Digital Commons Network^™

Open Records, Open Possibilities, John Mark Ockerbloom

John Mark Ockerbloom

Slides and prepared remarks for an ALA panel discussion on sharing bibliographic records and OCLC's proposed WorldCat policy.

I give some examples of useful innovations that can advance the mission of libraries when records are openly shared, and argue that more restrictive policies like OCLC's proposal can cost the library community dearly in lost opportunities. I show how the open source community has alternative ways to license work openly, and to cover costs. Finally, I argue that, even if WorldCat is not prepared to open access to all its bibliographic records, the members of the cooperative should be empowered to …

Opening The Ils For Discovery: The Digital Library Federation’S Ils-Discovery Interface Recommendations, John Mark Ockerbloom

John Mark Ockerbloom

Slides for my ALA talk, giving an overview of the DLF's ILD-discovery interface recommendations, and how they are and can be used to enable a richer environment of information discovery applications across a wide variety of ILS's and other library information bases.

Watching Our Backs: Community Verification Of Digital Preservation Systems, John Mark Ockerbloom

John Mark Ockerbloom

Librarians and faculty agree that information preservation is one of the essential roles of libraries. Yet, as the information we manage increasingly becomes digital, we have to rely on new methods of preserving this information that have not been fully tested. While developing and auditing for best practices is important, we must also verify that preservation systems actually perform as we hope they will, preferably long before we have to fall back on them.

In this talk, I will show ways in which this verification can be done now, by the community, with reasonable cost and demonstrable efficacy. Specifically, I …

High Quality Discovery In A Web 2.0 World: Architectures For Next Generation Catalogs, John Mark Ockerbloom

John Mark Ockerbloom

Issues of information and systems architecture underly many of the current debates over the future of cataloging. This talk discusses some ways in which the architecture of the catalog is being redesigned to combine the rich information architecture of library metadata with the robust systems architecture of many Web-based discovery systems. I will show "subject map" discovery systems that better exploit the relationships in complex ontologies like LCSH, and discuss a Digital Library Federation initiative to promote standards supporting interoperability between discovery systems and ILS data and services. I will also touch on the role of networked architectures in improving …

Periodical Use In A University Music Library: A Citation Study Of Theses And Dissertations Submitted To The Indiana University School Of Music From 1975-1980, Richard Griscom

Richard Griscom

In an effort to measure in-house use of music periodicals, a citation study based on bibliographies in theses and dissertations was conducted at the Indiana University Music Library. A total of 256 titles were cited, but only 30% were cited more than once. While the periodical literature cited by musicologists has a low rate of obsolescence, the periodicals cited by theorists and educators becomes obsolete at a rapid rate, making the rate of obsolescence for the field as a whole, fairly high, unlike other subject areas in the humanities.