Vast Active Library and Information Science blog. From a recent library science graduate in Wellington, New Zealand. A focus on reference and current awareness tools and issues, especially free, web-based resources.

 
Four men appeared in Christchurch District Court yesterday after a major police operation targeting alleged attempts to steal library books. (The Press).

| posted by Simon at 11:33 am

 
The aim of the Australian Digital Theses project is to create a national collaborative distributed database of digitised theses produced at Australian Universities. (Link from New Zealand Education Review, 9(37), 22 September 2004).

| posted by Simon at 1:34 pm

 
John Battelle's Searchblog carries an update on this story:

"Google made the decision to omit a small number of Chinese government banned sites (about eight) because to include them would create a damaged user interface experience. Google China users would see results and links, but be unable to click through to the actual pages, because China in fact filters those sites"

Better, but still not totally defensible.

| posted by Simon at 5:33 pm

 
Cool! My favourite newspaper, The Guardian (UK) has added a set of RSS feeds. I've been subscribed to their Online Blog for a while, but I think I'll definitely be subscribing to some of their other feeds.

| posted by Simon at 9:12 am

 
New Scientist carries an article claiming that Google News is censoring news stories that are critical of the Chinese government, for computers based in China.

Google admits to omitting some news sources within China but says this is meant to improve the quality of the service.

"In order to create the best possible news search experience for our users, we sometimes decide not to include some sites, for a variety of reasons," says a statement issued by the company. "These sources were not included because their sites are inaccessible."

So when I suggested they come up with a way of de-duping their news, so I didn't have to scroll through 10 pages carrying the same AP or Reuters article, reprinted in 100 regional newspapers, they couldn't do that, but they can censor sites on behalf of a government? Grrrrrrreeeat.

| posted by Simon at 9:27 am

 
Bloglines has quietly added a few useful new features.

One is a 'Keep New' checkbox after each post - this means that you can mark posts in your feeds that you don't want to disappear after you've read them. Very useful - I often browse my feeds for posts to read later, and I've been "clipping" those posts as a means of preserving them. Now I can just check the 'keep new' box and they'll still be there next time. Simple, but handy.

The other is a 'related feeds' feature - although it doesn't seem to be working too well at the moment.

| posted by Simon at 1:31 pm

 
The latest version of Firefox (Pre-release 1.0) is out now. I've only just downloaded it and I'm not enough of a tech-head to give a full review, but one feature seems very very cool indeed:

Live Bookmarks are basically RSS feeds that sit in your Bookmarks folder. Subscribe to a feed, and the feed becomes a top-level bookmark. Any posts within that feed become sub-bookmarks, under the feed. And they update in real time.

Not 100% necessary for me, seeing as I use Bloglines and check it regularly if I'm online, but this is still a cool app, and obviously not everyone wants a Bloglines account.

| posted by Simon at 6:12 pm

 
From eTaiwanNews.com comes a report of a Brown University study that places Taiwan first for e-government services.

"Other countries that scored well this year include Singapore (43.8), the United States (42.9), Canada (40.3), Monaco (39), China (37.3), Australia (36.7), Togo (36), and Germany (35)."

Togo? New Zealand is getting beaten by Togo? We've got some work to do.

Link via Smart Mobs.

| posted by Simon at 4:57 pm

 
Confusion over open-source.

OCLC's 2004 Information Format Trends Report discusses the "top trends in content and what they may mean for libraries in the next five years".

One of the key trends listed is "Legitimacy of open-source publishing (e.g. blogs)".

Since when did blogs become open-source? (OK, I'm sure some of them are, but that's not a defining characteristic of the software). Later on, it becomes clear that the report is talking about open content, and social publishing. Which is somewhat different. Their definitions here are vague, as well.

Similar experience recently in class. My lecturer was explaining that libraries have been slow to use open-source software for OPACs and ILSs because they don't want their data to be available for just anyone to access. Funny, I thought it was the source code of the software that was available in open source, not the data that you entered into a particular open source application.

Sigh.



| posted by Simon at 1:03 pm

 
Matapihi is a new, free service offering access to digital images from some of New Zealand's premier cultural organisations. It includes material from two of the largest New Zealand public libraries - Auckland and Christchurch City Libraries; from the Auckland Art Gallery; the Otago Museum; and the Alexander Turnbull Library - the archival library dedicated to preserving New Zealand's heritage.

Matapihi holds around 50, 000 images, sounds and objects. I haven't had time to play with it much yet, but it looks like a good resource. My only objection so far: it doesn't work well in Mozilla - something for the designers to consider addressing.

| posted by Simon at 2:04 pm

 
I got back yesterday from the LIANZA conference in Auckland. It's the first I've been to, and I think I got a lot out of it. I made contact with quite a few people, mainly those I already knew, but managed to get introduced to a lot of other librarians through them. I can already see that if I stay in this profession for a while that I'll build up quite a strong network of peers. Which is great.

The other highlight was re-discovering my motivation and desire to do my job. I managed to find three or four things to do differently that should improve what I do, and basically got an all-round sense of motivation to do so. In this respect, the actual content was probably less important than the attitude of the presenters. I didn't hear anything really earth-shatteringly new at any session, but I did pick up on some more traditional things that I hadn't been doing, or got reminders of things I already knew, but wasn't really doing.

