Conan the Librarian

Hockey Night in Toronto II

2005-12-05T19:35:00.000-05:00

Ah, the gods must be smiling on me. Not one but TWO Leaf games this year! This time, the Leafs took on the San Jose Sharks, their first Western Conference opponent of the year. I went with my friend Andrew, on his Dad's season tickets, something we've been doing together since we were 10 or 12 years old. The Leafs started out well, led 3-1 after the first ten minutes. Then, they disappeared for the next forty. A valiant charge was made at the end but it was not to be. San Jose (with newly acquired Joe Thornton in the lineup) had won 5-4.

It was supposed to be an historic night on two occassions. If the Leafs had won, Ed Belfour would have moved past Terry Sawchuk into 2nd place on the all-time NHL list for goaltender wins. Patrick Roy is miles ahead of both of them in first. Alas, it was not to be. BUT, Mats Sundin's assist on Darcy Tucker's first period goal gave him 769 points as a Maple Leaf and moved him past countryman Borje Salming into 3rd place on the franchise's all-time points list. Sundin now trails Dave Keon and Darryl Sittler. So, we witnessed a bit of history after all. However, the Maple Leafs didn't bother to announce this during the game. How weird is that? Maybe Sundin will pull a Terrel Owens and leave the organization on behalf of their "lack of class". It could happen.

Hockey Night in Toronto

2005-11-16T20:37:00.000-05:00

Last night I went to the Leafs game. As a Leafs fan, I was understandably excited. These opportunities are few and far between. As a bonus the Leafs were playing the New York Rangers (a fellow Original Six franchise) and for once, the Rangers were actually playing well. The game lulled at times but provided enough entertainment and near misses to keep me interested. Bryan McCabe's two power-play goals and Ed Belfour's solid goaltending provided the Leafs with a well deserved 2-1 victory. But this is more than a mere recap. As good as the game was, it was the person sitting two rows ahead of me which provided the greater interest.

As Danielle and I took our seats we noticed a large family contingent worm their way into the seats surrounding us - all fifteen of them. Nothing seemed unusual at first until, out of the corner of my eye, I noticed him immediately. I'd seen his face on tv so many times that there was no way I was mistaken. Steve Moore, none other than the most famous victim in hockey history, was sitting right in front of us. Moore seemed to have recovered from his broken vertabrae, cracked ribs, and on-ice concussion, which he received courtesy of Todd Bertuzzi. Bertuzzi's cowardly cheap shot during the last full season is a black mark on hockey. It makes me physically sick to know that he'll be a Canadian Olympian in Turin. Gretzky could have done the right thing and dismissed Bertuzzi and his thuggish ways but seems to think that Bertuzzi's bruising presence in front of the net is necessary to win a tournament dominated by speed and skill. Moore on the other hand, may never play again. I refrained from talking to him because I figured that he'd heard enough of the incident. But I wanted to.

Live Review: Kathleen Edwards with Joel Plaskett at the Phoenix

2005-11-14T14:30:00.000-05:00

It was actually hailing as I made my way to the Phoenix last week to catch Kathleen Edwards. A friend had called me out of the blue with the offer of going and since I'd never seen her play before, I figured why not. Besides, I own both of her albums and enjoy her take on the folky-country-rock sound. Opener Joel Plaskett (minus the Emergency) hit the stage with none other than his father on acoustic guitar. He played a low maintenance set which highlighted the quieter tracks off of his excellent LaDeDa disc. Even his more rockin' songs like "Natural Disaster" and "True Patriot Love" were stripped down and given the acoustic treatment with powerful results. Not to be outdone, Kathleen Edwards took the stage after being introduced by none other than TSN's (and ex-HNIC) Dave Hodge and broke right into "In State", the first track off of her most recent album Back To Me. Over the course of the evening, Ms. Edwards directed her excellent band through the prime cuts of her recorded output including "Six o'Clock News", "Summerlong", "Mercury", and "Copied Keys". During the encore, Edwards introduced a song she had written for Alicia Ross, the young woman from the north of Toronto who went missing towards the end of summer. In terms of songcraft, it was a moving tribute. It was made even more so by Edwards' visable emotion while struggling to get through the second verse. That was the first time I had ever seen a performer cry in front of an audience. To say it was either heartfelt or touching is simply not enough. After lamenting, "Why can't I write happy songs?" she closed off the evening with an excellent rendition of the Byrds/Gram Parsons classic "One Hundreds Years Fron Now". With our emotions spent, we headed back out into the hail.

