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3 Rs of RDA: A Review and Refresher on RDA for Audiovisual Materials
Presentation for the 2015 Church and Synagogue Library Association Conference. This presentation discusses the three Rs of RDA and a review and refresher on RDA for audiovisual materials.
Common Ground: Exploring Compatibilities Between the Linked Data Models of the Library of Congress and OCLC
Since 2011, OCLC researchers have been experimenting with Schema.org as a vehicle for exposing library metadata to Web search engines in a format they seek and understand. Schema.org is sponsored by Bing, Google, Yahoo! and Yandex as a common vocabulary for creating structured data markup on Web pages. OCLC’s experiments led to the 2012 publication of Schema.org metadata elements expressed as linked data on 300 million catalog records accessible from WorldCat.org.1 In 2011, BIBFRAME was launched by the Library of Congress (LC) as an initiative to develop a linked data alternative to MARC, building on the Library’s experience providing linked data access to its authority files. In the past year and a half, OCLC has focused on the tasks related to the use of Schema.org: refining the technical infrastructure and data architecture for at-scale publication of linked data for library resources in the broader Web, and investigating the promise of Schema.org as a common ground between the language of the information-seeking public and professional stewards of bibliographic description. BIBFRAME has focused on publishing additional vocabulary and facilitating implementation and testing. These new developments prompt the need to re-examine the relationship between the LC and OCLC models for library linked data. This document is an executive summary of a more detailed technical analysis that will be released later this year.
Content, Media, Carrier Types for Sound and Moving Image Resources
Handout accompanying a presentation for the 2015 Church and Synagogue Library Association Conference. This handout discusses content, media, carrier types for sound and moving image resources.
Danny the dragon
Children's e-book about Danny the Dragon who loses his fire. He learns and important lesson as he struggles to get it back.
Economics: From the Dismal Science to the Moral Science: The Moral Economics of Kendall P. Cochran
Adam Smith published The Theory of Moral Sentiments in 1759 and established the ethical foundation for The Wealth of Nations (1776) as well as the important role played by custom and fashion in shaping behaviors and outcomes. Kendall P. Cochran believed in Smith’s emphasis on value-driven analysis and seeking solutions to major problems of the day. Cochran believed that economists moved too far in the direction of analysis free of words like ought and should and devoted his career to establishing that economics is a moral science. A recent study by two Harvard professors, Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff, Growth in a Time of Debt (2010), asserted that healthy economic growth and high levels of government debt are incompatible. These conclusions are associated with the austerity movement, which calls for policymakers to reduce government spending in order to reduce the government’s debt and improve long-term growth prospects. The austerity movement has been used to justify the sharp decline in public sector employment that has restrained job growth since the recession of 2007. In 2013, a graduate student named Thomas Herndon discovered an error in the calculations of Reinhart and Rogoff, publishing his findings in a paper co-authored by his professors, called "Does High Public Debt Consistently Stifle Economic Growth? A Critique of Reinhart and Rogoff." These findings call the entire austerity movement into question, causing many to reconsider the current obsession with reducing the government debt during a time of economic stagnation. Cochran would have held a celebration to toast Herndon and his professors for their work, not only for the sake of technical accuracy, but also because the policy prescriptions associated with the austerity movement are misguided and harmful to the unemployed and underemployed during times of economic hardship. Cochran’s articles are significant at this time because he is …
Emulation & Virtualization as Preservation Strategies
Between the two fundamental digital preservation strategies, migration has been strongly favored. Recent developments in emulation frameworks make it possible to deliver emulations to readers via the Web in ways that make them appear as normal components of Web pages. This removes what was the major barrier to deployment of emulation as a preservation strategy. Barriers remain, the two most important are that the tools for creating preserved system images are inadequate, and that the legal basis for delivering emulations is unclear, and where it is clear it is highly restrictive. Both of these raise the cost of building and providing access to a substantial, well curated collection of emulated digital artefacts beyond reach. This book advocates that if the above mentioned barriers can be addressed, emulation will play a much greater role in digital preservation in the coming years. It will provide access to artefacts that migration cannot, and even assist in migration where necessary by allowing the original software to perform it. The evolution of digital artefacts means that current artefacts are more difficult and expensive to collect and preserve than those from the past, and less suitable for migration. This trend is expected to continue. Emulation is not a panacea. Technical, scale and intellectual property difficulties make many current digital artefacts infeasible to emulate. Where feasible, even with better tools and a viable legal framework, emulation is more expensive than migration-based strategies. The most important reason for the failure of current strategies to collect and preserve the majority of their target material is economic; the resources available are inadequate. The bulk of the resources expended on both migration and emulation strategies are for ingest, especially metadata generation and quality assurance. There is a risk that diverting resources to emulation, with its higher per-artefact ingest cost, will exacerbate …
