Virtual Dave…Real Blog

Library council named to advise OCLC in development of Web-scale management services

OCLC has named members of a Library Advisory Council that has been put in place to advise OCLC in developing the first Web-scale cooperative library management service.

In April, OCLC announced plans to launch a new service for Web-scale, cooperative library management services—network-level tools for managing library collections through circulation and delivery, print and licensed acquisitions, and license management. These new services will complement existing OCLC Web-scale services, such as cataloging, resource sharing, and integrated discovery.

The Library Advisory Council comprises leaders from the library community who will assist OCLC in creating a service strategy that will meet the needs of libraries across various sectors and geographies. Members of the Library Advisory Council are:

Helene Blowers, Digital Strategy Director, Columbus Metropolitan Library

John Helmer, Executive Director, Orbis Cascade Alliance

Jan Ison, Executive Director, Lincoln Trail Libraries System

R. David Lankes, Associate Professor, Syracuse University

Sarah McHugh, Statewide Projects Librarian, Montana State Library

Mary Piorun, Associate Director, University of Massachusetts Medical Center Library

Tim Rogers, Executive Director, NCLIVE

John Teskey, Director of Libraries, University of New Brunswick

Andrew Pace, OCLC, ex officio

The Library Advisory Council will hold its first meeting following the ALA Annual Conference in Chicago. The Advisory Council will expand soon to include more global representation, and pilot sites for the new Web-scale management services will be announced at the ALA conference.

In some of my presentations I talk about the danger of libraries ignoring massive scale information and the dangers of letting the commercial sector solve the problem. While not massive scale, the following story still highlights the danger and shows that using functions (providing reading materials) to define what you do over a worldview (why you do what you).

It seems that folks who bought and paid for a few books (ironically George Orwell’s Animal Farm and 1984) suddenly found the books missing from their Kindles. Amazon, at the request of the publisher, remotely wiped them. Yup, you thought you bought the book, but instead bought access. While Amazon seems to have credited accounts, it does re-open the whole question of first purchases.

From BoingBoing:

David Pogue. writing in the New York Times, reported that hundreds of customers awoke to find that Amazon remotely deleted books that they’d earlier bought and downloaded. Apparently, the publisher determined that it should not offer those titles, so Amazon logged into Kindles, erased the books, and issued refunds. This was aptly compared to someone sneaking into your house, taking away your books, and leaving a stack of cash on the table.

Also see the New York Times.

“Conversants” Virtual Conference Presentation, ALA Annual Conference 2009, Chicago, IL.

Abstract: The following presentation is a crossover between the Conversatns Converation/Confernece and the ALA Annual Conference.
Slides: http://quartz.syr.edu/rdlankes/Presentations/2009/ConversantsALAVirtual.pdf
Audio: http://quartz.syr.edu/rdlankes/pod/2009/VirtualALA.mp3
Transcript: http://quartz.syr.edu/rdlankes/Presentations/2009/ConvTrns.html

Screencast:

“A Sparrow with a Machine Gun” Lankes, R. David (Spring 2009). netConnect: Data in Context supplement to Library Journal.

http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6650838.html

Here is the Keynote I did for the Conversants Conference/Conversation back in April. It is the same one that has been available through the Ning site, I’m just posting it here since that site is now wrapping up.

They Named the Building After Us: The Library as Conversation from R. David Lankes on Vimeo.

With the online Conversants Conference/Conversation wrapping up, I wanted to make the materials for the keynote generally available. Thanks to all who helped out and participated.

“They Named the Building after Us: The Library as Conversation” Keynote Conversants Conference/Conversation.

Abstract: The mission of librarians is to improve society through facilitating knowledge creation in their communities. Through service, innovation, and leadership librarians facilitate, conversations in schools, communities, colleges, government, businesses, and beyond. It is this act of facilitation of knowledge in partnership with communities that makes a library – not collections, blogs, catalogs, or ivy on walls. This is the central premise of participatory librarianship. This keynote will explore the new role of librarians as a passionate and powerful force focused on the social good. It will present a unifying approach to librarianship that seeks to make sense of Library 2.0 and information commons alike.
Slides: http://quartz.syr.edu/rdlankes/Presentations/2009/ConversantsKeynote.pdf
Audio: http://quartz.syr.edu/rdlankes/pod/2009/ConversantsKeynote.mp3

Screencast:

They Named the Building After Us: The Library as Conversation from R. David Lankes on Vimeo.

“The Death of the Document” Program for Cooperative Cataloging, American Library Association Annual Conference, Chicago, IL.

Abstract: When a book becomes an ebook it looses more than simply its physical binding – it looses hard boundaries that separate the content of the book from its use. Online journals are not simply pictures of a traditional journal on a screen, but rather the foundations of intellectual communities. While today we hold on to terms such as book, journal, magazine and simply affix “e” to them, in truth, these terms of simply metaphors, an echo of an earlier analog reality. Online narratives, theses, and “how-to’s” become living documents bound closer to a multitude of contexts that defy traditional notions of information organization, already strained to the breaking point of scale. What is needed is a new approach to organizing knowledge, one based on context that occurs in the space between artifacts.
Slides: http://quartz.syr.edu/rdlankes/Presentations/2009/SUNYLA.pdf
Audio: http://quartz.syr.edu/rdlankes/pod/2009/PCC.mp3

Screencast:

Here is an awesome graphic visualizing a petabyte from Mozy (http://mozy.com/blog/misc/how-much-is-a-petabyte/). Great for all those of us concerned with massive scale information and librarianship: