techMETRO

Digitech Newsletter :: August 2009

Harness the Power of Open Source to Build Digital Collections with Omeka Many of you may remember that METRO recently announced the release of digitalMETRO, an online directory of digital collections. We built the system using Omeka, the collection management system created by the same folks that brought us Zotero. Omeka is a free and open source collections based, web-based publishing platform for scholars, librarians, archivists, museum professionals, educators, and cultural enthusiasts. Its “five-minute setup” makes launching an online exhibition as easy as launching a blog. Omeka is designed with non-IT specialists in mind, allowing users to focus on content and interpretation rather than programming. It brings Web 2.0 technologies and approaches to academic and cultural websites to foster user interaction and participation. Jeremy Boggs, Omeka Project Manager, will lead a one-day workshop on August 7. This workshop will introduce Omeka, provide a brief background on developing the software, show examples of different types of websites created with Omeka and teach participants how to use Omeka to build a website for your institution. Complete details and registration are available at http://bit.ly/WYNPA. METRO's Strategic Plan Released. Member Feedback Encouraged METRO has recently released the final draft of the 2009-2014 Strategic Plan, adopted in principle by the Board of Trustees after a unanimous recommendation from the Strategic Planning Committee. This Strategic Plan was developed through a broadly consultative and inclusive process with a goal of defining METRO’s identity and vision consistent with the needs of its members; the demands of a rapidly changing library/information world; and the beliefs of the METRO Board of Trustees, staff and members about what course the organization should take. We invite you to review the Strategic Plan and share your thoughts with METRO. Review the document and leave public comments here (http://bit.ly/gz9Er), or feel free to contact METRO staff directly with your feedback (staff emails are here: http://bit.ly/7UEhV) Digital Collection Spotlight: Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives Digital Library Each month we take a moment to share digital collections created by METRO members. Recommend a collection for the spotlight by emailing jkucsma@metro.org. The Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives (ALBA) is a non-profit educational organization dedicated to promoting public awareness, research, and discussion about the Spanish Civil War and the American volunteers who risked their lives to fight fascism in Spain. The items in the ALBA Digital Library represent four collections that are historically significant and lend themselves to be easily used in a classroom setting. The records contained in this digital collection were selected from four separate collections: the James Lardner Papers, the Herman Greenfield Papers, the Miriam Sigel Papers, and the Marjorie Polon Papers. All four collections are housed in New York University's Tamiment Library. View the collection here: http://bit.ly/9Tp2S Visit the home of ALBA on a METRO site visit August 19 to the Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives. Details: http://bit.ly/Ffc6z NOTE: The ALBA Digital Library is hosted on METRO's CONTENTdm system, taking advantage of affordable hosting for smaller digital collections. For more information about using this service for your library, museum, or archive, contact Jason Kucsma at jkucsma@metro.org Last Chance to RSVP for Digital Preservation Symposium at Center for Jewish History On Thursday, August 6 at 1pm, The Center for Jewish History will host a symposium on digital preservation. This symposium, sponsored by Ex Libris, will provide an overview of digital preservation, discuss the increasing need for digital preservation in a "born-digital" world, examine what digital objects should be preserved, and review key trends in digital preservation technology. In addition, the discussion will include digital preservation planning activities for libraries, archives and museums, the commitment undertaken in launching a digital preservation program, and the funding that may be required. Speakers for the symposium will include: Steve Knight, Associate Director and Programme Architect, National Digital Heritage Archive at the National Library of New Zealand Laura Leone, Director of Library Systems, Center for Jewish History Andrea Buchner, Director-Gruss Lipper Digital Laboratory, Center for Jewish History Mike Thuman, Digital Preservation Director, Ex Libris RSVP: To attend the symposium, please contact Greg Gosselin by Friday, July 31, 2009 at greg.gosselin@exlibrisgroup.com or 312.952.3578. Summer Digitization and Emerging Tech Workshops and Events August: 07 - Using Omeka to Build Digital Collections in Libraries and Archives. Details:http://bit.ly/WYNPA 09 - Webinar: Simple Strategies and Tools for Keeping Up With Tech Trends. Details: http://bit.ly/zsCPr 13 - Essential Wiki Master: How to Use, Install, Customize, Extend and Manage Wiki. Details: http://bit.ly/2Izsp Add these and other related events around NY and the world to your Google Calendar by subscribing to the METRO Calendar: http://bit.ly/metrocalendar. Newsfeed  The best of July's Tweets from the tweetMETRO feed (http://twitter.com/tweetMETRO): RT @s_francoeur: Eric Hellman has a write-up of the Google Book Search settlement discussion at NYPL as well. http://bit.ly/MzlIM Publishers Weekly recap of yesterday's Google Books discussion at NYPL http://bit.ly/EB1Ft NYTimes editorial on "Google's Big Plan for Books" http://bit.ly/fLiUD Colombia's digital library is up-and-running (13 contributing universities and institutions) http://bdcol.org/ RT @vonburkhardt: Six Things #Libraries Should Tweet http://bit.ly/ENq2J "How Not to Tweet" - tips for library tweeters from @davidleeking http://bit.ly/mdtLc ALA's Office for Information Technology Policy seeks nominations for best lib practices using cutting edge tech http://bit.ly/gmHLc Cliff Lynch on "Revisiting Institutional Repositories" from CNI's Spring Task Force Mtg http://vimeo.com/5498937 Are you or someone you know in the NYC area presenting at the Internet Librarian conference? DM @tweetMETRO and let us know RT @rww: Open Source and Social Media: Community, Collaboration, Freedom http://bit.ly/MNZKI Userful Corp. offers "Secure Your Funding" initiative for libraries seeking broadband technology stimulus funds http://bit.ly/jidZj Fan the digitalMETRO Facebook page and check out this week's featured digital collection: NYU Medical Center http://bit.ly/12k7fj Emerging Technologies: Background, tools and challenges for Higher Education (by @sirexykathryn) http://bit.ly/NjH8g Jenna Freedman on Twitter as a Tool for Website News http://bit.ly/N8jcM Tools for Evaluating Fair Use and Copyright Status (via Newman Library Idea Lab blog) http://bit.ly/Be85P RT @brooklynpublic: read all about our new text alert service on our blog http://bit.ly/icodR RT @dancohen: Critical read on long-range funding of digital academic projects: Ithaka Case Studies in Sustainability: http://is.gd/1zKEc LITA Social Software Showcase presentations available online http://bit.ly/VhWUQ Nice recap of digital library hardware showcase session at #ala2009; covers in-house v. outsourcing and more. http://bit.ly/GzLtf RT @arstechnica: How wide is the world's digital divide, anyway? - http://arst.ch/47w (via @sivavaid) Open Library: "One web page for every book ever published. It's a lofty, but achievable, goal. " (Guardian article: http://bit.ly/9Gh3X) Have other news you think we should be sharing with subscribers to this list? Tweet us at http://twitter.com/tweetmetro.

