Re: [CODE4LIB] The Berman Catalog
Security measures can be set in place to prevent the scenario you describe. Is the state of Minnesota or the city of Minneapolis able to copyright its work? Certainly this is impossible on the Federal level. But state laws vary. What would a FOIA request produce? Tagging systems (or pop culture cataloging) such as those used by Amazon.com were consciously or unconsciously inspired by Berman's work, I don't think that's so. As the inventor of the first such system for books, I can say that I was not inspired by Berman's work, impressive as I now know it to be. Nor I suspect was Joshua Schachter, who designed tagging for Del.icio.us. It is an unfortunate fact that information technology has largely bypassed librarianship. One reason for this is that librarians have convinced themelves that their work should not be public—that the taxpayer-funded work of a public library should be kept under restrictive terms. but although they are dynamic and current, they are simplisitic and undisciplined...we've got a sort of highly personalized marginally literate chaos where 5 people can all tag the same item differently and the sixth person who may search for that item may not search for it using any of the tags the previous 5 assigned. Do you speak from any experience in this topic? For example, have you compared systems in reality, or is this just a theoretical opinion about reality? I don't think marginally literate applies to LibraryThing's tagging, generally. Nor do I think LibraryThing's 37 million tags are more likely to yield no hits than one man's subject system. Anyway, if regular human beings are simplistic and undisciplined when they tag things, they are also so when they search for them. I think there is a place for both formal subject systems—and the more the better—and informal tagging systems. Having spent a few years carefully comparing the results, however, and seeing many success, I am weary of those who, to paraphrase Clay Shirky, refuse to see it working in practice, because they already know it doesn't work in theory. Berman's system is dynamic and current but also finely, structured and highly disciplined, he's created a great cognitive map of interconnected associations that bring order to chaos and clarifies and defines issues evolving in the culture... you could say a good search engine does that but his brain worked and still works in a more exquisitely sophisticated and powerful way than any search engine I've used. I appreciate that you admire the man, but this is an almost mystical idea. As to someone using his work for profit...get real no one besides ourselves has a clue to the value and usefulness of Berman's work, and they don't care to find out...and they certainly would not make the effort to deconstruct it and turn it into a Twitter version of a catalog, especially since they can't profit from it. I consider that a challenge! There's no monetary gold to be harvested from Berman's work...there's treasure of another kind! It seems to me that any system useful for finding things has value of every sort imaginable, including financial. Tim
Re: [CODE4LIB] The Berman Catalog
Ed Summers wrote: |As for Karen's question about the Internet Archive: it totally makes |sense to host the data up there. But, I had to sign a scary license |agreement from the UIUC Archives, which *almost* stopped me from even |releasing http://catalog.sanfordberman.org ... Madeline can say for |sure, but I'm fairly certain this license prevents putting the data up |for the public. The ultimate disservice to Sanford Berman IMHO. |/me sighs Same experience here. I responded directly to Karen: See http://catalog.sanfordberman.org/ -- it refers to licensing from the Univ of Illinois Archives. When the data first became available a number of years ago, I obtained a copy, and I remember that you had to specify that you were obtaining the data for personal research purposes only and that the data could not be made publicly available (or something to that effect). Things may have changed since then, but I don't know for sure. Until such a time (if ever) that the Berman catalog is publicly released, maybe a substitute public version (not perfect, but maybe close) could be reconstructed by harvesting library catalogs that incorporated Sandy's headings and xrefs. Sort of how the Dead Sea Scrolls were reconstructed for public access by working backwards from a concordance back in the 1990s. The hard part is probably trying to find libraries which subscribed to Sandy's microform and print publications of new headings and actually incorporated them. Of course, we know that LC is *not* in that group! (Although some of his headings did eventually find their way into LCSH.) The first ALA conference I ever attended (in Chicago in 1978) had Sandy Berman on the floor and Lucia Rather from LC on the podium passionately arguing about LCSH terminology. It was my first introduction to Sandy (my thought: wow, is this what goes on at ALA?), and (from a distance) I followed his career ever since. I was later able to hear him speak at a local Illinois Library Association conference in 1989 about subject terminology and had an opportunity to personally speak with him afterwards. I very much favored (and have been influenced by) his subject headings and, even if I may not have assigned them or directly entered them into local library authority files, I certainly have tried to follow that spirit in creating cross references, so that access under such terminology is not lost. Harvey
