... and maybe text messaging. Although they might not be synonymous.
So I had a few problems getting the widget to work. That lengthy list of comments on the week one page should have given me a clue. Anyway, I IM'd Stef about it. She IM'd back. Did you ever play IM tag? That can get annoying. Text/instant messaging may work better if you're using a cell-phone or Blackberry or some other personal device. A computer (desk-top for sure, laptop, maybe not as big a problem) doesn't have the portability. It does have the full-size keyboard though. So I think we're definitely losing some of the benefits of text/instant messaging when we're using desktops. One example that I read on a blog (can't remember where, don't know if I bookmarked it, don't want to check) was a library catalog that allowed patrons to text massage call numbers from their catalogs. No more scraps of paper and golf pencils. Neat! Right? But are scraps of paper and pencils really such a burden? A waste of resources maybe. But that can also be true of cell phones.
I really wonder if it's a generational thing. I watched the PBS special about wired kids called Growing up online (the entire broadcast is available online here with additional materials how cool is that!) and after hearing the follow-up story about one high-school student who joined the Coast Guard and had to give up most of his tech-communication tools during his first few weeks at the Coast Guard Academy. He seemed pretty relaxed about it, too. Like he was not really giving up all that much. And he sort of implied that he probably wouldn't be going back to it. At least not as heavily.
So I'm thinking that maybe, just maybe, text/instant messaging isn't necessarily the essential form of communication for younger people. Maybe they just have more time to use it (they're not working fulltime or raising families), they don't have their own space (not everyone has their own computer in their bedroom, they're spending a lot of time in situations (classrooms) where talking on a cellphone is not an option, and the type of communication they're engaging in are not so serious that their lives will be seriously impacted if they miss (or misread) a text.
Sure, it's important to teens now. But life beyond high school will have different challenges. I think that text-messaging still needs to take a back-seat to other forms of communication. I did a little text-messaging today with a friend who was reading my blog (on work time) and wanted to chat a little bit (also on work time). And that was pretty fun. But we had to stop when someone walked into her office. So, we got to pretend we were young and carefree (alright, relatively speaking) and getting away with something in a situation where it really wasn't that big of a deal. It was quick and easy and bothered no one else. And, for me at least, that may be the only appeal of text/instant messaging.
Now if we can find a way to incorporate it into our workflow that actually improves our product output or provides greater efficiency, then I'll be ready to take another look at it. (I do like the idea of someone having the option of texting for help from the library catalog terminals.) But right now, I don't think IM and texting adds enough value to make it much more than an interesting distraction.
Not that distractions are bad. Depending on the distractions, of course. Your mileage may vary.
Your comments are welcome.
Friday, February 15, 2008
Sunday, February 10, 2008
Instant Messaging
So, I'm a little late.
I finally got around to the first weeks assignment-- setting up an instant messaging account. Too many options to choose from! AIM, MSN, Yahoo!, and Google. Not to mention Meebo. So that slowed me down. Then trying to decide what ID to use and what password and didn't I used to have an account with these guys and what was that password?
Yada yada yada.
So, it's Sunday night, I've got it set up, and there's no one to talk to. I did send a message to Jean (or Stef or Beth) offline just to let someone know I've done something. So that part's done.
As far as using it in a library setting, it has potential. I read about David Lee King (or someone) using Meebo as a pop-up when someone is having problems using their library catalog and it sounded pretty cool. Then I thought about what it might be like to be on the receiving end when I'm looking up (oh, what's a common search term that's used in the catalog-- oh, how about fcuk?) So I type in my search term, don't get any hits, and all of a sudden a pop-up box appears on my screen asking WHAT ARE YOU LOOKING FOR?
Goodness.
Well, that might make me a little nervous. Sort of turn me off to the whole library-visiting experience. Younger users might take it in stride. Older users might freak out a little. Or be delighted. How do we know which type of patron we'd be messaging.
I can envision the patrons being the ones to initiate the contact. IM on their terms. Just a "Need help? Type here" box on the catalog page. That would be cool.
Yeah, it's probably still a good idea to do something with instant messaging. We've got off-desk reference personnel staffing phones/computers who could probably be available to IM patrons who are having trouble searching our catalog. But they (staffers) might find it easier to just walk out to the catalog terminals and talk to a patron. But what if the patron prefers IM rather than a human interaction? Lots of different patrons with lots of different needs/wants in their library experience.
