Breakout Sessions from NETSL's 2001 Spring Conference
Shaping Up the Web: Subject Access and Other Technical Services Fitness Tips
Digitizing Books for Preservation
Pete Merrill-Oldham (Acme Bookbinding)
Pete Merrill-Oldham, director of marketing and sales at Acme Bookbinding, described his company's approach to applying digital technology to preservation photocopying. (Jon Wingate, of Ridley's Book Bindery, was also to have made a presentation, but was unable to attend.) Acme began to offer preservation photocopying about a dozen years ago; six years ago, the company investigated digital techniques as a means of improving the service. The focus of Acme's digitization is the production of bound, printed reproductions, as compared with preservation on digital media per se. The digital files, however, can be saved, in order to print further copies on demand as needed. Previously, Acme would make single-sided photocopies as preservation masters, with the result that further reproductions would consist of second generation copies. The use of digital files allows for better quality printed reproductions.
Mr. Merrill-Oldham described some of the possibilities for editing page images, including deskewing in order to center page images, adjusting or removing margins if desired, and cleaning up individual page images (for example, to remove underlining). These editing choices are all optional, since marginalia or other markings may have historical or archival value in specific instances. The digital files are available on CD-ROM, in TIFF or PDF formats. In some instances, Acme is creating metadata for digital files, although this is not a primary focus of their effort. A preservation photocopy contract with the Library of Congress includes manual creation of metadata for some items, which can go down to the page level.
Several related issues were addressed during the question and answer session. Acme is exploring publication-on-demand through arrangements with libraries holding the original materials. For example, Georgetown University Law School makes some of its publications available for sale in this way, and receives a portion of the sale price. In response to a question about copyright, Mr. Merrill-Oldham stated that Acme requires its customers to perform their own copyright clearance work. The company does not keep digital files for books still within copyright. If items are disbound, they may be copied, as that conforms to the principle of fair replacement. If items are not disbound, Acme requires proof of copyright clearance from the customer. Responding to another question about reuse of the digital files produced, he emphasized that at this point, the production of a CD-ROM is an intermediate stage, with preservation copies as the final product. The company needs evidence of a definite market for formal archiving of digital files in order to carry that aspect of preservation further.
Reported by
David Miller
Curry College
Vendor-Supplied Bibliographic Records
Karl Fattig (Bowdoin College) and John Harrison (Bates College)
The program, "O Sole Mio! The Three Vendors," presented by Karl Fattig and John Harrison, offered six case studies of situations for which it may be appropriate to purchase records rather than catalog in-house. Their entertaining approach to the subject can be gleaned from the title, but the content was substantial. They gave very clear guidelines for preparing to purchase records, including personnel issues, for loading them into your library's catalog, and for database maintenance. Mr. Harrison and Mr. Fattig covered the use of OCLC's PromptCat service for approval books, vendor-supplied records for special formats, records for leased materials that are only held for a brief time, Marcive records for Government Documents, American Antiquarian Society records for major microform sets, and the OCLC collection sets for netLibrary electronic books. Mr. Fattig has posted their very informative PowerPoint slide show on his Web site at http://www.bowdoin.edu/~kfattig/vendor/. It is well worth a visit.
Reported by
Christina Bellinger
University of New Hampshire
Search Engine Fitness
Presented by Betsy Like (NELINET)
Beginning with the questions of how, when, where, and why you find information on the World Wide Web, Betsy Like of NELINET offered an overview of which search engines are currently the most effective and why. Finding information on the World Wide Web is so difficult because there is no comprehensive indexing, there is no standard language or interface, and there are "niches" of information that are restricted or hidden from search engines.
Search engines can be divided into several different types. General search engines (like Yahoo, Excite & Google) search the entire universe of information; metasearch engines bunch results from several different search engines together; subject specific search engines limit searches to one subject area; file type specific search engines limit searches to a specific file type (e.g. image files); and web page specific search engines search one web site.
Results from different search engines vary because they all index sites in different ways and rank results differently. Most search engines look for keywords in the title, keywords placed in the first few paragraphs of the page, and the frequency of keywords. Some (but not Google, Fast, or Northern Light) look at meta tags on a web page. Some (like Direct Hit) rank by link popularity. Many offer paid placement listings. Some (like Yahoo) have sites reviewed for their directories. Most penalize spamming and some (AltaVista and Google) look for <ALT> HTML tags.
Which search engine is the best? "Well, that depends..." Betsy said. She then presented a sample search done on a variety of search engines and showed some of the differences between them. Her favorite general search engines are Google and Northern Light, her least favorite, WebTop. Among metasearch engines, ProFusion, Mamma, and Vivisimo are the most effective. She pointed out that often one search engine is not sufficient, especially with metasearch engines, and suggested always trying more than one.
Betsy offered suggestions for better searching. Use distinctive words or phrases. Read the search help at your favorite search engine and use its unique features and tools. If you're doing a general search, start with a directory like Yahoo's. For a more specific search, choose a general search engine. Finally, don't forget the hidden web of information in your catalog and databases.
Reported by
Jennifer Bone
Keene (NH) Public Library
View Betsy Like's PowerPoint presentation.
Search Engines
Metasearch Engines
Sources:
Maintaining URLs
Presented by Amy Benson (NELINET)
Amy Benson's lively presentation addressed librarians in all phases of work with web-based library catalogs, making a persuasive case for planning URL maintenance before the number of URLs in the catalog becomes very large. Discovering changed URLs, assessing the changes, and correcting the errors are necessary to provide reliable, continuous access to remote resources via the catalog. The investment of library resources, especially staff time, on a continuing basis, is significant. A good maintenance plan will take into consideration the nature of online resource records in the catalog and available vendor services and software as well.
Amy explained the workings of PURLs (Persistent Uniform Resource Locators). She then described OCLC's bibliographic record notification service and OCLC's CORC notification option for changed URLs. Although each serves a purpose, participants called for a different kind of service - one that would provide change information to all subscribing libraries but without full bibliographic records. Amy described methods for extracting information from MARC records, and converting it to HTML, and a variety of link checking software packages that report "broken" links in the HTML file. So far, the only ILS that offers link checking software is Innovative Millennium System, and users reported that it is confounded by PURLs, but Innovative plans to correct that problem in the next release.
Reported by
Judith E. Stokes
Rhode Island College