My how time flies; seems like I just joined Flickr. Still the great, user friendly look and feel (thanks to UI guru George Oates!).
Today, went to the National Book Festival, sponsored by the Library of Congress, bit of a rainy day, but still LC claimed 130,000 people (new record) attended.
I remember the first NBF, held on the grounds of the Capitol (as opposed to the Mall), held on September 8, 2001. This was a small event compared to what it would grow to be.
Today was a rainy day and didn't get to see too much. Spent some time with Paula Dean and Carmen Agra Deedy (also Wilson Kimeli).
This 7,000th Flickr photo is of a woman with official ID taking photos at the 2009 event.
Saturday, September 26, 2009
Saturday, September 19, 2009
Pirates on the Potomac!
Angry Fish : Dr. Seuss
1,000 views! Wow. I'm glad the world has liked this photo.
I didn't realize when I crashed the ALA reception for the 50th anniversary of The Cat in the Hat that this photo of the the Fish popping out of the fishbowl - in the form of a cake - would become one of my most popular photos.
The ALA Midwinter meeting in Seattle was pretty good, but when I ran across the Cat in the Hat party, it was really great. Dr. Seuss' editor was there and they created special drinks, Thing One and Thing Two for the event (basically, they were variations on the Cosmo).
Some of my ALA friends were there and we all received a copy of the 50th anniversary edition of the Cat in the Hat!.
I didn't realize when I crashed the ALA reception for the 50th anniversary of The Cat in the Hat that this photo of the the Fish popping out of the fishbowl - in the form of a cake - would become one of my most popular photos.
The ALA Midwinter meeting in Seattle was pretty good, but when I ran across the Cat in the Hat party, it was really great. Dr. Seuss' editor was there and they created special drinks, Thing One and Thing Two for the event (basically, they were variations on the Cosmo).
Some of my ALA friends were there and we all received a copy of the 50th anniversary edition of the Cat in the Hat!.
Metadata passing in the night: Librarians, taxonomists, and the BHL project
In a recent post on iPhylo, Rod Page comments on the Biodiversity Heritage Library:
I'll gleefully embrace item (a) and and greet (b) with a a mournful shrug of the shoulders that says, "yes, I'm so sorry, we in the library field have failed our users in this regards."
Page goes on to document known metadata problems in the BHL, including this one:
You would think that after 200 years or so, librarians would know the difference between a monograph and a serial? Well, of course we do, but the problem is too often, instead of adhering to standards that meet the common goal of access, libraries have cataloged materials to meet their local users' needs, or to provide access at varying degrees of granularity to meet local standards. This wasn't a problem when all metadata was local, but one we've started to move into large scale, collaborative metadata mashups (such as is the BHL), all those individual aberrations from the standards (as well as the typos, non-standard rule application, etc.) have led not exactly to the "train-wreck" that the Google Book Project is faced with, but maybe something worse, a failure to serve the needs of a key user community of the BHL - taxonomists.
In 2003, my colleagues Tom Garnett and Suzanne Pilsk (Smithsonian Libraries), Anna Weitzman (Smithsonian/Botany Department) and Chris Lyal (Natural History Museum, London), began work on the digitization of the Biologia Centrali-Americana. After working with Anna and Chris for a few months (through numerous meetings in a windowless conference room - Chris on speakerphone), it dawned on the library side of the group that for a 150 plus years, we'd been providing our users with great metadata, the only trouble was, it was nearly useless to them and the jobs they were trying to do. When we would say "author" we meant the author of a bibliographic work; when they said author they meant the describer of a taxon (e.g. Homo sapiens L. - the L is the author, Linnaeus). Library metadata didn't cover this; Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH) might be applied, but were far to broad or general (Frogs -- North America). We were breaking Ranganathan's Law #4 of Library Science: Save the Time of the User.
