2010 Year End Mashup

A lot of great posts have been written in the last week of 2010. From devil’s advocates to looking ahead, esteemed library and information pros have been busy with reflection.

Taking inspiration from many posts including but not limited to the following, I am attempting to put together a list of my own LIS related resolutions for 2011. Nothing ends the year better than a list, right?

Here are fabulous posts for you to ponder while reflecting and resolving:

*Infonista: Kim Dority gives us this uplifting post called For 2011: Say Yes

*Meredith Farkas summarizes all the devil discussion in On Devil’s Advocates and Sausage Making

*The blog that spawned the discussion: K.G. Schneider’s The Devil Needs No Advocate

*Phrase and words that need to go on The ‘M’ Word

Now, without further ado, the Mod Librarian’s LIS Related 2011 Resolutions:

1. Be fearless, but prudent when proposing change.

2. Welcome opportunity and say yes to as much as possible while still retaining balance.

3. Read or write (or both) one LIS related resource per day.

4. Forge alliances with like minded LIS folks.

5. Stop using filler phrases like ‘At the end of the day,’ ‘That said,’ and ‘Net net.’

6. Be imaginative, innovative and enthusiastic.

7. Be discerning in weeding out techno-lust crushes from sustainable solutions.

8. Don’t let the pervasive doom and gloom of professionals like the Annoyed Librarian dampen your zeal for this profession.

9. Try things and if they don’t work, try other things.

10. Get that first post-MLIS job and get out there and make a difference!

Happy new year!

5 LIS Things to Discuss While Toasting

Well, the New York Times upstaged me by offering 110 things discussed in 2010. Once you are finished reading about bedbugs, Larry King, the iPad and Patti Smith’s National Book Award, check out these five fabulous topics designed to amaze your library and information sciences pals at parties.

1. Awesome tips for creating an editorial calendar to manage digital content.

2. What happens when fine art meets tag clouds, RFID chips, tweeting and personalized recommendations?

3. How not to do a screencast.

4. How having a smartphone changed the way Aaron Tay does his work.

5. Which twenty five classic films have been added to the National Film Registry?

Happy 2011!

History for Sale

Deaccessioning is a polarizing issue for archivists and special collections departments. Making a decision to sell part of an institution’s history is a sensitive topic. Now in Little Falls, New York the issue has caused a rift between the library board and the director who resigned over some perceived mishandling of collection items.

Especially vexing is the fact that the rare items in the Little Falls collection were sold to raise money for the library. Coupled with some possible mishandling of items, some of which may have ended up in a board member’s home, the deaccessioning situation spawned a great article in the New York Times on December 28, 2010.

To me, the most interesting quote in the article is that “We don’t have the space to take care of some of these items,” said Chester P. Szymanski III, the library’s president. “We’re not a museum. We’re a library.”

In my opinion, any collection whether in a library, archive, or museum should be handled with care and every organization should set up ground rules for collection management specific to deaccessioning before it happens. Also, the lines between museums, archives and library special collections are blurry, but the processes should be similar. After all, historical significance remains no matter who owns the items.

The Art History Kit: Scholars Resource

Remember sitting in a dark lecture hall with the sound of the slide projector advancing from art of the ancient near east through the renaissance? Well, I do and I know this is not how art history is taught presently. The resource of resources seems to be Scholars Resource “the only marketplace where educational institutions can license digital images in perpetuity from multiple sources.”

This resource is remarkable for a number of reasons. Users can search by textbook, time period, artist or museum. Anyone can view the vast selection, but you need an account to download images or order products.

Since the works of art feature many searchable attributes, this site seems to provide a fine starting point for anyone interested in art history research, scholar or otherwise. And, if you do need a nice selection of “slides” this is the place to find it all.

War Posters: Design and Propaganda

San Jose State University’s Charles B. Burdick (1927-1998) War Poster Collection contains over 1400 posters created by the United States and other nations to promote the message of war as good versus evil.A broad range of topics are represented in the collection, including war bonds, civilian employment, women’s service in the military, food rationing, and fire prevention. The collection also includes posters documenting political subject matter from the 1930s-1970s. About 50 of the most iconic posters are available online in the SJSU digital collection.

