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Library Linked Data Happening

August 26, 2014January 12, 2020 Lukas KosterLibrary

On August 14 the IFLA 2014 Satellite Meeting ‘Linked Data in Libraries: Let’s make it happen!’ took place at the National Library of France in Paris. Rurik Greenall (who also wrote a very readable conference report) and I had the opportunity to present our paper ‘An unbroken chain: approaches to implementing Linked Open Data in libraries; comparing local, open-source, collaborative and commercial systems’. In this paper we do not go into reasons for libraries to […]

Roadmaps, roadblocks and data finding users

June 19, 2014January 12, 2020 Lukas KosterLibrary

Lingering gold at ELAG 2014 Libraries tend to see themselves as intermediaries between information and the public, between creators and consumers of information. Looking back at the ELAG 2014 conference at the University of Bath however, I can’t get the image out of my head of libraries standing in the way between information and consumers. We’ve been talking about “inside out libraries”, “libraries everywhere”, “rethinking the library” and similar soundbites for some years now, but it […]

Linked data or die!

December 1, 2013January 12, 2020 Lukas KosterLibrary

Struggling towards usable linked data services at SWIB13 Paraphrasing some of the challenges proposed by keynote speaker Dorothea Salo, the unofficial theme of the SWIB13 conference in Hamburg might be described as “No more ontologies, we want out of the box linked data tools!”. This sounds like we are dealing with some serious confrontations in the linked open data world. Judging by Martin Malmsten’s LIBRIS battle cry “Linked data or die!” you might even think […]

The poor person’s linked open data workbench

November 11, 2013February 3, 2020 Lukas KosterData

Using discovery tools for presenting integrated information There has been a lot of discussion in recent years about library discovery tools. Basically, a library discovery tool provides a centrally maintained shared scholarly material metadata index, a system for searching and an option for adding a local metadata index. Academic libraries use it for providing a unified access platform to subscribed and open access databases and ejournals as well as their own local print and digital […]

A day between the stacks

August 9, 2013January 12, 2020 Lukas KosterGeneral

Connecting real books, metadata and people I spent one day in the stacks of the off-site central storage facility of the Library of the University of Amsterdam as one of the volunteers helping the library perform a huge stock control operation which will take years. Goal of this project is to get a complete overview of the discrepancy between what’s on the shelves and what is in the catalogue. We’re talking about 65 kilometer of […]

Meeting people vs. meeting deadlines

June 23, 2013January 12, 2020 Lukas KosterGeneral

Lessons from Cycling for Libraries As I am writing this, more than 100 people working in and for libraries from all over the world are cycling from Amsterdam to Brussels in the Cycling for Libraries 2013 event, defying heat, cold, wind and rain. And other cyclists ;-). Cycling for Libraries is an independent unconference on wheels that aims to promote and defend the role of libraries, mainly public libraries, in and for society. This year […]

Resilience, connections and a clean slate

June 10, 2013January 12, 2020 Lukas KosterLibrary

The inside-out library at ELAG 2013This year marked my fifth ELAG conference since 2008 (I skipped 2009), which is not much if you take into account that ELAG2013 was the 37th one. I really enjoyed the 2013 conference, not in the least because of the wonderful people of the local organising committee at the Ghent University Library, who made ELAG2013 a very pleasant event.This year’s theme was “the inside-out library”, a concept coined by Lorcan […]

Beyond The Library

March 22, 2013January 12, 2020 Lukas KosterLibrary

The BeyondThePDF2 conference, organised by FORCE11, was held in Amsterdam, March 19-20. From the website: “…we aim to bring about a change in modern scholarly communications through the effective use of information technology”. Basically the conference participants discussed new models of content creation, content dissemination, content consumption, funding and research evaluation.Because I work for an academic library in Amsterdam, dealing with online scholarly information systems and currently trying to connect traditional library information to related […]

(Discover AND deliver) OR else

January 7, 2013February 14, 2020 Lukas KosterData

The future of the academic library as a data services hub Is there a future for libraries, or more specifically: is there a future for academic libraries? This has been the topic of lots of articles, blog posts, books and conferences. See for instance Aaron Tay’s recent post about his favourite “future of libraries” articles. But the question needs to be addressed over and over again, because libraries, and particularly academic libraries, continue to persevere […]

Change or be irrelevant

October 10, 2012February 14, 2020 Lukas KosterLibrary

Or: Think “different” or paint yourself in a corner EMTACL12 – Emerging Technologies in Academic Libraries 2012 I attended the EMTACL12 conference in Trondheim October 1-3, 2012, organised by the Library of NTNU Norwegian University of Science and Technology, both as a member of the international programme committee and as a speaker. EMTACL stands for “emerging technologies in academic libraries”. Looking back, my impression was that the conference was not so much about emerging technologies, […]