libraria miscellanea

When will the madness end? Now the myspace buzz is out, facebook is in. I even saw a mashup [can't find it again!] that proclaimed facebook the genius brainchild of social networking systems, and myspace the red-headed step-child who scrubs the floors. Okay, maybe it wasn't really that bad, but it was pretty brutal. And I'm supposed to give a conference presentation about how helpful myspace can be for libraries? I'm going to have to dig pretty hard for that one. Yikes!

It seems that our MySpace page is becoming a success! Just the other day, I got an actual instant message from someone asking about our teen programming. Hurray! We started out getting a few friend requests per week, but now we are almost up to 100! Some of these are book authors, or musicians, folks soliciting business, but mostly they are real people. Using social networking sites, like Facebook and MySpace, have been really helpful means of getting information. For example, Stillwater Public Library is friends with local businesses, like Vault Video, a video store that is owned by a Stillwater community member and specializes in older titles. They post bulletins about upcoming sales and specials, which can then be passed on to other friends, and they pass it on, you get the idea. So, the passing of ideas on MySpace is a lot like word of mouth, which seems to be the way more and more people are getting information. At least that I have observed.

I created a generic myspace page for a public library as my final project in Doc Martens' LIS web class in Fall 2006. I also work as a reference librarian at a public library. My fellow librarian and comrade liked it, and thought he would show it to our library director, who also liked it, and asked me to tailor it to our library, Stillwater Public. I no longer have the beta-version available, but here is what the "finished" product looks like. Luckily for our library, we do not receive e-rate funding, so we do not have to block social networking and blogging websites, like other schools and libraries do. Patrons come to our library to access the internet and www.myspace.com, more specifically, because it's banned in so many places. I put up signs last week advertising that our library is now on myspace, and got a few extra friends requests. Hopefully, as word spreads, more people will be interested in joining our friends' list and getting all sorts of up ...

I really like the term "invisible web." It implies super powers, or something mystical. Certainly not what it really means, just parts of the internet that are not "publicly indexable," according to Ru and Horowitz in Indexing the Invisible Web . Information that is hidden, either because you have to pay to subscribe to it (from databases or journals) or url s that contain a ? (Ru and Horiwitz 250). So people who work on indexing and categorizing this hidden web- are they considered web 2.0 people, or is that encroaching on 2.5....or even 3.0? Library 2.o is a buzz word that has recently created a lot of hype on wikipedia; someone suggested getting rid of the term altogether. Why doesn't it deserve an entry, I wonder? Just because someone doesn't like it? Isn't that called censorship ? Most libraries are working to combat censorhip, so censoring the very term library 2.0 is pretty ironic, I think. According to Casey and Savastinuk in Library 2.0 , libra...

No, not Dr. Carter . According to Scott Nicholson in "Digital Library Archaeology: a conceptual framework for understanding library use through artifact-based evaluation" librarians have a thing or two to learn from archaeologists. I think all of us in the information field have a thing or two to learn about the way people search, and looking at another fields' examples certainly can't hurt. "Everyday people" don't go into a library thinking...now what keyword terms can I use to access this item...and oh, yes, I see a "see also" link here, so let me follow that to narrow down my search query... They can go to google and type in anything they want and get information online. AKA using natural language queries. So why can't library catalogs function this way? I understand we are working toward that, but it doesn't seem to me like information professionals are paying attention to what their users are telling them, either verbally or throug...

Reading electronic documents has been quite a challenge for me. I thought I had "issues" ...until I read the research from Ziming Liu, and it seems I am not in the minority. I had always used the internet for browsing, social networking, and searching, but not reading. Reading a book is a beloved activity, something you can do anywhere, from the comfort of your bed, curled up on the couch, sitting in a coffee shop, on a plane, with technology nigh required. In "Reading Behavior in the Digital Enviornment," Liu found that, over the last ten years, there is almost a 50% decrease in readers' attention span, and around 45% decrease for both in-depth reading and concentrated reading (p706, 2005). ! What? Is there a support group I can join? Joking aside, without the discipline that came with enrolling in a program that leans heavily on technology, I may never have really been comfortable reading much at all in an electronic format. And what a scary thing, to be le...

