ColumnCommunications Title Michaela Brenner and Peter Klein

Discovering the of the collection, accession, and dis- with satellite imagery, maps, terrain semination of [urban] key planning and 3-D buildings to put the world’s Library with documents . . . that have high value geographic information at your fin- for Oregon citizens and for scholars gertips” (http://earth.google.com). Google Earth around the world” (Abbott 2005). From there, the authors provide links This collection is called the Oregon to the digitized documents in the Libraries need to provide attractive Sustainable Community Digital library catalog. Easy distribution, as and exciting discovery tools to draw Library (OSCDL) and is an ongoing well as the more playful nature of patrons to the valuable resources project that includes literature, plan- this pilot project and the inclusion ning reports, maps, images, RLIS of pictures, make the available data in their catalogs. The authors con- (Regional Land Information System) even more attractive to users. ducted a pilot project to explore the geographical data, and more. Much free version of Google Earth as such of the older material is unpublished, a discover tool for Portland State and making it available online pres- “Google now reigns” ents a valuable resource. Most of the Library’s digital collection of urban digitized—and, more recently, born- “Google now reigns,” claims Karen planning documents. They created digital—documents are accessible Markey (Markey 2007), and many eye-catching placemarks with links to through the library’s catalog, where others agree that using Google is patrons can find them together with easier and more appealing to most parts of this collection, as well as to other library materials about the than using library catalogs. Google’s other pertinent materials like books, City of Portland. The bibliographic popularity has been growing spec- images, and historical background records are arranged in the catalog in tacularly. In August 2007, Google information. The detailed how-to-do an electronic resource management accounted for 64 percent of all U.S. (ERM) system (Brenner, Larsen, and searches (Avtec Media Group 2007). part of this article is preceded by a Weston 2006). Additionally, these In contrast, the OCLC report on how discussion about discovery of library bibliographic data are regularly users perceive the library shows that materials and followed by possible exported from the library catalog to only one percent of the respondents applications of this Google Earth the OSCDL Web site (http://oscdl. begin their information search on research.pdx.edu) and there inte- a library Web site, while 84 percent project. grated with GIS (Global Information use search engines (De Rosa, et al. System) features, thus optimizing 2005). n Calhoun’s report to the Library cataloging costs by reusing data in “If we [libraries] want to survive,” of Congress, it becomes clear a different electronic environment. says Stephen Abram, “we must place Ithat staff time and resources Committed to not falling into the our messages where the users are will need to move from cataloging trap that Clifford Lynch had in mind seeking answers and will trip over traditional formats, like books, to when he wrote, “I think there is them. Today that usually means at cataloging unique primary sources, a mental picture that many of us Yahoo, MSN, and Google” (Abram and then providing access to these have that digitization is something 2005). According to Lorcan Dempsey, sources from many different angles. you do and you finish . . . a finite, in the longer run, traffic to the library “Organize, digitize, expose unique one-time process“ (Lynch 2002), catalog will come by linking from special collections” (Calhoun 2006). and agreeing with Gatenby that “it larger consolidated resources, like In 2005, Portland State University doesn’t matter at all if a user finds Open WorldCat and Google Scholar Library received a grant “to develop our OPAC through the ‘back door’“ (Dempsey 2005). a digital library under the sponsor- (Gatenby 2007), the authors looked Dempsey also stressed that it ship of the Portland State University into further using these existing data becomes more and more significant Library to serve as a central repository from the library catalog by making to differentiate between discov- them accessible from a popular and ery and location (Dempsey 2006a). appealing place on the Internet, a Initially, users want to discover; they want to find what interests Michaela Brenner ([email protected]) place that users are more likely to is Assistant Professor and Database visit than the library catalog. them independent from where this Maintenance and Catalog Librarian at The free version of Google Earth, information is actually located and Portland State University Library, Oregon. a virtual-globe program that can available. While there may be lots of Peter Klein ([email protected]) be installed on PCs, lent itself to valuable, detailed, and exceptionally is Aerospace engineering BS/MS at the experimenting. “Google Earth com- well-organized bibliographic infor- AuthorUniversity ID boxof Colorado for 3 column at Boulder. layout bines the power of Google Search mation in the library catalog, not

