June 16, 2008
PubMed Faceoff
Back in the 1970s Herman Chernoff experimented with combining facial features to represent multivariate data; more data, bigger nose, for example.
Now fast-forward to 2008 and meet Euan Adie, web-developer with Nature Publishing Group. He has taken Chernoff's ideas, applied them to PubMed search results and created a mock-up called "PubMed Faceoff."
The age of the face represents the age of the article. The height of the eyebrows is the journal impact factor. A frown means the article wasn't cited as much as expected, while a smile means it was cited more than expected. The results are crude but you get the idea. If you could come up with an advanced search with more variables and could sort your results by facial features this could actually work. It really simplifies your search results based on those criteria. If you see a happy face with high eyebrows grinning at you that would tell you the article was highly cited and published in a high impact journal. If the face was young it would be a recent article. Simple and to the point. I like it but put some hair on the heads of those faces!
Posted by swortman at 04:47 PM | Comments (0)
June 10, 2008
Twitter, anyone?
Found a link from the Chronicle Daily Report to an interesting post called Twitter for Librarians: The Ultimate Guide. I confess, Twittering is something I cannot get into. I'm sure it's like Facebook, you need an active community to make it worthwhile. At any rate this guide put together by Christina Laun at College@Home lists some interesting ideas that may get me to give Twitter another try.
Her suggestions include using Twitter to:
* Keep in touch with librarian friends and colleagues
* Keep up with the latest news by getting Twitter feeds from BBC or CNN
* Get conference information
* Share resources
* Use it for a notepad
* Post library announcements
If Christina doesn't motivate you enough to try Twitter, check out this older post from Des Walsh on Twittering where he talks about guides to Twitter. The concept of Twittering is simple but sometimes it takes reading a guide for people become aware of the whole concept of microblogging.
Want to learn more about Twitter? Come to the ML2SIG brownbag panel discussion on Twittering at Hatcher, room 100, from 12-1. Who knows, it might even be held in Twitter...
[forgot to mention the DATE of the panel discussion - Monday, June 16.]
Posted by swortman at 08:02 AM | Comments (0)
June 07, 2008
Great New Wiki of Digital Research Tools
Here's another one of those, "Why didn't I think of that?" ideas that may be helpful to people. DIRT, Digital Research Tool is a wiki created by a group of librarians from Rice and Sam Houston Universities. Their goal is to organize short reviews of software to "help researchers--professors, students, think-tankers, corporate intelligence gatherers, and other inquisitive folks--do their work better."
The wiki is well organized from the start. The front page lists the types of tools they reviewed based on what you want to do. Want to edit images? There's a link to a page listing seven different titles for helping you do this, with direct links to each title. Want to network with other researchers? There's a link for that, too with a list of suggestions like Ning, Academici and Pronetos Professor's Network.
These librarians have obviously put a lot of work into this wiki and best of all - it IS a wiki so it can be updated and you can add content yourself. They are using PBwiki which is very simple to use. If you do want to contribute you will have to contact Lisa Spiro at lspiro@rice.edu to get editing access to the wiki but she says they welcome contributors.
Posted by swortman at 10:29 AM | Comments (2)
June 06, 2008
Peer-Reviewed Web Sites?
Certifying Online Research by Gary A. Olson in today's Chronicle of Higher Education, Chronicle Careers
Olson discusses the dilemmas of some disciplines and scholars being more accepting of what he calls "e-scholarship" while others insist on the traditional interpretation of getting published for decisions involving promotion and tenure.
The author recommends a process for reviewing online content, by which I assume he means non-commercial content which would include the following process or steps:
* The major professional and scholarly organizations in each discipline should devise a certification process in which a site owner can apply to have a site reviewed and recognized, perhaps for a nominal processing fee. The site would be subjected to a formal and rigorous review by peers in the disciplinary area covered by the site.* Only those sites meeting the highest standards should be awarded certification.
* Once a site wins certification from the national scholarly society, it should be permitted to display that stamp of approval prominently.
* The certification should remain in effect for a specific and limited amount of time (since a site can change rapidly and without notice). The site should regularly seek renewal of its certification.
* Each disciplinary organization should issue a resolution recommending that departments construe certification of a site as indicating that it has met the highest standards of scholarship.
* Each organization should maintain an online registry of certified sites.
This is a noble idea but what's in it for the organizations? Right now they're making money, theoretically, on scholarly, peer-reviewed journals and have a vested interest in keeping the status quote. Is the author expecting these professional organizations to review this content out of the goodness of their hearts? Internet content springs up like mushrooms daily. This would be an impossible task.
I agree, self-regulation is not the answer but scholarly communication is changing but evaluation of this communication doesn't have to change that much just because the media changes. There will always be tiers of scholarship, including the highest tier of reputable works of rigorous scholarship. What form the media takes will not change the most reputable publications but other levels have already changed. Look at how Wikipedia is changing scholarship. It is not considered the highest level of research but as long as people are willing to invest the time writing articles which include citations to scholarly materials and as long as these materials have been vetted or can be traced what's the harm in using it as a starting point?
Collaborating scholars should be able to make much more progress on their research than in the past, with the ease of international communication and instant re-visioning of wikis and other online tools but as long as publishers can make money from research and as long as tenure and promotion decisions have to be made the peer-reviewed process will remain.
