Science Library Pad

Rebooting the public square with open data and open source

there are myriad categories of raw data that are locked up inside the boundaries of government.  If governments were simply to publish this data, then private companies, civil society organisations, citizens and other government agencies will self-organise to use this data to create public value.  This holds the promise of better, cheaper government.

Don Tapscott - 03m43s to 4m06s

The fifth and final episode of CBC's ReCivilization was "Rebooting the Public Square".  Ignoring the apocalyptic "this is the end of everything we know" tone at the beginning, it looks at the infrastructure of open sharing online (through discussions with Google and Mozilla), open data (through a discussion with Sir Tim Berners-Lee), and the kinds of activities that are enabled in the government sphere (through a discussion with the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy).

I think it's an ok starting point for understanding some of the pieces, although there is a lot more to open government than is covered in the segment.  I was disappointed that as a Canadian show there was no mention of Canadian open government initiatives, which include

• national - open.gc.ca and participation in the Open Government Partnership
• provincial - data.gov.bc.ca
• municipal - ottawa.ca/opendata

(More sites are listed on Wikipedia - Open Data in Canada.)

The audio is available as broadcast on the web, there are also extended interviews available.  For those interested specifically in open government, the extended interview with Thomas Kalil is the most informative.  The series is also available (for free) in iTunes.

Twitter:

• @recivilization
• @dtapscott
• @adw_tweets
• @WhiteHouseOSTP
• @ericschmidt
• @MitchellBaker
• @timberners_lee

Previously:
December 30, 2006  Tapscott: turn your organization inside-out
December 28, 2006  Tapscott on collaboration and Wikinomics in the Globe
June 6, 2005  SLA2005 - live, semi-awake blogging of opening session - Monday 9:30 AM (featuring Tapscott keynote)

UK Open Government and Transparency

Francis Maude is UK Minister for the Cabinet Office.  He spoke about the UK experience in January 2012 for the World Bank.

Governments are finding transparency risky, difficult and uncomfortable. But transparency sticks – it’s irreversible once you start. And I believe transparency will become the defining characteristic of future public policy.

...

putting out raw data in the public domain for entrepreneurs and businesses to work with. Creating an information marketplace. And this is where I believe the UK is leading the way today.

Data sharing is underpinning everything we do to improve public services and to drive new waves of growth.

...

Companies large and small are also using the data to create innovative, products and applications.

Already we’re aware of 47 independent app developers working in the UK giving information to rail passengers through their smartphones – in a market that has for the most part open up in only a few major cities.

London commuters can now use their phone apps to decide whether to rush for the train or get a cup of coffee thanks to greater transport data.

Francis Maude's speech to the World Bank – Transparency and Open Data

You can also watch the webcast recording (Windows Media format).

In addition to the UK open data site data.gov.uk there are two other initiatives of note: gov.uk from the Government Digital Service and G-Cloud.

gov.uk is a project to have a single homepage to access UK government services.  They have been using an agile methodology, and the gov.uk site is now in beta, following an alpha.   From a homepage that is a blog to an official Twitter feed at @govuk that retweets team members, it is a great example of innovation at the heart of government.

G-Cloud includes government use of the cloud as well as data centre consolidation.  They just launched the CloudStore, a list of approved services.  It includes the notion of trying to open up government procurement to a wider variety of players.  They announced CloudStore Open for Business on February 19, 2012 in their blog.  The CloudStore, which runs on MS Azure, will be available as open source.  You can follow them at @G_Cloud_UK

RT @cantwaitogo The full UK Gov #cloudstore will be released as #opensource. < great, thx #oss #govit #gov20

— Andrew Stott (@DirDigEng) February 19, 2012

the Open City - the next driver for innovation?

Mayor Gregor Robertson and Coun. Andrea Reimer want the City of Vancouver to support open-source software and open standards.

They also want the city to make as much data as possible freely available to the public. Reimer will introduce a motion [PDF] next Tuesday (May 19) that would see the city endorse the principles of open source, open standards, and open data, as well as start work on publishing data on the Web using open standards.

In a press release issued today (May 14), Robertson said that an “open city” philosophy would help create new opportunities in the information-technology sector.

