Day 2 - Prizren

This was a totally AMAZING day, in so many ways. I hardly know where to begin.

We went to the "Inter-municipal Library" of Prizren. Prizren is a historical city going back to Roman times. It was a major trade route, and also one of those areas that was often conquered -- Romans, Ottoman Turks, 14th century Serbs. It holds a lot of Ottoman history and also still has a significant Catholic population. It is thought of as the most ethnically diverse city in Kosovo.

The road from Prishtina to Prizren is a two-laner with everything from cars, trucks, tractors, and donkey carts. Along the road there is an interesting mix of new construction (much of it looking to be stalled at the half-finished stage) and abandoned buildings, probably from the Yugoslav era. Construction, both old and new, does not look very solid, but there are many business and office buildings being built just outside of Prishtina, which shows at least an optimism about economic prosperity. (There were also sheep, cows, and some of the scruffiest looking dogs I have ever seen, but who stood by the road just defying the traffic to encroach on their territory.)

At the library, we arrived for a celebration of the second anniversary of the American Corner in their library. The AC space is small, but a small group of volunteers has turned it into a learning center, with English classes, movie nights, book groups, and activities for children. Oh, the children! We came into the meeting room and there were about 25 children at the front of the room in their finest: the little boys in suits, the girls in what I can only think of as "princess dresses" -- white and sparkly. I'm guessing that the age was about 5-6, but there was a great variety of sizes. I didn't get where they were from, but I'm guessing there must be an American school or an English language program at a school. They each wore a paper crown with a sticker with the logo of the American Corner. The US Embassy representative I was with whispered to me that the stickers were created by the embassy as bookplates for the books in the American Corner. So there were these little kids wearing book-plate tiara's, and the teacher led them in a number of songs. They did "Bingo was a dog" (or whatever it is called); "You are my sunshine", "The ABC song" and other great songs. It was definitely "through the looking glass". At the end, they shouted out in unison (and one little girl could really shout!) "Thank you America!"



Then volunteers from the American Corner came and talked about their work, in English. This was a real point of pride for them, and they had clearly worked very hard.

Next I gave a talk on digital libraries and digitization. Not too interesting. I did get a few interesting questions about dealing with old materials and about copyright. Laura, the US Embassy rep, had told me that the library had done a project where they asked local citizens to bring in old books that they had, and the library scanned some pages and prepared a book "catalog". One of the librarians went and got a copy of the book catalog and an old manuscript book, and brought them for us to see. Just amazing! They have a huge collections of manuscripts that have not had hardly any care, and many of the most incredible works are still in the hands of individuals. I asked for, and was given, a copy of the book that they did, and will show it around. This is a place where there are historical works that have probably never been seen by scholars.

From the library we went to the Gazi Mehmet Pasha mosque and library. The library is a small octagonal building that was built to be GMP's tomb. Unfortunately, he died in battle elsewhere and his body never made it back home. The US contributed funds to restore the building and discovered the empty tomb under the floor. The building houses a library of books, mostly donated by locals, mostly manuscript, and mostly in states of disrepair. (I took some pictures with the embassy's camera, so I will post them and link from here in a few days.) The building is unheated, probably reasonably dry, but the books are not being kept in an archival environment. The folks showing us around told us that the library covers a wide range of topics. There also was a box on the floor with bits and pieces -- single sheets, book covers (one with what looked like Venetian style end papers) -- and they told us that in another building they have many, many boxes like that. We looked at a book that was printed from plates, dated 1768. That was one of the more modern ones.



We also visited the mosque -- small, but with that stunning austerity that mosques have. And lots of stories about being rescued from assorted enemies.

As we left, I was given truly heartfelt thanks from the man who is responsible for the library and mosque; perhaps in his late thirties (I'm bad at ages), he talked about the hope that he has for his children, and how grateful he is that "America" stepped in and allowed them to restore the library and preserve their heritage.

Can I say now how inadequate I felt? This is one of the many places on this planet where $50K could transform our knowledge. Some scanning equipment and a bit of metadata work would make previously unseen works visible. I'm sure there are thousands of places like this on the planet, maybe untold thousands. It just really hurts to see it first hand.

On to day 3. Oh, and my suitcase finally arrived, just when I was really beginning to appreciate minimalist living. But now I have my camera with me, so I will try to make up for time with the photos.

Monday in Pristina

It's 4:25 pm and the call to prayer is broadcasting from a nearby mosque. Today was a day of ceremonies at the BKUK (National and university libraries of Kosovo), above.

