Untitled

‘Will the real Niklas Luhmann stand up, please’. A reply to John MingersMichael King ¹ Chris Thornhill ¹¹ Brunel University and King’s College, University of London

Abstract

This article is a critical response to John Minger’s recently published piece ‘Can social systems be autopoietic?’. It draws attention to instances in this piece where Mingers has misconstrued Luhmann’s theory—especially in the central concepts of openness and closure, system-environment relation, interaction, and functionality, but also in the interpretation of the role which Luhmann ascribes to the political system—and it attempts to give a more accurate analysis of these terms, and of their place in Luhmann’s overall sociology. The article also asserts, more generally, that to criticize Luhmann from the perspective of action-centred theory, as Mingers has done, fails to reflect on and integrate Luhmann’s direct challenge to perspectives of this kind. The article concludes with the argument that legitimate criticism of Luhmann should set out a more immanent account of his sociology, and should not simply have recourse to the more traditional sociological perspectives, which Luhmann has already effectively called into question.

Received 4 October 2002 Accepted 22 January 2003

3 years ago

DOI @ WILEY

Digital Object Identifier (DOI) Help

The Digital Object Identifier (DOI) is an identification system for intellectual property in the digital environment. Developed by the International DOI Foundation on behalf of the publishing industry, its goals are to provide a framework for managing intellectual content, link customers with publishers, facilitate electronic commerce, and enable automated copyright management.

Using DOIs: An Overview

DOI Applications

Publishing on the Internet requires new tools for managing content. Where traditional printed texts such as books and journals provided a title page or a cover for specific identifying information, digital content needs its own form of unique identifier. This is important for both internal management of content within a publishing house and for dissemination on electronic networks.

In the fast-changing world of electronic publishing, there is the added problem that ownership of information changes, and location of electronic files changes frequently over the life of a work. Technology is needed that permits an identifier to remain persistent although the links to rights holders may vary with time and place.

The network environment creates an expectation among users that resources can be linked and that these links should be stable. The DOI system provides a way to identify related materials and to link the reader or user of content to them. DOI has wide applicability to all forms of intellectual content and can therefore be applied to all forms of related materials, such as articles, books, classroom exercises, supporting data, videos, electronic files, and so on.

DOI provides a basis for work now in progress to develop automated means of processing routine transactions such as document retrieval, clearinghouse payments, and licensing. Publishers and users are being encouraged to experiment with DOI usage, and to commonly develop guidelines for DOI scope and rules for usage.

The DOI System and how it works

The DOI system has two main parts (the identifier, and a directory system) and a third logical component, a database.

The identifier: The DOI, is made up of two components. The first element — the prefix — is assigned to the publisher by a registration agency. Eventually, there may be multiple registration agencies to serve separate geographical regions or for each intellectual property sector (such as text publishing, photographs, music, software, etc.). However, at this stage there is only one registration agency and Directory Manager. Prefixes all begin with 10 to designate the DOI directory manager, followed by a number designating the publisher who will be depositing the individual DOIs, which ensures that a publisher can designate its own DOIs without fear of creating duplicate numbers. Publishers may choose to request a prefix for each imprint or product line, or may use a single prefix.

The second element, following a slash mark, is the suffix. This is the designation assigned by the publisher to the specific content being identified. Many publishers have elected to use recognized existing international standards for their suffixes when such a standard applies to the object being identified (e.g., ISBN for a book), but may alternatively choose to use an internal code. In use, the DOI identifier is an opaque string without intelligent meaning other than as an identifier.

The suffix can follow any system of the publisher’s choosing, and be assigned to objects of any size — book, article, abstract, chart — or any file type — text, audio, video, image or software. An object (book) may have one DOI, and a component within that object (chapter) may have another DOI. The publisher decides the level or “granularity” of identification based on the nature of objects sold and distributed over the Internet. The suffix can be as simple as a sequential number or a publisher’s own internal numbering system.

The directory: The power of the DOI system is its function as a routing or “resolution” system. Because digital content may change ownership or location over the course of its useful life, the DOI system uses a central directory. When a user clicks on a DOI, a message is sent to the central directory where the current web address associated with that DOI appears. This location is sent back to the user’s Internet browser with a special message telling the system to “go to this particular Internet address.” In a split second the user sees a “response screen” — a Web page — on which the publisher offers the reader either the content itself, or, if not, then further information about the object, and information on how to obtain it. When the object is moved to a new server or the copyright holder sells the product line to another company, one change is recorded in the directory and all subsequent readers will be sent to the new site. The DOI remains reliable and accurate because the link to the associated information or source of the content is so easily and efficiently changed. The underlying technology used in the DOI system is optimised for speed, efficiency, and persistence.