I've thought how using it would help me in my work as a cataloger, but I not sure I feel the need for instant messaging. Email and the phone seem to work fine. Maybe others would like to have faster, more direct contact with me though. We've got forms for reporting problems with bib records that South Central libraries use to send email. I could see then using IMs instead-- especially if they can send them when I'm offline. But, again, this stuff isn't exactly time-sensitive so it might be easier to keep doing what we're doing with that. Email still works for a lot of the stuff we do.
Part of the reason I'm a little hesitant about using IM is I recently read one of Meredith Farkas' blogs about libraries attempting to add their presence to Facebook and Second Life and questioning whether we really understand the cultures into which we're trying to insinuate ourselves. And another point she had later made about doing assessments of what we've done and doing some thinking beforehand about how we're trying to serve our users, rather than jumping on trends that really don't lend themselves to the type of services our patrons want from their libraries.
So I think instant messaging might have a role to play in our library, but I'm not sure yet what that is.
Oh, check out my Meebo widget. I had to tweak the HTML to get it to fit in my column. That was fun. People can now Meebo me from my blog. But how many people visit my blog?
As always, your comments are welcome.
I finally got around to the first weeks assignment-- setting up an instant messaging account. Too many options to choose from! AIM, MSN, Yahoo!, and Google. Not to mention Meebo. So that slowed me down. Then trying to decide what ID to use and what password and didn't I used to have an account with these guys and what was that password?
Yada yada yada.
So, it's Sunday night, I've got it set up, and there's no one to talk to. I did send a message to Jean (or Stef or Beth) offline just to let someone know I've done something. So that part's done.
As far as using it in a library setting, it has potential. I read about David Lee King (or someone) using Meebo as a pop-up when someone is having problems using their library catalog and it sounded pretty cool. Then I thought about what it might be like to be on the receiving end when I'm looking up (oh, what's a common search term that's used in the catalog-- oh, how about fcuk?) So I type in my search term, don't get any hits, and all of a sudden a pop-up box appears on my screen asking WHAT ARE YOU LOOKING FOR?
Goodness.
Well, that might make me a little nervous. Sort of turn me off to the whole library-visiting experience. Younger users might take it in stride. Older users might freak out a little. Or be delighted. How do we know which type of patron we'd be messaging.
I can envision the patrons being the ones to initiate the contact. IM on their terms. Just a "Need help? Type here" box on the catalog page. That would be cool.
Yeah, it's probably still a good idea to do something with instant messaging. We've got off-desk reference personnel staffing phones/computers who could probably be available to IM patrons who are having trouble searching our catalog. But they (staffers) might find it easier to just walk out to the catalog terminals and talk to a patron. But what if the patron prefers IM rather than a human interaction? Lots of different patrons with lots of different needs/wants in their library experience.
I've thought how using it would help me in my work as a cataloger, but I not sure I feel the need for instant messaging. Email and the phone seem to work fine. Maybe others would like to have faster, more direct contact with me though. We've got forms for reporting problems with bib records that South Central libraries use to send email. I could see then using IMs instead-- especially if they can send them when I'm offline. But, again, this stuff isn't exactly time-sensitive so it might be easier to keep doing what we're doing with that. Email still works for a lot of the stuff we do.
Part of the reason I'm a little hesitant about using IM is I recently read one of Meredith Farkas' blogs about libraries attempting to add their presence to Facebook and Second Life and questioning whether we really understand the cultures into which we're trying to insinuate ourselves. And another point she had later made about doing assessments of what we've done and doing some thinking beforehand about how we're trying to serve our users, rather than jumping on trends that really don't lend themselves to the type of services our patrons want from their libraries.
So I think instant messaging might have a role to play in our library, but I'm not sure yet what that is.
Oh, check out my Meebo widget. I had to tweak the HTML to get it to fit in my column. That was fun. People can now Meebo me from my blog. But how many people visit my blog?
As always, your comments are welcome.
Friday, November 30, 2007
Future Panic
So, I'm using part of the weekend to catch up on my backlog of unread articles on Bloglines and I came across this article that I had saved from the New York Times called "Paper Cuts Blog: Skimming the Sunday Reviews." It's a compilation of reviews from sources other than the NYT that were condensed by Times writer Dwight Garner. I'm not sure why I had saved it, although the preliminary text in Bloglines might have caught my eye since the first review was about a book called "Print is dead : books in our digital age" by Jeff Gomez. Now normally that link for the previous title would take you to the entry in the public library catalog. Unfortunately, this particular book is one we don't carry at our library, at least not at the time of this writing. Probably just an oversight. Right?