Burdick was a San Jose resident, WWII soldier, scholar and ultimately SJSU’s history department chair.

Here is an example of one iconic image:

Digital Curation and Preservation Bibliography

This bibliography compiled by Charles W. Bailey, Jr. presents selected English-language articles, books, and technical reports that are useful in understanding digital curation and preservation. This is quite a comprehensive resource and definitely a perfect starting point for any related research endeavor.

From file format to copyright to preservation metadata, this collection covers a full gamut of topics and then some. Also included are some fascinating case studies like “Curating the CIA World Factbook” and “Selecting Research Collections for Digitization: Applying the Harvard Model.”

So, thank you Charles W. Bailey, Jr. I will refer to this bibliography often.

Happy Holidays from 1909!

 

Recycling Content

I prefer to think of it as recycling or cross-promoting, but Eureka Janet (Alexander) calls it “scraping.” This is the act of taking someone else’s awesome blog post, adding your own spin and using their ideas as your own instant content creator. Look, I just did it…

A couple months ago, I unofficially committed to posting interesting content everyday. Naturally, some days I merely link readers to useful resources. Other days I actually delve deeper, adding insight and raising issues. Most of the time, I am commenting on someone else’s content.

I think the key to doing this gracefully, embracing the true spirit of collegial discourse is to be respectful, give proper credit to the thought-originator, and to take care to not utterly mangle the core message.

I hope I recycle content well. I truly admire all the tech savvy, trend spotting information junkies participating in these virtual conversations. I feel inspired!

The 5 Things to Talk About This Weekend

On Thursdays, the New York Times has a regular feature called “The 10 Things to Talk About This Weekend.” As a homage, I am going to start the tradition here on ModLibrarian with my 5 things to talk about in the library and information science realm. Here is the first installment.

1. Will color e-readers like the Nook Color and iPad prolong the life of book cover art?

2. Will the lecture series featuring celebs like wannabe librarian Keith Richards shine a new light on the New York Public Library?

3. Will secrets of blog SEO really help drive traffic to your blog?

4. Aren’t these content curation examples cool conversation starters?

5. Now that Delicious will survive last week’s hoopla, isn’t this article on semantically analyzing web content interesting?

Digital Imaging Explained

This tutorial from Cornell University touches on just about every issue you will encounter in implementing a digital preservation project. The explanations of image quality issues including file size, resolution, color, and file type are the clearest and most thorough I have ever encountered even after working with images daily during my years in advertising.

The section on metadata is easy to understand and integrates tools like this lovely metadata table. The entire tutorial features periodic questions to test your understanding of complex concepts as well as resources for additional reading.

The management section discusses pros and cons of outsourcing versus in house management of digital projects. Finally, the continuing education resources are phenomenal. I could spend the rest of my winter break just delving into these resources if I didn’t have to work on job applications instead.

Finally, here is an example of a real live project based on these tenets. I worked on this at The Seattle Public Library this fall and the planning really does take into consideration all the points raised by the Cornell tutorial.

Are Book Covers Dead Now Too?

Remember the movie Xanadu? Well, unfortunately, I do and the main character was an album cover artist. Changes in music delivery from the smaller format CD cover to electronic delivery greatly diminished the need for this particular niche of design.

Now an article on the CBS website “Judging Books by Their Covers” debates whether book cover art will suffer a similar demise given the sharp increase in the use of e-books.

Ultimately, the future of the book cover is as uncertain as the future of anything. However, this article covers (no pun intended) several interesting points such as the “subway factor” - whether someone wants to be seen on the subway reading a book based on its cover art and the fact that an actual book cover acts as a billboard advertising the book to other potential readers. Unless you are very cozy on public transportation, you may not be able to spy on your neighbor’s reading material as readily on an e-reader.

How to be a Digital Curator

I have always wanted to be a curator. The Merriam-Webster online dictionary definition is too broad and lacks nuance: one who has the care and superintendence of something; especially : one in charge of a museum, zoo, or other place of exhibit.

A curator is more of a trend spotter or arbiter of style responsible for presenting a unified content front for an organization - museum, retail establishment or otherwise. The hottest new buzzwords bandied about in advertising, content management, and information science are digital curation and content curation.