Is this librarian part of the Library 2.0 environment? I certainly don't see why not. According to Casey and Savastinuk, "even older, traditional services can be Library 2.0 if criteria are met" in their "Library 2.0" article from Library Journal in the September 1, 2006 issue . What is Library 2.0? "User centered-change" (2006). So that can include any services that help "create a customer-driven...enviornment" (2006). So, aside from a webpage, adding blogs, wikis, and even a myspace page could help get customers more involved in their community library would qualify. However, one challenge libraries are facing right now deals with censorship from the U.S. Government, and that challenge is legislation such as CIPA and DOPA . These bills, particularly DOPA, which is still awaiting approval to become law, would restrict libraries and schools that receive e-rate funding , to block any websites that allow chats, blogs, wikis, etc., targeted at...

Metadata is commonly defined as "data about data." This seemed like an esoteric term to me until I read two articles that helped clear things up a bit. Metadata is used in library settings as surrogate records, of sorts, so people can pull up the item in the catalog and view information about it without looking at the actual item. Very helpful! Electronic articles have metadata created for them so they can be searched for and downloaded using Ebsco or a similar database. Also very helpful! Internet information has Google to rank the information for us, using algorithms , not metadata. The algorithms search the entire piece of information, not just metadata tags, according to Dawson and Hamilton. They remind the reader that Lynch (2001) states that it is really easy to "manipulate the behavior of retrieval systems that use it, rather than simply describing the documents or other digital objects it may be associated with." Trolls are everywhere! I always wond...

Guinea pigs and digital libraries I love being a guinea pig for other people’s experiments. Especially the helpful ones. I have an on-again-off-again fascination with doing personality assessments, such as the Briggs-Meyers or the Kiersey temperament sorter (by the way, I’m an ENFJ and Counselor Idealist, respectively). (about five minutes later, I am back to writing and have just re-taken the Kiersey Temperament Sorter…) I just finished reading two articles about studying users in the digital library by Judy Jeng, and Ferreria and Pithan. Both state that user satisfaction is key to success in searching for information, ala Carol Kuhlthau , who was innovative in her research on this topic. Satisfaction in anything a person does plays a huge role in whether or not said tasks are accomplished, with what level of success, and what toll it takes on said person. But heck, this principle should be applied to all areas of life! I shall take this research to my boss...

I like Wikipedia ; "the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit," claims as listed on the homepage. If I have no idea what someone is talking about, such as a new "buzzword," I go immediately to wikipedia.org. Why? If it is happening now, especially if it's popular, there will be a wikipedia entry. Do I view it as the absolute source for information? Of course not. My seven-year-old neighbor could have written the entry. Or a tenured professor from Rutgers or Yale. I have no idea, but I do know that many people have checked it out, edited it, re-edited it, etc. and I will get a rough idea about what I need to know. According to Jaron Lanier, Edge writer and "digital visionary," this web entity is dangerous, just like Facism or "Maoism" (as the article title suggests, "Digital Maosim") because of the concept of what he calls the "hive mind." Think of bees, right? All these people out there in digital land are anony...

When I first tried to read the selections for the subject of this blog, I got weighted by all the research jargon. So I switched the order of the readings, and presto, I actually understood something. First impressions are important, no doubt about that. I hate to think that I'm going to meet someone for the first time on those days when I roll out of bed on those mornings which follow a night of over-indulgence: too bad. Sometimes a first impression is all you get. So, for a library to make a good one, especially to the online world, seems paramount to its' existence and flourishment. Lingaard, et al write that 50 milliseconds is all it takes for a web user to evalute the appeal of a web page in Attention Web Designers, (Lingaard 2006, 115). Apparently we are hard wired to respond emotionally much quicker than our ration works. I'm thinking of Ralph Kramden shouting, "One of these days!" or George Costanza yelling, "George is gettin' angry!"...