Article Review: The Future of Digital Libraries

2005-11-10T19:18:00.000-05:00

The July/August 2005 edition of D-Lib magazine celebrated the publication’s tenth anniversary. As an electronic journal focused primarily on digital library research and development, the edition’s contents are dedicated to analyzing the past ten years and their effect on both the magazine’s growth and digital libraries in general. It is within this context that Clifford Lynch’s article, “Where Do We Go From Here? The Next Decade for Digital Libraries” is written.

As many of us are currently training to become librarians, the issue of digital libraries and where they might be heading is certainly one of great importance. Simply put, we exist in an age of rapid electronic communication and instant technological gratification. This scenario has subsequently forced a healthy re-examination of how we process, store and provide access to information. Digital libraries are not a new idea. They have existed as long as electronic systems have been available to sustain them (Lynch, 2005). However, the unprecedented growth of the World Wide Web has placed digital libraries on the front line of information organization in terms of accessibility and convenience. In the future, Internet applications and their general use are only going to increase. What does this mean for digital libraries? Clifford Lynch believes he has the answer.

Lynch believes that the focus of digital libraries in the future will revolve around the issues of e-research, the digital creation of cultural content, digital preservation and the management of personal information (Lynch, 2005). These are all very prevalent concerns that he believes will dominate the field of librarianship throughout the next decade. On this point, I agree with him. Whether its personal, professional, noteworthy or disposable, information dominates our existence. How we access it depends on our means. The explosion of technology designed specifically to move, store or disseminate information has put the power of accessibility into the hands of the average user. Here in Canada, anyone can walk into a public library and access any number of informative resources online (e.g. email, news, blogs,), not to mention the physical information that exists on library shelves. Our society holds information and its organization in the highest regard. Without proper methods of organization and classification, we may drown in the sheer volume of information presented to us on a daily basis.

Lynch’s article not only examines the future implications of digital libraries but also gives a thorough retelling of their past. In doing so, he attempts to provide a linear narrative of the evolution of digital libraries. Lynch succeeds in this endeavour but it comes with a heavy price: future analysis. For an article entitled, “Where Do We Go From Here?” there is precious little evidence that the future is his main concern. In fact, his title should have been, “What Are We Doing Right Now?” because his focus is almost entirely on the present, whether he sees it that way or not. I say this because the “future” applications of digital libraries that he speaks of have currently arrived. The issues that Lynch feels we will look at in the next decade are being looked at right now. Indeed, the concern over the digital preservation of cultural content has been a pressing issue in libraries, archives and museums for the past twenty years (Lynch, 2005). Furthermore, e-research has been available since the inception of the Internet. Currently, the arrival of public academic search engines such as Google Scholar has made available (to those willing to pay) the vast electronic libraries of numerous academic institutions that had previously been accessible to students or faculty exclusively (Crawley, 2005). Additionally, programs such as the Open Archives Initiative exist to further enhance access to e-print material by providing access to the holdings of its participants’ academic archives (Lagoze, Van de Sompel, Nelson, & Warner, 2002). Established in 1999, the OAI has since grown to include over 330 archival repositories across the globe (“Registered Data Providers,” n.d.). Despite Lynch’s focus on the future, it is clear that his arguments are rooted firmly in the present.