First, though, after getting up I spent over an hour looking out my hotel window at a crowd gathering in front of the Swiss embassy, just two doors down. A few people entered the embassy, the others overflowed the sidewalk across from the embassy, nearly blocking the street. On first glance my mind read "protest" but I soon noticed that most waited in anticipation and some level of excitement. After a while gates must have been opened because first one group, then others flowed through the gate into the courtyard of the embassy building. I assume that the lineup had something to do with getting visas or work permissions. There was something hungry about the tenor of the crowd, like the look of day laborers when a truck pulls up to them.

The city's population is young and fashion is obviously very important, although the fashion here has its own flavor. Where overly big clothes are the rage in the US, here everyone seems to be wearing clothes that are one or two sizes too small. The makeup reminds me of what my friends and I must have looked like in high school, that is, a general lack of subtlety.

We went to the library and met briefly with the library director, Dr. Bashoti. (This is one of the few names that I remember, as they are almost all so unlike anything I have previously encountered.) The library was built probably in the 70's and is very strange in design, with many domes and an outer shell of metal sculpture that makes me think that the whole thing is in bondage. Inside, however, the domes become wonderful sky-lights, so the light inside is soft but natural. The entrance to the library sweeps up a grand staircase that ends in a semi-circle of stone steps that remind me of a roman amphitheatre. The venue is so elegant that it was the site of the signing of the Kosovo constitution, just a few days ago.

For the opening of this, the sixth Library Week, we gathered in a formal auditorium to hear lauditory speeches by representatives of the US Embassy, the BKUK, and Kosovo's ministry of education. Before the speeches a piano and cello piece was performed followed by a short bit of operatic singing. The female performers wore dramatic black dresses and makeup. More music was performed after the speeches including a highly tumultous piece called Vale mbi dalge (both of the e's should have umlauts, which someone told me is a sure sign of the Albanian language - lots of umlauts).

In the afternoon there was the grand opening of the American Corner, a single room in the library building that looks almost like a small public library, with books and computers. Like most libraries outside of a relatively small number of Western countries, the materials are all "on site use." (It's weird to see "library books" with no plastic jackets, no bar codes, no ownership stamps. There's nothing that says: "library book.") The young American women working on the Corner fortunately have an expansive and open spirit, and they have equipped the place with a big flat-screen TV and lots of videos and DVDs. One woman showed me proudly that she had ordered episodes of Seinfeld and the Mary Tyler Moore show. (If you come here in a year and there is a restaurant called "Soup Nazi," you will know why.) They hold English classes (and I'm invited to one on Thursday if I get finished with other matters in time). My main task for the corner is to find out how they can order some of those revolving paperback stands that public libraries use.

Following both ceremonies there was "Koktej" -- literally "cocktails" but actually your basic office event spread of pretzels, cheese, cold drinks and wine, all with plastic plates and cups. These were very popular and I didn't even try to approach the tables with the goodies.

After that I gave my first talk -- with simultaneous translation into Albanian and Serbian. This one was on "the role of documents in the founding of a country," or at least that's how the request had been transmitted to me. I talked about the formation of the post office and Library of Congress, and why information had been considered important for a new democracy. No one asked questions and I got zero feedback from the group, which means that I have no idea how the remainder of my talks will go over.

Tomorrow at 9 am a US Embassy driver comes to take me to the "American High School," a kind of English immersion school run by a Canadian. Then we go to Prizren for day 2 of library day. Day 2 consists of a talk on Digital Libraries by local librarians, lunch, the second anniversary of the American Corner in Inter-Municipal Library in Prizen (listed as "Manifestation" in the agenda, so I have no idea what that is about), then my talk, which they have entitled "Digital Libraries -- How to use digital means for preservation and cataloging of old / rare books."

I still haven't actually seen the user view of a library, but hope I will in the days ahead. So far, the only connections I have made where I might get to talk to people about what they are trying to do is with the American University and the American High School. The language barrier is very difficult; enough so that I cannot gauge how much of a conceptual barrier there is.

Arrival in Prishtina

I've made it to Prishtina (or Pristina) after about 27 hours of travel. What I have seen between the airport and the hotel is a city that is both brand new and rather run down. Lots of new construction, but equally as much that needs repair. It's surrounded by a lush, green farmed countryside, with cows and chickens running loose (well, the cows were standing, not running). It's rolling hills with mountains in the background.

I'd include photos but my bag with the camera did not make the trip, and is un-accounted for. Fortunately I have the essentials with me: laptop, pda, and enough clothes for a few days. (I've only checked a bag 3 times in the last 4-5 years, and 2 of those 3 the bag went missing. I'll keep my fingers crossed that this one turns up eventually.)

