November 2009 Archives

More than 23 million records have been added to WorldCat.org results this month from a group project called OAIster.

OAIster represents the initiatives that many libraries, museums and archives have taken in recent years to digitize their historic artifacts and make them open to the online world. Including them now in WorldCat increases the visibility of these collections and ensures continued access.

You'll now find more materials such as digitized books and articles, audio and video files, photos, data sets, theses and research papers in WorldCat.org because of this addition.

The Louis Armstrong and Leon Rene image here gives you a taste of what kinds of materials you'll now find through WorldCat.org because of OAIster records. (You'll typically find the citation in WorldCat.org and click through to the digital collection of the specific library.)

An additional way to find digital images in WorldCat is to add "cntnt" to your search query. Then matching digital content will appear in your results sets. For example, Baseball.

As most of the rest of the United States gets ready for some serious holiday shopping (or perhaps, unshopping as the case may be this year) at the end of this month, the bloggers among us--at least, the amateur ones--will be readying themselves to start a program of full disclosure because of a change on Dec. 1 with new FTC rules for testimonials.

Full what? Full disclosure meaning that a blogger or a person on a social network needs to make it clear if s/he is being compensated for the review of a product. It could be that a company or publishing house sent him a free product sample, which is fine. When he reviews the sample in his blog, he needs to make it clear how he got the sample. Or if someone who works for a company goes in and bashes a competitor's site, then she needs to disclose their employer. More about this change over on Wired and PC World blogs. Also, Publishers Weekly reassures us that the rules are not aimed at individual bloggers as much as the advertisers.

You may be wondering where WorldCat fits in with all of these new rules. Well for one thing, anything the WorldCat bloggers receive is immediately eaten with gusto. And we give high praise for baked goods. What? You're saying you've never seen anything about baked goods on this blog? Well readers, if someone ever sends us holiday cookies (hint hint), we will review them and say nice things about you. AND disclose that they were a gift.

But seriously, if you're an bookselling site affiliate and are concerned that doing a review (and receiving your 10 cents) might get you in hot water with the FTC, then you can start linking to WorldCat citations and doing reviews in WorldCat instead. Not only does it give your readers all the available formats and editions, but it also lets them find the material in a library near them. (In addition to having several purchase options, too.)

So get those links and reviews ready for WorldCat!

Tweets from the @OCLC twitter account from 10/17-11/13.

• Reputation enhancement redux (Lorcan Dempsey's weblog)
  
• OCLC RDA resources: w/ webinar recording  & signup for Nov. 19 session 
  
•  VIAF -- Expanding the concept of universal bibliographic control. In this month's OCLC NextSpace.
  
• Google incorporates some World Bank API data into search results (ReadWriteWeb)
  
• 40% of people "friend" brands on Facebook, 25% follow brands on Twitter (ReadWriteWeb)
  
• Amazon debuts Kindle for PC (CNET)
  
• charticle. n. A news article consisting of a chart or graphic with a small amount of explanatory text (Word Spy)
  
• Veteran's Day tomorrow. Featured CONTENTdm  digital collection: Arkansas Korean War Project 
  
• @JISC Recommendations for sys join-up could make finding research easier: A JISC-funded study
  
• RT @echildress And the wall came tumbling down. WorldCat.org search: su:Berlin Wall, Berlin, Germany, 1961-1989 History 
  
• Ars Technica on Firefox's fifth anniversary
  
• NextSpace 13 now online. Ripple Effect, VIAF, Web Scale, WC Digital Collection Gateway, stats & more.
  
• RT @geekthelibrary The great public library reinvention.
  
• Conference in Librarianship in Chile (A View of South America)
  
• The Age of Mega Content Sites (ReadWriteWeb) 
  
• Report: Social Isolation and New Technology (Pew Internet & American Life Project)
  
• Ars Technica reviews the OpenMoko WikiReader
  
• RT @oclcdevnet: More photos uploaded from WorldCat Mashathon Seattle
  
• OCLC Distinguished Seminar Series Presents, "Memento: Time Travel for the Web," with Herbert Van de Sompel on 11/19
  
• 7 data visualization groups on Flickr. Good for inspiration & thinking creatively about data (FlowingData)
  
• Register for the free, 1-hour webinar, "RDA and OCLC" Thursday, 11/19 at 1pm (EST)
  
• Beyond the Record with RDA (Metalogue)
  
• A report on the use of online video sharing sites within blogs
  
• For Those About to Mash, We Salute You (OCLC Developer Network)
  
• TV Finds That a Mortal Foe, the DVR, Is Really a Best Friend (NYTimes.com)
  
• friendsourcing: pp. Gathering info, recommendations, & feedback from a trusted group of online peers (Word Spy)
  
• Library of Congress opens historic newspaper API 
  
• Study: books overtook games in iTunes store in September 09 (and now make up 20% of all new apps)
  
• Getting smarter about archives and special collections (hangingtogether.org)
  
• Our own Lucia Shelton received the Carmen Carneiro Excellence and Incentive Award for helping Latin Amer. libraries disseminate information.
  