Also important was the speech from Penny Carnaby, the National Librarian. Her speech was a celebration of where we are, and the things we've achieved recently - and listening to it, it was hard not to be impressed, and proud. Knowledge and culture appear to be on a true high in New Zealand at the moment, and libraries are contributing to that - the EPIC project was cited as an example of something we're doing that hasn't been achieved anywhere else in the world, and NZ librarians took a lead role in the World Summit on the Information Society. We've also had the National Library Act (1.2 nb PDF), passed last year. When we add in factors such as a supportive and knowledgeable minister, and the current excellent job situation for information workers in this country, it's a good time to be a librarian (my classmates from the MLIS last year have all got good jobs, and didn't take long to find them).

Penny also looked forward to the future, and mentioned a few possibilities for the next year. The thing that excited me most was the possible upgrading of the National Union Catalogue to include "Amazon-like" information. I'm devoutly wishing that this occurs - one of my big gripes has been that I can get more comprehensive information about books from Amazon than from the NUC - sure, the NUC's information is "better", but Amazon's is often more useful (depending on the user's specific needs). If the National Library can take the best from Amazon and incorporate it into a properly bibliographically controlled catalogue, it will be an impressive and useful achievement.

| posted by Simon at 1:41 pm

 
Newswise reports:

Having trouble finding quality health information on the Web? You might ask your doctor to write you an "information prescription." A University of Iowa study shows the nearly no-cost, quick effort is an effective way to put people in touch with quality health information on the Internet.

| posted by Simon at 1:24 pm

 
I think this is the first blogpost from a New Zealand library conference. So here I am, posting from a New Zealand library conference. It's been good, though nothing has been really cutting edge. I guess that's to be expected at a mainstream conference, though.

I've got lots of notes to write up and reactions to speakers, but that will have to wait till I'm home.

| posted by Simon at 10:28 am

 
Jessamyn weighs in in favo(u)r of Wikipedia:

Does this [Alex Halvais's experiment, discussed previously] prove that the Wikipedia is authoritative? Not necessarily, but it's one more data point explaining how the system works to people that aren't familiar with it, and one more data point to use with naysayers who think that having a resource be freely editable means that by definition it can't also be authoritative.

On the other hand, Karen Schneider (director of Librarian's Index to the Internet and ALA council member) criticises Wikipedia:

I am the director of a digital library that is the anti-wiki. We put our labor into "information you can trust," and we're doing that to save librarians time....Would you really want a librarian to hand you ten resources with the comment that "some of this is crap, but you figure it out?"

I don't have an issue with wikis, but if I'm going to do the legwork to check the authority of a resource, then I'll use an authoritative resource in the first place....All information is questionable. That's what real librarians believe. And some information is better-packaged and more authoritative than others.

I see wikis are useful in the other direction. Wikis are good tools for checking up on the "authoritative" sites, to find out the rest of the story, the other perspective, the slant you don't get from oh-fish-ul resources. But I wouldn't assume that the wiki is correct; I would assume the wiki is opening the door to further queries.

Finally, the TANSTAAFL principle applies....

I'm not so sure I agree with Karen. I don't see LII (which is a wonderful resource) as an anti-Wiki - the two are closer than she seems to think. From the LII About page:

While the bulk of our work activity is performed by the LII staff, we also have over 100 Contributors from libraries in California and Washington State....

We have a rigorous commitment to data quality. Every site entered in the LII database is reviewed at least twice--sometimes three or four times--before it goes "live." An active weeding program keeps us current--while sites change and die all the time, LII almost never has more than 100 "dead" sites.

So both Wikipedia and LII use a team of volunteers. The key differences (as far as I can see) are that LII's volunteers are all professional librarians; and that LII has a formal review and weeding procedure. Whereas in theory anyone can edit Wikipedia. However, I still believe the nature of Wikipedia offers an informal means of achieving this same end. The Recent Changes page is constantly watched by many users, in order to identify and correct egregious changes.

And, while most contributors clearly aren't information professionals, they may yet be subject experts. (It's difficult to imagine what motivation a non-expert or troll would have for writing about wave-particle duality or other scientific or technical topics. And Wikipedia has proved itself to be far more accurate in its coverage of my own country (New Zealand) than some official electronic encyclopedias supplied by highly reputable companies. (If you're reading this, there's a high liklihood that your library subscribes to them). Likewise, the MDMA (ecstasy) article on Wikipedia is more accurate and comprehensive than almost any other such article I've seen online.

In sumnmary, I think the bottom line is: is this an accurate source? I have seen many criticisms of Wikipedia based on its nature, but I've yet to see one based on its content. Obviously, I wouldn't take it as gospel, but I think that we need to see some actual examples of flaws in Wikipedia's content, before we dismiss it out of hand.

Oh, and I didn't recognise the acronym Karen used, which I've quoted above. Guess where I went to find out what it means?

[edit: added link to Karen's post which I'd left out originally]

| posted by Simon at 12:07 pm

 
Long live Re-Invigorate, a very impressive and easy way of tracking site traffic, with lots of extras such as browser, screen resolution, OS, whether user has cookies set, and referring URL, as well as a rather nifty looking graphic representation of where your traffic comes from, by time zone. Only caveat, the text size is a little small and the colour scheme isn't the greatest to my eyes, but overall a good (and free, and open-source) product.

| posted by Simon at 12:06 pm