Categorizing Gender for the 2022 US Trans Survey

Posted on April 4, 2024 by Dlachenm

In February 2024, the National Center for Transgender Equality, based in Washington, DC released an “Early Insights” report for its 2022 US Trans Survey (USTS). The data and conclusions gathered from the survey will have significant and wide-reaching impacts in transgender social science, history, and policymaking in the US. The effort also has interesting implications in the information field, raising at least as many questions as it does answers. Perhaps the most fundamental question: how do you responsibly categorize gender identity among trans populations?

2022 US Trans Survey Logo, ustranssurvey.org.

According to the Early Insights report, “the 2022 USTS is now the largest survey ever conducted to examine the experiences of binary and nonbinary transgender people in the United States, with an unprecedented 92,329 respondents.” This iteration follows a prior survey by the National Center for Transgender Equality in 2015, which itself was developed out of a prior effort between 2008 and 2011 known as the National Transgender Discrimination Survey.(James 2024) While the 2022 USTS did not aim to provide a total population estimate of transgender people in the US, it does provide a broader look at the overall trans population than has been achieved up to this point.(Mithani 2023) The team made extensive and critical efforts at outreach in order to achieve a more representative survey population than previous survey, which notably struggled with collection bias. The resulting dataset is not perfect but is both the most extensive and (at least ostensibly) representative information of its kind available today, surpassing the prior effort’s research population by a factor of three.(James 2024)

*Gender Characteristics of USTS Respondents*, ustranssurvey.org.

In the politically fraught political climate that underlies discussions of transgender identity and populations in the US today, it has never been more apparent that gender is an ontologically complicated category with a range of different and strongly held popular conceptions. Separating it into a pie chart is no easy task! Notably, there is also the related but separate issue of sex to contend with. The categories which the 2022 USTS deals with with continue to include data regarding sex assigned at birth in addition to self-identified gender identity. In addition to “Assigned Male at Birth” and “Assigned Female at Birth” as subcategories for nonbinary identity, the 2022 USTS also includes interesting insights as to intersex identity. According to the Early Insights report, “Five percent (5%) of respondents reported they were born with a variation in physical sex characteristics or had an intersex variation or Difference of Sex Development, 72% reported they were not, and 23% reported that they did not know.”(James 2024) While not represented in the graphics, this insight reveals complications not only in the classification of gender, but also in the classification of human sex — a matter often assumed to constitute a simple binary.

Also interesting in the 2022 USTS’s classification of gender are categories which appear (or are absent) in the data. Two percent of respondents identified as “Crossdresser”. More granular nonbinary identities such as “agender” or “bigender” are not discussed in the report, nor is the North American Indigenous category of “two-spirit” (2S). No data is shown in the Early Insights report on whether there was an “Other” or “Miscellaneous” category for gender. These observations reveal a varied and shifting cultural context around the definition and classification of gender. Two great books have come out in the last couple years which investigate this aspect of transgender identity as culturally determined and rapidly changing in its formal description: Before We Were Trans by Kit Heyam, which deals with gender diversity with respect to imperial hegemony in diverse global contexts, and the third edition to Whipping Girl, a classic text on transgender studies by Julia Serrano.

I recall from a recent visit to the NYPL Picture Collection, for example, finding erased and crossed-out old subject headings written on files in the folder on trans women. “Female impersonators”? No, not anymore: “Transvestitism”? Yikes, not that either. Maybe “Gender Expression” then? Either a classification nightmare or an interesting case study, depending on who is doing the classification.

Works Cited:

James, S. E., Herman, J. L., Durso, L. E., & Heng-Lehtinen, R. (2024, February). Early insights. US Trans Survey. https://transequality.org/sites/default/files/2024-02/2022 USTS Early Insights Report_FINAL.pdf

Mithani, J. (2022, November 16). Data on trans people is hard to come by. this survey is changing that. The 19th. https://19thnews.org/2022/11/us-trans-survey-data-research/

National Center for Transgender Equality. (n.d.). 2022 US Trans Survey Logo. Issues | U.S. Transgender Survey. National Center for Transgender Equality. Retrieved April 4, 2024, from https://transequality.org/issues/us-transgender-survey.

