Access 2008

Wednesday, October 1st: Hackfest

Thursday, October 2nd
Begin	End	Session	Speakers
7:30	8:15	Breakfast
8:15	8:30	Opening Remarks, Housekeeping
8:30	9:30	Opening Keynote: Open: The synergy of creativity and open source	Karen Schneider [audio]
9:30	10:15	David Binkley Lecture: We Love Open Source Software. No, You Can’t Have Our Code	Dale Askey [presentation slides] [audio]
10:15	10:45	Coffee
10:45	11:30	MyLibrary – A Digital Library Framework and Toolbox	Eric Lease Morgan [presentation handout] [audio]
11:30	12:00	Hackfest Report 1
12:00	1:00	Lunch
1:00	1:45	“Ask not what you can do for the portal …”	Walter Lewis, Slavko Manojlovich [audio]
1:45	2:45	Tag! You’re It	Ken Varnum [presentation slides] [audio]
2:45	3:15	Coffee
3:15	4:00	Come, and Take Choice of All My Library: Mass Digitization Examined	Jonathan Bengston, Sian Meikle [presentation slides] [audio]
4:00	5:00	User-Generated Content and Social Discovery in the Academic Library Catalogue: Findings From User Research	Steve Toub, Martha Whitehead [presentation slides] [audio]
Friday, October 3rd
Begin	End	Session	Speakers
7:30	8:15	Breakfast
8:15	8:30	Opening Remarks, Housekeeping
8:30	9:30	Drupal: Content Management and Community for your Library	Ilana Kingsley, Dave Mitchell, Harish Nayak, Debra Riley-Huff, Nick Ruest [presentation slides] [audio]
9:30	10:15	LibX – an Open Source, Community Platform for Delivering Library Services	Dr. Godmar Back, Annette Bailey [presentation slides] [audio]
10:15	10:45	Coffee
10:45	11:30	Thunder Talks
11:30	12:00	Hackfest Report 2
12:00	1:00	Lunch
1:00	1:45	Mashing Up and Remixing the Library Website	Karen Coombs [presentation slides] [audio]
1:45	2:45	Evergreen/Conifer	John Fink, Dan Scott [John’s Slides | Dan’s Slides] [audio]
2:45	3:15	Coffee
3:15	4:00	Using WorldCat Grid Services in Library Applications	Roy Tennant [presentation slides] [audio]
4:00	4:45	FADIS (Fine Art Digital Imaging System)	Gordon Belray
4:45	5:30	BoFS (Birds of a Feather)
Saturday, October 4th
Begin	End	Session	Speakers
7:30	8:15	Breakfast
8:15	8:30	Opening Remarks, housekeeping
8:30	9:30	Moving Forward Together: a Consortial Discovery Layer	Allan Bell, Greg Sennema [presentation slides] [audio]
9:30	10:30	Next Generation Catalog: The Library OPAC Meets Web 2.0 with VuFind	Andrew Nagy [presentation slides] [audio]
10:30	11:00	Coffee
11:00	12:00	Synergies 1.5	Lynn Copeland, Rea Devakos, Mary Westell [audio]
12:00	1:00	Closing Keynote	Bob Young [audio]
1:00	1:10	Closing Remarks

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Opening Keynote

Open: The synergy of creativity and open source

Karen Schneider is the Community Librarian at Equinox Software and blogger at Free Range Librarian.

Her less technical writing includes essays, portraits, travelogues, video reviews, and a historically dubious account of Washington crossing the Delaware. She has been published in Gastronomica, White Crane, Nerve, Linux.com, IT Managers Journal, American Libraries, Library Journal, The Bottom Line, the dear departed Wilson Library Bulletin, a few other places she can’t remember, and has articles forthcoming elsewhere, but chooses not to jinx the process by naming the lucky publications.

