Resource discovery & information sharing: reaching the 2.0 turn

1. Resource discovery & information sharing: reaching the 2.0 turn Bonaria Biancu aka The Geek Librarian Biblioteca di Ateneo Università di Milano-Bicocca Trento, ITC-IRST-SRA21-22 Agosto 2006

2. Web 2.0 • October 2004 – Tim O’Reilly coined the term Web 2.0 • The web as a platform • Harnessing collective intelligence • Rich user experience • The long tail • Hackability • Perpetual beta • Architecture of participation • Granular accessibility of content • …

4. Library 2.0 • September 2005 – Michael Casey (Library Crunch) coined the term Library 2.0 = web 2.0 concepts and applications in the LIS realm (but there isn’t agreement on the definition) and also… • Librarian 2.0 = Librarian + Web 2.0 L2 is not just technology, it is an attitude (nevertheless web 2.0 is a significant part of the equation)

6. What – How – Why (from a geek lib perspective) • What: ILS disaggregation, recombination and integration [see Talis] • How: (open code/standards +) API, Mashups [see Programmable Web], AJAX [see OJAX], Greasemonkey [see LibraryThing Thing], Firefox Plugins [see Del.icio.us search plugins]… • Why: Putting libraries out of the walled gardens (breaking information silos) => remix content – foster user participation Early adopters: WPOPAC, Penn Tags

7. How L2 works in libraries • OPAC 2.0: records tagging, RSS for search results, acquisitions and alerts, user agents, openurl, federated search, user reviews, open search, recommendations, communities (Googlezon model) • Subject based wikis • Bloglines trusted feeds • Library blogs • IM reference • RSS alerts for library news • Pod-video-casting guides to library services • Personal search engines for reference (Swiki, Gigablast) • Collaborative web (MySpace, Protopage, NetVibes…) for communicating with users • OPML [see L2 ALA blog], social bookmarking [see Del.icio.us], and socialtagging [CiteULike, Flickr…] for integration with VLEs • …

8. Scout Portal Toolkit: a Resource Description, Organization and Discovery Tool • A project funded by Mellon Foundation, builded by University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Internet Scout Project in 2000 • Now (2006) fully tested – vers. 1.4.x (1.3.1 adopted by UNIMIB) • In Italy 4 instances: VL Cilea, AIB-DFP, FORMEZ, UNIMIB; others coming • Abroad: lots… (National Finnish Library Science Link House is a very good model)

9. Scout @ UNIMIB = LINX – Link e strumenti X la ricerca • System Configuration: layout, search options, users rights… • Metadata Field Editor: DCMES - ANSI/NISO Z39.85-2001, some DC qualifiers, some fields (overlapping) IEEE LOM • Web based apps • Import/Export features • Different levels of workflow editing • Vocabulary control • UTF-8 support • User Preferences

10. Metadata structure Metadata Field Editor • Type of Fields: Text, Paragraph, Number, Date, Flag, Controlled Name, Option, Classification, Image • name, type, description, default value, qualifier, min-max value, inclusion in advanced/keyword search and weight of the field set by Metadata Field Editor (LINX admin)

12. Resource description • Some of the 15 DC Simple (not all publicly viewable) + dumb down cataloging rules • Fields not implemented: alternate title, audience, rights, contributor, source, relation, coverage, email address, dates • Mandatory fields: URL, Title, Description, Date issued, Release Flag • DCAP for UNIMIB: neither formalized nor strict (=> see values for ‘type’ field) • Titolo (i.e. DC ‘title’) => text field • Classificazione (i.e. DC ‘subject’) => Classification field: 13 Library disciplinary areas + 2 additional about reference tools

13. Resource description • Parola chiave (i.e. DC ‘subject’) => Controlled Name field: TRT (Thesaurus Regione Toscana) + un-controlled terms provided bycatalogers • Descrizione (i.e. DC ‘description’)=> Paragraph field: free text provided by catalogers • Autore (i.e. DC ‘creator’) => Controlled Name field • Editore (i.e. DC ‘publisher’) => Controlled Name field • Tipo di risorsa (i.e. DC ‘type’) => Option field: only some terms from ‘DC type vocabulary’

14. Resource description • Lingua (ie. DC ‘language’) => Option field • Formato (i.e. DC ‘format’) => Option field • Data ultima modifica (i.e. DC ‘date’) => Date field: date of record last editing (chosen within the ‘date’ options offered by Scout => ‘date issued’, ‘date of record creation’, ‘date record checked’ and ‘date last modified’) • URL (i.e. DC ‘identifier’) – but it may be also a DOI or a handle or an ISBN or... • Release Flag (proprietary tag) => Flag field • ID record creator/modifier (proprietary tag) => not editable

15. Additional features implementedfor LINX • Linkchecker (for each registered user/each resource): score based on server response • Segnala una risorsa: web form for non-authenticated users • Statistics (for each resource) => coming soon

