Is there a role for our library in regards to answer boards? Certainly. Any activity that involves the conveyance and distillation of information is pertinent to librarians. The question though is how do we find the time and resources to do so? It would be nice for librarians to spend their time on these boards, but the library's main clients must come first. Perhaps it is an opportunity for library staff to spend some of their own time in answering these questions, but make it clear as they do so that more information can be gained by visiting the library itself (or its website). I would love to see librarians rostered to answering these questions, if we had the time to do so. Perhaps the library could even set up something like this on its own site. Not just simply talking to a librarian online, but allowing for other clients to suggest answers and material.
The questions that are asked are of course interesting in themselves. Many of the questions asked seem to be factual requests. The fact that they are asked shows that not everyone knows how to retrieve information and that not everything can be easily found on Google (yes, it means we are still relevant). I'm not sure however, of our professional capacity to answer the questions posed in the relationships section Of Yahoo Answers.
Opening up our catalogue to our clients is a fantastic idea (with some moderation). I'm a big fan. Our clients, being the end users of the material, are the ones most likely to be able to evaluate an item's usefulness. For students, largely using the same material from year to year, their own comments on collection material would undoubtedly be of use to others in the same subject areas. If we could couple these features with online item requests, we could even offer similar services to sites such as Amazon - "others who used this item also requested ...". Structured subject headings and access points are great for grouping together obviously similar items, but they don't easily allow for such lateral connections between collection items, which are often highly useful.
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
Monday, July 28, 2008
Libratithing
Aha, now here are some things that I'm excited about. Technorati is a lot of fun. This, for me, is a site where you can go never knowing what you might stumble across. Its the sort of site where you could spend days just wandering around and seeing whose opinion you can most disagree with (or agree with, whatever takes your fancy). Its good to have a spot to go to where you can just focus on perusing blogs.
LibraryThing as well is one that I really like. I have to admit, I'm the sort of person who tends to judge people by their book collections, and what better way to do this than by using LibraryThing! But seriously, this is a great site for finding new literature and material that you might find interesting (its also a lot better constructed than Delicious). None of the features are really new - its basically a combination between Amazon and any library catalogue you care to mention. But the great thing is getting to see which books are liked by people with similar taste. Quite frankly, this is a far better way of picking something to read than by making use of published book reviews. The State Library of Tasmania integrates LibraryThing with its catalogue, and I think it works really well.
LibraryThing as well is one that I really like. I have to admit, I'm the sort of person who tends to judge people by their book collections, and what better way to do this than by using LibraryThing! But seriously, this is a great site for finding new literature and material that you might find interesting (its also a lot better constructed than Delicious). None of the features are really new - its basically a combination between Amazon and any library catalogue you care to mention. But the great thing is getting to see which books are liked by people with similar taste. Quite frankly, this is a far better way of picking something to read than by making use of published book reviews. The State Library of Tasmania integrates LibraryThing with its catalogue, and I think it works really well.
Cuil
Has anybody else made use of Cuil yet? Launched this week, and meant to have greater web reach than Google. I've tried it for a few things and it seems ok - for simple searches anyway. There doesn't seem to be any option for advanced searches though. Either you have to know how to make complicated search queries, or you're stuck making dirty searches.
I just like the format. A lot easier to peruse results than Google. I have to admit that when trying to think of something to search for at first, I tried my own name. Very shallow of me (is it a good thing or a bad thing if very little comes up?). Which raises the question: is it still googling yourself if you're not using Google?
I just like the format. A lot easier to peruse results than Google. I have to admit that when trying to think of something to search for at first, I tried my own name. Very shallow of me (is it a good thing or a bad thing if very little comes up?). Which raises the question: is it still googling yourself if you're not using Google?
Not so tasty
Ok, I'm back from my wonderful adventures through the looking glass (wait, that might have been someone else) ...
Anyway, straight into it. I have to admit I'm not a big fan of Delicious (I know, I'm forgoing the full stops). Not to say that it doesn't have its uses, just that it doesn't suit me in particular. I don't use multiple computers, so I don't need to have a central point for my favourites. The format and layout also tends to annoy me. Maybe its my profession speaking, but a collection of links that - on first glance - lacks any organisation or coherence tends to make me automatically ignore them. Clouds can be useful, but only up to a point. They can often get out of control, so that looking through them is akin to putting your hand in a lucky dip. And don't get me started on the illegibility of blue text and pink highlighting.
Well, that's the negatives out of the way. "But, Hellene, didn't you like anything?" I hear you say. Yes, actually. Delicious does have its uses. Mainly this is that it allows you to point out sites that others may find useful from a particular perspective through the use of tags. Personally, I like the idea of free association tags. Unlike things like LCSH, tags utilise language actually in use. They allow for the use of slang, colloquialisms, abbreviations etc. that people actually search by - no matter how much we tell them not to.
From a personal perspective, its good to type in a few terms to find random sites that others with similar interests liked. But it must be remembered that what you find is just that - random. This is not an authoritative search of the interweb, but a search of what people like.
Obviously this is good for librarians who wish to make links that they found useful available to others (possibly for clients to add links as well). My own preference though would be to amalgamate all the links for NSW public libraries into one account, so that there is less duplication. The links that one library is likely to find useful will undoubtedly be found useful by other libraries.
Anyway, that's my rather incoherent two cents.
Anyway, straight into it. I have to admit I'm not a big fan of Delicious (I know, I'm forgoing the full stops). Not to say that it doesn't have its uses, just that it doesn't suit me in particular. I don't use multiple computers, so I don't need to have a central point for my favourites. The format and layout also tends to annoy me. Maybe its my profession speaking, but a collection of links that - on first glance - lacks any organisation or coherence tends to make me automatically ignore them. Clouds can be useful, but only up to a point. They can often get out of control, so that looking through them is akin to putting your hand in a lucky dip. And don't get me started on the illegibility of blue text and pink highlighting.
Well, that's the negatives out of the way. "But, Hellene, didn't you like anything?" I hear you say. Yes, actually. Delicious does have its uses. Mainly this is that it allows you to point out sites that others may find useful from a particular perspective through the use of tags. Personally, I like the idea of free association tags. Unlike things like LCSH, tags utilise language actually in use. They allow for the use of slang, colloquialisms, abbreviations etc. that people actually search by - no matter how much we tell them not to.
From a personal perspective, its good to type in a few terms to find random sites that others with similar interests liked. But it must be remembered that what you find is just that - random. This is not an authoritative search of the interweb, but a search of what people like.
Obviously this is good for librarians who wish to make links that they found useful available to others (possibly for clients to add links as well). My own preference though would be to amalgamate all the links for NSW public libraries into one account, so that there is less duplication. The links that one library is likely to find useful will undoubtedly be found useful by other libraries.
Anyway, that's my rather incoherent two cents.
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