ubetom

Yesterday we had the official presentation of the reorganization plan of the Groningen University Library. That is connected to my work in the Library Faculty of Arts.
At Faculty of Arts, again, I will have a lot of tasks, serving the staff & students of the Faculty: preparing library classes for the students of History, lending & information desk, helping & advising students with literature searching, database instruction, MS Office help, and computer problems. And more.

But, according to mr. Klugkist, the head librarian of the University Library in Groningen, helping students with computer & database problems, is not a task of library people. He thinks it is something for computer staff. I do not agree with him.
I think librarians can teach students more complete, than IT staff can.
It is not just solving printing problems! I think in our library (three computer rooms;about 70 computers) it is very helpfull to have at least one IT librarian, a specialist in helping students, and also staff, who have computer problems, advising in literature searching and database questions.

It think it is good for a library to give a complete service to their customers, advising, searching, problem solving, and more.

And not to be dependent on a computer helpdesk which is on a distance, and often only does react only after 24 hrs, or longer.
That is just a question of quality!

Okay, enough about this.

Now something else: since I’ll join my Arts colleagues again, I think of changing the name of this blog: Ubetom will become Elbetom (pronounce: “elbay” in dutch, short LB. LB is LetterenBibliotheek, that is the Library of Arts.
But the URL probably will stay: ubetom.wordpress.com.

Colleague MiTho proposed VeBeTom. VeBe = VakBibliotheek, that is Discipline Library, that will be the new name after the Library Reorganization.
Well, maybe it’s better to keep my name, in these uncertain times.

Photo’s by Hetty Oostergetel (thank you, Hetty!)

But after the skating, during the day, I felt ill: I got a headache, and also had fever. First 38 degrees Celsius, later 39. And then the feeling of sickness, followed by throwing up.
Annoying! Just when I want to finish my practical in the University Library satisfactory, I have to lie in bed. And I only have time until end of January! After that I have to return to the Faculty of Arts.

But see: how convenient our new laptop is! Even when I’m ill, I can blog and email(-;
Yes, we were a bit late with a laptop, but we already had two desktops. My girlfriend and I cycle in 15 minutes to our respective works. No necessity to use a laptop in train, or traffic-jam!
But my two adolescent boys need internet for school: Google, Wikipedia, and e-learning. Amongst other things.
And also handy when lying in bed with a flu.

PS I found a really nice photo from KAPturer. I don’t know if may use it on this blog, but I want to.

And I make a bit promotion for him/her. You find more pictures on Flickr

We saw some examples of locally stored data in f.i. Utrecht (Omega), Bremen (Elib), Denmark (kb.dk) and (DADS) (thank you, Lukas Koster!).

When we can get the data of f.i. Blackwell, Ebsco ASP and BSP, Elsevier Science Direct, Emerald, JSTOR, MUSE, Oxford U.P., SAGE, Springer, and Wiley, and even more, locally in Groningen, the results in Groningen will speed up tremendously.

In short: work to do for the licensing and subscription department of the University Library of Groningen University!

The day will start with promotional activities in the University Library of Groningen University.

PurpleSearch is a tool which will stay perpetual beta, but the coming period major innovations are not at hand.

Next week more information on the launching of PurpleSearch will be reported on this site!

Monday Januari 19 2009:
Some links (just in dutch – shame, shame):
- Launching of new search engine PurpleSearch
- General info on PurpleSearch
- PurpleSearch

The ISSN database already contains about 600.000 journals, from which about 30.000 are peer reviewed journals.
We collected the data from several sources locally, and on the Web.

OPAC data
We also want to squeeze the University Catalogue to get information concerning the journal holdings.
We do some test imports with the SRU interface of the OCLC PICA OPAC.
And we are trying to understand the PICA and PICA+ formats.
We must translate one format into the other. The information from the OPAC is all PICA+. We want to translate it to PICA or MARC21.
We want to import ISSN’s, titles, subtitles, holding information (signatures, stack numbers, available years etc.).
When we have built this ISSN database, we hope to keep it uptodate by searching all changes in the OPAC from a specific moment in time (f.i.each week), and automatically import the new data in the database.

Other parts of the project
* In PurpleSearch, and also the earlier version, LiveTrix, we already mention(ed) ISI Impact Factors.

* If possible, we import in the database links to tables of contents. Ulrich’s supplies links to tables of content of electronic journals. And maybe we can get some useful information via the xISSN database of WorldCat. David Walker told me that all OCLC cataloguing libraries in the USA could use World for free. And the same counts for the dutch cataloguing libraries, e.g. the Library of the University of Groningen.

* A minor project in this database story is the collecting of journal covers. Our goal is to store the covers in Groningen. So it won’t cost time when we present within the PurpleSearch results, journal information and also covers.
From Elsevier we already received about 2.000 covers (in zip!). Oxford University Press told us we could use their covers. But we ourselves must collect them (ca. 400). Cambridge Journals Online already told us to sent zipfile with their journal covers.
Wiley’s is still thinking about it. Other suppliers didn’t react untill now.

So, there’s a lot to do in 2009! And off course we have enough ideas to proceed. When we have this ISSN database working and running, and when we have more data locally stored in Groningen, we can think of extanding our services pack for PurpleSearch:
- Subject information (FRBR; faceting)
- Photo and film data
- Feed Navigator Plugin for RSS alerts.
- and more.

Have a nice holiday!

- Make an ISSN database; we try to get the ISSN data out of the catalogue and the SFX data.
- Connect to the ISSN database holding information of the University of Groningen catalogue. Information how is available.
- Connect to the ISSN database impact factors we get from ISI Web of Science.
- Connect to the ISSN database subject information from the dutch central catalogue NCC, GOO, from Library of Contents, LC, and DDC. We hope to develop FRBR faceting options in PurpleSearch, using GOO, LC, and DDC codes to refine a search result.
- Connect to the ISSN database tables of contents of journals. We hope to find this maybe in Ulrich’s, or via electronic journals publishers & aggregators.
- Connect to the ISSN database of journal covers. We hope to find them, maybe in Ulrich’s, or via electronic journals publishers & aggregators.

Why do we use a static database, and not a live connection to updated sites, such as XISSN service of WorldCat?
- We think we can make a faster service, when we host data in Groningen, instead of using WorldCat or other data.
- The XISSN of WorldCat service probably costs money.
- We hope to develop some smart programming, so that we can update parts of our ‘static’ ISSN database.
- When the database is ready, and we have done some more programming, new services will be available in PS.
So let’s go for it!