USR-Lib » Online libraries

Gmail, Skype now in India’s Crosshairs

admin — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 07:37:26 +0000

After temporarily setting aside its BlackBerry ultimatum, the Indian government has shifted its focus to Gmail and Skype, according to the AFP.

India is apparently taking issue with any communication service that doesn’t give it easy access to data. It has a problem with Google-owned Gmail’s heavy encryption and with the inability to listen in on conversations over VoIP with Skype.

“If a company is providing telecom services in Indian, then all communications must be available to Indian security services,” a government representative told AFP. “If Google or Skype have a component that is not accessible, that will not be possible.”

As of this writing, India had not sent notices to comply with its tight data-availability regulations, but the AFP reports that Google and Skype may receive notices as early as Tuesday. The notes will likely require that both companies provide the Indian government with a way to access e-mails in Gmail and conversations in Skype.

The Indian government made waves recently by targeting Research In Motion’s BlackBerry devices over data accessibility. The government contends that by safeguarding e-mail, instant messaging, and Web browsing, RIM is preventing India from monitoring communications as part of national security.

Last week, RIM stood firm in opposition to India, indicating that it wouldn’t submit to the government’s September 1 deadline. India has now given RIM two months to furnish access to its data or face a ban of its service.

Developing an online Library Management System

admin — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 06:30:45 +0000

Functional components of the project

Following is a list of functionalities of the system. More functionalities that you find appropriate can be added to this list. And, in places where the description of a functionality is not adequate, you can make appropriate assumptions and proceed.

There are registered people in the system (students, faculty, librarian et al). Each one of them may have some exclusive privileges (faculty, for example, could borrow reference books for a short period, while students cannot).

1.A person should be able to

change the password after logging into the system

see the status of the books/journals borrowed/reserved by him and the respective due dates and other relevant details

search for a particular book/journal based on the name of the book/name of the author/subject/etc and also list for books/journals based on the name of the autor/subject etc

reserve a particular book/journal borrowed by others currently

cancel the reservation made earlier for a particular book/journal

see who has borrowed a particular book/journal and when is the due date for the same

place requests for purchasing new books to the library, by giving details about the name of the book, name of the author, publisher etc.

get help about the LiMS on how to use the different features of the system

2.As soon as a reservation is made for a particular book, an automatic mail should be sent to the person who made the reservation about the details. Then, a mail should be sent to people who are having the book currently, stating a reservation has been made on that book.

3.Automatic mails should be sent to the users about the expiry of due dates for the books/journals borrowed by them. An advance notification (say, 4 days before the expiry of the due date) should be sent as well.

4.The librarian should be able to

include new books/journals or remove some books from the inventory

add new users to the system

see the purchase requests for new books and be able to approve/reject the same

Steps to start-off the project

The following steps will be helpful to start off the project.

1.Study and be comfortable with technologies such as Active Server Pages/HTML and SQL server. Some links to these technologies are given in the ‘Guidelines and References’ section of this document

2.Make a database of books/journals

3.Make a list of students/faculty who would be using the system

4.Create the front-page of the system giving a brief description about the system and a login box

5.Create the help-pages of the system in the form of Q&A. This will help you also when implementing the system

6.Create other sub-systems like automatic notification, screens for various functions (like reservation, cancellation of reservation, purchase request for new books, approval page for the librarian etc)

MD3 – The Metadata3 Project

admin — Thu, 13 May 2010 03:56:47 +0000

The MD3 Project takes a different approach to metadata – instead of having to create and implement new systems to handle new types of metadata, why not make new types of metadata work with our current systems?

The MD3 application provides functionality in two main areas: Metadata transformation, and Metadata sharing / retrieval. These two functions work together in a cohesive fashion to allow for a functional, scalable,and sustainable network of reusable metadata.

Metadata Transformation:

The metadata transformation feature of the MD3 application will allow a user to retrieve metadata in any mappable format, and transform that metadata into any other mappable format. Of initial interest is the ability to map any metadata record (of a known format) into a “MARC-like” record, which can then be immediately exported into a library’s integrated system. The term “MARC-like” is used because MARC usually implies using AACR2 conventions, and at this point, it would be impossible to translate the actual values of a field (such as Author) into the proper AACR2 style. However, it is very feasible to map between equivalent fields (such as DC:Creator and the MARC 100 field). The big question here is if libraries find this level of metadata acceptable, at least as a starting point, for entry as records in their ILS’s. My belief is that, given some minimal quality control, these “MARC-like” records could function quite well (as well as minimal MARC records) in an ILS, and could also be converted into “valid” MARC records much more easily and quickly then having to create the records from scratch. One can imagine a librarian finding a useful site on google, and pulling down google’s metadata record into the MD3 application, having it transformed into a “MARC-like” record, and inserted into the catalog, complete with a working 856 field (i.e. hotlink).

