PARcasts

Grace Agnew,
Associate University Librarian for Digital Library Systems,
Rutgers University

Interviewed by Merrilee Proffitt,
Senior Program Officer,
RLG Programs,
OCLC Research

Beyond brilliant silos: video content, data sets, open source and rights management. (.mp3: 6.9MB/20min.)

Tune in to find out why video content, data sets and open source are keeping Grace Agnew awake at night, plus why she believes you can never get away from rights management.

Robert Crawford,
Poet and Professor of Modern Scottish Literature,
University of St Andrews

Interviewed by John MacColl,
European Director,
RLG Programs,
OCLC Programs and Research

Research Libraries: the Viewpoint of a Scholar Poet (.mp3: 19.2MB/21min.)

In this interview, Robert Crawford talks about the scholarship which supported "Scotland's Books," a recently published book about the history of Scottish literature, and a forthcoming biography of Robert Burns. He describes the importance of digitized archives as well as the pleasures of working with paper in archives such as that at St Andrews, with hundreds of years' worth of undigitized material still to be charted. He also discusses the inspiration his poetry derives from new technologies, which is nonetheless inflected by anxiety about the loss of democratic access to the works which form a common heritage, and the uncritical adoption of the virtual world in preference to a natural world which needs our urgent attention. He finishes by reading his recent poem "The Digital Library, St Andrews."

Richard Ovenden,
Associate Director and Keeper of Special Collections,
Bodleian Library, Oxford

Interviewed by John MacColl,
European Director,
RLG Programs,
OCLC Programs and Research

Special Collections and Beyond—Conservation, Project Funding and Digital Surrogates (.mp3: 10.3MB/11min.)

In this interview, Richard Ovenden discusses the three main areas of his responsibility, arguing for a need to return to more active conservation, describing problems in digital library development caused by over-reliance on project funding, and pointing to the dangers of over-use of digital surrogates. He also considers an interesting and unforeseen consequence of being a Google Library Partner.

Alice Schreyer,
Assistant Director for Special Collections & Preservation;
Director, Special Collections Research Center,
University of Chicago Library

Interviewed by Merrilee Proffitt,
Senior Program Officer,
RLG Programs,
OCLC Programs and Research

Picking Up the Pace: Considering the Implications of Accelerated Archival Processing (.mp3: 13MB/38min.)

What happens when you are successful at increasing processing throughput? What is the impact on researchers, staff and space? Tune in and find out!

Jackie Dooley,
Head of Special Collections and Archives,
University of California, Irvine;
Consulting Archivist,
OCLC Programs and Research

Interviewed by Merrilee Proffitt,
Senior Program Officer,
RLG Programs,
OCLC Programs and Research

Electronic Records: The Archivist's 600-Pound Gorilla (.mp3: 13.4MB/38min.)

Digital does not mean preserved. Methods for managing and preserving born-digital electronic records are complicated and unresolved. Archivists must actively educate themselves about the issues. Learn more about the challenges of digital preservation and some current efforts that illustrate progress.

Ken Hamma,
Executive Director for Digital Policy and Initiatives
J. Paul Getty Trust

Interviewed by Günter Waibel,
Program Officer,
RLG Programs,
OCLC Programs and Research

The Cost of Owning Technology (.mp3: 9.17MB/20min.)

Owning technology requires significant ongoing investment, but there are various options—including development of open source and Web-based systems—that can bring down costs and lead to a more collaborative future.

MacKenzie Smith,
Associate Director for Technology,
Massachusetts Institute of Technology Libraries

Interviewed by Merrilee Proffitt,
Senior Program Officer
RLG Programs,
OCLC Programs and Research

What are the risks of missing out on new services, such as personal information management, vertical search, data curation for faculty research collections, and digital preservation? How can we shift resources to develop and implement new services? How do we prioritize the old versus the new? Developing evidence to support decisions is an important part of the puzzle. Clearly, shifts need to happen both with in library schools and also within current library leadership. A discussion of forward-looking MIT projects—such as DSpace, SIMILE (which has gathered wide adoption outside of libraries) and Facade (digital preservation of three dimensional, born digital objects)—and developing systems to deal with policy-driven data curation, is also included.

Jenn Riley,
Metadata Librarian,
Digital Library Program,
Indiana University, an RLG partner institution

Interviewed by Merrilee Proffitt,
Senior Program Officer
RLG Programs,
OCLC Programs and Research

Traditionally, the library catalog has not been an encyclopedia, but moving forward it could act more like one, at least in the way that it ties in with other systems to provide seamless access between users.

Dennis Meissner,
Head of Collections Management,
Minnesota Historical Society, an RLG partner institution

Interviewed by Merrilee Proffitt,
Senior Program Officer,
RLG Programs,
OCLC Programs and Research

How to invest resources wisely to best serve audience needs, and the importance of self-study.