Schneider’s technology writing has been recognized in a variety of venues for being both lively and learned (”venues” in this case meaning “homes of close friends or relatives”). From 2005 through 2007 she wrote at ALA Techsource, where readers showered her with compliments such as “Stop using the work ’suck’, you tramp!” and “My cataloger can beat up your metadata specialist!” From 1995 to 2001, as the Internet Librarian columnist for American Libraries (circulation 66,000), Schneider consistently ranked in magazine surveys as AL’s most popular author. In 1998, her article “The Tao of Internet Costs,” one of the first discussions within librarianship about sustainable technology funding, was selected as an article of the year for The Bottom Line, a journal of library finances. In 1998, as author of A Practical Guide to Internet Filters, Schneider provided expert testimony for Mainstream Loudoun vs. Board of Trustees, a pivotal First Amendment case about free speech on the Internet. She also co-moderates PUBLIB, a discussion list for public librarians, and enjoys goading them into their annual “Should we have Christmas trees in the library?” argument.

Schneider is also an enthusiastic speaker, presenter, and educator who in 2000 was named by the PUBLIB as one of the top ten speakers in librarianship. She bought a few votes to get there, but still! Many of these speeches were delivered on the floor of the Council of the American Library Association, a body to which she was inexplicably elected three times. She is currently taking a break from LibraryLand politics, and is rumored to be producing a major motion picture about global warming.

An Air Force veteran (1983-1991), graduate of Barnard College, University of Illinois, and University of San Francisco, and skilled treadmiller, Schneider now divides her free time somewhat unevenly between housework and watching television when she is not working on her collage of rejection letters she receives for those depressing little belles-lettres she insists on begging editors of fine journals to read.

When she isn’t traipsing around Georgia returning overdue books on the pretext of “visiting libraries,” Schneider lives in Tallahassee, Florida, which requires no punchline.

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Closing Keynote
Bob Young is the founder and CEO of Lulu.com, the premiere international marketplace for new digital content on the Internet, with more than 100,000 recently published titles and more than 2,500 new titles added each week, created by people in 80 different countries.

Lulu.com, founded in 2002, is Young’s most recent endeavour. The success of this company has earned Young notable recognition; he was named one of the “Top 50 Agenda-Setters in the Technology Industry in 2006” and was ranked as the fourth “Top Entrepreneur for 2006,” both by Silicon.com.

In 1993 Young co-founded Red Hat, the open source software company that gives hardware and software vendors a standard platform on which to certify their technology.  Red Hat has evolved into a Fortune 500 company and chief rival to Microsoft and Sun. His success at Red Hat won him industry accolades, including nomination as one of Business Week’s “Top Entrepreneurs” in 1999.

Before founding Red Hat, Young spent 20 years at the helm of two computer-leasing companies that he founded. His experiences as a high tech entrepreneur combined with his innate marketing savvy led to Red Hat’s success. His book, “Under the Radar”, chronicles how Red Hat’s open source strategy successfully won wide industry acceptance in a market previously dominated by proprietary binary-only systems. Young has also imparted the lessons learned from his entrepreneurial experiences through his contributions to the books to “You’ve GOT to Read This Book!” and “Chicken Soup for the Entrepreneur’s Soul.”

Young graduated from the University of Toronto in 1976 prior to beginning his career in the computer finance arena.

Young also owns the Hamilton Tiger-Cats of the Canadian Football League and currently serves as the league’s vice chairman. Bob Young, Founder & CEO, Lulu

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The David Binkley Lecture

We Love Open Source Software. No, You Can’t Have Our Code
Dale Askey
Open source software enjoys the rapt attention of libraries. In practice, however, most institutions are better at consuming than producing open source code. Issues that repeatedly arise include:

• redundancy (“we can build it better”)
• shyness (“my code isn’t perfect”)
• competitiveness (“we have an edge we don’t want to lose”)
• quirkiness (“our needs are so unique that we’ll ignore any obvious standards”)

…among others. Using a wide range of open source (or not so open source) projects, from fragments of simple code to large collaborative projects, this talk will illustrate these issues and (hopefully) point to some ways to share better.

Dale Askey: After dragging her from Washington University in St. Louis to the University of Utah and Yale University, Dale Askey trailed his spouse to Kansas State and the K-State Libraries in 2005 as the Web Development Librarian and head of the Integrated Access Group. His educational background is in the humanities, with a BA in German from Colorado College and an MA in German from Washington University. He completed an MLS at the University of Missouri. He has a sum total of about 80 hours of structured training with technology, and learned the rest as he went along. Often labelled a “techie,” he would prefer to be called a librarian, and still reads bound books on occasion.

