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U.S. Academic Libraries switching to Koha in 2010 2011 January 4

One of the things that interested me in Marshall Breeding’s “ILS Turnover Reverse report from Library Technology Guides” was what libraries were switching to Koha. In particular I was interested in which academic libraries have switched to Koha in 2010. As commentators in my earlier blog post about my “Thoughts on Library Technology Guides’ ILS Turnover Report” there are some questions about the data. In my opinion, most of the questions – at least those about numbers – are more problematic outside of the United States and a few other countries. For some of the reasons behind this, see Marshall Breeding’s comment on my last blog post about this report where he discusses how he gathers the data used in this report. For that reason, I decide to limit this post to U.S. Academic Libraries that switched to Koha in 2010.

According to my count [1] 15 U.S. academic libraries switched to Koha from another ILS and one more, a trade school named Antonelli College, went from no ILS to using Koha. I was interested in looking at was the profiles of the schools, and in particular the number of volumes [2], and the type and size of patrons served. I was also interested in looking at what libraries are listed as being independently supported. To a lesser degree I wanted to see if there was anything particularly interesting in who academic libraries were choosing to acquire Koha support from.

All of the U.S. academic libraries switching to Koha have less then 140,000 volumes (at least as far as I can tell) [3]. The two largest are in the New York City metro area and are getting support from Liblime. It is possible (likely?) that they are using Koha via WALDO consortium which has a partnership with PTFS/LibLime. The only other U.S. Academic library to switch in 2010 that has more then 100,000 volumes is D’Youville College. D’Youville is listed as independent, however the demo video on their Website of their new catalog shows that they are hosted via PTFS/LibLime as well and may possibly also be contracting through WALDO [4]. In other words, the larger U.S. academic libraries that moved to Koha in 2010 are doing so via LibLime/PTFS and I am pretty sure they are using “Liblime Enterprise Koha” and not the Open Source version. According to the Liblime Website, Liblime Enterprise Koha enhancements include many acquisitions enhancements and enhanced authority control. Here I need to plead ignorance of recent Koha developments in this area and of how “enhanced” Liblime Enterprise Koha really is in these areas, but from previous experience, these were areas of that I am under the impression that the Open Source version needs some development to attract larger academic libraries [5]. Many libraries still do not use acquisitions within the ILS or make extensive use of authority records (any use?). So these are not always a high priority when selecting an ILS in smaller libraries. However when you start getting closer to medium sized academic libraries they become more of an issue. In other words, I am not surprised that the U.S. academic libraries that are switching to Koha are small academic libraries, and that the larger ones that are migrating are switching to Liblime Enterprise Koha. Although the largest of the bunch selected Liblime, ByWater did attract some schools with volume counts that were not much smaller. Goddard College, for example, has 97,000 volumes and two others have about 75,000 records.

Besides D’Youville, the other library that is listed as independent is University of Science and Arts of Oklahoma. This is the third largest in terms of volume counts to make the switch on 2010. I wanted to check there catalog to see what it looked liked, but it is currently unavailable. If they truly are independent, it would be interesting to here about there experiences migrating to Koha.

The academic libraries that migrated serve a diverse type of schools. There is trade schools, 2 year community colleges, 4 year schools, graduate schools, and seminaries. Therefore it doesn’t look like the type of college or university being served is a factor for those who have selected Koha.

Of the schools that switched to Koha, 4 were using Koha, 3 Unicorn, 2 Horizon. Single schools had EOS.Webm Vurtua, Winnebego Spectrum, Athena, and Millennium.

Notes:
[1] Defining what is an academic library can be tricky sometimes. While it is easy to say Binghamton University Libraries, for example, is an academic library, there are places that fall into the gray area like trade schools, advanced research institutes, etc. Also, if a school is based in the United States, but the library is in London as part of a undergraduate program, is it a U.S. academic library (FWIW: In this case I said no). So, you might count more or less libraries than I. However, for purposes of this inquiry, I don’t think it is a factor since the ones I didn’t include really weren’t “outliers” in terms of size or scope.

