The end-of-year holidays are behind us and (in the northern parts of the northern hemisphere) the cold days of winter in front of us. What better time to bag it all and head to the warm(er) temperatures of San Diego, California for the ALA Midwinter meeting. I mean — come’on — do you really want to dive into all of that work that piled up over the past week or so? (You say that even more work will pile up if you attend the meeting? Bah, humbug!) If you are going, I wholeheartedly endorse the new ALA Connect-based meeting planner. It is at times frustratingly slow, but chock full of ways to slice-and-dice meeting events that were not possible in the earlier version. (I’m going to put in a suggested enhancement that the iCal file export includes URLs to the meeting listing online; that would be immensely helpful.)

Here is my schedule of events, with links into meeting descriptions on ALA Connect where appropriate. Also don’t forget to check out the What’s Happening (229KB, PDF) document for the inside scoop from the ALA staff to the ALA Council members. If you are interested in getting together with me, let me know and we’ll find a time.

Friday, January 7th

I’m arriving late, but normally I would try to get to the RMG Integrated Library System vendor panel. If the past year is any guide, I think it is going to be another wild year for ILS vendors. I do expect to pop into the LITA Happy Hour at the Uber Lounge of the Se San Diego Hotel.

Saturday, January 8th

After time for lunch, some exhibits and a private meeting I’ll have a choice to make. On the one hand is the regular SPARC/ACRL forum on the topic of Open Access and the changing state of scholarly publishing. The lineup is great: Caroline Sutton, President of the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA);
Wim van der Stelt, Executive Vice President of Corporate Strategy for Springer; and Catriona McCallum, Senior Editor for PLoS Biology and Consulting Editor for PLoS ONE. That sounds like a lively discussion.

On the other hand is the ad hoc Google Books Task Force meeting. The topic is certainly of interest, and news of any movement by the court on the settlement has been too quiet. But I don’t see an agenda for the meeting and I don’t know what will be covered. Fortunately, these two meetings are near each other in the convention center. Maybe I’ll start here and move to the SPARC/ACRL Forum.

Sunday, January 9th

Then I have another tough choice. I could go to the LITA Emerging Technologies Interest Group meeting. There will be a follow-up discussion to the panel from ALA Annual (which unfortunately I missed due to a family illness). Or I could go to the LITA Cloud Computing / Virtualization Interest Group meeting. I can’t find an agenda for this meeting either, but the topic is of interest at work.

Rounding out the day will be the public launch of an experimental service “providing a low cost and easy-to-use Web site service for small and rural public libraries” by the OCLC Innovation Lab.

Monday, January 10th

Tuesday, January 11th

The text was modified to remove a link to https://www3.oclc.org/app/ala_registration/ on January 28th, 2011.

The text was modified to remove a link to http://www.sesandiego.com/ on June 9th, 2011.

This week I sat in on the first of the three “Using RDA: Moving into the Metadata Future” webinars being hosted by ALA. This one was hosted by Karen Coyle with the title New Models of Metadata where she talked about library-specific efforts such asRDA and FRBR as well as the linked data effort in the wider world of information. There was a great deal of concern expressed in the chat window by participants about the future of cataloging, of cataloguers, and of MARC. The latter brought up memories of Roy Tennant‘s “MARC Must Die” declaration. My take away, though, isn’t that MARC is dead as much as MARC is a dead end.

Cover art from 'Library of the Dead' audio book

MARC, not dead yet?

What trips up our community even more, I think, is that we have a tendency to equate this communications format with mental model of how we describe things from a bibliographic point of view. We think of discrete records that describe these things rather than a network (or, more accurately, a graph) of interrelated nodes. This forces us to focus on the textual content of fields and not on the relationships between things. And in doing so, we are not making the best use of our limited efforts to describe the things in our curatorial care.

MARC may not be dead, but it is a dead end.

The year is coming to a close, so that must mean that the midwinter meeting of the American Library Association is right around the corner. Yep, there it is — just two and a half weeks away in Boston. A conference in Boston in January — the rates have got to be cheap. ¹ Given the fast approaching meeting, it is definitely time to strategize about how to tap into the pulse of library-land. Here is my plan so far. If you would like to get together in the spaces between meetings, or at the meetings themselves, let me know!