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LibX – an Open Source, Community Platform for Delivering Library Services
Dr. Godmar Back, Annette Bailey
Starting as a Firefox extension shared between a dozen libraries, LibX has grown into a multi-browser platform, adopted by over 290 libraries. This adoption was facilitated by the LibX Edition Builder, an interactive AJAX-based web interface that allows librarians to create, configure, share and deploy their editions. The Edition Builder includes sophisticated discovery technology that helps librarians configure local resources. As a result, many librarians can now offer this open source technology to their communities. This talk will explain the technology behind the Edition Builder, discuss results from an ongoing user study, and outline future developments for the LibX project.

Dr. Godmar Back received his PhD in Computer Science from University of Utah in 2001. After visiting Stanford University as a postdoctoral researcher, Dr. Back is now Assistant Professor of Computer Science at Virginia Tech. Dr. Back’s research is focused at the intersection on systems and programming languages.  His specific interests include static analysis, domain-specific languages, runtime systems, operating systems, real-time systems and high-performance computing. He teaches operating systems, compilers, and networking. Recently, he has added web and library technologies to his research areas. He is co-developer and maintainer of LibX, an open source platform for delivering library services, for which he shared the 2007 LITA Brett Butler Entrepreneurship Award.

Annette Bailey received her MLIS in 2001 from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She has been a librarian at SRI International and is now an Assistant Professor at the University Libraries at Virginia Tech. In her position as Virginia Tech’s Digital Assets Librarian, she provides leadership and guidance for all aspects of electronic resource management. Bailey serves on the Program Planning Committee for the ER&L Conference and the Editorial Board for the Journal of Electronic Resources Librarianship. Bailey co-developed the open source LibX plug-in, for which she received the 2007 LITA Brett Butler Entrepreneurship Award.  She won a National Leadership Grant in 2006 for LibX. She has given several invited presentations on LibX at conferences and heads the LibX team.

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Moving Forward Together: a Consortial Discovery Layer
Allan Bell, Greg Sennema
The current state of the ILS market is forcing libraries to make some hard strategic decisions on their choices of software. While some libraries are opting for open source and non-traditional vendor software, the Tri University Group (TUG) of Libraries have implemented Primo, a front-end product of a traditional ILS software. This session will discuss the rationale behind choosing this particular software, how Primo was implemented in a consortial environment, and how TUG hopes to remain relevant to our users while also keeping our options open for other ILS developments.

Alan Bell is the Associate University Librarian for Information Technology Services at the University of Waterloo. He has held management positions with HighWire Press in the Stanford University Libraries and Ovid Technologies as well as academic library roles as a Systems Librarian for the University of Texas at Arlington and Computer Services/Reference Librarian for McGill University’s Humanities and Social Sciences Library.

Greg Sennema is Electronic Services Librarian at Wilfrid Laurier University and works on web interface design and electronic resources management. His current projects include implementing a Drupal Library web site, and managing the TUG Libraries Primo implementation. He is an OLITA counselor, and frequently speaks and writes on various library technology topics. Greg is a 2007 Frye Institute Fellow, and has been recognized by Library Journal as a “Mover and Shaker.”

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FADIS (Fine Art Digital Imaging System)
Gordon Belray
FADIS (Federated Academic Digital Imaging System) is a server application for teaching and managing visual media in the arts that is freely available to participating institutions. FADIS encourages growth through the sharing of digital assets via a common repository and delivery system. Currently housing over 60,000 images (which includes video and audio content), FADIS offers a non-proprietary educational alternative for visual teaching and research. Particpating institutions include the Universities of Windsor, Guelph, McMaster, Brock, Cornell, Emily Carr Institute, OCAD, and NSCAD. The session will include a demonstration of the teaching and management tools.
http://fadis.library.utoronto.ca

Gordon Belray, a graduate of the Department of Art, is a software and graphic designer for Information Technology Services, University of Toronto Libraries. He develops the server applications FADIS (Fine Art Digital Imaging System, uPodcast and has recently implemented iTunes U at UofT), shoots and edits videos on campus and designs many websites at the university.