There are two really helpful articles on this topic that arrived via RSS this week. Let me summarize and curate them for you now. First, Scott Abel, the Content Wrangler, writes about a streamlined process for content curation. This article contains many fine insights, but the best thing is the process itself. A simplified “how to curate your content” complete with diagram.

The second resource is by Erin Scime on the blog A List Apart on “The Content Strategist as Content Curator.” This article goes into much more detail on the process of content curation and is very helpful especially as the lines blur between strategists and other folks being asked to assume curation duties. Especially in the world of libraries, web masters and digital librarians will likely curate content.

The most salient point in each article is that analytics should be used to inform future curation. At the most basic, I have been tracking analytics with this very blog for a month or so now and I notice that I have a higher readership with articles like this one than I do when I get on a soapbox about various library topics.

Wordle This.

Something a little fun today - make your own tag cloud. On Wordle, you can enter a block of text, the URL of a blog with RSS feed or a Delicious. You remember Delicious, the cyber-panic inducing social bookmarking tool that makes everyone a little nervous now that we’ve all explored Pinboard, Diigo and Trunk.ly.

In any event, the nicest thing about Wordle is the ability to customize font, color and layout of your tag cloud resulting in a pretty nifty looking cloud.

History of the French Poster

 Museum of the Decorative Arts, Paris

The Unappetizing Demise of Delicious

By now, everyone that was a loyal user of the social bookmarking site Delicious knows, Yahoo is allegedly shutting it down. I feel lucky in that I only recently started using Delicious in a somewhat obsessive manner, but many information professionals have been using it for years for personal use, professional research and to automatically populate any manner of subject guides and web resources.

For now, my bookmarks are all safely moved to Diigo and that is the service I will use moving forward. I have been interested in exploring the additional features, like web page highlighting and the import process is nice and easy. Here’s a useful step by step guide.

This situation does raise a number of interesting concerns about entrusting information of any kind to hosted or cloud vendors. One of the criteria people consider when vetting social software is whether a service has a longstanding and positive reputation. While the term “longstanding” as applied to technology is relative, Delicious did have a positive reputation.

This makes me think twice about using collaborative tools, putting too much credence in the storage capabilities of bookmarking services, and even on advising clients to store assets in a cloud based DAM solution. I have been working on another project designing a workflow system relying on a central file sharing service and I am now reconsidering.

Naturally, working some type of backup into your personal workflow is prudent in any case. However, the unsavory Delicious situation does raise some red flags about our increasing devotion to virtual products and services that were not even a glimmer in someone’s eye five years ago.

Search Results, Relevance, and Overload

If you’ve ever used library databases to do research or stock photo sites to search for images, you know the feeling. Overwhelmed by too many search results or underwhelmed by zero search results or just a couple options.

Part of the challenge, of course, is constructing an effective search query. But honestly, sometimes too many results is as much an issue as too few.

Add to the mix one interesting point raised by Meredith Farkas in this wonderful post “What do they really need?” talking about WorldCat Local. If students are searching for scholarly sources when writing research papers and the search results include everything plus the kitchen sink, this can add more confusion by presenting too many options of varying quality and relevance.

If art directors are looking for an image of a palm tree wrapped in holiday lights and they find every kind of tree in the world, their patience will be tested. No one has time for too many choices.

Students and researchers need the ability to limit searches to scholarly sources and creative professionals often need to sort by licensing models like royalty free versus rights managed.

I know that whether I am searching for research sources or for images, I am not as picky about the results as long as I have an appropriate amount from which to generate an idea, address a research question or satisfy a creative brief. I don’t care which article about image retrieval or which palm tree, as long as a few are suitable.

This is exactly the point. Search, no matter the system, needs to account for not only relevance, but managing the types of returns and the amount as well as offering sensible options for aggregating and discriminating. People don’t need 87 flavors of Cheerios nor do they need 87 palm trees or scholarly articles. They need about 23 of the correct type of asset.

The American Package Museum

Are you interested in package design? Well, this website for The American Package Museum features many beautifully shot photos of vintage packaging, a nice index, and not much else.