[2] I used a variety methods to get volume counts. Mostly though, I looked at what the libraries self-reported wither on Library Technology Reports or somewhere else

[3] There was one larger academic library to make the switch in the United Kingdom. Staffordshire University has approximately 180,000 volumes and switched to Koha with support from PTFS-Europe.

[4] This demonstrates some of the concerns members of the Koha community have with whether or not the self-reporting of Koha service providers is accurate

[5] As I mentioned in the past I do support a Koha install for a small collection (> 1000 records). I did look at some of these issues briefly while installing Koha and migrating items to the new install. I didn’t notice anything that made me think these features are not still lacking compared to their proprietary counterparts, but I did not look closely, so I may be wrong and I welcome any information that shows me they can do the same things, as streamlined, as something like Millennium, Voyager, or Aleph.

Academic Search Engine Spamming 2011 January 3

Jonathan Rochkind had a really interest blog post commenting on a recent article about “Academic Search Engine Spam and Google Scholar’s Resilience Against it” published by Joeran Beel and Bela Gipp in Journal of Electronic Publishing. The article (and Rochkind’s blog post) discuss how scholars could manipulate citation counts and visibility in Web-based academic search engines like Google Scholar. It is unclear what the risk-reward factor for this would be, but if it can be done, I am sure at least a few scholars will try to do it. However, it is also true as Beel and Gipp point out that citation gaming is not at all new. Some publishers and journals actively encourage people to cite from there journal(s), and there are citation circles and of course self-citing.

I am not really sure how much we should be worried about this, at least how much we should worry about it MORE than we do the whole idea of using dubious measures such as citation counts to account for promotion and tenure decisions to begin with. As Rochkind sums it up:

Once you start to look too carefully, the whole academic publishing endeavor can start to seem like a somewhat arbitrary game played by agreed upon rules in order to justify tenure decisions, rather than attempt to share knowledge with ones peers or the world or in general. In this light though, the possibility of gaming Google Scholar is perhaps less alarming, as it’s really just business as usual.

Happy reading.

Thoughts on Library Technology Guides’ ILS Turnover Report 2010 December 31

Marshall Breeding published his “ILS Turnover Reverse report from Library Technology Guides” that lists what ILS products were replaced by libraries in 2010. I am not sure what you can gather form these stats, but still they are interested to look at. There are a few things to keep in mind when looking at this report (and when looking at Library Technology Guides in general):

1. A lot of the information is self-reported.
2. Switch dates are based on contract signings and not implementation so sometimes a library may have switched in 2010 but signed in 2009, likewise they may be reported as a 2010 switch but did not switch yet.
3. Although Marshall Breeding tries to make this list as worldly as possible, it still has a heavy slant on English language libraries, and more specifically on ones located in the United Sates.
4. Consortium are funny things when it cums to these states. Even one consortium changing to a different vendor can really effect the counts, even if it is just one contract switch.

Some things I found interesting:

