2009 WorldCat Mashathon in Amsterdam

Because I'm an organizer for the event (whahoo!), I am pleased to announce the WorldCat Mashathon registration for Amsterdam is now open. Here is the *official* announcement:

Join fellow coders for the WorldCat Mashathon in Amsterdam, May 13-14. Sponsored by the OCLC Developer Network and International Institute of Social History (IISH), the two-day event will be held Wednesday and Thursday at IISH headquarters in Amsterdam.

The European Mashathon follows on the heels of a previous WorldCat Hackathon in New York City. Participants will spend the two days brainstorming and coding mash-ups with local systems, OCLC Web Services, and many other Web Services to embellish existing, and create new, library services.

WorldCat includes national catalogues from the Netherlands, the UK, Ireland, Iceland, Germany, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, France, Spain, Switzerland, Czech Republic, Lithuania, Russia and many more—so there are plenty of potential uses and apps just waiting to happen.

Why attend the WorldCat Hackathon?
• Brainstorm potential uses for and play with the WorldCat Search API.
• Gain development access to 1.2 billion items from more than 10,000 libraries worldwide.
• Integrate these resources with many others to create innovative new services.
• Meet fellow developers across the information industry.
• Share your creative vision and be a part of the next wave of online library development.

Ideas, outcomes and code from the Mashathon, together with a participants list, will be shared during and after the event for others to download and build on.

Learn more and register for the WorldCat Mashathon on the OCLC Developer Network wiki.

New WorldCat keyword widget

Released this weekend, the WorldCat keyword widget is pretty darn cool. You'll have to scroll down, though, to see it on our antiquated page layout (if you still read on the big screen, rather than your aggregator). Perhaps (sigh) it is time for some actual design skills to help us out here at IAG. I am feeling the need for some visual freshening. Or perhaps it's just spring fever.

Our original intent in keeping It's All Good in its current polkadotted fashion was to encourage everyone in libraries or library school who, like us, had limited design skills, attention spans and hours in the workday to devote to blogging to consider its merits and see how easy it was. "See," we said, "See how we're using it in the totally out-of-the-box, you don't need special tools way." But by now that ship has sailed...

But back to the WorldCat Keyword search widget. Designed especially for content pages or blogs that are relatively narrow in scope, you can build a refined keyword search right into the widget...and then of course you can also change it and get results right in the cute box. Play around with it and see what you think. Better yet, put it on a couple of blogs/pages and see what your users think.

Record your WorldCat story

I've been working on a sort of "StoryCorps" project for WorldCat and library cooperation--except it's video. It's really simple. All you do is record a quick blip about Why You Love WorldCat.org, and upload it to YouTube to join the growing collection.

We're inviting everyone to record their "WorldCat stories" in video form. It can be a simple as telling the world why you love a specific WorldCat.org feature (10 seconds), or as involved as relating the time when someone you knew absolutely couldn't find the Ukrainian resource she desperately needed, until a library staff member suggested WorldCat and she found the actual digitized art object itself. (2 minutes or, as long as you like).

If you're headed to the ACRL conference, we even have a videographer lined up to do the video taping for you. It will be at the OCLC hospitality suite at the Seattle Sheraton, room 3102 from 1-4 pm.

If you're at SXSW Interactive, lucky you! Record yourself in the midst of all the fun.

The One Minute Critic

I just stumbled over a delightful site: the One Minute Critic, brought to you by the Fort Vancouver Regional Library District. The vlog is a great example of librarians having fun highlighting their collections, using WorldCat lists to help people in their community connect to their library and providing sheer entertainment value in ways both high-tech and low-tech.

The 10 Classic Cookbooks list caught my eye, and then I found myself wanting to watch all the One Minute Critics! Incidentally (and interestingly)--this library system has one of the highest referrer rankings of WorldCat.org. In other words, lots of users find their materials through WorldCat.org, and they send a lot of traffic to WorldCat.org. It's a virtuous circle--WorldCat connecting people with libraries and great library materials (like cookbooks!)

Watch for the surprise take at the end. So fun!

Saturday Saturday and my feet aren't as tough as they used to be

So I had a fun-filled Saturday today. It was a WorldCat-filled day, seems like.
I started out at the WorldCat Local meeting at 9 this morning. Went to the booth, collected literature. Trucked to the Hyatt for the WorldCat.org meeting. Very good questions and interest, with all the new features coming out.

One thing it seems like we (OCLC) should be more vocal about is the point of WorldCat.org. It's primarily a way to connect end-users on the Web with local libraries and library materials. All too often we get caught up in feature/function and loose the big flick of why we're doing this in the first place: library visibility.