City of Vancouver set to back open source, open standards, open data - straight.com - May 14, 2009

via Twitter - Rob Giggey (Rob works at the City of Ottawa) - May 15, 2009

(I tried to find the Gregor Robertson press release referenced above, but I haven't been successful - can anyone point me to it?)

Toronto Mayor Miller has also announced toronto.ca/open (which still shows "under construction").

In Ottawa, supported by some City of Ottawa staff but not (yet?) endorsed as any kind of official policy, we're starting the open data discussion as part of ChangeCamp Ottawa.

What can you do as citizens and what can we do as libraries to enable the sharing of our civic data?  Is sharing civic data a next logical step for public libraries as enablers of the public space?

Previously:
May 5, 2009  Web APIs explained on CBC Spark - and Open Data Under Construction

next generation open library system

I'm so used to bookmarking stuff into my FriendFeed these days I have to remind myself my blog is also a communications vehicle... I'd be remiss in not posting about this major SOA & libraries initiative.

The Open Library Environment (OLE) Project

With support from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Open Library Environment (OLE) Project will convene the academic library community in the design of an Open Library Management System built on Service Oriented Architecture.

http://oleproject.org/

Duke University is the lead on this project.

UPDATE: Just for clarity I should probably mention that my organisation (CISTI) is neither a core nor an advisory partner.  ENDUPDATE

If you want to get an idea of the framework that this fits into, you can see my posting about the presentation Enterprise Services Architectures - Chris Mackie - DLF Fall Forum 2007.

It is great to see library projects starting to use a service-oriented approach, although given that this is the dominant industry trend these days, I'm not convinced that my four years of online and offline advocacy for library SOA actually had much of an impact on this choice.

(You can see my blog postings in category "Service-Oriented Architecture" going back to November 2004:
http://scilib.typepad.com/science_library_pad/serviceoriented_architecture/ )

Still, one does like to be right.

NLA announces Library Labs

The [National Library of Australia] has recently opened this "Library Labs" wiki space:

https://wiki.nla.gov.au/display/LABS/Home

The aim of this space is to let our colleagues know what we are doing, to invite comments, questions and feedback and to provide a space for discussion and collaboration.

We have started to redevelop our digital library services using a service-oriented architecture and open source software solutions where these are functional and robust.  We are also aiming to take a common ("single business") approach to collection management, discovery and delivery.

We are interested in forming a community of Australian business analysts and developers who are working on similar problems and who are interested in  interoperable, standards-based solutions. We are also interested in working with colleagues at an international level to provide prototypes and testbeds for new and emerging standards.

via Warwick Cathro
Assistant Director-General, Innovation
National Library of Australia

software development, staffing and new library technology

Librarian in Black responded to my article in Library Journal netConnect, and Richard Wallis' commentary thereon.  She says

What makes me sad is that both Ackerman [sic] and Wallis have missed a key point: if the future is in web services, how can libraries take advantage of that with their current staff configurations?  How many libraries in the U.S. have a honest-to-goodness computer programmer on staff?  How many have staff with Computer Science degrees?  How many staff do they have devoted to the library's hardware, software, and network?  How many staff do they have devoted to web services?

In the smallest libraries, perhaps all of these are the same one person.

My article is about modern software engineering for libraries, not on how to staff them.  However, in the very same issue of netConnect there's an article by Karen Coombs "Digital Promise and Peril" calling for library staffing to reflect the digital content environment

Many of these digital materials are in jeopardy of being lost because librarians have not yet found adequate ways to collect and manage them. In part, this is because roles and skill sets have been siloed in libraries. Materials preservation issues have typically been the purview of special collections and archives units within the library. In contrast, cataloging expertise has resided in technical services, and technology expertise has typically resided in systems. To collect and manage born digital objects adequately requires these roles and skill sets to come together.

