Mainframe to mobile

The connection between information technology and library information systems

This is the first post in a series of three

[1. Mainframe to mobile - 2. Mobile app or mobile web? - 3. Mobile library services]

The functions, services and audience of library information systems, as is the case with all information systems, have always been dependent on and determined by the existing level of information technology. Mobile devices are the latest step in this development.

© sainz

In the beginning there was a computer, a mainframe. The only way to communicate with it was to feed it punchcards with holes that represented characters.

© Mirandala

If you made a typo (puncho?), you were not informed until a day later when you collected the printout, and you could start again. System and data files could be stored externally on large tape reels or small tape cassettes, identical to music tapes. Tapes were also used for sharing and copying data between systems by means of physical transportation.

© ajmexico

Suddenly there was a human operable terminal, consisting of a monitor and keyboard, connected to the central computer. Now you could type in your code and save it as a file on the remote server (no local processing or storage at all). If you were lucky you had a full screen editor, if not there was the line editor. No graphics. Output and errors were shown on screen almost immediately, depending on the capacity of the CPU (central processing unit) and the number of other batch jobs in the queue. The computer was a multi-user time sharing device, a bit like the “cloud”, but every computer was a little cloud of its own.
There was no email. There were no end users other than systems administrators, programmers and some staff. Communication with customers was carried out by sending them printouts on paper by snail mail.

I guess this was the first time that some libraries, probably mainly in academic and scientific institutions, started creating digital catalogs, for staff use only of course.

© n.kahlua72

© RaeA

Then came the PC (Personal Computer). Terminal and keyboard were now connected to the computer (or system unit) on your desk. You had the thing entirely to yourself! Input and output consisted of lines of text only, one colour (green or white on black), and still no graphics. Files could be stored on floppy disks, 5¼-inch magnetic things that you could twist and bend, but if you did that you lost your data. There was no internal storage. File sharing was accomplished by moving the floppy from one PC to another and/or copy files from one floppy to another (on the same floppy drive).

© suburbanslice

Later we got smaller disks, 3½-inch, in protective cases. The PC was mainly used for early word processing (WordStar, WordPerfect) and games. Finally there was a hard disk (as opposed to “floppy” disk) inside the PC system unit, which held the operating system (mainly MS-DOS), and on which you could store your files, which became larger. Time for stand-alone database applications (dBase).

Client server GUI

Then there was Windows, a mouse, and graphics. And of course the Internet! You could connect your PC to the Internet with a modem that occupied your telephone line and made phone calls impossible during your online session. At first there was Gopher, a kind of text based web.
Then came the World Wide Web (web 0.0), consisting of static web pages with links to other static web pages that you could read on your PC. Not suitable for interactive systems. Libraries could publish addresses and opening hours.
But fortunately we got client-server architecture, combining the best of both worlds. Powerful servers were good at processing, storing and sharing data. PC’s were good at presenting and collecting data in a “user friendly” graphical user interface (GUI), making use of local programming and scripting languages. So you had to install an application on the local PC which then connected to the remote server database engine. The only bad thing was that the application was tied to the specific PC, with local Windows configuration settings. And it was not possible to move the thing around.

Now we had multi-user digital catalogs with a shared central database and remote access points with the client application installed, available to staff and customers.

Luckily dynamic creation of HTML pages came along, so we were able to move the client part of client-server applications to the web as well. With web applications we were able to use the same applications anywhere on any computer linked to the world wide web. You only needed a browser to display the server side pages on the local PC.

Now everybody could browse through the library catalog any time, anywhere (where there was a computer with an internet connection and a web browser). The library OPAC (Online Public Access Catalog) was born.

Web OPAC

The only disadvantage was that every page change had to be generated by the server again, so performance was not optimal.
But that changed with browser based scripting technology like JavaScript, AJAX, Flash, etc. Application bits are sent to the local browser on the PC at runtime, to be executed there. So actually this is client server “on the fly”, without the need to install a specific application locally.