Posted by swortman at 02:25 PM | Comments (0)
April 30, 2008
English Medieval Legal Documents Wiki from USC
Senior Law Librarian, Hazel Lord at University of Southern California has created an amazing research tool, using a wiki, English Medieval Legal Documents A.D. 600 - A.D. 1535: A Compilation of Published Sources.
According to Lord the classic bibliographies of law during these time periods are at least fifty years old and since that time many important archives have been digitized and are now available online, either free or from subscription databases. Using a wiki makes this a fluid, organic document which can grow along with the knowledge in this field since it can be instantly updated. First made available in February of this year, this wiki has had 72,000 hits in its first two months. Lord envisioned a project of about 200 records but the database as grown to nearly 1,000 records.
The wiki is well designed, starting with broad categories such as case law, statutory law and administrative law but also includes sections on early legal treatises, research guides and bibliographies. Navigating around the wiki is simple with main subject category links available from every page. There is a search function which is also available from every page and which ranks search results by relevance. Where possible, OCLC record numbers are linked to items so users can easily locate materials in WorldCat. LibX makes this feature that much easier when using FireFox, since you get the MGetIt icon and link back to Mirlyn or online databases.
Posted by swortman at 04:54 PM | Comments (0)
April 16, 2008
Virtual Library Tours
Those of us who work in Hatcher Graduate Library know how difficult it can be to find your way around this/these buildings. Hatcher is actually three buildings pulled together over the years with parts of the original library dating back to the 1880s. [Interesting that as I try to go back to verify the dates of the library there is no mention of Hatcher North being actually parts of two separate buildings. We even have an online display of the history of Hatcher Library but the text in the display makes it sound like Hatcher North was built in 1920. That's a whole other story...]
Staff at the Information Center desk get a few phone calls every term from students on cell phones trying to find their way out of the stacks. The YouTube video "Harlan Hatcher Graduate Labyrinth", a tongue-in-cheek tour of the library made the rounds last year. I think its time for the library to come up with our own tour to help students and faculty find their way around this lovable, old relic.
Here are some links to what other libraries are doing to help people find their way around the library. There are audio tours, tours set up in Flickr and other ideas.
Posted by swortman at 04:19 PM | Comments (0)
Knowledge Management by Ray Sims
This is what I meant to say about knowledge management and web 2.0 at the ML2SG brownbag only this presentation by Ray Sims is much more thorough and interesting.
Posted by swortman at 08:36 AM | Comments (0)
April 14, 2008
Video Uploads Now Available on Flickr
According to the Flickr blog you are now able to upload a 90 second video and post it to your Flickr account. You must have a pro membership in order to do this but membership is relatively cheap. Check out some of the videos already posted.
Evidently some Flickrites are less than thrilled about this. One of the most popular tags in Flickr last week was "novideosonflickr"
Posted by swortman at 08:50 AM | Comments (0)
January 22, 2008
Library Subject Guides in the Multidisciplinary, Interdisciplinary, Trans-disciplinary World
The Women's Studies Section of ACRL offered an interesting discussion topic at ALA Midwinter in Philadelphia last week, "(Re)Thinking Subject Guides: Interactivity Unbound." This group offers great topics which generate a surprising amount of interest, based on the fact that I ended up sitting on the floor for this.
There was a great deal of sharing from a number of institutions on how they are dealing with subject guides. Two libraries mentioned using LibGuides from Springshare. Here are a couple of examples of institutes using it, Boston College and Dalhousie University. I'm not going to get into the pros and cons of this software in this entry, since my purpose is to simply spill the gist of the discussion that took place.
Another management system mentioned was Luminis, which offers personal portals with tabs and will automatically show subject librarians.
A Michigan State librarian mentioned using open source LibData for subject guides, created by University of Minnesota. Here's an example of one of their subject guides for African Studies
Wayne State mentioned using Conduit software to create toolbars with different categories.
There was talk of using Del.icio.us to create a feed or list of online resource into guides but people agreed that it doesn't work well for personalizing a guide once you're in Del.icio.us.
One participant said there is such a thing as too much information and offers strictly one page guides to undergraduates at the University of Central Florida.
There was talk about whether "emerging technology" is the best thing to use for subject guides. Some folks said good ol' paper handouts work best for them. Others give handouts during instructional sessions but also offer them as PDFs and post links to them online.
We discussed using wikis as subject guides and I was surprised by acomment from one librarian who said people at her institution bulk at offering wikis for students because the library discredits using Wikipedia for academic research so creating one might encourage the wiki mentality. (Honey, the wikis are already HERE! Read Everything is Miscellaneous)
University of California - San Diego's Science and Engineering Library talked about using wikis but one person said they ended up with too many wikis and couldn't tame the clutter. They are now working on working out ways of creating better control over wikis and working toward standardization.
It appeared that many librarians opted for newer, easier technology for subject guides in order to circumvent institutional IT departments which weren't allowing them to create their own personalized tools for specific courses or topics.
Someone in the group asked if anyone kept statistics on the use of subject guides in their library and there was very little response to that idea. One library had surveyed students to see what they would like in a subject guide. There was no mention of the results of this survey. A couple librarians mentioned they relied on subject guides for answering research question from disciples in which they were not as familiar with resources. Others said their faculty used subject guides and even suggested topics for guides. That lead to a discussion on how you determine which topics need subject guides. Most librarians base guides on the disciple areas within their institutions. If you don't offer a major in European Studies do you really need a subject guide on that? This ends up being one of the major problems facing librarians as disciplines become more and more intertwined.