So let me summarize some of the goals and targets of the article, as well as talk about the relationship to promising developments:

• The main focus of the article is to convey to library administrators, managers and planners that the world of networked digital content requires new ways of thinking about developing library systems, and that there are modern software engineering methods and technologies that can support new systems development.
• It may be the case that, as in Sarah's words, the library blogosphere knows that "Of course the future is in web services" but it took years of hard lobbying and education within my organisation to convince my own library leadership - that's why I was happy to have the forum of Library Journal, to reach a wider audience.  I have to believe there are many library managers who have no idea where the technology future lies, and have only a vague notion of web services.
• If I can get one library manager to be able to ask good questions about web services and service-oriented architecture, and even (dare I dream) read one of the books I recommended with more detailed information on the topic, my goal is achieved.
• I recognize that many public libraries don't have the staff for development, and never will.  That's why I have said in the past that librarians should be scripters, not coders.  Most libraries should be using technology developed externally, not trying to do their own custom internal development, or as I said in my article, they should be technology service consumers, not necessarily producers. There are only a few libraries in the world (including mine) which have the size to have a substantial development staff.
• I work at a research library, not a public library nor an academic library.  Research libraries like mine now interact with patrons almost entirely online - our walkin traffic is basically zero.  That means we have to move into the networked information space very aggressively, or basically disappear as a presence for our users, replaced by publisher web sites.
• By moving to standard APIs, using standard modern development methods, and standardizing web services, libraries can take advantage of a much broader development community, and potential staffing pool.  How many software developers do you think know Z39.50, MARC, and SRU/SRW?  That's why we have a tiny community of library hackers trying to make things work.  Now imagine that instead your library software job poster just says "developer needs to work with standard Java tools to develop software using modern methods for standardized APIs".  Getting access to a better, broader staff base is intimately connected to moving library technology into the mainstream of software development.

Where can we look?

Maybe the DLF project on ILS APIs will help.

Maybe the OASIS effort on standardising search services will be useful.

Maybe it happens by using OpenSearch and simple REST interfaces rather than custom library protocols.

UPDATE: There is another important piece, which is about libraries reaching out and speaking the right language.  That's why you need to understand how to express things in terms of SOA, Web Services, and APIs.  There is way more innovation capacity outside your walls than you can ever get inside, even if you have the perfect IT staffing policy and budget.  From your local superpatrons, highschool CS students, and local college and university computer science departments, to, basically, every CS student in the entire world.  You can reach them with contests, with collaboration requests, with invitations to improve your systems... but here's the important part... if you speak their language.  CS people love challenges and programming, but they're not going to learn obscure library jargon and usage like OPAC, Z39.50 and database (which means something completely different in CS).  You can't say "hey, can you help us improve our OPAC because the Z39.50 doesn't federate across our databases".  They're not going to know what the f*** you're asking.  Learn the CS language, and a whole world of programmers will open up to you.

To me one of the single biggest missed opportunities is in the digital library community.  Ever year, lots of computer science groups, flush with energetic grad students, toil away and produce results that are presented at JCDL and ECDL.  And, based on my experience at ECDL 2006, they then present those results entirely to a community of other computer scientists.  Where are the librarians?  Why are you all at library conferences talking to other librarians?  Come to *CDL and ask the computer scientists to build stuff you need.  Yes, it's a difficult transition from research to production, but at least join the conversation.  ENDUPDATE

I don't have the answers and I have certainly asked again and again where people see all these frameworks and groups fitting together, with no response.

The good news is that there are lots of projects out there already - I don't think it's a case that there is no activity.  The fundamental point of my article is that for these projects, we have to use enterprise architecture, service-oriented architecture, web services / standard APIs and the whole toolkit of modern network-based standard-data software development.  Because if we don't, WE WILL BUILD SILO SYSTEMS AGAIN.

That's what I said in my IATUL presentation, and in the short accompanying paper (Scribd), and what I've been saying over and over again in this blog.

[Sidebar on Scribd: be careful browsing around this document hosting site.  Many of the profiles, profile images, and documents are unfortunately very not safe for work.  Scribd really needs to put in a moderation / adult content filtering system.]

