Dan Chudnov :: Library Geeks 011 - Gary Price

Originally posted by Dan Chudnov on May 10, 2007.

Gary Price of ask.com is like that great reference librarian you remember from childhood or with whom you used to work who *always* knows seven great answers to any question that starts with "Where would I go to look for...", and tells you which ones to try, in which order, and how they complement each other, and is always right. Except Gary and his colleagues do this for everybody on the whole web through his sites ResourceShelf and Docuticker, and for the past year through his job at Ask. Gary and I met several years ago, and we're new neighbors now, so we sat down together at a local coffee shop to catch up and to talk about his career and how he approaches his work.

There's a bit more ambient noise on this recording than usual, which means our recording levels are uneven sometimes, and I'm sorry about that. I hope you'll agree, though, that we have so much to learn from Gary about politely getting in the faces of our users to teach them what's out there and how to get the most out of it while saving them time, effort, and aggravation that it's worth listening through the noise.

Some of the many resources Gary mentions included:

• Price's List of Lists
• Intute
• the International Children's Digital Library
• Ask City
• Exalead
• WebSite-Watcher

This is one to listen to when you're sitting at your machine, or at least with a notepad nearby, because for everything listed above, he mentions at least two more resources worth your time and attention, and you'll want to try them out.

Code4Lib 2007 :: Dan Chudnov - Fun with ZeroConf MetaOpenSearch

Presentation by Dan Chudnov at Code4Lib 2007 in Athens, GA on March 1, 2007.

What if we could share our libraries like we can share music in iTunes? Maybe we can. Maybe a little ZeroConf and OpenSearch added to existing library systems like metasearch and service resolvers can help make it happen faster, easier, and cheaper than you might think. Or two of those, at least.

Play talk on Odeo.

Video and slides available.

Dan Chudnov :: Library Geeks 009 - eIFL-FOSS

Originally posted by Dan Chudnov on December 10, 2006.

Bess Sadler, Erik Hatcher, and Art Rhyno joined me to discuss the recent eIFL-FOSS meeting they attended in Cupramontana, Italy. Bess, Erik, and Art have each done fascinating work in the past and are involved in many exciting projects today. We discussed many of these and how they led to their respective involvement in eIFL, and what the goals and next projects for eIFL-FOSS will be.

Bess also interviewed many other meeting attendees, and those interviews are included as well. I hope you'll agree that hearing straight from this diverse, dispersed community of library supporters is a unique opportunity to get a sense of both the scale of work that needs to be done to improve libraries everywhere, and of the enormous opportunities available to us now.

Show notes include:

• Visit the eIFL home page
• NGO-in-a-box
• Erik's books on Amazon.com
• Art's book on Amazon.com
• See Collex in action and visit the Collex blog
• Read up on Solr
• Attend the Solr workshop/preconference at code4lib 2007

Dan Chudnov :: Library Geeks 008 - FRBR and OpenFRBR

Originally posted by Dan Chudnov on November 3, 2006.

William Denton of the FRBR blog and the new OpenFRBR project and I had a great time chatting in the winebar at the Chateau Laurier in Ottawa last month during the Access conference.

We covered a lot of ground, focusing on FRBR and his new project but also dipping into aspects of Canadian history and hard-boiled slang along the way, to mention just a few.

Notes from the show:

• William's Twists, Slugs and Roscoes: A Glossary of Hardboiled Slang
• Notes on the history of the Chateau Laurier
• The correct title is The intellectual foundation of information organization by Elaine Svenonius

Dan Chudnov :: Library Geeks 007 - Bruce D'Arcus

Originally posted by Dan Chudnov on October 27, 2006.

The seemingly ubiquitous Bruce D'Arcus joined Ed, Ross, and me to discuss his many efforts to improve bibliographic management for scholars. Bruce is involved in and tracks so many different initiatives, it's hard to believe this isn't actually his day job. We were particularly happy that Bruce could share some of his time with us during the busy school semester.

