The document is a fictional "A Chrismash Carol" that describes the past, present, and future of library data through references to images and articles on the web. It discusses the challenges of mashing up older structured card catalogue data and MARC records, as well as ideas for making library data more open, connected and hackable in the future to engage more users and avoid being isolated from the rest of the web.
4. http://www.flickr.com/photos/68103485@N05/6197933357/
Wednesday, 4 December 13
Structured, but designed to be interpreted by humans
Severely limited mashup potential ... although that doesn’t stop the dedicated masher
Card catalogue - sort of human readable http://www.flickr.com/photos/68103485@N05/6197933357/
10. http://bit.ly/vgeLGB
Wednesday, 4 December 13
We now have the opportunity to share our catalogue card information more quickly than ever
before. While losing any subtleties in it’s interpretation that might have previously been
understood (or not) by the human reader
The 21st Century, schema.org powered card catalogue http://bit.ly/uzmYwx
11. 020
## $a0877790086 :$c$10.00
020
## $z0877790105 (Fabrikoid) :$c$12.00
020
## $a0877790019 (black leather)
$z0877780116 :$c$14.00
020
## $a0877790124 (blue pigskin) :$c$15.00
020
## $z0877790159 (easel binding) :$c$16.00
[Five numbers associated with one catalog record.
Two are valid; one has both a valid and invalid (or
cancelled) form; two are invalid (or cancelled)]
Wednesday, 4 December 13
“Today, I’m turning my attention to a concrete example that drives me absolutely batshit crazy: taking a perfectly good unique-id field (in this case, the ISBN in
the 020) and appending stuff onto the end of it.” Bill Dueber http://robotlibrarian.billdueber.com/isbn-parenthetical-notes-bad-marc-data-1/
MARC can drive you ‘absolutely batshit crazy’ http://bit.ly/fJNqSM
12. Wednesday, 4 December 13
At least our data is more hackable than the card catalogue http://libraryhack.org/
13. Wednesday, 4 December 13
‘Composed’ was a hack I did for a developer competition http://bit.ly/pyDiNx
14. Wednesday, 4 December 13
”What’s about” was a winning entry in the #discodev competition http://bit.ly/l7TEZc
15. Wednesday, 4 December 13
Warwickshire County Council ran ‘Hack Warwickshire’ competition - and the winner was
http://bit.ly/cIavTK
19. SuperMARC
Wednesday, 4 December 13
sadly SuperMARC is a genuine suggestion for the future of bibliographic data
http://bit.ly/nhz6t7
Complex data formats
"1. Record Length.
We'll need to adjust the Leader positions of
00-04, and move it to something much higher.
further out.
Perhaps push bytes 05-23
So we can reserve bytes 00-12 for record length (and
bytes 05-23 become bytes 17-31)
That's one hell of a record.
for that large of a record?
That give you up to 9.999999 TB.
Do you think you have enough content
You can now include the actual printed
book.
"2. Expand the MARC record to have a 4 character numeric tag, starting
with
0001 and continue to 9999.
That too is quite big, many fields
repeated, and more fields to define.
"3. Indicator count.
Oh boy can we define fields.
Again, expand it to 3.
We may not use it, but
let's get rolling.
"4. Subfield code count.
Again, expand it to 3.
You can then tell
the computer that after the "delimiter" ($), you have either a 1 or 2
byte subfield.
I can see us using $aa $ab $ac
(or if you go to 4
character count you could do something like $a-b $d-a or even $a$b
$d$a.
Or even a different delimiter sign as a secondary delimiter."
20. 020
## $a0877790086 :$c$10.00
020
## $z0877790105 (Fabrikoid) :$c$12.00
020
## $a0877790019 (black leather)
$z0877780116 :$c$14.00
020
## $a0877790124 (blue pigskin) :$c$15.00
020
## $z0877790159 (easel binding) :$c$16.00
[Five numbers associated with one catalog record.
Two are valid; one has both a valid and invalid (or
cancelled) form; two are invalid (or cancelled)]
Wednesday, 4 December 13
“Today, I’m turning my attention to a concrete example that drives me absolutely batshit crazy: taking a perfectly good unique-id field (in this case, the ISBN in
the 020) and appending stuff onto the end of it.” Bill Dueber http://robotlibrarian.billdueber.com/isbn-parenthetical-notes-bad-marc-data-1/
21. 0020
### $aa0877790086 :$ac$10.00
0020
### $az0877790105 (Fabrikoid) :$ac$12.00
0020
### $aa0877790019 (black leather)
$az0877780116 :$ac$14.00
0020
### $aa0877790124 (blue pigskin) :$ac$15.00
0020
### $az0877790159 (easel binding) :$ac$16.00
[Five numbers associated with one catalog record.
Two are valid; one has both a valid and invalid (or
cancelled) form; two are invalid (or cancelled)]
Wednesday, 4 December 13
This doesn’t help!
22. The Web
Library data
Wednesday, 4 December 13
Lack of connections, and difficulty of linking library data to the rest of the web means it
always stays in it’s own silo.... leading to
The only way to avoid the Zombie Apocalypse is to follow my advice http://bit.ly/th1ylr
25. Lets face it, buying Bob Cratchitt and his family a turkey
isn’t going to cut it this time
Wednesday, 4 December 13
26. • Clearly license your data (or demand that
others license theirs) for reuse by others
• Engage in discussions on the future of
metadata - with cataloguers, developers and
users
• Look at how engaged users are really using
data
Wednesday, 4 December 13
don’t listen to me, just go read http://bit.ly/vbQIBB
Look at the JISC Guide to Open Bibliographic data
Join the Library of Congress bibframe list, follow tags like #lodlam on twitter
Look at the work @wragge is doing - read stuff like
http://discontents.com.au/words/conference-papers/it%E2%80%99s-all-about-the-stuffcollections-interfaces-power-and-people
http://discontents.com.au/shoebox/digital-humanities/extracting-editorials-1
27. Eat, drink and be
merry, for tomorrow,
we mash
Wednesday, 4 December 13