The database: Information about the object identified is maintained by the publisher. However it is planned that the DOI system will also collect some minimum level of associated metadata to enable provision of automated efficient services such as look-up of DOIs from bibliographic data, citation linking, and so forth. Thus information about the object identified (metadata) might be distributed over several databases. It might include the actual content or the information on where and how to obtain the content or other related data. From these database systems is generated the information that the user has access to in response to a DOI query, forming the third component of the DOI system.

The DOI can also serve as an agent. In the future, the DOI will also be used to automate transactions. The DOI is being further developed to incorporate functionality which could enable the user to associate a function with the DOI.

3 years ago

DOI

DIGITAL OBJECT IDENTIFIER (DOI)10.1111/j.1467-954X.2003.tb02830.x About DOI

3 years ago

ABSTRACT

Sociological Review

Volume 51 Issue 2, Pages 276 - 285

Published Online: 28 Jun 2008

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Abstract | References | Full Text: PDF (Size: 61K) | Related Articles | Citation Tracking

‘Will the real Niklas Luhmann stand up, please’. A reply to John MingersMichael King ¹ Chris Thornhill ¹¹ Brunel University and King’s College, University of London

Abstract

This article is a critical response to John Minger’s recently published piece ‘Can social systems be autopoietic?’. It draws attention to instances in this piece where Mingers has misconstrued Luhmann’s theory—especially in the central concepts of openness and closure, system-environment relation, interaction, and functionality, but also in the interpretation of the role which Luhmann ascribes to the political system—and it attempts to give a more accurate analysis of these terms, and of their place in Luhmann’s overall sociology. The article also asserts, more generally, that to criticize Luhmann from the perspective of action-centred theory, as Mingers has done, fails to reflect on and integrate Luhmann’s direct challenge to perspectives of this kind. The article concludes with the argument that legitimate criticism of Luhmann should set out a more immanent account of his sociology, and should not simply have recourse to the more traditional sociological perspectives, which Luhmann has already effectively called into question.

Received 4 October 2002 Accepted 22 January 2003

3 years ago

FUCK YEAH HEATH LEDGER

HOME
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RANDOM

August 27, 2009 20 notes

chechen mob leader i want to hear proposition.
joker let’s wind the clocks back a year… these cops and lawyers wouldn’t dare cross any of you. i mean, what happened? di-did your balls drop off?

August 21, 2009 37 notes

joker hahahahahahohoheeheeahahahaaah… and i thought my jokes were bad.

gambol gimme one good reason why i shouldn’t have my boy here pull your head off.

joker how about a magic trick? i’m going to make this pencil disappear. […] TADA! it’s… it’s gone!

August 21, 2009 41 notes

bank manager think you’re smart, huh? the guy that hired you, they’d just do the same to you. criminals in this town used to believe in things. honor. respect. look at you. what do you believe in, huh? what do you believe in?!

bozo/joker

i believe that whatever doesn’t kill you, simply makes you… stranger.August 20, 2009 30 notes

grumpy i’m bettin’ the joker told you to kill me as soon as we loaded the cash.

bozo/joker no, no, no, no, i killed the bus driver.

grumpy bus driver? what bus driver?

August 20, 2009 22 notes August 20, 2009 4 notesthanks for voting :D the winner was the dark knight, with candy in second and brokeback mountain in third. (:August 19, 2009 11 notes

WHAT MOVIE WOULD YOU RATHER HAVE A PICSPAM OF?

candy.
brokeback mountain.
the dark knight.
i’m not there.
ned kelly.
two hands.

either reblog with your answer or email infatuation@hotmail.co.uk! (:

August 19, 2009 20 notesAugust 19, 2009 6 notesAugust 19, 2009 5 notes

3 years ago

« December 2008 | Main | February 2009 »

28 January 2009

Biblios - social cataloging tool

Biblios - it’s like what, a social network for book catalogers; facebook for book people; BookBook? BookFace?

from Library Journal via read20-l.

http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6632425.html

“As OCLC and its central role in the library cataloging world
has become a subject of much discussion, LibLime has brought
an open source approach to cataloging, debuting ‡biblios, an
open-source, web-based metadata tool for libraries and
‡biblios.net, a hosted version of ‡biblios with social
cataloging features such as forums, private messaging, and
chat.