Posted by swortman at 04:44 PM | Comments (0)
January 09, 2008
keeping up with trends when work keeps calling
Remember back when it was warm and we were all enthused about M Library 2.0 and learning new things? Wait... it IS warm outside but it's January!
Well, how would you say we're doing as a library? Are you still enthused or has work gotten in the way? Now that it's time for New Year's resolutions why not get re-energized? Check out this post by Chris Winfield for 10 Simple Steps to Social Success in 2008 and start the year right.
Don't feel like you have the time? Read this post from Librarians Matter by Kathryn Greenhill of Fremantle, Western Australia, 20 reasons why learning emerging technologies is part of every librarian’s job.
Happy New Year!
Posted by swortman at 09:04 AM | Comments (0)
November 01, 2007
Google OpenSocial Due Today
Facebook opened its code to outside developers a few months back and from then on the Facebook applications have been coming thick and fast. Instead of just one application created by Facebook to keep track of your college courses and network with students in your classes there are now over 20 similar applications created by individuals, groups and businesses which do basically the same thing.
While Facebook is pumping out the content, other social networking tools are getting further and further behind. Where else but in Facebook can you look up a book at University of Michigan Library catalog and throw a sheep at someone from the same site? The problem is as more and more social networking interfaces come along companies have to either write multiple applications for each platform or pick and choose which one will give them the most bang for their bucks. Facebook applications can only run on Facebook. MySpace apps only work on MySpace. This may change though. Google is scheduled to release OpenSocial today, a new opensource API which will allow programmers to create applications which will run on a number of different social network sites, just not Facebook and MySpace.
There's an interesting article on this from Information Week, "Google Squares Off Against Facebook with OpenSocial". While there's no way this will make any significant dent in the traffic on MySpace and Facebook, Google seems to be trying to scoop up all the traffic related to the Facebook/MySpace wanna bes and position themselves for the next big thing. To quote the article,
So while Google may be offering a more open model than Facebook, the value of Facebook's walled garden isn't yet diminished. "They poked a hole in the dike, but it's far from opening up the floodgates," said Valdes.[Gartner analyst]Don't count the open model out, however. "Over time, open tends to win over closed," said Kraus [Google director of product management]. "But it's still very early in terms of social networking."
Posted by swortman at 02:46 PM | Comments (0)
October 30, 2007
What Blogs Do You Read?
This is old news but back in September the Online Education Database published a list of what they considered the top 25 Librarian Bloggers.
Rankings aside, I'd be interested in hearing what blogs YOU read, especially you University of Michigan people. I tend to get overly exited and subscribe to too many blogs, then don't read any of them until they are backed up with hundreds of entries. I'm trying to wean myself down to a manageable number. Let me know what you're reading.
Posted by swortman at 02:19 PM | Comments (0)
August 27, 2007
Now I think this is reasonable...
Mingle2 - Dating Site
Posted by swortman at 05:07 PM | Comments (0)
August 23, 2007
BIG Games
Jennifer Nardine gave an interesting talk at our Mlibrary 2.0 Project Share. She talked about going to the ALA TechSource Gaming, Learning, and Libraries Symposium in Chicago earlier this summer.
Greg Trefry, director of the Come Out and Play Festival spoke at this event on “Big Fun, Big Learning: Transforming the World Through Play”. The games Trefry talked about included:
Organizing a huge pillow fight in New York City
“You Are Not Here”, described as an urban tourism mash-up.
“Cruel 2 B Kind”, a game of benevolent assassination
“Payphone Warriors”, “Control the Payphones and Control the City”
Jennifer said Greg Trefry believes libraries are an ideal place for big games; they have specific locations, they have collections of things, and they have a number of different codes or unique identifies, like LC numbers which could for giant scavenger hunt style games.
There was an interesting twist on big games reported earlier this summer. Professors studying “swarm theory” randomly assigned the numbers 1-9 to 81 people who had to pin their number to their shirt. These people then worked on organizing themselves in a 9 by 9 grid, in an attempt to cooperatively solve a Sudoku puzzle. The results? It couldn’t be done without a couple of people giving up and directing the group. I guess it’s back to the drawing board for these researchers.
The Undergraduate Library sounds committed to gaming in some form or another which is great. I look forward to seeing what they come up with. It should be fun!
Posted by swortman at 02:50 PM | Comments (0)
August 20, 2007
Wrap-up of 13 Things
I found completing the 13 Things project for MLibrary 2.0 a lot of fun, very interesting and educational. It took some time but it was worth it. Some of the things were more fun than others but being able to blog about each one allows time to reflect on both the good and the bad and to contemplate how some of these tools might be used to better serve researchers using library resources, whether here in this building or, as is more often the case online.
I think one of the best ideas I've found for considering Library 2.0 is from Laura Cohen's blog, Library 2.0: An Academic Perspective, where she wrote the widely circulated A Librarian's 2.0 Manifesto. American Libraries journal graphically represents these 19 promises created by Laura as an old torn sheet of paper tacked to a wall, similar to Martin Luther's 95 Theses which led to the Protestant Reformation when it was tacked to the door of the Catholic church back in 1517. These 19 points may not be as historic as Luther's 95 but they may help to reform libraries and the way librarians think about their work.
I would challenge staff at the University of Michigan to take the time to discuss Laura Cohen's 19 points and define what it is we will do here, both as a team and as individuals to help lead the University of Michigan Library into the future.
