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Monday, January 30, 2006
In brief - politicians edit Wikipedia, misspelling gets round Google China
The Lowell Sun Online reports that the staff of U.S. Rep Marty Meehan have been repeatedly editing his entry on Wikipedia in order to sanitise it (via Slashdot). [Edit: the Talk page for the Wikipedia article makes it clear that even worse editing has been going on, listing a huge number of pages that have been edited by someone posting from the House of Representatives IP address - removing controversial information about Republicans, and portraying liberal politicians as "socialists".] Paul Boutin writes that misspelt search results will defeat the Google China filter. For example, "Tiananmen" is filtered to show peaceful pictures of the square, and works of art. But spell it incorrectly and you're likely to get the results that you were really looking for - the iconic picture of the student in front of the line of tanks, for example. (via BoingBoing). | Sunday, January 29, 2006
del.icio.us + flickr + google maps + blogs + wiki + myspace + livejournal +you
GROU.PS is a new community website that aggregates a range of social software services into one place. It's designed as a virtual home for people who already know each other (real life or virtually) rather than as a dating site or a place to meet new people. You sign up and register to join a group or groups (approval from the group owner is required). You can incorporate photos from Flickr, blog feeds from livejournal, myspace, xanga etc. There's a Google Maps feature so you can post your location. There's a wiki, and a links section using del.icio.us. It looks good. I can't give much more of an opinion at the moment, as I'm still waiting for my group application to be approved, but this is a great idea. | Lots more about Google in China On BBC News, Bill Thompson defends Google's actions, noting that Yahoo! and MSN also censor search results in China, and many sites are censored in Western countries too. Danny Sullivan at SearchEngineWatch is a lot less happy, noting that Google is actively filtering sites on its own, without waiting for the Chinese government to specify which sites it wants to be filtered. Jessamyn West at Librarian.net has similar concerns, saying that the decision "calls into question the very idea of objectivity in search engines everywhere". CNet reports that Google China had initially filtered sites relating to alcohol, teen pregnancy, dating and homosexuality, but that these are no longer filtered. John Batelle writes that the real irony is that Google is finally becoming a content editor. He also points out that Google has removed the page in its help area that said "Google does not censor results for any search term". | Techdirt: Court Says Google Cache Is Fair Use Good news from Nevada, where a court has ruled that Google's caching of webpages does not violate fair use. (Techdirt). | Wednesday, January 25, 2006
OCLC Symposium at ALA
Three very good posts, summing up this symposium. A lot of thought-provoking material here: The Shifted Librarian; LITA Blog#1; LITA Blog #2 | Google and the DOJ Danny Sullivan and John Battelle have good things to say. Danny's post gives an excellent explanation of what personal information could actually be gleaned from the records that search engines keep of individual queries they receive. | Tuesday, January 24, 2006
Top Technology Trends for libraries
Over on the LITA Blog, Sarah Houghton has some interesting things to say about her top technology trends. I really hope that at least some of the things she predicts come true (increased IM reference, increasing technology staff - without reducing other staff, automated tagging - without throwing out traditional controlled vocabularies, opening up library computers - removing security restrictions on what tools can be used, and picking and choosing the best of Library 2.0). A later post on the same blog, by lpressley, summarises the top technology trends discussion at ALA Midwinter. Also worth a look. | Quick search roundup Google News comes out of beta, and adds a new feature - personalised search (automatically generated recommendations, based on stories you've read previously). (Official Google Blog). Greg Linden has comments. Healthline is a new medical search engine. It claims to "search the web's best health sites". It claims to "understand the words and phrases that both medical and non-medical people use; so, for example, if you search for "brittle bone disease", we know you're thinking about "Osteogenesis Imperfecta"." I can see both good and bad in this approach. While these two terms may have the same meaning, the information needs of a user who searched on the first term would be very different from those of a user who searched on the second. More disappointingly, it contains links to sites that are misleading at best and dangerous at worst - for example the Scientologist propoganda site http://www.notodrugs-yestolife.com appears high in the rankings in a test search I ran. In defence of Healthline, they offer a feature called 'trust mark', which appears beside search results that have been certified as being of a high quality. And the FAQ lists a contact address where you can suggest a site, or suggest that a site be removed from their database. The Financial Times is (unsurprisingly) critical of Quaero, the new French/German search engine that will attempt to challenge the big American search engines. But with a budget of 300 million euros as against 1 billion dollars or so (for Google), does it have a chance? | Safari publishing books before they're written Because