With funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to the National Center for State Courts, the Center-hosted Self-Represented Litigation Network, in cooperation with the Legal Services Corporation, is presenting:
A Training on Public Libraries and Access to Justice January 11-12, 2010, Austin, Texas
Information on Application Process
Document aims to facilitate library resource sharing* **
November 11, 2009 – Baltimore, MD – The National Information Standards Organization (NISO) Voting Members have approved a new work item to develop a Recommended Practice related to the physical delivery of library materials. NISO is pleased to announce that the Working Group roster for this project is now finalized, and work will be commencing with a kick-off call of the group on November 18, 2009. Building on the efforts of three recent projects–Moving Mountains, Rethinking Resource Sharing’s Physical Delivery Committee, and the American Library Association’s ASCLA ICANS’ Physical Delivery Discussion Group-the recommended practice document is proposed to include recommendations for: packaging, shipping codes, labeling, acceptable turn-around time, lost or damaged materials handling, package tracking, ergonomic considerations, statistics, sorting, a set of elements to be used for comparison purposes to determine costs,linking of regional and local library carriers, and international delivery.
“A recent study found that 77% of academic libraries participate in state or provincial resource sharing networks above and beyond the 10,000,000 interlibrary loan (ILL) transactions that OCLC annually processes,” Valerie Horton, Executive Director, Colorado Library Consortium (CLiC), who proposed the project and will be serving as co-chair, explained. “The increased volume and costs of library delivery is creating a demand for more information about how to run efficient and effective delivery operations.” Diana Sachs-Silveira, Virtual Reference Manager, Tampa Bay Library Consortium, will be co-chairing the group with Ms. Horton.
The Maryland Authentication Working Group and the print discontinuation of the Maryland Register are both discussed in the following e-mail from Joan M Bellistri, a member of the Working Group:
The AALL Maryland Authentication Working Group has been created. Ideally, this working goup would have been formed before there were any issues in Maryland but we now have the immediate issue of the conversion of the Maryland Register to pdf distribution only. The Working Group is composed of librarians from court, academic and firm libraries and consists of Joanne Colvin, President of LLAM, Janet Camillo, Chair CMCLLD, Pat Behles, Carol Mundorf, Andy Zimmerman, Steve Anderson and myself. We hope to be adding members from the public library government docs community and the academic libraries and the Maryland State Bar Association. The ultimate purpose of the group would be to monitor
Maryland’s legal resources in terms of e-life cycle management (authentication, permanent public access and preservation) and work to educate the appropriate officials about the importance of these issues through the creation of a policy paper as a follow up to the
The e-Newsletter of the American Library Association – November 11, 2009.*
Highlights:
Extending the library’s reach
A Report from the Congressional Research Service (CRS) prepared by R. Eric Petersen, Analyst in American National Government November 5, 2009.*
Summary
Periodically, concerns have been raised about the number and variety of products created to document congressional activity. Other concerns focus on the process for authorizing and distributing printed government documents to Members of Congress, committees, and other officials in the House and Senate. These concerns reflect broader issues related to the manner in which government and private information is created, assembled, distributed, and preserved in light of the emergence of electronic publishing and distribution.
I was delighted to receive the following e-mail this morning from Camilla Tubbs, Chair of the American Association of Law Libraries (AALL) because it illustrates how librarians are working together to provide an improved information environment for the benefit of us all –librarians and non-librarians alike. Clearly these are the types of initiatives that need to be shared with our readers.
Some of the links below may be accessible only to members of AALL but others are potentially valuable research links which should be accessible to all. We encourage readers to comment. Anyone can send comments and provide other feedback directly from this posting. Those who are members of AALL and its Chapters can also subscribe to the Library Advocacy listserv at http://www.aallnet.org/aallwash/aalladvocsubscribe.asp and post directly from there. Without further discussion from me here is Camilla’s e-mail. I am greateful for her permission to publish. David Badertscher.
From: Camilla Tubbs
October 2009
In January 2009, the Library of Congress (LC) contracted with R2 Consulting LLC (R2) “to investigate and describe current approaches to the creation and distribution of MARC records in US and Canadian libraries”, with a primary focus from a primarily economics perspective on “in effect” mapping “the marketplace for cataloging records, including incentives for and barriers to production” of these records. One especially critical aspect of the project has been to assess the degree to which sources other than LC create records in significant quantities, and to determine the extent to which “all roads lead to DLC/DLC.” From a quick read, it appears that RDA and FRBR may it have been afforded sufficient treatment in this Study. Those interested in this topic will certainly want to re-visit the article by Joni Cassidy and members of her staff, AACR Move Over! Here Comes RDA
The following posting includes an excerpt from the Introduction to the resultant Study issued in October 2009 followed by a link for downloading the entire text of the Study.
