NARA has completed two of five planned increments of ERA, but has experienced schedule delays and cost overruns, and several functions planned for the system’s initial release were deferred. Although NARA initially planned for the system to be capable of ingesting federal and presidential records in September 2007, the two system increments to support those records did not achieve initial operating capability until June 2008 and December 2008, respectively. In addition, NARA reportedly spent about $80 million on the base increment, compared to its planned cost of about $60 million. Finally, a number of functions originally planned for the base increment were deferred to later increments, including the ability to delete records and to ingest redacted records. In fiscal year 2010, NARA plans to complete the third increment, which is to include new systems for Congressional records and public access, and begin work on the fourth.

Source: Government Accountability Office (David A. Powner, director, information technology management issues, before the Subcommittee on Information Policy, Census and National Archives, House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform)

Today, the United States Senate voted to confirm David Ferriero as the 10th Archivist of the United States. Mr. Ferriero was the Andrew W. Mellon Director of the New York Public Libraries and is a leader in the field of library science. Mr. Ferriero, who was nominated by President Obama on July 28, 2009, will succeed Professor Allen Weinstein who resigned as Archivist in December 2008 for health reasons. Deputy Archivist Adrienne Thomas is serving as the Acting Archivist until Mr. Ferriero assumes his duties.

As the Andrew W. Mellon Director of the New York Public Libraries (NYPL), Mr. Ferriero was part of the leadership team responsible for integrating the four research libraries and 87 branch libraries into one seamless service for users, creating the largest public library system in the United States and one of the largest research libraries in the world. Mr. Ferriero was in charge of collection strategy; conservation; digital experience; reference and research services; and education, programming, and exhibitions.

The announcement goes on to provide additional information about Mr. Ferriero’s as well as background about NARA.

Source: NARA
Hat Tip: Debra Bade

In a nutshell, OpenCalais uses semantic technology and natural language processing to analyze text and add metadata by drawing out entities from documents, blog posts, news stories, etc. In some cases, ths type of data can identify or help identify relationships between people, businesses, etc.

A visualization tool might make OpenCalais even more powerful. For example in might be interesting for visualization tools like Muckety or NNDB Mapper and to quickly “see” relationships that might go unnoticed without OpenCalais or other services.

Sure, it would be wonderful if all web content could be analyzed by a human and then have high quality metadata associated with it.

However, that’s far from possible given the massive amount of content generated each minute of each day.

You can try OpenCalais yourself by typing or pasting text into the viewer box.

We entered the full text of last Saturday’s Weekly Presidential Address and got back lots of stats and commentary.

+ Topic (Labor) Worth noting that we did not put the title of the address in the viewer box. The title is, “President Obama Says Recovery Act Creating Jobs and Strengthening Economy”

+ Social Tags Labor, Unemployment, Presidency of Barack Obama, etc.

+ Entities including: Cities (Arcadia, FL) is mentioned in speech Holiday (He ends by wishing everyone a Happy Halloween

+ Continent America (well we’ll got it some slack, close but incorrect) +Industry Terms Clean energy, Less Energy (Good)

+ Province or State Florida, again accurate Finally, Events & Facts

+ Generic Relations (announce, Florida,United States, the largest set of) First we were puzzled. Then, by cursoring over the entry, we see that it’s Florida having the largest set of clean energy projects.

Btw, if you cursor over any of the entities you’ll find additional info.

For example, with Florida we find a relevance score and the lat/long for Arcardia, FL, the town mentioned in the address.

Although we did see it in our document, OC might also provide direct links to Wikipedia, CIA World Factbook, etc.

Overall, very good. But, it’s just one example and one example search does not make a service.

One question that we would we would like to get an answer to is why ThomsonReuters is providing free access to OpenCalais? Does it plan to charge for additional services in the future?

UPDATE: Krista Thomas from OpenCalais sent along the following goals in a Twitter message.
1) Better software faster.
2) Connect all the worlds’ business information.

For bloggers, OC offers a WordPress plug-in, a service for Drupal users and more. The WordPress tool analyzes blog postings, suggests, and even images from Flickr.

Other services have technology that draws out indexing terms, descriptors, etc. but OpenCalais appears to be much more sophisticated. Somewhat similar is Silobreaker news search Silobreaker’s algorithm draws out entities from stories and then make them clickable or searchable. It also offers a couple of cool visualization tools.

Krista Thomas from OpenCalais recently gave a presentation to the San Diego Software Industry Council. Krista’s slides are available online. The charts on pages 4 and 5 are difficult to read so we’re trying to get copies to share..

At the present time

+ 18,000 Developers
+ 20+ Publishers
+ 50 Apps and Services Created
+ 4 million docs processed daily

Again, you can try OpenCalais yourself by typing or pasting text into the viewer box.

Finally, here’s one more OC example using the content from this post.

Overall, it’s easy to see how this service could be of value to both the individual blogger but even more so to publishing companies with a non-stop stream of of content.