Anyway, one snippet of the review by Scarlett Thomas of The Independent caught my eye:
Hmm. Ignore, if you can, the dismissive tone in Thomas' summation. That phrase "old folk like me" sort of gives me pause, but filling my iPod via CDs rather than downloading the music directly certainly sounds like me. (Full disclosure, I work in a library and didn't "pay" anything for the music on my iPod-- with the possible exception of the sixty or so titles I can see gathering dust on my shelf.) I remember making a similar argument to my nephews when downloading music via file-sharing was booming and being decried by the music industry as a threat to music itself. Why couldn't those recording industry executives see that electronic distribution would be cheaper and easier than manufacturing and distributing discs? Why not lower prices and dispense with the physical manifestation altogether? Admittedly, part of me likes having the physical backup, in case something happens to my hard drive. And my backup hard drive. But I don't need the discs anymore to enjoy the music. Think about it. You don't listen to the discs, you listen to the music.
Enter the Kindle. The latest device that lets you avoid the printed page. At $399.00 I think it's too expensive. (Remember, I work in a library-- cost to read a new book = $0.00) But it's the same concept as the iPod. You want to read stories, poems, histories, biographies, textbooks, whatever. You want access to the words. Books are our primary means of access. They're the carriers of the words. And words are what we read (and hear). But those words can be carried in a new way. One that requires less storage (and gathers less dust) and can be filled without a trip to the bookstore, mall, or library. Or library.
Which got me thinking about another article I read recently. Called "Time travel," this one was by Niki Denison in the winter 2007 issue of On Wisconsin, the Wisconsin Alumni Association magazine, and touched on some similar issues when talking about alumni who are working at envisioning the future and technological change. She started off by mentioning the singularity and how that near-future scenario of smarter-than-human intelligence has some futurists almost giddy with excitement. There was a sidebar by Bill Draves in the print version of the article (which I can't spot anywhere in the online version) that suggests there are nine societal changes in the near future that will have profound impacts. I'll list them all, but there are some that may have more than a little impact on our present conception of libraries.
Indeed, how do we justify much of anything we do when such breath-taking change is imminent? Despite our visionary ideals about our mission and relevance, we have to wonder if libraries are destined to become a dead-horse that we're feverishly trying to whip into the future with concepts like Library 2.0, while seeking a niche in Facebook, MySpace or Second Life, and offering video games while serving an aging population and coping with a shrinking budget? Will we be relegated to helping our generation (and older ones) experience just a small amount of what their children and grandchildren will be immersing themselves in daily, while insisting (ever more stridently) that the printed page is still superior to anything the modern age has to offer?
I don't know the answer. I don't know what the future holds. But it will be different. And if it's very different, it may not hold a place for me. Or maybe just not a place where I feel I belong. That's why it scares me.
Your comments, as always, are welcome.
Anyway, one snippet of the review by Scarlett Thomas of The Independent caught my eye:
The argument set out in this book is quite simple. Times have changed, and while old folk like me persist in buying CDs before putting them on our iPods, and using the Internet to buy, rather than experience, “content,” there is something out there called “Generation Download” that does, like, everything on a computer, and will “ditch the hardback and head over to Facebook” because books are, like, not interactive enough, and too long, and have, like, “boring bits.” … As Gomez says, “Generation Download has no need to go to record stores. Software and websites bring the record stores to them."
Hmm. Ignore, if you can, the dismissive tone in Thomas' summation. That phrase "old folk like me" sort of gives me pause, but filling my iPod via CDs rather than downloading the music directly certainly sounds like me. (Full disclosure, I work in a library and didn't "pay" anything for the music on my iPod-- with the possible exception of the sixty or so titles I can see gathering dust on my shelf.) I remember making a similar argument to my nephews when downloading music via file-sharing was booming and being decried by the music industry as a threat to music itself. Why couldn't those recording industry executives see that electronic distribution would be cheaper and easier than manufacturing and distributing discs? Why not lower prices and dispense with the physical manifestation altogether? Admittedly, part of me likes having the physical backup, in case something happens to my hard drive. And my backup hard drive. But I don't need the discs anymore to enjoy the music. Think about it. You don't listen to the discs, you listen to the music.