Re: [CODE4LIB] The Berman Catalog
On Tue, Jun 24, 2008 at 4:31 PM, Hahn, Harvey [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Same experience here. I responded directly to Karen: See http://catalog.sanfordberman.org/ -- it refers to licensing from the Univ of Illinois Archives. When the data first became available a number of years ago, I obtained a copy, and I remember that you had to specify that you were obtaining the data for personal research purposes only and that the data could not be made publicly available (or something to that effect). Things may have changed since then, but I don't know for sure. Until such a time (if ever) that the Berman catalog is publicly released, maybe a substitute public version (not perfect, but maybe close) could be reconstructed by harvesting library catalogs that incorporated Sandy's headings and xrefs. Just for the record, the data behind catalog.sanfordberman.org is the UIUC data. At the time Madeline corresponded with UIUC Archives and we arrived at a general understanding that the application wouldn't do any harm. However, I think Madeline has some ideas on how the presentation of the authority data (which is modeled) could be improved. //Ed
Re: [CODE4LIB] The Berman Catalog
I'm not sure this addressing the criteria of the licensing. How would you stop commercial purposes? Say I work for a UK-based vendor that starts with a T (as hard as that may seem) and I devise a script (or, even more crazily, have root access to the server to the server that the Berman catalog runs on...) that pulls the data into publicly accessible Platform store. You know, for the common good. Some random developer then uses that Platform store, builds an interface on, because, you know, Berman data! It's cool! But they have Google Ads in their interface. Some (admittedly small) amount of money changes hands from Google to developer. UIUC decides to sue since this against their licensing terms. Who's liable? Go! -Ross. p.s. The answer here is for UIUC to license this under an open data license -- NOT for a developer to release and pray. On Tue, Jun 24, 2008 at 9:42 PM, md [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: In regard to Harvey's concerns about the license agreement for the Berman catalog: The catalog IS publicly available on the Sanford Berman website and has been for about 3 years. Ed began development of a Ruby application. His work was very important and very appreciatedjust not finished. The license agreement states that you must use the databases for scholarly, education and research purposes, not for commercial or other purposes.That's how I'm using the databases.That's how I imagine everyone would use them. Ruby was one solution but I'm open to others. The structure of Berman's work is so complex and beautiful, the content so innovative and global that I would think anyone with an OSS Opac...Koha etc. would welcome the honor and the challenge of giving Berman's work a new environment to live in. So who among you will accept the challenge? ---Madeline Douglass [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [CODE4LIB] The Berman Catalog
Security measures can be set in place to prevent the scenario you describe. Tagging systems (or pop culture cataloging) such as those used by Amazon.com were consciously or unconsciously inspired by Berman's work, but although they are dynamic and current, they are simplisitic and undisciplined...we've got a sort of highly personalized marginally literate chaos where 5 people can all tag the same item differently and the sixth person who may search for that item may not search for it using any of the tags the previous 5 assigned. Berman's system is dynamic and current but also finely, structured and highly disciplined, he's created a great cognitive map of interconnected associations that bring order to chaos and clarifies and defines issues evolving in the culture... you could say a good search engine does that but his brain worked and still works in a more exquisitely sophisticated and powerful way than any search engine I've used. As to someone using his work for profit...get real no one besides ourselves has a clue to the value and usefulness of Berman's work, and they don't care to find out...and they certainly would not make the effort to deconstruct it and turn it into a Twitter version of a catalog, especially since they can't profit from it. There's no monetary gold to be harvested from Berman's work...there's treasure of another kind! - Original Message - From: Ross Singer [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: CODE4LIB@LISTSERV.ND.EDU Sent: Tuesday, June 24, 2008 10:30 PM Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] The Berman Catalog I'm not sure this addressing the criteria of the licensing. How would you stop commercial purposes? Say I work for a UK-based vendor that starts with a T (as hard as that may seem) and I devise a script (or, even more crazily, have root access to the server to the server that the Berman catalog runs on...) that pulls the data into publicly accessible Platform store. You know, for the common good. Some random developer then uses that Platform store, builds an interface on, because, you know, Berman data! It's cool! But they have Google Ads in their interface. Some (admittedly small) amount of money changes hands from Google to developer. UIUC decides to sue since this against their licensing terms. Who's liable? Go! -Ross. p.s. The answer here is for UIUC to license this