Karen Cal­houn

meta­data man­age­ment bw (before the web) and aw (after htet web)
bw
– or find­ing library mate­ri­als
– cat­a­log records (well-understood)
– shared coöper­a­tive cat­a­loging systems

aw
– for find­ing all kinds of things
– many types of records and sources
– loosely-coupled meta­data man­age­ment
– mul­ti­ple batch cre­ation and extract

meta­data is now really cool stuff

rec­om­mends O’Reilly’s arti­cle “What is Web 2.0?” and David Weinberger’s book Every­thing Is Mis­cel­la­neous
“the third order of order” — make the biggest pile you can
“include and post­pone” — can be orga­nized over time, some of them will be grass­roots (like Library­Thing), some will be offi­cial (tax­onomies, etc.)
– need them both, but have to pay atten­tion to the less for­mal ones

peo­ple are using meta­data to inter­act and con­tribute, even though they may not know what it is

what would meta­data 2.0 be like?
– not your father’s meta­data
– remix­ing, reuse, mashups
– wth the nec­es­sary rights
– meta­data syn­di­ca­tion
– enabling a rich user expe­ri­ence
– global, group, and local meta­data man­age­ment
– long term vision
– things you can do right now at your library

Ama­zon relent­lessly enhanced meta­data and rede­fined it for the world of books

what is a “full record?“
showed the same record from Libraries Aus­tralia, World­Cat, and Ama­zon to show the dif­fer­ences between a “full record” for each
from a user per­spec­tive, which one is the “full record?” ama­zon
– the horse has left the barn

using meta­data from mul­ti­ple sources
all of this remix­ing has gen­er­ated a high inter­est in copy­right
Cre­ative Com­mons licens­ing has proven to pro­vide an alter­na­tive to full con­trol — it’s a bridge between a world that con­trols every use (“all rights reserved”) and anar­chy where con­tent providers are exposed to exploita­tion
CC lets you pro­tect your work while also allow­ing your con­tent to be remixed

“intel­lec­tual prop­erty man­age­ment” is one of the burn­ing issues of Web 2.0

be where their eyes are; syn­di­cate your meta­data out­wards
OCLC calls this get­ting libraries to “web scale” — get­ting col­lec­tions to show up in as many places as pos­si­ble through this kind of syndication

showed World­Cat Face­book wid­get
– showed how you can share a WC list with peo­ple in FB
makes library col­lec­tions more vis­i­ble and con­nects every­day users the abil­ity to share books in new and excit­ing ways

over­whelm­ingly, users start with an inter­net search engine, not library resources
this doesn’t mean peo­ple are no longer using libraries or library resources, but it does mean they no longer begin with the library web­site
so we have to take our col­lec­tions where the users are

cat­a­log used to be our sun in the galaxy, but now it’s just a planet in the user’s galaxy
the story of the cat­a­log is not over

one library work­ing by itself is not going to make this hap­pen, is not going to get to “web scale“
can’t com­mand a huge amount of atten­tion for just one library
she believes that to keep libraries strong and vibrant in their com­mu­ni­ties, we need to work together to com­mand a much larger pres­ence on the web for library collections

talked about Open World­Cat Part­ner Pro­gram
showed an exam­ple of dri­ving traf­fic from the web to a library-owned title
chose a Ger­man title (since the inter­net and books aren’t just for Eng­lish readers)

we can be con­nected: a new vision for meta­data man­age­ment
data can flow local <–> group <–> global

worldcat.org sta­tis­tics
– num­ber of libraries vis­i­ble through WC and part­ner sites = more than 10,000
(ed. — see my Flickrstream for the rest of this slide)

every­where, the library
anchors for neigh­bor­hoods and com­mu­ni­ties, just as they always have been
wel­com­ing space in the com­mu­nity + great vis­i­bil­ity of the col­lec­tion on the web so that no mat­ter where you start, you can end up at your library

long-term vision
no less than a new age in which an indi­vid­ual library cat­a­log is one node on the web that is attached to many other nodes and the user can tra­verse those nodes eas­ily and con­ve­niently to their library’s col­lec­tions
can retain your inde­pen­dence but be loosely con­nected in Web 2.0-fashion, the same way so many other things are today

what can you do right now?
– take libraries to a wider audi­ence, eg sur­face your col­lec­tions in as many places as you can on the web
– encour­age a Web 2.0 “cul­ture of par­tic­i­pa­tion” in your own com­mu­ni­ties; sup­port dig­i­tal cit­i­zen­ship
– part­ner with muse­ums, his­tor­i­cal soci­eties, cul­tural orga­ni­za­tions, eg to add new online content

push­ing our data out, pulling users in: libraries and course man­age­ment systems

in 2004, 40% of classes used course man­age­ment sys­tems; more now
good: embed a library pres­ence in course sites
bet­ter: cus­tomize RSS feeds to course sites, links to course readings

Amer­i­can Uni­ver­sity has done some great work inte­grat­ing conent into LMS courses using cus­tomized RSS feeds

pub­lic libraries in Canada cre­ated http://mycommunityinfo.ca/
work­ing with the com­mu­nity to index locally-relevant sites
has a “life events” sec­tion (retire­ment, what to do if you lose your pet, going off to col­lege, etc.)

pub­lic libraries in the UK cre­ated The People’s Net­work
was funded by the lot­tery
part­ner­ing with indi­vid­u­als and com­mu­nity groups to cre­ate content

ques­tion: if we spoon­feed the con­tent into the LMS, does that give stu­dents less incen­tive to learn how to do it them­selves
answer: if 2% are start­ing with the library web­site, 98% of them aren’t see­ing this stuff any­way; doing this can drive users back to using your resources and services

ques­tion: what should cat­a­logers be doing dif­fer­ently in terms of their work
answer: they should be embrac­ing many sources of data, reuse it, get it done as quickly and as eas­ily as you can; make sure your cat­a­log is cur­rent — never have a back­log; revamp your skills and this kind of meta­data man­age­ment; learn how to inter­act with your user com­mu­nity; learn how to han­dle spe­cial collections

ques­tion: is there a way for me at my pub­lic library to find out how many links are com­ing back to my cat­a­log from World­Cat?
answer: yes!