“After beta testing since November, with 200 testers, it was
unveiled just before the American Library Association
Midwinter Meeting. More than 1000 people have signed up in a
week. A presentation Monday by LibLime CEO Joshua Ferraro drew
a curious audience.”

Like all good networks, there is a steep barrier to entry: in this case, working knowledge of MARC. There is no gentle “MARC for Dummies” book, and the traditional barrier to entry is the MLS degree.

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Posted at 04:32 PM in Biblios | Permalink | Comments (0)

26 January 2009

LibX: a library lookup tool browser plugin (with a plugin builder tool)

from the web site:

LibX is a browser plugin for Firefox and Internet Explorer that provides direct access to your library’s resources.
LibX is an open source framework from which editions for specific libraries can be built.
Currently, 545 academic and public libraries have created public LibX editions.

Create your own LibX edition now, or take a look at the screenshots & screencasts hosted at this site.

LibX received the 2007 LITA/Brett Butler Entrepreneurship Award.

There isn’t (yet) an Ann Arbor District Library version of this plugin.

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Posted at 04:55 PM in LibX | Permalink | Comments (0)

09 January 2009

Google Book Search, CIC libraries, and the public domain

as a followup to a previous post on Google Book Search and the public domain, here’s an announcement from the CIC (Big Ten universities + Notre Dame) on their partnership.

Google Book Search Project - Introduction

In 2007, the CIC partnered with Google to digitize as many as 10 million volumes across all CIC library systems. This project represents one of the largest cooperative ventures of its kind in higher education, one that will enable CIC institutions to preserve a vast realm of legacy content and make material available worldwide within just a few years.

Under the terms of this landmark agreement, Google will scan some of the most distinctive collections from CIC libraries and their 79 million volumes. These legacy collections are known to scholars worldwide, reflecting decades of careful investment and curation to build exceptional resources for research. The Google partnership promises to open up these resources to a much broader audience, ensuring that they remain accessible and discoverable in a digital age.

Through this agreement, Google will scan and make searchable public domain works as well as copyrighted materials, in a manner consistent with copyright law. For books protected by copyright, a search will yield basic information (such as the book’s title and author’s name); at most a few lines of text related to the search; and information about book purchase or lending. Public domain materials can be viewed, searched, or downloaded for printing in their entirety from the Google site.

Thanks to Ben Bunnell for the heads up to this - I had missed it the first time around. Here’s his original announcement:from 2007

In addition, as part of this agreement, the CIC libraries are creating a “shared digital repository,” so that out-of-copyright books from any of the institutions can be easily accessed by any scholar regardless of geographic location. In essence, the repository will become both a “common good” for the consortium’s 400,000 faculty and students, and a “public good” for the general public. This repository is the first of its kind, and is a great example of what libraries, working together, can accomplish.

There’s a total of 78 million volumes in these collections - minus, of course, all of the items that had been deacquisitioned before being scanned.

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Posted at 03:51 PM in Google Book Search | Permalink | Comments (1)

08 January 2009

Google Book Search: not accepting books in the Public Domain

Bill Tozier tells this story of trying to submit scans of public domain works to Google through the Google Books Partner Program, and getting this rejection:

Hi Bill,

Thanks for your interest in the Google Books Partner Program. While an ISBN is not required for participation in Google Book Search, please note that participants may only submit copyrighted titles to Google Book Search for which they hold rights. We are unable to accept public domain books through our Partner Program.

If you have any further questions at this time, please don’t hesitate to let me know.

Sincerely,

Greg
The Google Book Search Team

Bill points out that he does not own the public domain:

Which kind of erosion of the public domain would you like me to try first, Google? Shall I show “snippets” of Public Domain Books, like Kessinger, and make people pay ridiculously inflated prices for crap POD copies of things that would be better downloaded for free [from you, I’d argue]? Or should I go through the motions of Greg’s interpretation of your Terms of Service and lie about my rights so that I can slot something into your ill-fitting business logic?

Or maybe, perhaps, because these books are in the Public Domain, you might get a clue about what that actually means, and acknowledge that I, and you, and everybody has the rights to those works.

That’s what “Public Domain” means. We have the right.

Put your manager on the line, Greg.