it takes time to write and publish a book about a new technology, but the audience needs the book as soon as possible, Safari are offering customers the chance to buy a beta version of the book, giving them "early access to books on cutting-edge technologies...as they're being written." Customers "gain access to an evolving PDF manuscript that [they] can read, download or print." Best of all, "[readers] will have a chance to shape the final product [and] send suggestions, bug fixes, and comments directly to the author and editors." From Safari Bookshelf via BoingBoing. | What's Holding Back Corporate Blogging? BlogRevolt.com asks "why aren't more corporations blogging?", and concludes that the reasons are the lack of a clear and demonstrated return on investment, and fear - of not being able to control the message fully, and of openness. The comments are worth reading, too. | Thursday, January 19, 2006
Link roundup: Google and the DOJ, DRM, social networks, so much more
I have no time to comment on this, so I'm just posting the links. There's a lot of good reading here:
| Tuesday, January 17, 2006
Two good posts about library technology
Like the post title says, a couple of good posts on the need for libraries to improve their use of technology, especially in the catalogue. Not sure I agree with them 100%, but they're certainly worth a read. Karen Schneider at ALA TechSource writes 'The Revolution Will be Folksonomied', a strong criticism of the "piteously clunky library systems most libraries pay dearly for because we've never insisted that the catalog could be better than that." Karen argues that catalogues lack useful features such as truncation and relevance ranking, are limited by reliance on Library of Congress Subject Headings, which are either in arcane language or too narrow or broad for users, and because the library catalogue is "still an index, not a full text search engine". There's a lot more, and Karen's arguments are convincing. She also points to the University of California's Bibliographic Services Task Force report, which apparently condemns the failures of library catalogue software, while offering some solutions. [I haven't yet read the report]. I don't 100% agree with everything Karen writes. Her criticisms of the limitations of LCSH for many libraries are correct, but then LCSH was developed specifically for the Library of Congress, right? And there are plenty of alternatives that suit smaller libraries better (I've never used LCSH in real life). I'm also not sure about the emphasis on full-text searching - surely this isn't practical (or probably legal) if we're talking about print collections? Google might be able to afford to scan books and create full-text indexes, libraries can't. Possibly I've misunderstood, or perhaps Karen's comment "consolidate your resources instead of dribbling finite funds across multiple, duplicated library systems" implies that we should be conducting collaborative scanning projects ourselves, and sharing the results. Another good post is Eric Martin's on the Library and Information Technology Association weblog. Eric discusses the "increased need for library services and not necessarily library collections", given that our users now have access to a multitude of collections via the web; and the ability to be leaders in the implementation of services through in-house software development, arguing for the importance of knowledge of information technology for librarians. | Monday, January 16, 2006
The vital importance of good records management
Archives admits fault in release of secret report: "Archives New Zealand has admitted fault in mistakenly releasing a top secret spy report to a newspaper, but government officials will also look into how the report came to rest in a box of former prime minister David Lange's papers." | Online learning changes the nature of the university In The University of Anywhere Michael McGrorty writes of his experiences in library school. Over half the courses he took were online. Michael asks: "if a university offers a substantial proportion of classes online, can it really be said that the school is offering anything? With online classes, the school essentially disappears." Michael raises some very interesting points. It seems that the American experience of online learning is somewhat different from the way it is taught here in New Zealand. Michael writes: "there is a certain amount of help offered via email and other online devices, but there is nowhere to hide and nobody to sit behind; in an online class there isn’t any back row, and you can never be absent. The march of assignments and deadlines presses, and there being no attendance, there isn’t any reminder of time winding down". Where VUW classes are taught online, students still attend virtual classes, and use microphones and/or a chatroom to communicate. The lecturer delivers a lecture in real-time, using software that allows them to transmit voice and a powerpoint presentation at the same time. Students ask questions and discuss the lecture in the chat room. So there's still a sense of being part of a group. Some students will get together in small groups around the country, so the class can still be quite social. Michael's online classes sounded a lot more isolated. I think they would suit my learning style, but I'd probably enjoy them less. Finally, Michael suggests: "it becomes possible to envision a return to an older model of the school of library service—the one that was centered in the library itself. We may find ourselves returning to a situation in which library students work as apprentices in various types of libraries while taking their online classes from more or less distant institutions of learning. Nothing would be better for the trade, for the students or the future of the library." I think he may well be right. | Thursday, January 12, 2006
