Geckos vs Elephants.
Saturday, November 27, 2010
Wednesday, November 17, 2010
Leadership: Competency or Calling?
Tuesday, November 16, 2010
Is the Church Lost?
Check out this article, "Is the Church lost," and the Comments below it. Interesting conversation...
Monday, November 8, 2010
Digital Library Review : CDRI
The following is a review that I wrote for an IT class last fall. It's not that exciting, but you might benefit from scanning it, or at least reading the first paragraph. I'll be doing a series of posts on this resource... and they'll be much more exciting than this one. :) The images all come from the database. Browse the database here.
The American Theological Library Association’s (ALTA) Cooperative Digital Resources Initiative (CDRI) is a collection of digital resources contributed by libraries with ALTA membership. The CDRI is freely available online (http://www.atla.com/digitalresources/CDRI.html); it “provides access to digital images of woodcuts, photographs, slides, papyri, coins, maps, postcards, manuscripts, lithographs, sermons, shape-note tune books, and various forms of Christian art, architecture, and iconography” (“CDRI,” n.d.).
According to the initiative’s website, the CDRI was initially supported by a grant from the Henry Luce Foundation and is now maintained by ATLA (“CDRI,” n.d.). During the first phase of of the initiative in December 2001, nine institutions--including theological libraries from Yale, Princeton, and Vanderbilt--were awarded a portion of the grant money to make their particular collections available. The CDRI has now gone through four phases and provides access to thousands of resources. The mission of this digital library is also noted: “By providing pooled expertise regarding scanning and metadata standards, and a central delivery system, the Cooperative Digital Resources Initiative will benefit all ATLA members and serve as a model for long-term digital image collections” (“CDRI,” n.d.).
Since the collection itself is not tied to one specific institution and acts instead as a repository, labeling it a “digital library” may require some justification. According to Paul Kantor’s criteria (as cited by Kocktanek & Matthews), a digital library must have “1) a collection of texts, images, or data in digitized form, 2) a set of systems for indexing and navigating or retrieving in that collection, and 3) one or more defined community of users” (Kocktanek & Matthews, 2002). The CDRI certainly meets the first criteria--it is, indeed, a single collection made up of many collections. To ensure the quality of the collection, the CDRI actually requires all contributing institutions to adhere to a certain set of standards. For instance, for each item’s digital facsimile, there must be both a “master image” and an “access image” (“Standards”, n.d.). And each of these must then meet requirements for spatial resolution, tonal depth, compression, file format, and file size; there are also stipulations for quality control and file naming. The CDRI also meets Kantor’s second criteria, for an indexing and search and retrieval system is in place for the collection.
Though the CDRI’s web-search capabilities will be discussed in detail below, it is worth noting that the collection has been very intentionally organized through metadata standards. In order to keep the collection uniform and centralized (despite the varying and dispersed physical locations of the contributing institutions), the CDRI has provided detailed metadata guides to its participants (“Metadata,” n.d.). Records must be created for both the collection as a whole (i.e. Illuminations from Armenian Gospels) and for the individual components (i.e. Letter of Eusebius to Carpianus). Participating institutions are also directed to other “best practices” resources like the Digital Library Federation’s website and NEDCC's handbook for digital projects: A management tool for preservation and access (“Metadata,” n.d.). The CDRI also meets the third criteria for a digital library since it does have a defined constituency, as stated in the missional statement cited above. Potential users of the CDRI are not only ATLA member individuals, but also users from member institutions. Moreover, since the CDRI is freely available, it’s user community is extended to anyone with knowledge of its existence and access to the world wide web.
