books, artifacts, cataloging, networks

Hello.

Friday, January 14, 2011

Hello. I’m George Oates, Project Lead of the Open Library project, from the Internet Archive in San Francisco. I come from the land of folksonomy and photographs, having worked at Flickr from it’s inception to December 2008. I am new to the world of librarianship.

I’d like to talk briefly about artifacts that books produce, the library as a social object, and how those two ideas could enrich library cataloging.


The library world is not exactly a hotbed of innovation. Even though librarians are often information architecture experts, and have a deep, abiding interest in classification systems, and making books accessible, I think that in the age of the web, this access is hindered by the idea that records for books have been organized into a sequence, often sorted by title or author name.

Many of the computing tools and formats are based on these physical card catalogs, where a record is slotted into a sequence. Not to say that there aren’t a ton of librarians thinking hard about to connect books to each other, but in terms of cataloging, it’s often a brutally reductive process, in the past even literally constrained by the size of the index card the record was written on.

I’ve been enjoying pressing on the challenge of transforming the library catalog into a network.


It’s curious to me that the act of reading is most often solitary, but there’s an explosion of social objects that spring from that. Quite apart from the content itself, books are covered in markers and artifacts that tell us about their social lives.

Some rights reserved by pamhule


What are the artifacts that our interactions with books produce? They produce meetings...“Our Elberon Bookclub read, "The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao." A number of the members didn't like it, but that won't stop them from trying again next month!”

Some rights reserved by NJLA: New Jersey Library Association


Bibliographic points of interest

All rights reserved by jelens (used with permission)


http://www.forgottenbookmarks.com/2010/12/not-necessarily-in-that-order.html


“What book clubs are reading in Seattle”Some rights reserved by brewbooks


A library is created through use.

Some rights reserved by Matt Hampel


This is Isaac Newton’s OWN COPY of his book, Opticks. It has Newton’s own handwriting and annotations in the scan... SO COOL. It’s held at the Boston Public Library.


Handwritten scribbles and scrawls; annotations; corrections


Illuminated manuscripts - normally reserved for very special books, illuminated in gold. I like to think of these book artifacts as a new sort of illumination.

No known copyright restrictions [?]

http://www.flickr.com/photos/nationallibrarynz_commons/5344535652/


This is a book page on Google. You can see some computing power has been thrown at a large body of text to extract common words, and passages that have been referenced elsewhere.


This sort of processing is obviously useful for placing books into a network. Throwing named-entity extractors at a body of text can give us people or place names, citations and such.


I’m conflicted. It feels a bit clinical... I find sentiment analysis sort of funny... I mean, why don’t you just read the damn book already.

(Henry) Gray’s Anatomy, 1901http://www.archive.org/stream/anatomydescripti00grayuoft


But then of course, you can do cool stuff like this :)

Some books are only cursorily

to be tasted of.THOMAS FULLER 1608-1661


http://www.archive.org/stream/bookloversenchir00irelrich#page/n6/mode/1up

Namely first, voluminous books, the task of a man's life to read them over ; secondly, auxiliary books, only to be repaired to on occasions ; thirdly, such as are mere pieces of formality, so that if you look on them, you look through them ; and he that peeps through the casement of the index, sees as much as if he were in the house. But the laziness of those cannot be excused who perfunctorily pass over authors of consequence, and only trade in their tables and contents. These, like city-cheaters, having gotten the names of all country gentlemen, make silly people believe they have long lived in those places where they never were, and flourish with skill in those authors they never seriously studied.

I see the irony of me using this quotation - but I have read that book, and it’s wonderful. A series of love letters from authors to books.

The reason I bring this up now is that machine based treatments of literature are capable of turning any book into one of these auxiliary books. Not to be consumed as a whole, but in pieces.


Tree of Codes by Jonathan Safran Foer. A rewrite of The Street of Crocodiles by Bruno Schulz, that is poking at what’s possible with literature, and possible with paper. A reconstitution of a previous story, with a beautiful, meaningful physical design.