Of course, part of the problem was we really weren't talking to our users. At the same time that many of the great library thinkers were working (Cutter, Dewey, Ranganathan, Bowker, Poole, etc. - I'm stretching the timeline here, I know!), there were similar life science indexing projects. Charles Davies Sherborn was compiling the Index Animalium (an index to known animal species described 1758 to 1850). Sherborn lists described species as follows:
(note since this is a species index, the name is given species/genus, not the usual genus/species, fyi, this is the dodo, later reclassed as R. cucullatus). Note how bibliographic citation is done: Linnaeus, Syst. Nat., ed 10, 1758. Could you find that a library catalog? Unlikely, taxonomists and librarians were (and are) using totally different rules to describe bibliographic things. Every taxonomist knows that Syst. Nat. is Systema Naturae, but rarely capture all the common abbreviations used in taxonomic literature (of course, taxonomist, being human - mostly at least - they do don't always follow their own rules assiduously, make typos, or just plain whack errors; Sherborn is often very inconsistent in his citations, e.g. sometimes referencing the publications of the United States Exploring Expedition by the individual volume authors and sometimes under Charles Wilkes, commander of the Expedition).
The BHL project has been a great experiment in bringing together librarians, informaticians, taxonomists, and computer scientists. It's great to be in yet another roomful (YAR) of librarians/scientists and hash out these problems. The really great thing is that now were talking to each other, not going our own ways, tending our own gardens, but actually working together to solve these problems and build great projects.
The more I look at BHL the more I think the resource is (a) wonderfully useful and (b) hampered by some dodgy metadata.
I'll gleefully embrace item (a) and and greet (b) with a a mournful shrug of the shoulders that says, "yes, I'm so sorry, we in the library field have failed our users in this regards."
Page goes on to document known metadata problems in the BHL, including this one:
Another issue is that of duplicates. Searching for publications on Rana grahamii, I found items 41040 and 45847. Although one item is treated as a book, and the other as a volume of the journal Records of the Indian Museum, these are the same thing.
You would think that after 200 years or so, librarians would know the difference between a monograph and a serial? Well, of course we do, but the problem is too often, instead of adhering to standards that meet the common goal of access, libraries have cataloged materials to meet their local users' needs, or to provide access at varying degrees of granularity to meet local standards. This wasn't a problem when all metadata was local, but one we've started to move into large scale, collaborative metadata mashups (such as is the BHL), all those individual aberrations from the standards (as well as the typos, non-standard rule application, etc.) have led not exactly to the "train-wreck" that the Google Book Project is faced with, but maybe something worse, a failure to serve the needs of a key user community of the BHL - taxonomists.
In 2003, my colleagues Tom Garnett and Suzanne Pilsk (Smithsonian Libraries), Anna Weitzman (Smithsonian/Botany Department) and Chris Lyal (Natural History Museum, London), began work on the digitization of the Biologia Centrali-Americana. After working with Anna and Chris for a few months (through numerous meetings in a windowless conference room - Chris on speakerphone), it dawned on the library side of the group that for a 150 plus years, we'd been providing our users with great metadata, the only trouble was, it was nearly useless to them and the jobs they were trying to do. When we would say "author" we meant the author of a bibliographic work; when they said author they meant the describer of a taxon (e.g. Homo sapiens L. - the L is the author, Linnaeus). Library metadata didn't cover this; Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH) might be applied, but were far to broad or general (Frogs -- North America). We were breaking Ranganathan's Law #4 of Library Science: Save the Time of the User.
Of course, part of the problem was we really weren't talking to our users. At the same time that many of the great library thinkers were working (Cutter, Dewey, Ranganathan, Bowker, Poole, etc. - I'm stretching the timeline here, I know!), there were similar life science indexing projects. Charles Davies Sherborn was compiling the Index Animalium (an index to known animal species described 1758 to 1850). Sherborn lists described species as follows:
cucullatus Struthio, Linnaeus, Syst. Nat., ed. 10, 1758, 155.—[Didus ineptus, ed. 12.]
(note since this is a species index, the name is given species/genus, not the usual genus/species, fyi, this is the dodo, later reclassed as R. cucullatus). Note how bibliographic citation is done: Linnaeus, Syst. Nat., ed 10, 1758. Could you find that a library catalog? Unlikely, taxonomists and librarians were (and are) using totally different rules to describe bibliographic things. Every taxonomist knows that Syst. Nat. is Systema Naturae, but rarely capture all the common abbreviations used in taxonomic literature (of course, taxonomist, being human - mostly at least - they do don't always follow their own rules assiduously, make typos, or just plain whack errors; Sherborn is often very inconsistent in his citations, e.g. sometimes referencing the publications of the United States Exploring Expedition by the individual volume authors and sometimes under Charles Wilkes, commander of the Expedition).
