Whilst I completely see the point of this tool for storing bookmarks within the 'cloud' itself (who hasn't had a computer die on them and all their bookmarks gone with it), I think it would take me less time to reassemble my bookmarks in their file hierarchy on a new machine than it would to store them all on Delicious. Whilst I acknowledge that the problem would eventually happen again, it is a question of time management. If there were 40 hours in each day, I would gladly spend more of them playing with Delicious. I think it is a very interesting and useful tool. Yet, once I start exploring it, I find so many aspects of it so interesting that I find myself getting so lost in exploring other people's bookmarks that Ihave no time left for anything else!
Perhaps when I next have a block of free time, I will come back and explore this Thing further. For now, let me say that I am in awe of the libraries using Delicious so efficiently and do definitely see the potential for this tool. The sheer vastness of information and the potential for organisation will need to be delved into at some future point.
Friday, 9 July 2010
Tuesday, 6 July 2010
Thing 11 - Slideshare
I used Slideshare for the first time recently, in fact to link a powerpoint presentation to a previous blog post about tagging. I found it extremely useful and a convenient way of sharing information across the web. This way of working, being able to store documents and information on the web itself, is becoming more popular. It frees the individual from the machine. It also raises questions about copyright, control of one's own information, and other legal issues. I was pleased to see a variety of privacy settings on slideshare. Very impressive.
There are so many interesting presentations on Slideshare which makes it a fantastic resource for catching up on conferences and other events as well as being a useful place to store information. Libraries could for example put their induction presentations onto Slideshare and point to it in a link on the 'help' section of the website and via Twitter. A very interesting resource overall with many creative applications within the library setting.
There are so many interesting presentations on Slideshare which makes it a fantastic resource for catching up on conferences and other events as well as being a useful place to store information. Libraries could for example put their induction presentations onto Slideshare and point to it in a link on the 'help' section of the website and via Twitter. A very interesting resource overall with many creative applications within the library setting.
Tuesday, 22 June 2010
Thing 10: Using Images
Copyright and use of someone else's images are extremely important topics and should be at the forefront of our minds as information professionals when we are searching for promotional images (indeed, any type of image) online.
I was aware that Flickr had some provision for this but I have welcomed this opportunity to explore the search options and only search across creative commons licensed material. A search for 'librarian' retrieved a very interesting data set (not least of all the librarian costume!) A search for 'personal libraries' revealed this gem taken by vieux bandit:
The potential for using images is high. The library Twitter feed and Facebook account both need images of the library. People are becoming much more visual; the little bird and the shadow man just won't cut it anymore. To have a strong online presence, one that is viewed by people other than close colleagues, there needs to be a strong sense of identity. This can be achieved through use of images within social media networks. I'll definitely be playing with this tool in the future!
I was aware that Flickr had some provision for this but I have welcomed this opportunity to explore the search options and only search across creative commons licensed material. A search for 'librarian' retrieved a very interesting data set (not least of all the librarian costume!) A search for 'personal libraries' revealed this gem taken by vieux bandit:
The potential for using images is high. The library Twitter feed and Facebook account both need images of the library. People are becoming much more visual; the little bird and the shadow man just won't cut it anymore. To have a strong online presence, one that is viewed by people other than close colleagues, there needs to be a strong sense of identity. This can be achieved through use of images within social media networks. I'll definitely be playing with this tool in the future!
Monday, 21 June 2010
Flickr
Flickr.com serves the dual function of allowing people to search for images and to upload their own images onto the platform. Both of these functions are very useful.
The ability to store information on the web itself - cloud computing if you will - allows us to be free from the machine and the dread of misplacing the usb. The images are stored within Flickr itself, reachable from any pc. I personally uploaded my pictures from a road trip through Germany last year and created a photostream to email to friends and family. As a personal organisation tool, this is fantastic. And Flickr lets you tag your images to produce even more semantic links between your images and the images of different users.
Flickr is a database of images and as such it is a great place to look for images of specific things. Logically, if I am looking for specific images or images about specific things, then other people are too. Flickr is a place where people go to look for images. If someone has heard something about your library, they are as likely to look on Flickr for images as they are to Google it. Therefore, Flickr has great marketing potential for the library. Imagine creating a photostream and then pasting that url on the library's Facebook page or tweeting it out to your followers. The possibilities are endless!
The ability to store information on the web itself - cloud computing if you will - allows us to be free from the machine and the dread of misplacing the usb. The images are stored within Flickr itself, reachable from any pc. I personally uploaded my pictures from a road trip through Germany last year and created a photostream to email to friends and family. As a personal organisation tool, this is fantastic. And Flickr lets you tag your images to produce even more semantic links between your images and the images of different users.