Why do I think it's important to talk about these topics?  Because there really are lots of new developments in the library catalogue and OPAC world, including:

• Scriblio - "free, open source CMS and OPAC with faceted searching and browsing features based on WordPress"
• VuFind - "The goal of VuFind is to enable your users to search and browse through all of your library's resources by replacing the traditional OPAC"
• Evergreen Open ILS - including British Columbia Pines project - "The phased implementation of the Evergreen Open ILS for all of BC ("BC PINES") be implemented over the next 5 years. We hope that eventually all public libraries in BC will join"
• eXtensible Catalog (XC) - "an open-source online system that will unify access to traditional and digital library resources"
• CERN systems redevelopment - build a complete high-energy physics (HEP) information system with full-text, data-mining and demonstrate and deploy Web 2.0 applications in the domain of sciences

There are also some great modular browser tools out there, including

• LibX - a Firefox extension that provides direct access to your library's resources [and] an open source framework from which editions for specific libraries can be built.
• Zotero - a free, easy-to-use Firefox extension to help you collect, manage, and cite your research sources

I'm very much hoping that these developments will open libraries up to be better network participants, with a broader community of developers able to build pieces, and with standards enabling libraries with limited development capability to simply plug-and-play.

Some links via The Ten Thousand Year Blog: eXtensible Catalog open source project, VuFind released as open source software.

Previously:
June 29, 2007  Casey Bisson on Scriblio and OpenLibrary

the future of the scientific paper and more on open web science

Timo Hannay has an interesting presentation The Scientific Paper of the Future (9.2 MB PDF), from the Microsoft eScience Workshop at JHU.

The idea of the journal article as a window or an interface to data is a very interesting one, I'm reminded of Leigh Dodds' presentation on The Scientific Paper as Palimpsest.

Via Nascent, the Berkman Luncheon Series, and MediaBerkman blog I also find pointers to PowerPoint (23 MB - unfortunately many images don't show up in Windows PowerPoint 2000), audio (MP3) and video of Timo giving a presentation on What the Web Means for Science.

This in turn leads me to a presentation by Dan Burk on Open Source Strategies for Science.

Peter Murray-Rust on open science

It was his posting Is Openness “ethically flawed”? - September 2nd, 2006 that got me on my recent track of thinking about open science, he has followed that up with several more meaty chunks of open pondering:

• Open Data, Open Science. Closed Data… - September 7, 2006
• Open Source, Open Data and the science commons - September 7, 2006

Thanks to Open Access News for reminding me to revisit Rust's blog.

the concepts of open science and information commons

First, a challenge for you librarians out there: it would be nice if someone tracked down the origins and history of the "open science" concept.  Who coined it, with its current meaning?  What papers and conferences have discussed open science?  Let the referencing begin!

Is it meaningful to have distinctions between e-Science, Open Science, and Science Commons?

I, being a non-librarian, have gathered some references using that library arch-nemesis, Google.

John Willinsky, First Monday, Volume 10, Number 8 — 1 August 2005, The unacknowledged convergence of open source, open access, and open science

CODATA - Creating the Information Commons for e-Science: Toward Institutional Policies and Guidelines for Action, 1-2 September 2005

International Seminar - Open Access for Developing Countries, September 21-22, 2005
- presentation by Paul Uhlir Creating a global information commons for public science (PDF)

ICSTI - Information and Data in e-Science: Making Seamless Access a Reality, February 3, 2006

mitchell's blog, August 30, 2006, Open Source, Open Science

At Sci Foo Brian Behlendorf and I hosted a session about how the lessons learned from the open source software experience might be applicable to scientific endeavors. The hope is that we can support the “open” movement in science as well. By ‘open” I mean a system where effort and resources are pooled and the result shared. This is in contrast to an increasing focus on what’s “my intellectual property, how can I best protect that intellectual property, use it to create a closed system and then extract the most value for me from that closed system.”

CODATA - Creating the Global Information Commons for Science

Global Information Commons for Science is a multi-stakeholder initiative arising from the second phase of the World Summit on the Information Society in Tunis in November 2005.

Commons of Science Conference - Creating a Vision for Making Scientific Data Available Across Disciplines, October 3-4, 2006.  Washington, DC.  By invitation only.