Researchers from Rovira i Virgili University, Autonoma of Barcelona, and Oberta of Catalonia have developed a system that protects the privacy of Internet search engine users through a new computer protocol. “It is a model based on cryptographic tools, which distort the profile of users when they use search engines on Internet in such a way that their privacy is preserved,” says Rovira i Virgili University’s Alexandre Viego. The researchers note that there are systems that provide anonymous navigation, but say their system provides a significant improvement in response time over anonymous systems, though it still delays searches slightly. The new protocol has already been tested in both closed research center intranets and on the Internet, and the results have made the researchers optimistic about a global implementation model. The researchers are currently working on the development of a final user version, and believe that it will soon be easy to integrate the system into the major platforms and browsers.

Read the Complete News Item

Source: AlphaGalileo

ACM (the Association for Computing Machinery) announced today that it is providing its institutional library customers with advanced electronic archiving services to preserve their valuable electronic resources. These services, provided by Portico and CLOCKSS, address the scholarly community’s critical need for long-term solutions that assure reliable, secure, deliverable access to their burgeoning digital collection of scholarly works. ACM is offering these services to protect the vast online collection of resources in its Digital Library (DL), which are used by over 1 million computing professionals and students worldwide.

“By partnering with Portico and CLOCKSS, we are able to meet a growing demand in the library community for a trusted, reliable third-party archive, and to ensure that digital collections remain accessible to future scholars, researchers, and students,” said Scott Delman, ACM Group Publisher. “Scientific discovery and the educational process are not possible without reliable access to the accumulated scholarship of the past and secure preservation of the scholarly record, and these agreements are a clear step forward with the relationship between the ACM and the library community.”

By investing in long-term digital preservation of content, ACM’s aim is to make it easier for libraries to accelerate their transition away from print and free up resources invested in print collections in favor of new and innovative electronic products and services.

Much More After a Click

Portico’s primary preservation methodology is migration, which involves transitioning content from one file format to another as technology changes and as file formats become obsolete. Their archival approach begins with receipt of source files, which comprise the intellectual content of electronic scholarly journals, directly from publishers, and features transformation or “normalization” of these diverse files to a standard archival format which can be reliably managed over the long term.

“ACM’s investment in Portico to secure the long-term preservation of their vast digital collections is a tremendously positive development for libraries,” said Eileen Fenton, Portico Managing Director. “The hundreds of libraries around the world that participate in Portico can focus on building their digital collections and re-purposing monies related to print-based expenses knowing that ACM digital content is safe-guarded and will be accessible to them in the future if needed.”

CLOCKSS uses Archive Nodes, which are housed at libraries selected to be the custodians of the archived content, and at institutions that have existed for decades, if not centuries. Archive nodes are located in geographically, politically, and geologically disparate locations in North America, Europe, and Asia. The CLOCKSS archive is governed by the participating publishers and libraries, and supports the library’s role in society as a “custodian of culture.”

Source: ACM

See Also: Visit the Portico Web Site

See Also: Visit the CLOCKSS Web Site

The improvement won’t be very noticeable at first, but this is a small step toward unearthing more value in search and getting you more relevant results.

Trending topics on Twitter can be found on the Twitter home page or, if you’re logged in, you can find them in the right column below the search box.

Remember, today’s blog post is specifically about Twitter’s own search engine.

Source: Twitter Blog
Hat Tip: Search Engine Land

Don’t Forget

Many other Twitter search tools are available. Four examples are Collecta, OneRiot,tweetzi, and the new Twitter search tool from Bing.

“Let’s face it: the library, as a place, is dead,” said Suzanne E. Thorin, dean of libraries at Syracuse University. “Kaput. Finito. And we need to move on to a new concept of what the academic library is.”

Thorin prefaced her comments by saying that for the purposes of the debate she would be taking an extreme position on the fate of libraries. But her argument tapped into theories about the obsolescence of libraries — traditionally defined — that have grown along with the emergence of Web-based reference tools, e-books, digitized and born-digital content, and other technologies that some see as changing essential library functions.

“The scientists have mostly gone online with their library needs,” Thorin said. “Cutting-edge scholars in the humanities are building new disciplines and online environments are are, in effect, libraries themselves; they are diffuse, collaborative, non-hierarchical, always changing.”

[Snip]

Richard E. Luce, director of university libraries at Emory University, countered that just because libraries are transitioning from print to online does not mean they will cease to be libraries.

“The issue is really about library as place, whether you need the bricks and mortar,” Luce said. “So let’s look at that.” Why did thousands of college technologists come to Educause? “To interact with one another — to talk, to collaborate, to think, to communicate, to be with one another,” he said. “Isn’t that what we do in our best libraries?”

The library still is, and will continue to be, the centerpiece of a campus, Luce said. The history of libraries, he said, has been marked by evolution: They were founded as places where materials were collected and stored. Then they shifted their focus toward connecting clients with resources. Then, with the addition of creature comforts such as coffee shops, they became “experience” centered, effectively rendering student unions obsolete.

Access the Complete Article

Source: Inside Higher Ed
Hat Tip: Library Stuff

Web content changes all the time. If we don’t save that content before it disappears, a major part of our cultural history will be lost.

