The document discusses the concepts of Library 2.0 and the Scout Portal Toolkit, an open source resource discovery and organization tool. It provides details on how the Scout Portal Toolkit has been implemented at the University of Milano-Bicocca library, including the metadata fields used and features for resource description, discovery, and interaction with users. The document concludes with suggestions for additional ways the toolkit could be enhanced and integrated with other library systems.

1. Resource discovery & information sharing: reaching the 2.0 turn Bonaria Biancu aka The Geek Librarian Biblioteca di Ateneo Università di Milano-Bicocca Trento, ITC-IRST-SRA 21-22 Agosto 2006

2. Web 2.0 October 2004 – Tim O’Reilly coined the term Web 2.0 The web as a platform Harnessing collective intelligence Rich user experience The long tail Hackability Perpetual beta Architecture of participation Granular accessibility of content …

4. Library 2.0 September 2005 – Michael Casey ( Library Crunch ) coined the term Library 2.0 = web 2.0 concepts and applications in the LIS realm (but there isn’t agreement on the definition) and also… Librarian 2.0 = Librarian + Web 2.0 L2 is not just technology, it is an attitude (nevertheless web 2.0 is a significant part of the equation)

6. What – How – Why (from a geek lib perspective) What: ILS disaggregation, recombination and integration [see Talis ] How: (open code/standards +) API, Mashups [see Programmable Web ], AJAX [see OJAX ], Greasemonkey [see LibraryThing Thing ], Firefox Plugins [see Del.icio.us search plugins ]… Why: Putting libraries out of the walled gardens (breaking information silos) => remix content – foster user participation Early adopters: WPOPAC , Penn Tags

7. How L2 works in libraries OPAC 2.0 : records tagging, RSS for search results, acquisitions and alerts, user agents, openurl, federated search, user reviews, open search, recommendations, communities (Googlezon model) Subject based wikis Bloglines trusted feeds Library blogs IM reference RSS alerts for library news Pod-video-casting guides to library services Personal search engines for reference (Swiki, Gigablast) Collaborative web (MySpace, Protopage, NetVibes…) for communicating with users OPML [see L2 ALA blog ], social bookmarking [see Del.icio.us ], and social tagging [ CiteULike , Flickr …] for integration with VLEs …

8. Scout Portal Toolkit : a Resource Description, Organization and Discovery Tool A project funded by Mellon Foundation, builded by University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Internet Scout Project in 2000 Now (2006) fully tested – vers. 1.4.x (1.3.1 adopted by UNIMIB) In Italy 4 instances: VL Cilea , AIB-DFP , FORMEZ , UNIMIB ; others coming Abroad: lots… (National Finnish Library Science Link House is a very good model)

9. Scout @ UNIMIB = LINX – Link e strumenti X la ricerca System Configuration: layout, search options, users rights… Metadata Field Editor: DCMES - ANSI/NISO Z39.85-2001, some DC qualifiers , some fields (overlapping) IEEE LOM Web based apps Import/Export features Different levels of workflow editing Vocabulary control UTF-8 support User Preferences

10. Metadata structure Metadata Field Editor Type of Fields: Text , Paragraph , Number , Date , Flag , Controlled Name , Option , Classification, Image name , type , description , default value , qualifier , min-max value , inclusion in advanced/keyword search and weight of the field set by Metadata Field Editor (LINX admin )

12. Resource description Some of the 15 DC Simple (not all publicly viewable) + dumb down cataloging rules Fields not implemented: alternate title, audience , rights , contributor , source , relation , coverage, email address, dates Mandatory fields: URL , Title , Description , Date issued , Release Flag DCAP for UNIMIB: neither formalized nor strict (=> see values for ‘type’ field) Titolo (i.e. DC ‘title’) => text field Classificazione (i.e. DC ‘subject’) => Classification field: 13 Library disciplinary areas + 2 additional about reference tools

13. Resource description Parola chiave (i.e. DC ‘subject’) => Controlled Name field: TRT (Thesaurus Regione Toscana) + un-controlled terms provided by catalogers Descrizione (i.e. DC ‘description’) => Paragraph field: free text provided by catalogers Autore (i.e. DC ‘creator’) => Controlled Name field Editore (i.e. DC ‘publisher’) => Controlled Name field Tipo di risorsa (i.e. DC ‘type’) => Option field: only some terms from ‘DC type vocabulary’

14. Resource description Lingua (ie. DC ‘language’) => Option field Formato (i.e. DC ‘format’) => Option field Data ultima modifica (i.e. DC ‘date’) => Date field: date of record last editing (chosen within the ‘date’ options offered by Scout => ‘date issued’, ‘date of record creation’, ‘date record checked’ and ‘date last modified’) URL (i.e. DC ‘identifier’) – but it may be also a DOI or a handle or an ISBN or... Release Flag (proprietary tag) => Flag field ID record creator/modifier (proprietary tag) => not editable