16. DC Qualifiers Features not implemented for resource description

17. Features not implemented for resource description • OAI Mapping

18. Additional features not implemented • Forum • Layout preferencesfor users

19. Resource organization • Browsing tree • Last n resources in home page • Brief and full display records • Linkable tags: ‘classificazione’, ‘parola chiave’, ‘autore’, ‘editore’, ‘tipo di risorsa’, ‘lingua’, ‘formato’ • RSS • Import/Export records (Not all fields are viewable from not authenticated users)

20. Resource discovery • Browsing tree • Simple search • Advanced search (with filtering and max-num results option) • Cross-field search • RSS • Saved search • Mail alerts • Recommendations

21. Interaction with users and other L2 features • RSS • Saved search • Mail alerts (user agent) • Recommendations • Resource comments (some HTML tags allowed) • Resource ratings • Filtering search options & customization of records display per page • Thumbnail for book jackets, ejournal covers, website screenshots • Admin tracking user comments

22. Interaction with users and other L2 features • OAI-PMH compliance for resource harvesting • Import/Export in tab-delimited format for data echange with RDN-like hubs • News & Forum for community building • Dynamic layout (accessibility + user preferences) • Web based configuration and management • Open Source – frequent new versions – developers all over the world • Interoperability and open standards (XML, PHP, MySQL, Dublin Core, OAI – o.s. required: Linux, but also tested on Windows)

23. Enjoying L2 - from LINX… • Classification: factoring disciplinary areas in more specific classes (facets?) • Clustering (grouping search results by type, format, language…) • RSS feeds for disciplinary areas + search alerts • Get recommendations along with records, not separately • Sfx (min-opt): setting Scout as a web search option from Sfx menu • Sfx: link to an OpenUrl generator for resource URL field • Metalib: setting Scout as a resource [see NELLI – OAI searching via MetaIndex] • Exposing metadata for OAI harvesting • Integration with VLEs, CMSs etc.

24. Enjoying L2 - …to ERMS • OPAC-related features: • Catalogers: authority control for author, title, publisher, classification, subject fields • Catalogers: mapping UNIMARC/DC for linking between records (see: DC relation and source or UNIMARC 452 and 856 fields) • Sfx (max-opt): deep linking in Scout from Sfx menu • Federated search: whether by ‘web resource’ type/format or not [see OpenWorldCat & FRBR specs] • Open search: Scout as a target [see A9] • Single sign-on both for OPAC, Metalib, Scout and… users

25. Enjoying L2 - …to ERMS • Adding tags to resources for authenticated users [recall-precision] • Displaying tag cloud in homepage (personal tag cloud for authenticated users) • ‘Scout this’ bookmarklet (or right-click) to capture web resources and their metadata: title, url, screenshot… depending on how structured they are; classification if sharing schemes is possible – see compliance with repositories like E-LIS in CiteULike • ‘Scout this’ for Socializer-like applications • Community features [related tags/users, ‘users that visit x also visit y’…] to be included in Recommendations list

26. Enjoying L2 - …to ERMS • Catalogers: setting back-office tools for resource discovery (OPML, importing records from subject gateways, Del.icio.us-like ‘Links for you’…) • Catalogers: displaying entries from thesauri when adding/editing controlled names and DC schemas and vocabularies when adding/editing option lists [see post on TGL] • Ranking search results and => • Sort results by relevance • File upload • Resource display à la Digg: resources that have received highest rates go on the home page

27. Enjoying L2 - …to ERMS(how to test Ajax, API, Mashups, Greasmonkey) • Resource relations graphic display [see Grokker] • Auto-completion of search terms • Getting Amazon resource reviews • Getting Google Scholar references • Displaying tags from CiteULike or Connotea • Scraping identifiers (names, DOIs etc.) related with Scout resources [see LIBX] • …[see Connotea requested features to get suggestions]

28. Websites and articles • Scout Portal Toolkit • LINX - Link e strumenti per la ricerca • Virtual Library Cilea • AIB-DFP • FORMEZ - Biblioteca virtuale per la Pubblica Amministrazione • Edward Almasy et al., Software for building a full-featured discipline-based web portal, “D-Lib Magazine”, 8 (2002), 11 • Edward Almasy, The Scout Portal Toolkit: an overview, ALA Annual Conference, Atlanta, June 13-19, 2002 • Edward Almasy, Tools for creating your own resource portal: CWIS and the Scout Portal Toolkit, “Library Trends”, 54 (2005), 4

29. Collaboration • Wiki for sharing knowledge • Records exchange • Setting up a harvester (OAI, SRU/SRW…) for searching against databases (every instance exposing its metadata) • …

30. Questions? Acknowledgements: we are here thanks to Paolo Avesani :-) This work is published underCC license -Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 Italy