"There seems to be a disturbing message hidden in the Dewey Decimal Classification system, the organizational scheme first published in 1876 and now used in 95% of US schools: Of the hundred numbers set aside for topics concerning religion, 88 — numbers 201-287 — are reserved for Christianity. Jews and Moslems get just one each. But those single-digit religions are still doing better than Buddhists (294.3) who share a decimal point with the Sikhs (294.6) and Jains (294.4), looking up enviously at Christian "Parish government & administration" which gets its own whole number (254)."
"Why is the Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC) system so embarrassingly behind the times? After all, its owners are fully modern, reasonable people, many with advanced library degrees, who report to work in a suburb of Columbus, Ohio. How can they let their classification scheme get it so wrong? After all, if the US Census can finally, in 2000, acknowledge that many people don’t fit into a single racial bucket, surely the academics and intellectuals managing the nation’s standard library classification system can end its 130 years of religious bias. It's not that easy." (link via John Battelle's Searchblog)
Imagine Bloglines without all of the bells and whistles. No registration needed, just a portal of thousands of newsfeeds to read, broken up into numerous categories. Newstation comes pretty close. Click on the feeds on the left to read the content on the right. You can even comment on the stories. I think of it as an open aggregator for all to use. Now, it's not personalized, but I'm sure that it can be without having to collect registration information. I think Cookies can be used (like Daily Whirl does. Have the users pick which feeds they want to read, create a cookie for those feeds, and only that content will show up when the page is accessed from that computer.
A few odds and ends about Newstation. First, the categories don't work with Firefox (shucky darn), the special sections don't seem to work, and there is a feed to keep up with new happenings on the site. I'm pretty impressed with what I have seen so far with Newstation. Let's hope Brian can build on a good product.
That's what I think my aggregator and Blogger are saying to me these days. While I have tried to do my best with keeping up with my aggregator, the content is starting to build up on me. The problem? I have been trying to read more about social networks, collaboration, and cooperation in group work. Thus, I have subscribed to about 20 more feeds. I have said in the past that the best way to handle the content in your aggregator (if no extra time opens up in your life), that for every feed you add, you should delete one. In theory, this makes sense. Putting it into practice is another story, all together ("Putting it into practice is another story" - Airplane anyone?)
As I write this, I have at least 40 posts in draft format in my weblog (they are just links, but it makes me feel better about the situation if I call then posts), which I should really attempt to tackle this week. I have so much that I want to share. The other problem? I have 2 consulting reports due yesterday, 2 book reviews due by the end of the month, my column for Public Libraries which was due yesterday (almost done with that), and yet another article (this one scholarly) due by (again) the end of the month. Add to this the upcoming presentations that I have scheduled, and something has to give. And what gave was my aforementioned lack of blog drafting and posting.
There is good news (actually, it is all good news, but you get my point). I have been feeling very good as of late. No anxiety at all and my panic seems to have subsided. Working out really helps, plus I have a tremendously helpful support system online and off. So, that's good news.
Plus, I've just saved a bunch of money on car insurance my switching to GEICO....seriously.
There is an article in the latest issue of the LISJobs newsletter on marketing the librarian:
"Information professionals usually don't think of marketing themselves as a big issue. We know are the key to accessing information; we are service- and customer-oriented; we know our business - so, customers will just come to us, right? Unfortunately, we do need to market ourselves - not just to be known, but also to let our customers know who we are and what we can do to help them. Here, I share my experiences with marketing myself successfully as an information professional, both inside and outside my organization."
I wrote a similar article for LISCareer.com, which should appear in the October issue (see, I just marketed myself)
I'm not into PDA's (they never worked for me, not sure why), but I know of a fewcolleagues who might be interested in News in Motion
"News in Motion delivers user customized news content formatted for BlackBerry, HipTop, PDA, Treo and other hand-held devices. Log-in to the member section of the website, tell us which sites you want monitored for news, and you are all set. Depending on your preferences, email updates will start arriving to your mobile device. News inMotion can pull news and updates from any websites that have a RSS / XML feed."
The latest issue of Computers in Libraries magazine has an article entitled, "I've Gathered a Basket of Communication and Collaboration Tools", by May Chang. It is not available online, but I hope to get a copy from my public library's fee-based database as soon as I can. The synopsis:
"There's a bushel of communication and collaboration tools to choose from these days. Unsure of which to pick? This academic librarian scanned the field, tested many of them, and implemented wikis, blogs, forums, and more. Here she shares her juicy tidbits to help you pick your own basket of tools".
I haven't touched upon forums on LS. No reason why, they are probably worth exploring in the formation of collaboration and group work theories. More on that as I continue my voracious reading on the topic.
Update - Michael just e-mailed the article to me. I just love our little library world. Bloggers unite!!
Ray Matthews (Welcome back, Ray) shows us that the State of Missouri now has 19 RSS Feeds from their various departments that we can read in our aggregators. The Missouri State Library seems to work under the auspices of the Secretary of State, so one would assume (hope) that the library news would be included in the SOS Feed.
Hey New York, let's get some feeds going...
There's also more states doing RSS as well. Thanks Ray for keeping us all abreast.
I'm confused. Peter tells us that Eurekster is now searching blogs and that it is powered by Feedster. He even has a screen shot. But, he then mentions that he would want Eurekster and Feedster to get together in the future, which just confused me more. As far as I've seen, Eurekster has always searched blogs (as well as other content), so this is not new. What Peter is telling us that is new is that we can limit the results to blogs, but I don't see this on my end (Again, see Peter's screenshot) and I don't see anywhere that it is powered by Feedster. No mention on the Feedster blog and no mention in Eurekster news. Anyone want to clue me in?