© nxtiak

In the meantime the portable PC appeared, system unit, monitor and keyboard all in one. At first you needed some physical power to move the thing around, but later we got laptops, notebooks, netbooks, getting smaller, lighter and more powerful all the time. And wifi of course, no need to plug the device in to the physical network anymore. And USB-sticks.

Access to OPAC and online databases became available anytime, anywhere (where you carried your computer).

The latest development of course is the rise of mobile phones with wireless web access, or rather mobile web devices which can also be used for making phone calls. Mobile devices are small and light enough to carry with you in your pocket all the time. It’s a tiny PC.

Finally you can access library related information literally any time, anywhere, even in your bedroom and bathroom.

Mobile library app

It’s getting boring, but yes, there is a drawback. Web applications are not really accommodated for use in mobile browsers: pages are too large, browser technology is not really compatible, connections are too slow.

Available options are:

• creating a special “dumbed down” version of a website for use on mobile devices only: smaller text based pages with links
• creating a new HTML5/CSS3 website, targeted at mobile devices and “traditional” PC’s alike
• creating “apps”, to be installed on mobile devices and connect to a database system in the cloud; basically this is the old client-server model all over again.

A comparison of mobile apps and mobile web architecture is the topic of another post.

Who needs MARC?

Why use a non-normalised metadata exchange format for suboptimal data storage?

© leah the librarian

This week I had a nice chat with André Keyzer of Groningen University library and Peter van Boheemen of Wageningen University Library who attended OCLC’s Amsterdam Mashathon 2009. As can be expected from library technology geeks, we got talking about bibliographic metadata formats, very exciting of course. The question came up: what on earth could be the reason for storing bibliographic metadata in exchange formats like MARC?

Being asked once at an ELAG conference about the bibliographic format Wageningen University was using in their home grown catalog system, Peter answered: “WDC” ….”we don’t care“.

Exactly my idea! As a matter of fact I think I may have used the same words a couple of times in recent years, probably even at ELAG2008. The thing is: it really does not matter how you store bibliographic metadata in your database, as long as you can present and exchange the data in any format requested, be it MARC or Dublin Core or anything else.

Of course the importance of using internationally accepted standards is beyond doubt, but there clearly exists widespread misunderstanding of the functions of certain standards, like for instance MARC. MARC is NOT a data storage format. In my opinion MARC is not even an exchange format, but merely a presentation format.

St. Marc Express

With a background and experience in data modeling, database and systems design (among others), I was quite amazed about bibliographic metadata formats when I started working with library systems in libraries, not having a librarian training at all. Of course, MARC (“MAchine Readable Cataloging record“) was invented as a standard in order to facilitate exchange of library catalog records in a digital era.
But I think MARC was invented by old school cataloguers who did not have a clue about data normalisation at all. A MARC record, especially if it corresponds to an official set of cataloging rules like AARC2, is nothing more than a digitised printed catalog card.

In pre-computer times it made perfect sense to have a standardised uniform way of registering bibliographic metadata on a printed card in this way. The catalog card was simultaneously used as a medium for presenting AND storing metadata. This is where the confusion originates from!

MARC record

But when the Library of Congress says “If a library were to develop a “home-grown” system that did not use MARC records, it would not be taking advantage of an industry-wide standard whose primary purpose is to foster communication of information” it is saying just plain nonsense.
Actually it is better NOT to use something like MARC for other purposes than exchanging, or better, presenting data. To illustrate this I will give two examples of MARC tags that have been annoying me since my first day as a library employee:

• 100 – Main Entry-Personal Name (NR) – subfield $a – Personal name (NR)
• 773 – Host Item Entry (R) – subfield $g – Relationship information (R)

100 – Main Entry-Personal Name
Besides storing an author’s name as a string in each individual bibliographic record instead of using a code, linking to a central authority table (“foreign key” in relational database terms), it is also a mistake to use a person’s name as one complete string in one field. Examples on the Library of Congress MARC website use forms like “Adams, Henry”, “Fowler, T. M.” and “Blackbeard, Author of”. To take only the simple first example, this author could also be registered as “Henry Adams”, “Adams, H.”, “H. Adams”. And don’t say that these forms are not according to the rules! They are out there! There is no way to match these variations as being actually one and the same.
In a normalised relational database, this subfield $a would be stored something like this (simplified!):