under an open data license -- NOT for a developer to release and pray. On Tue, Jun 24, 2008 at 9:42 PM, md [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: In regard to Harvey's concerns about the license agreement for the Berman catalog: The catalog IS publicly available on the Sanford Berman website and has been for about 3 years. Ed began development of a Ruby application. His work was very important and very appreciatedjust not finished. The license agreement states that you must use the databases for scholarly, education and research purposes, not for commercial or other purposes.That's how I'm using the databases.That's how I imagine everyone would use them. Ruby was one solution but I'm open to others. The structure of Berman's work is so complex and beautiful, the content so innovative and global that I would think anyone with an OSS Opac...Koha etc. would welcome the honor and the challenge of giving Berman's work a new environment to live in. So who among you will accept the challenge? ---Madeline Douglass [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [CODE4LIB] The Berman Catalog
I actually created a minimal RubyOnRails view on the Berman data a few years ago. http://catalog.sanfordberman.org The src code for this is readily available if anyone is interested in helping Madeline work on it: http://inkdroid.org/bzr/berman/ The data has an interesting history, for anyone working with machine readable cataloging data. //Ed
Re: [CODE4LIB] The Berman Catalog
Are there any rights issues? If not, it would be good to make the raw files available, say by putting them up at the Internet Archive. kc md wrote: I have the raw data files of the former Hennepin County Library catalog and authority files. This is the innovative, unique catalog created by Sandy Berman. 1970s-2002. I would like to import the data into a MYSQL database. I assume this can be done with Perl, but don't know if an existing parser would work or if a custom program would be needed. I have no programming skills. There must be someone... here who knows and values Berman's work and is ready, willing and able to devote their knowledge and skills to making it accessible once again. Please contact me with questions on or off list. Thank You! Madeline Douglass [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.sanfordberman.org -- --- Karen Coyle / Digital Library Consultant [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.kcoyle.net ph.: 510-540-7596 skype: kcoylenet fx.: 510-848-3913 mo.: 510-435-8234
Re: [CODE4LIB] The Berman Catalog
Thanks for the encouraging words about the Berman Catalog to fellow colleagues... I don't know if you know, but Although I did find the Ruby code here http://inkdroid.org/bzr/berman/ I did not find the Marc record reader or parser you created...was it MARC : : Forgiving Reader? to read the records, then import them into the MYSQL database. and I did not find the MYSQL database/databases? you designed. I assume these are still resident on your server.If I am remembering this right, I think that you had imported some but not all of the catalog records and there was not time to create the authority file database(s) ? All I have to work with right now is the raw data. So I need to get 100% of the raw data catalog and authority files into one or perhaps several MYSQL databases, before the work on the Ruby display can proceed. I've recently heard of a Ruby based OPAC Blacklight, but don't know if that would work for this project. So if I can find someone to help, he or she would have to do what I assume you already did 1. Assess the state of the raw data to find out if all the delimiters are where they should be and perhaps fix any data imperfections that would be an obstacle to transfer 2. Create a structure for the MYSQL database after analysing the structure of the data...field lengths/repeating fields, etc. 3. Either use an existing or create a custom Marc Reader or parser to read the records and import them into MYSQL. There would also have to be a way of checking if everything transferred okay without data loss...I used to call this data validation. Now...if you would send me a copy of MARC : : ForgivingReader and the MYSQL database you created either populated with the records you put into it or blank but with the structure you defined, that would eliminate the need to reinvent the wheel and start over. And although I hope this message will bring me someone who can help, so far the responses I've received are from people with their own projects. So if you do know anyone who can help, let me know. If it's someone who would need funding, I'll find out if funds could be raised. Times a wastin...Sandy and George Carlin have/had the same condition. Madeline Douglass [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[CODE4LIB] The Berman Catalog
I have the raw data files of the former Hennepin County Library catalog and authority files. This is the innovative, unique catalog created by Sandy Berman. 1970s-2002. I would like to import the data into a MYSQL database. I assume this can be done with Perl, but don't know if an existing parser would work or if a custom program would be needed. I have no programming skills. There must be someone... here who knows and values Berman's work and is ready, willing and able to devote their knowledge and skills to making it accessible once again. Please contact me with questions on or off list. Thank You! Madeline Douglass [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.sanfordberman.org