The exciting part of the above is that these transformations are not limited to/from MARC records; as new metadata standards are adopted or created, they can be incorporated into the transformation system. So, for instance, if a library ran a GIS service, and used FGDC metadata, they could export OAI (Open Archives Initiative) compatible records that any OAI repository could harvest (or, going back to the original functionality, MARC records that any library could use).

Metadata sharing / retrieval:

Libraries have a long history of sharing metadata, namely, MARC records. Through agencies such as OCLC and RLG, libraries have had central repositories of metadata from which to browse and select. However, as more and more electronic resources become available, and the metadata associated with these resources is presented in a variety of formats (not just MARC), libraries struggle with finding and using appropriate metadata records which will help their customers obtain access to useful information resources. Initiatives such as CORC have attempted to tackle this issue, but to limited success. The MD3 project is another attempt in this arena; for it to succeed, it needs to create a single environment where users can look for metadata. The proposed mechanism for this is a “distributed repository” – this distributed repository will consist of metadata records which are stored by each MD3 application, connected via peer-to-peer (P2P) network technology. One can look at the success of applications such as napster and gnutella to see the potential of such a network when it comes to sharing information. By utilizing a P2P approach, the need for a managed centralized collection is eliminated; instead, the collection is distributed through the users on the network.

In addition to eliminating the need for a centralized, managed repository, the P2P approach also opens the door for a slew of possibilities. One could imagine a mechanism for automating quality-control and link-checking via such a system (someone on the MD3 network updates a record; other MD3 applications discover this, and notify the user of the update; the user can then determine whether the update is valid, and automatically have their metadata record updated as well). There are probably many other potential features out there to be discovered. By combining metadata sharing and metadata transformation, the MD3 application will empower libraries and librarians to utilitize metadata to its fullest extent in providing quality access to information.

How to Take Advantage of Online Libraries

admin — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 07:48:04 +0000

I had no idea that there were so many online libraries until I took a research assistant job. It was a very pleasant surprise. There are so many quality libraries available online to use. You might feel a little overwhelmed with how many resources are literally at your fingertips. The great news is that students can use these online libraries anytime of the day or night.

CONVIENANCE: You remember the days when you had to drive to the library. You hoped that what they had on the shelves would cover your project. Sometimes, you would have to go to another library just to finish getting your research. The online libraries gets rid of all this. You can sit on your laptop in a coffee shop or be at your desk at home and access these libraries.

USER FRIENDLY: One terrific thing about online libraries is how user friendly they are. You don’t have to have a ton of computer skills to get around in them. The majority of them even offer a video or slide show tutorial if you want to learn how to navigate through their books. You no longer have to lug books back and forth to a physical library. You can go to the online library anytime that you have time to both study and have a PC.

HIGHLIGHT FEATURE: I’m sure you remember how mad your teachers would get if you underlined in the books. It was even worse if you whipped out a highlighter and started using it. Would you ever get bad looks! The good news about online libraries is that the majority of them have a highlighting tool. You click a button, highlight your text online and you have marked up the book. You can highlight the important stuff without getting into any trouble!

CITATION FEATURE: The other cool thing about the highlights for the online libraries is that they will remember what you highlighted. You can use the bibliography tool. It will let you choose to get the reference for the highlight. This is so helpful if you use the highlights for quotes in your paper. You don’t have to sit there and figure out how to properly footnote or cite your work. The online library does all that work for you. All you have to do is copy and paste it directly into your paper.

The Semantic Web and Libraries

admin — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 04:19:11 +0000

Few topics cause more concern and confusion in the web community than the Semantic Web. The Semantic Web has been described as a vision of a web that goes beyond billions of linked web documents that lay in wait to be indexed by global search engines, it is a web where the semantics, or meaning, behind the content can be utilized in a meaningful way. To some, this hearkens back to the failed promises of Artificial Intelligence computing and the non-delivery of systems that were supposed to work out the family’s budget and intelligently order groceries for the week. The World Wide Web Consortium’s (W3C) extensive work on the Semantic Web has also been characterized as taking place in a semantic “cloud” that has obscured and detracted from much-needed web standardization efforts.

If you look beyond the hype, the Semantic Web can, in some ways, be seen as a natural progression that comes from building more capabilities into every new web technology. A simple sequence describing the evolution of the Semantic Web might begin with the chaotic stage of early HTML documents, where a minimal set of tags described all manner of content. Along the way, it was realized that it would be helpful to have concepts like “author” described in more meaningful tags than “h1″ or “bold”. XML emerged as the solution to ensure that the syntax and content of documents were consistent and to allow applications better ways of working with groups of documents that are authored for a common purpose, such as finding aids and full text materials marked up in TEI. XML uses constructs called DTDs and Schemas to tightly control the structure of documents and was met with great enthusiasm by web developers who could now share information using tags with labels like “subject” that better reflect the content itself.