Library Day in the Life

I've had the opportunity to speak with a handful of library school classes in the last year, and one of the questions that always comes up is, "What does a typical day look like for you?" Maybe it's because I'm a librarian not actually working in a library. Maybe it's because my job title is so opaque. Or it's just the general mystique of librarianship. Whatever the reason, I'm glad there's a second-annual Library Day in the Life -- if for no other reason than to help me document where it is that my time and energy go every day. Sometimes it's impossible for me to even tell at the end of the day what's been keeping me occupied all day.

HI! I'm Jason Kucsma, and I'm the Emerging Technologies Manager for the Metropolitan New York Library Council (METRO)! METRO is a non-profit member services organization serving libraries and librarians in New York City and Westchester County. Our membership includes over 250 academic, public, special, and hospital libraries which represent over 1300 branches throughout the metropolitan region. What follows is my attempt to wrangle some sense of order out of a workday that usually finds me flitting between email, web browsers, and the phone like a schizophrenic hummingbird.

5:30
Up for coffee. Read the NYTimes online and check personal email (Inbox Zero at 5:40). Scan Twitter posts from the last 12 hours and check Facebook for anything remotely interesting. Do not find. Check work email to see what's in store for the day. Not much because I answered emails over the weekend. Good.

7:00
Shower and wake up Mega (my amazing wife, whose name is actually Megan, but I call her "Mega" because she's that great) by accidentally letting one of the cats into the bedroom. She's also a librarian working in a non-library job. She's the Digital Assets Manager at The Granger Collection, a small, independently-owned image agency. Throw together lunch, shut down home computer (so my visiting teenage sister-in-law can't spend all day on Facebook and/or downloading garbage that shouldn't be downloaded), and head out for work. 

