Google Co-op @ your library

Posted on by jessamyn

There have been a few Custom Search Engines made lately using Google Co-op. Let’s look at a few of them. I did searches for librarians, im, and jessamyn.

LISZEN — library blog search engine. Sexy wiki title list. Works like Google, looks like Google, keeps my settings from Google so I see results in sets of 50, nice! Actually, something weird is happening. If I search for a word like librarians, I only get the top 10 results, Google’s standard results. If I add a refinement by clicking on a link, then I get results 1-50 which includes my custom number of search results. However, there is something weird about the set-up, I can’t see any results after the top ten or so, the rest disappear into what I assume is an I-FRAME and I can’t get to the next page of results or see the nav at the bottom that would take me to the other results. Big trouble. Results seem to be sorted by currency instead of relevance. Results are also returned under the attractive, but large header which means you’re going to do a bit of scrolling. The results refinement is a little clunky. Limiting to “special libraries” just adds the string “more:special_libraries” to the query string, and I also got weird results limiting to academic libraries. The refinements are all just set up like radio buttons so you can only use one of the refinements and the interface is a little counterintuitive. I like the set of blogs represented.

Librarian’s E-Library from ALA, or “Vetted resources on Libraries and Librarianship from the American Library Association (ALA) Library” — I think every time we call something an e-something it’s subtly implying that the normal version of that thing is not electronic. So when we say ebook we are saying if it’s electronic, it’s not a normal book. I think this is wrong thinking perhaps. Their interface is nowhere near as sexy as LISZEN’s but it does seem like they are trying to add some neat widgets like a list of some representative sites and other contributors. The results list is clean, looks just like Google’s with a little touch of red to remind you that you’re searching ALA’s version. Results seem to be sorted by relevance. I didn’t see any blogs represented except for official type blogs, so the results here complement LISZEN’s fairly well.

A few others I saw in the line-up include the ARL Libraries Search, Phil Bradley’s Librarian Weblogs and the Library 2.0 Feed Search

The really great thing about WPopac

Posted on by jessamyn

I’ve been a bit scarce lately. The days are shorter and I’m doing a little less “rah rah library” work and a little more staying warm and insulating the house. I’ve got a few little posts to make, but the main one is this. The thing about Casey’s grant that is so amazing is this.

The revolutionary part of the announcement, however, was that Plymouth State University would use the $50,000 to purchase Library of Congress catalog records and redistribute them free under a Creative Commons Share-Alike license or GNU. OCLC has been the source for catalog records for libraries, and its license restrictions do not permit reuse or distribution. However, catalog records have been shared via Z39.50 for several years without incident.

“Libraries’ online presence is broken. We are more than study halls in the digital age. For too long, libraries have have been coming up with unique solutions for common problems,” Bisson said. “Users are looking for an online presence that serves them in the way they expect.” He said “The intention is to bring together the free or nearly-free services available to the user.

Bisson said Plymouth State University is committed to supporting it, and will be offering it as a free download from its site, likely in the form of sample records plus WordPress with WP-OPAC included. “With nearly 140,000 registered users of Amazon Web Services, it’s time to use common solutions for our unique problems,” Bisson said.

Read it twice if you’re not sure you got it. Think how having that sort of data available to you (or your library, or your open source OPAC) could really, seriously change things.

My friend Casey: rockstar librarian

Posted on by jessamyn

Big big congrats to Casey Bisson. He has received the prestigious Mellon Award for Technology Collaboration for his WPopac project. Casey is down in DC now getting feted and adulated. Nice work Casey! From the press release:

“For years we’ve been talking about the digital divide in terms of access, and we’ve been working hard to put computers and networks into every school and library,” Bisson said. “But those same libraries, and their communities, are invisible to people online. If libraries are to be more than study halls in the Internet age, if they are to continue their role as centers of knowledge in every community, they need to be findable and available online. They need the tools to represent their collections, their services, and the unique history of their communities online. That’s what WPopac does.”

goodbye google answers

Posted on by jessamyn

Google stops accepting questions over at Google Answers. They’ll stop accepting answers by the end of the year. Ten to one they roll out some freebie service a la Yahoo Answers or Askville within the next six months (I have heard through the rumor mill that it may be much sooner than that). Interesting discussion over on MetaFilter about it which briefly compares and contrasts some of the Ask services with library services. I was also interviewed for a short article about Google Answers today on ArsTechnica. It’s a weird sort of power law that if your site comes up high on a Google Search for a topic, and you’re contactable, you wind up talking to more reporters about it.

State Funding for Libraries – It’s Overdue

Posted on by jessamyn

So today I went to a meeting of the Vermont Library Association’s Advocacy Committee. The Advocacy Committee works closely with the Government Relations Committee of VLA to get stuff done on a legislative level. They act and we promote. We work in tandem.

Big news this year is that the VLA is working with the Dept. of Libraries to try to get a small amount of guaranteed state funding for Vermont’s public libraries. Currently funding is 100% local, with the exception of grant programs like LSTA, Gates Foundation and Freeman Foundation money. For most Vermont towns this means getting the budget approved in town meeting every year. Some towns have the library as part of the town government funding and some have a separate line item. Some of the towns I work with have big fights about library funding every year. Some libraries get small increases every year when they need them. In any case, Vermont is one of only six states that has no state level funding for libraries and we are asking the Governor for $1.6 million [pdf] which will give public libraries in the state the equivalent of 10% of their operating costs, or a minimum of $1500.

A concern among some of the libraries is that towns might see the state money as supplanting money the town would have to pay and libraries would actually see no net increase in funding. And, of course, in a state where people are used to being so independent, there are always concerns when money comes from the government (CIPA anyone?).

In any case I’m new to this lobbying and legislating stuff, though I am pretty good at stringing sentences together. If anyone has advice, feel free to leave it in the comments.