Moving Libraries to the Cloud

Roy Tennant

What Are You Talking About?

• A cloud is a common metaphor for the Internet:

Cloud Computing

• “A style of computing in which dynamically scalable and often virtualized resources are provided as a service over the Internet” - Wikipedia

• Incorporates the concepts of:– Infrastructure as a Service (hardware capacity)– Platform as a Service (OS, “solution stacks”)– Software as a Service (applications)

Moving to the Cloud

• Moving “to the cloud” means moving computing tasks from in-house hardware and software to resources on the net

• Therefore, “moving libraries to the cloud” means moving library data and applications to the network level

Potential Benefits

• Low barriers to entry• Pay as you go instead of capital investment• No need to have local server capacity• Software upgrades are automatic• Saves staff

Potential Drawbacks

• Lack of complete control• Reliance on network connectivity and speed

The Cloud From a Business Perspective

So What About Libraries?

An Example: Cataloging

Carddistributionservice

Local card catalog

Catalogers

Bibliographicrecords

Added value

An Example: CatalogingBibliographicutility

Bibliographicrecords

Local catalog

Catalogers

Added value

An Example: Cataloging

Union catalog,Locally tailored and skinned

Bibliographicrecords

Catalogers

Added value

Benefits accrue to all!

OCLC’s “Expert Community” Experiment

• Allowing “wiki-like” editing of WorldCat records• “I’m very excited about the experiment and have

already "updated" more records in the past month than I have in months previous to this” – Nathan Putnam

Machine Services for Libraries in the Cloud

Data LayerApplication Layer

Presentation Layer

Typical Application

Diagrams from David Walker

Data LayerApplication Layer

XML layer

API-based Application

Data LayerApplication Layer

XML layer

Custom Presentation Layer

API-Based Application

Sent to anothersource to retrieve

worldcat.org/devnet/

Mashed Libraries UK 2008

WorldCat Hackathon 2008

OCLC Bootcamp, Code4Lib 2009

Ways Libraries Are Benefitting from Moving Data to the Cloud

WorldCat Search API and Facebook

http://apps.facebook.com/worldcat/

WorldCat Citations in Facebook

http://apps.facebook.com/citemeapp/

Terminology Services for smarter searches

http://webapp2.dlib.indiana.edu/search/

http://thesecretmirror.com/code/api-fun-visualizing-holdings-locations

Visualizing WorldCat Holdings

WorldCat WordPress Widget

http://www.librarywebchic.net/wordpress/218/worldcat-wordpress-widget/

Mobile Web Applications

http://mobileworldcat.org

Mobile Web Applications

Android Application: CompareEverywhere

http://compare-everywhere.com

CompareEverywhere Splash Page

CompareEverywhere Searching

CompareEverywhere Search Results

CompareEverywhere Library Links

CompareEverywhere Library Information

A Library Catalog on an Android Phone

A Library Catalog on an Android Phone

CompareEverywhere API Traffic Spike

CompareEverywhere, Day 1

For more details …

worldcat.org/devnet