32 inFORMATION TECHNOLOGY AND LIBRARIES | jjunune 20072008 many users (one percent) are willing providing such a powerful visualiza- The Portland State to discover this information through tion tool, the authors felt tempted Library OSCDL-on- the catalog. They may not discover to experiment with existing data what a library has to offer if “the from Portland State Library’s digital Google-Earth project library does not find a way to go to OSCDL collection and make these the user, rather than waiting for the data accessible through a virtual The authors chose ten Portland- user to come to the library” (Coyle globe. based OSCDL sub-collections as the 2007). Unless the intent is to keep our basis of this pilot project: Harbor treasures buried, the library com- Drive, Front Street, Portland Public munity needs to work with popular The King’s College Market, Urban Studies Collection, outside discovery environments— cultural heritage Downtown, Park Blocks, South Park like search engines—to bring infor- project Blocks, Pioneer Courthouse Square, mation available in libraries to users Portland City Archives, and JPACT from the outside. Martyn Jessop from King’s College in (Joint Policy Advisory Committee on Libraries are, although sometimes London, United Kingdom, published Transportation). reluctantly, responding. Google, an article about a relatively small The programming language Google Scholar, and Google Books are pilot project on providing access to for Google Earth is KML (keyhole Open WorldCat partner sites that are a digital cultural heritage collection markup language), a file format used now or soon will be providing access through a geographical informa- to display geographic data. KML is to WorldCat records. Google Book tion system (Jessop 2005). Jessop’s based on the XML standard and can Search includes “Find this book in approach to explore different tech- be created with the Google Earth the library,” and the advanced Book nologies and techniques to apply to user interface or from scratch with Search also has the option to limit a existing data about unique primary a simple text editor. Having no pre- search to library catalogs with access sources was exactly what the authors vious KML experience, the authors to the WorldCat Web record for each had in mind with this project, and decided to use both. item. “Deep linking” enables Web provided encouragement to move users to link from search results in forward with the idea of provid- Yahoo, Google, or other partner sites ing additional access to the Oregon to the “Find in a Library” interface Sustainable Community Digital in Open WorldCat, and then directly Library (OSCDL) collections through to the item’s record in their library’s Google Earth. Similar to Jessop, the online public access catalog (OPAC). authors regard it an unaffordable lux- Simply put, “Find it on Google, get it ury to put a great deal of effort into from your library” (Calhoun 2006). collecting, digitizing, and catalog- The “leveraged discovery envi- ing materials without making them ronment” is an expression coined available to a much broader audience by Dempsey that means it becomes through multiple access points. increasingly important to leverage Comparable to Jessop, the goal of a “discovery environment which is this project was to find a relatively Figure 1. Basic placemark in Google Earth outside your control to bring peo- simple, low-cost technological solu- ple back into our catalog environ- tion that could also be applied to a ment (like Amazon, Google Scholar)” much wider range of data without (Dempsey 2006b). much more investment in staff time Issues in Calhoun’s report to the and money. Library of Congress include the ques- Once the authors mastered the ini- tion of how to get a Google user tial hurdle of understanding Google from Google to library collections. Earth’s programming language, they She quotes an interviewee saying could easily identify with Jessop’s that “data about a library’s collec- notion of “project creep” as more tion needs to be on Google and other and more possibilities arose to make popular sites as well as the library the project more appealing. This, interface” (Calhoun 2006). as with the King’s College project, With evidence pointing to the was a valuable part of the develop- heavy use of Google for discovery ment process, the details of which are and with Google Earth technology described below. Figure 2. KML script for basic placemark