• Person
  • Surname=Adams
  • First name=Henry
  • Prefix=
  • …

773 – Host Item Entry
Subfield $g of this MARC tag is used for storing citation information for a journal article, volume, issue, year, start page, end page, all in one string, like: “Vol. 2, no. 2 (Feb. 1976), p. 195-230“. Again I have seen this used in many different ways. In a normalised format this would look something like this, using only the actual values:

• Journal
  • Volume=2
  • Issue=2
  • Year=1976
  • Month=2
  • Day=
  • Start page=195
  • End page=230

In a presentation of this normalised data record extra text can be added like “Vol.” or “Volume“, “Issue” or “No.“, brackets, replacing codes by descriptions (Month 2 = Feb.)  etc., according to the format required. So the stored values could be used to generate the text “Vol. 2, no. 2 (Feb. 1976), p. 195-230” on the fly, but also for instance “Volume 2, Issue 2, dated February 1976, pages 195-230“.

The strange thing with this bibliographic format aimed at exchanging metadata is that it actually makes metadata exchange terribly complicated, especially with these two tags Author and Host Item. I can illustrate this with describing the way this exchange is handled between two digital library tools we use at the Library of the University of Amsterdam, MetaLib and SFX , both from the same vendor, Ex Libris.

The metasearch tool MetaLib is using the described and preferred mechanism of on the fly conversion of received external metadata from any format to MARC for the purpose of presentation.
But if we want to use the retrieved record to link to for instance a full text article using the SFX link resolver, the generated MARC data is used as a source and the non-normalised data in the 100 and 773 MARC tags has to be converted to the OpenURL format, which is actually normalised (example in simple OpenUrl 0.1):

isbn=;issn=0927-3255;date=1976;
volume=2;issue=2;spage=195;epage=230;
aulast=Adams;aufirst=Henry;auinit=;

In order to do this all kinds of regular expressions and scripting functions are needed to extract the correct values from the MARC author and citation strings. Wouldn’t it be convenient, if the record in MetaLib would already have been in OpenURL or any other normalised format?

The point I am trying to make is of course that it does not matter how metadata is stored, as long as it is possible to get the data out of the database in any format appropriate for the occasion. The SRU/SRW protocol is particularly aimed at precisely this: getting data out of a database in the required format, like MARC, Dublin Core, or anything else. An SRU server is a piece of middleware that receives requests, gets the requested data, converts the data and then returns the data in the requested format.

Currently at the Library of the University of Amsterdam we are migrating our ILS which also involves converting our data from one bibliographic metadata format (PICA+) to another (MARC). This is extremely complicated, especially because of the non-normalised structure of both formats. And I must say that in my opinion PICA+ is even the better one.
Also all German and Austrian libraries are meant to migrate from the MAB format to MARC, which also seems to be a move away from a superior format.
All because of the need to adhere to international standards, but with the wrong solution.

Maybe the projected new standard for resource description and access RDA will be the solution, but that may take a while yet.

ReTweet @Reply – Twitter communities

In my post “Tweeting Libraries” among other things I described my Personal Twitter experience as opposed to Institutional Twitter use. Since then I have discovered some new developments in my own Twitter behaviour and some trends in Twitter at large: individual versus social.

There have been some discussions on the web about the pros and cons and the benefits and dangers of social networking tools like Twitter, focusing on “noise” (uninteresting trivial announcements) versus “signal” (meaningful content), but also on the risk of web 2.0 being about digital feudalism, and being a possible vehicle for fascism (as argumented by Andrew Keen).