7:45 - 8:15
Take the R from Park Slope to the Atlantic/Pacific stop. Express N is waiting, so I score a quicker ride to Union Square than if I were to ride the R the whole way.

8:20
Second person in the office this morning. Check work email (Inbox Zero at 8:30).

8:20 - 8:50
Type up first portion of this day's log, and realize that I'm not going to be able to sustain this level of specificity throughout the day. Shrug.

9:00
Follow a handful of librarians from last Friday's #followalibrarian Twitter lovefest.

9:20
Listen to a story on The Takeaway about streaming music "on the net."

9:30-10:30
Troubleshoot a problem with the digitalMETRO digital collection directory. The directory is built on the Omeka collection management system, and we've been testing the batch upload plug-in to add multiple collections at a time. For some reason, images weren't showing up when a recent batch was added, so I manually uploaded them. I'm excited about this little project. We started building it last Fall, and it now has detailed records for over 160 unique digital collections created and, well, I'll tell you more about it later. 

10:30 - 10:45
Quick check-in on email, tweets, and Facebook Scrabble (playing two evenly matched games with @tadawes and my wife). Write a mildly scathing Yelp review of a sushi restaurant I went to yesterday in Williamsburg. Never again.

10:45 - 11:00
Actually notice background music on Pandora when Superchunk, Calexico, Portastatic, Aqueduct, and Apples In Stereo all play consecutively. See also: Stuff White People Like.

11:00 - 2:00
Work on pulling together details for our Fall workshop and professional development schedule. As the Emerging Technologies Manager, one of my responsibilities is to program workshops for our member librarians on skills that we've identified as must-have skills for those interested in keeping their skills current. I work to both identify emerging tech areas and find expert librarian instructors to teach the courses, either face-to-face or online via our web conferencing software.

Some of the workshops/events I'm coordinating for the Fall include: A three-day series on digital preservation, Twitter basics for libraries, Zotero basics for research management (for librarians to use and to teach others to use), two webinars on open source software, Library Mash-Ups (with Nicole Engard, LibLime), Text Messaging Reference (with Joe Murphy, Yale), a site visit to the Jewish Theological Seminary's digitization lab, Managing Copyright for Digital Collections (with Linda Tadic, NYU Tisch School of the Arts), and about a half-dozen more. These workshops get scattered around our calendar among other workshops and events we host on more general library professional development topics.

12:53
Interrupt what I was doing when I remember that I need to send out a follow-up email to people who attended our free "Introduction to Zotero Webinar" last week. We've done two of these introduction webinars for about 20-25 people each session. The webinar is intended to be a primer for those libraries interested in bringing a "trained Zotero user/instructor" (hey, that's me!) to their library to teach staff how to use the tool.

1:45
Take a five-minute break to enter the Google Books contest. Eat slice of leftover spinach and cheese frittata at my desk that I made yesterday for brunch.

2:00-3:15
Meet with a a fellow working on transitioning from publishing to libraries. Meet to discuss what "emerging technologies" means to libraries and how librarians can position themselves in job interviews. I felt like I wasn't as helpful as I wanted to be in the conversation, primarily because job opportunities are so competitive right now -- everywhere, not just in libraries.

3:15-3:45
Check in with work and personal email (Inbox Zero for both at 3:45)

3:45
Continue working on wrangling details for Fall courses. Spend a few minutes stressing out about a webinar that I have to do NEXT WEEK about keeping up with technology trends when it's not your job to necessarily keep up with technology. Take solace in that fact that I got some really great advice by fellow librarians on FriendFeed.

4:00
Shift from course planning to answer some questions for a member library interested in having their digital collection included in WorldCat via OCLC's new Digital Collection Gateway. A little background is in order. METRO provides modest grants for libraries to launch or maintain digitization projects, and part of that includes free hosting of digital collections on an OCLC-hosted CONTENTdm instance. It's a great solution for smaller libraries that can't host their own digital collections, and an added benefit is that they have the opportunity to have their collections harvested into WorldCat and the New York Heritage project portal. The particularly library in question had some concerns about how their items would be represented in WorldCat and how some of their metadata would map to the WorldCat MARC fields. Do my best to answer their questions and invite more questions for clarification.

