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SkyRiver files antitrust lawsuit against OCLC 2010 July 29

When the SkyRiver bibliographic utility was first announced, I thought this would eventually lead to some sort of legal action. What I didn’t know is who would be the first to bring legal action and against whom. Well, now we know. SkyRiver, joined by Innovative Interfaces, has filed a lawsuit in federal court in San Francisco.

The likelihood of a lawsuit seemed more certain after the fees OCLC wanted to charge some of the first customers of SkyRiver like Michigan State University and California State University, Long Beach, to upload holdings. According to SkyRivers’ press release about the lawsuit (pdf) OCLC quoted them a price increase of over 1100%. I’m not a legal scholar and don’t know any details of the actually filling, so I don’t know what will happen, but it certainly will be interesting and will be a game changer. I also don’t expect it to have a quick outcome.

I didn’t see a press release from Innovative Interfaces yet, but I am sure that one of the reasons the company joined the lawsuit was the new OCLC Web-scale Management Services which directly competes with the traditional ILS.* Honestly, I was really surprised that the new OCLC system didn’t create a bigger buzz because in my mind it is a game changer. OCLC with control of so many bibliographic members created by members via there WorldCat platform is in a position to leverage WorldCat and a tremendous amount of data in ways other vendors simply can’t, especially if SkyRiver’s anti-trust claims are accurate. I also think the whole WorldCat record use policy fiasco over the last year or so has also added to the factors leading to this lawsuit.

As far as I know, OCLC also hasn’t made a public response as of yet.

I plan on following this story closely because I believe however it turns out, as I mentioned earlier it will be a game changer. If OCLC prevails, startups like SkyRiver won’t have a fair chance. If SkyRiver prevails, we can see a major restructuring of services that OCLC provides and possibly even a breakup of OCLC.

For information about the lawsuit from SkyRiver, check out the Web site they created about it, called Choice for Libraries.

* Yes, I know that SkyRiver and Innovative Interfaces are owned by the same people, but they are different companies.

DHCP to Static IP and hostname 2010 July 27

For some reason whenever I install Ubuntu or a derivative it finds my DHCP server and automatically configures a DHCP client. This is great but usually not what I want so I end up going back and changing to a static IP. I’m sure if I did an advanced install, I could get these options at install time, but it is easy enough to change afterwards so I just do it then. However, I usually forget what files I need to edit to make the change. Luckily, there is a good post about Ubuntu Networking Configuration Using Command Line on Ubuntu Geek. For details, follow the above links, but in short you need to edit:

/etc/network/interfaces (for IP Address, Gateway, etc.)
/etc/resolv.conf (for DNS)

Also, you may have to change the hostname using the following command:

sudo /bin/hostname newname

After this you can restart networking using:

sudo /etc/init.d/networking restart

However, I prefer to just reboot to make sure the changes stick.

WordPress Theme Kerfuffle 2010 July 19

People reading this blog outside of an RSS reader will notice something different with my blog. I changed the theme. I was using the Coppyblogger theme by Chris Pearson which I really like. However there has been a bit of kerfuffle that Chris is in the center of. The developers of WordPress feel that themes are part of the WordPress code base and therefore subject to the GPL as a derivative work. Chris feels differently. I don’t know from a legal standpoint who is right, except to say that if any WordPress GPL code is in the theme (which is true of many themes, including Thesis which Pearson wrote and is at the center of the kerfuffle), than it would definitely by GPLed.

For a convincing argument about why the developers think that it themes are subject to the GPL, see Mark Jaquith post about Why WordPress Themes are Derivative of WordPress. Whether or not it is legal to distribute themes under a license other than the GPL, after thinking about the issue, I feel not distributing themes under the GPL is unethical, or at least shows a lack of respect now that this issue has come to light.

The Copyblogger theme is free and licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5. Outside of this kerfuffle the CC Attribution Share Alike would be fine by me. Still I decided to at least temporarily change my theme since it was developed by Chris Pearson. I mostly did this as a tiny signal of support for the WordPress developers. I may change the theme again soon because I didn’t do a lot of searching/experimenting for a theme – I just took the first one that looked good.

E-mail Signature Files 2010 July 14

I decided to update my work e-mail signature file to reflect my new job title and at the same time make it automatically attach via my e-mail clients (Mozilla Thunderbird and the Gmail interface). While doing so I decided to look at what the prevailing thought on e-mail signatures is. Using a Google Search I picked out about ten Web pages/blog posts to review on this subject and this is what I found.

Things that all or almost all of the posts agreed upon:

1. Name (obvious, no?)
2. Professional Title / Position
3. Website URL (One or two people said it wasn’t needed but most thought this was good. Personally I think unless it is a small company with a minimal Web site you should include it. For example, finding the Library Web site on a large University site can sometimes take a while).
4. Phone number (Possibly also Mobile and Fax numbers. Joshua Dorkin pointed out “If you’re not willing to include a phone number with an email, then who on earth can take you seriously?“).
5. Keep the signature from 4 to 6 lines

Her are some things that some people thought were appropriate and others not:

1. E-mail Address (Some people said it is in the header, but others pointed out that some e-mail clients hide it and once the mail gets forwarded, the e-mail address may no longer be there. Personally, I decided to include it).
2. Instant Messaging Names (I didn’t see anyone say not to include it, but only a few mentioned it. Nathan Jones pointed out you should only include one. I would just say if you use IM all the time it makes sense, but if you are a light or even moderate user, probably not.
3. Mobile Note (As with IM, I didn’t see anyone say not tto include it, but not everyone mentioned it. Nathan Jones writes “I think it’s a good idea to add a small note at the bottom of the signature that indicates that the email is being sent from your mobile phone.” The thought is that people will be more forgiving of small typos and short responses.
4. Sig Separators (Again, no one said not to use them but I was surprised by how many didn’t mention them at all).