Despite these flaws, Lynch does recognize one area which I believe will play a large role in the evolution of digital libraries: commercial interest. As mentioned previously, digital libraries were once thought of as the specific domain of academics or researchers. The general public did not have any use for them. However, with technology evolving at such an alarming rate over the past fifteen years, the systems designed to store digital information have been made available to the average consumer. Suddenly, the walls of these secretive domains have been torn down and access has been granted, just as long you pay the admission fee. Google Scholar is but one example of private companies cashing in on the technology craze (Crawley, 2005). Lynch himself feels that the opening of digital libraries has attracted numerous independent agencies which are more than happy to provide funding (Lynch, 2005). With all this private interest, governments and academic institutions no longer feel the need to fund these libraries to the point they once did. If digital libraries are to survive, the funding needs to come from somewhere, so many archives and institutions receive private donations (Lynch, 2005). What this says about the objectivity of the information is a question we cannot answer at this time. One would hope that private investors would refrain from dictating the contents of a library.

Lynch’s overarching theme is that the future of digital libraries rests with its integration with broader individual, group and societal activities to form a permanent part of the information environment (Lynch, 2005). Their survival depends on this. Living in an information-rich age, the demands for more information increase every day, as do the demands for the latest information technology. By shifting focus from an exclusive club for academics and researchers to an inclusive, accessible and convenient method of discovering information, digital libraries survive on the forefront of the information age.

References

Crawley, D. (2005). The Infinite Library. University of Toronto Magazine, vol.
33, issue 1, 30-33.

Lagoze, C., Van de Sompel, H., Nelson, M., & Warner, S. (2002). Open
Archives Initiative frequently asked questions. Retrieved September
29, 2005, from http://www.openarchives.org/documents/FAQ.html

Lynch, C. (2005, July/August). Where do we go from here: The next decade
for digital libraries. D-Lib Magazine, vol. 11, no. 7/8. Retrieved October 31, 2005, from http://www.dlib.org/dlib/july05/lynch/07lynch.html

Registered data providers. (n.d.). Retrieved September 29, 2005, from
http://www.openarchives.org/Register/BrowseSites

A New Generation of Heroes Answer the Call at FIS

2005-11-03T21:38:00.000-05:00

A partnership formed in the depths of the Inforum. A common belief in the sanctity of Open Source software and $2.75 drinks at Dance Cave. A team for the ages. There is no book that will remain unshelved, no floor kept unclean, and no chance for evil to escape. I give you Conan the Librarian and Mr. Clean. You best respect.

Who Likes Covered Bridges? Anyone?

2005-10-20T23:03:00.000-04:00

Here we are at Ontario's only covered bridge (outside the town of Elmira). Am I the only one who finds these things exciting? Come on people, there was a plaque and everything!

Album Review: Broken Social Scene - Broken Social Scene

2005-10-20T21:49:00.000-04:00

What do you do when you're the appointed guiding light of a nation's music scene and you're faced with following up what is arguably one of the most respected and influential Canadian albums ever? Stick to what you know and don't rock the boat. Broken Social Scene's self titled follow-up to You Forgot It In People is more of the same from Toronto's most beloved indie rock hydra. Sure, first single "7/4 (shoreline)" is basically a rewrite of "Almost Crimes", what with Kevin Drew and Feist trading harmonic verses but what the hell! The song rocks. Other highlights include "Major Label Debut", and Emily Haines' (of Metric fame) "Swimmers". It's no "Anthems For A Seventeen Year Old Girl" but it'll do for now. The ace up the Scene's sleeve has always been its ability to focus the group's energy into cohesive units while simultaneously sounding like everything's going to hell. There's no better example of this than on album closer "It's All Gonna Break". A glorious mess of a song that reminds us why Broken Social Scene is at the top of the heap.

Album Review: Metric - Live It Out

2005-10-19T12:39:00.000-04:00

Upon first listen of Live It Out, I was entertained but not blown away. On the second listen, my feet started a-tappin' and my mouth a-hummin'. By the third listen, I was a fanatic, foaming at the mouth, tearing up my schoolwork - happy in the knowledge that Metric's second album was just as melodic and compelling as its predecessor. Sure, the lyrcical content is a bit darker and the production a bit heavier but my beloved hooks all remained in place. Try not singing along to "Empty", "Poster of a Girl", or "Monster Hospital". I defy you! They may not grab your attention at first but I guarantee they'll worm their way into your hearts eventually. And isn't that what all us music fans want in the end? An album that we have to invest in so that our returns last a long time? Kind of like an RSP.