discovering the library with gIntoorogleducin eargt Zoomih | BREfynn Imaerge an|d sklemitinH 33 A basic placemark provided by Zooming in, the placemarks show Google Earth (figure 1), copied and the locations to which the collections pasted in Notepad (figure 2), was the refer. Considering the many layers starting point. and icons available in Google Earth, At Portland State Library, the authors decided to use yellow Information Technology routinely stars to make them more visible. In batch export cataloged OSCDL data order to avoid clutter and overlap- from the library catalog (ILS) to the ping labels, titles only appear on OSCDL Web site to reuse them. For mouse-over (figures 7 and 8). the Google Earth project, the authors Figure 9 shows the open place- had two options, to either export Figure 3. Detail of template with variables mark for Portland Public Market. between « double brackets » data relevant to our collections from “Portland State University” with the ILS to a spreadsheet or to use an the university’s logo is a link that existing Excel spreadsheet contain- takes the user to the university’s ing most of the same data, including homepage. The next line is the title place coordinates. This spreadsheet of the collection, followed by a brief was one of many others that had description. The paragraph after that been created to keep track for the is the same for all collections and digitization process as well as for includes links to the Portland State creating bibliographic records for the University Library and the OSCDL library catalog later. Using the avail- Web site. The collection-specific links able spreadsheet again, the following that follow next go to the library data were retained: Figure 4. Detail: “Downtown” placemark of catalog where the user has access finished KML script to the digitized manuscripts of this n the title of the collection collection (figure 10). Other pertinent n longitude and latitude of the place the collection refers to links—in this case to a book available in the library, a public Web site on the n a brief description of the collec- tion history of the Market, and a historic image of the Market—were added as The following were added manu- well. To make the placemarks visu- ally to the remaining spreadsheet: ally more attractive, all links are pre- Figure 5. Simplified process sented in the school’s “PSU green,” n all the texts and URLs for the collection-specific links and an image representative of the collection was added. The pictures n URLs for the collection-specific images can be enlarged in a new window by clicking on them. To avoid copyright The authors extracted the place- issues, the authors photographed mark-specific script from figure 2 their own images. The last link opens to create a template in Notepad. A an e-mail window for questions and general description and all links that comments (figure 11). were the same for the ten collec- This link is intended to bring tions were added to this template, some feedback and suggestions on and placeholders were inserted for how to improve the project and on its collection-specific data (figure 3). value for researchers and other users. Using Microsoft Office Word’s The authors have been toying with mail merge, the authors populated the idea of including in the future the template with the data from the Figure 6. Ten stars representing the ten more elaborate features such as video spreadsheet in one quick step. The collections clips and music. result was a KML script that included One more recent feature is that all the placemark data for the ten col- KML files, created in Google Earth, lections (figure 4). Clicking the OSCDL.kml icon on can now also be viewed on the The script was saved as plain text a desktop or inside a Web application Web by simply entering the URL of (.txt) first, and then renamed with the opens Google Earth. The user “flies” the KML file into the search box of extension .kml, which represents the to Portland, where ten stars represent Google Maps (figure 12), thus cre- final file (figure 5). the ten collections (figure 6). ating Google Earth placemarks in

34 inFORMATION TECHNOLOGY AND LIBRARIES | june 2008 Figure 13. “Map” view in Google Maps

Figure 10. Access to the collection in Figure 7. Zoomed in with mouse-over library catalog placemark

Figure 14. “Satellite” view in Google Maps

Figure 11. Ready-to-go e-mail window

Figure 8. Location of the Pioneer Courthouse Square placemark

Figure 15. Portland Public Market place- mark in Google Maps

to install software as with Google Earth. This adds value to KML files and makes projects like this more versatile. Figure 12. URL of KML file in Google Maps The authors have identified sev- search box eral uses for the KML file:

n A workstation in the library can be dedicated to resources about the mouse-over didn’t work and the the City of Portland. An icon on Figure 9. Portland Public Market size of the placemarks was impre- the desktop of this workstation cise. However, the content of the will open Google Earth and “fly” placemarks—except for the images directly to Portland where the Google Maps with different view which didn’t show on some comput- yellow stars are displayed. options (figures 13 and 14). Not all ers—was fully retained and all links n Professors can easily add the .kml formatting is correctly transferred, worked (figure 15). Although the use file to WebCT (now Blackboard) and at this point, there is no way of the KML file in Google Maps is not or other course management sys- to correct this in Google Maps. For as elegant as in Google Earth, it has tems. example, the yellow stars were white, the advantage that there is no need n The file can be e-mailed as an