Digital vinyl
EFF reports that two independent record labels will be offering free MP3 downloads to people who buy albums on vinyl. This is a very, very cool move - vinyl is often a better format than CD, but it's obviously difficult to back-up or convert from vinyl to your PC or MP3 player. Two thumbs up to Merge and Saddle Creek Records. Merge is already one of my favourite labels for a roster that includes ...And You Will Know Us By The Trail of Dead, The Arcade Fire, American Music Club, Buzzcocks, Dinosaur Jr, The Ladybug Transistor, Lambchop, Lou Barlow, The Magnetic Fields (and the 6ths and Future Bible Heroes), Nuetral Milk Hotel, and a handful of excellent New Zealand bands - the 3Ds, the Clean, and David Kilgour. This move has just added to my appreciation for them. | Tuesday, January 10, 2006
Library 2.0
Walt Crawford's Cites & Insights 6:2 is an extensive (26, 000 words!) overview and critique of the concepts behind Library 2.0, and what Walt calls "Library 2.0" ("the movement or bandwagon"). It seems comprehensive, though I'm reading it without much knowledge of the issues (I've had limited internet access for much of the past few months). It's definitely worth reading if you have a few spare hours, and want to get a good overview of the topic, or to find out who has been talking about it. Jenny Levine, writing on the ALA Techsource Blog, discusses what's new about Library 2.0. She provides a good, clear definition, but then (to my mind) doesn't really back it up. The definition: "For me, "Library 2.0" is not just about making your content easier to use online or getting feedback from your users. It's about letting others use granular pieces of our content where they want, when they want, how they want, automatically, specifically online (although users can then also mash our content however they want in the physical world, too). Read that over a second time and you'll see that it is a very new concept for libraries." OK, good. I can see the appeal of this, and I can see how it's different from things that libraries have done before. I'm not sure if, in itself, it deserves a name like Library 2.0. There have surely been other, more significant, paradigm shifts in library history (move from closed to open stacks; the notion of the public library; the notion of lending libraries; invention of cataloguing and classification schemes - I don't know, I'm not a library historian). The name Library 2.0 implies to me that this is a clean break with the past - there's everything that has gone before, and there's this. Jenny writes "If you want to think small and look at L2 through the lens of only what we have done in the past, then yes it is nothing new". It's maybe not her intention, but this sentence seems to imply that "what we have done in the past" is "small". I don't think it is. I'm actually proud of what libraries have achieved in the past. But generally, I appreciate Jenny's arguments in the first part of her post. Library 2.0 is about re-using and re-mixing content, allowing users access to our resources as they wish. It's a conversation, like the Cluetrain Manifesto says [Jenny doesn't mention Cluetrain, but others have, and the connection seems obvious to me]. But what does this mean? "If you take a step back and look at what all of those tools and technologies could mean for a library's online presence, you can't help but be optimistic about what L2 can do for us IN THE SPACES WHERE OUR USERS ARE. Again, a very new concept." I don't get this. I'm sorry. What's new about going where our users are? Having a bookmobile, or a marae-based service is going where your users are. Does it need a new label? Yes, I realise we have users (or potential users) who are most comfortable online. Yes, we should be taking advantage of new tools to serve them wherever they are most comfortable. I don't see how this is different from adopting new technologies like phone or email (or postal mail!) to serve users. I also don't see why online services are being promoted so heavily by Library 2.0 proponents, when something like a third of Americans have still never used the internet (and probably a similar percentage for other Western countries). Some of my co-workers struggle with Word or email [and these are professional people who are a heck of a lot smarter than I am]. Where are they in this picture? "So pieces of the big picture include things like constant change, making the library user-centered, and encouraging user participation—but there's a lot more to it than that. There's also disintermediation of content as well as shifting your services to where your users are. When L2 opponents say that libraries have been doing these things all along, they're right—IF they're talking about doing it within the library's four walls. However, they've failed to understand that we don't do this online .....Show me an example of librarians doing a great job of fighting censorship online where the content can be reused elsewhere, users contribute, and the content is user-centered." It's obvious that libraries haven't historically done such things online. How long has "online" existed? Graphical web browsing is only 12 years old, after all. In most cases, it seems logical that we should be moving online, though again I don't see the need for a manifesto in order to do so. Think having a library blog is a good idea? Set up a blog, then. And I don't see why we necessarily have to be online - why is it