Friday, June 09, 2006
A Refresher in the Wisdom of Mr. Adams
In the midst of the great MySpace panic of 2006, I'd like to direct your attention to Douglas Adam's 1999 essay How To Stop Worrying a Learn to Love the Internet."
Thursday, June 08, 2006
Cuban Librarian Day and Musings on Virtual Reference
Today is Librarians in Cuba Day. Happy happy. I assume my blog readers are Google proficient enough to do some basic searches on the controversy surrounding Cuban librarians and the ALA's refusal/avoidance to take a stance on the issue.
But what I really came here to talk about are some assumptions IÂ’ve made while reading about virtual reference services:
1. Librarians want users to say "thank you"” and indicate when they are leaving the chat environment
Get used to chatting.. Perhaps find an option for archived chat so librarians and patrons can pick up where they left off if interrupted.
2. Librarians think video chat will improve service because they can read visual cues
I think this sounds too personal and librarians will have to deal with looking at exhibitionists too often.
My main thing is the librarians I've read about in the research studies need to GET OVER their fears of online chatting. Yeah it is imperfect, but millions of people are chatting away, loosing all ability to make eye contact and develop traditional social skills. Honestly, one paper I read made the assumption that a librarian would type about 20 words per minute. Who the hell works with computers and types 20 words per minute? If this is the truth, no wonder they are having problems with patrons leaving in the middle of the chat.
Marketing...I don'’t think many people know librarians are out there willing to help them online, and the research I've read confirms this. can you imagine if instead of cam girl spam you got a message that said "“Hey, this is Lisa the librarian at Your Library, if you need any help finding information, feel free to ask. Until then, add me to your buddy list so you don't forget I'm around, okay?"” However, maybe I am disconnected from the "screenagers" of today, librarians as "psycho killers". I think there is a healthy boundary here that teenagers do not want adults interfering with their online experiences, but something needs to be done to show people chat can be used for help beyond free peer to peer counseling.
Or libraries are still scared of chat rooms and providing a forum for people to meet around a common interest, but how cool would it be if you could log into a library chat room and have a book discussion with a librarian ANYTIME? 24/7 librarian mediated book talks? I love it. It seems like the focus on reference leaves out librarians that might be more comfortable talking about fiction. "Oh, I haven'’t read it, that sounds interesting?"” "“Would you like me to put in a purchase request for you?" "“We have a resource where you can find all the books in that series." A 24/7 book discussion group might get people more comfortable with using the library chat services for reference/information needs beyond entertainment.
My strangest fear when I first used virtual reference was wondering who was in the room. I assumed it was a chat room with other patrons milling about, people talking, the expert doing research but in a public forum. Not so, which certainly has its benefits and goes along with the libraries commitment to privacy, but I imagined it as "“hanging out" with librarians and patrons. In fact, somewhere in my reading librarians complained about patrons that wanted to chit chat online. Chit chat is how trust and relationships are established, and I know it is easy to enforce your boundaries online, but I think patrons WANT to know if you have a garden or a dog or kids if theyÂ’re asking for your help on those subjects. It helps the patron assess what vocabulary to use and what level of information you might be familiar with.
Confession, when I a’m at the reference desk and it is slow, I keep Gmail open and solicit reference questions from my friends via chat. I count that as library statistics too. We do book talks and reference questions, and I put items on hold for them too. I would love to have a Gmail account for library work, be very up front about the tradeoff between privacy and archiving, and use it for both professional networking and patron interactions.
But what I really came here to talk about are some assumptions IÂ’ve made while reading about virtual reference services:
1. Librarians want users to say "thank you"” and indicate when they are leaving the chat environment
Get used to chatting.. Perhaps find an option for archived chat so librarians and patrons can pick up where they left off if interrupted.
2. Librarians think video chat will improve service because they can read visual cues
I think this sounds too personal and librarians will have to deal with looking at exhibitionists too often.
My main thing is the librarians I've read about in the research studies need to GET OVER their fears of online chatting. Yeah it is imperfect, but millions of people are chatting away, loosing all ability to make eye contact and develop traditional social skills. Honestly, one paper I read made the assumption that a librarian would type about 20 words per minute. Who the hell works with computers and types 20 words per minute? If this is the truth, no wonder they are having problems with patrons leaving in the middle of the chat.
Marketing...I don'’t think many people know librarians are out there willing to help them online, and the research I've read confirms this. can you imagine if instead of cam girl spam you got a message that said "“Hey, this is Lisa the librarian at Your Library, if you need any help finding information, feel free to ask. Until then, add me to your buddy list so you don't forget I'm around, okay?"” However, maybe I am disconnected from the "screenagers" of today, librarians as "psycho killers". I think there is a healthy boundary here that teenagers do not want adults interfering with their online experiences, but something needs to be done to show people chat can be used for help beyond free peer to peer counseling.
