a) Athens access management service now available for FirstSearch use in United Kingdom
Libraries in the UK may now access the OCLC FirstSearch service using the Athens access management system. Athens is a nationwide access management service used by higher education, further education and other institutions and libraries in the UK to provide single password sign-on to a wide range of online resources.
"The Athens service enables us to issue every member of the university with a unique user name and password, which are then recognised by several online services - now including FirstSearch," said Marilyn Hird, Information Services Librarian at the University of Durham. "Our users have easy access to an increasing number of databases without the problem of having to memo-rises a series of unrelated user names and passwords. Athens makes life simpler for our users."
Ms Hird said the university can offer Athens-accessible services to staff who are working from home, part-time students who do not live on campus, and distance learners who may be based overseas.
"Now that FirstSearch has implemented Athens, we are very pleased that we have a simple means of extending access to FirstSearch to our offsite users, without needing to disclose lengthy and unmemorable authorisation and password codes," said Ms Hird.
More information about the Athens access management service can be found at http://www.athens.ac.uk/.
b) RLG and OCLC publish paper on future of digital preservation metadata
Collaborative efforts between the Research Libraries Group (RLG) and OCLC Online Computer Library Center have produced a report identifying common goals and approaches to digital preservation metadata.
Preservation metadata for digital objectsÄ a review of the state of the art is a 50-page white paper published by the OCLC/RLG Working Group on Preservation Metadata. The white paper can be found at http://www.oclc.org/digitalpreservation/.
The objective of this international working group is to develop a comprehensive metadata framework applicable to a broad range of digital preservation activity. The paper shares the group's early thinking and exploration with a view to developing the necessary consensus among stakeholders.
"The effectiveness of digital preservation will ultimately depend in large part on the ability of information managers to achieve consensus on standards and best practices relating to the long-term retention of digital objects," the group points out. "In a sense, metadata 'bootstraps' the preservation process, in that it specifies the information necessary to carry a digital object forward over the long term. Ä The development of a consensus on preservation meta-data, even at a high lvel, would represent an important contribution toward the establishment of reliable, interoperable digital archival repositories."
The scope of the white paper includes:
-definition and illustration of preservation metadata for digital objects;
- high-level requirements for a broadly applicable, comprehensive preservation metadata framework;
- the Open Archival Information System (OAIS) reference model, a potential starting for developing the preservation metadata framework;
- review and synthesis of existing preservation metadata approaches, including the work of NEDLIB (the Networked European Deposit Library), the CEDARS project (CURL Exemplars in Digital Archives), the National Library of Australia, and others;
- identification of points of convergence/divergence among existing approaches.
"We have reached a milestone with this review," said Meg Bellinger, head of OCLC's new Digital Collection Management and Preservation business unit and president of Preservation Resources. "By the end of the year we will have built consensus about this type of metadata and be addressing metadata elements and implementation strategies."
RLG program officer Robin Dale agreed: "The group will continue to work to complete its assigned tasks, but this is a big step forward. Having the paper available on the Web for public comment is a real boost to consensus building."
In March 2000, a planning group composed of representatives from the OCLC Office of Research, RLG and Preservation Resources began discussing ways to collaboratively create infrastructures for digital archiving as well as establish best practices and approaches for descriptive and management meta-data needed in long-term retention of digital documents.
c) OCLC users council addresses strategic directions, governance and the library as community portal
OCLC Users Council delegates discussed OCLC strategic directions and governance recommendations on February 11-13 2001 at OCLC in Dublin, Ohio, during the second of three regularly scheduled meetings for the 2000/2001 session.
Larry Alford, OCLC Users Council president and deputy university librarian, Davis Library, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, presided at the meeting, with the theme, the library as portal today.
Featured speaker Glen Holt, director, St. Louis Public Library, spoke about libraries becoming community portals on the Web. Award-winning mystery author Marcia Talley discussed the impact of digital information on publishing.
Dr Holt spoke about the public library as tomorrow's community portal in his presentation, "New site design coming: directions for constructing library portals." He showed examples of some of the best portals he has seen, including business sites. "The marketplace is always ahead of us," he said.
Dr Holt said the St Louis Public Library recently conducted research using some business models on library services valuation. From the findings, the library will continue to improve procedures, service and add value to the library - and to the library portal.