Flickr is a database of images and as such it is a great place to look for images of specific things. Logically, if I am looking for specific images or images about specific things, then other people are too. Flickr is a place where people go to look for images. If someone has heard something about your library, they are as likely to look on Flickr for images as they are to Google it. Therefore, Flickr has great marketing potential for the library. Imagine creating a photostream and then pasting that url on the library's Facebook page or tweeting it out to your followers. The possibilities are endless!
Tuesday, 15 June 2010
Thing 8 (or should that be #Thing8): Tagging.
The concept of tagging provokes two responses in librarians, often simultaneously: excited joy and abject fear. Joy at the concept of user participation encouraging the semantic relevance of data and fear that allowing users to control the process of subject analysis via uncontrolled keywords is the quickest route to information anarchy in history. I gave a paper on this very topic at the Cataloguing and Indexing group's annual conference 2008.
The conclusion to which I came was that there is a place for both types of information organisation: controlled vocabularies to promote sturctured subject analysis and keyword tagging. The problems with tags are numerous and have already been discussed at length: they use natural language with no cross references, homonyms lead to misguided searching (try searching for Turkey - bird or country?) and differences in spelling within a language across countries is not cross referenced with each variant. No one tells people whether to use china or China when talking about the country, even though in the physical world the initial letter should be capitalised. This leads to vast amounts of relevant information potentially not being retrieved. The worst problem of all concerns the motivation behind tagging: a great majority of web users tag primarily for their own information organisational needs and not to provide subject analysis for others. A cursory glance at a book on Librarything.com tells us that tags are used for the reader/owner's benefit as well as to analyse the subject of the book.
I personally use 'read 2009' and 'tbr' as tags to track my own reading habits. Other users can ignore this but it does provide another dimension to tagging. People also rely on the cconsistency of taggers; often this doesn't happen and the same concept ends up being represented in multiple ways.
Does this matter? Isn't there an interest there for researchers to look at how different people semantically translate a book's concepts? One woman's comedy might be another's tragedy. It is interesting to search on tags across the whole librarything catalogue. Which books are mostly 'unread'? Which books are in everyone's 'to be read' pile? Isn't it fascinating to see the size of the tag words change depending on how many people have used them? The wisdom of the crowd is a phenomena that can and does often work. The trick is to get as many people as possible tagging. Although this might sound like I am encouraging the data anarchy, somehow it seems to be that from the uncontrolled comes forth a consensus. Not a controlled vocabulary per se, but some form of organisation. If a book or a blog mostly uses certain tags, others are often encouraged to use tags that are already there. Whether or not this actually destroys the concept of tagging as an uncontrolled force is another debate!
I am interested in the use of tagging within the library catalogue. Don't recoil in horror! I have been a cataloguer and am very aware of the need for a controlled backbone of structured vocabulary with inbuilt semantic meaning and cross references. LCSH should not be replaced. I am proposing another type of subject analysis running parallel with the catalogue records. This library's catalogue is an inspired model whereby user's tags run parallel to catalogue records. The tags do not come into contact at all with the actual MARC21 coding. The tags are stored separately and are dynamically loaded together. It is a radical step to take, to be sure, but the possibilities are endless. The name of the paper could be added as a tag to books on current reading lists. Finding information would become that bit more flexible for our users without losing any of the important work done behind the scenes by LCSH. It is certainly something to ponder. Anyway, back to Librarians who Librarything...
The conclusion to which I came was that there is a place for both types of information organisation: controlled vocabularies to promote sturctured subject analysis and keyword tagging. The problems with tags are numerous and have already been discussed at length: they use natural language with no cross references, homonyms lead to misguided searching (try searching for Turkey - bird or country?) and differences in spelling within a language across countries is not cross referenced with each variant. No one tells people whether to use china or China when talking about the country, even though in the physical world the initial letter should be capitalised. This leads to vast amounts of relevant information potentially not being retrieved. The worst problem of all concerns the motivation behind tagging: a great majority of web users tag primarily for their own information organisational needs and not to provide subject analysis for others. A cursory glance at a book on Librarything.com tells us that tags are used for the reader/owner's benefit as well as to analyse the subject of the book.
I personally use 'read 2009' and 'tbr' as tags to track my own reading habits. Other users can ignore this but it does provide another dimension to tagging. People also rely on the cconsistency of taggers; often this doesn't happen and the same concept ends up being represented in multiple ways.