Posted by swortman at 05:00 PM | Comments (0)
Graduate Library Technical Services Flickr Set
Alexis Zirpoli has created an entertaining and educational group of pictures in Flickr on how items go through processing in Grad Technical Services in order to get on the library shelves.
Great job, Alexis. It's projects like this that could help to personalize this big library system, help us get to know one another and demonstrate the importance of each job here.
Which library division will create the next Flickr story on "What we do?"
Here's another humorous take on technical services from Arlington Heights Public Library.
Posted by swortman at 11:21 AM | Comments (0)
August 16, 2007
More on Next Generation OPACs
I'm pretty sure I finished the 13 things required by MLibrary 2.0. I think I could talk a little more about the next generation library catalog and compare more. I did that a few weeks ago but never wrote in this blog.
NINES
A big thumbs up for NINES, the Networked Infrastructure for Nineteenth-century Electronic Scholarship, mainly from UVa. Here are a few thoughts.
I like the way you put in the search term and it anticipates what you may be looking for in the form; enter homo...and it gives you choices of homosexual (135), homosexuality (120), homosexuals (14), homoerotic (70), etc. Each of these words has the number of entries available listed after it. This is even before you search!
You can search a social network of contributed content, add to that content and make notes about other submitted content. This is a very interesting collaborative tool for scholars interested in 19th century culture.
AADL
Major thumbs down on the Ann Arbor District Library SOPAC tag cloud. The main problem is that no one seems to be using it so everything or most things don't have more than a couple of tags so there are way too many tiny words, not enough variety on the size of the words to make a difference to anyone. The sidebar, showing the most popular tags, most recently added tags and random tags seem more helpful.
NCSU
I like the organization of North Caroline State's online catalog for several reasons. While it results page looks busy at first, it gives you a lot of information without having to click through several pages to find something. You see the list of items, whether or not any are currently available, call number and library where the item is located. You also see which call number range has the most items from your search and can narrow the search by time periods, author's name, library location, genre, subject, format, and on and on. All of this information is very helpful for fine tuning a search if you're just starting from scratch on a topic.
Posted by swortman at 01:21 PM | Comments (0)
Hatcher Library on YouTube & Flickr
YouTube
Have you seen Hatcher Library on YouTube? It's called "Harlan Hatcher Graduate Labyrinth" and I'm sure everyone at U-M has had similar experiences trying to find their way in this library. It's a combination of two buildings from two different eras. The oldest section of the library faces the diag . I'm pretty sure when it was originally built in 1920 it was a "closed stacks" library, which means only library workers were allowed to retrieve materials from the shelves. Those who wanted materials from the library just made requests at a front desk and waited for the things to be delivered to them. That's probably why this part of the library is so unfriendly and awkward for students. Multiple attempts to update this four-floor section have added to the labyrinth affect.
Then to add more craziness to this building another eight-floor building was attached to the old library in 1970 which uses completely different staircases and elevators but has the same name. The main connection between the two buildings is on the second floor, although there are staircases and entrances to the old building on other floors if you know what you're doing. The secret to finding things is to understand what the library catalog is trying to tell you when it specifies a book is located either in Hatcher North or Hatcher South. North is the old, facing the diag and South is, well, the tall library behind it with eight floors. Hmmm, trying to explain it I guess it IS pretty complicated. If anyone has any suggestions let me know and we'll create a new video, "Secrets to the Harlan Hatcher Graduate Labyrinth."
I think it makes a great tongue-in-cheek orientation.
Flickr
Yeah for Alexis Z. in technical services for being mentioned by Jessamyn West for her flickr set on how a book gets processed in the library. Not only will this be a great resource for explaining why people can't get a book instantly from the library, it will also introduce those people who do all that behind the scenes work to the rest of us in the library system here. Thanks for all your work tech services!
Congratulations Alexis. Great job!
There is also a Hatcher Graduate Library Group on Flickr, if you're interested in joining or adding some pictures.
Posted by swortman at 07:27 AM | Comments (4)
August 06, 2007
13 Things Out of Order - Number 6
Facebook is fun but is it really a professional tool? There's an blog post about this a few weeks ago that really doesn't say too much that's new but more of a confirmation.
Since having a Facebook profile for a few months I have used it a number of different ways. At first my youngest daughter thought it was so funny she had all her friends friend me so now I have 20-somethings all over the U.S. as friends. They may not use me as a librarian or ask me a question but I suppose it could happen. If they even glance at my profile they can see facebook applications related to library catalogs and books I'm reading so that might lead to something.
I also have friends from ALA and we can communicate easily using facebook and compare new library 2.0 ideas, facebook apps and ways to professionally use facebook.
I have to say I don't use my facebook groups as much as I could to communicate with others but that should be a great tool to develop communities and share information.
I love the idea of being able to add myself to women's studies classes through facebook but haven't used this to contact anyone yet. I admit students probably think it's sort of creepy. They all look 18 or 19 and then - there's my picture. I wouldn't have wanted to see my mother's picture in facebook or her friends if had been around when I was that age. I let Women's Studies faculty and grad students know I have a facebook account and minutes after I sent the email a PhD student asked to be my friend. It will be interested to see, as the fall semester starts if having this account will add any value to networking with my department for reference and/or instruction.
Posted by swortman at 05:01 PM | Comments (0)
Continuing on with the 13 things - Podcasts - Yuck!