It is as if someone designed a lovely site and stopped in the middle. There are no notes or finding aids or catalog records with each package. I, for one, would love a year and name of designer. I am tempted to track down the curator, Ian House, for more information. I really love the look of this site.

Another Book Tree

Do you believe this is another book tree? Gleeson Library, San Francisco.

What is a MOHAI?

The Museum of History and Industry in Seattle has a great collection of local history artifacts. As per the website,  “The museum’s Sophie Frye Bass Library preserves and provides access to over 3 million historic photographs, as well as manuscripts and archival holdings, maps, books, posters, motion pictures and printed ephemera.”

I personally love the online photo archive. And did I mention there is an exhibit of purses called Clutch It! going on now?

I am so lucky that I am on my way to visit the MOHAI librarians this morning. I’ll leave you with this fine photo from the archive:

Another Fashionable Resource

FIDM, the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising in LA, has some interesting online collections. Eschewing the usual collection style presentation, FIDM has some slide shows, like this one on the Art of Television Costume Design. A helpful grid imbues the images with the correct credits instead of the usual finding aid-ish metadata that usually appears.

Rumor has it that FIDM has also created their own version of the VRA Core metadata schema to tag their blog posts complete with fashion specific values like fabric.

Fonts Matter

Designers have always believed in the power of typography. Libraries should pay attention to fonts as well when designing signage, wayfinding tools and websites. This recent article about the Silver Springs Library caught my eye and offers an exploration of how certain fonts can effectively evoke a feeling.

Another article by George Oates talks about building the wildly popular online community Flickr. One of the initial design concerns was regarding font. With descriptions like “clean” and “unobtrusive,” I think you will agree that the sans serif selection serves its purpose.

And, no comic sans please!

The Library is Cool!

In the land of celebrities, nestled a block away from the uber hip hotel The Standard, the Los Angeles Central library is trying to revitalize interest by hosting events targeting a different audience - influential scene makers.

This library is already in a to-die-for historic building and was one of the first to incorporate things like branded merchandise, a gift store and art exhibits. It is an amazing location and resource.

I am a little taken aback at this reference to the event in The Huffington Post. Why is it any different to have an event at the library than at say the Metropolitan Museum of Art or other prestigious institutions that have been hosting swanky events for eons?

Untitled

A tree of books - happy holidays! (courtesy of Jane Dougherty, HAPL)

Book Scanning: Scan Tailor is Awesome

Ever scan a book and then have to go back and split and straighten the pages before uploading to your collection management tool of choice? While this can be automated a bit in programs like Adobe Photoshop, did you ever wonder why you couldn’t have just one intuitive, wonderful tool for page processing.

Enter Scan Tailor…

Scan Tailor “performs operations such as page splitting, deskewing, adding/removing borders, and others.” It is free and open source (though it would be nice to donate to the clever developer). Available for Windows with the source code as well. Try it. You’ll like it.

Volunteer Voices: Hatch Show Print

Volunteer Voices is Tennessee’s statewide digital archive. This site has resources for digital archivists and researchers as well as a fantastic collection of collections.

My favorite is Hatch Show Print. I was quite the letterpress and printing buff and I have long been a fan of Hatch. Part of their historical music poster collection is featured on Volunteer Voices along with wonderful and detailed information.

The Hatch section of the Country Music Hall of Fame website is informative too.

Google eBooks Part 2: Panic now!

I just received an answer to a question posted on the Google eReader/eBook support site this morning. When asking if Google eBooks can be lent by libraries, the reply was “Lending isn’t supported as part of the current Google eBooks product.”

Here are the two links provided in the response:

- Verbiage on gifting eBooks

- Answer to another query on library lending

Google eBooks: Don't Freak Out...

As everyone with an interest in the written word likely knows by now, Google announced the launch of their own eBook reader and bookstore yesterday. From a user perspective, it seems pretty awesome to be able to read your books from anywhere on various devices with no hassle. Since the content lives in the cloud, you can access it from anywhere just like your handy Google docs and gmail and calendar and so on.