I'm at the Hotel Ambasador, another example of old and new. The Wifi is great, so I'll be able to stay in touch. Everything else is what we in the US would consider minimal, but here is found in the luxury hotel. (Those photos on the web page -- Photoshop!)

Tomorrow is a day of meetings and ceremonies. I'll try to keep good notes and report on the events.

En Route to Kosovo

I'm in the Vienna airport, waiting for a flight to Pristina, Kosovo. I'm spending the next week in Kosovo as a participant in Library Week, which appears to be sponsored by the US Embassy. The events for the week are many, beginning with the Grand Opening tomorrow of the American Corner in the national and university library of Kosovo (acronym: BKUK). An "American Corner" is a library/cultural center promoting... well, promoting America. I think this is the current version of the USIS libraries that one used find around the world.

Besides trying to look alert during ceremonies, I'm giving four talks on various aspects of library technology and having meetings with various groups, with the faint hope of providing some useful information. It's easy to have the dream that a struggling country (or province, if you don't subscribe to Kosovo's independence) like Kosovo can make use of the Internet and digital resources to make a great leap forward in terms of information access. I'm sure it is not so simple. I expect to learn quite a bit and to be surprised at every turn. I will try to pass along what I learn as the week progresses. I may get online and ask for specific help or suggestions, since I'm quite sure I can't answer even a fraction of the questions that might arise.

Stay tuned.

Meaning

One of the big challenges for the RDA Vocabularies project is to define terms that have clear, unambiguous meaning so that library data can have a firm foundation for data processing. Library data as conceived in the 19th century (and carried through to today) was designed as a textual display (not data elements). This meant that it only had to be clear to human beings, who are marvelous at the interpretation of text and quite accepting of the imprecision of utterances. Now that our data must be managed by machines we have less room for the free-wheeling language basis of our data. The text that follows was my attempt to explain this on the RDA-L mailing list.

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In RDA, there is a field called "extent" that is defined as:

"Extent reflects the number of units and/or subunits making up a resource." (3.4.0.1.1)

That's fine as meaning goes. Here are examples from RDA Chapter 3:

327 pages
1 sculpture
2 portfolios ([18] leaves; [24] leaves)

These are fairly clear: number + unit ("327" + "pages"). Then you get:

viii, 278 pages

This could be interpreted as:

viii pages
278 pages

But it has another meaning, which is that it is also conveying (I could say primarily conveying) the PAGINATION, that is, how the pages are numbered. Pagination is important for distinguishing editions, so this is good information, but it isn't the same as the number of pages in the item -- especially not to a computer.

Why does this matter?

It matters because it has a different meaning -- a meaning that humans can distinguish, but computers cannot. And even for humans the meaning is somewhat ambiguous -- since only numbered pages are included.

In the past our data was designed as text to be read by humans. We could rely on humans to make inferences about the data, which meant that there was tolerance for this kind of mixing of meanings. But if, for example, we want to be able to match up ONIX records and library records for the same item (and there are good reasons to do that both for acquisitions purposes and user service purposes), then this mixture of meanings makes it hard to compare the ONIX number of pages (which is literally the number of pages in the book -- that's after all what they pay the printer for) with the library pagination. (Believe me it's hard -- I've been working on this kind of match.) In essence, if we want to include number + unit AND pagination in the same record, we should distinguish between them.

And let's not go into a rant against the publishers ("They do it wrong!" No, they don't; they do what is right for them). There is a distinction often made also in abstracting and indexing data, where an article can have both page numbers ("43-47") and number of pages ("5"). This latter is used in ILL to estimate copying costs.

So if we want our data to play well in the world of bibliographic information, we have to pay close attention to meaning. We have our habits (as I believe I showed when I asked about title case on the RDA list*, which drew many responses but much speculation), but those do not serve us well if we can't turn them into unambiguous data definitions. I think it is a shame that RDA is carrying forward some of our habits without thinking more about meaning.