It is so fun to see familiar faces and meet new friends. There was talk yesterday at the Symposium of a future contact lens that could be embedded with metadata...so in theory as someone is walking up to you, their name and how you know them could flash up at you. That would be REALLY helpful at conferences!

But I digress. I did make time for lunch with colleagues at the Corner Bakery, a popular spot with tasty salads and sandwiches. Then back to the convention center for the WorldCat Local meeting. Panic because no catering. Whoops, we didn't order any catering.

It was really heartening during the WorldCat.org session to hear OCLC's view of the usability test outcomes from graduate students, undergraduates and public libraries...and then to hear the same comments echoed from librarians at the WorldCat Local session this afternoon. There were speakers from the University of Washington, University of Delaware, University of California and...(?) memory escapes me. But all very very interesting stuff.

The gentleman from UW who spoke about their installation of WorldCat Local was saying you have to trust your users and prepare for success--their ILL fulfillment traffic went up by 300% or some ridiculously large number. In terms of "trust your users"--he had staff not believing that people needed all this information! (They didn't need it before...) And I think the idea was, they weren't finding it before, so they didn't know it existed.

The theme of the day seems to have been, "People expect a Google-like experience, and we want to figure out by hook or by crook to make it happen." This is a great shift from what I have heard at previous conferences. There is no hand-wringing or drama about if Google is going to take over the world. Now it seems most people are simply taking it as fact and trying to figure out what to do about it. And luckily, WorldCat.org and WorldCat Local seems to be mentioned as part of the solution, anyway.

So then while the meeting is still going on, I have to hop out to meet with a publisher rep about advertising. Print advertising still attracts eyeballs, but there's not a lot of innovation going on there. Online and event advertising seemed to be a hotter topic, based on the conversation we had. What advertising do you notice most? Notice least?

Then it was back to the hotel to prepare with other groups of people for sessions tomorrow. And I left my scarf in the hotel lobby bar. Shoot. Then a quick hop up to the OCLC Green Suite for the next-to final meeting of the day. A large-group discussion, with food and snacks.

Tomorrow is the OCLC Update Breakfast. There have been so many news releases this week--it will be a wonder if we can cover them all in an hour.

See you at the Blog Salon tomorrow night! 5:30 to 8 pm, Hyatt Regency Centennial I, F/G.

Heading off to Hackathon

Hey everyone. I've been "head-down" the past few weeks, as we've come to say in our group. I've learned how to host Webinars--or at least I can say that I've wrestled with WebEx with the best of them.

Anyway, before I zip off to the very first WorldCat Hackathon in New York tomorrow (I'm so excited!!), I wanted to introduce a guest post from a fellow OCLC staffer, Arthur Smith. Arthur is the Director for Strategic Business Development in the Middle East and India. He keeps us on our toes and always has great insight into things, it seems to me. He sent a photo last week that I immediately wanted to share with you, because it speaks volumes about the incredible work that librarians do on a daily basis all over the world...

Calling all developers: WorldCat Hackathon

If you're a coder-type or want to hang out with some and brainstorm some great ideas/write some great code, come to the WorldCat Hackathon!

Registration is now open for the Nov. 7-8 event in New York at the New York Public's Science, Industry and Business Library.

I'm excited because I'm going to be there and "cover" the event, interview/blog about the attendees and (very important) make sure there's enough yummy food.

We've been quietly digging out

So you may have noticed we have been suspiciously quiet since ALA. Is it because we used up all our decent ideas at the LITA Forum? Blog salon?
Hardly.

• I think it's because we're all trying to dig out from the "ALA preparation" hole that we (at least, me) invariably find ourselves in.
• Chrystie is busy launching a new WebJunction site.
• I spent a week in Ohio and now have a new official role as the consumer marketing guru for WorldCat.org. (My words, not OCLC's).
• George is valiantly trying to have a summer in between speaking engagements and entertaining IFLA fellows.
• Eric, well, Eric last I know was organizing a baseball outing. But that was in his spare time.

If you missed the WorldCat Challenge at ALA, the WorldCat pool and wheresworldcat tagged photos are starting to grow. If you need a WorldCat t-shirt, more are coming later this summer. The first appearance was at ALA, but I'll let you know as soon as they're available. Or sign up to receive WorldCat updates and you'll know when they're out.

WorldCat Challenge t-shirts

WheresWorldCat
Originally uploaded by bobrobboy

Kate Gaylord models the WorldCat Challenge t-shirts we gave out at ALA.

Summer Reading with WorldCat

The Summer Solstice is upon us this weekend. The longest day of the year! Hope you have a fun weekend planned or already beginning, if you're across the pond. We're coming into prime strawberry season here in New Hampshire. Finally!