Search capabilities in the CDRI are not, in the reviewer’s opinion, as strong as the collection itself. At the CDRI homepage, each collection is listed and hyperlinked under a grouping. Groupings include “Architecture, art, iconography,” “Ancient Near East,” “Manuscripts, Texts, Sermons,” “Missions, World Religion,” and “Other” (“CDRI,” n.d.). While these divisions are very helpful for a broad view of the collection and for browsing, they are not all together consistent or extensive enough. For instance, “Manuscripts, Texts, [and] Sermons,” indicates a particular type or format of a source while “Missions, World Religion” indicates a topical division, which would lead the user to believe that the item is about that subject. Moreover, any user who spends some time searching and browsing the CDRI would quickly realize that the range of formats and topics contained in the collection comes nowhere close to the four divisions on the homepage. Also listed and hyperlinked on the homepage are the contributors to each phase; clicking on an institution listed takes users to a summary of the collection or collections contributed by that particular institution.
The actual search interface for the CDRI consists of four search boxes: “Keyword Anywhere,” “Title,” “Description,” and “Subject” (“CDRI,” n.d.). There are also hyperlinked options to “Browse the Collections,” to “Limit by Collection,” or to obtain “Search Help” (“CDRI,” n.d.). The first sample search conducted was for “postcard,” entered into the “Keyword Anywhere” search box, yielding a total of 2507 results. The same search phrase was used in the remaining three search boxes (one search at a time), with a smaller number of results: “Title” yielded 12, “Description” yielded 567, and “Subject” only yielded 1. This first sample searched all collections. The results summary page lists only 10 results per page, with a hyperlinked title to the item and a thumbnail view of the image to the right-hand side, which seems to be a nice feature. The relevancy ranking method used by the web search in the CDRI is, however, unclear. The word “postcard” does not necessarily appear in the item title. There is also a significant gap in the number of results between the “Keyword Anywhere” and the “Description” searches, indicating that there may be some inconsistencies within the records.
A second search was conducted with the terms “postcard” in the “Description” box and “missionary” in the “Keyword Anywhere” box. A total of 361 results were retrieved. Interestingly enough, the user can also get to these same results by choosing the option to “Browse the Collections”--there is an entire collection titled “Missionary postcards.” In fact, it is the reviewer’s opinion that the browsing capabilities, though limited only to the collection level, are more useful than the search capabilities. Take for example a search for “sermon” in the “Subject” box. Only 3 results are yielded, and each one is an image. Selecting the “Browse the Collections” option reveals several collections of sermons--the collection “Thanksgiving Day Sermons” alone has 490 records. Additionally, the item records themselves should be indexed accordingly; a sermon titled “The good land in which we live” contains within its record a subject heading “Sermons, American--19th century” (“CDRI,” n.d.). It is the obvious that the search capabilities are missing a step somewhere because 3 results for “sermon” as subject is not representative of the collection.
Despite its searching limitations, however, the CDRI is overall a valuable digital library, at least in the eyes of the reviewer. The quality of the items in the collection is very high, and it is clear from the last two phases of the initiative that ATLA is expanding the collection by format by seeking audio and video collections. Allowing institutions to compete for a portion of the grant money not only ensured that standards were being met, but that only the most dynamic and beneficial collections were added (see “Criteria for Evaluation of Projects,” “CDRI,” n.d.). Certainly, one of the strengths of the this digital library’s collection is that the multi-institutional contributions have made it diverse.
This does not mean, though, that the CDRI is without room for improvement. Some of the recommendations from the reviewer include a more modern interface for the user, which would also help with navigability. The CDRI could also work on visibility; currently there is not even a link to it from ATLA’s homepage. And though many of the contributing institutions do have links to the CDRI on their libraries’ websites, countless other libraries could create catalog records and post links to the CDRI, especially since it’s a free resource (Campbell, 2004). Also, the CDRI could aid its users by providing an “Ask a Librarian” feature. This could involve using Web 2.0 applications like chat reference, or at least by providing an email address for questions. Or perhaps--since the CDRI relies so heavily on contributed collections--it could also utilize the collaborative spirit of the profession by asking the contributing institutions to also dedicate a small amount of time to Reference Services.