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* I'll summarize this in an upcoming post

Copyright and MARC

OCLC (well, OCLC/RLG) has released a summary report on copyright investigation in academic institutions. The basic results are obvious, but it's good that someone has done even a small amount of fact-gathering on this topic. The report concludes that determining copyright status of library materials is hard work. That's no surprise. Two statements in the report, however, give me special satisfaction:

Institutions are working with MARC data from their local catalog. This information allows them to rule out high risk materials, and work with a narrower pool of items. Beyond this, institutions need to examine items for information not contained in MARC record. (p.3)

Information is not present in MARC records both because local MARC record sometimes doesn't contain information it should, and also because cataloging rules don't call for including some information that is necessary for this purpose. (p. 4)

I want to point out that a field for copyright information has recently been approved for addition to the MARC21 record, and that I authored the proposal that went to the MARC standards committee. There were many people who opposed the proposal on the grounds that catalogers should not be determining the copyright status of items. I continue to point out that the field (based on the copyrightMD schema developed for the California Digital Library) does not determine copyright status. It provides certain factual information, such as recording the copyright statement that is on the work, something that I honestly think should be included in descriptive cataloging. It also provides a way to record the assessment made by the library or archive. Much of the time this assessment will be "unknown status," but the few times that it can be determined that an item is in the public domain, that information is highly valuable to the potential users of the material.

CopyrightMD was mainly motivated by the needs of archives undergoing digitization projects. I was struck by the fact that libraries and archives are making materials available online and then either 1) saying nothing about the copyright status of the work, or 2) making statements about use permissions that have no basis in law. For a while I was gathering up the more egregious statements by institutions about rights in materials that they had digitized and made available for open access online. Basically, libraries and archives are often making statements that amount to actual permissions, such as "You can make up to 2 copies of this for personal use." The problem with that statement is that only the copyright holder can give such permissions; that's what copyright is all about. It is also fairly simple to find cases where copyright is being claimed on works that are in the public domain; you can find Federal documents in Google Books that are only available in snippet view or that have "Copyrighted material" watermarked on each page. You and I may be able to scoff at this absurdity, but shouldn't we be doing better by our users? Shouldn't we be providing them with information to counter this mis-information?

The information that we provide should include everything that we do know about the basic facts that are used to determine copyright:

• who is the creator?
• who is the copyright holder?
• what copyright statement is on the work?
  
• when was this created/published?
• if a copyright holder is known, what is the appropriate contact information?
• etc. (see the documentation for all the fields)
  

Some of this is part of library cataloging, but certain key information (like a copyright holder statement) is not included. There also is renewed attention to data points like creator death dates, which feature in copyright determination but were not being provided by the US cataloging community until recently. Mainly, however, most archival materials are not being given full cataloging. Brief metadata records are being created as items are digitized. My argument is that for any item that is digitized and made accessible, the data that informs copyright status is absolutely essential in that metadata.

It is equally important state what you do not know along with what you do know about the item. If the archive has no idea who created the work, or has a name but not enough information to determine a death date, then it would be good to tell the user that up front. Often, archives include a statement like "Contact XYZ archive for more information." When I asked them what usually happened when a person did contact them, they said that most of the time they had no further information for the user. And they knew that at the time that they digitized the item and created the metadata for it. Can you see the problem here?

The OCLC/RLG report shows that there are two primary situations where librarians are spending time making copyright determinations: 1) when deciding if they can provide access to materials, which means digital access (since hardcopy access doesn't have copyright issues) and 2) when the institution needs to engage in re-use of materials, mainly in archives and special collections. Each time that one of these assessments is done, the data that is gathered to support the assessment should be recorded so this work does not need to be repeated at another time. It seems obvious to me that part of the assessment process should be the recording of the data that isn't in the catalog record today. I'm still stunned that we haven't begun doing that on a regular basis.

Code4lib + RDV Update

I attended Code4lib 2008 in Portland Oregon at the end of February, and I must say it was the most intense and rewarding and even thrilling conference I've ever been to. Imagine 200 coders in a room, laptop on each lap, programs running, chat flying, boosterism abounding. Lightening talks (5 minutes or less) introduced quick hacks with stunning results (none of which I have been able to replicate with my own very modest skills, but I am sure that others have had more success).

It was an honor to be speaking at that event, and I used the opportunity to present the reasoning behind the RDA Vocabularies project. I have to say that it was an easy audience because a room full of coders understands the difficulty of working with unstructured textual data, which is a lot of what we work with in libraryland. The RDA Vocabularies project is developing a set of elements (or "properties" in RDF-speak) that will facilitate a more machine-friendly approach to bibliographic data, without compromising on user-friendliness. But the main point of the Vocabularies project for me is that we can create better user services with data that plays well on the Web.

The talk was filmed, but the videos haven't been set up for streaming yet. I added text to my slides (PDF), making some of them much too wordy (it seemed to take fewer words when I was speaking it). If I learn to do videocasts (a current goal of minie), I will try to get some of this content available for viewing+listening.

(Note: Jon Phipps, code4lib attendee and programmer on the NSDL registries project, has an interesting post on using RDF triples with DC and RDA. I think I'll get it if I read it 3 or 4 more times.)