Live Review: Paul McCartney at the ACC

2005-10-11T11:40:00.000-04:00

Despite the misgivings of numerous friends, I went to the ACC last night and checked out Paul McCartney. It's pretty easy to deride McCartney these days (his smugness, his schmuckability factor, his entire recorded output since 1980, etc.) but you can't argue with the classics. He started off with "Magical Mystery Tour" and ended with "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band." In between he pulled out "Eleanor Rigby", "Band on the Run", "Hey Jude", "Let it Be", "Jet", "Blackbird", "Drive My Car", and a host of others like it was nothing. My personal highlights included the less celebrated but equally stunning "I'll Follow the Sun" and "I Will." For "Mull of Kintyre", he brought out a 25 piece Scottish pipe band. Sure, I could do less with the five minute audience appreciation after every song and the hokey, less than humble 15 minute A&E biography which opened the show. In fact, there were many times when I wanted to punch McCartney in the face for that "I'm Paul McCartney and you're not" attitude. His music redeemed him in the end though. And that will be my lasting impression.

-Chris

WARNING!! WARNING!! WARNING!!

2005-10-01T23:35:00.000-04:00

If you are a member of FIS1311, then please ignore this important public broadcast.

TO FRIENDS AND FAMILY - underneath I have posted my first class assignment. Unless you are EXTREMELY fascinated with the world of harvesting metatdata for scholarly purposes, I recommend you pass it over. Instead, you should check out the Onion News (in the Links section). Although my essay has more expletives, it's still much funnier.

-Chris

Project Profile - Open Archives Initiative

2005-10-01T23:29:00.000-04:00

The Open Archives Initiative (OAI) is exactly what it claims to be: an online endeavour to provide access to a large number of virtual archives, specifically scholarly institutions. The official mission statement of OAI declares that, “The Open Archives Initiative develops interoperability standards that aim to facilitate the efficient dissemination of content” (Lagoze, Van de Sompel, Nelson, & Warner, 2002, para. 3). These interoperability standards are actually a series of metadata codes that, when attached to academic publications, provide search engines with the necessary assistance to locate desired information (Young, 2002).

Centered at Cornell University, OAI is rooted in, “An effort to enhance access to e-print archives as a means of increasing the availability of scholarly communication” (Lagoze, Van de Sompel, Nelson, & Warner, 2002, para. 3). Established in 1999, OAI has since grown to include over 330 archival repositories including: African Journals Online, Dspace @ MIT, Harvard Smithsonian Digital Video, Helsinki University of Technology, Mémoires et theses de l’Université Laval, and Oxford Eprints (“Registered Data Providers,” n.d.). The scope of OAI grew so rapidly during its first few years that by 2001, a distinctive European wing was established, the Open Archives Forum, to facilitate the implementation of OAI technology in Europe (“Open Archives Forum,” n.d.). Support for OAI comes from three sources: the Digital Library Federation (DLF), the Coalition for Networked Information (CNI), and a National Science Foundation Grant known as ‘Project PRISM’. The DLF is an international association of libraries and scholarly institutions that develop networks of digital libraries (“About the DLF,” n.d.). The CNI is also a collection of academic institutions and libraries which support networked IT projects focusing on the advancement of scholarly communication (“Welcome to CNI,” 2005). Based at Cornell, Project PRISM (Preservation, Reliability, Interoperability, Security, Metadata) is a collaborative effort between Cornell University Library and the school’s computer science department to, “Investigate and develop policies and mechanisms needed for information integrity in the context of component-based digital library architecture” (“Prism: Cornell University,” 2005, para. 1). Clearly, OAI and its supporters share the belief that increasing accessibility to academic publications can only serve to strengthen scholarly discourse.

