Presentation about how to find and select ebooks from the Internet Archive and create clickable links from within your library catalog so patrons can access them without having to leave your catalog.

1. Radicalize Your Catalog with
eBooks That Your Patrons
Keep Forever
Carol Frost, Santa Clara County Library District
Lori Ayre, Galecia Group
Megan Wong, Santa Clara County Library District
Heekyung Wilhelmi, Santa Clara County Library District
11/12/2014

2. LSTA Grant, Santa Clara County Library District
Goal: Create a replicable model for eBooks
• Add public domain eBooks to your library catalog from the
Internet Archive’s Open Library using scripts we created
• Patron can easily download the eBook out directly from our
catalog (no leaving site) and get to keep the eBook (no
expiration date or DRM)
• Focusing on classic titles that are out of copyright
• No money needed for acquisitions of titles
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3. 11/12/2014

4. Library-designed
ebook solution
with purchased
content
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5. “E-discover
the Classics”
using open
domain, free
classic titles
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6. What about those
public domain
titles we access
through
Overdrive?
• Overdrive offers Project Gutenberg
titles and keeps stats
• In SCCLD, our patrons check out over
10,000 eBooks monthly; 500 from
Project Gutenberg
However….
The Project Gutenberg website is for
human users only. Any real or perceived
use of automated tools to access our site
will result in a block of your IP address.
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7. Internet Archive
and
Open Library
https://archive.org
The Internet Archive, a 501(c)(3) non-profit, is
building a digital library of Internet sites and
other cultural artifacts in digital form. Like a
paper library, we provide free access to
researchers, historians, scholars, the print
disabled, and the general public
https://openlibrary.org
Open Library is an open, editable library catalog,
building towards a web page for every book
ever published. One million titles available, both
in- and out-of-copyright.
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8. Programmers
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● Hired a metadata expert
● Hired a programmer
● Hired Lori to communicate between
the library district and the
programmers

9. 11/12/2014
Basecamp
and
Google
Hangouts

10. Collection
Developing
Using a
Programmer
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Phase 1: we own the print copy of a
classic title, but do not own the eBook
• Library staff identified 252 titles
where Programmers wrote script
• 3,459 editions for 212 title matches
• Limited to English
• Modified script to pull OCR scoring
• Added 192 records
Phase 2: we don’t own any format of
the classic title
• Identified 42 potential titles
• Added 26 records

11. OCR
Score
Title Variances
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12. Loader and
display issues
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13. MARC
Decisions
490 series field “Always
Available Classics
655 local subject headings
• Electronic books
• Ebook Classics
• Always available classics
Three 856 fields
• Always available eBooks
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(ePub)
• Always available eBooks
(Kindle)
• Always available eBooks
(multiple formats

14. What formats
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15. 11/12/2014
Access via our
Catalog:
“Always
Available Classics”

16. 11/12/2014
Detail of
Item Record

17. 11/12/2014
Open
Library
has PDF,
other
formats

18. 11/12/2014
One Click to
Download
and Keep
ePub from
Catalog!!!

19. 11/12/2014
ePub
Opens In
eReader

20. 11/12/2014
Access from our
website:
sccl.org/classics

21. 11/12/2014
White Fang
Leads
The Pack!

22. 11/12/2014
Statistics
Using
Bit.ly

23. 11/12/2014
Statistics
Using
Script
By
Programmer

24. 11/12/2014
Promotional
materials

25. Survey
Results
• 72% of those taking the survey had experience in downloading a library eBook
• 89% said it was simple, took just a few clicks to download and read the
eBook
• 65% said downloading straight from the catalog is more convenient
than traditional eBook downloading
• 32% saw no difference
• When asked if they were likely to use the "Always Available Classics", 52% said
they would try it, 30% said they did not care for classics but liked the model
of downloading
• For those who had already tried the "Always Available Classics," 66% said
they found it simple with just a few clicks
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26. More info at….
https://foss4lib.org/package/openlibrary-utilities-
sccld
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27. What is…
FOSS4LIB https://foss4lib.org/package/openlibrary-utilities-sccld
• resource for finding
out a wide range of
open source projects
• Each “package” listing
includes
• Links to the code
repositories
• OS license
• Status of development
• Technical info
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28. Our Package - “OpenLibrary Utils” Python Scripts
/src/olpublidomain.py
/src/olmarkdecorator.py
/src/iaabbyqa.py
Librarian Documentation
Instructions
1. Prepare list of candidate books.
• Create new spreadsheet with two columns, TITLE and AUTHOR,
respectively.
• Populate the spreadsheet with potential e-Books that you're searching for.
• Save as ./data/candidate_seed.tsv (tab-separated text file).
2. Run olpublicdomain.py to create a list of matching OpenLibrary records.
• The ./data/ folder should now contain a file called olpd_out.tsv containing
the official author record, title record, publication date, and OpenLibrary
URL for each work.
• The ./cache/ folder should now contain XML records for each matching
record, which will later allow the highest-quality version of each work to be
selected based on OCR quality analysis (depends on completion of
iaabbyqa.py program).
3. Populate your MARC file with the eBook URLs
• Create a file of OpenLibrary URLs from ./data/olpd_out.tsv. This file should
consist solely of URLs, one per line. Save this file as
./data/openlib_url_list.tsv.
• Run .olmarcdecorator.py to generate a MARC file with information
retrieved from OpenLibrary's MARCXML record for each title. The new
MARC file will be saved at ./data/ebooks.mrc. http://galecia.github.io/openlibrary-utils/
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29. What
we learned
We all need to be telling our ILS vendors that we need
to be able to track usage of anything that is non-standard
If we were going to sustain this, we would need to put
more staff time into know what the schools were
assigning for summer reading lists, and doing more
promotion for this
For the Open Library titles, there are many, many titles,
If we curated more lists and grew our titles, it would
make more titles available
Shortening the number of steps for a download is still
key, and we did achieve this, and are proud of it
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30. 11/12/2014
The quality of the ebooks on Open Library
isn’t as good as they need to be and there are
too many editions from which to choose
• Can we create our own shared repository of
high quality eBook files with associated MARC
record?
• Can we crowdsource the QC process?
• Can we share promotional material?
To start, visit our FOSS4LIB page and try out
our scripts to
• add our set of ebooks to your collection, or
• create your own new set
What we
learned and
what to do
NEXT

31. Questions
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