important that librarians are fighting censorship online, per se? Finally, I'm a little surprised at the use of terms like "opponents". Both Steven Cohen and Meredith Wolfwater make the same point in the comments to that post. [edit: Meredith has also posted a very good response to Jenny's article]. I'm sceptical (as should be obvious) about the idea of/need for "Library 2.0" as a movement. That doesn't mean I'm opposed to it, just that I don't see what it offers that's additional to what some librarians (notably Jenny herself) have been saying for years. And I think that's about all I've got to say. I'm going to carry on trying to adapt (some)[1] of the Web 2.0/Library 2.0 tools to my work environment, but I don't think I'll be signing up for the movement anytime soon. [1] Wikis, re-mixed RSS feeds, librarything.com, social bookmarking/collaborative tagging (at the enterprise level, if possible), IM are all things that I've been exploring, or thinking about exploring. | Reference Librarian Start Page (Walking Paper) Aaron at Walking Paper has an intriguing suggestion on using personalised home pages (like Netvibes or Google IG) in the library. "My job would be facilitated if I could see:
| Makeover For The Academic Library (ACRL Blog) A provocative (in both the 'controversial' and 'thought-provoking' sense post from the Assocation of College and Research Libraries blog, suggesting a model for the 21st century academic library. Makeover For The Academic Library includes suggestions like 'increase local coverage', 'use your readers', 'redeploy resources mercilessly', and (most controversially, perhaps) offer premium services to key users, in order to increase their usage, while offering minimal service to the others. Via Stephen's Lighthouse. | Yahoo! Music purchases Webjay From the Yahoo! Music Blog. This looks interesting. Webjay is a playlist creation site. "Users can create playlists using music/audio/video from around the Web (with a simple Web form, from scraping a Web page, or with a fancy Ajax interface created by a 3rd party using Webjay APIs), share them with others, include them on their Web sites, browse other users playlists, play the playlists in any media player, or cannibalize the playlists to create new ones." I had a brief look at the Webjay home page, and I like what I see. The TNL.net weblog has a write-up, and an interview with Webjay creator Lucas Gonze. Says Lucas "The point of playlists is that they are to internet media what RSS is to weblogs and HTML is to browsing.....Examples of the kinds of goodness I'm talking about: * Interactivity wide open; anybody on the internet is a full participant * Implementation wide open; anybody with the chops can write programs which contribute to the ecosystem * and interoperability; anybody should be able to author content which anybody can render". Sweet! | Wednesday, January 04, 2006
Why companies monitor blogs
An intelligent article from CNet on why companies monitor blogs: "online discussions--be it in forums, on blogs or elsewhere--are a modern replacement for customer satisfaction surveys or focus group reports, which can take months to compile and analyze." The article discusses market research companies who specialise in analysing blog/internet posts, and also points to several free or cheap tools that can be used to do so - Technorati, Google Blog Search, Pubsub [misspelt as Hubsub] and Icerocket. As an aside, I have a feeling that someone is going to make a lot of money out of developing a comment/opinion search tool - something that truly aggregates collective intelligence on movies, music, consumer products etc. I've just spent long hours using conventional search engines to find consumer opinions about DVD/DVR recorders. The information is out there, but it's scattered and hard to find. If someone could develop a search engine that would let me see what (e.g.) Amazon customers, and Epinions users, and bloggers, and professional and amateur reviewers on other sites were saying about a given product, I'd use that tool a lot. | Ten good reasons to start social bookmarking today Roxomatic offers a short, interesting list of reasons to use social bookmarking services. It's worth a read if you're currently agnostic about social bookmarking, or need to convince others of the benefits. Several of them stood out for me: "...[H]ave a really comfortable place to back up your bookmarks, to get them back e.g. after installing a new system, changing your desktop or switching to another browser. No time to read an obviously interesting article now? No possibility to print it? Add articles with the tag toberead to your database, and read and/ or print them later. Find quickly the most recommended bookmarks about a topic, e.g. interesting informations about Firefox extensions will be found at del.icio.us/tag/firefox+extensions, and subscribe to it. Make a copy of interesting newspaper articles – or are you sure your newspaper company will have permalinks and a free archive forever?" Looking over those, it seems that my main reasons for using social bookmarking tools (I use Furl and del.ic.ious) are non-social - I'm more interested (at the moment) in organising my own information, having it accessible from both my work and home computers, and storing interesting articles in my own archive. No doubt that will change once I've transferred all my bookmarks into del.ic.ious and I can start finding users with similar interests to mine. | Free and Innovative Software From Stephen's Lighthouse, a short list of free software tools that libraries can include in their portals. Blogger, Myspace, LibraryThing, Del.ic.ious, Picasa, Google Maps, etc. | |
