Bibliographic Wilderness

Deciding whether to go with a particular open source product is an exercise in risk management. To be sure, let’s be clear—deciding whether to go with a particular proprietary product is also an an exercise in risk management. (And really, most organizational management decisions probably are, but what do I know, I’ve never been a manager and don’t have an mba).

Evaluating the risk level of an open source product is kind of new terrain for some in the library world. It is comforting to remember that there are some aspects of evaluation that really aren’t much different for open source software than for any other software — for instance, looking at whether the product has the features you need, and how well it works.

There are other aspects that need to be approached differently for open source. In this essay, I’m going to look at just one of them, that is cause for particular concern among some people — open source support models, how you get support for an open source product, what you are risking in terms of support with an open source product. All open source products/projects are not equal here. In trying to explain to others how to approach risk management related to support options in a particular open source product, I’ve found it useful to talk about three situations or statuses an open source project may have with regard to support. (more…)

Think again.

http://listserv.nd.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0803&L=ngc4lib&T=0&O=D&X=77132057060E3A8667&P=6033

Jesse Haro of the Phoenix Public Library writes:

Following the release of the Customer Service Agreement from Amazon this past

December, we requested clarification from Amazon regarding the use of AWS for library catalogs and received the following response:

“Thank you for contacting Amazon Web Services. Unfortunately your application does not comply with section 5.1.3 of the AWS Customer Agreement. We do not allow Amazon Associates Web Service to be used for library catalogs. Driving traffic back to Amazon must be the primary purpose for all applications using Amazon Associates Web
Service.”

There are actually a bunch of reasons library software might be interested in AWS. But the hot topic is cover images. If libraries could get cover images for free from AWS, why pay for the expensive (and more technically cumbersome!) Bowker Syndetics service to do the same? One wonders what went on behind the scenes to make Amazon change their license terms in 2007 to result in the above. I am very curious as to where Amazon gets their cover images and under what, if any, licensing terms. I am curious as to where Bowker Syndetics gets their cover images and on what licensing terms–I am curious as to whether Bowker has an exclusive license/contract with publishers to sell cover images to libraries (or to anyone else other than libraries? I’m curious what contracts Bowker has with whom). All of this I will probably never know unless I go work for one of these companies.

I am also curious about the copyright status of cover images and cover image thumbnails in general. Who owns copyright on covers? The publisher, I guess? Is using a thumbnail of a cover image in a library catalog (or online store) possibly fair use that would not need copyright holder permission? What do copyright holders think about this? This we may all learn more about soon. There is buzz afoot about other cover image services various entities are trying to create with an open access model, without any license agreements with publishers whatsoever.

So Google has announced a much-awaited api for pre-checking availability of full text in Google Books. Here is one post with more detail than other announcements I’ve found.

I note that the API is described as a javascript api, and examples are provided where the request to the API is made on the client-side with javascript.

However, there’s no technical reason why you couldn’t do this server-side as well. It’s just an HTTP GET request with certain query parameters which returns JSON. I can certainly parse JSON server-side.

It makes a big difference to me whether I can do this server-side or not. Why? One example is because my software wants to query multiple sources of digital text (including our own licensed e-text from our catalog), and do something different depending on whether there is any available text or none. In some contexts, the user may even get an entirely different page depending on the answer to that. It’s difficult or impossible to implement that kind of logic only on the client-side (plus it would only work for those with javascript).

So there’s no technical reason I can’t do it server-side. But Google may certainly stop me with policy. They could rate-limit requests to the API from any given IP (and it sounds like they DO: “Because developers often issue an atypical quantity of requests, you may accidentially tip the security precautions found in Google Book Search.” ). Google certainly has it’s own business reasons to want to aggregate as much individual data as possible, not let my application be an intermediate proxy. (Google is in fact in the business of collecting usage data, not of providing search. Think about how they make their money). So hmm, time will tell.

Interestingly, a couple of the examples on the announcement are Google Books pre-check integrated into sfx! It sounds as if this was done by Ex Libris, not by the individual customer. And when I attempt to reverse-engineer the HTML to see what’s going on–it looks to me like SFX is indeed making a server-side pre-check, not doing it in javascript on the client side. Which would be encouraging. Unless Ex Libris somehow has special permission. Hmm.

Eagerly awaiting more information about this. Not quite sure how to get it.

updates (14 Mar):

1.

Got a reply from Google:

You can do something similar to this on the client side, just add some logic
in the JavaScript on whether or not to show the div with the books dependent
on the viewability information.

Unfortunately, we don’t support server side querying of the API, because
viewability is based on local rights limitations (different countries
consider different books to be public domain), and we think it hurts theuser experience to provide incorrect viewability information.

Doh! This doesn’t really answer my concern I’m afraid, I really can’t do what I need to do client side, at least not without extreme difficulty or loss of functionality. But I guess that’s how it’ll be!

2.

Had the idea of asking the ksu SFX example for an XML response, to see what that tells us. Of course everything in the XML response is neccesarily generated server side. The Google Books section looks like this:

<target>
<target_name>LOCAL_GOOGLE_BOOK_SEARCH</target_name>
<target_public_name>Google Book Search</target_public_name>
<target_service_id>22170000000000005</target_service_id>
<service_type>getCitedReference</service_type>
<parser>GoogleBookSearch::Isbn</parser>
<parse_param/>
<proxy>no</proxy>
<crossref>no</crossref>
<note/>
<authentication/>
<char_set/>
<displayer>GoogleBookSearch::Reference</displayer>
−
<target_url>
http://books.google.com/books?id=BpPwy8t3OtIC&ie=ISO-8859-1&source=gbs_ViewAPI
</target_url>
</target>

Hmm. It’s hard to say. The XML response does not include what’s in the HTML response telling you for sure what kind of access is available. But it does include a google books URL that sure looks like it required talking to Google on the server-side to generate–it doesnt’ have an ISSN in it, it has a Google unique ID. How would SFX know that Google unique ID without talking to Google on the server-side? Which Google tells me they don’t allow. Hmm. Curioser.

Another update: If I turn off javascript and look at the ksu SFX page, I still get the Google Books link. It would definitely appear to be server side. Is Ex Libris SFX allowed to do something that I am not?

Thoughts on FRBR sparked by a discussion on RDA-L (archives for month in progress not online, sadly) about FRBR modelling of moving pictures (thanks Martha Yee), which itself was sparked by Diane Hillman’s excellent stab at creating some RDA cataloging scenarios (which I can’t find the url for having no archive of RDA-L to search. You know, I should go and subscribe a google list to it and make my own archive henceforth). (more…)