Babies are not only the funniest creatures in the world, they are also under the impression that everything else is just as funny as they are.



This is a lesson for all of us bothered with spending too much money on gifts...

Labels: funny

The Shifted Librarian and "Visiting the Most Modern Library in the World".

Excellent entry about a fascinating new library in Delft, Holland. It sounds like the Ontario Science Centre of libraries! But it's not called a library. It's not called the Delft Public Library. As 'the shifted librarian' says,

"it just goes by the name 'DOK' and the sign on the door says it's a 'library concept center.' The staff did this on purpose to get away from the traditional stereotypes of the public library, because the institution they’ve created is about as far away as you can get from the connotation of a 1950s building, filled with quiet people, all of them sitting alone, in a relatively dreary building, being shushed by an old lady with a bun."

As I mention in the comment on the entry's page, how can this stereotype that follows librarianship around EVER be shaken off, if every time we do, we call it something different?!? When do we give the public a chance to go, "Wow! That's a library (or librarian)? There must be more to them than what I had originally thought!" Ok, that might be a little naive, but it certainly won't happen if we keep doing things they don't expect and then tell them that it's something different so they can go on expecting the same old same old from us the next time.

Notes from the Web 2.you workshop (February 15, 2008, at McGill University, Montreal) session called "Is Boolean Dead? Research and the New Web" 1 hour presentation by Rajiv Johal and Beth Dunning, Librarians, Howard Ross Library of Management, McGill University.

Having driven from Kingston and not accounting enough for the traffic in Montreal, I was late for this presentation by a few minutes so I missed the opening statements but was flung fully into the meat of the presentation without any preamble.

The question was asked, "What is Search 2.0?" There is no clear definition for this concept but it does include the increasingly popular use of facets and tags, and is emphatically not Boolean. Some examples of public search engines illustrated this 2.0 idea are:

• the child focussed, visually appealing search engine RedZee [redzee.com],
• the guided search engine ChaCha [chacha.com], and
• Rollyo [rollyo.com] which allows you to choose or create a tool that searches only a certain set of sites.
  

The open source ILS movement is also including some very 2.0 concepts:

• Fish4info [fish4info.org] is an example of a user-friendly interface for your OPAC/ILS created with the CMS Drupal; and
• Evergreen [open-ils.org], which is quite popular in the US, is a full OPAC/ILS product with facets, reviews, and no Boolean.
  

In many of these tools, although Boolean operators are not used or not recognized in the default or basic searches, very often there is still the option to be able to use it. It just remains hidden to the user who may be confused or ignorant about Boolean techniques.

Increasingly, vendor solutions are also integrating some of the Search 2.0 preferences, whether as full products or “middleware”, pieces you can simply add to your current system. And example is Aquabrowser’s tag cloud (note: the tag cloud is frequently on the left of the screen because research has shown that that is where average users tend to look first), used at the University of Chicago’s library catalog option “Lens” [lens.lib.uchicago.edu]. When trying to determine whether this technology was a useful addition to their catalog, the U of C found that upwards of 9 out of 10 students (even Masters and PhD students) improve their search results with access to the tag cloud. (I’m not sure that the survey really shows that it is a good tool: it could just be that generally people are really bad searchers and that any tool would improve things. Searching problems are very often a matter of lack of a clear process not always lack of synonyms or proper terms.) U of C is still maintaining their original catalog interface (sans tag cloud) so that all the usual functionality can still be used included Boolean searching.

At this point, an audience member asked about about the existence of tools that enabled virtual browsing of the shelf but the presenters were not aware of any such tools.

Citation and other research databases were also entering into the Search 2.0 ring. For example Factiva Search 2.0 ( a business news database) does not translate “and” or “or” into the Boolean functions but rather includes them as any other keyword in the search because AND or OR could be a company’s ticker code or part of one. When searching using a term that the tool recognizes as a company’s ticker, it breaks this option out to link to the company’s homepage or related news, and it includes a multimedia search in the platform as well.

Another question from the audience concerned the existence of recommender-type tools in use in any of these tools. Apparently McMaster University Library is testing this functionality.

Another vendor jumping on the Search 2.0 bandwagon is EBSCO with their Visual Search. This uses indexing to create a visual interface to explore articles but, just like the other tools, it really only helps with browsing as opposed to performing comprehensive searches.

The important points to take away from this session were summarized as:

• Boolean searching is not dead but rather hidden from the average user; and
  
• Search 2.0 is here to stay, being about what users want. Try implementing some of the ideas in some small way.
  

After-session comments from the audience:

• Consider a search tool used by Walmart called Endeca [endeca.com].
• What would you do first? Remove the necessity to search with Boolean operators and include a spell check feature. The term “fuzzy searching” was used to describe these kinds of functions.
• Consider the tension between teaching users how to search and making it easier for the users to search.
  