The BHL project has been a great experiment in bringing together librarians, informaticians, taxonomists, and computer scientists. It's great to be in yet another roomful (YAR) of librarians/scientists and hash out these problems. The really great thing is that now were talking to each other, not going our own ways, tending our own gardens, but actually working together to solve these problems and build great projects.
Friday, September 18, 2009
100,000 views
Wow! I'm amazed ... thank you Flickr-ites. You've now given me over 100,000 views on my photos and photostream.
Glad you've all like the pictures of libraries, airports, food, mold, dripping water, the Washington Monument, YARs (yet another roomful of librarians, scientists, etc.), life at the Smithsonian, conferences, views from airplane windows, life in Washington, flowers, insects, and whatever else hits my fancy.
Cheers!
Here's a a slideshow of my Flicrk photos!
Glad you've all like the pictures of libraries, airports, food, mold, dripping water, the Washington Monument, YARs (yet another roomful of librarians, scientists, etc.), life at the Smithsonian, conferences, views from airplane windows, life in Washington, flowers, insects, and whatever else hits my fancy.
Cheers!
Here's a a slideshow of my Flicrk photos!
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
Dodos and galleons
My interest in dodos (Raphus cucullatus) seems to be spreading. Today I received a copy of Dodo's en galjoenen (Dodos and Galleons by Perry Moree, 2001). It's an interesting looking book about the Dutch ship, Gelderland, and its exploration of Mauritius. Lot's of good information about dodos, including some of the earliest depictions of dodos!
Also included is a music CD by the group Pekel. Pekel, a Dutch folk group, composed songs around some of the narrative from the voyage. The song is "Dodo Song" in two parts, "Meat of the Dodo" and "Dead as a Dodo". The song is sung in English, French and Dutch.
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_vvLO37VeCdS6mROLgAP8d2mJSv3102NQ7py1dIIi56wGc2LflvRuC9qwVnLak5GxivfpxUZYazMpcGEnIAfSNx8Fb1Q5oITLRD7HuhYtXvnZUfDs-Rb1M-s7wUKHZ1VvymKCfo3G0s3VBh1BcTO0Q=s0-d)
Also included is a music CD by the group Pekel. Pekel, a Dutch folk group, composed songs around some of the narrative from the voyage. The song is "Dodo Song" in two parts, "Meat of the Dodo" and "Dead as a Dodo". The song is sung in English, French and Dutch.
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
World Digital Library
I attended a reception at the Library of Congress to honor the World Digital Library. The reception, held in the Members Room at LC (the reading room reserved for members of Congress) was very nice. James Billington (Librarian of Congress - pictured) gave a nice introduction to the project. Member of the Obama administration attended as well as staff from the embassy community.
The highlight was when students from Westlake High School in nearby Charles County, Maryland, demonstrated how there used the WDL in class assignments in the past few months.
I spent a nice time before the speechifying with Ronald Cunningham, Deputy Superintendent of Schools for Charles County discussing the changes that the Internet and digital libraries have brought to the K-12 environment. Mr. Cunningham is clearly a believer in new styles of learning (while keeping the successful lessons - pun intended - from the past!).
An aside, the food at the reception, was quite nice!
The highlight was when students from Westlake High School in nearby Charles County, Maryland, demonstrated how there used the WDL in class assignments in the past few months.
I spent a nice time before the speechifying with Ronald Cunningham, Deputy Superintendent of Schools for Charles County discussing the changes that the Internet and digital libraries have brought to the K-12 environment. Mr. Cunningham is clearly a believer in new styles of learning (while keeping the successful lessons - pun intended - from the past!).
An aside, the food at the reception, was quite nice!
Sunday, September 13, 2009
Saturday, September 12, 2009
Who needs cloud computing?
Oh yeah, the 4 tb NAS came with the same delivery!
Saturday, September 05, 2009
Saturday, August 29, 2009
You've Reached That Star Teddy!
The morning rain in the Washington area had ended and though it was still pretty humid, it wasn't all that hot.
And so, I decided to walk over to Arlington Cemetery to watch the funeral procession of Ted Kennedy. As these things often are, things were delayed and we ended up standing and waiting for nearly 2 hours til the procession arrived.