Along the lines of physical books as social objects, this is Mr. Thatcher Wine, a former Internet entrepreneur who now creates custom book collections and decorative “book solutions,”http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/06/garden/06books.html?scp=1&sq=book%20designer&st=cse

Funny footnote: Correction: January 7, 2011An earlier version of this article misstated the number of books Mr. Wine wrapped for the spa in the condo tower Icon Brickell in Miami.


My mum volunteers every Tuesday at the Oxfam bookshop in Adelaide, South Australia. I mentioned to her that I would be talking to you today, and she mentioned that a chap had come into her bookstore asking to buy 2,000 books to furnish a new restaurant’s decor. (She gave him the schlocky stuff that wasn’t moving.)All rights reserved by Matilda Diamant


Old media is more generally a liability though, sadly.Even though following along the patterns of deaccession -- which are rarely public, by the way -- would be interesting, it’s a concern that lots of libraries are getting rid of physical books where there’s a digital copy available. These seems dangerous - and actually, the Internet Archive is quietly building a physical archive to catch this so called waste for the long term.

No known copyright restrictions [?]


A library is created through use. As a reader, your library is like an autobiography. Tracking changes over time, subject matter, who you lent things to and when maps back against your life.

Some rights reserved by ninahale


I’m in love with informal fuzzy arrangements of books.

Library catalogs could be aware of many more things things like a book’s artifacts, its circulation, how many people have read, borrowed or purchased the book, adjacent books, general arrangements, changes over time. And from as many source collections as possible.

Catalog as Landscape?


How do you see the shape of a catalog? How can you see its boundaries and edges? How can you move through it differently than search and retrieve?

Photo by me

Some rights reserved by tuppus

Deconstruction


I came to Open Library with a good deal of skepticism about the library world. Watching order emerge from total chaos in the uncontrolled classification system at work on Flickr, but, I was intrigued to see if we could outline the catalog as a shape, so we pulled everything to bits to see what we could find.

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/tupwanders/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/tupwanders/

LEADER: 01378cam 2200373I 4500001 ocmocm01143845003 OCoLC005 19951211171151.0008 750117r19531945nyu 000 1 eng u019 $a4338553040 $cSLC$dOCL$dTXA$dSFR$dOCoLC049 $aSFRA092 $aF$bSaLinger 1953100 1 $aSalinger, J. D.$q(Jerome David),$d1919-245 14 $aThe catcher in the rye.260 $a[New York] :$bNew American Library,$c[1953, c1951]300 $a192 p.$c18 cm.490 0 $aSignet book,$vD1667500 $aReprint of the 1945 ed. published by Little, Brown, Boston.590 $aBarbara Grier and Donna McBride collection.650 0 $aTeenage boys$vFiction.650 0 $aBrothers and sisters$vFiction.650 0 $aPreparatory schools$vFiction.650 4 $aAlienation in teenagers$vFiction.650 4 $aTeenage boys$xInterpersonal relations$vFiction.650 4 $aEmotionally disturbed teenage boys$vFiction.690 $aBarbara Grier and Donna McBride collection.655 4 $aQueer pulps.907 $a.b15331775$b10-24-07$c07-20-03998 $axsf$b07-01-03$cm$da$e-$feng$gnyu$h4$i1935 $aADM-9576907 $a.b15331775$b02-23-04$c07-20-03998 $axsf$b07-01-03$cm$da$e-$feng$gnyu$h4$i1945 $aF SaLinger 1953$g1$i31223037153153$lxsfgl$o-$p$0.00$q-$rc$so$t1$u0$v0$w0$x0$y.i25499191$z08-05-03


Here is a MARC record. Full of data!

Let’s see what happens when you explode Library of Congress Subject Headings. This data isn’t even in Open Library - we borrowed it from loc.gov then pulled out the dynamite...