Initially, I was concerned about the implication for libraries specifically, but since I have had a chance to peruse the fine print of the terms of use, it seems that Google leaves the restrictions up to the publishers. So, the same publishers that restrict library lending of current eBook titles will likely be the same ones that will be restricted on this platform. Public domain is public domain. Rights are managed via DRM.

And, this endeavor seems to do a lot for independent bookstores like the fantastic Powell’s in Portland. So I am not freaking out. I am still not an eBook convert personally, but I can see how this type of digital progression will provide benefits not only for independent bookstores, but also academic and other small publishers. This could get interesting.

What is Digital Curation?

According to the DCC website, “digital curation involves maintaining, preserving and adding value to digital research data throughout its lifecycle.”

I also love the tagline “because good research needs good data.”

To me, digital curation seems like the research related arm of digital preservation or even digitization. In all cases, the goal is to not only preserve the digital artifact or surrogate in a stable form, but to add data in order to refind it later.

This site is the go to resource. Now research and data can get married.

Crush of the Day: Powerhouse Museum Online

From the clean, clear website design to the variety of materials, the Powerhouse Museum of Science and Design in Sydney, Australia has got it covered. Since many of us will never make it down under, it is fantastic to have access to at least some of the incredible collections online.

I am especially beholden to the Object Name Thesaurus, the Thingalyzer and the Electronic Swatchbook. You will find many treasures in the content heavy yet light and airy landing page for online resources. From blogs to educational resources to kids games and podcasts, the Powerhouse Museum has done a top notch job of communicating via its virtual presence.

Preserving and Cataloging Moving Images

Moving images, also known as film or movies, have unique preservation and cataloging requirements. Well, there are some great resources if you are interested in this fascinating topic.

Moving Image Archive News is a blog that is “a clearinghouse of information on film archiving and related endeavors.” With topics ranging from home movies to jazz greats unearthed from TV archives to Rick Prelinger’s archive of old San Francisco films, there is a lot of material for those interested in media.

Another great article on cataloging moving images and the challenges of subjectivity and the dynamic aspect of film is in the Summer 2009 issue of PNLA Quarterly. Here’s the citation and a link to the journal.

Sam, H. (2009). Cataloging and Preservation of Moving Images: A Survey of Organizations and Initiatives. PNLA Quarterly, 73(4), 62-8.

Open Source DAM Solutions

It must be open source week here at ModLibrarian. Today, I would like to share an awesome resource highlighting the merits of a variety of open source digital asset management systems, courtesy of Naresh Sarwan. Coincidentally, I just started research yesterday to determine whether Razuna is really appropriate for the in-house corporate marketing department I am assisting or whether I should kick the tires on ResourceSpace, Gallery and Notre DAM.

Opinions and experiences would be welcome! I will let you all know where I net out as well.

Scanning is not Magic

Don’t get me wrong. Improved technology, lower costs on higher end scanning equipment and special cradles that aid in scanning of delicate archival books are fantastic innovations opening unprecedented digitization doors for libraries, archives and museums. Here’s an article in the LA Times that highlights that fact.

However, an astute SLA member, Boston’s Mary Beth Dunhouse, posted a comment on LinkedIn yesterday that really made me think. Scanning is  just one step in a much more complex process.

Metadata planning, metadata collection, resizing images,enabling OCR if applicable, and uploading to a collection management system are all part of making materials available online. In one recent project, our team at The Seattle Public Library spent a long time deliberating over which Dublin Core elements would best capture our unique collection information.

And, please do not forget assigning subject headings to improve findability. Compound objects like books and brochures require a directory structure. Have you thought about storage and is your server backed up? Do you need to do additional research to fill out any of your metadata fields?

A lot of the material in archives and special collections is being digitized and has not yet been cataloged or processed. Just something to consider.

Open Source Collection Software

Have you heard of Greenstone Digital Library Software? Well, thanks to Micah Vandegrift’s excellent presentation on Floridian subcultures I now know more about what Greenstone can do.

Did I mention this is multi-lingual, open source software designed to empower users in a wide variety of locals and situations to display online artifacts? The site is replete with tutorials and information. I cannot wait to download the Mac copy and start a collection over winter break.

Have you used Greenstone? Let me know what you think. I am excited about the possibilities.