There was a large crowd and lots of chatter and friendliness. In a nod to technology, people were checking smart phones and texting to find out the status of the procession. The various reporters, security and Secret Service people joined in to chat with the crowd and give status updates.
I got Twitter and Facebook updates from friends at other points along the route.
As the Kennedy Family arrived following the hearse, there was almost a festive atmosphere as they smiled and waved to the crowd.
And so, I decided to walk over to Arlington Cemetery to watch the funeral procession of Ted Kennedy. As these things often are, things were delayed and we ended up standing and waiting for nearly 2 hours til the procession arrived.
There was a large crowd and lots of chatter and friendliness. In a nod to technology, people were checking smart phones and texting to find out the status of the procession. The various reporters, security and Secret Service people joined in to chat with the crowd and give status updates.
I got Twitter and Facebook updates from friends at other points along the route.
As the Kennedy Family arrived following the hearse, there was almost a festive atmosphere as they smiled and waved to the crowd.
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
Edward M. Kennedy (1932-2009)
In 1979 it seemed like a lot of things would be happening to this 60's wannabe college freshman. First off, there were rumors that the Beatles were going to reunite for a benefit concert of some sort (never happened, Paul and Wings played a great set at the Concert for the People of Kampuchea, however).
The other thing was that Camelot would be coming back. Ted Kennedy was going to run for president and take care of all those annoying LBJ-Nixon-Ford-Carter blues we'd been having since 22 November 1963 (or 6 June 1968 or 18 July 1968).
Yup, this was a good time to be a College Democrat!
So when Teddy announced at Faneuil Hall that he'd be running for president (in a hopeless challenge against a sitting president no less!) it was GREAT!
I sure didn't understand "realpolitik" then (if I do know!), but it sure seemed like a good idea. My Economics 101 prof was excited (Kennedy will bring in great minds!); and, being in school in Washington, I joined the Kennedy Campaign. I didn't do much (stuffed envelopes at the National HQ building - a former Cadillac showroom [insert jokes here] - ran in a fundraising raise [I think I still have the tee-shirt]). My now wife (a Mass. native) also worked on the campaign and with a friend did a campaign roadtrip to Pennsylvania. There was a big party after the Penn. primary (Ted won!) at the Cadillac HQ, but Ted never showed up.
Being angry - and VERY NAIVE - when Ted lost the nomination (but gave the great convention speech which probably sealed the Reagan victory) I couldn't vote for Jimmy and ended up voting for John Anderson (who you ask???? aside: ran into Anderson at a movie theater in DC 6 months after the election, "I voted for you" says I, "thanks" says he").
And thus passes Camelot.
(image above, pin from 1960 John Kennedy campaign purchased at 1980 EMK fundraiser)
(remind me to tell you about Jerry Brown sometime!)
The other thing was that Camelot would be coming back. Ted Kennedy was going to run for president and take care of all those annoying LBJ-Nixon-Ford-Carter blues we'd been having since 22 November 1963 (or 6 June 1968 or 18 July 1968).
Yup, this was a good time to be a College Democrat!
So when Teddy announced at Faneuil Hall that he'd be running for president (in a hopeless challenge against a sitting president no less!) it was GREAT!
I sure didn't understand "realpolitik" then (if I do know!), but it sure seemed like a good idea. My Economics 101 prof was excited (Kennedy will bring in great minds!); and, being in school in Washington, I joined the Kennedy Campaign. I didn't do much (stuffed envelopes at the National HQ building - a former Cadillac showroom [insert jokes here] - ran in a fundraising raise [I think I still have the tee-shirt]). My now wife (a Mass. native) also worked on the campaign and with a friend did a campaign roadtrip to Pennsylvania. There was a big party after the Penn. primary (Ted won!) at the Cadillac HQ, but Ted never showed up.
Being angry - and VERY NAIVE - when Ted lost the nomination (but gave the great convention speech which probably sealed the Reagan victory) I couldn't vote for Jimmy and ended up voting for John Anderson (who you ask???? aside: ran into Anderson at a movie theater in DC 6 months after the election, "I voted for you" says I, "thanks" says he").
And thus passes Camelot.
(image above, pin from 1960 John Kennedy campaign purchased at 1980 EMK fundraiser)
(remind me to tell you about Jerry Brown sometime!)
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