So in honor of summertime and reading everywhere, we designed a few WorldCat bookmarks. 8, to be exact. The idea is that whatever your summer reading programs are, you can add in the online component with WorldCat. Download and print more at a moment's notice. Enjoy!

I realized I might not have told you about this little effort, when I read Katie's recent post. And she's got a great book list going for summer reads. Check it out.

Hulu is here

If you're a TV, movie or a YouTube junkie, now there's a new place for video content: Hulu.com.

There's not a *ton* of content here yet--but scanning through I saw enough Simpsons, Saturday Night Live and House clips to make for some fun doodling over the weekend. Not to mention the smattering of full-length movies.

I wonder if you could write a little script to capture the metadata for each episode and list it (like a journal article) in WorldCat or your local catalog, so the user could find it, click and get right to the content. It doesn't sound that hard.

That usually means it's next to impossible...

WorldCat blog

At long last, I am very happy to welcome the WorldCat blog into the family. Many of you met Jasmine at the last Blog Salon, and if you haven't yet--you might have seen her on the road talking about social networking and WorldCat.

She just made her inaugural post to the WorldCat blog (full disclosure--I am on the WorldCat blog team, too.) with a classic Sesame Street YouTube video of Cookie Monster in the library. I love it!
(And after you watch it, you'll no longer marvel at why the library brand=books!)

Science Fair projects trumped all

I went to my first Hanukkah party yesterday. We played Texas Hold 'Em Driedel and went home reeking of fried food smell. It was great!

'Tis also the season for Science Fair projects at public libraries around the U.S.
(And you thought it was the holiday shopping season!)

We had an interesting discussion today about a trial program we've been running on Yahoo and MSN, to show paid search results for meaningful content in Worldcat. Science Fair projects and related content has been the clear victor, in the results. Likely any Public Library Reference librarian who's driven the desk a year or two could tell you that, but it was good to see the online world bore out the same results.

Recipes were also a big hit--little wonder with the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday in November and baking season in full swing.

Dust off that online cookbook display and consider digitizing a few always-out cookbooks--people are looking for them online!

3. "Resume samples"
4. "Property Tax"
5. "Tax Forms"

rounded out the top 5 visit results. We limited this test to U.S. audiences only, if I remember correctly. Shows you what at least some of America is thinking about:
How can I do my holiday shopping and deduct it from my taxes?

WorldCat Lists

WorldCat.org now has list-making functionality! I have been excited to see this feature go in--and now it is available. I did a quick list search for "book" and it looks like 47 lists have already been created since Friday. And judging from the titles and descriptions, people are finding lots of creative ways to use lists. Awesome! I feel like it's like my own personal cataloging ability, powered by WorldCat. I will resist the urge (for now) to go through my entire bookshelf.

A few additional creative uses I'd thought about:

• I could see bookclubs or reading groups using the list functionality to keep track of what they've already read, and to solicit potential new titles from the members.
• For the academicians among us, you could load up the required readings from a syllabus into a WorldCat list--students could see at a glance which editions/articles were available at the library, what was checked out already, available as an eBook, etc.
• Maybe a family could track their library-movie-watching together, through a WorldCat list. Or a teen could post out the coolest sounds s/he has heard from the library's eclectic music collection...

I am sure other people have more ideas, too. How do YOU think you'll use WorldCat lists?

WorldCat gadget now available on Google Gadgets

Exciting news! In addition to a cool downloadable search box (in customizable colors) that you can add to your blog or Web page (see ours at left, if you click through from your RSS reader), and browser toolbars, NOW you can also add a WorldCat gadget to your personalized Google page.

Happily, I have done it here:







Of course, if you're a Resource Shelf reader, you're thinking smugly to yourself, Ah Ha! Done! Downloaded! Awesome.
What other neat gadgets should I ask the WorldCat team to think about building for us?

View from the outside

Amanda, from Notes from the Digital Frontier, does a nice bit on why she thinks libraries will continue. Keep in mind she is in no way connected to a library, that I can tell. (Other than being a user.)

Another good tidbit from inside and outside the library world: a colleague at OCLC in charge of social marketing for WorldCat.org pointed me over to Ning.com. And would you look at that, Bill Drew has set up a Library 2.0 social network with 14,275 views so far in four (4) days ...Ning looks to be a very easy way to set up a social network that has friending, photos, blog posting capabilities and so much more. It may not be absolutely beautiful, but it's an easy way to get started and not re-invent the wheel.

I also wonder if Gather.com would be a good social networking place for library or WorldCat-ophiles...so I started a WorldCat group. Go Join!