The most obvious recommendation is to enhance the CDRI “catalog” and to improve its search capabilities. Since all contributors are already following specific metadata standards, the reviewer would suggest an extension of those standards to create more interconnectivity between the collections. Library of Congress Subject Headings are already being used, so why not allow them to be hyperlinked at the record level and then allow subject browsing? Also, since the metadata is already in place, migrating it to a next generation catalog would not be to difficult--it would, however, greatly increase the usability of the CDRI as a digital library.
References
Campbell, D. G., & Fast, K. V. (2004). Academic Libraries and the Semantic Web: What the Future May Hold for Research-Supporting Library Catalogues. The Journal of Academic Librarianship, 30(5), 382-390.
CDRI: Digital resources for the study of religion. (n.d.). American Theological Library Association. Retrieved November 11, 2009, from
www.atla.com/digitalresources/CDRI.html.
Kochtanek, T. R., & Matthews, J. R. (2002). Digital Libraries . Library information systems: From library automation to distributed information access solutions (pp. 240). Englewood, Colorado: Libraries Unlimited.
Metadata elements. (n.d.). American Theological Library Association. Retrieved November 11, 2009, from
http://www.atla.com/cdri/metadata/metadata_elements.htm.
Standards for ATLA CDRI projects. (n.d.). American Theological Library Association. Retrieved November 11, 2009, from http://www.atla.com/cdri/standards.html#3.
The American Theological Library Association’s (ALTA) Cooperative Digital Resources Initiative (CDRI) is a collection of digital resources contributed by libraries with ALTA membership. The CDRI is freely available online (http://www.atla.com/digitalresources/CDRI.html); it “provides access to digital images of woodcuts, photographs, slides, papyri, coins, maps, postcards, manuscripts, lithographs, sermons, shape-note tune books, and various forms of Christian art, architecture, and iconography” (“CDRI,” n.d.).
According to the initiative’s website, the CDRI was initially supported by a grant from the Henry Luce Foundation and is now maintained by ATLA (“CDRI,” n.d.). During the first phase of of the initiative in December 2001, nine institutions--including theological libraries from Yale, Princeton, and Vanderbilt--were awarded a portion of the grant money to make their particular collections available. The CDRI has now gone through four phases and provides access to thousands of resources. The mission of this digital library is also noted: “By providing pooled expertise regarding scanning and metadata standards, and a central delivery system, the Cooperative Digital Resources Initiative will benefit all ATLA members and serve as a model for long-term digital image collections” (“CDRI,” n.d.).
Since the collection itself is not tied to one specific institution and acts instead as a repository, labeling it a “digital library” may require some justification. According to Paul Kantor’s criteria (as cited by Kocktanek & Matthews), a digital library must have “1) a collection of texts, images, or data in digitized form, 2) a set of systems for indexing and navigating or retrieving in that collection, and 3) one or more defined community of users” (Kocktanek & Matthews, 2002). The CDRI certainly meets the first criteria--it is, indeed, a single collection made up of many collections. To ensure the quality of the collection, the CDRI actually requires all contributing institutions to adhere to a certain set of standards. For instance, for each item’s digital facsimile, there must be both a “master image” and an “access image” (“Standards”, n.d.). And each of these must then meet requirements for spatial resolution, tonal depth, compression, file format, and file size; there are also stipulations for quality control and file naming. The CDRI also meets Kantor’s second criteria, for an indexing and search and retrieval system is in place for the collection.
Though the CDRI’s web-search capabilities will be discussed in detail below, it is worth noting that the collection has been very intentionally organized through metadata standards. In order to keep the collection uniform and centralized (despite the varying and dispersed physical locations of the contributing institutions), the CDRI has provided detailed metadata guides to its participants (“Metadata,” n.d.). Records must be created for both the collection as a whole (i.e. Illuminations from Armenian Gospels) and for the individual components (i.e. Letter of Eusebius to Carpianus). Participating institutions are also directed to other “best practices” resources like the Digital Library Federation’s website and NEDCC's handbook for digital projects: A management tool for preservation and access (“Metadata,” n.d.). The CDRI also meets the third criteria for a digital library since it does have a defined constituency, as stated in the missional statement cited above. Potential users of the CDRI are not only ATLA member individuals, but also users from member institutions. Moreover, since the CDRI is freely available, it’s user community is extended to anyone with knowledge of its existence and access to the world wide web.