Enter the Kindle. The latest device that lets you avoid the printed page. At $399.00 I think it's too expensive. (Remember, I work in a library-- cost to read a new book = $0.00) But it's the same concept as the iPod. You want to read stories, poems, histories, biographies, textbooks, whatever. You want access to the words. Books are our primary means of access. They're the carriers of the words. And words are what we read (and hear). But those words can be carried in a new way. One that requires less storage (and gathers less dust) and can be filled without a trip to the bookstore, mall, or library. Or library.
Which got me thinking about another article I read recently. Called "Time travel," this one was by Niki Denison in the winter 2007 issue of On Wisconsin, the Wisconsin Alumni Association magazine, and touched on some similar issues when talking about alumni who are working at envisioning the future and technological change. She started off by mentioning the singularity and how that near-future scenario of smarter-than-human intelligence has some futurists almost giddy with excitement. There was a sidebar by Bill Draves in the print version of the article (which I can't spot anywhere in the online version) that suggests there are nine societal changes in the near future that will have profound impacts. I'll list them all, but there are some that may have more than a little impact on our present conception of libraries.
- Most people will work at home.
- Virtual offices, or Intranets, will replace physical offices.
- Networks will replace the organizational chart.
- Trains will replace cars.
- Suburbs will decline.
- New social infrastructure will evolve.
- Values and work ethics will change.
- Half of all learning will be online.
- Technology will replace buildings.
Higher education has this "edifice complex" -- we're still spending too much money on buildings. In this century, technology expenses have to exceed building expenses, or individual institutions will be in real danger, because buildings are simply obsolete-- they're just a cost.Given that world-view, it's kind of hard to justify a new library building. Especially when more information is being digitized and made available online. And our library is deep into planning for a new central library building as well as a couple of new branch libraries. How do we justify this, when these new buildings may be obsolete within a generation?
Indeed, how do we justify much of anything we do when such breath-taking change is imminent? Despite our visionary ideals about our mission and relevance, we have to wonder if libraries are destined to become a dead-horse that we're feverishly trying to whip into the future with concepts like Library 2.0, while seeking a niche in Facebook, MySpace or Second Life, and offering video games while serving an aging population and coping with a shrinking budget? Will we be relegated to helping our generation (and older ones) experience just a small amount of what their children and grandchildren will be immersing themselves in daily, while insisting (ever more stridently) that the printed page is still superior to anything the modern age has to offer?
I don't know the answer. I don't know what the future holds. But it will be different. And if it's very different, it may not hold a place for me. Or maybe just not a place where I feel I belong. That's why it scares me.
Your comments, as always, are welcome.
Monday, November 26, 2007
Playing Less, Still Fearing Mistakes
So, since we're nearing the end of the (first) semester for Project Players, I'm wondering how we all did. Do we get grades? (prizes don't count) Perhaps more to the point, do any of us get incompletes? (And I have to wonder who, if any, of my co-workers will see this post.) I'd say I've gained some really valuable experiences from the course. Bloglines and del.icio.us are part of my daily routine now. Blogging has become something of a habit as well, but the lack of feedback is a bit of a deterrent. Flickr won't be getting too much use from me. LibraryThing doesn't do it for me either, although I may experiment more later. Ditto with Wikis.
But if you're seeking nominations for praiseworthy blogs, I happen to like Pinky's (excellent organizational style and layout) and Retiring Guy (great writing quality). Belated nominee: RDmpl for the absolute best use of a blog to promote an underused library resource-- government documents. He's got me trying something similar here and here. (About my nominees, well, I haven't ventured too far afield from the South Central Library System blogs. Who has the time?)
And speaking of fearing less, here's a link to a recent article in the New York Times (gotta admit, that Bloglines feed is still paying dividends) about the value in making mistakes and learning from them. It talks about the schizophrenic way we look at mistakes ("Mistakes are how we learn" vs. "Failing publicly can be a crushing blow to a fragile ego") and how when it comes to decision-making, at least in business, we increasingly emphasize the outcome rather than the process.
