SLA Information Technology Division Blog

New Authorities and Vocabularies website from LoC

From an announcement message sent out by Sally McCallum, head of the Network Development and MARC Standards Office:

The Library of Congress has opened its ID.LOC.GOV web service,
Authorities and Vocabularies, with the Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH) as the initial offering.  The primary goal of this service is to enable machines to programmatically access data at the Library of Congress but the web interface also provides simple user access.  We view this service as a step toward exposing and interconnecting vocabulary and thesaurus data via URLs.   For LCSH, we are fortunate to have been able to link terms to a similar service provided in Europe for RAMEAU, a French subject heading vocabulary closely coordinated with LCSH.

We are very interested to get feedback on the uses and usefulness of the service to inform ways that we might enhance it.  (There is a comment form at the site.).  Over the next few months we will also be expanding it to other vocabularies commonly found in standards that the Library supports such as the Thesaurus of Graphic Materials, geographic area, language, and relator codes, and preservation events and roles.

So please go to the site and explore it for yourself at http://id.loc.gov.

SLA Centennial Website Launches

SLA's centennial year is almost here, as the SLA Centennial Website officially launched this week.  The website offers vision messages from SLA leaders past and present, as well as unit histories and reflections.  These stories will be updated frequently, as will news about unit events, contents, and other activities.  We really want the website to be member-focused and encourage you to submit content and ideas to us.  One of the ways you can participate is through adding your suggestions to the "100 lists."  As these lists grow, we'll continue to add new lists throughout the year.

The website also includes information on the SLA Centennial Video Contest.  This is a great opportunity to involve unit members and students and have a chance at big prizes.  Better hurry though--entries for "The SLA Information Professional of Tomorrow" are due on December 15, 2008.

Jott: Mobile messaging

Jott is a free service that allows you to convert your voice into email and text messages from any cell phone.  Currently in public beta, the service allows you to eliminate repetitive calls, send email and text messages, and create reminders to help you remember the important things.  Bloggers may be especially interested because they are no longer limited by the unavailability of their laptop or an Internet connection.  By calling the toll-free number and leaving a voice message, your message is transcribed to text and posted to your blog automatically.   

Pluggd: Skip to the best parts of audio and video files

Pluggd.com, currently in beta, encourages users to skip to the juicy parts of their audio and video files.  Browse the millions of shows available on the site for content that you may be interested in.  Once you have located a file, type in the term that you are looking for within the player search bar.  You'll get a heat map providing you with points where the topic may be covered within the show.  Once you see your matches,  click to start the show at that specific point.  Interested?  Check out the demo here.

Free Group Calls with Lypp

A post on the Read Write blog details a free conference calling service that will launch in September.  Lypp goes beyond the regular conference call by calling the conference participants, thereby removing the usual reasons why people miss conference calls (copying down the wrong pin number, calling at the wrong time or dialing the wrong number, etc.)  If you're interested in participating in the site's private beta deployment, send your email address to: [email protected].

IT Division on Facebook

You already knew about the SLA Group on Facebook, but did you know about the IT Division Facebook Group? The Group was created during the Denver conference. Become a Friend by visiting http://usf.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2426821730 .

My graph is a work of art!

This isn't strictly IT related, but I always enjoy it when I hear of other professions encountering the difficulties with copyright that librarians see on a daily basis.  The Copyfight blog, which is definitely worth checking out if you haven't seen it yet, just made this post regarding the reproduction of scientific figures:

http://copyfight.corante.com/archives/2007/05/01/fair_use_and_scientific_illustration.php

Photographs and artwork are usually considered under the current laws to be individual pieces of work that cannot be wholly reproduced without compensating the original artist/photographer.  Does this also apply to charts and graphs that are merely representations of data?  I'm no lawyer, but I think you could make a pretty good argument that fair use does apply to scientific figures.  Unless you are doing something very artistic with your data display, there is nothing terribly unique about any given scientific figure.  If you can reproduce the underlying data within the bounds of fair use, then it seems like the derivative figure should also be covered.

I suppose this is another one of those cases where easy data transmission has thrown another kink into the chains of copyright law.  Not too long ago (I remember these times and I'm not quite yet 30), it was fairly difficult to accurately reproduce images.  Now all it takes is a screen shot, a decent quality scanner, or a simple right click and "save as" to make a semi-perfect copy of what may be a copyrighted image.  I keep thinking that I'd like copyright law to catch up with the times, but sometimes I prefer the gray areas to what the judges eventually decide.

Internet Librarian 2006

I'm guessing most of you receive this by mail like me but have you looked at the preliminary program of the next Internet Librarian conference in October? Tons of succulent stuff to see and do. And the conference is also offering a podcasting studio for the attendees. More details to come I'm sure.