I’m not sure who Greg’s manager is; it might be Ben Bunnell or Frances Haugen, both of whom have been involved in the program at one point along the way, and hopefully someone’s Google Alerts will trigger when I invoke them.

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Posted at 04:01 PM in Google Book Search | Permalink | Comments (0)

“Reconsidering Relevance” - Daniel Tunkelang talk at Google NYC 1/7/09

This was the announcement of yesterday’s talk; I hope it’s still relevant. Tunkelang is chief scientist at Endeca.

As posted to his blog The Noisy Channel: Reconsidering Relevance

Reconsidering Relevance

We’ve become complacent about relevance. The overwhelming success of web search engines has lulled even information retrieval (IR) researchers to expect only incremental improvements in relevance in the near future. And beyond web search, there are still broad search problems where relevance still feels hopelessly like the pre-Google web.

But even some of the most basic IR questions about relevance are unresolved. We take for granted the very idea that a computer can determine which documents are relevant to a person’s needs. And we still rely on two-word queries (on average) to communicate a user’s information need. But this approach is a contrivance; in reality, we need to think of information-seeking as a problem of optimizing the communication between people and machines.

We can do better. In fact, there are a variety of ongoing efforts to do so, often under the banners of “interactive information retrieval”, “exploratory search”, and “human computer information retrieval”. In this talk, I’ll discuss these initiatives and how they are helping to move “relevance” beyond today’s outdated assumptions.

Google Tech Talk: Reconsidering Relevance View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: tunkelang daniel)

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Posted at 10:32 AM in Information retrieval | Permalink | Comments (1)

07 January 2009

The role of libraries in economic hard times (recorded on WAMU Diane Rehm show)

On the Diane Rehm show on WAMU this morning:
11:00 The Role of Libraries in Economic Hard Times
There’s a recording there too.

Libraries today have become multimedia centers, offering not only books but DVDs, e-books and Internet access. They can also be an especially important community resource during times of economic hardship. A look at the future of libraries in a slowing economy.

Guests

Carla Hayden, executive director, Enoch Pratt Free Library and past president of the American Library Association

Jim Rettig, President of the American Library Association. He is also the University Librarian at the Boatwright Memorial Library at the University of Richmond, Virginia.

Ginnie Cooper, Chief Librarian for the District of Columbia Public Library. She is the Former Executive Director of the Brooklyn Public Library.

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Posted at 02:46 PM in Public libraries | Permalink | Comments (0)

04 January 2009

amazon kindle vs. mobile phone based book readers

Some interesting comparisons from a set of people with enough discretionary income to keep up with the gadget race, but who are still dismayed at the mean time to failure and cost of repair of single-purpose electric book readers. Philip Greenspun highlights his frustration at: Amazon Kindle bites the dust… $187 to fix

I may have to rethink my enthusiasm for the electronic book. Realistically the way that people handle books, the Kindle is not going to last more than one year. That means you’re spending $360 for the initial purchase and $187 every year for hardware repairs. Some of the Kindle editions of books are edging their way up towards $20 (seethis Naipaul biography, for example). Suppose that you read one book every two weeks, or 25 books per year…

Kindle: $250 per year for hardware (spreading the cost of the initial Kindle purchase a bit) plus $312 for books at $12.50 per book = $562 per year. Good for individual travel and treadmill usage; bad for having to worry about forgetting it somewhere; bad for taking on vacation with family due to difficulty of sharing; terrible for illustrations and photos.

Paper: 25 books at $15 per book = $375 per year. Probably 50 percent of those books can be recycled into gifts, so the true cost is closer to $200 per year (assuming you need to buy gifts for friends and family periodically). Heavy for long trips; awkward for treadmill usage; good for carefree life (risk of forgetting in coffee shop limited to $15); great for sharing; great for illustrations and photos.

The commenters of course urge the use of libraries and online library reserves, but there’s an interesting piece of the thread re using relatively advanced mobile phones as readers (iPhone, Android leading the pack). Philip points to this from Robin Bloor at Have Mac Will Blog: One Million Users: Is Stanza Killing The Kindle?

Does an ebook need a software application that runs on a device (like the iPhone) or does it need a purpose-built device (like the Kindle)?

