Metadata Creation Practices in Digital Repositories and Collections: Schemata, Selection Criteria, and Interoperability, by Jung-ran Park and Yuji Tosaka

This study explores the current state of metadata-creation practices across digital repositories and collections by using data collected from a nationwide survey of mostly cataloging and metadata professionals. Results show that MARC, AACR2, and LCSH are the most widely used metadata schema, content standard, and subject-controlled vocabulary, respectively. Dublin Core (DC) is the second most widely used metadata schema, followed by EAD, MODS, VRA, and TEI. Qualified DC’s wider use vis-à-vis Unqualified DC (40.6 percent versus 25.4 percent) is noteworthy. The leading criteria in selecting metadata and controlled-vocabulary schemata are collection-specific considerations, such as the types of resources, nature of the collection, and needs of primary users and communities. Existing technological infrastructure and staff expertise also are significant factors contributing to the current use of metadata schemata and controlled vocabularies for subject access across distributed digital repositories and collections. Metadata interoperability remains a major challenge. There is a lack of exposure of locally created metadata and metadata guidelines beyond the local environments. Homegrown locally added metadata elements may also hinder metadata interoperability across digital repositories and collections when there is a lack of sharable mechanisms for locally defined extensions and variants.

Batch Loading Collections into DSpace: Using Perl Scripts for Automation and Quality Control, by Maureen P. Walsh

This paper describes batch loading workflows developed for the Knowledge Bank, The Ohio State University’s institutional repository. In the five years since the inception of the repository approximately 80 percent of the items added to the Knowledge Bank, a DSpace repository, have been batch loaded. Most of the batch loads utilized Perl scripts to automate the process of importing metadata and content files. Custom Perl scripts were used to migrate data from spreadsheets or comma-separated values files into the DSpace archive directory format, to build collections and tables of contents, and to provide data quality control. Two projects are described to illustrate the process and workflows.

Authentication and Access: Accommodating Public Users in an Academic World, by Lynne Weber and Peg Lawrence

In the fall of 2004, the Academic Computing Center, a division of the Information Technology Services Department (ITS) at Minnesota State University, Mankato took over responsibility for the computers in the public areas of Memorial Library. For the first time, affiliated Memorial Library users were required to authenticate using a campus username and password, a change that effectively eliminated computer access for anyone not part of the university community. This posed a dilemma for the librarians. Because of its Federal Depository status, the library had a responsibility to provide general access to both print and online government publications for the general public. Furthermore, the library had a long tradition of providing guest access to most library resources, and there was reluctance to abandon the practice. Therefore the librarians worked with ITS to retain a small group of six computers that did not require authentication and were clearly marked for community use, along with several standup, open-access computers on each floor used primarily for searching the library catalog. The additional need to provide computer access to high school students visiting the library for research and instruction led to more discussions with ITS and resulted in a means of generating temporary usernames and passwords through a Web form. These user accommodations were implemented in the library without creating a written policy governing the use of open-access computers.

The Next Generation Library Catalog: A Comparative Study of the OPACs of Koha, Evergreen, and Voyager, by Sharon Q. Yang and Melissa A. Hofmann

Open source has been the center of attention in the library world for the past several years. Koha and Evergreen are the two major open-source integrated library systems (ILSs), and they continue to grow in maturity and popularity. The question remains as to how much we have achieved in open-source development toward the next-generation catalog compared to commercial systems. Little has been written in the library literature to answer this question. This paper intends to answer this question by comparing  the next-generation features of the OPACs of two open-source ILSs (Koha and Evergreen) and one proprietary ILS (Voyager’s WebVoyage).

Are Your Digital Documents Web Friendly?: Making Scanned Documents Web Accessible, by Yongli Zhou

The Internet has greatly changed how library users search and use library resources. Many of them prefer resources available in electronic format over traditional print materials. While many documents are now born digital, many more are only accessible in print and need to be digitized. This paper focuses on how the Colorado State University Libraries creates and optimizes text-based and digitized PDF documents for easy access, downloading, and printing.

