Digital Library Center Blog | UF

Press release from the USDA National Agricultural Library (PDF here)

United States Department of Agriculture
Research, Education, and Economics
Agricultural Research Service

January 20, 2010

Dear Friends and Colleagues of the USDA National Agricultural Library:

It gives me great pleasure to announce the appointment of Dr. Simon Y. Liu as the new Director of the National Agricultural Library (NAL), effective February 14, 2010.

Dr. Liu currently is an Associate Director of the National Library of Medicine (NLM) and the Director of NLM Computer and Communications Systems in Bethesda, Maryland, a position he has held since May 2000. In addition to a wealth of leadership, program development, management, and other executive experience at NLM, Dr. Liu brings a rich portfolio of professional credentials and skills to the NAL.

As a native of Taiwan, he received his undergraduate training there. In post graduate training in the U.S., he earned master’s degrees in Computer Science, Business Administration, and Government from Indiana University, University of Maryland, and Johns Hopkins University, respectively. He has received two doctoral degrees (Ed.D. in Higher Education and Ph.D. in Computer Science) from George Washington University. He now holds adjunct faculty and graduate school appointments at several of these institutions.

Dr. Liu is active in professional societies and associations and as an Editor of a web technology journal and an information technology professional magazine. Prior to his NLM service, he held information technology and management leadership positions with the U.S. Departments of Justice and Treasury during the mid to late 1990’s following private sector contractor work supporting software development for NASA information systems and space mission studies.

As Director of the National Agricultural Library, Dr. Liu will provide leadership to the world’s largest and most accessible research library focused on agriculture and related subjects. On the basis of this diverse training and experience, Dr. Liu has demonstrated those visionary qualities sought in the new Director to provide innovative technological and strategic approaches to the development and operation of NAL’s next generation library and information systems for effective customer service, partnerships, and stakeholder support.

I wish to express my sincere appreciation to the Search Committee, Evaluation Panel, and the many NAL customers, partners and stakeholders whose proactive interest throughout the search and competitive recruitment process has culminated in the appointment of Dr. Liu.

I look forward to working with Dr. Liu, the NAL staff, and the Library’s diverse and devoted constituencies in the days ahead to assure the ongoing development and success of NAL programs, products, and services.

Sincerely,

EDWARD B. KNIPLING Administrator

From: UF Center for Latin American Studies

The University of Florida Center for Latin American Studies will sponsor Library Travel Research Grants for summer 2010. Their purpose is to enable faculty researchers from other U.S. colleges and universities to use the extensive resources of the Latin American Collection in the University of Florida Libraries, thereby enhancing its value as a national resource.  The grants are funded by a Title VI National Resource Center grant from the U.S. Department of Education.

Six or more travel grants of up to $1250 each will be made to cover travel and lodging expenses. Grantees are expected to remain in Gainesville for at least one week and, following their stay, submit a brief (2-3 pp.) report on how their work at UF Libraries enriched their research project and offer suggestions for possible improvements of the Latin American Collection. Researchers’ work at the Latin American Collection may be undertaken at any time during the summer, starting May 15, 2010.  All travel must be completed by August 14, 2010. At least one grant will be made to a scholar from a Florida college or university.  Applicants must be US citizens or permanent residents.

The UF Libraries Latin American Collection

The UF Libraries’ Latin American Collection contains one of the finest collections of Latin American materials in the U.S. It consists of over 500,000 volumes, some 50,000 reels of microfilm (many unique and very scarce), renowned newspaper and government-document holdings, and a growing access to computer-based electronic information resources.