"We have to adopt new approaches in the library's role in the marketplace," said Barbara Gubbin, director, Houston Public Library and member of the OCLC Board of Trustees, in response to Glen Holt's presentation. "We have to figure out ways to keep up as the horizon continues to move further and further away."
Ms Talley, a librarian and former Users Council delegate, recently completed her third novel, Occasion for revenge, to be released in August. In her presentation, "The author and the library in the electronic age," she described the publishing world as 'unsettled.'
She said recent high-profile partnerships announced between publishers and computer companies are evidence of a future of electronic books. Despite the emergence of electronic books and other alternative forms of the novel, she said, "I really believe that if regular, old-fashioned books were not around, someone would have to invent them."
Ms Talley said mid-list authors like her might be the most vulnerable in the current publishing environment because publishers will always invest in best-selling authors, and struggling authors might find their best shot at getting published is in a digital form. "For a struggling author, the light at the end of the tunnel may just turn out to be the glow of a computer screen," she said.
Mr Alford, and Jerry Stephens, Users Council vice president/presidentelect and librarian and director, Mervyn H. Sterne Library, University of Alabama-Birmingham, served as moderators during discussion of proposals from the OCLC Strategic Directions and Governance Advisory Council.
d) Research library leaders from around the world meet at OCLC to discuss "Weaving Libraries into the Web"
Library leaders from 28 countries met in March 2001 at OCLC in Dublin, Ohio, to discuss strategies to make libraries more prominent information sources on the World Wide Web.
Featured speakers at the 19th Annual OCLC International Conference of Research Library Directors included Sam Hill, president and chief executive officer, Helios Consulting; Howard Strauss, manager, Academic Applications, Princeton University; and Jay Jordan, president and chief executive officer, OCLC.
Weaving Libraries into the Web and the Web into Libraries was the theme for this year's event. David F. Kohl, chair, OCLC Research Libraries Advisory Committee, and dean of libraries, University of Cincinnati, led the programme.
In the opening session, Dr. Kohl noted that 50% of the attendees were from outside the United States. "I welcome you," he said, "as part of OCLC's world family."
The 107 conference participants also heard reports from William J. Crowe, chair, OCLC Board of Trustees, and Spencer Librarian, Kenneth Spencer Research Library, University of Kansas, Lawrence, and from OCLC staff.
In his presentation, "Branding the library and the university in an online world," Mr Hill pointed out that 'branding' is nothing new to the marketplace.
He briefly traced the history of branding, suggesting that it began in 200 BC as a maker's mark put on the bottom of a sandal in Syria. From its beginning as a means to show who had created a product, the brand has become something that triggers recognition in people's minds. It is a particularly hot topic in the business world today.
"Libraries need branding," said Mr Hill. "The Internet has pumped a lot of information and information providers out there, but any time there's a new technology the number of companies expands exponentially. Out of all this cacophony on the Internet, some brands will emerge. I think libraries are starting from a better place than anyone else."
"You have to be careful about generic relationships," said Mr Hill, in response to a question about whether to brand a specific library or libraries in general. "Most people make choices at a very specific level. So people tend to generalise from the specific. If you can make people like your library, they'll like libraries in general."
"Web portals are going to change everything about the Web," said Mr Strauss, in his presentation, "A Home Page does not a Portal make."
"The way web pages are built is going to change completely, and the way web pages are used is going to change completely," said Mr Strauss. "Today, when you use the Web, what you see is somebody's home page. Everyone sees
the same institution-centric home page. Web portals are going to change this institution-centric view to a user-centric view."
Instead of everyone seeing the same home page on the Web, there will be a web page, or portal, personalised for each individual, he said. So at an academic institution with 50,000 students, faculty and staff, there will be 50,000 different web portals. "Everybody who interacts with the Web is going to see something tailored to their own particular needs and interests. So a web portal is a web page that is tailored to you - it is user-centric."
It takes a completely different process to build a web portal than it does to build a conventional web page, according to Mr Strauss. Today, an organisation has a group of people who build and design web pages. But to build a user-centric page, one must have access to all sorts of information about a person, and the people who have this information are distributed across the entire university.
"That means we have to do something that is more complicated than any technical challenge you can imagine - we have to get different groups of people to work together," said Mr Strauss. "Web development folks can design the look and feel of these portals; we'll get others to work on some of the personalisation issues; and we'll get someone else to go out and get access to the data. That's why I believe this is not going to be successful unless we do lots and lots of planning."