Friday, January 15th

On Friday afternoon I’ll be at RMG’s 2010 ALA/Midwinter Annual Presidents’ Seminar (2:00pm to 5:00pm; Convention Center Room 162 A/B). Rob McGee’s seminars bring together the heads of library automation companies to talk through the issues of the day. Of late, he has also been giving a platform to the various open source library automation projects that might not have a corporate face, so it usually turns out to be a well-rounded discussion. This has long been a Midwinter highlight for me.

At end the day, I’ll probably be at the LITA Happy Hour (5:00pm to 7:00pm; Capiz Bar of the Renaissance Boston Waterfront Hotel). Note the “probably” — it depends on the arrival schedule of someone I need to meet. If weather messes with late afternoon flights, I’m more likely to be at the happy hour.

Saturday, January 16th

My Saturday morning plans continue with an open meeting of the OCLC Record Use Policy review council (10:30am to noon; Renaissance Boston, Atlantic rooms 1/2). As seen by the reaction to the proposed policy, this group is getting to the heart of OCLC as a cooperative and WorldCat as a pool of bibliographic information. Will we come to a new shared understanding of what membership in OCLC is? Can WorldCat records become the heart of open bibliographic linked data? Am I telegraphing my desires too much? We’ll see…

Saturday afternoon has my firmest commitment of the conference: the LITA JPEG 2000 Interest Group (1:30pm to 3:00pm; Convention Center room 157B). I’m serving as chair of this IG, and although we have no formal programming plans, those that come to the meeting in the past have engaged in interesting and thoughtful conversations about the use of JPEG2000 for presenting still images online and for archiving still and moving pictures. Good stuff.

Saturday afternoon rounds out with either the LITA Standards Interest Group meeting (4:00pm to 5:30pm; Convention Center room 104A/B) or the ACRL Image Resources Interest Group meeting (4:00pm to 5:30pm; Westin Copley Place, Great Republic room). On the one hand, the LITA Standards Interest Group is about the only place NISO is planning a public presentation during Midwinter (from what I understand they are not buying exhibit spaces, so they can’t schedule their normal independent update meeting). On the other hand, the ACRL Image Resources Interest Group is just getting going this year, so I’d like to learn more about what they are planning to do. Tough choice…might default to just staying at the convention center…we’ll see.

Sunday, January 17th

Next planned event is the discussion meeting of the LITA Top Technology Trends Committee (10:30am to noon; Convention Center room 162A/B). A good place to network and soak up information.

Then it is back over to the Westin Waterfront for the OCLC Developer Network Luncheon (noon to 1:30pm; Westin Waterfront, Webster Room). Hobnobbing with geeks and eating cold cut sandwiches. Enough said?

Sunday afternoon is open, and will probably be spent in the exhibit hall.

Monday, January 18th

Flying out Monday late afternoon.

Free Midwinter Airport Shuttle

Free Airport Shuttle-(Proof of hotel reservation in ALA hotel block and sign up required) You will receive a free airport shuttle ticket from the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center to Logan International Airport on Monday, Jan 18, 2010 if you reserve a room in the ALA hotel block though Experient (our registration company). You must sign up for the ride at the shuttle supervisor table located at the shuttle drop-off location at the convention center. You must keep your ticket to present to the bus driver when boarding for the airport. Tickets are not transferable. Exhibitors are included.

Sounds great to me. Now, where am I going to stash my luggage on Monday…

The text was modified to remove a link to http://www.ala.org/ala/conferencesevents/upcoming/midwinter/2010/travel.cfm#free%20shuttle on January 20th, 2011.

The text was modified to remove a link to https://www3.oclc.org/app/ala_registration/ on January 28th, 2011.

Footnotes

1. I wonder when we are going to San Antonio next? That is my favorite place for a midwinter meeting. What?!? According to the future conference schedule we’re not schedule to go back to San Antonio but will be back in Boston for 2016? Bummer!

Ah, it is the beginning of September when thoughts turn to going back to school, the days turn a little colder (in the northern hemisphere) and the smell of lawsuit briefs is in the air. Well, okay — the latter might not be what you expect, but this is a special September, after all. Postponed from May, the deadline for filing comments in the Google Book Search settlement is coming up. And everyone is weighing in (“again” for some) on the details of the settlement. A couple of highlights.