Side Streets

“Till then I walk the side streets home,
Even when I’m on my own.”
“Side Streets” – Saint Etienne (Web site ; Wikipedia entry) from the album Tales from Turnpike House (Wikipedia entry)

Turnpike House is a real building in the London area, and the songs on Saint Etienne’s concept album, Tales from Turnpike House, weave flashes of several fictional character’s lives set in flats in the building. Reviews (sample reviews: 1, 2, 3) offer more backstory than I’ll offer here, but let’s just say the reviewers and I concur: Tales is the exception to the rule – this concept album actually works.

And speaking of concepts that work: OCLC Research has been working on a project called WorldCat Identities. Chief Scientist Thom Hickey – my boss – has been the lead on a project to build the infrastructure to automatically generate one HTML page per identity (i.e. an identity being character, person, animal, or organization, etc. referenced in selected fields in a bibliographic record) in WorldCat – about 19 million unique identities at last count. The pages draw from bibliographic data in WorldCat which is used in conjunction with authority file data to provide information about and list works by the identity, reveal related identities, display publishing patterns, and offer whatever other information of interest we can mine and display. And the works listed link to – you guessed it – WorldCat.org.

Like many projects OCLC Research has undertaken in recent years, WorldCat Identities builds on prior work by OCLC and RLG.. WorldCat identities draws inspiration from RLG’s RedLightGreen and leverages FRBR (work clustering), Audience Level (surmising audience), VIAF (linking common identities in diverse authority files), NameFinder (user-typo-tolerant searching support), Dewey Browser (DDC made visual) and makes use of SRU, a protocol that OCLC has worked with the Library of Congress and others to develop. And, of course, WorldCat – the collective work of thousands of libraries and tens of thousands of librarians – is the key data source.

Thom’s various entries on his blog, Outgoing (see this entry and later posts) and posts by Lorcan and Walt have talked about the project. Tim O'Reilly gave it a nice write up on O’Reilly Radar. And WorldCat Identities has also been mentioned by a number of other blogs (see the end of this post for links to posts I’ve found).

The attention is gratifying and confirms the generally positive reactions and excitement face-to-face demonstrations of iterations of the project have engendered when Thom has presented WorldCat Identities in various settings. We’re also delighted to be working with our RLG Programs colleagues and several RLG partner institutions to get some early, expert feedback on WorldCat Identities.

As a fallen cataloger and recovering reference librarian, I’ve been impressed with WorldCat Identities in many ways. It leverages libraries’ investments in bibliographic and authority data. Each page is just the sort of by-and-about presentation to make undergraduate-doing-a-paper-about-a-person reference transactions go much faster than helping the user assemble some version of the same on their own. And the links to related identities offer a very addicting experience for the curious – the “side streets” are many and often quite interesting. Some nice examples of pages that work well:

• Victor Hugo
• Hayao Miyazaki
• Barbara Streisand
• Peter Pan (Fictitious character)
  

But all is by no means perfect. Searching the names listed above in WorldCat Identities returns search results that show variations in how the names have been recorded in bibliographic records – some differences in form of name no doubt reflect different authoritative forms of name adopted by various communities (and VIAF offers the potential means to link multiple authoritative forms efficiently), but more than a few the variations arise from errors in the underlying data, errors that keep apart things that should be put together or alternatively put together different persons and their works as a single identity.

There are also some not-quite-as-expected-by-the-user ordering and ranking of works associated with some identities (see for example Elvis Presley), but it’s not so obvious how to “fix” many of these unexpected results (the criteria applied make logical sense for most pages) – tinkering with ranking often fixes one case only to break many, many more. And, of course, for those music lovers among us, it’s wonderful to find so many persons involved with music, but at this stage in the project, WorldCat Identities does not yet include corporate headings so no musical groups are given their own pages (and yes, you may spot a few, but they’re not really supposed to be there – these reflect a small but visible corpus of MARC tagging errors). Note that corporate identities will be added at some point – it’s a research project, after all, and we didn’t put in every feature we’d planned on day one.

So I invite you, gentle reader, to try WorldCat Identities out and let us know what you think. And if you find some especially compelling side streets, please leave a comment on this post so we can all retrace your steps.

{Posts relating to WorldCat Identities in various blogs (feel free to add more references via the comments – apologies in advance to those I might have missed): English-language: Baby Boomer Librarian, Catalogablog, DigitalKoans, Family Man Librarian, Household Opera, Library Stuff, Notional Slurry, PersonaNonData, Thinking Out Loud, Tom Keags, Vacuum, Wikimetrics ; French-language: Figoblog, affordance.info ; Italian-language: Fermo 2003 ; Japanese-language: Current Awareness Portal ; Romanian-language: ProLibro. Wikipedia articles incorporating WorldCat Identities links: Bill Clinton, Brad Pitt}

Photo: Doorways in the French Concession area of Shanghai. (c2004 Eric Childress)