Mr Jordan presented an update of OCLC activities. He touched on progress in OCLC's international operations, including moving the OCLC Arabic Cataloguing Pilot Project into a production system. He mentioned OCLC's work on preservation and archiving services, including exploring the creation of a co-operative digital object repository. He discussed OCLC research, extending the OCLC co-operative, and other developments.
Mr Jordan announced that OCLC has signed an agreement with BioOne in which OCLC will become the exclusive distributor of BioOne journals outside the United States and Canada.
BioOne is a new web-based aggregation of research in the biological, ecological and environmental sciences that was launched in April 2001. Amigos, a regional service provider, is the distributor for BioOne in the United States and Canada.
Phyllis Spies, vice president, Worldwide Library Services, touched on OCLC's international growth in her presentation, "What will a Global OCLC Co-operative look like?"
"OCLC's global strategy is multi-faceted," said Ms Spies. "We are working toward multiple levels of co-operation - co-operation within regions as well as global co-operation. We want to deepen our relationship with local partners so that they will help develop and tailor systems and services to better meet the needs of libraries in their regions, and most importantly, will also allow those regions of the world to co-operate globally."
Gary Houk, vice president, OCLC Metadata and Content Management Services, and Pat Stevens, director, Product Planning and Strategy, discussed and demonstrated the plan for extending the OCLC co-operative - and for extending WorldCat specifically.
The enhanced version of WorldCat will include a shared knowledge base supported by a set of integrated, web-based tools and services that facilitate contribution, discovery, exchange, delivery and preservation of knowledge objects and shared expertise of participating libraries.
"Within three years, services provided under OCLC's Metadata program will transform OCLC's traditional cataloguing service to a comprehensive metadata creation and management service for librarianships, library users and information partners," said Mr Houk.
Conference participants also attended OCLC briefings on: The Co-operative Online Resource Catalog (CORC); Dewey Decimal System: Knowledge Organisation Tool; and OCLC Digital Collection Management and Preservation.
e) Online course teaches cataloguing of Internet resources
A new web-based cataloguing course designed to teach Internet resource cataloguing skills to new and seasoned cataloguers, paraprofessionals and library school students is now available from the OCLC Institute.
"Cataloguing Internet Resources using MARC 21 and AACR2" was co-operatively developed by three OCLC-affiliated regional networks - Amigos Library Services, NELINET and SOLINET; Steven J. Miller, OCLC Institute consultant, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Golda Meir Library; and the OCLC Institute.
This web-based course provides easy, 24-hour access to an important body of knowledge for libraries today. Designed for self-paced and self-directed study, the course covers current cataloguing rules and MARC fields that are essential for libraries to provide efficient, effective and uniform description and access for selected Internet resources using traditional standards and practices (a module on cataloguing serials in forthcoming).
Users access the course's 28 interactive lessons with a standard web browser. Each lesson contains learning objectives, instructional materials, real-world examples, and quizzes and tests that provide immediate feedback.
All lessons provide references and links to authoritative documentation and standards.
The course covers:
Õ How cataloguing Internet resources compares with monographic cataloguing
Õ How to code MARC leader and control fields
Õ How to record title and statement of responsibility, including title proper, additional title information, statement of responsibility and varying forms of title
Õ How to record edition statements
Õ How to record special characteristics of computer files
Õ How to record date, publisher and dates of publication
Õ How to record series statements
Õ How to record notes that pertain especially to Internet resources
Õ How to record electronic location and access information using the 856
field
Õ How to record main and added entries
Õ How to apply existing experience in assigning subject headings and classification to bibliographic records for Internet resources.
"This course brings together, in a comprehensive yet relatively concise manner, just about all of the information that a cataloguer will need to handle most electronic resources with confidence," said Jay Weitz, consulting database specialist, OCLC Metadata Standards and Quality, who reviewed and critiqued the course during development.
Special discounts are available for multiple registrations of 11 or more, making this course ideal for technical services departments to provide their staff members with training and resources for Internet site cataloguing.
The OCLC Institute promotes the evolution of libraries through advanced education and knowledge exchange. The OCLC Institute conducts educational and consulting programs worldwide.
For further information please contact: Nita Dean, OCLC, 6565 Frantz Road, Dublin, Ohio, USA 43017-3395. E-mail: nita_dean@oclc.org URL: www.oclc.org