Library Gazette

The Google Books settlement stemmed from lawsuits related to the Google Books digitization project. The original settlement from October 2008 has seen alot of opinion and criticism in the last year. Below is a short list of sites that cover the developments:

1. Google Books Settlement page
2. ZSR Library blog entries discussing the settlement
3. Timeline of developments on Cnet
4. The EU perspective on Google Books
5. NyTimes coverage
6. Editorial by Sergey Brin

In teaching teaching we will discuss some possible uses of Google Books as a teaching topic in Information Literacy courses. Some ideas for using this topic to guide class include:

1. Doing research on current events
2. Evaluating ‘news’ type resources on websites (for example comparing Cnet and Reuters coverage)
3. Discussion of Copyright issues surrounding digitization

This month’s Emerging Tech Talk was on Location Aware Devices and Augmented Reality. Since it still sounds a lot like science fiction, and is hard to explain without seeing it in action, we started by watching a few videos:

First, a video about overlaying additional information based on symbols a device understands:

Then, a video about a browser that overlays data with the environment behind it:

Then, a video about Yelp’s “Monocle” Easter Egg for the iPhone:

And finally, we watched Pattie Maes and Pranav Mistry’s Sixth Sense TED Talk.

Afterward, we discussed how location aware devices are becoming more mainstream as GPS technology and compasses show up in mobile devices, and how we’re about to see growth in augmented reality as well (especially after the next version of the iPhone OS). The Sixth Sense demo showed a possible next steps we could see after that. Exciting stuff! And once it’s much more mainstream these technologies will impact how people can access information and what their expectations will be.

If you’re interested in seeing the Monocle app in action, several of us have installed it on our phones. I’d be happy to show you!

It has been just over 2 weeks since we pulled the trigger and switched our catalog view over. We have gotten lots of great feedback and ideas for improvement and I thought I would take a moment to gather this feedback together and talk about next steps.

General Impressions

Comments from our patrons have varied from being impressed with the faceted browsing options to being frustrated with the limited information displayed on the default record page. Perhaps not surprisingly, There were some uses of the old catalog that do not work the same in Vufind (for example the display of the number of holds on a record). There has been some expectation that Vufind would go further in being more ‘Amazon’ like in how it indexes and displays records.

The list of enhancement requests, bugs, and fixed issues below represent all of the feedback that we have gotten over the last few weeks. We are working to resolve the bugs (foremost among them the speed issues and advanced searching) and will keep you posted with new news.

Enhancement requests

• Would like to be able to see how many hold requests exist on an item in the new catalog
• Would like the new catalog to explicitly state which series or version an item is (example Mi-5 season 1,2,3)
• Add year into results listing
• Add journal option to basic search
• Add the ability to see 20, 40, 60 records per page
• Improve serial current issues display - right now it shows item level detail but not summary holdings
• Add ability to preserve certain facets (like library) when doing searching
• Add grouping to locations (All physical reference locations for example)

Bug Reports (Unresolved)

• Catalog slows down under ‘heavy’ use - Some lib100 classes of 15 people have seen some slow response times
• Location listing should be in alphabetical order, should be consolidated in certain cases (ref desk and reference for example)
• Advanced Searching does not work with more than 2 terms, truncation proves to be problematic, further advanced searching returns inconsistent or known to be incorrect results when compared to the old catalog
• Resources without Item records in catalog show incorrect status of Checked Out - We have a workaround for this but it requires addressing each location specifically in the code, further statuses in voyager not always reported as desired in Vufind (missing books showing up as lost), lost showing up as overdue
• Date sorting not working as desired
• Recently received issues do not have a location?
• Wake Forest University facet limit does not return records (It is in essence a useless facet since everything in the db has this tag)
• Call number searching should not include periods - makes it difficult
• Endnote Export not working
• Still working on fully automated index updating

Fixed Issues

• Call Number now shows at the top of every view of the record
• Library links not always proxied appropriately - Kevin implemented a workaround for now
• Ebooks now showing as available
• Military Science added as location
• Sometimes the 007 in items (item format) does not correspond to what the item actually is. These items should be reported when identified and will be fixed by cataloging
• Known items not always showing up - We have a number of specific reports here. In some cases this is due to a lag in indexing (still working on getting the connection between our two servers opened up) but in others the items were kicked out due to record errors.

The NYT has a interesting update on the status of the GoogleBooks legal issues this morning. There are some curious tidbits in the article including a mention of a “book rights registry” that Google asserts will coordinate rights payments to publishers.

Of note, the article also mentions the Europeana Digital Library, a multi-institutional repository of all sorts of digital materials.

Student assistants Rebekah Warner and Brad Binder work the first shift at the Bridge.

ZSR Library is partnering with the University’s Information Systems to bring a new combined service to the space in the library that previously housed the Information Technology Center.