discovering the library with gIntoorogleducin eargt Zoomih | BREfynn Imaerge an|d sklemitinH 35 attachment to those interested in in Google Maps, thus possibly reach- tion with other discovery tools; final the development of the City of ing a larger audience. report, prepared for the Library of Portland. Similar to the King’s College Congress. www.loc.gov.proxy.lib.pdx. edu/catdir/calhoun-report-final.pdf. n A link from the Wikipedia page project and following Abram’s sug- related to the OSCDL project gestion that “we should experiment Coyle, Karen. 2007. The library catalog in a 2.0 world. The Journal of Academic leads to the Google Earth pilot more with pilots in specific areas” Librarianship 33, no. 2: 289–291. project. (Abram 2005), this pilot project is of De Rosa, Cathy et al. 2005. Perceptions of n The project was added to the an exploratory, experimental nature. libraries and information resources. A Google Earth Gallery where And as with many experiments, the report to the OCLC membership. www many remarkable projects, cre- authors were testing an idea, trying .oclc.org.proxy.lib.pdx.edu/reports/ ated by individuals and groups something different and new to find pdfs/Percept_all.pdf. can be found. out how useful this idea might be, Dempsey, Lorcan. 2006a. The library n It can also be accessed through and useful applications for this proj- catalogue in the new discovery envi- the OSCDL Web site, and rele- ect were identified. Google Earth is a ronment: Some thoughts. Ariadne 48. vant links from the records in the sophisticated, attractive, and exciting www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue48/demp- sey. library catalog to Google Maps program—and fun to play with. In a Dempsey, Lorcan. 2006b. Lifting can be included. It may be use- time “where attention is scarce and out the catalog discovery expe- ful to alert patrons, who actually information resources are abundant,” rience. Lorcan Dempsey’s Weblog did come to the catalog by them- as Dempsey (2006a) says, we need on Libraries, Services, and Networks, selves, to this visual tool. to provide these kinds of discovery May 14, 2006. http://orweblog tools to attract patrons and to lure .oclc.org/archives/001021.html them to these valuable resources in Dempsey, Lorcan. 2005. Making data our library’s catalog that we created work—Web 2.0 and catalogs. Lor- Conclusion with so much diligence and cost of can Dempsey’s Weblog on Libra- ries, Services, and Networks, October staff time and resources. 4, 2005. http://orweblog.oclc “The question now is not how we .org/archives/000815.html improve the catalog as such,” says Gatenby, Janifer. 2007. Accessing library Dempsey. “It is how we provide effec- Works Cited materials via Google and other Web tive discovery and delivery of library sites. Paper presented to ELAG (Euro- materials in a network environment Abbott, Carl. 2005. Planning a sustain- pean Library Automation Group), where attention is scarce and infor- able Portland: A digital library for May 9, 2007. http://elag2007.upf. mation resources are abundant and local, regional, and state planning and edu/papers/gatenby_2.pdf. policy documents. Framing paper. Jessop, Martyn. 2005. The application where discovery opportunities are http://oscdl.research.pdx.edu/docu- of a geographical information system being centralized into major search ments/library_grant.pdf. to the creation of a cultural heritage engines and distributed to other envi- Abram, Stephen. 2005. The Google oppor- digital resource. Literary and Linguistic ronments” (Dempsey 2006a). With tunity. Library Journal 130, no. 2: 34. Computing: Journal of the Association for this in mind, the authors took on the Avtec Media Group. 2007. Search engine Literary and Linguistic Computing 20, challenge to create another discovery statistics. http://avtecmedia.com/ no. 1: 71–90. tool for one of the Library’s primary internet-marketing/internet-market- Lynch, Clifford. 2002. Digital collections, unique digital collections. ing-trends.htm. digital libraries, and the digitization Google Earth is not the Web, and Brenner, Michaela, Tom Larsen, and Clau- of cultural heritage information. First it needs to be installed on a worksta- dia Weston. 2006. Digital collection Monday 7, no. 5. www.firstmonday. management through the library cata- org/issues/issue7_5/lynch. tion in order to use a KML file. On log. Information Technology and Libraries Markey, Karen. 2007. The online library the other hand, the file created in 25, no. 2: 65–77. catalog. D-Lib Magazine 13, no. 1/2. www Google Earth can also be used on the Calhoun, Karen. 2006. The changing .dlib.org/dlib/january07/markey/01 Web more readily but less elegantly nature of the catalog and its integra- markey.html.

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36 inFORMATION TECHNOLOGY AND LIBRARIES | june 2008