• 214 libraries migrated from the various SyrisDynix Systems listed (Horizon (119), Unicorn (77), Dynix(18), Symphony (0)). Of them only 34 migrated to SyrisDynix’s new system, Symphony (Horizon (25), Unicorn (0), Dynix(9)). All-in-all, 46 libraries migrated to Symphony in 2010. That is a net loss of 168 Libraries. On the surface that does not look like good news for SirsiDynix. Of course, if the 12 new customers are larger, it might not be all bad, but still it is hard to see this as anything but SirsiDynix having not done well this past year in the ILS marketplace.
• 20 libraries are already listing Ex Libris’s next-next generation ILS – Unified Resource Management, as there new ILS even though it is still in the early stages of development. All of them were already Ex Libris customers (Aleph (18), Voyager (2)). They are also all in Australia.
• As those of you who follow Koha, an Open Source ILS, are probably aware, there has been some controversy involving LibLime and the company (PTFS) that bought them during the last year or so Without rehashing it, lets just say many members of the Koha community (especially those involved with development), didn’t see eye-to-eye with PTFS on a variety of issues. Because of this, I was wondering if anything would show up in ILS provider switching. PTFS (I am counting PTFS, PTFS-Europe, and LibLime together in this case although that may or may not be fair – I don’t really know if there is a difference in support, etc. from the various listings) lost 16 customers. 13 of them switched from PTFS to Evergreen (many of them in what appears to be a consortia move), one switched to ByWater for Koha support, one stayed with Koha but is now running it independently, and another one switched to Horizon. Based on these numbers, I would say the controversy has not lead to librarians choosing another Koha provider, at least not yet. Off course, maybe librarians would like to move but can’t just yet because of contract issues, so maybe any migration would be more of a lagging-indicator of dis-satisfaction.
• Talking about ByWater, 13 libraries reportedly switched from Koha-Independent to Koha via ByWater. I am not sure if this is an actually switch in service providers, or if maybe this is a switch in reporting.
• 139 libraries switched to the Open Source Evergreen ILS (Zero switched from Evergreen to something else). That seems to be good news for the future of Evergreen.

What does this all mean? Probably nothing, especially without looking closer at the individual circumstances, but still it is interesting to look at. I have been looking a little more deeply into some of the libraries that switched to Koha from another ILS. That will be a subject of a future post.

Mobile Library Services? 2010 December 24

Lukas Koster over at Commonplace.net has an interesting post asking “Do we need mobile library services?” His answer is “Not really.” It is very interesting take on mobile applications for libraries. The only application that has received significant use form his library’s mobile site is one that shows which desktop computers are free. I am not surprised by this. I never really saw the reason behind such the hype for mobile in libraries. Sure, having a Web page that is readable and has hours or related information is nice, but beyond that I was, and remain, skeptical. Still maybe Lukas, I, and others such as Aaron Tay that are not sure about the hype are in the minority considering the success of the Handheld Librarian Conference (The 4th conference is happening in about 2 months).

College Football Top 10 2010 November 6

Here is my top 10 going into today’s action; again without comment….

1. Boise State (7-0; Prev 1)
2. Oregon (8-0; Prev 2)
3. TCU (9-0; Prev 3)
4. Utah (8-0; Prev 5)
5. Auburn (8-0; Prev 6)
6. Wisconsin (7-1, Prev 10)
7. Oklahoma (7-1; Prev
8. Arizona (7-1; Prev 9)
9. Alabama (7-1; Prev Unranked)
10. Nebraska (7-1; Prev Unranked)

College Football Top 10 2010 October 17

Opps… I forgot to publish a top 10 last week. Sorry about that. I had one ready to o but wanted to check on a few things and never got it into the blog. There were a number of upsets in the “Top 25” this weekend. The only one I was really surprised about was South Carolina losing. I sort of thought Ohio State might loose as they didn’t play anyone like Wisconsin yet and they were on the road. At least that will solve the potential of two Big 10(11) teams going through the whole season and not playing each other (what a mess that would be). FWIW: The previous is where I had them two weeks ago since I didn’t publish last week,

