Week 6 : Exercise 3 : Thing 1 - Library 2.0

On the whole, I like the ideas/thoughts on the direction of Library 2.0. While it seems to me, that much of what is talked about in terms of Library 2.0 is already happening, this might be in direct response to the Library 2.0 movement - and it is also happening quite slowly. Some thoughts on the ideas:

Cutting back on the print collection, in favour of digital copies stored online has happened, and will continue - particularly in terms of e-journals, but I feel that the turning point will be when these "items" in the collection can be accessed in a different manner than by sitting at a screen or printing documents. The beauty of books is their tactile quality, and computers have a loooooong way to catch up in that respect. Some e-book devices have tried to bridge that gap...

User viewing an electronic page on an e-book device

The development of e-paper is a step towards creating books that can store several electronic versions of texts, with the ability to load and re-load text on a "screen" that has qualities similar to paper.

e-paper

Sites like Project Gutenberg step in this direction, offering electronic versions of "cultural works" which are in the public domain for free download - now cataloging over 20, 000 free books. LibriVox is a similar site that offers audiobooks in the public domain.

Collect User Intelligence: I'm a big fan of this. By tapping into the hive mind, we can often skip past much of the research stages of "What I'm looking for", and jump straight to "Found it!". This also includes "Don't know what I want" > "Found it!".

Broaden relevance ranking: I've often thought that we should include other data in search results, such as circulation activity, so patrons can see, not only the title and location, but information on the book's activity - a much more social sense of information gathering.

Adopting web features: It seems the new library website will begin this phase, and it is a good idea, from the page:

The features of Amazon and Google of interest to students and scholars ought to be incorporated into the services libraries make available. Libraries should welcome the submission of reviews, assignment of keywords (“tagging”), addition of scholarly commentary, and other forms of user participation.

Not only will the patron's understanding of computers become more and more web-based, but this will make the integration/mashup of other sites into the ACL site easier for patrons to use and understand.

Week 6 : Exercise 2 : Thing 2 - Pop Cultural

After looking at the initial list of popular blogs at Technorati, the first thing I noticed was that I read 3 of them on a regular basis... which was kindof a surprise. It's quite amazing how many people are reading the same thing around the world.

The other interesting thing was that the second most popular blog was Blog Tips to Help You Make Money Blogging, which goes to show that there is obviously enthusiasm to create more and more blogs.

This is a great way to discover new blogs to read, because... well, they're popular for a reason - generally, their posts will be interesting and varied enough to make you keep comin' back. I've added some to my RSS feeds already.

Week 6 : Exercise 2 : Thing 1 - Technorati and Tags

Below are the stats and thoughts on different searching methods on Technorati...

Blog Directory - 328 Results: generally picked up blogs which talked about learning, and Web 2.0, though not necessarily in the phrase "learning 2.0". Doing a phrase search for "learning 2.0" produced more focused results, with many of them related to libraries in the U.S. This seemed kind-of like doing a subject search in OPAC.

Tags - 86 Results: Used the search for phrase: seemed to get posts by many similar authors. This may be a result of the fact that tags have to be entered for blogs, so less people will do it.

Blog Posts - 420 Results: Used this search through the advanced search selection, and chose the exact phrase search option. This worked in a similar way to the blog directory search, though produced far more results, and more variety (which is not always a good thing!)

Week 6 : Exercise 1 : Thing 1 - Del.icio.us

I think I might have posted enough about del.icio.us in my Week 3 post, so I won't go into it more. At that time it related to a mash-up site called deliGoo. In that post, I said... (and I quote)

deliGoo takes [Del.icio.us] one step further. As the name suggests, deliGoo allows you to search through not only your del.icio.us bookmarks, but also the pages which those bookmarks refer to. This is like doing a selective Google search through only the pages that have been important to you.

The significance of this site only really became apparent when I began to work with del.icio.us over a long period of time. The ability to use tags meant that I was saving a lot of sites, with the knowledge that tags would help me to find them. This was all well and good, but often the reason I saved a site wasn't apparent from the tag alone, meaning that I'd look past it when later I searched it out. Using deliGoo I've been able to delve that little bit further than just tags to work out which link is the one I want.

There are other significant aspects to deliGoo that I won't go into, but check out the previous post for more.

As for delicious, I think it's one of the best things since sliced bread, and use it all the time... 374 bookmarked sites and counting!

Links:
My mashups post on delicious and deliGoo
del.icio.us
deliGoo

Week 5 : Exercise 3 : Thing 1 - ROLLYO

Just like with the LibraryThing exercise, when I got to this site I couldn't think of any searches that I'd like to do. After a lot of thinking, and exploring, I came up with a few to create.

43Folders
Ask.Metafilter
Lifehacker
Digg

I visit these sites often, both as a way of discovering new posts/sites, and to search for info on applications, or web-apps. (I actually did a search for ROLLYO on Lifehacker first). So far I've created this search-bar, and added it to my blog. I think the most use I'll get from it will be by adding it to my Firefox searchbar. The search-box is to the right.

Week 5 : Exercise 2 : Thing 1 - Library Thing

I like LibraryThing - though I have some reservations. As we wander around the internet, we often keep adding to our list of "sites-I've-joined-because-it-seemed-like-a-good-idea-at-the-time". Some of those sites are good ideas, and I think LibraryThing is - but in amongst all the others I've joined, I can't see myself using it enough to make it so...

The real problem is that I can't remember the titles of all of the books I love, so my list (with the grand total of 6!) doesn't really represent my reading habits, nor does it help much in the way of recommending other books. Yes, I could work to add to this, but honestly, in the grand scheme of things, I reckon that - even if I managed to input all of the books I have read and loved - there's quite a slim chance that I would remember to put in books as I continue to read them.

So where does that leave LibraryThing? Well, with a lot of scope I think.

In an ideal world, I'd like LibraryThing to already know what books I've read. A parallel site, LastFM logs music listening in the same way as LibraryThing records books. The difference is that LastFM - through an application - uploads this information in the background, automatically while you're listening (on your computer). On your LastFM profile then, appears all of the songs listened to, and the amount of times. By clicking on a "Neighbours" tab, you can then see the music of those with similar tastes. With the additional function of a "radio" you can listen to similar music uniquely programmed to your taste.

The ability to passively add items to one's record is what makes LastFM work. Perhaps something similar could be set up with the ACL website? Instead of requiring a person to type in book titles - as LibraryThing does - the ACL site could adopt a similar function, analyzing patrons' reading habits then, by comparison with others, make recommendations on similar titles.

By incorporating this into the ACL site, the library would make a recommendation process seamless for patrons, and therefore provide the service to a wider range of patrons.

Links:
LibraryThing
LastFM

Week 5 : Exercise 1 : thing 1 - Generating Dummies

I found this image generator: the Dummiez Book Cover Maker. The hardest part was trying to think of what to write!

There are more at the site www.SignGenerator.org, including the Garbage Pail Kids generator!