Thursday Threads: RDA Test Results, Author’s Rights Denied, Future Copyright Scenario

Posted on June 16, 2011 by Peter Murray

This week we got the long-awaited report from the group testing RDA to see if its use would be approved for the major U.S. national libraries. And the answer? An unsatisfying, if predictable, maybe-but-not-yet. This week also brought new examples of the tensions between authors and publishers and libraries. The first example is an author’s story of an attempt to navigate an author’s rights agreement and coming to an insurmountable barrier. The second example tries to look in to the future of teaching and learning in a world where fair use has been dramatically scaled back from the existing status quo, and it is a frightening one.

This is a preview of Thursday Threads: RDA Test Results, Author’s Rights Denied, Future Copyright Scenario. Read the full post (1012 words, 4:03 minutes estimated reading time)

Friday Followups: RDA Revolt and Cable TV vs. Internet Streaming

Posted on December 10, 2010 by Peter Murray

It has been another busy week, and unfortunately Thursday has slipped into Friday. There have been a few updates to earlier Thursday Threads items, so I’m turning this into “Friday Followups” instead. We’ll attempt to get back new items next Thursday, but in the meantime take a look at these updates.

This is a preview of Friday Followups: RDA Revolt and Cable TV vs. Internet Streaming. Read the full post (462 words, 1 image, 1:51 minutes estimated reading time)

Thursday Threads: Open Publishing Alternatives, Open Bibliographic Data, Earn an MBA in Facebook, Unconference Planning

Posted on December 2, 2010 by Peter Murray

The highlights of the past week are around publishing — first with a model proposed by Eric Hellman in which consumers can pool enough money to pay publishers to “set a book free” under a Creative Commons license, then with an announcement by the University of Pittsburgh offering free hosting of open access e-journals. Since we have to be able to describe and find this content, their bibliographic descriptions are important; John Wilkin proposes a model for open access to elements of bibliographic descriptions. Rounding out this week’s topics are a report of a master’s degree program in business using Facebook, and tips for planning an unconference meeting.

This is a preview of Thursday Threads: Open Publishing Alternatives, Open Bibliographic Data, Earn an MBA in Facebook, Unconference Planning. Read the full post (1352 words, 1 image, 5:24 minutes estimated reading time)

Defining Metadata and Making Metadata Accessible

Posted on November 16, 2010 by Peter Murray

In preparation for the last webinar of the three-part series “Using RDA: Moving into the Metadata Future“, I’m reading again Karen Coyle‘s “Library Data in a Modern Context” — the first chapter ofUnderstanding the Semantic Web: Bibliographic Data and Metadata. Right at the start she has a clear and useful definition of this thing we call “metadata.”

This is a preview of Defining Metadata and Making Metadata Accessible. Read the full post (722 words, 2:53 minutes estimated reading time)

Thursday Threads: RDA Revolt, Google Book Search Algorithm, Google Helps Improve Web Servers, Google’s Internet Traffic Hugeness

Posted on November 4, 2010 by Peter Murray

This week is a mostly Google edition of DLTJ Thursday Threads. Below is a high-level overview of Google’s Book Search algorithm, how Google is helping web servers improve the speed at which content loads, and how Google’s internet traffic is growing as a percentage of all internet traffic. But first, there is an uprising on the RDA test records in the WorldCat database.

This is a preview of Thursday Threads: RDA Revolt, Google Book Search Algorithm, Google Helps Improve Web Servers, Google’s Internet Traffic Hugeness. Read the full post (849 words, 1 image, 3:24 minutes estimated reading time)

MARC isn’t Dead, but it is a Dead End

Posted on October 29, 2010 by Peter Murray

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.

This is a preview of MARC isn’t Dead, but it is a Dead End. Read the full post (406 words, 1 image, 1:37 minutes estimated reading time)

RDA-as-Service Only

Posted on June 27, 2010 by Peter Murray

At the ALA Annual Conference exhibit floor I got my first chance to see the RDA Toolkit. RDA is “Resource Description and Access” — the new standard for bibliographic description of content. So this was the first time I really got to look at the RDA Toolkit. (By the way, you can look at it, too, during an open trial access period that runs through the end of August by signing up for it.) What really struck in me the demonstration, though, was that the site is as much a subscription to access the content of the RDA standard as it is a subscription to a delivery service with functions and features that go beyond the text of the standard itself. The text of the standard will be available in printed form, but one cannot get an electronic copy of the standard itself. This strikes me as sort of weird, so this blog post talks through that weirdness feeling.

This is a preview of RDA-as-Service Only. Read the full post (831 words, 2 images, 3:19 minutes estimated reading time)

Disruptive Library Technology Jester

We're Disrupted, We're Librarians, and We're Not Going to Take It Anymore

Tag Archives: Resource Description and Access