I was on vacation during the podcast presentation and haven't had the chance to look at the resource information, if there is any posted on the Library 2.0 web site. I have been struggling through the podcasts, for some reason. I can't figure out how to subscribe to podcasts from the major aggregators link itunes. itunes has been very frustrating. First I assumed I could just go to a site and find an rss feed for subscriptions but I'm not finding it. I go to store, they try to sell me a mouse, a nano, whatever. I go to the itunes and podcasts link and they want me to download itunes. I try downloading it and first it says I don't have permission. I try again and I get it installed but
where am I?
what do I do?
do I even need this thing to subscribe to podcasts?
I give up on itunes temporarily and just search podcasts in Google. I get to podcast.net. I try searching for a good podcast which might be related to women's studies. I click on a link for "society and culture" then find a link for "women." I end up with a lot of useless podcasts on religion, weddings and fashion.
I give up again and go back to my Google results list. I find an Yahoo! Podcasts, which has a nifty cloud of tags to search. Found a lame podcast called BloggingHeads.tv. I didn't listen to it long enough to figure out the point of the podcast because the audio was so poor I couldn't make out what they were saying.
A little farther down the list from the BloggingHeads.tv I found a podcast I of interest, Addicted to Race. I originally thought I had to install some Yahoo tool to be able to subscribe to this but looking closer discovered I didn't so, phew, I managed to subscribe to this feed.
I subscribed to NPR:Book Tour and already subscribed to some podcasts by the Library of Congress so I can cross off thing number 9. I'm still going back and figure out itunes. I feel so old!
Posted by swortman at 03:54 PM | Comments (0)
July 31, 2007
Next Generation OPAC at the Library
Okay! I've been on vacation for two weeks and have taken some time to gear up, or rather catch up on other things but now I'm blogging again. I've missed a few of the MLibrary 2.0 sessions while I've been gone but I'm still working on my 13 things so here I go, talking about the latest in OPAC development related to Library 2.0.
I've been experimenting with the McMaster University Library catalog and found some interesting things. For my first search I tried to look up items written by Virginia Woolf. I used the basic search box, selected an author search and entered "Woolf, Virginia", even though the example for entering a name would have been "Virginia Woolf." I was happy to see that I got 563 hits either way so I thought that was pretty intuitive.
I have to admit I was a little annoyed that McMaster University had 563 items by Virginia Woolf when University of Michigan only had 200 but I soon found out why. For one thing, forty-eight of their 60 records listed as online specified you could read them for five minutes then recommend them for purchase so they don't really own these titles. Most of them were duplicates anyway. Another problem was that the search didn't really limit to the author field. It seemed to pick up every item with the words Virginia Woolf anywhere. I tried "refining" my search to only audio format and got four recordings of the sound track for the movie "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf." There were also lots of literary criticisms related to Virginia Woolf but not authored by her. Very messy!
I tried another search using the advanced search feature which lists links by LC classification. This would be a good idea for many subjects but people may need to already know about LC classification to be able to use it. Would you know where to start looking for information on gay or lesbian studies? What about multidisciplinary subjects? And what would "General Works" mean to anyone? (What does it cover anyway?)
On the plus side exploring by subjects may get people thinking and exploring more and it might help researchers come up with new terms.
Here are my initial good/bad thoughts about this particular catalog:
Good
1. Easy to navigate
2. Includes added value like new book titles as you're working
3. Easy to hone a search by dates, language, authors, formats, etc.
4. Individual records open as small window above the overall results list so you don't have to mess with navigation
5. Bread crumb navigation is something with which most people are familiar
Bad
1. Don't see a way to save or export records
2. No way to eliminate unwanted items in your search by using "not"
3. Inaccurate search results (see above)
4. The default on the left to refine the search should be expanded, like North Carolina State's catalog so you can see the options but can close them if you want. (My personal preference, maybe but I'm listing it as "bad!")
5. Can't clear an entire search so you may be clicking "remove" several times
6. Might miss a remove and only be searching in a subset of something
Okay, that last two bad comments listed may be a little lame. You would probably catch on to this if you used the catalog more than once and if you could read, I admit.
Overall this was an interesting exercise and got me thinking about what a catalog is and what it could be. Though this catalog may work differently from what I'm used to users will probably still be able to find what they need, just as well as with Mirlyn and perhaps some of the added value would be more helpful and more intuitive to people used to Amazon, Barnes and Noble online and other retail search utilities.
Posted by swortman at 03:28 PM | Comments (0)
July 05, 2007
13 Things
After rereading the MLibrary 2.0 13 Things "assignment" I see that I was supposed to be using this blog to track my progress toward the, eh, 13 things. I'm listing the goals below just to keep myself on track. Despite feeling very 2.0ish lately I see I have a ways to go toward completing these assignments. This is good. I'm getting too comfortable with some things and leaving the uncomfortable things for last, typical.
I've had Zotero installed on my computer for months but beyond the initial experimentation I haven't taken the time to try it seriously. Time to get started!
I installed LibX a couple of weeks ago without knowing exactly what it was and what it could do for me. Now that I've read a little more about it on the LibX site I am a little more informed. I tripped upon some of the features last week and posted my findings on this blog. It took those more in the know to set me straight with their comments to my posting. Thanks, guys!
According to the LibrarianinBlack, there is now a guide on the Library Instruction wiki, Library 2.0 in 15 minutes a day. There have been so many libraries offering workshops similar to the one Michigan has been doing on Library 2.0 that this wiki has pulled a number of instructional links and ideas together so that people won't have to start from scratch when offering similar events.