Or libraries are still scared of chat rooms and providing a forum for people to meet around a common interest, but how cool would it be if you could log into a library chat room and have a book discussion with a librarian ANYTIME? 24/7 librarian mediated book talks? I love it. It seems like the focus on reference leaves out librarians that might be more comfortable talking about fiction. "Oh, I haven'’t read it, that sounds interesting?"” "“Would you like me to put in a purchase request for you?" "“We have a resource where you can find all the books in that series." A 24/7 book discussion group might get people more comfortable with using the library chat services for reference/information needs beyond entertainment.
My strangest fear when I first used virtual reference was wondering who was in the room. I assumed it was a chat room with other patrons milling about, people talking, the expert doing research but in a public forum. Not so, which certainly has its benefits and goes along with the libraries commitment to privacy, but I imagined it as "“hanging out" with librarians and patrons. In fact, somewhere in my reading librarians complained about patrons that wanted to chit chat online. Chit chat is how trust and relationships are established, and I know it is easy to enforce your boundaries online, but I think patrons WANT to know if you have a garden or a dog or kids if theyÂ’re asking for your help on those subjects. It helps the patron assess what vocabulary to use and what level of information you might be familiar with.
Confession, when I a’m at the reference desk and it is slow, I keep Gmail open and solicit reference questions from my friends via chat. I count that as library statistics too. We do book talks and reference questions, and I put items on hold for them too. I would love to have a Gmail account for library work, be very up front about the tradeoff between privacy and archiving, and use it for both professional networking and patron interactions.
Sunday, June 04, 2006
Directories
The homework, posted here with sassnotes:
Use the www.dmoz.com to find links to specialized search engines. Comment on the directories you found that are of interest to you?
I tried using the hierarchical structure but was not finding it helpful. I ended up using the search statement “search engines” to find 14 categories of search engines. Overall I did not find the Open Directory Project to be very useful. It has a limited number of recommended sites and does not seem to have a very active community contributing to the service, as evidenced by their postings for recruiting volunteers throughout the site.
For instance, I thought search engines might be found hierarchally under “computers”, eventually it was found, but only under computers:internet:searching:search engines (345)
Hiearchical searching is very limiting on the web, it may be useful to find keywords and refine searches, but to find “search engines” on the Open Directory Project was counterintuitive. This could be corrected by more variations in indexing.
also, misleading that some areas cited (0) results but if you click on the topic it provides results but does not explain that they are “near hits” (such as Top:Computers:Directories (0) but if you click on that it brings up other categories under computers.
I felt there was not enough explanation about the organization of the site, stuff was there, but not necessarily authorative based on recommendations from volunteer users. Endorsement by major internet service provider AOL was suspect as well, and I would like to have seen more disclosure on how and why they support the project.
I was pretty unimpressed with the “Awards” they’ve won.
comment: I felt like getting credit and taking a break from all this library related searching and do what I do best, find inconsistencies and inaccuracies in music databases. Oh man if they only paid to be an editor here, delicious and community tagging could save this, no one knows what version is going to take off and the problems of exporting and importing personal bookmarks.
I did find an interesting search engine blog called www.thesearchlounge.org through an interesting article “When Giant Directories Roamed the Earth” (http://www.searchlounge.org/?p=40) that discusses some of the limitations of volunteer indexing selling out to corporations and the challenge to create the most authoritive and useful search engine.
“It will be interesting for me to see if directories last as a useful research tool. Yahoo’s directory, once their crown jewel, now occupies a smidge of real estate towards the bottom of their homepage. There are other players popping up solely for the submission money, though just about all of them are so thin on content that one visit is plenty. Bookmarking services like del.icio.us and Furl are helping us dynamically learn about what people find interesting on the Web, yet there are issues with the free-wheeling and personalized metadata, or folksonomies, that users of these services employ. No one has invented the perfect, omniscient search tool yet. And ya know, I wouldn’t be surprised if the person who creates one gets their idea while in a directory.”
Yes.
Once upon a time I was known as MDVT79D
Perhaps it is a symptom of spending too much time around trendy people that I am always wondering if ideas are "the next big thing". I can dismiss some of this as trivial, such as debating whether the next pop culture meme is unicorns or ninjas (with the hipster in me knowing that as soon as the crap is on sale at Hot Topic it will reach a saturation point in mainstream culture within a year or two).