My kids say: “Twitter is for old people who think they’re cool“. According to them it’s nothing more than : “Just woke up; SEND”, “Having breakfast; SEND”; “Drinking coffee; SEND”; “Writing tweet; SEND”. For them Twitter is only about broadcasting trivialities, narcissistic exhibitionism, “noise”.
For their own web communications they use chat (MSN/Messenger), SMS (mobile phone text messages), communities (Hyves, the Dutch counterpart of MySpace) and email. Basically I think young kids communicate online only within their groups of friends, with people they know.

Just to get an overview: a tweet, or Twitter message, can basically be of three different types:

• just plain messages, announcements
• replies: reactions to tweets from others, characterised by the “@<twittername>” string
• retweets: forwarding tweets from others, characterised by the letters “RT“

Although a lot of people use Twitter in the “exhibitionist” way, I don’t do that myself at all. If I look at my Twitter behaviour of the past weeks, I almost only see “retweets” and “replies”.

Both “replies” and “retweets” obviously were not features of the original Twitter concept, they came into being because Twitter users needed conversation.
A reply is becoming more and more a replacement for short emails or mobile phone text messages, at least for me. These Twitter replies are not “monologues”, but “dialogues”. If you don’t want everybody to read these, you can use a “Direct message” or “DM“.
Retweets are used to forward interesting messages to the people who are following you, your “community” so to speak. No monologue, no dialogue, but sharing information with specific groups.
The “@<twittername>” mechanism is also used to refer to another Twitter user in a tweet. In official Twitter terminology “replies” have been replaced by “mentions“.

Retweets and replies are the building blocks of Twitter communities. My primary community consists of people and organisations related to libraries. Just a small number of these people I actually know in person. Most of them I have never met. The advantage of Twitter here is obvious: I get to know more people who are active in my professional area, I stay informed and up to date, I can discuss topics. This is all about “signal”. If issues are too big for twitter (more than 140 characters) we can use our blogs.
But it’s not only retweets and replies that make Twitter communities work. Trivialities (“noise”) are equally important. They make you get to know people and in this way help create relationships built on trust.

Another compelling example of a very positive social use of Twitter I experienced last week, when there were a number of very interesting Library 2.0 conferences, none of which I could attend in person because of our ILS project:

• ELAG 2009 (European Library Automation Group) in Bratislava, April 22-24
• Dutch Conference Social Networks 2009 in Rotterdam, April 22
• Ugame Ulearn 2009 in Delft, April 23

All of these conferences were covered on Twitter by attendees using the hashtags #elag09, #csnr09 and #ugul09 . This phenomenon makes it possible for non-participants to follow all events and discussions at these conferences and even join in the discussions. Twitter at its best!

Twitter is just a tool, a means to communicate in many different ways. It can be used for good and for bad, and of course what is “good” and what is “bad” is up to the individual to decide.

Replacing our ILS, business as usual

© Peter Morville

As you may have noticed from some of my tweets, the Library of the Unversity of Amsterdam, my place of work, is in the process of replacing its ILS (Integrated Library System). All in all this project, or better these two projects (one selecting a new ILS, the other one implementing it) will have taken 18 months or more from the decision to go ahead until STP (Switch to Production), planned for August 15 this year. My colleague Bert Zeeman blogged about this (in Dutch) recently.

One thing that has become absolutely clear to me is that replacing an ILS is not just about replacing one information system by another. It is about replacing an entire organisational structure of work processes, with its huge impact on all people involved. And in our case it affects two organisations: besides the Library of the University of Amsterdam also the Media Library of the Hogeschool van Amsterdam. We have been managing library systems for both organisations in a mini consortial structure since a couple of years. So the Media Library is facing a second ILS replacement within two years.

While the decision was made because of pressing technical reasons, also with an eye on preparing for future library 2.0 developments, it turned out to be of substantial consequence for the organisation.
This is the first time that I am participating in such a radical library system project. I have done a couple of projects implementing and upgrading metasearching and OpenURL link resolver tools in the last six years, but these are nothing compared to the current project. With these “add-on” tools, that started as a means of extending the library’s primary stream of information, only a relatively limited number of people were involved. But with an ILS you are talking about the core business of a library (still!) and about day to day working life of everybody involved in acquisitions, cataloguing, circulation as well as system administrators and system librarians.