Evie Ippolito (653-01)

Tagged with: Classification, lgbtq, nonbinary, survey, transgender
Posted in Classification, Knowledge and Truth, Research Projects, Uncategorized

Mullvad VPN: Free the Internet?

Posted on April 3, 2024 by Dlachenm — Leave a comment

“Free from mass surveillance and censorship. Free from big data markets where your personal information is up for sale. Free from authorities mass monitoring every click you make. Free from an infrastructure mapping your whole life.”

Commuting in NYC means seeing advertisements everywhere you look: on the subway, on billboards, on pamphlets stapled to poles. An advertisement that has been catching my eye is one whose logo is a rodent wearing a yellow construction hat, who apparently wants viewers to protect their internet privacy. The “Mullvad VPN” website breaks down its purpose like this:

Your IP address can be used to track and map your life online. You can hide it by using a trustworthy VPN (virtual private network) (like Mullvad VPN).
Using a trustworthy VPN in combination with a privacy-focused browser keeps tracking technologies by data collectors at bay.
Data collection and constant monitoring may be dangerous, and we need to resist mass surveillance.

The Mullvad site provides extensive descriptions and definitions about internet privacy and safety, and about the history and functioning of the Mullvad VPN products. Though these services are only available behind a paywall and are therefore not accessible to all curious internet users, the information on their site can provide a basic education about how personal IP addresses work and about the scope of commercial mass surveillance. Even if the effect of Mullvad on our collective knowledge is primarily informative, getting more internet users aware of their interaction with data brokers is key to a more just information society.

Mullvad VPN – Free the internet. (n.d.). Mullvad VPN. Retrieved April 3, 2024, from https://mullvad.net/en

Leah Caroline Rosenzweig (653-01)

Tagged with: censorship, data, privacy, surveillance
Posted in Knowledge and Truth, Open Data

The Myth of The Library of Alexandria

Posted on April 3, 2024 by Dlachenm

I would venture a guess that there are very few people in the field of librarianship, or in fact in the larger field of information, who have never heard of the mythical Library of Alexandria. We’ve read the stories, we’ve seen the graphs, we know how much humanity lost to the fires. Honestly, I’d wager that a fair chunk of internet users are at least somewhat aware of this tale, as well as anyone who enjoyed Carl Sagan’s Cosmos.

The story commonly goes like this: In Alexandria, Egypt, during the Ptolemaic Dynasty, the Library of Alexandria was the hub of all of the world’s information. Scrolls and manuscripts were collected from all over the world, copied, and returned to their owners. The library’s collection amassed perhaps 1 million scrolls over time. The library remained the educational center of the world until it was burned down around 2000 years ago, and the loss of all of humanity’s advancements in literacy, math, and especially science, propelled the world into the Dark Ages.

…I’m sure that, by now, there are sensationalist alarm bells going off in everybody’s head. The fact of the matter is, the bulk of the myths we’ve all come to know regarding the Library of Alexandria are only that– myths. Many of the stories we have heard about the great library were not recorded until hundreds of years after its supposed burning, and many were written without any references to any accounts of those who may have actually witnessed it. The story that we were left with is hundreds of legends, fictionalized historical records, and compelling calls-to-action in a trench coat.

So what do we ACTUALLY know?

The burning of the Library of Alexandria certainly did not cause the Dark Ages. The Dark Ages are named that way because there are very few records that exist from that time, at least in the Christian world, not because humanity didn’t know anything.
There were a number of libraries in ancient Alexandria, and two were considered great– The Mouseion and the Serapeum. We can think of these as an academic and a public library, respectively. Between these libraries, there may have been a collection of around 40,000 books (though some historians report it may have been up to 700,000– just another fact no one can agree on).
Some of the destruction that we now imagine to have befallen the library may have been inspired by a few events– One being the burning of Alexandria’s port by Julius Caesar, and another being an actual fire that took place in the Serapeum, that did not completely raze the building. There is no account of the library having been burned down in its entirety.
Not all of the world’s knowledge was lost to time! In fact, the library seemed to be pretty good about making copies of each of the scrolls that came into its collections, and many of these scrolls were kept off site anyway. Not to mention, the pervasiveness of the idea that the Library of Alexandria was the repository of “all of the world’s knowledge” is, mildly speaking, aggressively Western.

