I recently discovered a large resource for tango music and other tango related information on eSnips.

You can listen to a lot of tango music from the very very old - the earliest I found are from 1907! (e.g. Hotel Victoria) - to the latest neotango music. It’s easy to create and save your own playlists as well.

Some interesting resources to start with:

• The “Biblioteca Tanguera” with pdf books on tango (mostly in spanish).
• The “Discografias” with discographies of most orchestra’s.
• For old and rare tango’s check “Guardia Vieja” and “Orquestas Olvidadas“.

For anything else you can just search the name of any song and/or artist. It’s an amazing collection and everyone can contribute to it!

I added a very simple virtual bookshelf to the ISBN/EAN lookup - Amazon/Bol mashup so you can see which books other people have looked up.

I’m also thinking about using WorldCat’s xisbn service to find and use associated ISBN’s, for instance the dutch translation of an english book.
I could maybe use it to try to find a cover in another language for books that have no cover in Bol or Amazon for the original ISBN… Other suggestions are welcome!

Wat is OAI-PMH ?

Eén van de kerntechnologieën die het Open Access principe helpen ondersteunen is het Open Archives Initiative (OAI) Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (PMH). Het is een eenvoudig HTTP en XML gebaseerd protocol voor het delen van metadata dat door elke zichzelf ernstig nemende repository software wordt ondersteund.

Functionering van OAI-PMH (Bron: Open Archives Forum online tutorial)

Het gebruik van HTTP in het protocol betekent dat elke repository eenvoudig via een URL, dus het adresveld van elke webbrowser, kan worden ondervraagd.
De standaard ‘vragen’ (verbs) die men kan stellen aan een repository zijn:

• Identify: vraag naar informatie over de repository. vb.: http://doks.khk.be/eindwerk/oai?verb=Identify
• ListMetadataFormats: vraag naar de beschikbare metadataformaten.
• ListSets: vraag naar de beschikbare sets. Records kunnen in een repository gestructureerd worden in sets.
• ListRecords: vraag de volledige metadata op van records (de vraag kan beperkt worden op datum van/tot en op set, bovendien kan het gewenste metadataformaat gevraagd worden).
• ListIdentifiers: idem als ListRecords, maar geeft per record slechts een verkort resultaat (identifier en datum) in plaats van de volledige metadata. vb.: http://doks.khk.be/eindwerk/oai?verb=ListIdentifiers&metadataPrefix=oai_dc, be patient, it can take while…
• GetRecord: vraag een specifiek record op.

Het ‘antwoord’ op de vraag komt terug in XML formaat en kan gemakkelijk automatisch verwerkt worden maar kan ook gewoon als tekst bekeken in het browservenster.

Het Dublin Core metadataformaat wordt standaard ondersteund door OAI-PMH, maar in principe is het mogelijk om metadata in elk gewenst formaat te delen.

Het manueel ondervragen zoals hierboven is één mogelijkheid, maar er bestaat speciale software om dit automatisch te doen en de resultaten te verwerken in een database: de zogenaamde ‘harvester’ software. Eenvoudig gezegd is een harvester een programma dat in staat is metadata te oogsten van verschillende repositories, de metadata in een database op te slaan en diensten, zoals een zoekinterface, aan te bieden aan gebruikers. Een online voorbeeld is OAIster.

[gebaseerd op een stukje van mijn eindwerk "Een Open Access eindwerkendatabank van de Vlaamse bibliotheek- en archiefopleidingen", 2006.]

I made a very simple experimental AJAX page to lookup bibliographic book information by ISBN or EAN in WorldCat and mashed it up with a thumbnail of the book cover from Amazon and bol.com for other languages than english. Check it out!
If I had a barcode scanner I could automatically catalog my books with this page by logging the bibliographic info in a text file and importing it into a spreadsheet or database program.

Dutch version:
Zoek een boek op ISBN of EAN barcode in WorldCat en krijg de bibliografische metadata samen met een afbeelding van de boekomslag van Amazon en/of bol.com.

Karen Schneider's post (How OPACs suck, Part 1) on the ALA TechSource blog says exactly what I've been thinking for a long time and what some library professionals still don't want to see: Catalogs must be user friendly! Instead of complaining that patrons don't use the catalog or don't use it correctly, they should wonder why they don't and then do something about it.
"They don't know how to search, we have to train our patrons." NO! Patrons don't want to learn how to search! They want relevant results when they type a word in the box, just like they get with Google or any other search engine.

And there's more to improve… see Jenny Levine's post on OPAC tagging. John Blyberg even finds a real indication of evidence that library users are ready for a Social Library Catalog.

Update: More John Blyberg on social OPAC's.

Update: How OPACs Suck, Part 2: The Checklist of Shame

Update: A related view on information behaviour on the library’s Web site, with its dozens of user interfaces, search protocols, and limitations that confuses the student who is used to the clean and simple Google interface.

A quote from a very interesting read “Thoughteracy for All”, M.O. Thirunarayanan:

Practically all segments of society values the skills of reading and writing.
This is because no other alternatives to learning have existed since the invention of alphabet systems.

Now technology offers an alternative, a viable, cost-effective, sensible, inclusive, and achievable alternative.
Based on advances in technology, it can be argued that it is no longer necessary to speculate if reading and writing will become obsolete skills. The question that remains to be answered is ‘when will reading and writing become obsolete skills’?

From Tom Keays Blog

Update: Of course let’s not forget that life and society, luckily, is not technology driven.

Not only social software is popular these days:
Here's an article in the Belgian newspaper De Standaard about social reading in the library: Lezen doe je best in groep (reading is best done in group). Publishers even publish special editions of books for reading groups and group reading.

An interesting project is De leesclub van Mekka (The Mekka reading club), an online reading group and blog, organised and supported by the cultural radio show Mekka on Studio Brussel in cooperation with the newspaper De Standaard.
I found some more online reading groups like the one of British newspaper The Guardian or BookBlog, but they don't have radio support.

Update 12/05/2006: There was a discussion on online social reading in 2004: "Social reading — A niche to be filled?". It poses the question of a website/software where

my friends and I can read stuff together … And we get to comment and annotate for one another.

Update 12/05/2006: The Transliteracies project does research in the Technological, Social, and Cultural Practices of Online Reading. It could be interesting to follow their efforts. They have a "collective reading"/"group reading" topic with until now only 2 small posts that are not even on reading… But they have some interesting articles on other topics.
Another interesting social reading phenomenon is "library dating" (lib-dating, bib-dating, bibdate in dutch), there's an article in today's De Morgen newspaper. The library Tweebronnen in Leuven organizes a library dating activity for the cultural festival Kulturama. Readers meet in a nice atmosphere based on their literature preferences.

Library dating
is sexier than beer halls.
You have to whisper.
-Connie Falk-

Update 24/02/2006: Seattle Post Intelligencer picked up the bib-dating story and it made it to Library Link of the Day according to the VVBAD blog.

Update 12/05/2006: More promotion for library dating by VCOB (Flemish Center for Public Libraries). They created a bibdate manual and a logo. See also the post on the VVBAD blog: "Bibdate: een sterk concept"

www.adlibsoft.com offers a free lite version of it’s Adlib Museum collection management software to museums and private collectors.