To make it even more complicated, the University Library is also switching from the old system’s proprietary bibliographic format to MARC21, because that is what the new system is using. Personally I think that the old system’s format is better (just like our German colleagues think about their move from MAB to MARC), but of course the advantages of using an internationally accepted and used standard outweighs this, as always. Maybe food for another blog post later…

Last but not least, the Library is simultaneously doing a project for the implementation of RFID for self check machines. The initial idea was to implement RFID in the old system and then just migrate everything to the new one. However, for various reasons, recently it was decided to postpone RFID implementation to shortly after our ILS STP. Some initial tests have shown that this probably will work.

And while all this is going on, all normal work needs to be taken care of too: ” business as usual” .

Now, looking at workflows: the way that our individual departments have organised their workflows, is partly dictated by the way the old system is designed. The new system obviously dictates workflows too, but in other areas. Although this new system is very flexible and highly configurable, there are still some local requirements that cannot be met by the new system.
Of course this is NOT the way it should be! Systems should enable us to do what we want and how we want it! Hopefully new developments like Ex Libris’ URM and the very recently announced new OCLS WorldCat Web based ILS will take care of users better.

Talking about “very flexible and highly configurable”: although a very big advantage, this also makes it much more complicated and time consuming to implement the new system. Fortunately there are a lot of other libraries in The Netherlands and around the world using the new system that are willing to help us in every possible way. And this is highly appreciated!

Other isues that make this project complicated:

• unexpected issues, bottlenecks: these keep on coming
• migration of data from old system: conversion of old to new format
• implementing links with external systems like student’s and staff database, financial system, national union catalogue

I think we will make STP on the planned date, but I also think we need to postpone a number of issues until after that. There will still be a lot of work to be done for my department after the project has finished.

To end with a positive note: the new OPAC wil be much nicer and more flexible than the old one. And in the end that is what we are doing this for: our patrons.

Developers meet developers, people meet people

Last month I was in the opportunity to participate in the first official Ex Libris “Developers meet developers” meeting in Jerusalem, November 12-13, 2008. The meeting was dedicated to the new Open Platform strategy that Ex Libris has adopted. I already mentioned this development in my post How open are open systems?. Together with one of the other attendees, Mark Dehmlow, of Notre Dame University Library, I wrote a short report on this meeting in the IGeLU newsletter issue 2, 2008, page 21-22.

The intention of this event was that representatives from Ex Libris customer institutions that use Ex Libris’ Digital Library tools Aleph, SFX, MetaLib, and Primo and are actively involved in developing plug-ins, add-ons and extensions to one or more of these products, and Ex Libris staff involved in development of these tools, had the chance to meet face to face and talk, discuss and exchange ideas from both sides.

The political, cultural and social circumstances of the location of the event (about which I blogged some personal thoughts here) are such that I can’t resist the temptation of using them as a metaphor, although I am fully aware that the actual situation in Jerusalem is of course much more complicated. I apologise in advance if I unintentionally offend anyone by using the serious real world situation in an inappropriate way.

So, let’s give it a try: in Jerusalem there are a number of separate areas for different population groups. In general there are the Jewish western part and the Arab eastern part. But there is also the old city right in the middle, with Jewish, Arab, Christian and Armenian quarters. Besides that you can also see separate neighbourhoods within the Jewish part with different Jewish groups. And last but not least, right in the middle of the Christian quarter there is the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, with corners for almost all christian religious groups. Very fascinating and intriguing.

Although there are no physical borders between these areas, the complicated serious political, social and cultural circumstances prevent most people to visit their neighbours in their own areas. Now here comes the metaphor! In the world of informations systems you normally have a similar situation of “us and them”. Customers and users often think that providers of systems do not take them seriously and give them tools they can’t work with, and the other way around system developers often see end users as nagging bores, never satisfied and complaining about everything.
Customers and providers inhabit the same space, like Jerusalem, but do not cross the imaginary border to really meet.