Okay, now it's onward to podcasting! See ya!
List of 13 Things
1.)Blogs
Create a blog using MBlog or another blogging platform. This is where you will post your reflections to the 13 things. Email the address of your blog to Dave Carter (superman@umich.edu), and let him know if you want to be included in the MLibrary 2.0 SuperFeed.
2) RSS
Set up an account on Google Reader (or another feed reader of your choice) and subscribe to two library-related and one non-library-related blog via their feeds.
3) Del.icio.us
Create a del.icio.us account (link to it from your blog post). Post (and tag!) three URLs related to Web/Library 2.0.
4) Flickr
Create a flickr account (link to it from your blog post). Join the MLibrary2.0 group. Explore flickr and add a few pictures to your favorites.
5) Facebook
Create a Facebook account and join the MLibrary2.0 facebook group.
6) Post something about using Facebook
Consider how the library could use Facebook for outreach or for reference; make a wall or discussion post about your thoughts in the MLibrary2.0 group.
7) Play with various Next Gen OPACs
Play with one of the Next Generation OPACs. Do a variety of searches and explore features not available in a traditional catalog. Make comments in your blog about your experience.
8) Talk about your experiences with these OPACs on your blog
Perform a set of searches in at least three of the Next Generation OPACs. Make a blog entry about your experience. Compare the features, capabilities and usability of the interfaces and make a prioritized list of the features you would most like to see in Mirlyn.
9) Subscribe to three podcasts
Find & subscribe to three podcasts you are interested in using iTunes, Google Reader, or another program.
10) Create a YouTube account and embed a library video in your blog
Create a YouTube account. Find a library-related video and add it to your favorites. Embed this video in an entry in your blog.
11) Install LibX and Zotero
Install LibX and Zotero for Firefox on your home or work computer.
12) Use LibX and Zotero
Use LibX to locate a book/article that is of interest to you, and use Zotero to save it to your personal library. Extra credit for adding tags.
13) Reflect about your experiences with all of these things and write about it in your blog
In your blog, reflect on your experiences with Web/Library 2.0 and what you have learned. Consider keeping your blog alive past the 13 things by continuing to post your thoughts on libraries.
Posted by swortman at 08:46 AM | Comments (0)
June 28, 2007
Revenge of the Blog People: Part 258
The generation gap of the library world, Michael Gorman vs. Bloggers has a recent twist. True to the ideas of mash-ups and not only being consumers of technology but also producers of technology the latest revenge from the blog people on Michael Gorman's 2005 article in Library Journal comes in the form of a song by David Lee King which features quotes from his article. Will this never die?
Okay, it IS pretty funny!
Posted by swortman at 11:23 AM | Comments (0)
June 27, 2007
Twittering Astronauts?
Social networking, here, there and everywhere. I have been trying to make sense of my notes from ALA to offer some posts to this blog but haven't gotten anything organized well enough to make sense yet so I'll just comment on social networking in the news.
I can't listen to the radio at all these last few days without hearing about social networking. NPR's Talk of the Nation had a show on this afternoon Social Networking on the Web Grows Up
Host Neal Conen talked with several people about the various ways social networking is growing up and being used for innovative networking. There was talk of social networking as a way of mobilizing people as well as a way of finding people both globally and locally with like interests (http://cruisecritic.com or http://www.meetup.com/).
Someone else spoke of social networking related to business networking, finding contacts, checking references, recruiting people. Even using it to look up a dentist and checking out who else on the network you know, at least virtually who might be able to recommend the dentist. For business they mentioned sites like linkedin and I just found ryze
The third person, Tom Watson, publisher of onphilanthropy.com talked about social networking as a way of gathering both money and people to social causes. See an article he wrote about Kiva and how he used it to provide microloans for people starting businesses in underdeveloped countries.
I haven't even gotten to the twittering astronauts yet! There is an article in C/Net News about how NASA met this week with people from Twitter, CreativeCommens and other online groups in what they called an Exploration Summit to figure out ways that NASA could become more hip to the new net generation. One popular idea was astronauts twittering from outerspace. Cool!
Posted by swortman at 09:15 PM | Comments (0)
June 23, 2007
On the Road to ALA - Thursday
Well, here I am in Washington, DC. Guess I won’t be on the Internet until tomorrow [it ended up being Saturday]. I tried it from my room and got a message that it will be $10.95/day! Yikes! I’ll just head over to the Convention Center and use theirs.
I borrowed my husband’s Business 2.0 magazine to read on the flight this evening. I don’t know why he keeps getting it. I think it’s a promotional thing since he’s never subscribed to it. There was a good article, Weaving the {Semantic} Web, by Michael V. Copeland. The article talked about Nova Spivack and his company Radar Networks. The company, and others like it are working on Web 3.0 or the Semantic Web. This new iteration of the web people are working on will be a smarter, machine-based web instead of the people based social networked web of today.
Spivack, grandson of Peter Drucker is getting ready to release his first attempt at a commercial use for Web 3.0 by offering a personal planner that will make the computer and network work for the user. Think of it as the computer knowing you well enough that it can seamlessly plan things without all the back and forth calling or emailing that’s usually required now. Ever see that video explanation of a wiki that’s out there? This planner sounds like a giant wiki, only the computer, not the people reads data from several sources and come up with what is the best option for you.
