Industry Trends, Analysis and Breaking News
NFAIS and ASIDIC Announce Merger
Jul 01
The National Federation of Advanced Information Services (NFAIS) and ASIDIC (formerly the Association of Information and Dissemination Centers - www.asidic.org), today jointly announced the assimilation of ASIDIC members into the NFAIS Community as a result of the dissolution of ASIDIC on June 30, 2010. the agreement will provide ASIDIC members in good standing with all NFAIS member benefits through June 30, 2011, after which they will have the option to continue their NFAIS membership through a three-year transition period. Any ASIDIC assets remaining after the merger will be used as requested by the ASIDIC Board and that is to attract conference speakers to NFAIS events that are in keeping with the mission and spirit of ASIDIC. In addition, a member of an ASIDIC Member organization will be invited to serve as a non-voting NFAIS Board member from the close of the merger through June 30, 2011 in order to assist the NFAIS Board in a successful membership transition and to ensure the preservation of the ASIDIC spirit and mission within NFAIS.
The full text of the announcement is here
Read more »ProQuest Partners With Getty Research Institute
Jul 01
NFAIS member organizations ProQuest and the Getty Research Institute (GRI) have announced an agreement that will allow ProQuest to take over the indexing of the International Bibliography of Art (IBA), providing a secure future for a resource considered central to the study of art history. The agreement assures the database's continuing development and accessibility to researchers around the world.
ProQuest also publishes a significant number of specialist databases in the arts, including ARTbibliographies Modern, Design and Applied Arts Index and the International Index to Music Periodicals. Further, the Bibliography of the History of Art (BHA), discontinued at the end of 2007, has long been available to researchers through ProQuest on the Illumina platform.
The GRI has supported bibliographical services for the field of art history since 1981.
Read more »Spindex Me
Jun 04
Librarian Phil Bradley and industry analyst Stephen Arnold are two people who have found Microsoft's recent launch of social dashboard, Spindex to be of interest and potentially of some value. Both find the system's capacity to extracting trending topics from within a single user's social network to be a step forward in maximizing the value gained from social media. (As a comparison, Twitter can only generate trending topics based on what it knows of a user's local geographic position (if that's been turned on) or what it gleans from tweets worldwide.) I too have been playing with the system, but as an ordinary user, I'm not particularly enthused.
Spindex is positioned as the first system to fully index and make searchable posted content from those within an individual's personal social network. (See the introductory blog announcement here.) Hence the play on words in the site's domain, Spindex.me
The selling point from Microsoft's perspective is that the Spindex system offers the user a more efficient mechanism for extracting useful "signal" from the social "noise". The system acts as a personalized filter against the rush of activity streams. Since its introduction just about a month ago, Microsoft engineers have made further refinements. http://fuse.microsoft.com/projects-spindex.html
I have encountered no real bugs in using the system, but neither am I a particular fan.
For one thing, even for a closed beta, Spindex is slow in generating merged streams from my Twitter and Facebook contacts; in my experience, it can take five minutes or longer to display the indexed information. In an age where we're used to near real-time processing of tweets and updates, such latency seems excessive. It also represents the strongest argument against adding in any additional RSS feeds as the Microsoft site suggests users might wish to do.
Secondly, the dashboard (at least for me) offers no additional value in its displayed "slice and dice" of content generated by those within my network. Clicking on the photo avatar of one of the "top posters" in my network generates an implicit search of the individual's name against the Bing search tool. Search results may include the person's LinkedIn profile, various web sites associated with the individual, or even his or her blog. The value is supposed to be in seeing a a more complete rendition of that individual's activity, but if I'm already following that person via Twitter or Facebook, the chances are that I am already aware of his or her credentials.
Finally, the interface is not particularly intuitive. Just as one example, there are two buttons below each search item result (Share/Remember). Clicking on "Share" will post the item to Twitter, but I've yet to discover what happens when I click on "Remember". If the system is storing it for me, I can't find where and if the system is "remembering" the item for its own purposes in improving an algorithm to improve personalized results, there's nothing available to me as a user that explains that this is what is taking place.
Further insights are available from Venture Beat, CNet and BlackWeb2.0
Read more »
Library Mobile
May 07
Aaron Tay of the National University of Singapore, blogging at Musings on Librarianship, has done a fascinating job of assessing library mobile sites with an eye to commonality of features. Capturing the essence of what library developers expect users want to do in this environment, his final list (see the conclusion at the end of his post) includes functionality to permit quick look-ups in the library catalog and mobile enabled databases, basic contact and service availability (hours, directions, computer availability, conference rooms, etc.) and links to mobile enabled web2.0 accounts on Twitter/Flickr/YouTube and Facebook.