So, the Library of Alexandria didn’t burn down at the hands of Caesar, or whichever historical tyrant you want to place at the scene of the crime. Something in time still led to its destruction, otherwise it would still be standing in modern day Alexandria.

As best as anyone can tell, the tragedy of the fall of the Library of Alexandria does not lay in its burning, but in the same slow suffocation that our libraries are under threat of today–defunding. Over time, over conflict, over social upheaval, over the loss of public interest, the institution of the Library of Alexandria faded away. It’s a less dramatic story than most are used to, but it is a harrowing reminder of the fragility of our own public institutions.

The myth of the burning of the great library is not without its relevance, however. If you had ever found yourself lamenting the destruction of knowledge and culture of the Library of Alexandria, the ongoing destruction of the cultural and educational institutions of Palestine should be equally as horrifying. As of February, at least 13 libraries in Gaza have been either destroyed or badly damaged, and with them a significant collection of rare books, 150 years worth of records, and a number of librarians.

Eli Spiegel
Knowledge Organization 653

SOURCES
Deprez, G. (2020, November 9). The Great Library of Alexandria: The untold story explained. The Collector. https://www.thecollector.com/library-of-alexandria/
Ovenden, R. (2020, November 17). The real lesson of the burning of the Library of Alexandria. Time. https://time.com/5912689/library-of-alexandria-burning/
Sheehan, D. (2024, February 6). Israel has damaged or destroyed at least 13 libraries in Gaza. Literary Hub. https://lithub.com/israel-has-damaged-or-destroyed-at-least-13-libraries-in-gaza/

image source (as best as I could find): https://history.stackexchange.com/questions/33412/is-there-any-science-behind-this-graph-that-suggests-wed-be-exploring-new-galax

Tagged with: alexandria, cultural destruction, destruction of libraries, history, legends, Libraries, Library of Alexandria
Posted in Libraries, Library

Folksonomy and Tag Wrangling: Examining Archive of Our Own

Posted on April 3, 2024 by Dlachenm

Ever heard of fan fiction? It’s unauthorized stories based on existing works of fiction. These stories can vary greatly in length, accuracy to the source material, and subject matter, but most rely on the reader having some understanding of the original work or works. While writing and reading fan fiction are not popular hobbies, many people around the world do partake in it, and as such different sites have been created for these stories to be shared and stored.

But that’s just background info to talk about one of those sites: Archive of Our Own. Initially created in 2008 by the nonprofit Organization for Transformative Works, Archive of Our Own (often shortened to AO3) allows users to upload and share their fan fiction online, as well as read and comment on others. In 2020 the site reported that it had nearly 6 million works in over 36,700 fandoms (Fandoms refer to groups of people revolving around a specific movie, TV show, book, etc.). And that begs the question, with so many works, how do you sort them all?

AO3 is based around folksonomy, a classification system where users apply their own tags to online items (in this case fan fiction) to easily locate them. Other popular examples of this system in practice are hashtags on Twitter and Tumblr’s tagging system. However, one of the largest problems with this system is that it doesn’t account for synonyms. If on Tumblr I searched for posts with the tag “Spider Man” I could have completely different results when searching for posts with the tag “Spider-Man,” and could therefore miss out on something I want to see because the poster didn’t use both tags.

AO3 is different. Volunteers work for the archive as “tag wranglers.” One of the main parts of their jobs is looking through new tags to see if they can be redirected to completed versions of tags or more commonly used, synonymous tags.

For example, let’s imagine someone writes fan fiction about a relationship between Character A and Person B. When posting, they would most likely tag it Character A/Person B. However, a user looking to find that kind of story may search for just Character/Person. On a site like Twitter the story would not appear, but because of tag wranglers a user on AO3 would be redirected to the larger Character A/Person B tag.