XML is arguably a key building block in the Semantic Web but the first real manifestation of the W3C’s semantic work was the publication of the Resource Description Framework (RDF) specification for encoding and sharing metadata. Metadata is sometimes called “data about data” and has been one of the main activities of libraries for several centuries. The premise of RDF is that metadata can be modeled as a set of statements that indicate a piece of information about something else. In RDF parlance, these are called “triples’. For example, the statement “Tim Severin is the creator of the Brendan Voyage” consists of three parts (Tim Severin, Creator, Brendan Voyage) and can be written with RDF in XML as:

Tim Severin

This type of statement is called an assertion and RDF specifies that every part of the assertion can be assigned a URI (Uniform Resource Indicator), much like a URL but different in the sense that it doesn’t have to map to a real web address and can represent concepts (“Creator”), living entities (“Tim Severin”), and anything else in the known and imagined universe, from animals to laundry lists. The “dc” in the example stands for Dublin Core and is associated with a special URI called a namespace(“http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.0/ “) that, in turn, is associated with a set of metadata elements. On its own, this is somewhat useful, but one of the most compelling aspects of RDF is combining elements from different metadata sets. If I had a set of elements specifying a rating system, for example, I could insert a namespace (xmlns) reference that would allow me to insert my rating as shown:

Excellent
Tim Severin

RDF detractors are quick to point out that this type of “mixing and matching” for metadata has been slow to ignite the kind of interest that has followed HTML and XML. While there is no doubt that RDF has not captured as much of the spotlight, it is worth noting that:

RDF is concerned with metadata, which isn’t always appreciated if you don’t have occasion to ponder information retrieval or if you think that keyword indexing can solve most information needs.
The syntax is somewhat convoluted, even compared to HTML and XML, and may be better represented by labeled graphs or other techniques common in Computer Science but often confusing to the novice. Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web, has proposed a much simpler syntax for RDF called Notation 3 which looks something like:

:tim :creator “The Brendan Voyage” .

In addition to the need to appreciate metadata and the syntax issues, another difficulty with the Semantic Web is that RDF is only the first step along the way. Going beyond assertions to supporting any high level of inferences, where a computer can automatically pull together concepts, really requires some understanding of RDF Schemas and Ontology Languages like DAML+OIL. RDF Schema allows concepts to be specified and related, for example, specifying that a “writer” is a type of “creator”. Ontologies are also formal representations of entities and concepts, and languages like DAML+OIL are different from RDF Schema in the sense that they provide even more options for defining relationships. For example, using Notation 3, we could have this relationship:

dc:Creator daml:equivalentTo red:PreparerName .

This would allow a program to “infer” that a real estate agreement identified with the “PreparerName” element from the Real Estate Data (red) Consortium schema is equivalent to “Creator” from Dublin Core using the “equivalentTo” property from DAML+OIL. This means that in addition to titles of monographs that the author I am researching has written, I could also receive documents that represent the author’s activities as a lawyer from a semantically-aware library system.

RDF Schemas and ontology work are crucial to the success of the Semantic Web, and have tended to emerge in subject areas that lend themselves well to defining relationships between concepts, for examples, dictionaries and vocabularies, thesauri, and many branches of science. For libraries, the value of the Semantic Web may have less to do with changes in bibliographic databases than with integrating resources that don’t often show up in traditional cataloguing. Scientific datasets, for example, often don’t have access points that translate well to bibliographic descriptions and bring in a multitude of concepts that may be critical for the resource community the datasets are produced for. DNA sequences, solar wind movements, and other types of scientific data require specialized query languages. RDF holds the promise of wiring in the metadata and schema/ontologies that address the complexity of the semantics of the data rather than trying to cram this level of description into Dublin Core or MARC.

Another intriguing use of Semantic Web activity is to tie together library functions with external systems. For example, expanding on the work of the RDF Calendar initiative to support queries like “find me all the works on XML that are due in the library before I go on vacation”. The Semantic Web could provide the plumbing to allow a system to talk to an individual’s RDF-enabled calendar system to determine the timeframe identified by the use of the term “vacation”. RDF and Semantic Web-based query languages offer a glimpse of how the semantics/vocabularies of different research communities may be combined in supporting information retrieval. It isn’t likely that the results will come close to the early promises of Artificial Intelligence but libraries are in a somewhat unique position to both appreciate the importance of sharing metadata, and understand the benefits of interoperable vocabularies and semantics better than most organizations. The Semantic Web may turn out to be far less audacious in practice than in concept, but it could be an important tool for trying to provide services for the growing stream of diverse web-based content and services that flows by our libraries.