Systems
Doing things with software and data.
A reservoir not an ocean - visualizing and operationalizing collective collections
When I think of the Google Books initiative now, three things stick with me. The first is simply what an audacious idea it was – to digitize all the books. The second is that without it, the book literature is less accessible than the web literature, which seems a pity.
Research information management systems: a new service category?
It has been interesting watching Research Information Management or RIM emerge as a new service category in the last couple of years.
The decentered library network presence
The library does not have a singular network presence. There may be a main website, but the library also syndicates its presence to other venues (e.g. RSS), has unbundled to social sites (e.g. Facebook), and sources activity in the cloud (e.g. LibGuides).
Roses are red .... the top love stories?
St Valentine's Day. What are the most popular love stories? Taking library holdings as a proxy for popularity.
Full library discovery
The collection remains central to the library experience. However, as library services evolve beyond the collection so it makes sense for discovery services to represent more of what the library does and can provide - to move from 'full collection discovery' to 'full library discovery.'
Names and identities: looking at Flann O'Brien
There is not a one-to-one relationship between names and people. This means that the relationship between people and their names and identities has become something that is managed in a variety of places. OCLC Research has several projects in this area.
Systemwide organization - sourcing and scaling redux
Libraries are increasingly taking a system-wide perspective of their roles and services. This can take different forms.
Discovery vs discoverability ...
Inside-out and outside-in: libraries, collections, services I have been interested in the different dynamics of the inside-out and outside-in library for a while (see here for example). One especially interesting characteristic is the quite different approach to discovery in each case, even though this distinction has not yet crystallized in