His posting includes screenshots and is well worth the time of
those working in mobile development.
Social Software in Academia: Users' Acceptance of Web 2.0 Services
Apr 30
There are some interesting findings and statistics in the findings from this research paper, Social Software in Academia: Three Studies on Users' Acceptance of Web 2.0 Services, presented at the WWW2010 event.
From section 4.1.2 of the paper, "How often do you use the following services for scientific research?' with answer possibilities : 'always', 'often', 'rarely', 'never', and 'I do not know this service'...Here Wikipedia and other wikis were considered in contrast to other traditional research tools and Google or other Web search engines. Only 7.6% of survey participants claimed that they never use Wikipedia for this purpose, 20.6% 'always' use Wikipedia for scientific research talks (this is rank 4 behind Google with 35.6%, Libraries with 33.8% and online library catalogs with 29.9%), another 45.3% use it 'often'." This particular quote pertained to student usage of Wikipedia but faculty awareness and use of Wikipedia is also covered in the paper.
There is a good deal of meat in the paper, brought to our
attention by Gary Price of the
ResourceShelf. His is a particularly useful resource and one
that has significant credibility in the information
community.
Google Book Settlement: What's Going To Happen Next?
Apr 22
Judge Denny Chin has been unanimously confirmed by the Senate to the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals. This is of particular interest to those in the information community because Chin had been the judge associated with the critical litigation surrounding the Google Book Settlement. Chin had heard testimony on the amended agreement in February of this year as a U.S. District Court judge in New York but had not yet handed down a ruling on the case. It is not yet clear when that ruling will be made and Chin's confirmation may further delay a final decision on the controversial settlement.
Because Google Books has the potential to be such an important information resource, the information community is already considering the potential business model for this database. As it happens, Michael Cairns, former President of R.R. Bowker and blogger at Personanondata, has been assessing the options and he presents his conclusions today. You'll want to read his full findings there, but two particular findings of interest are:
--Libraries will see tremendous advantages - both immediate and over time - from the GBS, although concerns have been voiced (notably from Robert Darnton of Harvard).
--Google will add services and may open the platform for other
application providers to enhance and broaden the user
experience.
Annotating Content
Apr 14
The other day I was using the search tool, Bing. It's important to note that the attraction of Bing (at least for me) is not necessarily the actual search results returned. Those are fine, but not necessarily superior to those from Yahoo or Google. The attraction of Bing for me is the compelling user experience. Invariably the site has some beautiful photographic image as the wallpaper which, when one's mouse is moved across the screen, displays clever annotations tied to the featured image. Each annotation has a link which dynamically generates a search query. Clicking on that link may take the user to a set of images of Mandarin Ducks from Bing's image gallery, maps of Ross Island, or videos of the incredible balancing stupa of Kyaiktiyo in Myanmar -- truly a wealth of information beyond mere text. Annotations in such instances truly do present, explain and amplify information as they create engagement.
Annotation has tremendous value to researchers and scholars. It
is therefore worthwhile to monitor the activity of the
Open Annotation
Collaboration project; the Spring 2010 meeting of the
Coalition for Networked Information (CNI) featured a
presentation from that group (link to video) and the progress
they are making in this area is most intriguing.
What Is The Library's Value Proposition?
Apr 09
The library profession has prided itself on the contributions that it makes in support of scholarship and pedagogy. In the current environment, there are librarians who feel that role is under-rated. Stephen Bell is one such librarian and has expressed his suspicion that the faculty and students don't get it and that libraries need to refocus attention on their contribution to education and research. The recently-released Ithaka Faculty Survey 2009: Key Strategic Insights for Libraries, Publishers, and Societies may bear out his thinking. This year's findings are based on just over 3,000 complete responses from scholars across all disciplines (Humanities (21.6%), Sciences (26.1%) and Social Sciences (38.1%); the remaining roughly 14% were in area studies or "other".).
According to the Ithaka study, faculty believe that the most important role performed by libraries is that of purchasing agent for information resources. On page 11, the report notes "It is striking how faculty members have come to universally perceive the library role as purchasing agent for institutional information resources as essential" (italics added).
That might be somewhat comforting to those research librarians whose responses were included in a recent OCLC report authored by James Michalko, Constance Malpas, and Arnold Arcolio. In Research Libraries, Risk and Systemic Change, the highest ranked threat to the libraries was "a reduced sense of library relevance from below, above and within". This perception was due to the availability of alternative service providers who were providing "a more compelling research environment and support tools." (page 12).