Areas of collection focus include all disciplines, although literature, the humanities and the social sciences are best represented. All regions of Latin America are also well represented, with the Caribbean, Circum-Caribbean and Brazil having the deepest holdings, while the Andean and Southern Cone regions are developing strengths. Particularly noteworthy are the Collection’s holdings on religion in the Americas, including Santeria, Rastafarianism and the Ralph Della Cava Collection on Padre Cícero and Brazilian popular religion. Other units of the UF Libraries also contain important resources and researchers are encouraged to utilize them as well. The UF Map Library houses approximately 500,000 maps and atlases, some 50,000 of which deal with Latin American topics. The Science Library has important book and journal holdings on agriculture, tropical conservation, and development. The Special Collections Department has manuscript holdings such as the Rochambeau, Jeremie and the Braga Brothers Sugar Company papers, and the newly acquired Ramón Figueroa Collection of Mexican and Cuban film posters.

Information on the UF Latin American Collection is available at: http://www.uflib.ufl.edu/lac. You can also e-mail Richard Phillips, Director of the Latin American Collection, for further information.

Application Procedure

All applications must be filed electronically.
To apply for a Library Travel Grant, send a letter of intent, brief library research proposal, travel budget, and CV to:

Hannah Covert, Executive Director
Center for Latin American Studies
319 Grinter Hall
telephone: 352-392-0375, Ext. 825
e-mail: hcovert@latam.ufl.edu

Application Deadline

March 2, 2010

From: UF Libraries’ News, Events, and Updates

A $2.38 million grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to Indiana University (IU) will be used to develop software created specifically for the management of print and electronic collections for academic and research libraries around the world. The University of Florida is the lead partner for the Florida Consortium (Florida International University, Florida State University, New College of Florida, Rollins College, University of Central Florida, University of Miami, University of South Florida and the Florida Center for Library Automation), which is a founding member of a national coalition of libraries which will shape and implement the software.

IU will lead the Kuali OLE (Open Library Environment) project, a partnership of research libraries dedicated to managing increasingly digital resources and collections. Together, these libraries will develop “community source” software that will be made available to libraries worldwide. Kuali OLE (pronounced Oh-LAY) partners include Indiana University; Florida Consortium; Lehigh University; Triangle Research Libraries Network, represented by Duke University and North Carolina State University; University of Chicago; University of Maryland; University of Michigan; and the University of Pennsylvania.

“Students and faculty served by academic libraries increasingly seek 24-7 access to digital content to support their studies and research,” said Judith Russell, Dean of Libraries at the University of Florida. “Developing new and improved management tools and access to these electronic resources is essential to delivery of high quality library services. We are delighted to join our colleagues here in Florida and around the country in developing open access software to support our shared mission.”

“Large academic research libraries such as these manage and provide access to millions of items, using software to track interrelated transactions that range from ordering and paying for items to loaning materials to library patrons. As the nature of library collections expands to include more digital materials — including leased electronic journals and digitized photograph collections — libraries are increasingly interested in developing management software for these resources,” said Interim Ruth Lilly Dean of IU University Libraries Carolyn Walters.

“Libraries now create, lease and share digital materials, but the systems in place for cataloging and tracking these items are based on print collections,” said Walters. “With this project, we benefit from working together with a community of academic libraries that want to change the way that information is managed in the scholarly environment.”

“Research libraries are in dire need of systems that can support the management of research collections for the next-generation scholar,” said Robert H. McDonald, executive director for the project and IU’s associate dean for library technologies. “This approach demonstrates the best of open-source software development, directed partnership resource needs and a market of commercial support providers to truly align with the needs of research libraries within the higher education environment.”

More than 200 libraries, educational institutions, professional organizations and businesses laid the groundwork for the Kuali OLE project by participating in the original OLE project, a design phase that was supported by an earlier grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and led by Duke University. Kuali OLE project researchers will now work to create a next-generation library system that breaks away from print-based workflows and reflects the changing nature of library materials and new approaches to scholarly work.

OLE became an official project of the Kuali Foundation in November. (Kuali is a community of universities, colleges, businesses and other organizations that have partnered to build and sustain community-source software for higher education.) This affiliation gives Kuali OLE tremendous expertise in developing and sustaining community-based software.

“The Mellon Foundation has a distinguished history of supporting transformative projects for education and cultural preservation,” said Brad Wheeler, Kuali Foundation board chair and vice president for Information Technology at IU. “We are grateful for their support of this open, extensible and deeply collaborative work among the OLE investing libraries. The libraries’ choice to anchor the project in the Kuali Foundation will ensure its quality, openness and sustainability for years to come.”