What happens when MySpace reaches this saturation point? How long will it take to not put the www before del.icio.us? Will anyone use it or will it be a friendster or bebo or come on, I still have a profile up at Makeoutclub!
So now, I wonder even more about the intersections of my personal and professional life. This is the end of privacy folks, and if I want to use del.icio.us to reccomend sites to my library school peers and instructors, I have to think twice about bookmarking the funny perverted furry story for everyone else's amusement. What else have I left laying around the web? If my 1992 posts from Prodigy BBS are ever recovered I've got a lot of embarassing teenage stuff to face up to (thank you mainstream media reports on cybersex for letting me find all those pervs, or letting them find me), but the documentation of my involvement and the evolution of the online NKOTB community would be incredible to examine (the networking, fan fiction, online identity, celebrity gossip, online sales etc.)
But that me has vanished from the internet (except when I invoke her, and maybe when I get around to scanning that fan fiction).
However, I am living here for a while:
http://del.icio.us/agentramona
Use the www.dmoz.com to find links to specialized search engines. Comment on the directories you found that are of interest to you?
I tried using the hierarchical structure but was not finding it helpful. I ended up using the search statement “search engines” to find 14 categories of search engines. Overall I did not find the Open Directory Project to be very useful. It has a limited number of recommended sites and does not seem to have a very active community contributing to the service, as evidenced by their postings for recruiting volunteers throughout the site.
For instance, I thought search engines might be found hierarchally under “computers”, eventually it was found, but only under computers:internet:searching:search engines (345)
Hiearchical searching is very limiting on the web, it may be useful to find keywords and refine searches, but to find “search engines” on the Open Directory Project was counterintuitive. This could be corrected by more variations in indexing.
also, misleading that some areas cited (0) results but if you click on the topic it provides results but does not explain that they are “near hits” (such as Top:Computers:Directories (0) but if you click on that it brings up other categories under computers.
I felt there was not enough explanation about the organization of the site, stuff was there, but not necessarily authorative based on recommendations from volunteer users. Endorsement by major internet service provider AOL was suspect as well, and I would like to have seen more disclosure on how and why they support the project.
I was pretty unimpressed with the “Awards” they’ve won.
comment: I felt like getting credit and taking a break from all this library related searching and do what I do best, find inconsistencies and inaccuracies in music databases. Oh man if they only paid to be an editor here, delicious and community tagging could save this, no one knows what version is going to take off and the problems of exporting and importing personal bookmarks.
I did find an interesting search engine blog called www.thesearchlounge.org through an interesting article “When Giant Directories Roamed the Earth” (http://www.searchlounge.org/?p=40) that discusses some of the limitations of volunteer indexing selling out to corporations and the challenge to create the most authoritive and useful search engine.
“It will be interesting for me to see if directories last as a useful research tool. Yahoo’s directory, once their crown jewel, now occupies a smidge of real estate towards the bottom of their homepage. There are other players popping up solely for the submission money, though just about all of them are so thin on content that one visit is plenty. Bookmarking services like del.icio.us and Furl are helping us dynamically learn about what people find interesting on the Web, yet there are issues with the free-wheeling and personalized metadata, or folksonomies, that users of these services employ. No one has invented the perfect, omniscient search tool yet. And ya know, I wouldn’t be surprised if the person who creates one gets their idea while in a directory.”
Yes.
Once upon a time I was known as MDVT79D
Perhaps it is a symptom of spending too much time around trendy people that I am always wondering if ideas are "the next big thing". I can dismiss some of this as trivial, such as debating whether the next pop culture meme is unicorns or ninjas (with the hipster in me knowing that as soon as the crap is on sale at Hot Topic it will reach a saturation point in mainstream culture within a year or two).
What happens when MySpace reaches this saturation point? How long will it take to not put the www before del.icio.us? Will anyone use it or will it be a friendster or bebo or come on, I still have a profile up at Makeoutclub!
So now, I wonder even more about the intersections of my personal and professional life. This is the end of privacy folks, and if I want to use del.icio.us to reccomend sites to my library school peers and instructors, I have to think twice about bookmarking the funny perverted furry story for everyone else's amusement. What else have I left laying around the web? If my 1992 posts from Prodigy BBS are ever recovered I've got a lot of embarassing teenage stuff to face up to (thank you mainstream media reports on cybersex for letting me find all those pervs, or letting them find me), but the documentation of my involvement and the evolution of the online NKOTB community would be incredible to examine (the networking, fan fiction, online identity, celebrity gossip, online sales etc.)
But that me has vanished from the internet (except when I invoke her, and maybe when I get around to scanning that fan fiction).
However, I am living here for a while:
http://del.icio.us/agentramona
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