UNESCO - Consultation meeting on WSIS Action Line C7 ''E-science'', 22 October 2006, Huarun Hotel, Beijing, China

If this is all a bit too heavy, you can enjoy the Flickred photos from iSummit 2006 (the one in Rio, not the one in Toronto) by John Wilbanks.

Some other starting points for further reading are the (very slow) Science Commons Blog (feed at http://sciencecommons.org/weblog/rss ), and the OnTheCommons blog entry A Renaissance of the Science Commons.

So are there four elements to open science, viz. open source + access + data + discourse?

Any other important articles or events?

Previously:
September 04, 2006  open discourse + access + data equals open science?
April 28, 2006  conference proceedings: ICSTI eScience, Bielefeld + Taiga + LtF on academic library future

Word 2007 and the bibliographic processing future

There is an opportunity for the library and scholarly community to work with the various word processor builders to get to some common standards.

The main players that I'm aware of being Word 2007 and OpenOffice.

Jennifer Michelstein of Microsoft has the (mis)fortune of starting her MS blogging career with the posting [Word 2007] Academic features: citation & bibliography tools.

There's some nice stuff, but I have two concerns:

1. The focus is on building your Master List inside of Word.  Yes, you can share lists, but I don't want Word to be the citation master at all

Once a source is created, it lives in two places: your Master List and your Current List. The Master List is the database of all sources ever created. The Current List includes all of the sources that will be used in the current document.

The purpose of the Master List is to save you from re-typing and re-entering information about sources that you commonly use. For example, if you are a Shakespeare scholar and always cite the same five Shakespearean references, you can just select these sources in your Master List and click Copy to add them to your Current List. Now you can cite them throughout your document.

Maybe Connotea is my "master list", or EndNote, or Bookends.  You know, separation of concerns?  Let my bibliographic software be the master of citation management.  Make Word the master of communicating with all major citation repositories, whether local on my machine, or out on the web.

2. They will talk to libraries... somehow.  With a software development kit (SDK) that doesn't exist yet.  Um, how about we get that kit, immediately?

we are building a platform on the Research and Reference pane, to enable connecting to a library database and importing metadata about sources. We’ll publish an SDK so that Microsoft or any 3rd party data provider can build a service that fits nicely into our Bibliography tools. This project is underway, but the functionality isn’t available externally in Beta2. This sounds like a topic better handled in its own post.

darcusblog (Bruce D'Arcus, of the OpenOffice Bibliographic Project) has written extensively (and critically) about the current state of the art in citation management in Word 2007

via Dan on eScience

a couple upcoming events - repositories and code

*** 1 Open Repositories 2007 - 2nd International Conference on Open Repositories (ICOR2007)
January 23-26, 2007
San Antonio, Texas

CFP deadline:

October 2, 2006     Extended abstract, less than 500 words, double spaced

via Disruptive Library Technology Jester

*** 2 code4lib 2007
February 28 - March 2, 2007
Athens, Georgia

Bioclipse - open-source visual platform for chem and bio

The Bioclipse project is aimed at creating a Java-based, open source, visual platform for chemo- and bioinformatics based on the Eclipse Rich Client Platform (RCP).

There is a wiki and code on SourceForge.
They plan to release version 1.0 on May 19.

Info via the interesting chem-bla-ics blog.

LogicBlaze: open source SOA

Note: Open source doesn't mean free.

InformationWeek has an article SOA Goes Open Source

LogicBlaze has launched an integrated suite of open source code that's designed to get businesses started with service-oriented architecture. Called Fuse, it includes several pieces of open source code from the Apache Software Foundation, plus three from the Apache incubator. The claim that all the pieces have matured must take into consideration that incubator projects at Apache aren't yet full-fledged, open source projects; rather, they're getting an organization and community established around a core code donation.

elemental links has a good overview of the components in Fuse.

SOA for Canadian Higher Education

here is the link to the outputs of the SOA workshop in
Vancouver last month.  Go to

http://educationcommons.org/projects/display/SOA/Home

Click on the Workshop March 2006 link to see all the workshop material.    Look for the
16 (or so) "service candidates" we identified as emerging out of the
high-level business process of "apply for admission".  We demonstrated the
power of service oriented analysis and the existence of abundant reusable
services at or close to the infrastructure level (though Thomas Erl calls
these "application services").  The MIT/OKI [Open Knowledge Initiative] crowd and UK representative [University of Hull - e-Services Integration] were particularly helpful in working this through.