“The Kuali OLE collaboration comes at the perfect time,” said Deborah Jakubs, Rita DiGiallonardo Holloway University Librarian & Vice Provost for Library Affairs at Duke University. “If libraries are to provide excellent support for scholarship and teaching well into the future, we must develop a new model that reflects the true needs of our organizations and facilitates our work in a constantly changing environment. This partnership capitalizes on the experience, the commitment, and the energy of a key group of institutions to build that model for the future of research library operations. We are grateful to The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for recognizing the promise of the OLE project, and to Kuali for offering us this opportunity to align our goals with theirs.”

Jakubs and Wheeler were recently elected co-chairs of the Kuali OLE Board of Directors at its initial board meeting in Washington, D.C., on December 16, 2009.

An accomplished team of librarians select, manage and grow the University of Florida’s research collections, which include more than 4.5 million books, 1 million documents, 550,000 maps and images, and 20,000 computer data sets. The materials support every academic discipline on campus. The libraries have built a number of nationally significant research collections.

Judith C. Russell
Dean of University Libraries
University of Florida
jcrussell@ufl.edu
352-273-2505

The University of Florida Digital Collections (UFDC) has grown from September 2007’s 1 million pages (pages of books, newspapers, archival materials, maps, posters, audio, video, photos, and more) to 2 million in July 2008, 3 million in December 2008 (thanks to ingesting microfilm digitized by a vendor) and then to 4 million in July 2009. Right now - and UFDC is loading so this will be higher by morning - UFDC has 4,134,392 pages.

Four million, one hundred and thirty-four thousand, three hundred and ninety-two pages.

It sounds impressive because it is. Yet, it’s so much more than that even when only on a quantity level. Page counts are helpful for a general sense of “big-ness” because they prove critical mass. It’s a way of saying “if you’re not sure this is the digital collection you’re looking for, this collection is big enough to have something you’re interested in”. Page counts aren’t helpful in dealing with multiple formats. For instance, right now 1 page =

• 1 page of a journal article, born digital and submitted electronically
• 1 10 ft. x 12 ft. blueprint from 1905
• 1 video, one hour long, digitized from VHS
• 1 audio interview, one hour long, converted from reel to reel tapes

These aren’t equivalent in terms of the work to create them, the interface variety and sophistication to present them, or the use-value to patrons and for preservation.

Page counts aren’t perfect, and neither are item counts, but is there an easy and accurate way to explain any complex, diverse, and varied collections with 4 million + pieces?

The value created from having critical mass makes the entire scenario more complicated. There’s no good way to explain the value of  being able to search for an illustrator and seeing examples of the work in multiple books, finding reviews of the illustrator’s work in a literary journal, seeing articles by the illustrator’s peers in newspapers from the same time period, and more without a narrative-style example, and that’s not short or easy.

Given the size, scope, and wealth contained in UFDC, I’m at a loss for words to explain just how wonderful UFDC is. For now, I plan to focus on adding more materials and adding more contextual guides (exhibits, highlighted items of the week, guides, and then on to authority records). I’d still like to have something short and quick to explain UFDC like the page counts, but perhaps those were never good enough explanations and I was just more comfortable with them when they were less blatantly inaccurate. Whatever the case, UFDC continues to grow at an astonishing rate by any measure I can imagine.

I’d always assumed that catalog records were based on MARC, and that MARC was a guideline or standard like METS, MODS, or TEI, or even HTML or XML. After all, SGML is one heck of a powerful grandparent for modern record formats, right? And for printing, TeX, LaTeX, and BibTeX have been around for ages, so there’s no way that an archaic punch-card style technology could be in use at almost every library in the US, right? Sadly, no, I was wrong.