As mentioned previously, OAI uses a series of metadata codes to collect information about scholarly publications that are held within numerous archival repositories. OAI has set up a protocol for this process known as ‘Metadata Harvesting’ or OAI-PMH (Lagoze, Van de Sompel, Nelson, & Warner, 2002). There are two types of metadata providers associated with OAI-PMH. Data Providers (e.g. archives) maintain one or more repositories that support the OAI-PMH as a means of exposing metadata. These provide free access to metadata but do not necessarily offer free access to full texts or other resources. Service Providers (e.g. search engines) issue OAI-PMH requests to data providers and use metadata as a basis for building value-added services (Lagoze, Van de Sompel, Nelson, & Warner, 2002). Some examples of these include: Arc (Old Dominion University), Repository Explorer (Virginia Tech), Public Knowledge Harvester (University of British Colombia), iCite, and Perseus (“Registered Service Providers,” n.d.). Every metadata record harvested by the OAI-PMH has an identifier that corresponds to the item from which the metadata was derived. The identifiers that OAI-PMH use are part of the common format known as the Dublin Core Metadata Element Set, which is comprised of fifteen distinctive elements: title, creator, subject, description, publisher, contributor, date, type, format, identifier, source, language, relation, coverage, and rights (Carpenter, 2003). The OAI chose Dublin Core as their identifying body because over the years it has, “Evolved as a de facto standard for simple cross-discipline metadata” (Lagoze, Van de Sompel, Nelson, & Warner, 2002, para. 31). In addition, OAI-PMH uses XML Schemas to define record formats. Providers can exchange any metadata they like using OAI-PMH as long as they can encode it in XML and define an XML Schema for it (Carpenter, 2003).

The latest incarnation of OAI-PMH is version 2.0. The initial version, 1.0, was released in January 2001. A minor update version, 1.1, was released in July 2001 to conform to changes in the XML schema specification. Version 2.0 has been available since June 2002 (Lagoze, Van de Sompel, Nelson, & Warner, 2002). In addition to technical alterations, OAI-PMH version 2.0 also marks the completion of the protocol’s initial experimentation period. During this period, observation focused on the functional aspects of the protocol as well the utility of the general notion of metadata harvesting. Considerable use of OAI-PMH during that period proved that there was sufficient support for metadata harvesting amongst the scholarly community. (Lagoze, Van de Sompel, Nelson, & Warner, 2002). More recently, examples of OAI-PMH implementation include CiteSeer (November 2004), a public digital library and search engine with access to over 700,000 documents and Google (March 2005), which is using OAI-PMH to harvest information from the National Library of Australia (“OAI: News from,” n.d.). Originally focused on the E-Print community, the healthy response to metadata harvesting has motivated OAI to broaden its scope by providing access to a range of digital materials. The OAI sees itself as a potential forum for stakeholders (E-Print providers, publishers, authors) to discuss publishing alternatives and explore other mechanisms for interoperability (Lagoze, Van de Sompel, Nelson, & Warner, 2002).

Despite its success, OAI has been the target for some criticism, although this has been largely aimed at the project’s mandate rather than its technical applications. A core belief of OAI is that increased accessibility to academic work will directly strengthen the greater scholarly community. Unfortunately, that community can only be enhanced if academics take the initiative to submit their materials to online repositories. A major headache it seems, is convincing these people to do so (Young, 2002). The traditional method for submitting material for publication would be to go through academic journals. The problem is that old habits die hard. Critics (Young, 2002) argue that the cultural attitude surrounding journalistic publication needs to shift if projects such as OAI are to succeed in the long term. Furthermore, there is concern over the issue of Intellectual Property Rights (IPR). In this case, there is some apprehension about the management of intellectual property in exposed metadata and the restriction of access (Lagoze, Van de Sompel, Nelson, & Warner, 2002). The OAI believes that this issue is the sole responsibility of the data providers that adopt the OAI-PMH framework. OAI does not define or prescribe any particular rights management scheme and fully expects that some repositories will permit more or less unrestricted access to their metadata while others will have a more restrictive nature (Lagoze, Van de Sompel, Nelson, & Warner, 2002).