LEADER: 01378cam 2200373I 4500001 ocmocm01143845003 OCoLC005 19951211171151.0008 750117r19531945nyu 000 1 eng u019 $a4338553040 $cSLC$dOCL$dTXA$dSFR$dOCoLC049 $aSFRA092 $aF$bSaLinger 1953100 1 $aSalinger, J. D.$q(Jerome David),$d1919-245 14 $aThe catcher in the rye.260 $a[New York] :$bNew American Library,$c[1953, c1951]300 $a192 p.$c18 cm.490 0 $aSignet book,$vD1667500 $aReprint of the 1945 ed. published by Little, Brown, Boston.590 $aBarbara Grier and Donna McBride collection.650 0 $aTeenage boys$vFiction.650 0 $aBrothers and sisters$vFiction.650 0 $aPreparatory schools$vFiction.650 4 $aAlienation in teenagers$vFiction.650 4 $aTeenage boys$xInterpersonal relations$vFiction.650 4 $aEmotionally disturbed teenage boys$vFiction.690 $aBarbara Grier and Donna McBride collection.655 4 $aQueer pulps.907 $a.b15331775$b10-24-07$c07-20-03998 $axsf$b07-01-03$cm$da$e-$feng$gnyu$h4$i1935 $aADM-9576907 $a.b15331775$b02-23-04$c07-20-03998 $axsf$b07-01-03$cm$da$e-$feng$gnyu$h4$i1945 $aF SaLinger 1953$g1$i31223037153153$lxsfgl$o-$p$0.00$q-$rc$so$t1$u0$v0$w0$x0$y.i25499191$z08-05-03


650 field - subjects

650 0 $aTeenage boys$vFiction.650 0 $aBrothers and sisters$vFiction.650 0 $aPreparatory schools$vFiction.650 4 $aAlienation in teenagers$vFiction.650 4 $aTeenage boys$xInterpersonal relations$vFiction.650 4 $aEmotionally disturbed teenage boys$vFiction.


Zoom in

650 0 $aTeenage boys$vFiction.650 0 $aBrothers and sisters$vFiction.650 0 $aPreparatory schools vFiction.650 0 $aAlienation in teenagers vFiction.650 0 $aTeenage boys$xInterpersonal relations vFiction.650 0 $aEmotionally disturbed teenage boys vFiction.


Strip out the MaRC gumpf

Teenage boys, Fiction, Brothers and sisters, Preparatory schools, Alienation in teenagers, Interpersonal relations, Emotionally disturbed teenage boys


Remove dupes, make it a human readable list

Teenage boys, Fiction, Brothers and sisters, Preparatory schools, Alienation in teenagers, Interpersonal relations, Emotionally disturbed teenage boys


Then put a page behind all of them...


Looking at the subject page, you can see the Works with the most editions in the top panel, with a handy indicator to tell you if you can read an electronic version....

By Casey Cripe


Casey Cripe


http://www.literature-map.com/aimee+bender.html

“Gnod is my experiment in the field of artificial intelligence. Its a self-adapting system, living on this server and 'talking' to everyone who comes along. Gnods intention is to learn about the outer world and to learn 'understanding' its visitors. This enables gnod to share all its wisdom with you in an intuitive and efficient way. You might call it a search-engine to find things you don't know about.”


I wanted to end with some quick comments on social design in the context of a library. I sort of love the idea of Sssh as a design theme.

Even though we’ve seen that there’s a ton of social artifacts and connections that emerge from reading, and collections of books, I quite like the restriction of not leaping to 2.0 style tools in the design of Open Library.

Some rights reserved by Enokson


http://www.flickr.com/photos/bartificial/5027921214


This is ImportBot. He gets new catalog records from the Library of Congress and puts them into Open Library every Tuesday. We also import records from Amazon, and from the Internet Archive. ImportBot looks for recently scanned books, and creates new records (or merges them with existing ones) just a few minutes after the record is created on the Internet Archive.


Just simple building blocks for interconnection at this stage. Simply writing identifiers from other bookish systems out there on the web. One benefit of collecting these identifiers is that it allows developers out there to investigate the open library in their own language, but using their own IDs.


It’s exciting -- at least, to me -- to imagine a turblent library catalog. This shift from sequence to network, and the injection of different collection information and book artifacts is something easy for computers to process. The more connections, the better - because that increases our chance of finding things again.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/rreis/4859722551/sizes/l/

The Library at Nightby Alberto Manguel


I was very pleased to discover the writings of a chap called Alberto Manguel. His thinking on libraries has been deeply influential. If you’re interested at all in books, libraries, or reading, read him.

George [email protected] | slideshare.net/george08 | @openlibrary


mailto:[email protected]




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