The Library of Congress is working to provide permanent access to web content of historical importance. It selects websites for collection, requests permissions from the website owners, addresses the technology of collecting websites and preserves the websites and makes them available.

This video examines those four challenges.

Access the Video (embedded here)

A text transcript is also available (PDF)

Source: National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program

There are six lists available. The primary list is Agenda Setters. Other lists can be accessed via the down menu at the top of each list.

+ Top Agenda Setters (The Primary List) (Sir Tim Berners-Lee #1)

+ Top Business Leaders (Steve Jobs #1)

+ Top Entrepreneurs (Jack Dorsey, Biz Stone and Evan Williams #1)

+ Top Politicos (Richard Thomas #1)

+ Top Techies (Werner Vogels #1)

+ Top Visionaries (Sir Tim Berners-Lee #1)

Each entry also contains a profile.

Lists from previous years can be found on the about half way down on the right side under the header, “Agenda Setters Past.”

Source: Silicon.com

The interview runs three pages. Here are a few points that we found to be most interesting. However, the entire interview is a “must read.”

+ “One of the things that’s important to know about Wikipedia is that the entries that are edited by hundreds of people are really anomalies.”–Jimmy Wales

+ This small group mentality can be a blessing when editing articles but it is also one of the site’s biggest weaknesses: Wikipedia’s pool of contributors can tend towards the homogenous – or “a certain type of person”, in Wales’ words.

+ “Right now a lot of the Wikipedia editing is done by people who are very technologically savvy,” he says. “What we see is 20s and 30s computer geeks, mostly male – tragically 85 per cent male.

+ “We know there are geeks who aren’t computer geeks,” he adds. “We know there are people who are really knowledgeable about poetry, who might not really feel comfortable editing a template or figuring out our table syntax… but who have a tonne of knowledge that they would be happy to share with people, and they would love to meet other people from their community who are interested in discussing and putting up some knowledge and we sometimes aren’t addressing their needs very well so that’s one of the things we’re focused on.”

+ To this end, there will be a small grant of almost $900,000 from the US-based Stanton Foundation to improve Wikipedia’s writing and editing processes for first time users to help boost usability and accessibility.

Access the Complete Interview (via Silicon.com)

Source: Silicon.com

See Also: Rankings: Top 10 Countries by Engagement (Average Minutes Per Visitor Spent on Wikimedia Foundation Sites)

See Also: Complete List of Wikimedia Foundation Sites

See Also: Jimmy Wales Interviewed by Yale Daily News (October 9, 2009)

The Special Libraries Association and The New York Library Association are members of the OBA.

From the Blog Post:

The Open Book Alliance is issuing the following baseline requirements that the new settlement proposal must meet if it is to achieve those critical objectives. These requirements reflect the collective expression of concerns by the U.S. Department of Justice, authors, publishers, academics, libraries, foreign nations, state Attorneys General, consumer advocacy groups, and many others, and thus we think it appropriate to review the revised settlement within this framework.

[Snip]

+ The settlement must not grant Google an exclusive set of rights (de facto or otherwise) or result in any one entity gaining control over access to and distribution of the world’s largest digital database of books.

+ Authors and other rights holders must retain meaningful rights and the ability to determine the use of their works that have been scanned by Google.

+ The settlement must result in the creation of a true digital library that grants all researchers and users, commercial and non-commercial, full access that guarantees the ability to innovate on the knowledge it contains.

+ All class members must be treated equitably.

+ The settlement cannot provide for competition by making others engage in future litigation.

+ Congress must retain the exclusive authority granted by the U.S. Constitution to set copyright policy.

+ All rights holders impacted by the settlement must have a meaningful ability to receive notice, understand its terms and opt-out.

+ The parties that negotiated the settlement must live under the terms to which they seek to bind others, rather than their own separately negotiated arrangements.

Access the Complete Blog Post

Source: Open Book Alliance

See Also: Press Review: Judge Chin Sets Nov. 9 Deadline For Revised Google Book Settlement (via ResourceShelf, October 7, 2009)

Poetry of September 11 is a guide to print and online poetry about the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. The guide is divided into the following sections:

+ Print Publications

+ Online Resources
+++ Selected Individual Poems
+++ Collections of Poetry

+ Finding Additional Poems Through Your Library

See Also: A Complete List of Web Guides

See Also: Library of Congress Bibliographies, Research Guides and Finding Aids

Source: Virtual Services, Digital Reference Section @ Library of Congress

The primary attraction for the new Wall Street Journal Professional Edition [an online resource] lies in its incorporation of Factiva content. The service will integrate content from 17,000 Factiva sources with WSJ.com content to create news flows covering key industries, companies, etc. Users will also be able to search a 1-year archive of Factiva and a 2-year archive of WSJ.com content. The price will run $49 a month or about $600 a year; that [our emphasis] will include access to full-text articles for no additional transactional pricing, unlike the $2.95 per article paid under most other Factiva subscriptions. The product has already launched with enterprise customers and will launch for consumers in January 2010.

Much More in the Complete Article including a Screenshot of the WSJ Professional Edition

Source: Info Today NewsBreaks