This is why it is so remarkable that the “crossing of the border” between Ex Libris customers and developers actually happened in Jerusalem. Of course I immediately must add that Ex Libris has always favoured open systems for customers to use in their own way, and supports the international user groups, but an actual face-to-face meeting on the level of developers is something different.

From personal experience I know that it is very easy for situations to get out of hand if there is no real communication and no willingness for mutual understanding. That is why I think that it is absolutely vital that meetings like this can continue to take place. From the customers’ side the user groups IGeLU and ELUNA are fully dedicated to this goal, and I really hope that Ex Libris is also serious about it.

In this month of Christmas, Chanuka and Eid Al-Adha, let me end with the wish for better understanding on the personal, professional and global level!

Antisocial Networking

In his post “Twitter me this” Owen Stephens writes about differences in use and audience of Social Networking Sites. (Apparently at Imperial College London they had a similar kind of Web2.0 Learning programme as we had at the Library of the University of Amsterdam.)
Owen distinguishes audiences on several, intermixed levels (my interpretation): “young” (e.g. MySpace ) vs. “old(er)” (e.g. Facebook ); “business/networking” (e.g. LinkedIn ) vs. “family and friends” (also FaceBook); “professional” (e.g. Ning ).

And Owen mentions the risk involved here:

“I do find that Facebook raises the issue of how I mix my professional and personal life – whereas on LinkedIn everyone is one there as a ‘professional contact’ (even those people who are also friends), in Facebook I have some professional contacts, and some personal contacts. Although it hasn’t happened yet, there is a clearly a risk that in the future there could be a conflict between how I want to present myself professionally, and how I do personally – I’m not sure I’d want my boss (not singling out my current boss) to be my ‘Friend’ on Facebook.”

I recognise these differences and risks as well. In The Netherlands the most popular social networking site is Hyves, which can be compared to MySpace (according to my interpretation of Owen’s classification), but without the music angle. I have an account there, with only 13 “friends”, but my kids have 100 or more.

On LinkedIn however, I have 80 connections (a term used to stress that these contacts are to be regarded as serious business relations), of which 99% I have met face-to-face at least once, by the way. Owen says about LinkedIn:

“I’ve got a LinkedIn account but I don’t tend to use it for ‘social networking’, and more really as a ‘contacts’ list – while some people clearly use LinkedIn to ‘work’ their business contacts, I can’t say that I’ve ever been terribly good at this.”

I guess I am using LinkedIn the same way as Owen does. Last week I had a discussion with a colleague/friend (!) about the use of these business networking sites like LinkedIn. We concluded that a number of people obviously use LinkedIn to show off: “Look, I have more than 300 connections on my list; mine is bigger than yours“. I must confess that I have thoughts like that myself sometimes: “I hope that this colleague has noticed that I know that famous person“….

Now these “serious” business networks are starting to offer more social features. LinkedIn has groups, forums and “LinkedIn Applications”: integrating web 2.0 stuff like Amazon reading list, Slideshare, WordPress. In fact, this very blog post will show up on my LinkedIn Profile.

I guess there is a lot of competition, for instance with Plaxo. Besides “connections”, which can be marked “business”, “friends” or “family”, Plaxo offers the options of “hooking up feeds” from web 2.0 services that you use, like flickr, delicious, twitter, blogs, youtube, lastfm, etc. I find this a very useful feature, because it gives me an integrated overview of all my web2.0 streams, much like SecondBrain does, which has a slightly different “connection” implementation, more like Twitter, with “followers”.
Plaxo lets you also synchronise connections with LinkedIn, but this is a “Premium service”, meaning it costs money.

Now, to come back to Owen’s risk assessment: in my Plaxo profile I show my professional blog (this one, that you are reading right now) to “Everyone”, but my twitter, personal blog, flickr, delicious, picasa and lastfm streams only to “Friends” and “Family”, because I think I should not draw unnecessary attention to my twitter “trivia” (as Owen calls it), holiday snapshots and non-professional bookmarks. These streams are publicly available of course, but I do not want to actually push them in the faces of my “serious” connections.