According to this article mashups are early versions of Web 3.0. So is tagging in Flickr. Things like this are what Tom Coates, who works for Yahoo calls, “dirty semantic Web.” I guess that means Web 3.0, phase one.
This sort of thing has been going on for a while if you look at Amazon as it suggests items for you based on past purchases. The CIA is collecting data from several resources on possible terrorist subjects, (hopefully not you and me) trying to find connections or relationships that might foil a terrorist plot in the early stages.
Peter Morville, who was in Ann Arbor for the opening of MLibrary 2.0 will be speaking at ALA on Monday as part of the ALCTS Presidents Program. Topic? Ambient Findability, of course.
Posted by swortman at 08:50 AM | Comments (0)
June 21, 2007
MLibrary 2.0 Workshop - Social Tagging: What is it and what does it have to do with the library?
Workshop number 2 for Mlibrary 2.0 was today. This one was on social tagging and gave an overview of Flickr and Del.icio.us. There is so much information to get through for each of these workshops that it's very helpful the way the group has organized the web site for users to go back and look into things further.
Suzanne Chapman gave today's presentation. She explained things well, had answers to everyone's questions, kept us on task and gave great examples of how other libraries and groups are useing social tagging.
Suzanne and Bill Dueber came up with an interesting experiment for demonstrating social tagging to the group. They had us to to a picture online and enter our own tags. After everyone entered their tags we checked out what we all came up with, then compared that to the cataloging information. Since there are two workshop sessions the tags are separated into session one and session two. Tagging images, while not standardized has great potential because it allows you to get down into details that cataloging can't possibly include. With broad brush strokes people can enter as many words as they want with the hope that someone will have the same ideas for catagorizing the image.
Something I hadn't heard about before this workshop is Google Image Labeler. It's part game, part social tagging. Google flashes images up and you have up to 90 seconds to come up with as many tags as possible. You are paired with another random user who also enters tags for the same image. You both enter tags until there is a tag match. Supposedly this helps Google to come up with appropriate tags or indexing for their images. It's kind of fun but some images are definitely easier to tag that others. Sometimes there is a short list of words you can't use to tag the image. These are usually the most obvious choices for tags so you have to expend a few brain cells to come up with other, not so obvious tags.
Makes me think I should check out Eye To I: Visual Literacy Meets Information Literacy at ALA Annual. The Informtion Section of ACRL is presenting this along with ACRL Arts Section. They created a virtual poster session using a blog. The presentation is Sunday, 1:30 - 3:30 at Renaissance Washington - Grand Ballroom South, if you're interested.
Social Bookmarking
Things I didn't know:
1. You can suggest links that you think other people in your network might like.
2. You can create delicious feeds very easily and put the code on an appropriate web page or in your blog. This would be so easy to use for so many things in the library!
3. You can customize your tagroll cloud easily in del.iou.us, too
4. You can add a del.icio.us button to Firefox (easier than IE)that lets you post an address on the fly.
Flickr
There's a MLibrary 2.0 group in Flickr with 111 pictures!
Flickr and copyrighting are an interesting phenomenon. I have to do some more reading about Creative Commons and licencing. It's so easy to post pictures on Flickr that no one seems to be concerned about having someone's permission to post their picture or taking pictures of book covers and slapping them up on a web page. Who controls the content, the image, the right to display? It's all getting looser and looser which is not necessarily bad thing.
There's a Michigan Libraries Flickr group along with a lot of other fun groups. I think KRS should join the Librarians on Motorcycles group, it only has two members.
Posted by swortman at 01:20 PM | Comments (1)
June 18, 2007
Ten Major Types of Technology Users
I actually read my American Libraries magazine for June/July this weekend and found some interesting information. The latest issue isn't available online at the library yet. There's a fourteen day wait period so everyone has to read the paper version for now.
One of the Tech Briefs in AL mentioned The Pew Internet and American Life Project came up with ten different types of technology users in a report released in May . The project released the results of a survey on internet usage and categorized technology users into ten types. You can take a quiz on the project site to find out where you fit in the technology continuum. Depending on how high you score, you may be classified as an omnivore, a connector, a lackluster veteran, a productivity enhancer, a mobile centric user, a connected but hassled user, an inexperienced experimenter, light but satisfied, indifferent, or off the network. It's all for fun and not very reliable because I scored as a connector. I would think I'm more lie an inexperience experimenter, instead.
Here are some other brief tidbits from American Libraries
April 18 issue of PC Magazine has an article 11 Ways to Search Without Google, including Ms. Dewey. Check her out if you haven't seen her yet.
By the Numbers feature offers two interesting statistics for Academic Libraries.
1. 29% of U.S. homes are "without internet access [and] do not plan to get online in the next year, according to a Park Associates study." I think this is the study.
2. 1.1 million is the "number of pages of historical government documents, some more than a century old, removed from public view since the September 2001 attacks under the National Archives and Records Administration's 'records of concern' program." Here's a link to the original story.
3. Also a tip from Meredith Farkas to keep in mind as we pursue Library 2.0, "Avoid technolust." Basically, make sure you're not so excited about new technology that you use it just to use it. Make sure it's helping your library users and improving your library.
Posted by swortman at 03:30 PM | Comments (0)
June 15, 2007
Blog/Rss Workshop from MLibrary 2.0
Thursday, June 14 was the first workshop presented by MLibrary 2.0, Blogs & RSS. We talked about the definition of a blog, how you can subscribe to a blog, viewing blogs using Google Reader and created our own blogs (well, it was an experiment!).