From Wright Field, Ohio, to Hokkaido, Japan: General Curtis E. LeMay's Letters to His Wife Helen, 1941–1945
In 1942, Colonel Curtis E. LeMay and his 305th Bomb Group left Syracuse, New York, bound for England, where they joined the Eighth Air Force and Royal Air Force in war against Germany and her allies. Over the next three years LeMay led American air forces in Europe, India, China, and the Pacific against the Axis powers. His efforts yielded advancement through the chain of command to the rank of Major General in command of the XXIst Bomber Command, the most effective strategic bombing force of the war. LeMay’s activities in World War II are well-documented, but his personal history is less thoroughly recorded. Throughout the war he wrote hundreds of letters to his wife, Helen, and daughter, Jane. They are published for the first time in this volume, weaved together with meticulously researched narrative essays buttressed by both official and unofficial sources and supplemented with extensive footnotes. History remembers “LeMay, the Commander” well. From Wright Field, Ohio, to Hokkaido, Japan, will yield a better understanding of “LeMay, the Man.”
Holy Spirit Episcopal School: A Bilingual School in Tela, Atlántida, Honduras, of Holy Spirit Episcopal Church/ Iglesia Episcopal Espíritu Santo, a Ministry of the Episcopal Diocese of Honduras
Presentation for the 2015 Church and Synagogue Library Association Conference. This presentation discusses Holy Spirit Episcopal School, a bilingual school in Tela, Atlántida, Honduras.
It's all the cat's fault!
Children's e-book about a boy who could not complete his homework because of a certain mischievous cat.Discover what happened to him and see how one thing can lead to another, and another, and another...
Library of Congress: Strong Leadership Needed to Address Serious Information Technology Management Weaknesses
The Library of Congress has established policies and procedures for managing its information technology (IT) resources, but significant weaknesses across several areas have hindered their effectiveness: -Strategic planning: The Library does not have an IT strategic plan that is aligned with the overall agency strategic plan and establishes goals, measures, and strategies. This leaves the Library without a clear direction for its use of IT. -Investment management: Although the Library obligated at least $119 million on IT for fiscal year 2014, it is not effectively managing its investments. To its credit, the Library has established structures for managing IT investments—including a review board and a process for selecting investments. However, the board does not review all key investments, and its roles and responsibilities are not always clearly defined. Additionally, the Library does not have a complete process for tracking its IT spending or an accurate inventory of its assets. For example, while the inventory identifies over 18,000 computers currently in use, officials stated that the Library has fewer than 6,500. Until the Library addresses these weaknesses, its ability to make informed decisions will be impaired. -Information security and privacy: The Library assigned roles and responsibilities and developed policies and procedures for securing its information and systems. However, its implementation of key security and privacy management controls was uneven. For example, the Library's system inventory did not include all key systems. Additionally, the Library did not always fully define and test security controls for its systems, remediate weaknesses in a timely manner, and assess the risks to the privacy of personal information in its systems. Such deficiencies also contributed to weaknesses in technical security controls, putting the Library's systems and information at risk of compromise. -Service management: The Library's Information Technology Services (ITS) division is primarily responsible for providing IT services …
Mapping the Future of Scholarly Publishing
The National Science Communication Institute (nSCI) hosted a conference in late 2013 to explore the broad issue related to scholarly publishing. The Open Science Initiative (OSI) is a working group convened by the National Science Communication Institute (nSCI) in October 2014 to discuss the issues regarding improving open access for the betterment of science and to recommend possible solutions. The following document summarizes the wide range of issues, perspectives and recommendations from this group’s online conversation during November and December 2014 and January 2015. The 112 participants who signed up to participate in this conversation were drawn mostly from the academic, research, and library communities. Most of these 112 were not active in this conversation, but a healthy diversity of key perspectives was still represented. Individual participants may not agree with all of the viewpoints described herein, but participants agree that this document reflects the spirit and content of the conversation.