Search capabilities in the CDRI are not, in the reviewer’s opinion, as strong as the collection itself. At the CDRI homepage, each collection is listed and hyperlinked under a grouping. Groupings include “Architecture, art, iconography,” “Ancient Near East,” “Manuscripts, Texts, Sermons,” “Missions, World Religion,” and “Other” (“CDRI,” n.d.). While these divisions are very helpful for a broad view of the collection and for browsing, they are not all together consistent or extensive enough. For instance, “Manuscripts, Texts, [and] Sermons,” indicates a particular type or format of a source while “Missions, World Religion” indicates a topical division, which would lead the user to believe that the item is about that subject. Moreover, any user who spends some time searching and browsing the CDRI would quickly realize that the range of formats and topics contained in the collection comes nowhere close to the four divisions on the homepage. Also listed and hyperlinked on the homepage are the contributors to each phase; clicking on an institution listed takes users to a summary of the collection or collections contributed by that particular institution.
The actual search interface for the CDRI consists of four search boxes: “Keyword Anywhere,” “Title,” “Description,” and “Subject” (“CDRI,” n.d.). There are also hyperlinked options to “Browse the Collections,” to “Limit by Collection,” or to obtain “Search Help” (“CDRI,” n.d.). The first sample search conducted was for “postcard,” entered into the “Keyword Anywhere” search box, yielding a total of 2507 results. The same search phrase was used in the remaining three search boxes (one search at a time), with a smaller number of results: “Title” yielded 12, “Description” yielded 567, and “Subject” only yielded 1. This first sample searched all collections. The results summary page lists only 10 results per page, with a hyperlinked title to the item and a thumbnail view of the image to the right-hand side, which seems to be a nice feature. The relevancy ranking method used by the web search in the CDRI is, however, unclear. The word “postcard” does not necessarily appear in the item title. There is also a significant gap in the number of results between the “Keyword Anywhere” and the “Description” searches, indicating that there may be some inconsistencies within the records.
A second search was conducted with the terms “postcard” in the “Description” box and “missionary” in the “Keyword Anywhere” box. A total of 361 results were retrieved. Interestingly enough, the user can also get to these same results by choosing the option to “Browse the Collections”--there is an entire collection titled “Missionary postcards.” In fact, it is the reviewer’s opinion that the browsing capabilities, though limited only to the collection level, are more useful than the search capabilities. Take for example a search for “sermon” in the “Subject” box. Only 3 results are yielded, and each one is an image. Selecting the “Browse the Collections” option reveals several collections of sermons--the collection “Thanksgiving Day Sermons” alone has 490 records. Additionally, the item records themselves should be indexed accordingly; a sermon titled “The good land in which we live” contains within its record a subject heading “Sermons, American--19th century” (“CDRI,” n.d.). It is the obvious that the search capabilities are missing a step somewhere because 3 results for “sermon” as subject is not representative of the collection.
Despite its searching limitations, however, the CDRI is overall a valuable digital library, at least in the eyes of the reviewer. The quality of the items in the collection is very high, and it is clear from the last two phases of the initiative that ATLA is expanding the collection by format by seeking audio and video collections. Allowing institutions to compete for a portion of the grant money not only ensured that standards were being met, but that only the most dynamic and beneficial collections were added (see “Criteria for Evaluation of Projects,” “CDRI,” n.d.). Certainly, one of the strengths of the this digital library’s collection is that the multi-institutional contributions have made it diverse.