My assumptions on what MARC must be have kept me from helping to fix the problems that stem from what it actually is. I’m also now worried about what other dead technologies might be in widespread use that are directly related to library operations. Please note that I’m not in any way attacking the ideas that underly MARC records. We need bibliographic records, and metadata and organizational systems are essential. MARC is just a mix of the transfer protocol, data definition, data structure, data display, and actual data content. It’s a thing optimized to print card catalog cards in a card catalog world.

Cards in card catalogs have defined data elements (author, title subject, call number, etc) and they have an organizational method and so extrapolating that to defined fields should be easy. Except, defined fields in MARC are always within the record. The minimum part of a MARC record is a single full MARC record read line by line. You can’t skip ahead because the field leaders note where the field begins and how long it will be. I saw the weird number sequences and leaders for elements, and I assumed that those were either shorthand or they were habit-based preferences that people chose to use. After all, the catalog record has defined data components for bibliographic and authority records (named people, corporations, other entities), so it had to be a matter of preference to displaying an author like this:

ME:Pers Name     100 1# $a Brenner, Richard J.,
                        $d 1941-

The $a for author had to be a shorthand, and so must be the 100 1#, because they had to be. It could not be the case that this shorthand was actually needed and that almost every library with an electronic catalog was still wedded to the technology made to optimize the printing of card catalog cards in the 1970s (or before? it’s updated to deal with unicode, at least MARC21 is, but this is punch card or telegraph style technology).

Take a look at this MARC record:

01041cam  2200265 a 450000100200000000300040002000
50017000240080041000410100024000820200025001060200
04400131040001800175050002400193082001800217100003
20023524500870026724600360035425000120039026000370
04023000029004395000042004685200220005106500033007
30650001200763^###89048230#/AC/r91^DLC^19911106082
810.9^891101s1990####maua###j######000#0#eng##^##$
a###89048230#/AC/r91^##$a0316107514 :$c$12.95^##$a
0316107506 (pbk.) :$c$5.95 ($6.95 Can.)^##$aDLC$cD
LC$dDLC^00$aGV943.25$b.B74 1990^00$a796.334/2$220^
10$aBrenner, Richard J.,$d1941-^10$aMake the team.
$pSoccer :$ba heads up guide to super soccer! /$cR
ichard J. Brenner.^30$aHeads up guide to super soc
cer.^##$a1st ed.^##$aBoston :$bLittle, Brown,$cc19
90.^##$a127 p. :$bill. ;$c19 cm.^##$a"A Sports ill
ustrated for kids book."^##$aInstructions for impr
oving soccer skills. Discusses dribbling, heading,
 playmaking, defense, conditioning, mental attitud
e, how to handle problems with coaches, parents, a
nd other players, and the history of soccer.^#0$aS
occer$vJuvenile literature.^#1$aSoccer.^\

(source)

Sure, that can be formatted nicely, but imagine a modern system having to read all of this to be able to allow users to search by author, title, keyword, and have facets for years, material type, etc. A program then reads all of the records in, indexing all of them and then running purely off of the index, except when forced to look at the MARC records because people are still doing something to/with them, or it somehow queries the records-as-blobs. I’m not even sure how older catalogs actually worked because the format of these is impossible for my concepts of computerized search.

I don’t know how common it must be for people familiar with normal standards to unquestioningly assume that MARC must be a normal standard, but I had trouble even understanding that something as broken as the MARC record could still exist. Now, I understand why people would tell me “that’s not possible” or “that’s not the way the system works” when I’d ask questions about what should be simple tasks. I’d often reply “but it has to be because that’s the way computers work” and I’d keep asking, thinking MARC must be an elaborate way to define data, with ties to legacy systems that made it confusing. That’s true-ish, but the real problem is that MARC is an archaic legacy form, so much so that I couldn’t comprehend when people tried to explain it to me.

When explaining MARC records to those familiar with normal technology standards, Karen Coyle notes hearing “virtual sighs” as  the programmers who “were not familiar with the standard library metadata record, and the standards were not compatible with the general suite of tools that the programmers commonly work with, such as HTML, CSS, and a host of XML-based tools” (source). In my mind, a metadata standard - especially one for library materials, whether books or audio or maps or whatnot - cannot be incompatible with XML.