Among the projects noted during discussion:

• Bruce's Citation Style Language, now used in Zotero
• The OpenOffice Bibliographic project which Bruce co-chairs
• Wikipedia on the OpenDocument Format
• "OpenOffice, OpenDocument, and Metadata", his talk from Access 2005
• The hCite microformat
• The Metadata Object Description Schema (MODS)
• Boundaries of dissent : protest and state power in the media age, Bruce's recent book

Dan Chudnov :: Library Geeks 006 - Access Hackfest

Originally posted by Dan Chudnov on October 17, 2006. Read also Dan's "Quick Notes from Access 2006".

Last week's Access conference provided many opportunities for an eager 'caster. If I'd slept at all I would have taken advantage of more of them. Still, I managed to turn the mic on a few times, and today's episode is the first of those.

Ross and I introduce the annual Access Hackfest preconference, and discuss some of the details of how it works. Following this are a series of Hackfesters discussing the projects they've chosen and the progress they've made, including advice to future Hackfest hosts from the current hosts and reflections from a first-time 'fester. (Hmm... maybe "'fester" isn't the best term.)

I've tried for years to communicate how well the Hackfest encapsulates everything great about the Access conference - that it's a chance to engage in a kind of librarianship we don't often get to engage in, without long-term commitments, politics, departmental rivalries. Unless you're actually there it's hard to see just how much fun it is, how much you can learn, and how refreshing (and tiring!) it can be to work so hard on something somebody else suggested and even pay for the privilege. Since you can't all be there, maybe listening to Hackfest participants tell you about it will be the next best thing to being there.

Dan Chudnov :: Library Geeks 005 - Zotero

Originally posted by Dan Chudnov on October 3, 2006.

Dan Cohen, Josh Greenberg, and Dan Stillman of the Center for History and New Media at GMU joined me to discuss their work on Zotero, their about-to-be-released Firefox 2 based citation manager-cum-bibliographic everything keeper. "Z-Day", as they call the upcoming public release day, is scheduled for this Thursday, October 5, 2006.

There's a lot to be excited about in Zotero, as I wrote recently. Listen in and learn all about it straight from the source through the local podcast feed, iTunes, or straight to the mp3 file.

Show notes:

• To use Zotero, you'll need Firefox 2.
• Zotero uses the Citation Style Language, or CSL, by Bruce D'Arcus.
• Zotero can recognize, parse, and collect bibliographic information found in COinS.
• Support is planned in Zotero for unAPI.

Dan Chudnov :: Library Geeks 004 - Intro Geek

Originally posted by Dan Chudnov on September 16, 2006.

Ed Summers joined Ross and me this time around to talk about how we all got our start on the coding side of libraries. It's another long, but fun, one.

Ed mentions the ongoing books4code initiative to start a distributed book group for hacker-types; they're already a few chapters into the current title, but there should be plenty of time to catch up.

Later Ed mentions his perl "backpan" history, where you can find prehistoric MARC modules.

Dan Chudnov :: Library Geeks 003 - That Thing You Do

Originally posted by Dan Chudnov on August 31, 2006.

Abby Blachly and Tim Spalding of LibraryThing joined me last week for Library Geeks episode 003 - The Thing You Do. The goal was to have it posted in time to sync with LibraryThing's first birthday, but, better late than never. Happy birthday LibraryThing!

Our conversation covered a lot of ground, from privacy, tagging, and bookkeeping to Cutter codes and, yes, even marshmallows. Even edited down some, it's well over an hour, but I hope you'll agree that their project and what they have to say about it is so compelling that it's worth the extra time.

Dan Chudnov :: Library Geeks 002b - Post-Social

Originally posted by Dan Chudnov on August 16, 2006. (part 2 of 2)

Jessamyn West joins Ross and me to discuss communities virtual and real, and how her work as a librarian intersects with each; Ross also provides an update on the umlaut.