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Come, and Take Choice of All My Library: Mass Digitization Examined.
Jonathan Bengston, Sian Meikle
Mass digitization is underway at many libraries through international partnerships such as the Open Content Alliance, Microsoft Live Books and Google Books. How can you add some digitized content to your holdings, and how can you get your own library’s books digitized? What does it take technically, and what do you get? What are the implications for our print collections? Are we closer to a universal library? Explore the questions with three librarians involved in the Open Library project and the University of Toronto’s mass digitization program, which has digitized 100,000 books as of April 2008.

Jonathan Bengtson is the Associate University Librarian for Scholarly Resources at the University of Toronto. He oversees collection development, technical services, ordering, and serials, as well as provides leadership in scholarly communications, including copyright, intellectual property, e-licensing, open access, and digital initiatives. Jonathan has held various senior positions in academic, research, and nonprofit libraries in Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom—including Executive Director of the Providence Athenaeum (founded in 1753) in Providence, Rhode Island, Head Librarian of the Queen’s College, Oxford (founded in 1341), and Chief Librarian of the University of St. Michael’s College, University of Toronto. Jonathan has been a member of the United Kingdom Library Association’s National Council and served as Vice President/President-Elect of the Consortium of Rhode Island Academic and Research Libraries. He is currently on the Board of Directors of the Society for the History of Authorship, Reading, and Publishing and is the coordinator for the University of Toronto’s partnership with the Open Content Alliance and Microsoft Live Books mass digitization projects. He holds a summa cum laude BA in history from the University of California and post-graduate degrees from Oxford University (medieval history) and University College London (library studies). Jonathan is active in publishing and teaching on topics in the history of the book, the history of libraries, modern library management, and medieval history.

Sian Meikle is the Digital Services Librarian at the University of Toronto Libraries. Her area is the planning and delivery of library and humanities resources and services online. She has worked on the production teams of numerous born-digital and digitization projects at the University (see Digital Special Collections). She also participates in the work of the AlouetteCanada Open Digitization Initiative and the Open Content Alliance.

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Mashing Up and Remixing the Library Website
Karen Coombs
Libraries today are presented with the challenge creating a unified user experience out of systems which are traditionally highly separate silos. Often this is done by literally copying and inserting data and information from one system to another. In the case of the library website data is often copied from the library catalog, article databases or other sources. However, this method is neither efficient nor sustainable. As a result, the University of Houston Libraries has developed a home grown content management system based on the following principles of Web 2.0: Radical decentralization, Small pieces loosely joined, and Remixable content. This tool allows librarians to create web pages that are a mix of types content from various systems including events, finding aids, blogs, library catalog, and federated search. By using this tool, subject librarians can create highly specialized “virtual libraries” for their users in a particular subject area. Additionally, content from the library website and other systems can now be incorporated into external websites such as those for colleges and departments. This innovation has allow the library to better serve its users by presenting them accurate, up to date, and relevant information.

Karen A. Coombs serves as the Head of Web Services at the University of Houston Libraries. Her duties include development and maintenance of the libraries’ web site and virtual presence for 35,000 plus students, faculty and staff. She has an MLS and an MS in Information Management from Syracuse University. Karen has presented at many national conferences including ALA Annual, LITA Forum, and Internet Librarian; she has written articles for Computers in Libraries, Library Journal, Library Hi Tech, and Journal of Academic Librarianship. With Jason Griffey , she is the co-author of the upcoming book Library Blogging. She is past-chair of the LITA Special Interest Group for Blogs, Wikis and interactive media, a member of the LITA Top Technology Trends panel, and the author of the Library Web Chic weblog.

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Synergies 1.5
Lynn Copeland, Rea Devakos, Mary Westell
Synergies, a CFI funded project to develop pan Canadian infrastructure for scholarly publishing is now 1 and 1/2 year old. This session will describe progress to date and future plans. The Synergies architecture will be presented, development plans for the Public Knowledge Projects suite and the Erudit Publishing Platform will be detailed. Long term preservation and regional initiatives will also be presented.

Lynn Copeland is Dean of Library Services at Simon Fraser University and was formerly Head of Systems, Data, and Resource Sharing. Copeland was the first Manager of the British Columbia Electronic Library Network. Copeland is Chair of the CARL Scholarly Communication Committee and former Chair of the eLearning Working Group, leads the Multicultural Canada project to digitize resources relating to Canada’s ethnic groups and is a member of the Canadiana.org board.