1. Boise State (6-0; Prev 1). Virginia Tech’ is rolling through the early part of their ACC schedule, so I still think that was a good win despite some questions about VaTech after their loss to James Madison loss. Although Oregon State lost in Overtime to Washington last not go to 3-3, I still think they are a good team. Losses to Boise, TCU, and Washington won’t get you in the top 10, but they are nothing to be ashamed of.
2. Oregon (6-0; Prev 3). Oregon has scored at least 42 points in every game and has a great second half defense. Although Tennessee isn’t the Tennessee that Peyton Manning played for, credit for playing them on the road is due and a nice win against Arizona have them in my top 2
3. Oklahoma (6-0; Prev 4). Texas shows that they were better than advertised this week by beating Nebraska, thus making Oklahoma’s win against the Longhorns a bit more impressive.
4. TCU (7-0; Prev 9). Texas Christian has out of conference wins against Pac-10 and Big-12 teams. And while SMU isn’t a top 10 (or even 20) caliber team, they aren’t chopped liver so that is another good out of conference win. I’m looking forward to the Utah-TCU game later this season.
5. Utah (6-0; Prev Unranked). Utah’s opening win against Pitt might not be as impressive as it looked at the time with Pitt only being 3-3, but still the get credit for scheduling. That combined with rolling over the rest of their schedules moves Utah into my top 10. BTW: Wow, has BYU dropped down this year.
6. Missouri (6-0; Prev Unranked). Missouri keeps rolling through the early part of the schedule, which included a Big 10 foe (Illinois) and some out of conference schools that are not impressive. At least when they played McNeese State I was in the second week of the season.
7. Auburn (7-0; Prev unranked). Only tough out of conference game was an overtime win at home against Clemson, but they put up 65 this week against Arkansas. I thought the SEC was supposed to have good defense?
8. LSU (7-0; Prev 5). If you pay McNeese State out of conference mid-season and they hang tough with you for a while, you drop. Esp. since my #6 beat the same common opponent by 44. They would have dropped further, but I still giver them credit for scheduling West Virginia.
9. Michigan State (7-0; Prev Unranked). Only good out of conference win was against Notre Dame, but they have looked good in the Big 10(11) conference schedule thus far.
10. Oklahoma State (6-0); Prev Unranked). The Cowboys are going to start facing much tough competition starting next week when Nebraska comes to town.

A History of OCLC’s Ohio Tax Exemption Status 2010 October 14

The Disruptive Library Technology Jester has an interesting look at A History of the OCLC Tax-Exemption Status. As the author points out, it is but one version of the history. However, it is the best one I have seen and worth a look if you are interested in these sorts of things.

Code4Lib Journal, Issue 11 2010 September 22

Issue 11 of the Code4Lib Journal is now available. The contents are as follows:

Editorial Introduction – A Cataloger’s Perspective on the Code4Lib Journal
Kelley McGrath
On the Code4Lib Journal, technology, and the universe of library cataloging and metadata.

Interpreting MARC: Where’s the Bibliographic Data?
Jason Thomale
The MARC data format was created early in the history of digital computers. In this article, the author entertains the notion that viewing MARC from a modern technological perspective leads to interpretive problems such as a confusion of “bibliographic data” with “catalog records.” He explores this idea through examining a specific MARC interpretation task that he undertook early in his career and then revisited nearly four years later. Revising the code that performed the task confronted him with his own misconceptions about MARC that were rooted in his worldview about what he thought “structured data” should be and helped him to place MARC in a more appropriate context.

XForms for Libraries, An Introduction
Ethan Gruber, Chris Fitzpatrick, Bill Parod, and Scott Prater
XForms applications can be used to create XML metadata that is well-formed and valid according to the schema, and then saved to (or loaded from) a datastore that communicates via REST or SOAP. XForms applications provide a powerful set of tools for data creation and manipulation, as demonstrated by some projects related to library workflows that are described in this paper.

Why Purchase When You Can Repurpose? Using Crosswalks to Enhance User Access
Teressa M. Keenan
The Mansfield Library subscribes to the Readex database U.S. Congressional Serial Set, 1817-1994 (full-text historic reports of Congress and federal agencies). Given the option of purchasing MARC records for all 262,000 publications in the Serial Set or making use of free access to simple Dublin Core records provided by Readex, the library opted to repurpose the free metadata. The process that the Mansfield Library used to obtain the Dublin Core records is described, including the procedures for crosswalking the metadata to MARC and batch loading the bibliographic records complete with holdings information to the local catalog. This report shows that we successfully achieved our goals of dramatically increasing access to Serial Set material by exposing metadata in the local catalog and discusses the challenges we faced along the way. We hope that others tasked with the manipulation of metadata will be able to use what we learned from this project.