While still changing as the site is only in beta, AO3’s tagging system already gives us a lot to examine and learn from. While it couldn’t apply to every archive or catalog, the volunteer and community-controlled tagging system shows how important it is to consider the different language users use when conducting searches. How much are users missing out on because they didn’t use the right words? How can we help that user find what they need?

-Jacob Martinez (INFO653-1)

References:

–https://archiveofourown.org/admin_posts/15931

–https://archiveofourown.org/wrangling_guidelines

–https://wrangletangle.tumblr.com/post/160715264914/id-love-to-try-my-hand-at-tag-wrangling-and-am

Tagged with: Classification, Digital Collections, Cataloging, Tagging, folksonomy, fanfiction
Posted in Cataloging, Classification

Disappearing Journals and the future of Academic Citations

Posted on April 2, 2024 by Dlachenm

The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Photography Collection, The New York Public Library. (1999). Stephen A. Schwarzman Building, interior, Rose Main Reading Room Retrieved from https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/b153a765-7dca-f909-e040-e00a18062ff0

Information scholars Mikael Laakso, Lisa Matthias, and Najko Jahn, in the Journal of Information Science and Technology, brings us new data documenting the challenges of preserving knowledge as it related to digital Open Access Journals. In their article, “Open is not forever: A study of vanished open access journals,” the authors found that over 170 Journals had disappeared from 2000-2019. This has some pretty significant implications for scholars moving forward and who is responsible for preserving this knowledge.

For those who need a refresher, academic scholarship relies on a system of citations to help contextualize and validate research. To verify a citation, you need to have access to the original publication that an author referenced. Scholars need to be able to verify citations in part to ensure the accuracy of their findings and compare their findings with others. In print-based world, it was the responsibility of librarians to maintain holdings of previously published works, however in a digital world the authors find that this gets a lot more complicated.

The journal, Nature, has a good summary of the article and has an excellent summary of how the research was conducted. For people interested in knowledge organization, the use of Digital Object Identifiers for this project is really interesting.

Eve, who is also involved in research and development at digital-infrastructure organization Crossref, checked whether 7,438,037 works labelled with digital object identifiers (DOIs) are held in archives. DOIs — which consist of a string of numbers, letters and symbols — are unique fingerprints used to identify and link to specific publications, such as scholarly articles and official reports. Crossref is the largest DOI registration agency, allocating the identifiers to about 20,000 members, including publishers, museums and other institutions.
The sample of DOIs included in the study was made up of a random selection of up to 1,000 registered to each member organization. Twenty-eight per cent of these works — more than two million articles — did not appear in a major digital archive, despite having an active DOI. Only 58% of the DOIs referenced works that had been stored in at least one archive. The other 14% were excluded from the study because they were published too recently, were not journal articles or did not have an identifiable source.
(Wild, 2023)

From the findings in this paper, the authors found that no single entity was responsible for maintaining access and archives for these journals. The authors did find that the Internet Archives Wayback Machine maintained a repository for some of these journals. However, those archives limited the searchability and organization of the journals that were stored there. The authors recommend that a service or entity be created to do so, to ensure future accessibility to the research. This paper has a lot of implications for the future of scholarship, Open Access Journals, accessibility, and knowledge organization, and thus a lot to think about as we consider the evolving role of open access in the future of research.

Wild, S. (2024, March 4). Millions of research papers at risk of disappearing from the internet. Nature News. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-00616-5

Laakso, M., Matthias, L., & Jahn, N. (2021). Open is not forever: A study of vanished open access journals. Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 72(9), 1099–1112. https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.24460

– SC Murray 653-01

Tagged with: academia, citations, digitization, internet, Internet Archive, Libraries, Library collections, metadata, Open Access, Preservation, publishing, Research, scholarship, writing
Posted in Libraries, Open Access

Old NYC and Browsing History

Posted on April 2, 2024 by Dlachenm

Old NYC

The NYPL created a website that maps archival photos of New York City onto an interactive map. As someone interested in memory, this website intrigues me because of the layered memories associated with one place. There are pictures of streets dating back to the early development of New York City and photos as recent as the 2000s. That’s almost 200 years of memory, community, and change layered on this one map. What’s fascinating is that some streets have remained the same and others have undergone drastic changes. I would have loved to work on a project like this and locate all the images on this site. Through this website, I have found so much joy and fun in learning bits and pieces of the history of my neighborhoods.