Imho, the ebook is software and I have little doubt that I’m right about this. There will be some people who are prepared to buy a Kindle (or the Sony equivalent) in order to have a device that’s purpose-built for reading books. But if you can get equivalent functionality from an iPhone or iPod, then you’re not going to be happy to pay over $300 for the Kindle just for the privilege of buying ebooks. If ebooks were difficult to read on the iPhone/iPod then Stanza would already be dead in the water, but that’s not the case.

And, as you would expect, Stanza will not be confined to the iPhone. There’s already a Beta version for Google Android and one will likely be developed for RIM. There are also versions for the Mac and Windows (you may not want to read books on those platforms, but you’ll want to keep your library somewhere. For Lexcycle it makes sense to port it wherever there’s a platform that might be used for reading ebooks.

At various points in the history of consumer computing technology there’s brief moments of “convergence” where everyone seems to be doing the same thing at least briefly before the tower of Babel hits again. The trend-spotter in me looks at this and thinks that mobile phones are getting more capable at least as fast as any dedicated purpose-built book reading machine, and that coming from the other end the small cheap “netbook” laptops will squeeze prices from the other end. To me that doesn’t leave much room for a special purpose mobile book reader, but suggests that there may be multiple plausible general purpose phone-like or laptop-like things that will have a bunch of book-like things ready to read on them.

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Posted at 01:21 AM in Kindle, Mobile Library | Permalink | Comments (2)

02 January 2009

scrollmotion - mobile ebooks w/fairplay itunes DRM for iPhone etc

first, the Wired article (not much more than a press release):

ScrollMotion, a New York mobile app developer, has concluded deals with a number of major publishing houses, and is in talks with several others, to produce newly released and best-selling e-books as applications for the iPhone and iPod touch.

Publishers now on board include Houghton Mifflin, Simon & Schuster, Random House, Hachette and Penguin Group USA. (via 2cooltools)

The implication is that books get sold through the iTunes app store, one application = one book; you don’t buy a reader + the book separate, but you get the whole bundle together. Teleread is not exactly thrilled about this approach

I don’t care if ScrollMotion is the easiest e-reader on earth to use on the iPhone and iPod Touch, which it may or may not be.

All I know is that ScrollMotion will treat iPhone/Touch books like apps—despite the existence of a 148-app limit.

Is a fix from Apple on the way? If not, major publishers such as Simon & Schuster and Random House might be in for a rude disappointment after signing SM-related deals—which, alas, they have.

I’m looking for anything like a review of someone who actually bought this. Here’s some cover art on a site with an reviewer who bought this “for her husband”, “cool beans” which isn’t exactly an in-depth analysis.

With this kind of rights management, libraries would be completely out of the loop for distributing this particular flavor of ebooks. You could imagine public production and distribution of free e-books in an iPhone reader flavor, and if you did you might find something like Stanza, which gives you 100,000 free works through a single application. And you might note as they do that a number of books for sale in the app store are free on Stanza (free is good, you might suspect). They generate revenue by creating non-free books also for sale through the App Store, so in some sense Stanza is the direct competition for ScrollMotion.

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Posted at 11:45 PM in Mobile Library | Permalink | Comments (1)

using an rss feed as a user interface, the iPhone experience

thanks to Brian Kerr for showing me this; Ann Arbor specific; I don’t have a screen shot to show you.

The iPhone’s Safari web browser has a good RSS viewer inside it, which will display a feed nicely as a web page so that you can make your way through it.

As a result, the private RSS feed that the Ann Arbor District Library provides for holds and checkouts - or the public feeds for searches - show up nicely. Brian notes that the books that are available now show up first on the list when you display it.

When I go to my favorite iPhone simulator it doesn’t simulate the feed reader support, so I don’t have a screen shot here.

one more reason to support RSS

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Posted at 05:00 PM in Library mashups | Permalink | Comments (1)

“Young Philly Politics” and the battle to save Philadelphia libraries

I didn’t catch this on the first go-around of Philadelphia library stories, but this caught my eye in a Philadelphia Inquirer story, “True Melting Pot Helped Save Libraries”:

“People just came together in a very fast and almost surprising way,” said Irv Ackelsberg, a former Community Legal Services lawyer and City Council candidate who sued Nutter on behalf of seven residents and the union representing library workers. “We’ve just come through a few months in which the impossible happened: The Phillies won the world series and Barack Obama became president. My God, we can do anything.”

Ackelsberg’s case was bolstered by the stories of his plaintiffs, who included a 15-year-old high school student from Ogontz; two women who homeschool their children, one from the Northeast and the other the Northwest; and a South Philly woman whose 11-year-old walks three blocks to the Queen Memorial branch.