This does not mean, though, that the CDRI is without room for improvement. Some of the recommendations from the reviewer include a more modern interface for the user, which would also help with navigability. The CDRI could also work on visibility; currently there is not even a link to it from ATLA’s homepage. And though many of the contributing institutions do have links to the CDRI on their libraries’ websites, countless other libraries could create catalog records and post links to the CDRI, especially since it’s a free resource (Campbell, 2004). Also, the CDRI could aid its users by providing an “Ask a Librarian” feature. This could involve using Web 2.0 applications like chat reference, or at least by providing an email address for questions. Or perhaps--since the CDRI relies so heavily on contributed collections--it could also utilize the collaborative spirit of the profession by asking the contributing institutions to also dedicate a small amount of time to Reference Services.
The most obvious recommendation is to enhance the CDRI “catalog” and to improve its search capabilities. Since all contributors are already following specific metadata standards, the reviewer would suggest an extension of those standards to create more interconnectivity between the collections. Library of Congress Subject Headings are already being used, so why not allow them to be hyperlinked at the record level and then allow subject browsing? Also, since the metadata is already in place, migrating it to a next generation catalog would not be to difficult--it would, however, greatly increase the usability of the CDRI as a digital library.
References
Campbell, D. G., & Fast, K. V. (2004). Academic Libraries and the Semantic Web: What the Future May Hold for Research-Supporting Library Catalogues. The Journal of Academic Librarianship, 30(5), 382-390.
CDRI: Digital resources for the study of religion. (n.d.). American Theological Library Association. Retrieved November 11, 2009, from
www.atla.com/digitalresources/CDRI.html.
Kochtanek, T. R., & Matthews, J. R. (2002). Digital Libraries . Library information systems: From library automation to distributed information access solutions (pp. 240). Englewood, Colorado: Libraries Unlimited.
Metadata elements. (n.d.). American Theological Library Association. Retrieved November 11, 2009, from
http://www.atla.com/cdri/metadata/metadata_elements.htm.
Standards for ATLA CDRI projects. (n.d.). American Theological Library Association. Retrieved November 11, 2009, from http://www.atla.com/cdri/standards.html#3.
ATLA Cooperative Digital Resources Initiative
"Vigorous Christian Leadership" from Images of mainline Protestant children and families in the U.S. Duke University, Divinity School Library, Durham, NC, 2006.
Digitized from a b/w cartoon: Presbyterian Life 3.2 January 21, 1950, p. 7.
Accessed from CDRI database, 8 November 2010.
Thursday, November 4, 2010
Twitterfied
At the request of one your fellow patrons, I have set up a twitter account. So, yeah. Follow me @MapKcLibrarian.
More usuful info on LibraryThing coming soon...
More usuful info on LibraryThing coming soon...
Sunday, October 24, 2010
Friday, October 22, 2010
Accessing the Library Catalog
Ways you can search, browse, and view books online:
1. Go straight to http://www.librarything.com/profile/mapkc
2. Google "library mapkc." Select the top most result.
3. Click on the link at the bottom of this blog.
No password is required! Check back here often--I'll be posting about some of LibraryThing's features. In fact, go ahead and subscribe via RSS.
Oh, and ask me questions!
1. Go straight to http://www.librarything.com/profile/mapkc
2. Google "library mapkc." Select the top most result.
3. Click on the link at the bottom of this blog.
No password is required! Check back here often--I'll be posting about some of LibraryThing's features. In fact, go ahead and subscribe via RSS.
Oh, and ask me questions!
Tuesday, October 19, 2010
More Call Numbers Coming Soon
Update: I'm currently finishing up the classification for the Ministry Skills module. Look for new labels soon!
Thursday, October 14, 2010
Good things to know...
Here we go! This blog will be a place to find updates to the library, links to resources, and all other good things that I think you should know.
Please feel free to leave comments and ask questions.
Please feel free to leave comments and ask questions.
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