We are starting to piece together some of the next steps and have identified
the following "tracks" going forward:

Entity definition
Business process discovery
Application service candidate discovery
Experimental implementation exercises (Proof of Concept)
Data representation architecture and schema definition
Higher education "basic profile" definition
Security and privacy requirements definition
Technology alternatives selection -- should be deferred to Service-Oriented
Analysis stage

By the time we reach CANHEIT, we should have a penultimate version of the
report (feasibility study) funded by the Mellon Foundation.  Be sure to
attend the presentation by Richard Spencer and Leo Fernig [A Community Source Student Services System].

Ted Dodds
Associate Vice President, Information Technology & CIO
The University of British Columbia

http://www.e-strategy.ubc.ca/

via Bill St. Arnaud - CAnet News - SOA in Higher Education

Previously:
January 05, 2005  Hull.ac.uk portal built using SOA

Google Summer of Code 2006

If your organization has been trying to find a way to get some neat code developed, the Google Summer of Code 2006 may help.

5. What are the eligibility requirements for mentor organizations?

Mentor organizations must be organizations or individuals running an active and viable open source or free software project whose applications are approved by Google's Open Source Program Office. ...

15. How are payments structured?

Google will provide a stipend of 5000 USD per student developer, of which 4500 USD goes to the accepted student applicant and 500 USD to the mentoring organization upon successful completion of a project. Students will be paid 500 USD upon acceptance of their application to the program, 2000 USD mid-program provided sufficient progress has been made on their project, and 2000 USD at close of program provided their project has been completed.

from Summer of Code: Mentor FAQ

as seen on Slashdot Summer of Code 2006 is On /.

SOA Web Services conference + AJAX

I don't know how good this is, but for what it's worth

The 10th International SOA Web Services Edge Conference, colocated with the First Annual Enterprise Open Source Conference, will take place on June 5-6, 2006 at the historical Roosevelt Hotel in New York City. ...

This year, more than 100 distinguished conference faculty members will present 96 cutting-edge SOA, Web Services and Enterprise Open Source topics in educational classes, panels, and keynotes in six simultaneous tracks for two information-packed days, plus a bonus track, a "Real-World AJAX" two-day seminar

OpenOffice Bibliographic Project

The bibliographic project will design and build an easy to use and comprehensive bibliographic facility within OpenOffice. It will be easy to use for the casual user, but will meet all the requirements of the professional and academic writer. The new bibliographic facility will utilise the latest open standards and will make the fullest use of emerging XML, XSLT, RDF and SRU/W technology.

http://bibliographic.openoffice.org/

I think this might be a promising central point for collaboration in the area of bibliographic integration with software.  Since you need the citation information in your document composition environment, why not just build bibliographic capabilities right in?

UPDATE

Bruce D'Arcus of the Geography Department of Miami University is the co-project leader. He has a blog.

A couple interesting postings from his blog:

• December 17, 2005  Citation Metadata Workflow
• January 28, 2006  A Model for Citation Metadata

His blog leads me to discover there is a HubMed Blog - Hublog, with a posting from December 17, 2005 Academic Metadata Workflow.

ENDUPDATE

via JISC Middleware for Distributed Cognition

SOA presentations from ObjectWeb

ObjectWeb - Program - Service-Oriented Architecture

This session [was] devoted to Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) with special emphasis on open source middleware platforms that support SOA. ...

• Open Source Middleware for Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), Adrian TRENAMAN, Iona (PDF) [gives overview, then talks about open CORBA, ESB and JMS open source]
• Building an SME ecosystem workbench with PETALS Services Plaftorm, Jean-Pierre LORRE, EBM (PDF)
• SCA specification and programming model, Mike Edwards, IBM (PDF) [talks about Service Component Architecture, the latest flavour of SOA]

First Monday CFP - Openness: Code, science and content, also conference

while open source software — due to its strong impact on business and on bridging the digital divide — has drawn much attention, it may provide false hopes for the sustainability of openness in other areas of content that need careful examination. The conference FM10 Openness: Code, science and content — Making collaborative creativity sustainable provides a platform for such analysis and discussion, resulting in concrete proposals for sustainable models for open collaboration in creative domains.