He said the plaintiffs were “basically delivered” to him by a grassroots upwelling whose cohesiveness was partly attributed to the Internet community surrounding the Young Philly Politics blog run by his son, Dan Urevick-Ackelsberg.

I looked at the Libraries section of the Young Philly Politics blog and saw a group that is very different from the “Friends of the Library” group you normally see - this collection of people is younger, more radicalized, more mobile, poorer, and more willing to fight without compromise. Amazing, really, to see things like this:

So, you want to send Mayor Goode an email about his op-ed? Care to guess who it would go to? That would be the email of Sandy Horrocks, the Free Library’s spokeswoman. In other words, at worst, the Free Library wrote the op-ed for Mayor Goode. At best, they are coordinating a media campaign to shut down their own damn libraries.

It makes it a hell of a lot tougher to save the libraries when there is leadership on the inside that is pushing to close the doors, and is, in fact, waging its own bizarre public relations blitz against the neighborhoods it is supposed to serve.

with 46 comments on the post.

Thanks to Dave Pattern’s “Hot Stuff” blog for the word of the day for 1/1/09 (“block”) and the pointer that brought me back to dig deeper.

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Posted at 12:30 AM in Public libraries | Permalink | Comments (0)

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SUPERPATRON BLOGROLL

“Self-plagiarism is style”
Director’s Blog | Ann Arbor District Library
findability.org | ambient findability + the design of findable objects | a blog by Peter Morville
IAlog
LibraryThing
Louis Rosenfeld: Information Architecture & User Experience
panlibus
Stephen’s Lighthouse
Tame The Web: Libraries and Technology
The Shifted Librarian
Thing-ology (LibraryThing’s ideas blog)
ulo.tricho.us

WHAT THEY’RE SAYING ABOUT SUPERPATRON

So you’ve got Ed exploring the possibility space, and John working to enlarge that space, and together they’ve created a virtuous cycle of innovation. Now this is obviously an extreme example. You are not going to find a superpatron of Ed’s caliber and a superlibrarian of John’s caliber in every town. But I think the dynamic at work there can apply more broadly. And if it does, it will matter that these patrons and librarians are situated in a local context. (Jon Udell, Remixing the Library, GRL2020)
Der Supernutzer beschreibt 10 Möglichkeiten, der Bibliothek zu helfen….Den wichtigsten Punkt hat er vergessen, ihn aber selbst erfüllt. Sozusagen als Präambel könnte man also anführen:
“Übe konstruktive Kritik an der Bibliothek. Ohne Resonanz können die Leute da drin nicht wissen, was Du willst.” Infobib.de
How come only some books in the Google Book Search have “find in a library” links next to them? Diglet asks, and gets an answer, sort of a lame one if you ask me. update: Kevin mentioned in the comments that it would be great to see this for all books in Google Books. I went to bed thinking “Oh yeah, I should look into that….” and while I was sleeping, Superpatron, aka Ed Vielmetti solved the crime, er problem, and created a Greasemonkey script (a plug-in that you can run with Firefox) that does this for Ann Arbor and can be modified for any library. (Jessamyn West)
Curse you Superpatron! t’s way past my bedtime, but the Ann Arbor Superpatron has been planting ideas in my head again… (Dave Pattern)
Superpatron is a blog run by a patron. The author posts entries about events and articles relevant to the library community, but does it with a patron point of view. (North Texas Regional Library System)
The blogosphere’s resident “awesomest patron ever,” Edward Vielmetti, appears in an article in School Library Journal about how he wrote a script tweaking (ahem, improving) Google Book Search. Vielmetti’s blog, Superpatron, is one I read daily and highly recommend to anyone in libraries looking to get a very smart user’s perspective.(Librarian In Black)
When I wrote him back, I called him the “AADL Super Patron,” which is very coincidental, since he has been planning to create a blog with almost the same name. Today, Superpatron is live and I’m sure it will quickly be filled with Ed’s terrific ideas about making libraries more responsive to patrons’ needs. So hurry up and subscribe already, ok? (Meredith Farkas)
The Superpatron (faster than a speeding reference librarian…) posts a presentation on the use of del.icio.us for research.Steven Cohen, Library Stuff
I’ve talked about Edward Vielmetti here before, but I never had the right name for him. Now I do. He’s Superpatron! (Jenny Levine)
Last fall, in Ann Arbor, Michigan, I gave a talk entitled Superpatrons and Superlibrarians. Joining me for this week’s podcast are the two guys who inspired that talk. The superpatron is Ed Vielmetti, an old Internet hand who likes to mash up the services proviced by the Ann Arbor District Library. That’s possible because superlibrarian John Blyberg, who works at the AADL, has reconfigured his library’s online catalog system, adding RSS feeds and a full-blown API he calls PatREST. (Jon Udell)
Little did I know that when I pointed to Ed Vielmetti’s blog, I was not only coining a phrase, but providing the name for Ed’s brilliant new blog. Ed is that (unfortunately still) rare creature that not only groks the net in fullness, but also has use for his public library. (Eli Neiburger)
Die Ann Arbor District Library hat einen Nutzer, der sie liebt. Und nicht nur das, er schreibt darüber. Oliver Obst