Despite these concerns, OAI has only grown since the first version of OAI-PMH was made available in 2001. Since then, over 350 archival repositories and service providers have become part of the OAI community. With increased online access to academic materials becoming the standard at a large number of scholarly institutions, it is safe to say that the future of OAI looks brighter than ever.

References

About the DLF: DLF operations. (n.d.). Retrieved September 30, 2005, from
http://www.diglib.org/about.htm

Carpenter, L. (2003). Main technical ideas of OAI-PMH. Retrieved September
26, 2005, from http://www.oaforum.org/tutorial/english/page3.htm

Lagoze, C., Van de Sompel, H., Nelson, M., & Warner, S. (2002). Open
Archives Initiative frequently asked questions. Retrieved September
29, 2005, from http://www.openarchives.org/documents/FAQ.html

Open Archives Forum overview: objectives. (n.d.). Retrieved September 26,
2005, from http://www.oaforum.org/overview/

Open Archives Initiative: news from the OAI community. (n.d.). Retrieved
September 29, 2005, from http://www.openarchives.org

Prism: Cornell University Library (CUL) research program. (2005, October 1).
Retrieved September 30, 2005, from
http://www.library.cornell.edu/iris/research/prism/

Registered data providers. (n.d.). Retrieved September 29, 2005, from
http://www.openarchives.org/Register/BrowseSites

Registered service providers. (n.d.). Retrieved September 29, 2005, from
http://www.openarchives.org/service/listproviders.html

Welcome to CNI. (2005). Retrieved September 30, 2005 from
http://www.cni.org/

Young, J.R. (2002, July 5). Superarchives could hold all scholarly output
[Electronic version]. The Chronicle of Higher Education, vol. 48, issue
43. Retrieved September 29, 2005, from http://chronicle.com/free/v48/i43/43a02901

NFL Game Day

2005-09-27T11:33:00.000-04:00

This past Sunday, I travelled to Buffalo for my first live NFL experience. Everything I had ever learned from the movies about the culture of American football was on display: tailgating, cheerleaders, marching bands, and yes, even big fat party animal types who had painted their chests blue and red in honour of their team and tried desparately not to fall over or slur their words after shotgunning 14 cans of beer in little under an hour. "Yeah, go Billlssshhh!" It was certainly quite the spectacle. It reminded me of watching a English Premiership football match a few years ago in Liverpool. Plenty of alcohol consumption for sure, but more importantly, more passion and gusto in just one section of the stadium, than in all of the Air Canada Center combined. For that I envy the fans of Buffalo. On every completed play, they cheered. On every missed call, they booed mercilessly. Whether on offense or defense, the Bills could always count on their fans to show their support. As a Maple Leaf fan, I was riddled with jealously. If only, I thought. If only I could bottle some of this enthusiasm and unleash it on the unsuspecting corporate "fans" at the ACC who attend for show, not interest. Blow em' back to Bay Street!

As for the game itself, the Atlanta Falcons won 24-16.

-Chris

Your Gracious Host

2005-09-22T11:10:00.000-04:00

Welcome! - kindly wipe your feet at the door

2005-09-22T10:59:00.000-04:00

Welcome one and all to my very first blog (especially my fellow future information professionals)! If you're a student in FIS1311 then you're well aware of the purpose of this site. If, on the other hand, you have no idea what I'm talking about, let me give you a bit of background. I'm currently studying for my Masters of Information Studies at the University of Toronto and the creation of this site was a course requirement. Before you groan and immediately assume that this is solely a homework related endeavour, let me assure you that I fully intend to use this forum to discuss much more than my assignments. So, if any of you out there want to discuss movies, music, concerts, books, traveling or anything that tickles your fancy, feel free to drop me a line. As anyone can guess from the title of this blog, I'm not that serious a guy so don't be shy. By the way, three cheers for the person who can tell me where the reference "Conan the Librarian" comes from.

-Chris