RLG Programs partner Jeremy Frumkin,
Head of Emerging Technologies,
Oregon State University

Interviewed by Merrilee Proffitt,
Senior Program Officer,
RLG Programs,
OCLC Programs and Research

What does "moving toward the network level" really mean, who is doing it and how will it impact libraries?

RLG Programs partner Mark Dimunation
Chief of the Rare Book and Special Collections Division,
Library of Congress

Interviewed by Merrilee Proffitt,
Senior Program Officer,
RLG Programs,
OCLC Programs and Research

The Value of Physical Artifacts in an Increasingly Virtual World (.mp3: 7.4MB/22min.)

Special collections need to keep collecting and building collections of real things, but also need to be smart and be part of the digital conversation. How do libraries create a digital environment where researchers can derive the evidence they need to do their work?

Merrilee Proffitt,
Senior Program Officer,
OCLC Research, and
Bill Carney,
Content Manager, OCLC

WorldCat Copyright Evidence Registry

In this webinar, Merrilee Proffitt and Bill Carney provide background on the work that has been undertaken to contribute to the development of the WorldCat Copyright Evidence Registry. Merrilee and Bill also provide a demonstration of this pilot and talk about the current focus of establishing best practices for using the "rules engine" to codify determining what, for a given institution, is in or out of scope.

The WorldCat Copyright Evidence Registry will enable the creation and sharing of copyright evidence through a collaboratively created and maintained database. A side benefit of the project may be the community collaborating to define a consistent, accepted process for libraries to gather and document copyright evidence in order to provide access to digitized materials.

• .wmv (40.5MB/51min.)
• .mp4 (18.3MB/51min.)

Roy Tennant, Senior Program Officer, and Bruce Washburn, Consulting Software Engineer,
RLG Programs,
OCLC Programs and Research

Using the WorldCat Search API

In this webinar, Roy Tennant and Bruce Washburn provide an overview of WorldCat Search API features. Launched in August 2008, the WorldCat Search API provides OCLC libraries with new ways of taking advantage of the WorldCat database and features. With the API, you can build WorldCat search results, metadata, and links to library catalogs into your own systems. Supporting common search protocols like OpenSearch and SRU, and delivering data in standard formats like RSS, Atom, Dublin Core and MARC, the API is ready to be applied to a wide array of applications.

Two versions of this webinar are available: Using the WorldCat Search API (with Q&A) is a recording of the 27 August webinar that includes questions from partners but in which technical difficulties prohibited Roy and Bruce from demonstrating current applications that use the API as originally planned. Because of this, an additional webinar was recorded, Using the WorldCat Search API (with Demos) that does contain these demonstrations but does not contain a question and answer session. This revised webinar is also available in the iTunes Store.

• Using the WorldCat Search API (with Q&A): .wmv (49.6MB/37min.)
• Using the WorldCat Search API (with Demos): .wmv (41.9MB/25min.)
• Using the WorldCat Search API (with Demos): .m4v (27.2MB/25min.)

Merrilee Proffit and Jennifer Schaffner ,
Program Officers,
RLG Programs,
OCLC Programs and Research

Assessing the Impact of Special Collections

In this webinar, Merrilee Proffitt and Jennifer Schaffner discuss metrics within special collections. Jen provides selected usage statistics gathered in special collections from 1995 to the present, and Merrilee covers the spectrum of possibilities for measuring use. Then they both raise some new issues and take comments and questions from participants to increase awareness about measuring special collections impact in libraries, archives and museums.

• .wmv (71.1MB/58min.)
• .m4v (42.3MB/58min.)

Constance Malpas,
Program Officer,
RLG Programs,
OCLC Programs and Research

Assessing Uniqueness in the System-wide Book Collection: Preliminary Results from a Study of WorldCat

As space pressures on library print collections increase, and mass digitization efforts begin to challenge the primacy of locally-held print inventories, new attention has been directed to collection assessment in research libraries. Further, notions about the importance of and definitions for "uniqueness" have become discussion topics in a variety of venues, particularly in the context of long-tail economics.

In this webinar, Constance Malpas gives an update on recent research on the distribution and content characterization of unique print books represented in the WorldCat database. RLG partners have been a critical part of this research project, contributing both local expertise and data, and providing insights on how different measures of "uniqueness" can shape local and group collection management efforts.

• .wmv (71.3MB/54min.)
• .m4v (41.9MB/54min.)

Ricky Erway and Jennifer Schaffner,
Program Officers,
RLG Programs,
OCLC Programs and Research

Out of the Stacks and onto the Desktop: Rethinking Assumptions about Access and Digitization

Ricky Erway and Jennifer Schaffner provide a brief overview of the outcomes of two recent initiatives undertaken by RLG Programs with contributions from staff at many partner institutions that resulted in the following reports:

• Good Terms—Improving Commercial-Noncommercial Partnerships for Mass Digitization (D-Lib Magazine, 13,11/12.)
• Shifting Gears: Gearing Up to Get Into the Flow (.pdf: 86K/ 11pp.)

• .wmv (73.5MB/54min.)
• .m4v (46.1MB/54min.)