The American Library Association (ALA), the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) and the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) again offered its support for the settlement, if only the court would promise to extend vigorous oversight of pricing and privacy practices of Google and the Books Rights Registry. This came in the form of a supplemental filing to the brief the three organizations filed in May (just prior to the first comment deadline).

Google Search for Open Book Alliance

Lest you think the fun be over too soon, the deadline for filing briefs has been extended yet again from close of business tomorrow (Friday, September 4th, 2009) until 10:00am Tuesday. Apparently, the court’s electronic filing system will be unavailable from 2pm today until 8am on Tuesday the 8th. The main settlement website says explicitly that the deadline for rights holders to opt out of the settlement remains September 4th.

But seriously, if you are looking for thoughtful commentary on the commentary, I recommend James Grimmelmann’s blog, The Laboratorium. Although there isn’t a single page that brings together all of his postings about the Google Book Search settlement, he helpfully prepends “GBS:” to the title of all such postings. If you are looking to participate in the discussion surrounding the settlement, the best place I know of is the interactive version of the settlement notice hosted at The Public Index. There you can comment and watch the comments of others on a section-by-section basis, along with a catalog of documents and links from others regarding the settlement.

The next big event after the filing deadline is the Final Fairness Hearing, scheduled for 10am on October 7, 2009 (or, at least, scheduled for that day and time at the moment). At the fairness hearing, we get to hear from the the court as it considers whether to grant final approval of the Settlement. Somehow, though, I don’t think even that will be close to the final word on the settlement. Stay tuned…

The text was modified to update a link from http://www.wo.ala.org/districtdispatch/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/supplementbrief-FINAL.pdf to http://wo.ala.org/gbs/ala-acrl-arl-brief-to-court/ on January 20th, 2011.

The text was modified to update a link from http://sla.org/ to http://www.sla.org/ on February 11th, 2011.

Today was to be the deadline for objecting to, opting out of, and/or filing briefs with the court on the Google Book Search Settlement. That was the plan, at least, when the preliminary approval statement from the court was issued last year. That deadline changed, and that is part of a recent flurry of activity surrounding the proposed Settlement. This post provides a summary of recent news and an index of documents that you might want to read for more information.

First, Recent News

• The Internet Archive, a recognized library in the State of California, filed a request to intervene as a defendant party to the lawsuit in order to represent the interests of libraries. (Open Content Alliance blog, 17-Apr-2009) The request was subsequently denied. (Court order by Denny Chin, 24-Apr-2009)
• The judge overseeing the Settlement agreed to a request by a coalition of copyright holders — members of the proposed plaintiff class — to postpone the date by which rights holders needed to opt-out of the settlement class or file objections to the settlement itself to September 4th. (Wired Magazine, 27-Apr-2009; Court order by Denny Chin)
• The Justice Department reportedly initiated an inquiry into antitrust implications of the Settlement agreement. This doesn’t mean that the department will oppose the settlement, but it suggests that the department finds some of the arguments being made at least worthy of further inquiry. (New York Times, 28-Apr-2009)
• Google began to respond to some of the criticism directed on its Public Policy Blog (“Google’s views on government, policy and politics”). In this initial post, one of a promised many, the director of product management for Google Book Search describes how the settlement agreement represents expanded access over what the Book Search service currently offers. (Google Public Policy Blog, 29-Apr-2009)
• ALA, ACRL, and ARL filed a brief [22-page PDF] with the court requesting that it provide for strict supervision over the implementation of the agreement, should the court approve it. (DLTJ summary of brief, 4-May-2009; NY Times Bits Blog, 4-May-2009)

Then, More In-depth Information

• Pamela Samuelson for O’Reilly Radar: Legally Speaking: The Dead Souls of the Google Booksearch Settlement — A little over four printed pages giving a very brief overview of the Settlement, describing the class action nature of the lawsuit, the potential for a Google monopoly of the largest digital library of books, and the sticky problem of orphan works. (17-Apr-2009, also scheduled to appear in the July 2009 issue of Communications of the ACM)
• ALA/ARL Settlement Summary: A Guide for the Perplexed: Libraries & the Google Library Project Settlement [PDF]: Twenty-three double-spaced pages that is an early description of the terms of the settlement agreement with a focus on what the settlement, as currently written, could mean for libraries. (13-Nov-2008)
• James Grimmelmann for the American Constitution Society for Law and Policy: The Google Book Search Settlement: Ends, Means, and the Future of Books — Seventeen pages of dense prose in three parts: an analysis of the lawsuit and its settlement, an in-depth examination of the problem of orphan works, and a proposal for handling the resolution of orphan works through a legislative process rather than a judicial process. (April 2009)
• Walt Crawford’s Cites & Insights: “Perspective: The Google Book Search Settlement” — Walt devotes an entire 30-page issue to summation of the issues and pointers to dozens (if not 100) other postings and reports on the Settlement. Highly recommended if you want to dive in and learn all you can about the nature of the settlement and the resulting commentary. (March 2009)