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3 years ago

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Simple API for JISC MOSAIC Project Developer Competition data

Jul 29th, 2009 by Dave Pattern. 3 comments

For those of you interested in the developer competition being run by the JISC MOSAIC Project, I’ve put together a quick & dirty API for the available data sets. If it’s easier for you, you can use this API to develop your competition entry rather than working with the entire downloaded data set.

edit (31/Jul/2009): Just to clarify — the developer competition is open to anyone, not just UK residents (however, UK law applies to how the competition is being run). Fingers crossed, the Project Team is hopeful that a few more UK academic libraries will be adding their data sets to the pot in early August.

The URL to use for the API is http://library.hud.ac.uk/mosaic/api.pl and you’ll need to supply aucas and/or isbn parameter to get a response back (in XML), e.g.:

The “ucas” value is a UCAS Course Code. You can find these codes by going to the UCAS web siteand doing a “search by subject”. Not all codes will generate output using the API, but you can find a list of codes that do appear in the MOSAIC data sets here.

If you use both a “ucas” and “isbn” value, the output will be limited to just transactions for that ISBN on courses with that UCAS course code.

You can also use these extra parameters in the URL…

show=summary — only show the summary section in the XML output
show=data — only show the data in the XML output (i.e. hide the summary)
prog=… — only show data for the specified progression level (e.g. staff, UG1, etc, seedocumentation for full list)
year=… — only show data for the specified academic year (e.g. 2005 = academic year 2005/6)

rows=… — max number of rows of data to include (default is 500) n.b. the summary section shows the breakdown for all rows, not just the ones included by the rows limit

The format of the XML is pretty much the same as shown in the project documentation guide, except that I’ve added a summary section to the output.

Notes

The API was knocked together quite quickly, so please report any bugs! Also, I can’t guarentee that the API is 100% stable, so please let me know (e.g. via Twitter) if it appears to be down.

Posted in: TILE/MOSAIC Projects, Usage Data.
Tagged: apis · jisc · mosaic · opendata · usagedata

3 years ago

Scrap from a3 DELETED NOV 7 2007

Instead of invention one would like proximity. Such proximity, if it could be written, would no longer be “confined to the Cartesian logic of compartmentalized areas” but would be subject to the most formless of spaces. I like to read without knowing what I am reading and the words repeat endlessly like a carpet or escalator within the text. The text in such a novel In this sense the writing would be non-architectural. There would be no necessity for a door. Emotion and empathy would be built into the feelings and not produced artificially by being inserted into the lives of characters.

appeared to surround the photographs like an anonymous enclosure with no distinguishing individual structures. The problem with most writing about the past is that it usually involves solving a formal problem when what most people really want is to feel or think without any aesthetic judgments to mar the process. And so my feelings

In the end, it did not matter which newspaper I began or ended with or which sit-com I happened to be watching or re-watching. All physical activity, like a spike on an EKG monitor or prime time viewing habits, shall be inserted after the fact. All images shall materialize from a database with a date stamp and a physical cue and all this shall be prefigured by an earlier occurrence, an interval, a product, a memoir, a linked page, a pre-recorded format, a typeface, a digital genre, a promise, and so it was in this particular instance—

Scrap from a3 DELETED NOV 7 2007

Instead of invention one would like proximity. Such proximity, if it could be written, would no longer be “confined to the Cartesian logic of compartmentalized areas” but would be subject to the most formless of spaces. I like to read without knowing what I am reading and the words repeat endlessly like a carpet or escalator within the text. The text in such a novel In this sense the writing would be non-architectural. There would be no necessity for a door. Emotion and empathy would be built into the feelings and not produced artificially by being inserted into the lives of characters.

