James M. Day – Page 7 – Library Technology Launchpad

Linked Data and Library Vendors

In February we wrote about Linked Data basics and resources but only briefly mentioned its application by library vendors. In this post we’ll look deeper into existing and future library applications and services from major library vendors that implement Linked Data.

OCLC

Before the BIBFRAME model began development, OCLC was already experimenting with Linked Data using the Schema.org model and worked toward expanding its vocabularies to include bibliographic data.

Right now all WorldCat entries include Linked Data. At the bottom of an item record, there is an expandable section headed “Linked Data” which will display the Linked Data schema:

OCLC WorldCat Record Linked Data Example

WorldCat displays the Primary Entry and any Related Entries in several standard formats:

Turtle (text/turtle)
JSON-LD (application/ld+json)
RDF/XML (application/rdf+xml)
N-TRIPLES (text/plain)
HTML+RDFa (text/html)

SirsiDynix

BLUEcloud Visibility was announced in a press release on January 7, 2015. SirsiDynix partnered with Zepheira to create this add-in product to work with SirsiDynix’s existing products. They created a pilot program with Douglas County Libraries.

BLUEcloud Visibility transforms MARC21 records to Linked Data. Some features:

Service to extract your MARC records and transform them into BIBFRAME resources
Records are enhanced with library location data making them geographically relevant to patrons in your area
Creates linked data for your library resources, so search engines can index, link them to other resources, and make them discoverable

Currently only library catalog data is included, but the company plans to extend to electronic resources. Currently there is no real-time item availability. Records will be updated twice a month.

BLUEcloud Visibility Graphic — Graphic from: BLUEcloud Visibility: The Future of Library Data webinar at http://go.sirsidynix.com/BLUEcloud-Visibility-The-Future-of-Library-Data-On-Demand.html

Read more on SirsiDynix’s BLUEcloud Visibility page.

Innovative Interfaces

Innovative Interfaces is an active sponsor of the Libhub Initiative. In August 2015 they published The ILS and Linked Data: A White Paper to explain why the company was adopting Linked Data and answers some questions about it.

On March 16, 2016, Innovative Interfaces and Zepheira announced a partnership to use Zepheira’s Linked Data technology in Innovative’s new Innovative Linked Data service.

“Innovative Linked Data is available immediately as a subscription service for Polaris, Sierra, Millennium, and Virtua library systems” according to the press release.

Ex Libris

In January, Ex Libris announced that the company launched a program to “harness linked data technology in its resource management and discovery solutions” and published the paper Putting Linked Data at the Service of Libraries. The paper details how Ex Libris will enrich products such as their Alma resource management service and Primo discovery service with Linked Data both as a source and a consumer.

Future versions of Alma will ingest BIBFRAME records and enable cataloging librarians to utilize global online authority files such as VIAF for author/creator authority records, Library of Congress Linked Data Subject Headings, and GeoNames geographical place names database.

Ex Libris Primo

The next Primo user interface will include Linked Data features to enhance search results. Linked Data will, of course, increase the exposure of the library’s resources to third-party applications and the Web at-large.

Ex Libris is working with its user groups to form Linked Open Data Special Interest Working Groups to help develop and test Linked Data features in the products mentioned. Collaborating libraries include those at Boston College, University of Oklahoma, and University of Amsterdam.

Library Technology at the ALA 2016 Annual Conference

The ALA 2016 Annual Conference is just about a month away. The conference covers a myriad of library topics and sorting through the program sessions to find the ones focused on library technology takes effort. Let us do the work for you.

Here is our list of programs related to library technology. You’ll find interest groups and sessions on data and metadata, makerspaces, UX, Linked Data, ILS and LMS, websites, mobile apps, emerging technologies, and more. Committee meetings were not included.

For official descriptions, speakers, and final schedule, please check the conference Full Schedule page.

Continue reading “Library Technology at the ALA 2016 Annual Conference”

Introducing Microsoft Academic

The Microsoft Academic search tool is an open discovery service for scholarly scientific works including citation relationships between works, authors, institutions, places, and subject fields.