Announcing ITAL Preprints

Beginning July 12, 2010, we will post preprints of forthcoming articles at the ITAL Web site. Preprints will be added when available and will be removed upon publication. At this time we have the following:

• Kayla L. Quinney, Sara D. Smith and Quinn Galbraith
  Bridging the Gap: Self-directed Staff Technology Training
• José R. Hilera, Carmen Pagés, J. Javier Martínez, J. Antonio Gutiérrez and Luis de-Marcos
  An Evolutive Process to Convert Glossaries into Ontologies
• A. Malizia, P. Bottoni and S. Levialdi
  Generating Collaborative Systems for Digital Libraries: a Model-Driven Approach
• Marijke Visser and Mary Alice Ball
  The Middle Mile: The Role of the Public Library in Ensuring Access to Broadband

June 2010 issue now online

The table of contents and linked articles for the June issue are at http://www.lita.org/ala/mgrps/divs/lita/ital/292010/2902jun/toc.cfm. It can be accessed by all LITA members.

Editorial Board Thoughts: ITAL 2.0, by Andy Boze

Starting with the September 2008 issue of ITAL we launched ITALica, the ITAL blog at http://ITAL-ica.blogspot.com/, as a pilot. ITALica was conceived as a forum for readers, authors, and editors of ITAL to discuss each issue. For a year and a half we’ve been open for reader feedback, and our authors have been posting to the blog and responding to reader comments. What’s your opinion of ITALica? Is it useful? What could we be doing to enhance its usefulness?

Usability Studies of Faceted Browsing: A Literature Review, by Jody Condit Fagan

Faceted browsing is a common feature of new library catalog interfaces. But to what extent does it improve user performance in searching within today’s library catalog systems? This article reviews the literature for user studies involving faceted browsing and user studies of “next-generation” library catalogs that incorporate faceted browsing. Both the results and the methods of these studies are analyzed by asking, What do we currently know about faceted browsing? How can we design better studies of faceted browsing in library catalogs? The article proposes methodological considerations for practicing librarians and provides examples of goals, tasks, and measurements for user studies of faceted browsing in library catalogs.

Reducing Psychological Resistance to Digital Repositories. by Brian Quinn

The potential value of digital repositories is dependent on the cooperation of scholars to deposit their work. Although many researchers have been resistant to submitting their work, the literature on digital repositories contains very little research on the psychology of resistance. This article looks at the psychological literature on resistance and explores what its implications might be for reducing the resistance of scholars to submitting their work to digital repositories. Psychologists have devised many potentially useful strategies for reducing resistance that might be used to address the problem; this article examines these strategies and how they might be applied.

Web Services and Widgets for Library Information Systems, by Godmar Back and Annette Bailey

As more libraries integrate information from web services to enhance their online public displays, techniques that facilitate this integration are needed. This paper presents a technique for such integration that is based on HTML widgets. We discuss three example systems (Google Book Classes, Tictoclookup, and MAJAX) that implement this technique. These systems can be easily adapted without requiring programming experience or expensive hosting.

TUTORIAL: On the Clouds: A New Way of Computing, by Yan Han

This article introduces cloud computing and discusses the author’s experience “on the clouds.” The author reviews cloud computing services and providers, then presents his experience of running multiple systems (e.g., integrated library systems, content management systems, and repository software). He evaluates costs, discusses advantages, and addresses some issues about cloud computing. Cloud computing fundamentally changes the ways institutions and companies manage their computing needs. Libraries can take advantage of cloud computing to start an IT project with low cost, to manage computing resources cost-effectively, and to explore new computing possibilities.

The New User Environment: The End of Technical Services?, by Bradford Lee Eden

"Technical Services: an obsolete term used to describe the largest component of most library staffs in the twentieth century. That component of the staff was entirely devoted to arcane and mysterious processes involved in selecting, acquiring, cataloging, processing, and otherwise making available to library users physical material containing information content pieces (incops). The processes were complicated, expensive, and time-consuming, and generally served to severely limit direct service to users both by producing records that were difficult to understand and interpret, even by other library staff, and by consuming from 75–80 percent of the library’s financial and personnel resources. In the twenty-first century, the advent of new forms of publication and new techniques for providing universal records and universal access to information content made the organizational structure obsolete. That change in organizational structure, more than any other single factor, is generally credited as being responsible for the dramatic improvement in the quality of library service that has occurred in the first decade of the twenty-first century."