The article goes on to cite a June, 2006 Harvard Business Review article by Paul J. H. Schoemaker and Robert E. Gunther (available at your local library or online via EBSCOhost) that explores areas where deliberately making mistakes (such as testing false assumptions) can be fairly low-cost and hugely profitable. One of the keys was finding areas where decisions are made repeatedly ("environments where core assumptions drive large numbers of routine decisions") rather than rare decisions an individual or company would make only once.
So, how can we, as libraries, "profit" by making deliberate mistakes? We could start by examining where we make the majority of our decisions: Buying materials/selection? Cataloging? Shelving? Checkout? Internet sign-up? Reference? Answering phones? What are the core assumptions that underlie our current decisions? Where can we make changes? Who can make those changes? How do we measure results? How do we interpret those results?
Lather. Rinse. Repeat.
Could we apply the deliberate mistakes philosophy to our Project Play course? What were the assumptions going in about who would sign up? Would the results be different if, instead of targeting the permanent/professional staff, we were to allow shelvers and checkout desk staffers, maintenance/custodial workers, Friends of the library, volunteers, etc. to sign up instead?
And what are the results for the current group? How are we being measured? What assumptions were made at the start of this learning experiment? What adjustments (mistakes) can be made?
Too many questions perhaps. Naturally I don't have the answers.
Comments are, as always, welcome.
But if you're seeking nominations for praiseworthy blogs, I happen to like Pinky's (excellent organizational style and layout) and Retiring Guy (great writing quality). Belated nominee: RDmpl for the absolute best use of a blog to promote an underused library resource-- government documents. He's got me trying something similar here and here. (About my nominees, well, I haven't ventured too far afield from the South Central Library System blogs. Who has the time?)
And speaking of fearing less, here's a link to a recent article in the New York Times (gotta admit, that Bloglines feed is still paying dividends) about the value in making mistakes and learning from them. It talks about the schizophrenic way we look at mistakes ("Mistakes are how we learn" vs. "Failing publicly can be a crushing blow to a fragile ego") and how when it comes to decision-making, at least in business, we increasingly emphasize the outcome rather than the process.
The article goes on to cite a June, 2006 Harvard Business Review article by Paul J. H. Schoemaker and Robert E. Gunther (available at your local library or online via EBSCOhost) that explores areas where deliberately making mistakes (such as testing false assumptions) can be fairly low-cost and hugely profitable. One of the keys was finding areas where decisions are made repeatedly ("environments where core assumptions drive large numbers of routine decisions") rather than rare decisions an individual or company would make only once.
So, how can we, as libraries, "profit" by making deliberate mistakes? We could start by examining where we make the majority of our decisions: Buying materials/selection? Cataloging? Shelving? Checkout? Internet sign-up? Reference? Answering phones? What are the core assumptions that underlie our current decisions? Where can we make changes? Who can make those changes? How do we measure results? How do we interpret those results?
Lather. Rinse. Repeat.
Could we apply the deliberate mistakes philosophy to our Project Play course? What were the assumptions going in about who would sign up? Would the results be different if, instead of targeting the permanent/professional staff, we were to allow shelvers and checkout desk staffers, maintenance/custodial workers, Friends of the library, volunteers, etc. to sign up instead?
And what are the results for the current group? How are we being measured? What assumptions were made at the start of this learning experiment? What adjustments (mistakes) can be made?
Too many questions perhaps. Naturally I don't have the answers.
Comments are, as always, welcome.
Friday, November 16, 2007
Wikis
Well, I'm rushing to get this finished since Beth is leaving town and Nichole is quitting her job, but I doubt either of them will feel badly about missing this particular post.
I've been thinking about using Wikis in Technical Services lately, since we do seem to be trading information back and forth. I've got a lot of notes to myself about various procedures that I keep as Microsoft Word documents that I can pop open and look at and some of those have been shared with the other catalogers here. One of them, for world language shelf location prefixes, is one that occasionally gets added to (usually when Jan gets a DVD in a language that's not already included on the list). I haven't been keeping up with her additions so when I got a few new children's items that were in Tamil, I sent out a message to the other catalogers asking if they had any objections to me using "Tam" as a prefix. Naturally, it turned out that Jan had created one already, different from mine, and it just hadn't gotten added to my list. (Oops. Doesn't exactly make me shine, now does it?) And there are other lists like shortened Dewey numbers for our music sound recordings, cutter numbers for classical composers, cutters for makes and models of automobiles, cutters for books about Microsoft software, as well as notes we routinely give to new catalogers, that could probably live on a web site/wiki.