ZSR technology services will continue to be offered with a multimedia lab equipped with scanners and audio and video capturing stations. The screening room now includes a multimedia center with video production equipment. Instruction is available by appointment or as needed during use of the space. The screening room can be booked for group or class use. Digital still and video cameras, along with other equipment, can be checked out from The Bridge.

We are very excited that the IS Service Desk will join The Bridge later this fall. Students, faculty and staff will then be able to bring their University issued laptops to this area to get help on hardware and software issues. Stop in to visit the new space and check back for updates as the moving date for the IS Service Desk gets closer.

Once both services are in place and operational, we plan to have a Grand Opening celebration of the new combined services.

On Wednesday the Z. Smith Reynolds Library implemented a new discovery system for their library collections. The system, developed initially by Villanova University, employs innovative indexing and searching techniques to help patrons find and interact with library resources.

This new tool adds the ability for patrons to discover new relationships between resources through the use of faceted browsing, a technique which is commonly used on web-based stores such as Amazon. It also introduces new community-focused features such as the ability to add comments and tags to catalog records. These features allow library patrons to easily discover resources by combining several limiting criteria (such as format, location, and publication date) using dynamic links on the results page.

The system complements a suite of locally-developed and open source information systems that the library employs including the New Book/Film Walls, WakeSpace (a digital library of WFU collections), Book delivery and reserves services, and library-sponsored blogs and wikis for the university community.

Over the last few weeks, Kevin, Jean-Paul and I have been finalizing the release of our Vufind implementation by working through the list of issues and observations submitted by library staff in our wiki. We were able to resolve many of the issues but did choose to hide/work around certain functions that had too many problems to resolve in our current release. For full details on what was fixed, what was missed, and what we decided to leave for the next release you can hit the bottom of the page

The most recent load ran into a number of data issues related to the addition of a few pieces of information from the holdings and item records into the index, most notably 30 or so records that had invalid MARC tags which would kill our export scripts. In all, out of our 1.7 million records, only 11718 of them errored out. This represents less than .7% of our collection. We will have to address these errors before those records can be loaded.

Please take a few minutes and check out the current system. One of the neatest (in my opinion) features of the system is a broken out list of all of our libraries. We were able to generate this using our holdings data (which is included in another list). This means that we can now have a dedicated catalog for the music, and education, libraries not to mention our own popular video collection.

If you have additional feedback or bug reports - please submit them in our wiki using this link. There will be a staff presentation on Vufind on Tuesday at 3pm in room 476 during which you can find out more about the system.

The familiar hype cycle report from Gartner has been released for 2009. The NY times published a nice summary article that highlights some of the findings (including where Gartner stands on Twitter).

Of interest to the library techies may be the report on cloud computing. Cloud technologies on the rise include Cloud-based email and enterprise wide use of cloud computing while both virtualization (running multiple ‘computers’ on a singe set of hardware) and Software as a Service (Saas) are both rising on the ‘Slope of Enlightment’ according to Gartner. A great example of SaaS is our Serialssolutions subscription.

Another interesting report focuses on trends in higher education. Items rising on the list include digital preservation of research data, use of open source software, and mobile learning while Cloud email is just emerging from the ‘Trough of Disillusionment.’

There are reports on all sorts of information issues and topical areas so head on over to the full report & enjoy. To get into the above links, first visit the Gartner login page. After that each of the above links will take you directly to your resource.

On Monday Barry re-assembled the equipment in the Multi-media lab following a several week-long refurbishment of the space.

The lab has been re-configured just a bit to make better use of the space but everything else is pretty much as it was. Shortly though we will be installing a brand-new digitization machine procured as with Grant funds from our recent LSTA Outreach grant.

Come on down and check out the new carpet, new ceiling and re-painted (I promise) walls!

A year ago, Steve Cramer initiated a get together of UNCG and WFU library staff to talk about reference technology. We had a great time visiting our colleagues, talking about common issues, and brainstorming about the future of our distinct part of the field.

Yesterday, we met for a second time. A similar group from UNCG came to visit, and we broadened the group to include NCSU. It was a great time! We met in Starbucks from 10-12:30, had lunch at Shorty’s, and gave the NCSU folks a short tour before they went on their way.

Roz, Giz, Sarah, Mary, Kaeley, Bobbie, Kevin, and I participated from ZSR, and we had nine visitors from the other schools. We talked a bit about how our different institutions are organized, discussed current tools that have potential for instructional work, talked about current projects, and where our work was headed. If you’re interested in seeing the links we discussed, you can find them here.

It’s really energizing to connect with others doing similar things and to see how we’re approaching the same issues from our different institutional perspectives. NCSU was interested in hosting a get together in the fall, and I’m looking forward to seeing everyone again!