Library Blogs Buzz Weekly

NARA ( National Archives and Records Administration), the independent agency that to oversees management of federal government records including presidential libraries and historic collections, is a topic that we have never looked at on our blog. .

I found an interesting article " NARA's Federal Records Centers Offer Agencies Storage, Easy Use for 80 Billion Pages of Documents" by Tara E. C. McLoughlin that gives a nice overview of the NARA's organizational structure and a brief description on how the federal records centers work..

" Through its nationwide network of 17 facilities with more than 1,100 federal employees, the centers serve 400 federal agencies. FRCs store and service every kind of federal record—tax returns, claims files for military veterans, blueprints of federal buildings and structures, cancelled checks for Social Security payments and tax refunds, bankruptcy court records, inmate files on federal prisoners, and maps of national parks to name just a few."

For the visual learners I have also prepared an introductory video from NARA's website.

When I read my last post I felt that it is incomplete, so I decided to give you some more information on innovative ILS companies. In the October issue of Computers in Libraries, there was an article from Marshal Breeding called " The Birth of New Generation of Library Interfaces", which briefly highlights the development of the next generation of library catalogs ( ILS).

" Library Corp. was the first to jump into the next-generation catalog competition.
The company didn't create its own product but partnered with Medialab Solutions to
offer AquaBrowser and Endeca to libraries. AquaBrowser, developed by Medialab
Solutions, which was recently acquired by R.R. Bowker, is a next-gen library
interface that has seen the widest adoption to date, with more than 100 libraries using
it.

Innovative Interfaces focused much of its development resources over the last year on
creating Encore, its discovery services platform. Encore targets a wide variety of
libraries. Its initial bevy of more than 50 early adopters includes public, academic, and
special libraries.

Ex Libris created Primo, a next-gen interface that implements its vision for
discovering and delivering information sources in academic libraries. The company
positions this product as a single-user interface to front all of a library's print and
electronic resources.

Polaris chose the path of enhancing the online catalog it delivered as part of its
integrated system with the slate of features expected in next-generation library
interfaces. The latest version of the Polaris online catalog includes features such as
relevancy ranking, faceted navigation, and book jacket images. I have not found any
examples where a customer has chosen to replace the Polaris online catalog with a
third-party product.

OCLC offers WorldCat Local as a new catalog option for libraries. Currently in the
pilot stage, WorldCat Local combines the power of searching the global WorldCat
database with modern interface features and with hooks into the library's local ILS for
item availability and patron service features."

I chose to copy this part of the article, because it perfectly compliments my previous post by detailing a little bit more about the major ILS vendors and their products. If you are someone, who is really interested in the future of ILS, I strongly recommend that you read the October 2007 issue " Computers In Libraries", because the whole publication is dedicated to library automation.

Jing is a new screencasting application in beta for creating snapshots and video captures of your computer screen.

The creators of Jing want you to think about it as a tool that can help you explain and share with buddies what you see and do on your computer. With Jing you can select "an area of your screen, capture it as an image or record it as a video, and then click share. "

You can also draw over the captured picture or record your voice over the video to better explain to your friends your screencast. A microphone hooked to your PC is needed to record your voice. After you finish Jing will create a web address with your video or image and you can send to your friends.

Jing Project offers 200 MB of free space for storing your screenshots on Screencast.com. To find out how Jing works click on the "Video Tour" link on the first page or the Getting Started link.

Another free presentation software program for creating screencasts is Wink. "Using Wink you can capture screenshots, add explanations boxes, buttons, titles etc and generate a highly effective tutorial for your users."

If you are curious how Wink tutorials look like, pick one from the link below:

<http://www.debugmode.com/userforums/viewforum.php?f=34>

To work with Wink you need to have Macromedia Flash Player installed on your computer.

"OCLC is piloting a new service that will allow libraries to combine the cooperative power of OCLC member libraries worldwide with the ability to customize WorldCat.org as a solution for local discovery and delivery services.", announced the OCLC blog on April 11.

For me it looks like OCLC is building experimental platform for libraries to search and deliver books using the www.worldcat.org website as a base. Library Blog Buzz posted about Worldcat in September.

Having 1 catalog for all the libraries in the US ? Why not? How much money this will save us in cataloging, technical and computer services. Maintaining a catalog is expensive, so the saved cash can go for programming, additional space and maybe salary increases for staff, if we are lucky.

That announcement from OCLS caused a lot of buzz with library blogs. Sarah Houghton-Jan from the famous Librarian in Black blog was able to capture some of the reactions of major bloggers.

"Yet another clear demonstration that the library world is changing. The traditional boundaries between the ILS/LMS, and library and non-library data services are blurring."

Sarah Houghton-Jan, Librarian in Black

"Get your circulation from here; your user-interface from there; get your global data from over there; your acquisitions from somewhere else; and blend it with data feeds from here, there and everywhere is becoming more and more a possibility" Richard Wallis, Talis

"Is this the beginning of the end for the local catalog from OPAC providers? - It’s always exciting to see new things/ideas but we wish that OCLC would also get other longtime WorldCat issues up and running correctly." Gary Price, ResourceShelf

"There may be a future world where teeny libraries like the ones in my area and other rural areas become part of this great giant catalog that is supposedly so beneficial to library users everywhere, but for now they can’t afford it." Jessamyn West, librarian.net

Microsoft started its long promised Book Search in beta with the first set of thousands of out-of-copyright books.

The MSN Book Search interface is divided into two sides. On the left side you are provided with the option to download the whole book, see snippets of text on pages, where your search terms appear or refine your search within the book. The right side of the screen devoted to reading is fixed. Microsoft doesn’t offer zoom in or full screen options for the reading panel, which is a little inconvenient for users with small pc screen and visual problems. Overall MSN Book Search provides you with less details about the book ( no summary, no key terms, citations from other books, links to relevant books etc), but I suspect that this is going to change.

Few weeks ago Google announced improvements for its Book Search program. The engineers explained that they have enhanced the "About this book" section, where depending on the book record users can find basic bibliographic information ( author, publisher, ISBN), key terms and phrases, short summary of the book and related books.

To bring more relevant material for your book search, Google has also worked on "References from books" and "References from scholarly works" sections. Another obvious improvement is the new interface, where users can view books in full screen, in one or two page mode, scroll or flip trough the pages and jump directly to chapters of interest.

"Once you find a book you might be interested in, you can now see its chapter titles, key terms, and selected pages all on the same page, helping you get a feel for it." summarizes Okan Kolak, Google Software Engineer in his Inside Google Book Search blog. Greg Notess from Search Engine Showdown also has posted a thorough review on the new changes in Google Book Search.