Microsoft is quietly developing an open discovery service for scholarly scientific works called Microsoft Academic based on Microsoft Research’s Microsoft Academic Graph (MAG). This search database will function much like Web of Science and Scopus in linking paper citations to aid in discovery.

To build the MAG, Bing technology crawls the Web looking for “publisher websites, university repositories, researcher and departmental web pages, etc.” which then get analysed for content and citations. If papers are determined to be scholarly works, they’re added to the MAG.

Microsoft describes the service in their FAQ:

This new service puts a knowledge driven, semantic inference based search and recommendation framework front and center. In addition, a new data structure and graph engine have been developed to facilitate the real-time intent recognition and knowledge serving. One illustrating feature is semantic query suggestions that identify authors, topics, journals, conferences, etc., as you type and offer ways to refine your search based on the data in the underlying academic knowledge graph. You can also refine your results using the filters on the search results page. Since we are built on top of Bing’s web crawling infrastructure, we are able to discover and index new academic papers in a more scalable manner. We now have over 150 million entities and billions of relationships in the Microsoft Academic Graph and growing!

Search results can be filtered by date range, author, affiliation, field of study, journal, and conference. Users can choose to include news items or limit results to scholarly works.

The underlying MAG data is available for download or accessed via the Academic Knowledge API.

It remains to be seen if Microsoft Academic can develop the features to rival Google Scholar. Three features would go a long way towards that goal. The service should allow libraries to register so that search results can contain custom links including institutional authentication such as a proxy URL prefix. Microsoft Academic could add its own altmetrics by gathering results from Bing crawling the Web and social media sites. A simple tool to add citations to Microsoft Word documents would be a way to set Microsoft Academic apart. But its open, non-commercial platform with downloadable data and APIs makes it a search service to watch.

Preview Microsoft Academic at https://academic.microsoft.com.

What’s in the Library Technology Toolkit?

I got a new computer at work last week. Before that happened I backed up my documents and configuration files. I also made a list of my installed applications to be reinstalled on my new system. I thought I’d post the list to show what’s in the computer toolkit of a typical Electronic Services Librarian.

Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2016

Install Office 2016 on your PC

The standard office suite of programs. We just got access to Office 2016 so I am testing it with our ILS (Voyager) and learning its new features to help staff when they upgrade. I’ll also look for any new integration features with SharePoint.

Adobe Master Collection CS6

From this suite, Dreamweaver and Photoshop get used on a regular basis. The main library website uses a content management system, but we still have some standalone sites that are built using individual HTML pages. Dreamweaver is useful for those. Photoshop is used on an almost daily basis to edit photos, graphics for the website and social media, screenshots for instruction, library signs, and more.

Adobe Acrobat X Pro

Acrobat Acrobat Pro is used to create, edit, and convert documents to PDF. Most of the documents we upload to our institutional repository and staff intranet are in PDF form, so this tool is essential.

Notepad++

Sure, you can edit code in Microsoft Notepad, but I prefer Notepad++ for its added benefits. Features include color-coded text based on syntax, collapsible code sections, code autocomplete, enhanced find and replace, and multiple files in tabs (with file history memory).

You can download Notepad++ for free.

Snagit

Snagit Markup Example Snagit allows you to take screenshots and capture video, then mark them up with highlighting, boxes, arrows, speech bubbles, etc. This program is really useful for creating tutorials on using a website or piece of software.

WinSCP

WinSCP is a free FTP program. I use WinSCP to transfer files to various webservers, download export files from our ILS, and upload bibliographic and holdings record files to vendors. It also features a built in PuTTY terminal function to connect to and execute SSH commands on remote servers.

You can download WinSCP for free.

Prish Image Resizer

This simple utility installs to Windows 7 and can batch resize photos right in Windows Explorer. Select photo(s), right-click and select Prish Resizer. The app gives a few options for photo size and location to place the resized files. A similar feature with fewer options is included in Windows 8 and Windows 10.

You can download Prish Image Resizer for free.

Malwarebytes

Malwarebytes is a free anti-malware program that is easy to download and install. I run it periodically on my own computer, but also use it to find and clean up suspected malware on other staff computers. It is one of the utilities I keep on my USB drive when helping staff troubleshoot and fix issues with their computers.

You can download Malwarebytes for free.

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