• On the discriminations of availability (Lorcan Dempsey's weblog)
  
• How to Avoid Malware on Facebook and Twitter: 8 Best Practices
  
• Google Wave Use Cases: Education
  
• The Market, the Commons, and the Library of Congress (Metalogue) 
  
• @lorcanD RT @chronicle: Columbia & Cornell Libraries Announce 'Radical' Partnership
  
• Google's new Social Search surprisingly useful (Ars Technica)
  
• Recorded presentation: Drake University's digital collections w/ Bart Schmidt, Digital Projects Librarian [OCLC]
  
• New Center at UC Irvine to Seed Research and Collaboration on Digital Media and Learning
  
• Does the Brain Like E-Books? 5 opinions (NYTimes.com)
  
• Untangling the library systems environment (Lorcan Dempsey's weblog)
  
• Research support services (Lorcan Dempsey's weblog)
  
• Bing launches beta Twitter search
  
• HP, UMich deal offers reprinting of rare & out-of-print books from M's library (Ars Technica)
  
• Freescale Semiconductor announces deal with E-Ink; lays groundwork for e-paper color and animation
  
• RT @lorcanD @OpenUniversity: Develop your information skills with the OU Library
  
• Twitter and Status Updating (Pew Internet & American Life Project)
  
• Library Users and Non-Users: A Bibliography from the OCLC Library. (WC List)
  
• OCLC member institutions in Europe, Mid East & Africa - call-out to nominate for Global Council
  
• eLearn: Feature Article - How Tiny Camcorders are Changing Education
  
• Issue 12 of OCLC eNews is out - news for and about libraries in Europe, Mid East, Africa and OCLC
  
• Nook: B&N Android e-reader will allow peer-to-peer eBook lending (Ars Technica)
  
• UK Government opens data to public
  
• RT @zbriceno @wsulorena @atyourlibrary: 2009 Teens' Top 10 list from @YALSA  and @Worldcat
  
• peep culture: n. in which people display (and take pleasure in watching) the minutiae of daily life. (Word Spy)
  
• NPR's content management solution: COPE--Create Once, Publish Everywhere (ProgrammableWeb) 
• Spring Design announces dual screen (E-Ink and LCD) E-book reader
  
• Archive and related resources from September 30, 2009 webinar on virtual reference (WebJunction)
  
• Making the Nat'l Air & Space Museum's Poster Collection Accessible Online (blog)  (collection)
  
• October trend briefing: "NOWISM: why currency is the new currency" (Trendwatching.com) 

Here's the Top 20 List for October. I changed the qualifications this time to have only items that were held in more than 1,000 libraries worldwide on the list. This eliminated some of the more bizarre items while elevating more topical and, unsurprisingly, popular items. This also gives you a list of things that are more than likely available in a library near you.

Here they are, in order of views:

1. A Star Called Henry by Roddy Doyle
2. Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man by Steve Harvey
3. Twilight by Stephenie Meyer
4. The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown
5. Musicophilia by Oliver W. Sacks
6. Nursing Theorists and Their Work edited by Ann Marriner-Tomey and Martha Raile Alligood
7. Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak
8. New Moon by Stephenie Meyer
9. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince by J. K. Rowling
10. The World is Flat by Thomas L. Friedman
11. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
12. Eclipse by Stephenie Meyer
13. Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association by the American Psychological Association
14. The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown
15. The World Factbook by the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Foreign Assessment Center
16. Push by Sapphire
17. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J. K. Rowling
18. The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins
19. Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs by Judi Barrett
20. Hope's Boy by Andrew Bridge

The top 5 items added by WorldCat libraries in October are:

1- The spire : a novel, by Patricia Cornwell. Added by 1213 WorldCat libraries.
2- 10-10-10 : 10 minutes, 10 months, 10 years - a life-transforming idea, by Suzy Welch. Added by 863 WorldCat libraries.
3- Nine dragons : a novel, by Michael Connelly. Added by 845 WorldCat libraries
4- Evidence : an Alex Delaware novel, by Jonathan Kellerman. Added by 809 WorldCat libraries
5- The Scarpetta Factor, by Patricia Cornwell. Added by 783 WorldCat libraries

Lists of recent items added to WorldCat libraries for the month of Oct. are now available. You can see these lists on your library's WorldCat profile page which can be accessed via the 'Library info' link in the list of holding libraries on the item details page or the library name in the library search results (to search for your library, go to WorldCat.org/libraries).

The recent items list for each library now provides a breakdown of different item types by: all new items, new fiction, new non-fiction, new juvenile and new non-juvenile.

October stats include:
- 9,393 libraries added new items to WorldCat in October
- Of those, 490 did not have an existing recent items list, so WorldCat automatically created a new list.
- 8,903 existing recent items lists were updated.

I don't use Facebook a ton. Being a GenXer, I tend to live on email and Twitter. I do enjoy it when I have time, and have re-connected to a bunch of old high school friends and folks who have moved away over the years.

I have noticed, though, that there seem to be a lot of games, polls and memes making the rounds of FB. I haven't played any of the dedicated FB games (like Mafia Wars). I am a gamer, but I tend towards Xbox with my 10-year old. Similarly, I haven't taken advantage of any of the "Which Greek God Are You Most Like?" type polls. Unless I understand the criteria, I'm not interested. I mean, come on... if you're going to tell me I'm more like Circe than Mercury, I need to know why.

I have, however, taken part in a couple of "memes" that friends have passed along. These usually take the form of a questionnaire delivered in a note, which the initiator tags with your name. You are encouraged to answer the question and pass it on to 10, 15, etc. of your friends.

The most recent couple of these I've been invited to reply to involved listing of favorite "Top 10" or "Top 15" things. What I did when responding was to create my replies as WorldCat lists to make them easier to share. You can see my WC lists for "Top 15 movies" and "Top 15 books."

For the "movies" list, I also made sure to add the editions of the movies that had cool "cover" art (although I guess it's "box" art for VHSs or DVDs), and then pointed folks to the "Covers Only" view of that list via the WC List link, as part of my FB reply.

A couple friends commented that they thought it was a much more interesting and helpful way to do a list like this. It was certainly more fun for me. I can even see, from the WC List page for each list, how many other WorldCat users have viewed my lists.

Sharing lists of "favorites" is fun. And WorldCat can add a bit of library flavor to the mix.