For example, when browsing this website, I found images near an old neighborhood of mine. The image is of a ruined building. The caption on OldNYC.org reads,

“Soundview Ave., west side, between Stephen’s Ave. and the tip of Clason’s Point (approximate location), showing the remains of The Thomas Cornell farmhouse which was burned by the Indians about 1645. Many stones from the remains were later incorporated into the Clason’s Point Inn. For additional data see Jenkins’ Story of the Bronx, p 403. 1890.”

This one image led me down a rabbit hole. I looked up Thomas Cornell. According to his Wikipedia page, he is a settler who colonized Boston, Rhode Island, and The Bronx. He was given a land patent to what is now my neighborhood, originally called Cornell’s Neck now known as Classon Point. I found the book quoted in the caption and downloaded it as a PDF. According to this book and online sources, Classon Point was a plantation for some time until the indigenous people burned down Cornell’s home and pushed him and other settlers out to Long Island. Just this one image completely shifted my understanding of resistance to slavery and colonization in New York City. While also learning about the fierce presence of indigenous people. I would not have found any of this out if I didn’t have access to this singular image. This site allows for causal browsing by allowing users to search from data points they have relationships with. This website is also an app called Old NYC. I use it when I walk around the city and try to see what new history I can discover in each neighborhood. This cataloging and organizational feat is an example of accessible and open archival material. It makes me wonder what other ways we can use technology to create public access to archival records that allows users to explore using references they already know, ie addresses and neighborhoods.

Tyler Vargas

Info 653 – 01

Resources
– https://www.geni.com/people/Thomas-Cornell/6000000005704125004
– https://www.scribd.com/doc/300853/Willett-Family-History?query2=the%20willett%27s%20in%20england
– https://www.oldnyc.org/#701800f-b
– https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Cornell_(settler)
– The Story of The Bronx (1639-1912) Stephen Jenkins.pdf

Tagged with: Classon Point, Colonization, New York History, photography, resistance, The Bronx, Thomas Cornell
Posted in Archives, Cataloging, Library

Want to catalog your wardrobe? There’s an app for that.

Posted on April 2, 2024 by Dlachenm

Recently, one of my friends posted about an app called Indyx on her Instagram story, saying it helped her plan her outfits and remind herself of clothes she hadn’t worn in a while. I was curious and intrigued, partially because the name Indyx (pronounced “index”) sounds like cataloging and classification-speak, and because I’m always looking for a way to come up with new outfits while reducing my personal consumption (and spending). I clicked on the app’s Instagram profile, and what do you know? The tagline is, “Like a library for your closet”. I downloaded the app immediately.

Image Credit: Sarah Madaus via @myindyx Instagram

The interface is sleek and minimalist, and the overall UX is excellent—very unlike WorldShare (ha). The first step to cataloging an item of clothing within the app is to take a flat-lay photo of it. Once you upload that, you type in the brand, size, color(s), main category (top, outerwear, bottoms, etc.), and subcategory (denim, leggings, shorts, etc.). After you input that, you’ve filled out enough for a basic catalog entry. As I was filling this out, I was reminded of the MARC and RDA portion of this class, because the fields are so similar to the basic fields needed in a bibliographic entry.

There’s a “More Information” section within each cataloged item, where you can add more advanced information, such as a personal note, item description, item condition, material, and more, which are reminiscent of the more detailed fields in MARC. Just as they make a MARC record more helpful for an archivist, cataloger, or librarian to find exactly what they need, these additional Indyx fields are helpful if you want to quickly filter or sort your closet to find specific materials (like silk or leather), or if you want to list your clothing to the brand’s resale platform. Of course it’s also for librarian users to geek out over 😉

Image Credit: Sarah Madaus

Image Credit: Sarah Madaus

Once you catalog more items from your closet, you can create collections, plan outfits, and even pay for an Indyx stylist to help you get the most out of your wardrobe. One thing I found interesting is that, in some metropolitan areas, you can pay a premium (read: $295+) to have a “Wardrobe Archivist” come to your home and do the tedious work of taking photos of and cataloging your clothes for you. So, if all else fails after we graduate from Pratt, we can take our Masters degrees and become Indyx Archivists.