The value of that "purchasing agent" role however shouldn't be entirely dismissed. Information resources are still critical to on-going scholarship. The faculty responses documented by the Ithaka report indicate that "scholars tend to prefer electronic resources specific to their own discipline over those that cover multiple disciplines." This is true across sciences, social sciences and the humanities, although social scientists have a greater tendency to use multi-disciplinary resources than the other two populations. Discipline specific resources are preferred because (1) they reduce the volume of what needs to be searched to a relevant and manageable corpus and (2) more-targeted resources may offer discovery mechanisms and tools tightly engineered to that disciplines workflow needs.
Discovery is still dominated by citations contained within specific journals or monographs and searching online databases that offer full-text access to articles. Google Scholar comes in third behind those two avenues of approach (see page 7 of the Ithaka report).
For-fee information services, then, are critically important in the academic sector. Information professionals should recognize that. More attention needs to be given to all aspects of licensing of content and librarians (particularly those just now gaining their MLS degrees) should fully master the business mindset of vendors and hone negotiating skills in order to ensure the most advantageous terms of use for those who rely on them to continue providing access.
Coverage in the Chronicle of Higher Education offers
additional information on the Ithaka findings while Inside
Higher Education treats the role of the
library somewhat dismissively.
Compelling Displays
Mar 24
When Google released Buzz last month (thereby inviting a flood of bad press on themselves), it also shifted something on my public Google profile. If you look at my public Google profile here [ http://www.google.com/profiles/jillmwo ], you will see a tab labelled "Buzz". If you click on that tab, you will see all of my shared items that you would previously have seen at http://www.google.com/reader/shared/jillmwo. The display of the content is entirely different and I'm sure the Google engineers would suggest that the more recent design is more efficient while still preserving the value of shared items. The functionality of this Buzz display competes successfully against the functionality and display of Friendfeed.
Entries are truncated so that more fit on a page as one scrolls down. The Buzz display of shared items is more detailed than the same set of items displayed to my subscribers on Friendfeed [ http://friendfeed.com/jillmwo ] but displays less than the full text displayed on the older Google design.
Friendfeed also strips out the images from specific entries; the redesign of my shared items via Buzz leaves them as thumbnails. In the full text view, frequently the graphics would overwhelm the page view.
The avatar photo from my profile appears beside every item in the Buzz stream whereas on Friendfeed and on the older shared items display, my photo appears only at the top of the pages. This facial recognition clue, one hopes, lends credibility to the items I'm sharing when mixed in with content from other human sources.
There seems (to me, at least) to be a better use of white space in the newest interface which gives the page a cleaner look without sacrificing the occasional splash of color in the graphic elements.
Google's interfaces are frequently the reason users return. Why
should the information platforms found in libraries frequently be
so far behind?
ACS Mobile: New Information Access Option
Mar 17
Earlier this week, the American Chemical Society (ACS) posted a video demonstration of their just-announced ACS mobile information delivery service aimed at iPhone and iTouch users .
Among other functionality, the $2.99 app offers dynamic delivery of an indexed list of more than 35,000 research articles and pathways for free access to graphical and text abstracts of those articles. Also present is the capability to share links and snippets to alert friends and colleagues about those articles via email, Facebook and Twitter.
It's the user demographic that ACS sees this app fulfilling that
may be most telling. Morgan Stanley in late 2009 presented their
findings on the dawning of the Mobile Computing era and Brandin
Nordin, an executive quoted in the ACS press release, indicates
that the majority of ACS' web users "are between the ages of 20-40,
and we find that one-third of those readers now use mobile devices
to access the Internet."
OCLC Modifies WorldCat URLs
Mar 16
Most of the information community is agreed that the higher the quality of your metadata (including the various forms of identifiers available), the more discoverable your content will be for users. That said, most users have difficulty recalling such unique identifiers as an ISBN or OCLC record number when seeking out a particular title.
That's why it was interesting to see OCLC's
recent blog announcement regarding a tweak they have introduced
to updating the URLs in Worldcat.
If you hold your cursor over one of the links appearing just below, you'll see that each generates a search in Worldcat, but uses a simplified structure (worldcat domain, title, and the actual title of the work) to execute that search.