4:15
Turn off Pandora to listen to a mix CD sent to me by fellow librarian and good friend Stephen Francoeur. Great mix of tracks (from Green Day to Okkervil River to Matt Pond PA to The Faint to The Pigeon Detectives and more).  Cliche as it sounds, music really gets me through the day most of the time. On days when I listen to only podcasts, I can totally feel the effect that the lack of music has on my psyche. Weird, but it's true. I also spend an inordinate amount of time looking for and listening to new music, so it's nice to have friends recommend stuff that really moves them.

4:20
Back to course planning. Finish description and objectives for Zotero course and email reminders to instructors that I still need descriptions and objectives from. Wonder why I decide to end that sentence in a preposition and shrug it off.

4:50
Wonder how it became almost time to go home when I have so many windows open and things in-process. Begin prioritization of which things NEED to get done now and which ones I will do tomorrow -- also resigning myself to the fact that I will likely not leave at 5pm sharp.

5:10
Review notes for my weekly update on a capstone project I'm doing for my summer class in the University of Arizona's Digital Information Management Certificate Program (DigIn). DigIn is run by the School of Information Resources and Library Science as a six-course virtual program geared toward giving some technological skills and concepts to librarians, archivists, and museum curators. The project I'm working on involves using Omeka to deliver digital collections. We started out creating a directory of digital collections in New York City, and the second phase of the project involves documenting the viability of using Omeka to deliver digital collections created on the CONTENTdm collection management system.

5:14
Leave work in hopes of making it to the train before an impending monsoon strikes. Succeed. Read fantastic article on the train about Obama's right-hand lady in NY Times Sunday Magazine.

6:00
Make it back to Brooklyn in time to head to my favorite Mexican restaurant.

8:25
Edit this post a bit and call it an evening.

Nominate Your Library for Best Library Practices Using Cutting Edge Technology

From the official ALA release:

The American Library Association’s (ALA) Office for Information Technology Policy (OITP) is soliciting nominations for best library practices using cutting-edge technology. 

“We want to showcase libraries that are serving their communities with novel and innovative methods and provide the library community with some successful models for delivering quality library service in new ways,” said Vivian Pisano, Chair of OITP’s America’s Libraries for the 21st Century Subcommittee. 

If you wish to submit a nomination, please complete this form and send it to the American Library Association, Office for Information Technology Policy, 1615 New Hampshire Avenue NW, 1st Floor, Washington, D.C. 20009 or by e-mail to ainouye@alawash.org by September 1, 2009.  Further details about the nomination process may be found here.

The America’s Libraries for the 21st Century Subcommittee will review all nominations and conduct selected interviews or site visits to identify those libraries that are truly offering a best practice or most innovative service.  Libraries or library service areas selected will be publicized via the OITP Web site, highlighted through ALA publications, and featured in a program at the ALA Annual Conference in 2010. 

E-mail submissions to ainouye@alawash.org.

For questions, contact:

Vivian Pisano, Chief of Information Technology
San Francisco Public Library
100 Larkin Street
San Francisco, CA  94102
415/557-4340
vpisano@sfpl.org

OCLC and NISO Release White Paper on Book Metadata Workflow

From the abstract:

The white paper was commissioned by NISO and OCLC as a follow-up to the Symposium for Publishers and Librarians held by OCLC on March 18-19, 2009 to discuss book metadata. This paper analyzes the current state of metadata creation, exchange, and use throughout the book supply chain. With the number of book formats multiplying and the amount of digital content growing rapidly, the metadata required to support the discovery, sale, and use of content by a global audience is increasing exponentially. At the same time economic pressures on all stakeholders in the supply chain from publishers, wholesalers, booksellers, metadata vendors, and librarians present greater challenges to providing quality and comprehensive metadata at every point in the cycle. Through interviews with over 30 industry representatives, Luther has created a book metadata exchange map illustrating the process and has identified opportunities for eliminating redundancies and making the entire process more efficient.

From the press release:

"The white paper illustrates how effectively both publishers and libraries have implemented their respective standards of ONIX for Books and MARC, but also shows how silos have grown up around the two standards," stated Todd Carpenter, NISO Managing Director. "There are definite opportunities for breaking down these silos and both communities are eager to find better methods for interoperability and streamlining their operations."

Read/Download here.

[via LITA-L]