Near-Death Experiences While Drowning: Dying Is Not the End of Consciousness!
Due to advances in resuscitation and defibrillation practices over the past decades, people are returning from the brink of death in numbers unprecedented in human history. Of the millions of people who survive drowning each year, about 20% report a near-death experience (NDE): a reported memory of profound psychological events that contain certain paranormal, transcendental, and mystical features. NDEs are usually hyperreal and lucid experiences dominated by pleasurable feelings and more rarely dominated by distressed feelings. This book presents a summary of 40 years of research on NDEs. It contains 22 drowning NDE accounts and recommendations for how water safety professionals can use NDE-related information in their work with people they successfully resuscitate.
Office of Scholarly Communication: Scope, Organizational Placement, and Planning in Ten Research Libraries
The phrase “scholarly communication” appears often in the description of library roles and responsibilities, but the function is still new enough that it takes different forms in different institutions. There is no common understanding of where it fits into the library’s organizational structure. This landscape review of offices of scholarly communication grows out of research originally conducted by Ithaka S+R for the Harvard Library. The project was designed to undertake a review of how academic institutions support the scholarly communication function in their libraries and to gather basic information about the issues at some of the largest research intensive university libraries. It finds categorical differences in the vision for the scholarly communications unit and its organizational placement, as well as associated differences in staffing and budget.
Report on the Maturity of the Library’s System Development Life Cycle Processes and Procedures
The System Development Life Cycle (SDLC) process applies to information system development projects ensuring that all functional and user requirements are met by using a structured and standardized process during all phases of a system’s life cycle. Systems developed according to information technology (IT) best practices are more likely to provide secure and reliable long‐term performance. The Office of the Inspector General (OIG) engaged CliftonLarsonAllen’s (CLA’s) to perform an audit of the Library’s SDLC process to assess the maturity of the Library’s current policies and practices and to evaluate the efficiency of Information Technology Services’ (ITS) process for structuring, planning, and controlling the development of the Library’s vital information systems. This included an assessment of ITS’ compliance with the Library’s SDLC policy and the application of generally accepted IT best practices. In its report, CLA identified several weaknesses in the Library’s SDLC process that places the Library at risk of developing IT systems that are not adequately documented and lack cost and performance data needed to properly monitor and make prudent IT investment decisions. By optimizing its current SDLC process, the Library can mitigate these risks while improving efficiency and governance of IT system development.
Taking Stock: Sharing Responsibility for Print Preservation
In "Taking Stock: Sharing Responsibility for Print Preservation," Roger Schonfeld surveys the progress made in the past decade, and warns against the conflation of collaborative print management and improved access to collections with preservation. This issue brief was presented at Preserving America's Print Resources II: A North American Summit in Berkeley, California, on June 25, 2015. The full conference program is available at http://www.crl.edu/events/preserving-americas-print-resources-ii-north-american-summit.
Through the Lenses of Ray Bankston and Don Shugart: Horse Photos from the University of North Texas Libraries
The selected Horse Photos in this book represent samples images produced by the two most prolific equine photographers, Ray Bankston and Don Shugart between 1962 and 2000. While Ray Bankston and Don Shugart traveled extensively, many of their clients, including prominent ranches and prestigious performance horse events, were located in Texas, home of the American Quarter Horse Association, the National Cutting Horse Association, and the American Paint Horse Association. In addition to formal portraits of famous horses and their owners and riders, their photo collections also contain never-before-published informal shots of riders and horse-show exhibitors, as well as those of farms, ranches, rodeo arenas, and performance rings of a bygone era. Where available, the dates when horses were photographed are noted, as well as the names of their owners, riders, trainers, and the ranches and farms that represent them.
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