Rea Devakos is the Coordinator of Scholarly Communication Initiatives for the University of Toronto Libraries. She also heads the Ontario region of the Synergies project. Previous positions include Instruction Coordinator. Before joining the U of T,  Rea held a variety of management and public service positions in community college, public and special libraries.

Mary Westell is Associate University Librarian for Information Technology and Scholarly Communications in Libraries and Cultural Resources, University of Calgary. Former chair of the LHCADL Technology Committee, the COPPUL Systems and Digitization groups, she is a current member of the national Synergies Steering Committee. Other current projects include implementing technology applications for the new Taylor Family Digital Library,
continued development of the UofC digitization programs and the Institutional Repository.

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Evergreen/Conifer
John Fink, Dan Scott
This presentation describes the origin, present, and future of the Conifer Project — a groundbreaking association of three universities of Ontario aimed at implementing a shared catalog using the Evergreen open source ILS. What’s gone right? What needs work? Should your institution or consortium consider a similar model?

John Fink is the Digital Technologies Development Librarian at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario.  He has been involved in open source systems in libraries since 1995.  His research interests include open source software and copyright.  He holds a B.A. in English from Miami University and an MLIS from San Jose State University.  He blogs at woefully long intervals at http://libgrunt.blogspot.com.

Dan Scott is the systems librarian for Laurentian University in Sudbury, Ontario. He is both a developer for the Evergreen open source library system and the project manager for Project Conifer – a partnership between four Ontario universities and a medical school to adopt Evergreen for academic libraries. Dan has co-authored a book (“Apache Derby: Off to the Races”) and occasionally writes about coffee, code, and other good things at coffeecode.net.

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Drupal: Content Management and Community for your Library
Ilana Kingsley, Dave Mitchell, Harish Nayak, Debra Riley-Huff, Nick Ruest
A panel presentation about using the open-source content management system Drupal as a backend for your library web site and library applications. We’ll discuss why we chose Drupal, out-of-the box vs. custom built applications, must-have modules, theming issues, design and implementation scenarios, and more. Panel members are from academic and public libraries.

Ilana Kingsley is a Web Librarian and Assistant Professor at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. Some of her responsibilities include developing and maintaining the Library Web site, electronic resources management, and bibliographic instruction. As co-team Department Head for the Library IT department, she is leading the Library to use and embrace emerging technologies and open-source initiatives. Her research interests include back-of-the-book and Web index usability, and user-centric indexing using folksonomies. Ilana has previously worked in private industry as a Software Engineer and Information Analyst. She has a MLS from Syracuse University.

Dave Mitchell is not a Librarian, but rather an Information Technology Specialist for the London Public Library. Those specialties include among other things, architectural design and maintenance of the Library’s Website and Intranet, custom software development and security/privacy management. In parallel with his technical duties he continues to foster his background in design and marketing, merging the two streams whenever possible. A long standing proponent of Open Source software, his mission is to further the education of his peers in the boundless possibilities it allows.

Harish Nayak is Director of Digital Library Initiatives for the River Campus Libraries and is responsible for advanced development of various library systems including several interfaces to the library catalog and the Find Articles MetaSearch tool at the University of Rochester.  Prior to joining the University of Rochester Libraries, he worked as a programmer analyst for private industry lending his software development expertise to projects in the telecommunications, energy, defense, and nonprofit industries.  Harish holds a BA in Computer Science from the University of Rochester and an MBA from the State University of New York at Buffalo.

Debra A. Riley-Huff is Web Services Librarian and Assistant Professor at the University of Mississippi. She has previously served as Technology Coordinator at the University of Kansas Libraries. She has a Bachelor of Fine Arts (Visual) from Kansas State University and an MS in Library and Information Science from Emporia State University. She is has authored and presented on several aspects of Web development for academic libraries. She provides Web authoring and development for an array of digital library projects as well as management for the Libraries Web presence.  Her research interests are organizational behavior and information, culture and information access, and digital information access in developing
nations.