But I have concerns. I'm just not sure how secure something like that would be, having all that fuss about changes to Wikipedia made by people with an agenda certainly gives one pause. And I'm not sure whether it would be more convenient for me to use a web site than just a document file already on my computer. Or whether the formatting that I can use in a Word document could be cut and pasted into a Wiki (I haven't taken the time to really look at/play with the features-- maybe later this week). Etc.
Minor concerns? Not so much to me. Easily addressed? I'll have to take more time to poke around before I'll know.
I certainly agree that it can be useful for shorter term projects. The camping list video was very short term (but, frankly, not that important). We've had some projects (for lack of a better term) which were written as Word documents that were sent via email and I used the "track changes" feature to make comments before I sent them back and that's the sort of collaboration where I think a Wiki could be used. But my changes probably shouldn't replace the originals without there being some discussion, right? I'm not sure I trust my power/judgment to that extent. Trust someone else? That's even riskier.
My feeling is that lots of the kind of work-related materials I'm thinking could fit on a wiki need to be fairly permanent. I think we'd need to have limitations on access and passwords. And backups/history. So I'm a little more cautious about using Wikis for that type of work. Maybe I'll change my mind after I've had more time to explore/play with them this weekend.
Thanks for reading.
I've been thinking about using Wikis in Technical Services lately, since we do seem to be trading information back and forth. I've got a lot of notes to myself about various procedures that I keep as Microsoft Word documents that I can pop open and look at and some of those have been shared with the other catalogers here. One of them, for world language shelf location prefixes, is one that occasionally gets added to (usually when Jan gets a DVD in a language that's not already included on the list). I haven't been keeping up with her additions so when I got a few new children's items that were in Tamil, I sent out a message to the other catalogers asking if they had any objections to me using "Tam" as a prefix. Naturally, it turned out that Jan had created one already, different from mine, and it just hadn't gotten added to my list. (Oops. Doesn't exactly make me shine, now does it?) And there are other lists like shortened Dewey numbers for our music sound recordings, cutter numbers for classical composers, cutters for makes and models of automobiles, cutters for books about Microsoft software, as well as notes we routinely give to new catalogers, that could probably live on a web site/wiki.
But I have concerns. I'm just not sure how secure something like that would be, having all that fuss about changes to Wikipedia made by people with an agenda certainly gives one pause. And I'm not sure whether it would be more convenient for me to use a web site than just a document file already on my computer. Or whether the formatting that I can use in a Word document could be cut and pasted into a Wiki (I haven't taken the time to really look at/play with the features-- maybe later this week). Etc.
Minor concerns? Not so much to me. Easily addressed? I'll have to take more time to poke around before I'll know.
I certainly agree that it can be useful for shorter term projects. The camping list video was very short term (but, frankly, not that important). We've had some projects (for lack of a better term) which were written as Word documents that were sent via email and I used the "track changes" feature to make comments before I sent them back and that's the sort of collaboration where I think a Wiki could be used. But my changes probably shouldn't replace the originals without there being some discussion, right? I'm not sure I trust my power/judgment to that extent. Trust someone else? That's even riskier.
My feeling is that lots of the kind of work-related materials I'm thinking could fit on a wiki need to be fairly permanent. I think we'd need to have limitations on access and passwords. And backups/history. So I'm a little more cautious about using Wikis for that type of work. Maybe I'll change my mind after I've had more time to explore/play with them this weekend.
Thanks for reading.
Saturday, November 10, 2007
Del.icio.us
I stumbled onto del.icio.us a while back while looking for ways to create lists of titles and started linking from some articles in Bloglines that I wanted to read at my leisure. So it's been a pretty nice addition to my wired world. I'll still need to add my account to my blog page (later). Here's a link to it. (I tagged and added a couple of my own blogs just to see if anyone else would stumble across them. If anyone has, they don't seem to think they're worth linking to. Sigh)
But, since I'm a cataloger, I am a little bit threatened by the concept of tagging. One of my co-workers emailed me today and sent a link to the Danbury Public Library catalog, which uses tags, and asked what I thought of the concept. (She was excited about it.) I spent some time trying to undermine the concept. I did take the opportunity to link to my blog about LibraryThing, where I took a few cheap shots at the overlapping tags they used on the novel Ulysses and the problems I had with the lack of controlled headings for the Beatles.