Here are somethings with more disagreement where the leaning was to not include the following:

1. Business address (More people in my small sample didn’t like the idea of a street address then did, but it was up for debate. Joshua Dorkin wrote “While it helps to know where someone’s physical presence is, in the current day and age people aren’t using snail mail as often as they used to. Mailing addresses are great to have, but not 100% necessary.” Others thought it depended on how hard it would be to find out the address or if people are likely to want to come visit you. Personally I included it because people may not know where Binghamton University is otherwise, and If I’m going to include “Binghamton NY, USA” I might as well add a PO Box and Zip code. Besides, how often do a see complaints about job postings that don’t include addresses or people getting schools with similar names confused?).
2. Quotes, mottos, etc. (Judith at Netmanners.com specifically pointed out not to “use inflammatory quotes in your signature file.” I see a lot of professional e-mail with quotes that might not be inflammatory, but definitely could turn some people off. On your personal e-mail to friends and family that is your choice but I don’t think it is appropriate for professional e-mail. I just say no to quotes in professional email signatures).
3. Branding via color or images (Some thought minimal levels of branding such as fonts matching the organizations color or a small image are okay, but all agreed that too much is too much)
4. Closing sentiment (Some posts mentioned that the “first line of an email signature should be a closing sentiment, such as ‘Thank you,’ or “Sincerely.’” Personally, I don’t agree. If I want a closing sentiment, I’ll type it myself and make sure it is appropriate for the situation).
5. Formatting (Surprisingly not too many people mentioned formatting. One person that did was Judith at nermanners.com who said you should “align your sig’s text with spaces rather than tabbing [...] Also keep in mind that you want to keep your sig file to 70 characters or less, as that is the set screen width default for most email programs.” I think the 70 character wide rule is a good one to keep in mind.
6. Degrees (Most people thought listing things like MBA looked arrogant if for no other reason then because it is uncommon – at least in the United States. However, these people didn’t work at Universities as far as I could tell. I think the attitude in academia about this would be different than in corporations, so I see no harm in listing MLS, MBA, EdD, PhD, etc in the library world. I chose not to list my MLS, but if I had a doctorate I might have choose differently).

Anyway, if you are interested this is what I came up with…

–
Edward M. Corrado
Assistant Director for Library Technology
Binghamton University Libraries
P.O. Box 6012, Binghamton, NY 13902 USA
Phone: +1-607-777-4909 | Fax: +1-607-777-4848
ecorrado@binghamton.edu | http://library.binghamton.edu

Preserving Electronic Records in Colleges and Universities workshop 2010 July 12

On Friday, July 9 I went to a Preserving Electronic Records in Colleges and Universities workshop held at Cornell University and sponsored by the New York State Archives. The workshop was presented by Steve F. Goodfellow, President, Access Systems, Inc. The workshop was well organized and Steve Goodfellow did a good job presenting the material. In some respects, I can’t say I learned a real lot, especially on the technology side, but the workshop was more the worthwhile, if only to have some of my thoughts on the issue reinforced by an expert. I did learn about some policy considerations and retention schedules however.

During a break I talked with Steve and we agreed that while the technology is important and their are technological challenges, really electronic preservation is more of a policy challenge then a technological one. If the policies are in place and carried out (which included the proper funding), the technology can be worked out. That is not to say the technological solutions are always worked out properly. During the first part of the workshop we discussed items when it didn’t. One example was a client of his had an old student records system and they thought they migrated everything. However, they kept the old system around for old lookups “just in case.” Well, a new CIO came in and asked when was the last time it was used. The answer was not in a long time, so the old system was removed. Guess what happened? Not everything was moved and now they didn’t have it any more.

One of the big take aways for me was the Fundamental Goals of an electronic records preservation system identified during the workshop. The three are:

1. Readable of electronically stored records
2. Authoritative & trustworthy process
3. Maintain a secure and reliable repository

These to a large degree are obvious, but if you are embarking on a electronic preservation program, you should identify how you are accomplishing these goals.

Article about SkyRiver 2010 July 6

After being away for a short while at a conference, I am catching up on some week old e-mails. One e-mail I received was about an article in ALCTS Newsletter Online about Michigan State University’s experience with the new SkyRiver bibliographic utility. The bottom line, according to the article, is that they saved about $80,000 a year and didn’t see a loss in productivity once the catalogers became used to using SkyRiver instead of OCLC for copy cataloging. They did say, however, that foreign language materials where lacking. They also mentioned the cost-prohibitiveness of uploading records to OCLC. Anyway, if you are at all interested in this alternative to OCLC, it gives a nice, albeit brief, overview of Michigan State’s experience with SkyRiver.