Nick Ruest IZ TEH DIGITAL STRATEGIEZ LIBRARIAN AT MCMASTR UNIVERISTYS MILLS MEMORIAL LIBRARY.  HE HEADZ UP ALL OV TEH LIBRARYS DIGITIZASHUN PROJECTS, AN MANAGEZ TEH UNIVERSITYS INSTITUSHUNAL REPOSITORTY.  NICK RESENTLY SMASHD DRUPAL INTO DIGITAL COLLECSHUNS MANAGMENT SISTEM 4 MCMASTR, AN LAUNCHD TEH LIBRARY AN ARCHIVEZ CANADA FUNDD PEACE & WAR IN DA 20TH SENTURY PROJECT – HTTP://PW20C.MCMASTR.CA.  NICK HAS MLIS DEGREE FRUM WAYNE STATE UNIVERSITY, AN UNDERGRADUATE DEGREE IN POLITICAL SCIENCE.

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“Ask not what you can do for the portal …”
Walter Lewis, Slavko Manojlovich
In 2008 the AlouetteCanada/OurOntario.ca search portal is being extended to offer web services to those whose data is present in the portal (and others who want to leverage it in other ways). These services currently support the OurOntario.ca toolkit discovery layers and are closely integrated into their workflows. The web services will have an API for querying the portal and well-known outputs for integration into local systems. Building on the digitization experiences at Memorial University, Cape Breton University and other Atlantic institutions, the session will also cover what you need to know to create high quality digital collections which will seamlessly be part of Alouette Canada’s vision for creating a national digital library.

Walter Lewis has been seconded from the Halton Hills Public Library to Knowledge Ontario’s OurOntario.ca project where he is involved in the development of various toolsets. In addition, he is one of the programmers responsible for the award-winning search portal used by Ontario as well as a number of other provinces and regions across the country and the Alouette Canada project. Walter has a MA in history and continues to publish in the field of Great Lakes history along with maintaining the Maritime History of the Great Lakes site.

Slavko Manojlovich is the Associate University Librarian (IT) at Memorial University of Newfoundland where his primary responsibility is the coordination of digitization activities within Memorial and with Memorial’s partners in Newfoundland and the other Atlantic Provinces. He serves as the resident Z39.50 interoperability guru for the SIrsiDynix user community. It is interesting to note that in the 1980s, Slavko, with the assistance of Art Rhyno and others at Memorial, developed a prototype open source ILS based on the SPIRES DBMS from Stanford University. That project died with the demise of the IBM mainframe.

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MyLibrary – A Digital Library Framework and Toolbox
Eric Lease Morgan
This presentation describes and illustrates the functionality of a set of object-oriented Perl modules called MyLibrary. Comprised of three parts (information resources, people, and facet/term combinations), MyLibrary provides an architecture for librarians and developers to create any number of digital library implementations including sets of database-driven subject pages, a traditional library catalog complete with circulation, a full-text index of ebooks and articles, OAI clients and servers, or personalized “my” pages. Unlike other frameworks, MyLibrary explicilty includes places for people in its architecture, and through the facet/term combinations attempts to create relationships between them and information resources.

Eric Lease Morgan is the Head of Digital Access and Information Architecture Department at the University Libraries of Notre Dame. He considers himself to be a librarian first and a computer user second. His professional goal is to discover new ways to use computers to increase library collections and improve library services. Some of his more notable investigations have surrounded the automatic collection of electronic serials, the indexing of open access content, and the personalization of library websites. In his spare time, he can be seen folding defective floppy discs into intricate origami flora and fauna.

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Next Generation Catalog: The Library OPAC Meets Web 2.0 with VuFind
Andrew Nagy
Contemporary libraries need state-of-the-art software to make their collections and services visible and attractive to Web users accustomed to the one stop-shopping aspects of Google and the customer-oriented features of commercial sites such as Amazon. VuFind, an open-source resource discovery portal developed for libraries by libraries, has?harnessed the power of contemporary Web search technology that enables users to query and browse the library’s resources in a simple yet sophisticated manner. This talk will attempt to paint the picture of what a Next Generation Catalog might look like and what features we would expect to have followed by an in depth demonstration the VuFind software.