Does this matter? Isn't there an interest there for researchers to look at how different people semantically translate a book's concepts? One woman's comedy might be another's tragedy. It is interesting to search on tags across the whole librarything catalogue. Which books are mostly 'unread'? Which books are in everyone's 'to be read' pile? Isn't it fascinating to see the size of the tag words change depending on how many people have used them? The wisdom of the crowd is a phenomena that can and does often work. The trick is to get as many people as possible tagging. Although this might sound like I am encouraging the data anarchy, somehow it seems to be that from the uncontrolled comes forth a consensus. Not a controlled vocabulary per se, but some form of organisation. If a book or a blog mostly uses certain tags, others are often encouraged to use tags that are already there. Whether or not this actually destroys the concept of tagging as an uncontrolled force is another debate!
I am interested in the use of tagging within the library catalogue. Don't recoil in horror! I have been a cataloguer and am very aware of the need for a controlled backbone of structured vocabulary with inbuilt semantic meaning and cross references. LCSH should not be replaced. I am proposing another type of subject analysis running parallel with the catalogue records. This library's catalogue is an inspired model whereby user's tags run parallel to catalogue records. The tags do not come into contact at all with the actual MARC21 coding. The tags are stored separately and are dynamically loaded together. It is a radical step to take, to be sure, but the possibilities are endless. The name of the paper could be added as a tag to books on current reading lists. Finding information would become that bit more flexible for our users without losing any of the important work done behind the scenes by LCSH. It is certainly something to ponder. Anyway, back to Librarians who Librarything...
Monday, 14 June 2010
Thing 7: Twitter
Well, I have always been in favour of Twitter and am delighted to be back in fairly safe territory with Thing 7! I recently blogged about the merits of twitter here. It is an inspired solution to keeping current within the profession. It enables us to follow debates, trend topics, and take the power of information dissemination into our own hands. Of course, there are people who insist on micro-blogging about every micro-aspect of their life. As in real life, these people are best avoided (psst: just don't follow them!) Selectivity is the key. That, and deciding how you're going to use Twitter.
There are quite a few libraries on Twitter who use the tool to push information out to their users, both information specific to that library and often information about the interests of the readership in general. It is an immediate and current way to connect with our users. A change in opening hours at short notice, for example, is pushed out to users as quickly as possible. However, that relies on users 'following' the library. Because not everyone will want to do this, we cannot disperse with other methods of information dissemination. No one is saying that we shouldn't put notices up or update the library website homepage. Twitter is just another channel.
On a professional peer to peer level, I find Twitter invaluable. I would miss so many interesting facets of our profession and current debates without this tool. Twitter brings attention to projects and current events; one only has to look at the amount of Tweets containing the #cam23 tag to see how much interest we're generating!
There are quite a few libraries on Twitter who use the tool to push information out to their users, both information specific to that library and often information about the interests of the readership in general. It is an immediate and current way to connect with our users. A change in opening hours at short notice, for example, is pushed out to users as quickly as possible. However, that relies on users 'following' the library. Because not everyone will want to do this, we cannot disperse with other methods of information dissemination. No one is saying that we shouldn't put notices up or update the library website homepage. Twitter is just another channel.
On a professional peer to peer level, I find Twitter invaluable. I would miss so many interesting facets of our profession and current debates without this tool. Twitter brings attention to projects and current events; one only has to look at the amount of Tweets containing the #cam23 tag to see how much interest we're generating!
Thing 6
I admit, I have never been a big fan of electronic calendars. I find that, by the time I've written all my appointments onto it, I'm late for wherever I'm going! However, in the spirit of Cam 23 I added my shiny new (and rather empty) google calendar onto my igoogle page.
I then diligently added my appointments for that week. And promptly forgot about looking at the calendar again until today's new 'thing' reminded me to blog about it. The truth is that I like my physical diary. I carry it with me, it sits in my office. It's always there if I need to pop something in quickly. It's hard enough to keep up to date with one calendar, I really can't manage an electronic one as well.
A few years ago, I worked in a place that utilised shared outlook calendars for booking meetings and arranging the use of various rooms by multiple sets of people. The electronic setup of the calendars were ideal for this sort of use. It was easy to use and avoided double bookings. It also allowed other people to see when colleagues were busy.
Whilst I can see potential for this tool, I won't be embracing this particular Thing after this programme. I find it hard enough to manage one calendar!
I then diligently added my appointments for that week. And promptly forgot about looking at the calendar again until today's new 'thing' reminded me to blog about it. The truth is that I like my physical diary. I carry it with me, it sits in my office. It's always there if I need to pop something in quickly. It's hard enough to keep up to date with one calendar, I really can't manage an electronic one as well.
A few years ago, I worked in a place that utilised shared outlook calendars for booking meetings and arranging the use of various rooms by multiple sets of people. The electronic setup of the calendars were ideal for this sort of use. It was easy to use and avoided double bookings. It also allowed other people to see when colleagues were busy.
Whilst I can see potential for this tool, I won't be embracing this particular Thing after this programme. I find it hard enough to manage one calendar!
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