[ http://www.worldcat.org/title/enchanted-hunters ] Enchanted
Hunters by Maria Tatar
[ http://www.worldcat.org/title/wolf-hall ] Wolf Hall by
Hillary Mantel
[ http://www.worldcat.org/title/gait-disorders ] Gait
Disorders by Michael Ronthal
A blogger, a faculty member, or an information professional can
easily create such links to WorldCat in their own context -- book
review, course syllabus, or bibliography -- to Worldcat and make it
easy for those clicking on the link to find the book in which they
have an interest. Current links with the more complex structures
that include OCLC record numbers still work but the new approach
is, in the words of OCLC, "more intuitive, more mashable and more
search engine friendly". It is worth noting however (in the
interest of precision) the comments appended to the OCLC blog
entry.
Usage and Growth of Twitter
Mar 12
With Twitter reaching 50 million tweets per day, it represents a significant platform for both information communication and dissemination purposes. Indeed, as one analyst pointed out, the real question for investors is whether Twitter is a communications utility or a media company. ) And as Twitter interfaces become increasingly sophisticated and enterprise-friendly, the popularity of the system will continue to grow.
This week, security firm Barracuda Labs released its Annual Report 2009 which covered in large part the potential security threat that accounts on Twitter may pose to ordinary users. Their finding was that one in eight accounts created might be considered malicious, suspicious, or otherwise misused in some criminal fashion. However, they also offered up some interesting statistics on the use of the Twitter platform. For example, Barracuda's definition of a true twitter user was someone:
- With at least 10 followers or more
- Who followed 10 or more people themselves
- And who had posted at least ten tweets.
Only 21% of Twitter users fell within those parameters. Approximately a third of Twitter users had more followers than they themselves were following. And with regard to actual tweeting activity, Barracuda Labs found that the most active individuals transmitting their information in tweets were those whose following hovered *around* 1000 registered users.
There are additional statistics in the report regarding the
usage and growth curve of Twitter that make it interesting
reading.
UKSG and NISO Release KBART Recommended Practices
Jan 19
Announced at the ALA Midwinter Meeting in Boston by the United Kingdom Serials Group
(UKSG) and the National Information Standards Organization
(NISO), the KBART (Knowledge Bases and Related Tools)
Working Group has published their initial set of practical
recommendations for the timely exchange of accurate metadata
between content providers and knowledge base developers. Such
information is key to enhancing the user experience; inconsistent
or incorrect metadata results in dead or misdirected links
frustrating students, faculty and researchers.
The HTML version of the Working Group recommendations is accessible at: http://www.uksg.org/kbart/s1/summary while the PDF version is accessible here.
NFAIS member organizations ProQuest,
OCLC, MarkLogic and
EBSCO all had active representation in the
committees and working groups involved in the development of this
set of recommended practices.
Fueling Usage through Mobile Phone Apps
Jan 15
Anyone following the plethora of news announcements released in time for ALA Midwinter is aware that mobile is currently one of the hottest area of activity in the library environment. All the more reason then to view this video (from Ohio television news station, NBC4) that shows Mike Teets, Vice President, OCLC Enterprise Architecture, demonstrating the recent iPhone application from RedLaser, that supports usage of local library collections. It's fueled through WorldCat data. (OCLC's formal news release about the application may be viewed at: http://www.oclc.org/us/en/news/releases/2010/20101.htm ).
In their formal press release, Mike Teets is quoted as saying "Mobile devices are fast becoming the medium of choice for access to information for many people." OCLC is creating multiple apps to satisfy the needs of users in a variety of settings by satisfying queries at the point of need. In a subsequent email exchange that I had with Teets, he shared with me that "a single purpose, single platform app is not likely to be successful in meeting member library needs." OCLC recognizes the user's need to work across multiple environments, specifically:
- platform specific apps (Red Laser, more coming),
- multi-platform apps (Boopsie partner http://worldcat.org/m, Netlibrary ebooks on Nook and Sony readers),
- mobile web applications, i.e. not downloaded app (nothing yet, concepts brewing),
- mobile friendly standard web access (improving http://worldcat.org for direct access from phone browsers)
- Text based mobile devices (SMS access to QuestionPoint)
This varied approach offers benefit to both users and the libraries that serve them.
OCLC is a member organization of NFAIS.
The 2010 Horizon Report
Jan 14
The 2010 Horizon
Report (PDF download) is a collaboration between the New Media Corsortium and the
Coalition for
Networked Information. Although the report has not yet been
formally released,
The Chronicle of Higher Ed offered a write-up today from their
Wired Campus blog.
This year, the report is indicating that the time to adoption for mobile computing and open content is expected to be a year or less. Further out in the adoption time line are electronic books and simple augmented reality -- perhaps two to three years off. Most exciting, however, are the gesture-based computing and visual data analysis that the Horizon advisory group anticipates in a four to five year timeframe.
This is a must-read for those in the information
community.
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