more fun than the stodgier public face
includes a blog-like message board
links to key resources
calendering EXTcalender
uses WYSiWYG Pro editor ($40 for non-profit)
Posted by pzed on March 2, 2007 at 12.28pm
Open-Source Endeca in 250 Lines or Less, Casey Durfee
2 Mar 07
Open-Source Endeca in 250 Lines or Less
Casey Durfee
Seattle Public Library
#bugs ~ lines of code ^ 1.5
demo: http://catalog.spl.org/catalog/
code: http://extranet.spl.org/code/code4lib2007.zip
presentation: http://extranet.spl.org/talks/open_source_endeca/
Solr shortcuts
– results in Python format
– no database
– lucene search syntax
Django
– faster than Rails, can handle concurrent users
– forces you to do things the right way; forces split between coding and design
– object-oriented templates
goal to keep the URL as simple as possible
– no bizarre numeric codes
Solr performance tricks
– <optimize/>
– huge filterCache, very important for faceting; roughly equal to number of bib records in database
– some facets are faster than others; need to warm facets: query all records and do facets on every field (facetwarmer.py run every 10 minutes)
Posted by pzed on March 2, 2007 at 11.47am
Intellectual Property Disclosure Process, Michael Doran
2 Mar 07
The Intellectual Property Disclosure Process: Releasing Open Source Software in Academia
Michael Doran
University of Texas, Arlington
developers working for institutions likely do not own the copyright on their software, and therefore don’t have the right to release the software under open source
university will have IP office
– intellectual property disclosure process
does this IP stuff apply to me? – very likely yes
does it apply to this particular software?
– use common sense or ask
– “easier to get forgiveness than permission” will only work once, if that
a couple cautionary tales: in the first, the software is released and then (oops) the IP disclosure process is undertaken retrospectively
in the second, the UTA IP committee decides not to allow the free release (no right of appeal), decision is supported by provost; initially attempt to license back to ILS vendor, who don’t want it; then try to sell the software to other institutions directly; MD then pleads with the provost to allow him to address the committee again, and is able to explain open source in a way that they understand and the software is finally released
advice: have a plan
– find out about the process beforehand
– understand the committee’s viewpoint, generally patent/profit oriented, can’t assume they know what open source is
– work out a strategy
– be clear about what you want and why
– add context
under questioning, Doran also suggested the inclusion of a “poison pill”, which I assume would be to include some code released under GPL or better yet CC non-commercial
Posted by pzed on March 2, 2007 at 11.06am
LibraryFind, Terry Reese
2 Mar 07
LibraryFind
Terry Reese
Oregon State University Libraries
hybrid federated search service
Ruby on Rails application
– Rails only works with one request at a time
– in a metasearch environment, this is a problem
– clustering solution using Mongrel
– Ruby’s built in XML support not particularly good
LibraryFind
– metasearch tool: items harvested and federated (wanted to include access to IRs – built under the assumption that federated search isn’t a long-term solution, but that eventually everything will be harvested)
– openURL resolver/server
– web service
LF is a component of OSU’s vision of a library as platform
unique metasearch tool
– integrated openURL resolution
– both harvester/indexer (OAI and MARC repositories; 65 databases) and federated search too
– metadata-based knowledge base, using abstract connection classes (e.g. can create one generic connector for all Z39.50 sites, another for all web service sites, another for OAI sites, etc)
– as a result, adding new resources and sharing the knowledge base with other institutions is possible
caching
– daily cache of all searches held for 3 days
– top 15% of searches then stored to a permanent cache; considerably faster!
three search types
– general
– images (repositories)
– books and more (includes local catalogue)
To do
– scaling; current production version supports 5 simultaneous connections
– harvesting potentially 100s of millions of records; foresee as many as 20 trillion (!?!)
– umlaut integration
– opensearch
– json
– coins
– improved installation (shooting for WordPress 5 minute install)
no authentication needed to search the tool, only to connect to resources; so far, haven’t talked to any vendors who have a problem with that
Posted by pzed on March 2, 2007 at 10.46am