As it turns out, there are a number of apps like these, such as Whering, Combyne, and SimpleCloset. These tools can help users get the most out of the clothes, shoes, jewelry, and accessories they already own, instead of continuing to feed into the epidemic of overconsumption. They also show that cataloging and organization really do come naturally to everyone. (And if you’re a Virgo like me, your life literally feels meaningless without them.) These instinctual urges give us a sense of order, control, and knowledge of what we possess.

– Sarah Madaus (INFO653-1)

Tagged with: apps, Archives, catalog, Cataloging, Classification, Fashion, MARC, metadata, RDA, technology
Posted in Classification, Cataloging, Archives

Lost Films of the Digital Era

Posted on April 2, 2024 by Dlachenm

I recently came across this article from the Hollywood reporter about the challenges that film archivists are facing with archivists are facing with archiving digital film. There is a concern in the film industry that independent films may be lost in the future similar to the silent film Era. As of 2017, 92 % of films are shot on digital. Alfred Hitchcock’s second film “The Mountain Eagle” is one of the casualties of the silent film era. The British Film Institute is still looking for the film.

“Those films were not attended to at the time — not archived properly because they weren’t the products of major studios,” – Leonard Maltin, Film Historian
Baum, G., & Giardina, C. (2024, March 19). “it’s a silent fire”: Decaying Digital Movie and TV show files are a Hollywood crisis. The Hollywood Reporter. https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/digital/digital-preservation-film-tv-shows-archives-1235851957/

I always imagined that Digital Media was easier to preserve than analog media. However, industry professionals have stressed the need for constant migration of digital media. Unfortunately, smaller films don’t have the studios to maintain their backups.

“The data that you are protecting needs consistent migration. You really can never take your eye off the digital ball. That why you have backups, it can happen at any time. The odds are pretty low [of losing a film] — but there are still odds.” – Andy Matz

– James Coleman, Info 653-01

Sources
Baum, G., & Giardina, C. (2024, March 19). “it’s a silent fire”: Decaying Digital Movie and TV show files are a Hollywood crisis. The Hollywood Reporter. https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/digital/digital-preservation-film-tv-shows-archives-1235851957/

Rizov, Vadim (24 April 2019).
“24 Films Shot on 35mm Released in 2018”. Filmmaker Magazine
. Retrieved 2019-09-14.

Photos

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0016127/mediaviewer/rm4133591809/?ref_=tt_ov_i

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/digital/digital-preservation-film-tv-shows-archives-1235851957

Tagged with: Archives, cinema, Digital Film, film, film archive, movies, Preservation, Silent Film
Posted in Archives, Cataloging, Preservation

Well, That Stinks: How Scientists Discovered More Than 10,000 New Viral Species

Posted on April 1, 2024 by Dlachenm

In 2023, Scientists at the University of Copenhagen released the results of a study where they analyzed the diaper contents of roughly 650 one-year-olds, and found within their fecal matter a whopping 10,000 new viral species that had yet to be discovered. These species constituted 248 new viral families—only 16 families of gut bacteria were previously known.

Viruses exist somewhere between living and nonliving states; they have DNA but cannot create energy and can only replicate themselves inside host cells. They are cellular parasites, and they have traumatized us—from the flu virus every year to the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the scientists of this study hypothesized that some of these gut viruses could be necessary for healthy human development. They may play roles in staving off chronic illnesses like asthma and diabetes later in life. As viruses can also attach to bacteria inside of our gut, they may also play a role in shaping the balance of our microbiome.

The virus taxonomic system is the same as the one used for all biological organisms. Here is a screenshot from Wikipedia page Virus Classification that shows the levels and scientific suffixes of the different levels of classification for viruses.