15. Additional features implemented for LINX Linkchecker (for each registered user/each resource): score based on server response Segnala una risorsa : web form for non-authenticated users Statistics (for each resource) => coming soon

16. Features not implemented for resource description DC Qualifiers

17. Features not implemented for resource description OAI Mapping

18. Additional features not implemented Forum Layout preferences for users

19. Resource organization Browsing tree Last n resources in home page Brief and full display records Linkable tags: ‘classificazione’, ‘parola chiave’, ‘autore’, ‘editore’, ‘tipo di risorsa’, ‘lingua’, ‘formato’ RSS Import/Export records (Not all fields are viewable from not authenticated users)

20. Resource discovery Browsing tree Simple search Advanced search (with filtering and max-num results option) Cross-field search RSS Saved search Mail alerts Recommendations

21. Interaction with users and other L2 features RSS Saved search Mail alerts ( user agent ) Recommendations Resource comments (some HTML tags allowed) Resource ratings Filtering search options & customization of records display per page Thumbnail for book jackets, ejournal covers, website screenshots Admin tracking user comments

22. Interaction with users and other L2 features OAI-PMH compliance for resource harvesting Import/Export in tab-delimited format for data echange with RDN -like hubs News & Forum for community building Dynamic layout (accessibility + user preferences) Web based configuration and management Open Source – frequent new versions – developers all over the world Interoperability and open standards (XML, PHP, MySQL, Dublin Core, OAI – o.s. required: Linux, but also tested on Windows)

23. Enjoying L2 - from LINX… Classification: factoring disciplinary areas in more specific classes ( facets ?) Clustering (grouping search results by type , format , language …) RSS feeds for disciplinary areas + search alerts Get recommendations along with records, not separately Sfx (min-opt): setting Scout as a web search option from Sfx menu Sfx: link to an OpenUrl generator for resource URL field Metalib: setting Scout as a resource [see NELLI – OAI searching via MetaIndex] Exposing metadata for OAI harvesting Integration with VLEs, CMSs etc.

24. Enjoying L2 - …to ERMS OPAC-related features: Catalogers: authority control for author , title , publisher , classification, subject fields Catalogers: mapping UNIMARC/DC for linking between records (see: DC relation and source or UNIMARC 452 and 856 fields) Sfx (max-opt): deep linking in Scout from Sfx menu Federated search: whether by ‘web resource’ type/format or not [see OpenWorldCat & FRBR specs] Open search: Scout as a target [see A9 ] Single sign-on both for OPAC, Metalib, Scout and… users

25. Enjoying L2 - …to ERMS Adding tags to resources for authenticated users [recall-precision] Displaying tag cloud in homepage (personal tag cloud for authenticated users) ‘ Scout this’ bookmarklet (or right-click) to capture web resources and their metadata: title , url, screenshot … depending on how structured they are; classification if sharing schemes is possible – see compliance with repositories like E-LIS in CiteULike ‘ Scout this’ for Socializer -like applications Community features [related tags/users, ‘users that visit x also visit y ’…] to be included in Recommendations list

26. Enjoying L2 - …to ERMS Catalogers: setting back-office tools for resource discovery (OPML, importing records from subject gateways, Del.icio.us-like ‘Links for you’…) Catalogers: displaying entries from thesauri when adding/editing controlled names and DC schemas and vocabularies when adding/editing option lists [see post on TGL] Ranking search results and => Sort results by relevance File upload Resource display à la Digg: resources that have received highest rates go on the home page

27. Enjoying L2 - …to ERMS (how to test Ajax, API, Mashups, Greasmonkey) Resource relations graphic display [see Grokker] Auto-completion of search terms Getting Amazon resource reviews Getting Google Scholar references Displaying tags from CiteULike or Connotea Scraping identifiers ( names , DOIs etc.) related with Scout resources [see LIBX ] … [see Connotea requested features to get suggestions]

28. Websites and articles Scout Portal Toolkit LINX - Link e strumenti per la ricerca Virtual Library Cilea AIB-DFP FORMEZ - Biblioteca virtuale per la Pubblica Amministrazione Edward Almasy et al., Software for building a full-featured discipline-based web portal , “D-Lib Magazine”, 8 (2002), 11 Edward Almasy, The Scout Portal Toolkit : an overview , ALA Annual Conference, Atlanta, June 13-19, 2002 Edward Almasy, Tools for creating your own resource portal: CWIS and the Scout Portal Toolkit , “Library Trends”, 54 (2005), 4

29. Collaboration Wiki for sharing knowledge Records exchange Setting up a harvester (OAI, SRU/SRW…) for searching against databases (every instance exposing its metadata) …

30. Questions? Acknowledgements: we are here thanks to Paolo Avesani :-) This work is published under CC license - Attribution-NonCommercial- ShareAlike 2.5 Italy