appeared to surround the photographs like an anonymous enclosure with no distinguishing individual structures. The problem with most writing about the past is that it usually involves solving a formal problem when what most people really want is to feel or think without any aesthetic judgments to mar the process. And so my feelings

In the end, it did not matter which newspaper I began or ended with or which sit-com I happened to be watching or re-watching. All physical activity, like a spike on an EKG monitor or prime time viewing habits, shall be inserted after the fact. All images shall materialize from a database with a date stamp and a physical cue and all this shall be prefigured by an earlier occurrence, an interval, a product, a memoir, a linked page, a pre-recorded format, a typeface, a digital genre, a promise, and so it was in this particular instance—

Scrap from a3 DELETED NOV 7 2007

Instead of invention one would like proximity. Such proximity, if it could be written, would no longer be “confined to the Cartesian logic of compartmentalized areas” but would be subject to the most formless of spaces. I like to read without knowing what I am reading and the words repeat endlessly like a carpet or escalator within the text. The text in such a novel In this sense the writing would be non-architectural. There would be no necessity for a door. Emotion and empathy would be built into the feelings and not produced artificially by being inserted into the lives of characters.

appeared to surround the photographs like an anonymous enclosure with no distinguishing individual structures. The problem with most writing about the past is that it usually involves solving a formal problem when what most people really want is to feel or think without any aesthetic judgments to mar the process. And so my feelings

In the end, it did not matter which newspaper I began or ended with or which sit-com I happened to be watching or re-watching. All physical activity, like a spike on an EKG monitor or prime time viewing habits, shall be inserted after the fact. All images shall materialize from a database with a date stamp and a physical cue and all this shall be prefigured by an earlier occurrence, an interval, a product, a memoir, a linked page, a pre-recorded format, a typeface, a digital genre, a promise, and so it was in this particular instance—

Scrap from a3 DELETED NOV 7 2007

Instead of invention one would like proximity. Such proximity, if it could be written, would no longer be “confined to the Cartesian logic of compartmentalized areas” but would be subject to the most formless of spaces. I like to read without knowing what I am reading and the words repeat endlessly like a carpet or escalator within the text. The text in such a novel In this sense the writing would be non-architectural. There would be no necessity for a door. Emotion and empathy would be built into the feelings and not produced artificially by being inserted into the lives of characters.

appeared to surround the photographs like an anonymous enclosure with no distinguishing individual structures. The problem with most writing about the past is that it usually involves solving a formal problem when what most people really want is to feel or think without any aesthetic judgments to mar the process. And so my feelings

In the end, it did not matter which newspaper I began or ended with or which sit-com I happened to be watching or re-watching. All physical activity, like a spike on an EKG monitor or prime time viewing habits, shall be inserted after the fact. All images shall materialize from a database with a date stamp and a physical cue and all this shall be prefigured by an earlier occurrence, an interval, a product, a memoir, a linked page, a pre-recorded format, a typeface, a digital genre, a promise, and so it was in this particular instance—

Scrap from a3 DELETED NOV 7 2007

Instead of invention one would like proximity. Such proximity, if it could be written, would no longer be “confined to the Cartesian logic of compartmentalized areas” but would be subject to the most formless of spaces. I like to read without knowing what I am reading and the words repeat endlessly like a carpet or escalator within the text. The text in such a novel In this sense the writing would be non-architectural. There would be no necessity for a door. Emotion and empathy would be built into the feelings and not produced artificially by being inserted into the lives of characters.

appeared to surround the photographs like an anonymous enclosure with no distinguishing individual structures. The problem with most writing about the past is that it usually involves solving a formal problem when what most people really want is to feel or think without any aesthetic judgments to mar the process. And so my feelings

In the end, it did not matter which newspaper I began or ended with or which sit-com I happened to be watching or re-watching. All physical activity, like a spike on an EKG monitor or prime time viewing habits, shall be inserted after the fact. All images shall materialize from a database with a date stamp and a physical cue and all this shall be prefigured by an earlier occurrence, an interval, a product, a memoir, a linked page, a pre-recorded format, a typeface, a digital genre, a promise, and so it was in this particular instance—

3 years ago