But I did have to admit that the sheer number of tags that could be added to a record gives them a bit of an advantage. Not using a controlled vocabulary has the downside of not being able to narrow your search to a specific topic, but it seems to be very patron friendly and very usable. Comparing tagging to our "related-works" feature in our OPAC shows the difference-- when you click on a controlled heading you get all the items which use that exact heading. Good for when you want specificity (like when searching the author heading for "Beatles"). But you lose variant links that would catch different items where the term "Beatles" is a subject keyword rather than an author. Tags don't need to fit into one or the other pigeon-hole. That might be a huge benefit. Or not.
I also noted in my search of the Danbury catalog that some items didn't seem to get tags (none were on the sound recordings I looked at here, here, here or any under this performer), nor did a serial record with several editions of Fodor's Las Vegas. And there was one book about mushrooms that didn't even use the word mushrooms in any of the three tags used on it! So in this instance, a title or subject keyword search would be more effective than the current tags! And lest I forget, keyword searching capabilities currently available might be a better standard of comparison than subject headings. Where summaries and contents notes are available, they could prove to be the equal of tagging. We just don't have the time/resources to get this kind of information into all of our catalog records. But someday we might.
So it seems to me that tagging tends to work with newer, popular/high circulation items. My co-worker stated that she thought tagging would be a huge advantage when doing reader's advisory and that's probably true. I can also see where it might be useful in an area like music, where there are numerous sub-genres to categories like rock and techno and rap that won't be accessible if subject headings are broadly assigned but that could be added with tags.
But I do see some potential problems:
Now on to the gruntwork:
Done. (see above and below)
Some questions to consider: How can libraries harness the “massive amounts of participation” in tools like del.icio.us?
I think the tags on LibraryThing would be more appropriate if we're talking about adding the tags to our bib records. But I could see our reference staff showing patrons how to search delicious for tags that would link to web postings. But wouldn't this just be googling a smaller database?
Where else could libraries use tags?
Well, some of us use them on our blogs and I see them used on our internal websites and our book reviews.
Is the concept of tagging, with its uncontrolled vocabulary, unsettling to you?
Yes and no. I'm a cataloger and anything that undermines cataloging feels a little threatening. I think an uncontrolled vocabulary can co-exist with a controlled one, but this could be one more step along that slippery slope toward what they used to call "outsourcing."
Hey, I think I'm done with this assignment! Now that's cool!
But, since I'm a cataloger, I am a little bit threatened by the concept of tagging. One of my co-workers emailed me today and sent a link to the Danbury Public Library catalog, which uses tags, and asked what I thought of the concept. (She was excited about it.) I spent some time trying to undermine the concept. I did take the opportunity to link to my blog about LibraryThing, where I took a few cheap shots at the overlapping tags they used on the novel Ulysses and the problems I had with the lack of controlled headings for the Beatles.
But I did have to admit that the sheer number of tags that could be added to a record gives them a bit of an advantage. Not using a controlled vocabulary has the downside of not being able to narrow your search to a specific topic, but it seems to be very patron friendly and very usable. Comparing tagging to our "related-works" feature in our OPAC shows the difference-- when you click on a controlled heading you get all the items which use that exact heading. Good for when you want specificity (like when searching the author heading for "Beatles"). But you lose variant links that would catch different items where the term "Beatles" is a subject keyword rather than an author. Tags don't need to fit into one or the other pigeon-hole. That might be a huge benefit. Or not.
I also noted in my search of the Danbury catalog that some items didn't seem to get tags (none were on the sound recordings I looked at here, here, here or any under this performer), nor did a serial record with several editions of Fodor's Las Vegas. And there was one book about mushrooms that didn't even use the word mushrooms in any of the three tags used on it! So in this instance, a title or subject keyword search would be more effective than the current tags! And lest I forget, keyword searching capabilities currently available might be a better standard of comparison than subject headings. Where summaries and contents notes are available, they could prove to be the equal of tagging. We just don't have the time/resources to get this kind of information into all of our catalog records. But someday we might.
So it seems to me that tagging tends to work with newer, popular/high circulation items. My co-worker stated that she thought tagging would be a huge advantage when doing reader's advisory and that's probably true. I can also see where it might be useful in an area like music, where there are numerous sub-genres to categories like rock and techno and rap that won't be accessible if subject headings are broadly assigned but that could be added with tags.