The American Library Association (through the Association’s Washington Office and the Association of College and Research Libraries Division) and the Association of Research Libraries filed a brief [PDF] with the court in support of the Google Book Search Settlement while asking the judge to “exercise vigorous oversight” over details the settlement. In the 22-page amicus¹ brief, the library associations say they do not oppose the settlement, but they do request that the courts provide strict oversight of the activities of Google and the Book Rights Registry. From page 2 of the brief:

The Settlement, therefore, will likely have a significant and lasting impact on libraries and the public, including authors and publishers. But in the absence of competition for the services enabled by the Settlement, this impact may not be entirely positive. The Settlement could compromise fundamental library values such as equity of access to information, patron privacy, and intellectual freedom. In order to mitigate the possible negative effects the Settlement may have on libraries and the public at large, the Library Associations request that this Court vigorously exercise its jurisdiction over the interpretation and implementation of the Settlement.

The brief then describes “concerns with the Settlement, and how the Court’s oversight can ameliorate those concerns.”

The concerns stated in the brief are:

“The Settlement Creates An Essential Facility With Concentrated Control.”

“The Settlement Could Limit Access to the ISD.”

“The Settlement Will Heighten Inequalities Among Libraries.”

“The Settlement Does Not Protect User Privacy.”

“The Settlement Could Limit Intellectual Freedom.”

“The Settlement Could Frustrate the Development of Innovative Services.”

“This Court Can Address The Library Associations’ Concerns Through Rigorous Oversight of the Implementation of the Settlement.”

• Any library or other possible institutional subscriber must have the ability to request this Court to review the pricing of an institutional subscription. The Court’s standard of review should be whether the price meets the economic objectives set forth in the Settlement, i.e., “(1) the realization of revenue at market rates for each Book and license on behalf of Rightsholders and (2) the realization of broad access to the Books by the public, including institutions of higher education.”
• Any entity must have the ability to request this Court to review the Registry’s refusal to license copyrights to books on the same terms available to Google.
• Any class member must have the ability to request this Court to review the procedures by which the Registry selects members of its board of directors, and to evaluate whether the Registry properly considers the interests of all class members in its decision-making.
• Any user must have the ability to request this Court to direct Google to provide the user with a list of books excluded from any of its services for editorial or non-editorial reasons, and an explanation of why it was excluded. Google already must provide the Registry with a list of books excluded for editorial reasons.
• Any researcher must have the ability to request this Court to review the reasonableness of a Research Corpus host site’s refusal to allow the researcher to conduct a research project at the host site.
• Any user must have the ability to request this Court to direct Google and the Registry to disclose their policies for collecting, retaining, disseminating, and protecting personally identifiable information. Additionally, any user must have the ability to request this Court to review whether Google and the Registry are complying with their privacy policies.

Reading it for yourself

Footnotes

1. Latin: “friend”, informal form of amicus curiae of “friend of the court” — Wiktionary

Earlier this week, LITA announced its unconference event: LITACamp. The meeting is scheduled for May 7-8, 2009 at the OCLC Conference Center in Dublin, Ohio.

(Map of conference center and surrounding facilities.)

For those that don’t know, the unconference meeting format is one where the topics are picked by those that show up, and those that show up play an active role in creating the meeting. Other than the two keynotes (Joan Frye Williams and John Blyberg) the schedule of meetings is created by the will of the group present at the time.

Cost varies by standing in LITA/ALA ($150 for LITA members, $210 for ALA members, and $290 for non-ALA members). This registration fee includes a light breakfast on both days and a lunch on Thursday, plus free WiFi at the conference center. The meeting site has more information.

The text was modified to remove a link to http://www.ala.org/ala/mgrps/divs/lita/litaevents/litacamp/index.cfm on July 13th, 2011.