Andrew Nagy is the Technology Development Specialist at Villanova University’s Falvey Memorial Library. He has been working professionally as a web-based software engineer since 1999. Previously he worked for Syracuse University for a nationally grant funded research department in academic technologies. He holds a Masters of Technology Management degree from Villanova University School of Business and a Masters of Computer Science from Villanova University College of Arts and Sciences and an Undergraduate degree in Information Management and Technology from the Syracuse University iSchool. Andrew has been focused in the areas of Open Source Technologies and is the Lead Developer of VuFind, an open source internationally adopted Next Generation Library Discovery Application. He has also contributed to the PEAR repository, a collection of open source PHP libraries.

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Using WorldCat Grid Services in Library Applications
Roy Tennant
OCLC’s WorldCat Grid offers a wide array of bibliographic data and services via a suite of application program interfaces (APIs), including the ability to search and retrieve records from the WorldCat database. WorldCat Grid Services and the supporting OCLC Developer’s Network will be introduced, and applications that use these services will be demonstrated. Attendees will learn how they can quickly take advantage of these services to enhance their web sites, services, or software applications.

Roy Tennant is a Senior Program Officer for OCLC Programs and Research.  He is the owner of the Web4Lib and XML4Lib electronic discussions, and  the creator and editor of Current Cites, a current awareness newsletter  published every month since 1990. His books include Managing the Digital Library (2004), XML in Libraries (2002), Practical HTML: A Self-Paced Tutorial (1996), and Crossing the Internet Threshold: An Instructional Handbook (1993). Roy wrote a monthly column on digital libraries for Library Journal 1997-2007 and has written numerous articles in other professional journals.  In 2003, he received the American Library Association’s LITA/Library Hi Tech Award for Excellence in Communication for Continuing Education.

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User-Generated Content and Social Discovery in the Academic Library Catalogue: Findings From User Research
Steve Toub, Martha Whitehead
Just because a library catalogue provides Web 2.0 features like tags and comments doesn’t mean students will use these features. One aspect of Queen’s University Library’s partnership with BiblioCommons is to better understand how user-generated content might be applied to the academic library catalogue. The presenters will share findings from user research on:

• what types of user-generated content (e.g., evaluative ratings of required reading materials, comments on checked out books, sharing bibliographies created for an assignment) seem most applicable to the academic library catalogue;
• where in the flow students would be most willing to contribute; and
• what incentives seem most likely to encourage contributions.

Steve Toub has been Product Manager, Academic Services at BiblioCommons since early 2008. In his previous position at the University of California’s California Digital Library, he coordinated user experience design, web production and acted as a product manager for a variety of digital library projects.

Martha Whitehead is an Associate University Librarian at Queen’s University Library, where she oversees library systems, web development, digital initiatives and several public service areas including the Queen’s Learning Commons.  Queen’s Library is a partner in many university-wide information and learning technology initiatives, and Martha is actively involved with the Web Directions Committee and the Partnership for Teaching and Learning Support.  Before joining Queen’s in 2004, Martha worked at the University of British Columbia Library, where she held positions in information services, systems, circulation and distance education. Martha is a member of the Ontario Council of University Library’s Scholars Portal Operations and Development committee and chair of the Scholars Portal Public Services Advisory Group.

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Tag! You’re It
Ken Varnum
The University of Michigan libraries launched MTagger, a home-grown social bookmark tool, in spring 2008. It allows users to tag individual library web pages, catalog records, digital library images, or any other web page. Through the “collections” feature — metadata assigning each tagged item to one of the library’s physical or online collections — users can broaden or narrow their search for tags. We built the tool to enhance findability across our collections and to expose “hidden” collections to users who might not know they even existed. In this talk, learn about why we built this tool, how it works, how it’s being used, and where we’re going with it.

Ken Varnum has been integrating web technologies into library settings almost as long as there has been a web.  He is currently the Web Systems Manager for the University of Michigan University Libraries in Ann Arbor. From 2004-2007, he was IT Manager at The Fletcher School, Tufts University.  Prior to that, he managed an internal peer-reviewed journal and the web site for Ford Motor Company’s research library (1997-2004) and was Electronic Services Librarian at the Open Media Research Institute in Prague, Czech Republic (1995-1997).  He can’t believe he’s been professionally employed doing such fun projects for 14 years.  Ken blogs about innovative ways libraries use RSS at RSS4Lib.com.

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