Quick notes from the show:

• Jessamyn's best-known sites are at jessamyn.info | jessamyn.com and librarian.net. Her recent SAA talk slides are online too. She also has a terrific page devoted to Donald Barthelme which she shyly avoided mentioning; learn more about Richard Brautigan at the Brautigan Bibliography and Archive.
• Visit Metafilter, and look for AskMeFi and the FAQ
• Ross's blog-savvy colleague from GT blogs at The Ubiquitous Librarian.

Dan Chudnov :: Library Geeks 002a - Post-Social

Originally posted by Dan Chudnov on August 16, 2006. (part 1 of 2)

Jessamyn West joins Ross and me to discuss communities virtual and real, and how her work as a librarian intersects with each; Ross also provides an update on the umlaut.

Quick notes from the show:

• Jessamyn's best-known sites are at jessamyn.info | jessamyn.com and librarian.net. Her recent SAA talk slides are online too. She also has a terrific page devoted to Donald Barthelme which she shyly avoided mentioning; learn more about Richard Brautigan at the Brautigan Bibliography and Archive.
• Visit Metafilter, and look for AskMeFi and the FAQ
• Ross's blog-savvy colleague from GT blogs at The Ubiquitous Librarian.

Dan Chudnov :: Library Geeks 001 - Fun with OpenURL

Originally posted by Dan Chudnov on August 7, 2006.

Hear ye, hear ye, we have met the Library Geeks and we are us: Listen to Library Geeks 001 - Fun with OpenURL.

Ross Singer joins me for the first episode, wherein we discuss OpenURL, the state of the OpenURL resolver marketplace, and the innovative work Ross is leading at the Georgia Tech library to implement a next-generation resolver.

Notes:

• Learn more about the umlaut at the umlaut trac
• The JCDL paper on statistics is available through the umlaut itself

Jon Udell :: A conversation with Dan Chudnov about OpenURL, context-sensitive linking, and digital archiving

Originally posted by Jon Udell on February 16, 2007. Ryan Eby has made a transcript of the conversation available on his blog.

Today's podcast with Dan Chudnov is a sequel to my earlier podcast with Tony Hammond about the Nature Publishing Group's use of digital object identifiers. I invited Dan to discuss related topics including the OpenURL standard for context-sensitive linking.

I'm not the only one who's had a hard time understanding how these technologies relate to one another and to the web. See, for example, Dorothea Salo's rant I hate library standards, also Dan's own recent essay Rethinking OpenURL.

I have ventured into this confusing landscape because I think that the issues that libraries and academic publishers are wrestling with -- persistent long-term storage, permanent URLs, reliable citation indexing and analysis -- are ones that will matter to many businesses and individuals. As we project our corporate, professional, and personal identities onto the web, we'll start to see that the long-term stability of those projections is valuable and worth paying for.

Recently, for example, Dave Winer -- who's been exploring Amazon's S3 -- wrote:

I have an idea of making a proposal to Amazon to pay it a onetime fee for hosting the content for perpetuity, that way I can remove a concern for my heirs, and feel that my writing may survive me, something I'd like to assure.

Beyond long-term storage of bits, there's a whole cluster of related services that we're coming to depend on, but that flow from relationships that are transient. When I moved this blog from infoworld.com to wordpress.com, for example, InfoWorld very graciously redirected the RSS feed, but another organization might not have done so. I could have finessed that issue by using FeedBurner, but I wasn't -- and honestly, still am not -- ready to make a long-term bet on that service.

For most people today, digital archiving and web publishing services are provided to you by your school, by your employer, or -- increasingly -- by some entity on the web. When your life circumstances change, it's often necessary or desirable to change your provider, but it's rarely easy to do that, and almost never possible to do it without loss of continuity.

There are no absolute guarantees, of course, but a relatively strong assurance of continuity is something that more and more folks will be ready to pay for. Amazon is on the short list of organizations in a position to make such assurances. So, obviously, is Microsoft. Will Microsoft's existing and future online services move in that direction? I hope so. Among other things, it's a business model that doesn't depend on advertising, and that would be a refreshing change.