Michael tipped me off to a book coming out by Michael Sauers called "Blogging and RSS: A Librarian's Handbook". It will be out in the spring of 2005 and will be published by Information Today. I can't wait to get my hands on a copy (hint, hint)
Feed to JavaScript - Yet Another Easy Way to Display Feeds on a Web Page
I have mentioned many of these tools in the past. Basically, they are very easy ways to display RSS Feeds on a page. This one happens to use Javascript. Also, as I have mentioned before, these tools run on third-party servers, so you are at the mercy of the resource. That said, some allow the users to download the code to use on their own server. Feed to Javascript allows that, which is nice. Last, for those that love CSS, this is probably the best tool for you to use. (link via Del.icio.us)
First, I've started a Furl account for my current readings about social networks, collaborative intelligence, cooperation, group work, and the like. So, if you're into that stuff, grab the feed. My Del.icio.us account is still going strong, with mostly posts about weblogs and RSS that don't quite fit in here.
Also, Blogger has a new feature that lets readers e-mail posts to friends. After each post, you will see an envelope. Click on that bad boy and you will be able to e-mail that post.
"[T]he new version has expanded filtering support. The default view for a group is a reverse chronological listing of posts from all group members. Say you're only interested in what one specific member of your Group is saying? Simply click on their blog name in the Group Roll, and you are presented with a filtered view of only the posts from that blog. Click another blog, and you now have posts from only those two blogs, etc. You can always return to the default view by clicking the "Include All" text at the top of your Group Roll."
I hadn't checked out the librarians group in a while, but it looks like it's still going strong. I'm looking forward to more new features over at Blogdigger Groups. The next time Greg won't have to e-mail me because I've subscribed to the development blog RSS Feed
"Rice notes that some search engines such as Google pull listings from blogs, but they treat the blog listing as they would any web page, requiring the searcher who specifically is seeking blog content to read through all the listings returned in a search to identify those from blogs. Existing software products aggregate listings from blogs, but require the user seeking a view of overall trends or opinions as represented in blogs to read through all the blog listings to make that determination manually."
"Rice says Blabble goes a step farther by incorporating natural language processing that parses blog listings returned in a search into parts of speech so as to extract from them words, phrases and constructions that indicate opinion. “50,000 people may write about a topic, but you don’t have time to read 50,000 listings,” says Rice. “And I probably don’t care about one individual opinion; it’s the aggregate that I care about."
Check out the sample searches and you can see how the software works. I have never been a fan of natural language when it comes to searching (Sorry AJ), but within the confines of aggregation (not RSS aggregation, but group aggregation), it could work. Take the most popular words used to describe something in a multi-million blog post database and match them up with search terms and you have Blabble. Or so it seems... (link via Topix)
It looks like there is some discussion going on about Peter's work with his library OPAC.
- Art mentions Peter's work with Amazon API and ILL. Oooooh. Peter, show us what you did.
- Jeff, who also commented on my post, works at Library Elf, which "an Internet-based tool for anyone who uses the library and would like to keep track of what they've borrowed. Subscribers are able to checks one or more library accounts in one place, giving you a way to simultaneously keep tabs of the status of all your items on loan". This just screams RSS Feeds...
While these hacks are amazing, I wonder why library vendors haven't created them themselves so that we don't have to rely on Peter to create them for us. Also, these are just for one vendor (and, in the case of Library Elf, only a small number of libraries), so most of us can't use them. We're getting there, but I still feel that we are far away from an understanding of this technology. Sigh.
I guess I can be a bit pleased knowing that OCLC Research may hear about it...
Ross Mayfield, whose weblog I've subscribed to over the weekend, has an interesting round-up of the wikipedia fiasco that dominated the social networks scene this week (at least, it did in my aggregator):
"Which brings me to an lingering thought — that explicitly codifying reputation introduces a cost which can constrain commons-based peer production. Wikipedia was never supposed to work, somehow does because of good club theory and transaction costs, and has gained a reputation as a resource. Introducing reputation for contributors or articles is the greatest risk to the Wikipedia community. Getting a base study on factual accuracy can help inform this decision as well as educate the public on how to use and participate with this commons resource."
When I first mentioned Wikipedia on LS about 1 year ago, I immediately received an e-mail from a colleague saying that I shouldn't be linking to it due to it's "non-authority" based postings. I agreed with the comment, somewhat due to my library school training on the use of "relevant" resources to answer reference questions. That was before I started to read about social networks and collaborative group work and how, as a general idea, groups work much better than individuals in solving complex problems and getting to answers quicker. Now, this is a general statement. Many factors need to be at play within the group for it to work in its best capacity. That is why I have become infatuated with Wikis over the past month, even though they go against one of the basic premises of librarianship: relevant sources. But shouldn't librarians do a bit more research into collaborative work and online social networks before we dismiss wikipedia as garbage? Shouldn't we analyze resources for quality before making blanket statements about wikis and other collaborative tools?
Granted, the article that started this well-informed debate was not the fault of the librarian who sent an e-mail to a reporter. We all have the right to our opinion. The reporter should have interviewed others who believe that wikipedia is a worthwhile resource. I, for one, am glad that the article came out. We need more discussion like this, especially in the library community, as it fosters meaningful discussion and great fodder for me on upcoming projects...
"The result is a Perl script that automatically connects to the web-based Dynix (aka Epixtech) OPAC and grabs a list of the items I've got checked out and the date they are due. It then creates an RSS feed that I can read in my newsreader every morning."
Of course, the first thing that came to mind was that Peter should contact Dynix and show them what he has done. My second thought was that he should contact the other vendors and show them how it can easily be done. My third and final thought was to contact Peter, get on my knees, put my hands in the air, and scream, "I'm Not Worthy". Great spidering work Peter. I'd love to see some other feeds that can be created with the Dynix catalog (RSS Feeds by DDC or subject headings, perhaps?).