Screenshot from Wikipedia article *Virus Classification* that shows the taxonomy of viruses; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virus_classification.

Studying and mapping all of these new viruses took the scientists 5 years. By the time the scientists were done essentially cataloging all of the new viral species, they came up with the graphic pictured below. The names of the viral families are named for the children in whose diapers they were found, leading to names like Noraviridae, Benedicteviridae, and Esterviridae. An interactive graphic of the mapping can be found here.

Image titled *An atlas of infant gut DNA virus diversity* taken from the study tilted “Expanding known viral diversity in the healthy infant gut” by Shah et al.

Currently, however, the ICTV, or the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses has not yet approved the mapping results of the study. Perhaps we will see this stinky research reflected in its next update, though!

-Meg Carroll, INFO 653-01

References:

University of Copenhagen – Faculty of Science. (2023, April 11). Your baby’s gut is crawling with unknown viruses. ScienceDaily. Retrieved March 28, 2024 from www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/04/230411105857.htm

Shiraz A. Shah, Ling Deng, Jonathan Thorsen, Anders G. Pedersen, Moïra B. Dion, Josué L. Castro-Mejía, Ronalds Silins, Fie O. Romme, Romain Sausset, Leon E. Jessen, Eric Olo Ndela, Mathis Hjelmsø, Morten A. Rasmussen, Tamsin A. Redgwell, Cristina Leal Rodríguez, Gisle Vestergaard, Yichang Zhang, Bo Chawes, Klaus Bønnelykke, Søren J. Sørensen, Hans Bisgaard, Francois Enault, Jakob Stokholm, Sylvain Moineau, Marie-Agnès Petit, Dennis S. Nielsen. Expanding known viral diversity in the healthy infant gut. Nature Microbiology, 2023; DOI: 10.1038/s41564-023-01345-7

Tagged with: Classification, Mapping, science, scientificclassification, Taxonomies, taxonomy, virus
Posted in Uncategorized

OCLC Is Now Partnering With Equinox Open Library Initiative

Posted on April 1, 2024 by Dlachenm

OCLC, the world’s largest library cataloguing nonprofit, is now partnering with Equinox Open Library Initiative to offer access to WorldCat MetaData API for customers.

This is big news for the library world – Equinox, one of the leading technology companies for open source development and support for libraries, will now work alongside OCLC to integrate more discovery, cataloguing, and resource sharing through APIs. This means that library service providers will be able to integrate with OCLC’s Worldshare Management System, as well as OCLC Wise in their library platforms.

WorldCat is the biggest global network of comprehensive data for library collections. It is consistently being updated, as well as having top data quality specialists in the ranks of classifying and verifying data. In addition, library staff can also contribute and enhance records on WorldCat, ensuring that their particular library collections are well represented within WorldCat.

“We’re excited to partner with Equinox to offer this integration and added functionality for our mutual customers…This partnership promotes choice and flexibility in library services. We want to make it easy for libraries to use OCLC services through the platforms and service providers they choose.”
– Chip Nilges, OCLC Vice President, Business Development, Membership and Research

OCLC official logo, provided by website

The first service integration will take place in the Westchester Library System in New York. The integration will help support the cataloguing efforts in Westchester by identifying high-quality records from WorldCat more efficiently.

Equinox Open Library Initiative official logo, provided by website

“We are pleased to announce this partnership with OCLC which will provide new efficiencies for Evergreen ILS and Koha ILS libraries using OCLC services….Libraries benefit directly from collaborative innovation and the shared expertise of vendor partners. We look forward to working with OCLC and to supporting the Westchester Library System during their pilot.”
Lisa Carlucci, Executive Director, Equinox

Rachel Ladd, INFO-653-01

References: https://www.oclc.org/en/news/releases/2024/20240318-oclc-equinox-open-library-initiative-partner.html

Tagged with: Cataloging, Classification, classifying, data, equinox library initiative, Libraries, Library, Library collections, metadata, news, OCLC, Reading, technology
Posted in Cataloging, Libraries, Library, Open Data, Uncategorized