Hacking Summon
Michael Klein
When the Oregon State University Libraries selected Serials Solutions’ Summon as its discovery tool, the implementation team realized that they had an opportunity to implement a set of “hacks” that that would improve the overall user experience. This article will explore the space between Summon’s out-of-the-box user interface and full developer API, providing practical advice on tweaking configuration information and catalog exports to take full advantage of Summon’s indexing and faceting features. The article then describes the creation of OSUL’s home-grown open source availabilty service which replaced and enhanced the availability information that Summon would normally pull directly from the catalog.

Automatic Aggregation of Faculty Publications from Personal Web Pages
Najko Jahn, Mathias Lösch, and Wolfram Horstmann
Many researchers make their publications available on personal web pages. In this paper, we propose a simple method for the automatic aggregation of these documents. We search faculty web pages for archived publications and present their full text links together with the author’s name and short content excerpts on a comprehensive web page. The excerpts are generated simply by querying a standard web search engine.

Managing Library IT Workflow with Bugzilla
Nina McHale
Prior to September 2008, all technology issues at the University of Colorado Denver’s Auraria Library were reported to a dedicated departmental phone line. A variety of staff changes necessitated a more formal means of tracking, delegating, and resolving reported issues, and the department turned to Bugzilla, an open source bug tracking application designed by Mozilla.org developers. While designed with software development bug tracking in mind, Bugzilla can be easily customized and modified to serve as an IT ticketing system. Twenty-three months and over 2300 trouble tickets later, Auraria’s IT department workflow is much smoother and more efficient. This article includes two Perl Template Toolkit code samples for customized Bugzilla screens for its use in a library environment; readers will be able to easily replicate the project in their own environments.

ASIS&T 2010 early-bird registation ends tommorow 2010 September 16

The last day to register for ASIS&T 2010 at the early bird rate is tomorrow, September 17. I know many think of ASIS&T as a conference primarily for LIS faculty, and that may be true, but I find it very valuable as a practitioner and I think more people working in the field should attend because they would get a lot out of it, and the researchers would get some valuable real-world input into their projects. For more details see the ASIS&T 2010 program or facebook page.

Call for chapters: Getting started with cloud computing: A LITA guide 2010 August 27

Dear Librarian Colleagues:

Consider writing a chapter for the forthcoming book, “Getting started with cloud computing: A LITA guide”.

Edward Corrado and Heather Moulaison, editors, are looking for 8-12 page (double spaced standard font) chapters on either:

1. Applications and services used by librarians in the cloud and how they might be used in a variety of libraries, including information on:

a. The tool itself (what it does, why it could be of use to libraries)
b. Why librarians should know about this application or service

2. Descriptions of best practices/ok practices/not good practices in using cloud services, including information on:

a. The background to the project: Describe your library, your collection, your resources, or any other element that will be necessary to understand what you did and why

b. The project: Describe what you did, why you did it, who did what, and how, being sure to mention any special funding you needed or resources you used

c. The assessment: How have you assessed your project and what are the results of that assessment

Possible topics: Using Amazon S3 for backups/storage, Hosting Websites, blogs, wikis, etc., in the Cloud, Hosting Library Subject Guides in the Cloud, Using Google Docs and other Google Applications, etc.

Examples can focus on all kinds of libraries, including public, special, museum, academic, etc.

Projected deadline for chapter: Nov. 1, 2010.

Authors will receive a copy of the book as compensation.

If you are interested in submitting an idea for consideration, please send a rough outline of your proposed chapter to ecorrado@ecorrado.us before Sept. 15, 2010. Clearly indicate in your email your name, contact information, and any other information the editors should take into
consideration about the context of your proposal.