Talking With Talis :: The Mellon rewards WPOpac... and opens an Open Data door?

Originally posted by Talking With Talis on December 13, 2006.

In this Library 2.0 Gang discussion, we talk about Casey Bisson's recent well-deserved recognition by the Mellon Foundation for his work on WPOpac. We go on to explore perhaps the most significant aspect of the award; the fact that Casey intends to spend the money on buying and openly sharing bibliographic data from the Library of Congress, and probe the antiquated business models that make it necessary for him to even consider spending money in this way.

Participants in this edition of the Library 2.0 Gang were;

• Paul Miller, Technology Evangelist at Talis. Paul blogs at Thinking about the Future, contributes to panlibus, and hosts the Talking with Talis podcast series.
• Ross Singer, Library Applications Developer for Georgia Tech Library in Atlanta, Georgia. Ross blogs at Dilletante's Ball.
• Rob Styles, Tech Lead and Programme Manager for Open Data Services at Talis. Rob blogs at I Really Don't Know and contributes to panlibus.
• Tim Spalding, founder of LibraryThing. Tim blogs at the LibraryThing blog and Thing-ology.
• Richard Wallis, Technology Evangelist at Talis. Richard contributes to the panlibus blog.

A forum is available for discussion of issues raised during the recording.

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.