Labels: internet, librarianship

The Readius! Woah. Just play the video below to see this new product with a thin rollable, bendable screen in action. As I've read in a bunch of different places, this certainly seems like the technology to completely revolutionize the whole e-reading and handheld computing and communication industry. There's all sorts of talk about how the Readius can access not only ebooks but newspapers and other text sources all wirelessly and "seamlessly" but in my opinion, just the availability of a flexible computing surface like this is a huge step in getting more electronic "power" into small portable devices. Pretty cool.

Labels: reading, thoughts

LibVibe for 28 February 2008: Listen to this library newscast and pull your hair out over library administrators saying that fewer librarians is the way of the future!

(BTW... I just now found out about LibVibe. A library news podcast. Sweet! I added you to my bloglines, LibVibe!)

PubMed Search Facebook App(s) NOW Available: There are now two little widgetey things you can put on your facebook profile that'll allow you to search PubMed from there. I put the one named "PubMed Search" on there (due to its use of the logo, but despite the other's clever name of "Pubface") even though I can't possible foresee me actually searching PubMed from there. I mean, I have access to Ovid Medline - same database, better control - and the url for PubMed is not hard to remember (pubmed.gov). But it makes me cool so how can I resist... it makes me cool, right? Right?

Librarians demoted - Move dictated by budget, customers' needs, director says from the Wauau Daily Herald in Wisconsin, US: 4 senior level librarian positions replaced with lower level positions, with, of course, less pay.

This happens entirely too often, and not in just the library world of course. The problem is that, especially with librarians, after the staffing and budget change, those involved work even harder to try to make sure that service continues as it had before. Very often service quality (and quantity) is reduced but the reduction is focussed in an area that will get the least amount of complaints. All this does is show those who initiated the staff and budget cuts that they made a good choice and that maybe even more cuts should be made.

The really unfortunate thing is the justification given sometimes for cuts like these: "Librarians today do less complex work" said the director of this particular library. Hardly. What with the constantly growing number of resources, many of which are not so trustworthy, and the increased reliance the public has on good information sources, our job could not be more complex at this time. Not only that, but part of our job is now constantly defending good resources and tools against the public and administrators who think that ease of use is the most important quality an information source should have: "I don't have time to actually look up the answer to my important question, so I'll just take the advice that this match book is giving me!"

As a profession, librarians need to focus on making it clear to the government, to educational institutions, and to our customers that accurate information searching is worth a little extra work, and certainly worth the salary of the person who can do that extra work for you.

NASA Beams Beatles' "Across the Universe" Into Space. Sweet. Not really a surprise though. I mean, who else are they gonna choose really? Rolling Stones? Madonna? Elvis? No offense but we want to make a good impression to the rest of the universe. lol

And it really shows the average age of those in charge over there!

Of course, the whole world has been transmitting all our music (and speeches and tv and radio talk shows and news and cell phone conversations and CB radio conversations, etc) all across the universe for years. That's kinda the point of all these transmissions we send to ourselves... they point everywhere pretty much, even into space. I guess it's nice to send a slightly more cleaned up signal once in a while.

[From Information isn't reserved for books by Houston Chronicle's Carolyn Feibel.]

Another good example of the "we're not all old spinsters with horn-rimmed glasses and tight hair buns" style of librarian related news piece. In fact, it quotes a past president of ALA as saying:

librarians are subject to outdated stereotypes: "fusty, bookish, sensible shoes, eyeglasses and not particularly friendly. We're really the polar opposite of that right now."

Good point, but it makes me think, "So what is the polar opposite of 'bookish, sensible shoes, [and] eyeglasses'?" Sports-loving, Reebok-wearing, and sans glasses? That's not me. I read. I wear Doc Martens (VERY comfortable and the style I wear looks business-ey). I wear glasses. And trust me, there are still several of the stereotypes walking around. Just like any profession, most of us don't fit the typical image but we're not the furthest thing from it.

And I was always confused about librarians being seen as not friendly. Yeah, the clerks behind the circulation desk are often grouchy... try their job for a day and try not being grouchy. But librarians HAVE to be comfortable with people. That's pretty much all we do: connect people with information. Without people, we'd have nothing to do!

Later in the article, the director of Houston Public Library is quoted as saying, "You can take your coffee around the library, and nobody's going to tell you to be quiet." I don't know about you but it's still possible to be loud enough for you to be disturbing those around you, even the ones working in groups. But she's right in saying that libraries have to stop being just the building with the books. IN-FORM-ATION. That's what we're about. Remember it, kids. Write it down. Then come ask us for it.

Labels: librarianship