The conference will draw on the experience of First Monday as the foremost  online, peer–reviewed academic journal covering these issues since May 1996. Not only has First Monday published numerous papers by leading scholars on the topics of open collaboration, open access, and open content in its various forms, it is itself an example of open collaboration in practice: for nearly a decade, the journal has been published on a purely voluntary basis, with no subscription fees, advertising, sponsorship or other revenues. The success of First Monday is demonstrated by thousands of readers around the world, downloading hundreds of thousands of papers each month. This conference celebrates First Monday’s tenth anniversary.

We invite papers for the conference and for a very special issue of First Monday. These papers will be reviewed by a special conference editorial committee. Authors of selected papers will be invited to the conference, scheduled to take place at the University of Illinois at Chicago, 15–17 May 2006. The conference is supported in part by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation (http://www.macfound.org/) and the Open Society Institute (http://www.soros.org/). Other selected papers will be published in a special issue of First Monday, to appear in June 2006.

Papers should address the issues involved in building sustainable models for openness in science, software and content. They can examine technical, sociological, economic/business and legal issues, and can be conceptual or practical in nature.

FM10 Openness: Code, science and content

CFP deadline 6 February 2006
completed papers by 1 May 2006

via Ten Thousand Year Blog

Apache open source Web Services stuff

I couldn't remember the name of one of the Apache projects at SOA Symposium, which maybe tells you what kind of presence it has.  I kept thinking "synergy" but it's actually Synapse

http://wiki.apache.org/incubator/SynapseProposal

It did get tons of press

http://www.google.ca/search?q=apache+synapse

unfortunately I'm not sure that

1. it exists in any substantial form yet
2. I understand what it is supposed to do

There is also of course Apache Axis, which lives with a bunch of other related Web Services projects at

http://ws.apache.org/

electronic info for libraries General Assembly 2005

eIFL (Electronic Information for Libraries) is an interesting organization of developing countries.

Their General Assembly 2005 just took place this year in Lithuania.  Topics included open source, open access and Google Scholar.  Mark Leggott reports:

I have been in Vilnius Lithuania for the last 5 days working with the members of a great library group called eIFL. Art Rhyno and I gave an all-day workshop on open source (Art did all the work) and we then participated in a couple of days of conferencing. It was a very good set of sessions but more importantly, it is a great group of people. In fact, it is the only other event I have attended that had a feel similar to Access. A close-knit group with a passion for the issues they are meeting to discuss with an opportunity to enjoy themselves. The group has representation from about 50 member countries, mostly from Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Much of the sessions were concerned with things open, so I really felt at home. What I particularly noticed was that the group is very keen to make use of open source and open content and is very savvy about the technology and issues - more, I suspect, than many people in North America would think.

Previously:
2005-Feb-05  eIFL Open Access project

LibX Firefox Extension Framework for Libraries

This is great to see: a framework with all the pieces you need to build Firefox extensions for your own libraries.

LibX - Firefox Extension for Libraries

Ongoing  We are currently looking for libraries that are interested in adapting, evaluating and possibly deploying LibX.  Librarians: if your library uses Millenium, Horizon, or Voyager, getting your own edition of LibX can take as little as 15 mins, and we are willing to help you set it up.  We will add other OPACs as there is interest.

LibX was created by Annette Bailey and Godmar Back.
I think this is a great development.

via LibSuccess - Web Browser Extensions

ILI2005 - Tuesday 11th - Using Open Source and Open Standards to Extend Proprietary Systems

Disclaimer: I work at CISTI.

  Glen Newton 
  Originally uploaded by mstephens7.

A good picture of Glen giving his presentation, taken by Michael Stephens.