But I do see some potential problems:
- getting tags on older works. Can we dump the tags from amazon.com or LibraryThing into our database? I'm guessing there's some way to do this, at least with current works. Starting from scratch and adding tags to our catalog would probably just emphasize our bias toward the new. But if tags already exist on amazon and LibraryThing, can't people find related works on those sites before they come to ours to place holds?
- monitoring the tags being added for improprieties. I'm sure we could come up with an automated way to prevent f-bombs but how about legitimate subject headings that might cause a reaction in some of our patrons?
- size limitations-- such as we're already facing when dealing with well-worn genre headings like Love stories, Detective and mystery stories, Feature films, Rock music, etc. can be an even bigger problem when searching an uncontrolled vocabulary. Try searching "literature" (100K+ hits) "war" (200K+ hits) or "history" (300K+ hits) on del.icio.us and you'll see what I mean. (And, no disrespect intended, but I don't think the Danbury Public Library is dealing with the same number of resources that the South Central Library System is sharing.)
- do we know how this would affect the system resources? Would a well used tag like one of those I mentioned in the previous bullet slow down the system significantly? And can we add tags without compromising the security of our database?
- do patrons who can't access our database from home add tags from terminals in the library? If some of our patrons don't have the same technology tools others among us take for granted are they being discriminated against somehow?
Now on to the gruntwork:
Assignments
1. Write a post in your blog about this week’s lesson and add some tags/labels to the post.Done. (see above and below)
Some questions to consider: How can libraries harness the “massive amounts of participation” in tools like del.icio.us?
I think the tags on LibraryThing would be more appropriate if we're talking about adding the tags to our bib records. But I could see our reference staff showing patrons how to search delicious for tags that would link to web postings. But wouldn't this just be googling a smaller database?
Where else could libraries use tags?
Well, some of us use them on our blogs and I see them used on our internal websites and our book reviews.
Is the concept of tagging, with its uncontrolled vocabulary, unsettling to you?
Yes and no. I'm a cataloger and anything that undermines cataloging feels a little threatening. I think an uncontrolled vocabulary can co-exist with a controlled one, but this could be one more step along that slippery slope toward what they used to call "outsourcing."
2. Explore del.icio.us: Search for something you’re interested in.
I searched for the term/phrase graphic novels and got 1,647 hits.
Try clicking on different things in an entry to see what happens (What happens when you click on the title of the bookmarked page?
I got taken to the web site where the article lives. (Cool! No, really! I know it's supposed to happen, but it really is cool! Magic, even!)
How about the tags?
I clicked on the tag "manga" under one article and got a new list of articles using that term. (Again, totally cool!)
How about the “saved by xxx people” link?)
What you mean porn stars?! (ha!) (well you brought it up) That seems to take me to the list of notes (not tags) that the people who have tagged the article have written to themselves. (Still pretty cool, but it feels not as useful?)
Optional assignments:
1. Set up your own del.icio.us account and share its URL on your blog.
Yeah, got the account. I'll add the link later.
Del.icio.us has a How do I get started? page to get you started!
2. Choose someone’s account in del.icio.us who is linking to things you particularly like, and subscribe to their RSS feed in your Bloglines account. (HINT: Once you get to their del.icio.us page, look for the orange RSS icon at the bottom of the page!). If you can’t find someone’s account to subscribe to, try Libraryman.
I subscribed to Jessamyn West's del.icio.us account, just cuz I like her blogs. Don't know whether I'll stick with this new side of her though. Just wanted to finish the assignment.
I subscribed to Jessamyn West's del.icio.us account, just cuz I like her blogs. Don't know whether I'll stick with this new side of her though. Just wanted to finish the assignment.
Hey, I think I'm done with this assignment! Now that's cool!
Wednesday, November 7, 2007
Not For The Timid
Thanks to my Bloglines subscriptions, I got sucked into another huge article. This one was about younger people who really, really embrace the web as a social tool. If you have the time, read through this article, about these young people (in their teens and twenties) who seem to post anything/everything on the Web.
I'm definitely turning into my parents. And not in a good way.
Feel free to comment.
I'm definitely turning into my parents. And not in a good way.
Feel free to comment.
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