First, kudos to the vendor that runs the ALA Meeting Planner website. They listened to suggestions and now include a way to download your event planner information to your desktop/handheld device using the iCalendar standard. It is available from the “Downloads and Printing” page of your meeting planner homepage. (You’ll need to sign in using the e-mail address listed on your ALA Annual Registration form plus the password “ala”.) Jump down to the end and select the “iCAL” button next to “Personal Itinerary” to download the iCalendar file.

Now comes the unfortunate part — it doesn’t import into Mac iCal. Because of a structural error in the file, it may not import into other applications, either. The problem stems from the fact that the unique identifier (“UID”) for each event is not in fact unique — it is the same for all events. The fix is pretty simple, though: open the .ics iCalendar file in a text editor (“TextEdit” on the Mac, “Notepad” on the PC) and make each UID unique. In my case, the UID line for each event was:

UID:EC9439B1-FF65-11D6-9973-003065F99D04

The text file is somewhat confusing to read (it was meant for a machine to read, after all, not you), but you just have to look for each line that starts with UID. I changed the last number of each entry to a sequential number, so in the end my file looked something like this:

BEGIN:VCALENDAR
PRODID:ALA Personal Itinerary
[...]
BEGIN:VEVENT
CLASS:PUBLIC
CREATED:20080514T021306Z
PRIORITY:5
SEQUENCE:5
DTSTART;TZID=US/Pacific:20080628T103000
DTEND;TZID=US/Pacific:20080628T120000
SUMMARY:Building and Supporting Koha , an open-source ILS
DESCRIPTION: Unit: LITA, Location: Hyatt Regency Orange County, Room: Grand A
UID:EC9439B1-FF65-11D6-9973-003065F99D01
TRANSP:OPAQUE
X-MICROSOFT-CDO-BUSYSTATUS:BUSY
X-MICROSOFT-CDO-IMPORTANCE:1
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
CLASS:PUBLIC
CREATED:20080514T021306Z
PRIORITY:5
SEQUENCE:5
DTSTART;TZID=US/Pacific:20080628T133000
DTEND;TZID=US/Pacific:20080628T153000
SUMMARY:There’s No Catalog Like No Catalog: The Ultimate Debate on the future of the Library Catalog
DESCRIPTION: Unit: LITA, Location: Hyatt Regency Orange County, Room: Grand A
UID:EC9439B1-FF65-11D6-9973-003065F99D02
TRANSP:OPAQUE
X-MICROSOFT-CDO-BUSYSTATUS:BUSY
X-MICROSOFT-CDO-IMPORTANCE:1
END:VEVENT
CLASS:PUBLIC
CREATED:20080514T021306Z
PRIORITY:5
SEQUENCE:5
DTSTART;TZID=US/Pacific:20080629T080000
DTEND;TZID=US/Pacific:20080629T100000
SUMMARY:Archiving in Practice with JPEG2000
DESCRIPTION: Unit: LITA, Location: Anaheim Convention Center, Room: Ballroom E
UID:EC9439B1-FF65-11D6-9973-003065F99D03
TRANSP:OPAQUE
X-MICROSOFT-CDO-BUSYSTATUS:BUSY
X-MICROSOFT-CDO-IMPORTANCE:1
END:VEVENT
END:VCALENDAR

See the differences in the bolded lines? The changes are done; save the file and import it into the Mac iCal program. All of your entries will show up. When you do this, also take note of this advice in the site’s documentation:

Dates are relative to the event’s location, not the device’s.
A meeting at 10am to 11am Pacific Standard Time (PST) will show up in the calendar of an attendee in Washington DC as 1pm to 2pm. When the device’s clock is changed from Eastern Standard Time (EST) to PST, the calendar will automatically shift the appointment to the correct local time of 10am to 11am.

Hope to see you in Anaheim!

Here is a map of official conference hotels and a link to download the KML file into Google Earth.

ALA Midwinter 2008 Hotel KML Location file

I’m somewhat disappointed by the display of the KML file through the Google Maps API. The KML file contains <address> tags, which in the Google Earth desktop application appears to enable the “Directions From” and “Directions To” options. It is entirely possible that I’m missing something in the KML file — it was created by exporting a folder of placemarks from the Google Earth application. The raw KML file, suitable for importing into Google Earth, can be downloaded from the link under the map.

If you have any suggestions for improving the output, let me know.