I am really glad I'm a week behind on blogging for class, actually. I read Gradmann's blog about our class blogs, and realized I had better do some more research to find out about these terms: FRBR, ontologies, semantic web, and the like. So in total, I actually read about 10 articles or websites to find enough info to read these! Metadata, the word and concept, was introduced to me in LIS 5033 with Drs. Martens and Kim, and I just found it hilariously nerdy (think Weird Al's White and Nerdy ). "Data about data," I believe was the definition given. Of course, after researching for 1.5 semesters, and especially after reading these articles by Gradmann and Mohamad, I understand and appreciate the importance of the study of data about data. What I found fascinating in Mohamad's report in the impact of metadata in web resources discovering is that with many search engines, tagging metadata doesn't make a big difference without knowing the algorithm that sear...

Bertot, Jaeger, Langa and McClure wrote this article about public access and internet in libraries, and how the federal government has "drafted" libraries to help the people without any compensation; monetary or otherwise. So essentially, libraries are getting dumped on by Big Brother and Uncle Sam, and especially so in times of crisis and natural disaster. Why? The geniuses at FEMA and DHS and all those other government agencies helping poor people have slowly been making their forms and information solely available online. Because people who can't afford to feed themselves probably have access to a computer. It just makes sense, right? WRONG. So, instead of creating offices to help these people use the computers to find the information, they direct the people to the nation's libraries. They are giving people references to the library but not giving libraries extra money, funding, or anything of the sort to help them out. They have shifted the burden of aiding the ...

Firstly, I should go ahead and say that I have held some unsavory ideas about gaming; whether it be internet or through a gaming station which is viewed on the television screen. I had an ex-husband who never wanted to be around people or do anything in his free time except to play video games, or "escape" into television or movies. I have also had other friends and those close to me become so involved in the "gaming" world that they neglected reality. As an educated, somewhat-intelligent person, I realize this is a huge bias, and I have worked really hard trying to overcome it, especially since I began my career in a world that needs to embrace technology, without bias. I also have a very good friend whose boyfriend is an avid gamer, and occasionally they try to convince me to play with them... I really did enjoy reading both of these articles, by Gee and Hinton. Both agree that gaming is more than just "fun" or "kids' stuff" and is successf...

Wikis have been sort of a mystery to me. I understand why the exist, that they allow users all the power for editing, contributing, etc. and that Wikipedia has caused a lot of controversy since its' beginning. I've used wikipedia when I couldn't find the answer in a more traditional resource, but if any other fact-checked resource is available, I use that first. I asked a professor friend of mine about wikipedia once, and she said she allows her undergraduates to use it, but not her graduate students. What? Huh? Why have different standards for students? Are undergraduates expected to be less intelligent automatically? Or is it that they aren't resourceful enough? Or possibly that they don't really care enough about the subject to be taken seriously? Hmm... Tom Cross' article "Puppy Smoothies: Improving the Reliability of Open, Collaborative Wikis" is totally fabulous. Not only does it have a catchy title, but it presents a great idea that ...

Last semester in 5033, part of our final essay assignment was to agree or disagree with Vaidhyanathan's excerpt we were given from his article "The Perfect Library" (which I totally screwed up, but really enjoyed, btw!). After reading the entire article for Dr. Martens' class this semester, it takes on a whole new meaning; which is that the flow of information is spurred on my libraries because they represent Enlightenment, and that corporations and others in power, albeit theocracies or monarchies, withold information to gain money and power. I wholeheartedly agree with these ideas. To paraphrase a quote from this article, a city that cares enough to establish and maintain libraries is a city that cares about enlightenment and public knowledge. Horray! Another topic Vaidhyanathan writes about which has bearing on intellectual freedom and flow of information is the 9/11 inspired USA Patriot Act. I have discussed the ramifications of the USA Patriot act with people ...