You might argue that this kind of behaviour is not “social“, but rather “antisocial“: certain groups of contacts are excluded from information that privileged groups do have access to. And this term could also be applied to the “showing off” behaviour that I mentioned above.

The funny thing is, that the “killer application” that won me over to Plaxo and that I use the most, is not social at all: it’s something that I have been looking for since playing around with web 1.0 “Personal Information Managers”: the option of integrating and synchronising the Plaxo Calendar with my Outlook work calendar and my private Google calendar. For me this is a huge advantage to having to consult several calendars when planning an appointment.
But I do not share my Plaxo Calendar at all. Would you call this antisocial behaviour too?

Library Systems and the world of hardware

The project for implementation of Aleph as the new ILS for the Library of the University of Amsterdam started last week (October 2) with the official kick-off meeting. The Ex Libris project plan was presented to the members of the project team, bottlenecks were identified, and a lot of adjustments were made to the planning in order to be able to carry out more tasks simultaneously and thus earlier in time.

First steps are installation of Aleph 18, and giving on site trainings to all people involved, using the new locally installed Aleph 18 system.

"Systems dependent on hardware and people"

But of course, before everything can start, we need the hardware! The central ICT department of the University of Amsterdam (not part of the library) is responsible for configuring and providing the Aleph production server according to the official Ex Libris “Requirements for ALEPH 500 Installation”. And as always there is confusion about what is actually meant by the provider,and as always there are conflicts between the provider’s requirements and the ICT department’s security policy.

As head of the Library Systems Department of the library and as coordinator of the project’s System Administration team, I have been acting this week as an intermediary between our software and hardware providers, passing information about volumes, partitions, database and scratch files, root access, IP addresses and swap areas.

This makes you realise again that all these new web 2.0 systems and techniques are in the end completely dependent on the availability of correctly configured and constantly monitored machines, cables and electricity, and not in the least on all these technicians that know all about hardware and networks.

So, commonplace.net….

I have had this domain name for a long time, before I started working with digital library systems, even before I knew about them. It was January 2000, at the peak of web 1.0.

My main motive was that I wanted to have an email address that I would not have to change every so often because of disappearing free email providers (my first email address was something at crosswinds.net). But I also wanted to create some kind of bridge or virtual meeting place for the different fields I was interested in, art, history, IT, etc.
There were no blogs or blogging software or any modern web2.0 tools, I had to do everything with HTML and CSS.

A funny thing is that Pam’s Paper Pills blog (© photo) compares old “commonplace books” with “modern blogs”.

My first real project that attracted some attention was my “Short guide to free email” .

A couple of years later I found myself kind of “in between careers”, moving away from IT and system development into what I then expected to be arts and humanities. I actually found myself somewhere in the middle in the end (where I still am right now).

I started adding more “literary” and “historical” texts to my website.But I never really got it going.

Until web 2.0 came along. First I moved everything to a WordPress environment, but I still did not have real content. I played around with a couple of different approaches, finally I decided to start a blog on digital libraries. One of the many but it would automatically be part of the current “virtual community” of the blogosphere and the web at large.

It took some time to think of topics that are not really covered by other well known bloggers. Matters were complicated by the fact that I also have another site, that I had started using for a kind of “personal” blogging (http://lukask.blogspot.com).

But I think the next couple of years I may have a lot to blog about. I will be heavily involved in the implementation of Aleph at the Library of the University of Amsterdam, I have just been elected as member of the Steering Committee of  IGeLU (International Group of Ex Libris Users), we intend to get involved more in the new Ex Libris developers platform, and of course there is Ex Libris‘ new URM/URD2 strategy to follow.

So, I hope this will be the first of many library2.0 blog posts.

Lukas Koster

Web 2.0 … The Machine is Us/ing Us