From the Introduction:
In January 2009, the Library of Congress (LC) contracted with R2 Consulting LLC (R2) to investigate and describe current approaches to the creation and distribution of MARC records in US and Canadian libraries. The primary focus is on the economics of existing practice, in effect mapping the “marketplace” for cataloging records, including incentives for and barriers to production. The underlying question is whether sufficient cataloging capacity exists in North America, and how that capacity is distributed. This project was designed to be descriptive rather than prescriptive, seeking to understand in detail the ways in which cataloging records are produced and distributed, as well as who bears the costs and who realizes the value. We are not attempting to offer solutions or suggest changes, though some have become obvious as we’ve looked at the data. One especially critical aspect of the project has been to assess the degree to which sources other than LC create records in significant quantities, and to determine the extent to which “all roads lead to DLC/DLC.”
The goal is to achieve the best possible understanding of current circumstances and practices:
What is the overall cataloging capacity in North America?
Where does it reside?
What are the primary distribution pathways and channels for sharing records?
How much redundancy is there?
What can we predict about cataloging capacity over the next 5‐10 years?
What is the estimated need/demand? How does this compare with capacity?
What is the relative importance of authority control to libraries?
What is the current reliance by North American Libraries on LC cataloging?
Over the course of six months, R2 employed a number of information‐gathering techniques. First, we developed a social network called Bibliographic Record Production: www.bibrecordproduction.ning.com which ultimately attracted more than 800 members. This forum was used to develop and refine surveys, to assure that we were asking the right questions, and to enlist proportionate representation from all market segments. We performed a literature search as highlighted in the bibliography. We developed two extensive surveys, one for libraries and one for vendors, and worked diligently to assure the participation of school, public, academic and specialized libraries, and of Canadian as well as US libraries. We took special care with the school and small public library markets, as they are often under‐represented in such studies, and rely almost exclusively on records produced by LC, even if those records reach them through other channels. We also interviewed key people by phone, and made a site visit to the Library of Congress.
The surveys were released in April and completed in May 2009. There are a handful of areas where gaps exist, but the response was proportionate to the size of the respective markets, a factor that gives us confidence in the results. Overall, survey responses were strong, with 972 libraries and 70 vendors participating. Results are summarized in sections II and III of the report; Library and Distributor responses respectively. Note that the survey questions themselves can be found online at:
www.r2test.net/pdfs/Survey Questions ‐ Libraries.pdf www.r2test.net/pdfs/Survey Questions ‐ MARC Systems, Distributors, and Service Providers.pdf
Despite many revisions and our best efforts to achieve clarity in the survey questions, it is apparent that a common understanding does not apply across all market segments. There is, in fact, not really a shared understanding of what constitutes a MARC record, since it can serve purposes other than cataloging. In addition, the distinction between creating a record (which ideally occurs once for each title) and distributing a record (where the same record may be provided to multiple customers) proved confusing to some respondents. This has made quantitative comparisons unreliable, and we have introduced them only in cases where the data are relatively unambiguous.
Our primary observations and conclusions are described in the two subsequent sections of the report:
III. The Conflicted Market IV. Economics of Cataloging Continue reading
White Paper by Nelson Reust and Danielle Reust
The authors write: ” Migration to Windows 7 is a future reality for most. With XP approaching its end of life, and many organizations choosing to skip Vista as an interim step, the new Windows 7 release holds the promise of new features and benefits that include added security, improved manageability and enhanced ease of use. Regardless of the starting point, a migration to Windows 7 is a path that holds as many questions and challenges as it does potential rewards. Planning now can ensure a smooth transition in 2010.”
Click here to see the complete paper.
Rick Snow of the National Center for State Courts (NCSC) has just announced that results of the NCSC e-filing survey conducted earlier this year are available at . Also, a brief summary of the findings is available on our Court Technology Bulletin at .
He writes: “We hope you find the results useful. If you have further questions regarding the survey, or would like to respond to the survey for your court or state, please contact Jim McMillan (jmcmillan@ncsc.org) or Rick Snow (rsnow@ncsc.org).”
On October 9, 2009 an Op-Ed article, A LIBRARY TO LAST FOREVER, by Sergey Brin, Co-Founder and President, Technology of Google Inc. was published in the New York Times.in which he discusses Google’s rationale for their book project. For the informaation I am including in this post the two final paragraphs of his article, a link to the article itself, and some randomly selected comments in response to his article. Accoring to Mr. Brin: “Google’s books project is a win-win for authors, publishers and Google, but the real winners are readers, who will have access to an expanded world of books” Others are not so sure.
FINAL TWO PARAGRAPHS:
“In the Insurance Year Book 1880-1881, which I found on Google Books, Cornelius Walford chronicles the destruction of dozens of libraries and millions of books, in the hope that such a record will “impress the necessity of something being done” to preserve them. The famous library at Alexandria burned three times, in 48 B.C., A.D. 273 and A.D. 640, as did the Library of Congress, where a fire in 1851 destroyed two-thirds of the collection.
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