It looks like the phenomenon of not knowing how to define MARC is fairly common for folks who work regularly with current computing. Hopefully we’ll all learn just enough about MARC to replace it quickly with RDA (or even something that seems like MARC to those who like it, but something that functions as a real data model). Once the archaic MARC-technology-underpinnings - whether or not other aspects of it remain - can be replaced, library data will be so much easier to access, use, and connect for everyone from catalogers to patrons. I feel awful that I didn’t understand how broken MARC was as it tried to act as protocol/structure/display/format/record, and I’m only now learning what MARC is, so I don’t yet know how many problems it’s created or how many innovations or aids it’s prevented.

The Rose Hill Manor Park & Children’s Museum in Frederick, Maryland will soon be printing new copies of historic children’s books from the Baldwin Library of Historical Children’s Literature Digital Collection. The children’s books will be used for their story hour program where they read stories to children and let them act out part of the story and do a craft; their Playtime Monday programs that encourage children and parents to explore their facilities and spend time reading and playing together; tours; and history camp programs where they teach kids about school days for children in the past.

It’s always exciting to share old materials from the University of Florida Libraries in new ways, whether digitally or in print once again!

The Research Library Leadership Fellows (RLLF) Program is an executive leadership program jointly designed and sponsored by ARL member libraries. The pilot program was sponsored by the University of California at Los Angeles; Columbia University; University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; University of Texas at Austin; and University of Washington. The second offering was sponsored by six ARL member libraries: University of California, Berkeley and the California Digital Library; Harvard University; University of Minnesota; North Carolina State University; Pennsylvania State University; and the University of Toronto. The 2009-2010 program is being jointly sponsored and designed by Brigham Young University, University of Florida, Georgia Institute of Technology, University of Houston, University of Michigan, University of Utah, and University of Western Ontario. The program offers an opportunity for development of future senior-level leaders in large research libraries.

Applications for the RLLF Program are due by March 6. Not only is this an amazing opportunity, but it’s one that includes a visit to the University of Florida Libraries, which is also wonderful and I’m excited to know that the Libraries have the opportunity to host the RLL Fellows. As one of the sponsors for the 2009-2010 RLLF Program, the University of Florida Libraries is hosting a meeting (”Strategic Issues Institute II”) in February 2010!

The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) issued a call for President Obama’s administration to support large-scale digitization initiatives. The brief call from the ARL Newsletter is online as is the full letter.

As an addendum to to ARL’s call for “a large-scale initiative to digitize public domain collections,” let’s also make sure these initiatives include all holdings that are in the public domain in however many selected US institutions, including the millions upon millions of pages published in other countries and collected by the US. The US has so many collections that would benefit the US and so many collections that, if shared openly, would benefit the world and international relations overall. Presenting and sharing these materials, especially in a way that makes sure they’re sustainable, will create new national resources and new sources for global collaboration.

My personal dream would be to see the public domain documents acquired through foreign cooperative acquisitions plans digitized as part of the larger US institution holdings where they can be found. In the Farmington Plan different US institutions collected materials by area or country so that the materials would be accessible in the US and preserved. The Farmington plan was formulated with the fear of data loss (paper data loss) from war and the first official Farmington meeting was in the 1940s in Farmington Connecticut. The Farmington Plan was official in 1948, but it’s official operations didn’t come with the necessary official funding so it only formalized work that had already been going on.

The cooperative collection plans formalized in the Farmington Plan date back far earlier. The reason I know any of this history is because the University of Florida, for instance, had been collecting Caribbean material for decades prior to the Farmington Plan (see this article) and continues to do so today. UF became the official institution responsible for the Caribbean in 1952 when a “modification of the subject basis for assignment was suggested when it was recommended that libraries accept total responsibility for publications issued by a given country or area not presently covered by the Plan. Thus, the Caribbean area was accepted by the University of Florida” (source). According to all of the documentation I’ve found (and this is still new research for me), the University of Florida had been collecting Caribbean materials and so UF was simply asked and added to the Farmington Plan for what it was already doing. Because of the existing relationships in the Caribbean, UF was able to acquire copies of documents–in print and in microfilm through “mobile microfilming units” (meaning barges with microfilm cameras that traveled the Caribbean and made microfilm copies of important documents and books)–and in at least one case, UF’s microfilm was the last copy in the world (hurricanes and tropical weather are a constant danger to archives now and were much more so before air conditioning). In the last copy instance, UF was able to digitize the materials through the Digital Library of the Caribbean (dLOC) and return the cultural materials to their rightful owners while also sharing the materials with the world. The last copy became one of many copies and became inaccessible to easily accessible.

The Digital Library of the Caribbean (dLOC) is a wonderful and downright amazing project in terms of technology, history, and significance. It’s successful because it took the cooperative collection plan and made it work digitally. Yet there are so many other existing projects that are or could also build on parts of earlier cooperative collection plans. Funding is needed though and these materials are needed and are not otherwise accessible. The purpose of cooperative collection plans was to ensure that someone would have a copy in the US and to avoid purchasing multiple copies and possibly overspending on always underfunded budgets (and this is going back past the 1940s discussions and earlier). The majority of materials in research libraries are unique because libraries couldn’t afford to get extra copies. Digitizing full collections is wonderful, but we need to digitize everything in all of them or very nearly. The uniqueness means that each library collection only has a tiny portion of the whole. Google scanning entire university libraries is only beginning to hint at scratching the surface and we need so much more.

ARL’s call for a large-scale digitization initiative is so right because the need is so huge, the benefits so great, and the possibilities so enormous. As ARL states, the initiative “will lay a foundation for innovation and national competitiveness in the decades ahead.” To that I would add “and a spirit of international cooperation and collaboration” to ensure that past brilliance and innovation are included. While the Farmington Plan wasn’t funded as it needed to be, it’s hard to imagine how much funding would be needed to support essentially an Internet of data made of microfilm, so many copies, mailed to institutions for all to access. The costs remain high, but are much lower and the potential rewards so much greater.

President Obama’s Presidential Inauguration can be viewed live on Tuesday on large screens–in addition to the many computer screens it will fill–at three of the UF Libraries:

• Library West in the InfoCommons (3rd floor)
• Education Library (limited seating)
• Large screen just outside the Journalism & Communications Library

Before the Internet made information access faster and easier (and it continues to improve), libraries were already mass-sharing information through interlibrary loan. Interlibrary loan is such a simple concept–libraries share books with other libraries–but it was and continues to be carefully planned and implemented to ensure availability and access through cooperative collection plans, lists of records and methods for disseminating them (National Union Catalog, publishing bibliographies of what books were where), and agreements to make sure users know about the materials in order to request them.

Thanks to interlibrary loan systems everywhere for making information available and accessible. Making information findable, available, and usable is always something to celebrate, especially when they’ve been doing it for so very long. The original interlibrary groups have expanded, merged, and reformed, but some carry on under the same names like Florida’s interlibrary loan network, FLIN (The Florida Library Information Network) which turns 40 this year. Over those years FLIN has shared 6.6 million items, or 167,000 items a year! Congratulations to FLIN! And, congratulations to all of the interlibrary loan networks celebrating another year or another decade of service!

The Internet is now the main information source for many, but making the Internet really work (with information on where to find information, the information wanted) begins with the infrastructure for information access. Information architectures, systems for finding and accessing information, and making sure that information is in the best form possible has been a long tradition within interlibrary loan and with the subsequent technologies it employed, including facsimiles, microfilm (or microphotography), electronic, and digital. Without the systems for interlibrary loan, we wouldn’t be able to access many books in print and our digital-only systems wouldn’t have had the benefit of the painstaking work done through postal/train/car/horse/shoe/sneaker/net of interlibrary loan.

As this year comes to a close, thanks to all of the interlibrary loan services who have shared so much!