Ignored segregation: inaccessible websites

I wrote my article, "Tending a wild garden..." as a paper while working on my Masters of Library Science. I was taking a class on "Resources and Services for People With Disabilities" and was amazed to learn how much of the Web is inaccessible to persons with visual and other impairments. I also was struggling to grasp the recommendations of the Web Accessibility Initiative and how it would affect my future work designing and maintaining library websites. My paper was a step in that direction.

It is sad that in a country that prides itself on equal rights for all that such an inequity lacks an adequate remedy in law. The current regulations and guidelines have no enforcement "teeth," and the only way to redress this is for persons with disabilities (PWD for short) to sue the worst offenders (e.g. Target).

According to a recent posting on the Accessibility Watch blog,
On 26 January 2010, the Federal IT Council (FITC) in Switzerland (Informatikrat des Bundes – IRB) accepted the changes to P028 Version 2.0 with unanimous consent. As a result of these changes, existing federal websites must meet WCAG 2.0 Level AA by 31 December 2010. New federal websites must meet this conformance level immediately.

Someday the U.S.A. will do better.

March 2010 issue now online

The index and linked articles for the March issue are at http://www.lita.org/ala/mgrps/divs/lita/ital/292010/2901mar/toc.cfm. It can be accessed by all LITA members.

A Partnership for Creating Successful Partnerships, by Carl Grant

When Marc asked me to write this column I eagerly accepted because I feel strongly about libraries leveraging their role to their greater advantage in the rapidly changing information landscape. I see sponsorships and partnerships as an important tool for doing that. However, as noted in Marc’s column in this issue, we’d been having a discussion about the continuing involvement of Ex Libris in the LITA/Ex Libris Student Writing Award. Like many of you, we at Ex Libris are trying to keep our costs low in this challenging economic environment so that we can in turn keep your costs low. Thus we are closely evaluating all expenditures to ensure their cost is justified by the value they return to our organization. I won’t repeat the discussion already outlined by Marc above, but will just note with great pleasure his willingness to not only listen to my concerns, but to try and address them. His invitation to write this column was part of that response, a chance for me to share my thoughts and concerns with you about sponsorships and partnerships and where they need to go in the future.

To do that, I’d like to expand on some of the concepts Marc and I were discussing and talk about how to make sponsorships and partnerships successful. I want to look at what successful ones consist of as well as what types are needed in our profession tomorrow.

Editorial Board Thoughts: Issue Introduction to Student Essays, by Sandra Shores

The papers in this special issue, although covering diverse topics, have in common their authorship by people currently or recently engaged in graduate library studies. It has been many years since I was a library science student—twenty-five in fact. I remember remarking to a future colleague at the time that I found the interview for my first professional job easy, not because the interviewers failed to ask challenging questions, but because I had just graduated. I was passionate about my chosen profession, and my mind was filled from my time at library school with big ideas and the latest theories, techniques, and knowledge of our discipline.

Monitoring Network and Service Availability with Open-Source Software, by T. Michael Silver

Silver describes the implementation of a monitoring system using an open-source software package to improve the availability of services and reduce the response time when troubles occur. He provides a brief overview of the literature available on monitoring library systems, and then describes the implementation of Nagios, an open-source network monitoring system, to monitor a regional library system’s servers and wide area network. Particular attention is paid to using the plug-in architecture to monitor library services effectively. The author includes example displays and configuration files.

Tending a Wild Garden: Library Web Design for Persons with Disabilities, by R. Todd Vandenbark

Nearly one-fifth of Americans have some form of disability, and accessibility guidelines and standards that apply to libraries are complicated, unclear, and difficult to achieve. Understanding how persons with disabilities access Web-based content is critical to accessible design. Recent research supports the use of a database-driven model for library Web development. Existing technologies offer a variety of tools to meet disabled patrons’ needs, and resources exist to assist library professionals in obtaining and evaluating product accessibility information from vendors. Librarians in charge of technology can best serve these patrons by proactively updating and adapting services as assistive technologies improve.

The Path toward Global Interoperability in Cataloging, by Ilana Tolkoff

Libraries began in complete isolation with no uniformity of standards and have grown over time to be ever more interoperable. This paper examines the current steps toward the goal of universal interoperability. These projects aim to reconcile linguistic and organizational obstacles, with a particular focus on subject headings, name authorities, and titles.