Since I had already created or posted to a couple of Mblog blogs last year I knew how to create a blog. The tough part is not creating a blog, it's keeping the postings current and actually having something interesting to say so that people will listen to you. Unfortunately, the two that I had been working on last year sort of faded out. I still would like to create a diversity committee blog or a blog on topics related to academic diversity but haven't created it yet. Maybe I'll try to use Wordpress or Blogger instead of Mblog. I'm sick of the generic light blue/gray Mblog template and it's not very easy to change as far as I can tell.
The most helpful thing for me in the Blog/RSS workshop yesterday was getting more familiar with Google Reader. I have tried Bloglines but I filled it with too many feeds in my excitement and can't possibly read them all. I went to a Sage extension in Firefox which is very cool but is machine specific. Now I'm on to Google Reader and,so far so good.
I liked being able to slap up a quick page from Google Reader of feeds you started or shared but now I'm working on figuring out how to do it. I can't remember and it's not on the resources page. Could this be added to the resources for the Blogs session?
Posted by swortman at 10:09 AM | Comments (0)
June 11, 2007
Mom on Facebook
I feel a little like an intruder by joining Facebook. My daughter's friends are adding me to their list of friends but I'm not seeing anyone my age. I read a funny article from the NY Times about a mother joining Facebook, totally embarrassing her and making her feeling , “wayyy creepy.”
Luckily my daughters are no longer high schoolers, thinking that everything I DO is "wayyy creepy." Those days are gone, luckily. What might really creep them out is to have a bunch of librarians ask to be their friends so if your interested (I am so mean!) here they are K & J.
The Kept-Up Academic Librarian mentioned an interesting article from MSNBC about MySpace losing the high school student population to Facebook. I am not even going to attempt MySpace right now. Facebook is foreign enough for me!
Posted by swortman at 08:49 AM | Comments (0)
June 08, 2007
MLibrary 2.0 First Session
Okay, I just spent 15 minute writing something that just got deleted so I guess I'll start again. So much for the preview function!
I went to the first session of University of Michigan Library's MLibrary 2.0 events and it was fun. It's exciting to be able to see people I've read or heard about and get new ideas. Today was the kick-off event and we listened to Peter Morville, Mr. Ambient Findability, Kristin Antelman, Associate Director for the Digital Library of North Carolina State and Jessamyn West, of www.librarian.net fame.
Each one had good things to say and my reading list has now tripled, after all their references.
Everything is Miscellaneous by David Weinberger
UFOs (Ubiquitous Findable Objects) - by Peter Morville
The Inmates Are Running the Asylum: Why High Tech Products Drive Us Crazy and How to Restore the Sanity by Allen Cooper
A Manifesto for Networked Objects by Julian Bleecker
The Elements of User Experience by Jesse James Garrett
The Transparent Society by David Brin
Here are some random thoughts from my notes.
The word "usability" is overused. You need to include credibility, a belief in the information, usefulness, accessibilty, desireability and findability. These form a honeycomb, see the Semantic Studio blog for the description and diagram Peter Morville used.
Findability and credability are increasingly linked.
Ambient finability is the ability to find anyone or anything from anywhere at any time.
From Dilbert, "Information is gushing toward your barain like a firehose aimed at a teacup."
ambientdevices.com (there coming!)
You can track your children with a chip - the technology is available but how comfortable are we using it?
We need to create bigger needles for those bigger information haystacks.
Sites to check out:
Buzzillion.com
podzinger.com - a speech to text searching using speech recognition
delicious library (rat's it's Mac!)
findability.org
semanticsstudios.com/lemur.pdf (Morville's presentation)
vivisimo.com
Kristin Antelman talked about the library at NC State's experience with their new catalog along with other interesting catalogs and library sites, Plymouth State University Library, Seattle Public, Phoenix Public Library, UVa Library, Georgia Tech, University of Washington, which uses WorldCat Local.
She mentioned the Calhoun report, which lead me to an interesting article my Michigan's Karen Markey,The Online Catalog; Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained?, in the Jan/Feb 2007 issue of D-Lib Magazine
She mentioned the discussion group NGC4Lib - Next Generation Cataloging for Libraries
"Catalogers are feeling embattled," she says.
(What the heck is OWL, FOAF, SKOS, in my notes?)
Researchers want to see the lineage of publications, authors, clusters of knowledge. NCState's catalog doesn't do. Metasearching and Endeca is a big problem.
Jesssmyn West's presentation and handouts are available at http://www.librarian.net/talks/mlibrary/
She talked about Web 2.0/Library 2.0 as a service model which lets people drive. My concern is it lets SOME people drive but it's leaving other people farther and farther behind.
Random notes from JW talk,
"thingology"
digital natives vs digital immigrants - those born with this technology vs. us older folk who learned it later in life
Happy error messages on Flickr
Hard to get data from 2.0 apps
Everything is beta and will always be beta, since it's continually changing and never a finished product
Get rid of the fear of failure - experimenting is good w/ 2.0
Rutger's E-Z Borrow - ILL with a happy, user-friendly name.
10 no brainers for public libraries
Her talk was energetic and fun, if not in depth but I liked her attitude and spirit. The best thing I took away from it was her comment to jump in to technology or change with an Okay-who's-with-me attitude!
Posted by swortman at 09:38 PM | Comments (0)