Using Open Source and Open Standards to Extend Proprietary Systems

Glen Newton, CISTI
Michael Fortin, Concordia University (co-op student)

Initial solution
- PHP
- Z39.50
- could be embedded into CMS
- due to Z39.50 problems, used Yaz Proxy
http://www.indexdata.dk/yazproxy/
- implemented using Linux, Apache, PHP 5

[slide of interface for initial solution]

results interface is simpler than the direct catalogue interface

Extensions
* moved to Ajax
* search other Z39.50 databases
* search PubMed using HTTP REST
* search Amazon using Web Services
* use Web Services to get cover art from Amazon []
* search our own metadata database (MySQL)

[slide of interface for extended solution]

basically the interface presents the search with different tabs for each service,
so you get e.g. a search for "cell" on CISTI catalogue, PubMed, Amazon

Conclusion

turned into almost a federated search

* Success due to integration of open standards and open source
* Could have been done using non open source, at greater cost
* Would prefer to have used Innovative XML Server instead of Z39.50

See CISTI Lab.

Q from Brian Kelly: Ajax is making an application inside of a web browser, what are the CLF issues.
A: Amazon.ca may offer both English and French.  Within the browser Ajax is still building HTML / XHTML
so you can still comply...
Q from Brian: but Ajax depends on JavaScript, which ? violates CLF ?

Internet Librarian International 2005

In one week I will be at Internet Librarian International 2005 - Transcending Boundaries:
Information Technologies & Strategies for the 21st Century.
(UPDATE: Just to be clear, this is the UK version of the conference, held in London, England.)

I will be doing a 15 minute presentation on Monday October 10, 15:15-15:30
Session C104 – How to Enhance Access with Browser Extensions in
Track C: Global Best Practices.

As reference I will be using the LibSuccess Wiki page on Web Browser Extensions for Libraries that Gianluca Drago and I have put together (along with others - please don't hestitate to contribute).

My colleague from CISTI, Glen Newton, will be presenting with Brian Kelly on Tuesday October 11, 13:45 – 14:45
Session B203 – Using Open Standards and Open Source Software in
Track B (afternoon): Technology for Libraries.

I have created an unofficial wiki for the conference at
http://ili2005.xwiki.com/
You can also blog there if you want by entering a title in the "Add a Blog Entry" box in the left-hand side column, keep in mind that you need to use XWiki syntax within the blog portion as well.
So far, the participation level in this wiki has been very low, I will be interested to see whether there are actually very many additions.  It is additional overhead to run an open wiki due to the need to clean up any spam and defacement.

You can read more about the features I have added to the wiki in my previous posting.

I will probably be raw-blogging the conference here under category/tag ILI2005.
I may post summaries to the wiki.

I have pulled some placemarks for Google Earth from searches:
Download CopthorneTaraHotel-London.kmz
Download HighStreetKensingtonStation-London.kmz
As you can see, Google Earth has good searching for UK info, so you can just e.g. enter a hotel name or tube station while zoomed in on London and it should be able to find it.

I found the Google Earth view to be useful for my previous trip to Copenhagen, but mainly in terms of the relative positions of things.  I found it hard to get a good sense of the size of things - I couldn't tell whether the buildings and streets I had printed out in order to locate the conference venue were huge buildings separated by wide streets, or small buildings separated by alleyways.

You may find the Google Earth view a bit more helpful if you go into the roads layer and turn on UK Roads.

IBM buys Gluecode - can they get buy-in for small J2EE?

Reading Service-Oriented Architecture blog today, found these interesting comments:

A completely proprietary SOA solution would work - as long as the INTERFACES are standard."

I agree.

However, an SOA running on a commodity open-source environment — built with open-source toolsets — is an incredible value proposition, far more than an SOA built on Websphere, WebLogic, or Microsoft BizTalk and .NET. These app servers have steep licensing costs, and companies looking for low-end platforms to build their services can turn to open-source app servers such as JBoss and Apache Geronimo.

Now, IBM steps into the scene with Gluecode under its wing, which leverages Apache Geronimo. ...

IBM intends to position Gluecode at the low end of the market, and keep WebSphere at the high end, where it's been strongest

You can get more info in the official IBM Press Release.
Forbes has some reporting on the open-source marketplace in general, in a category they have interestingly called Intelligent Infrastructure.