For my fellow classmates… During my presentation tonight, feel free to glance at these webpages.

Maurer School of Law at Indiana University

Blawg in Bloom

So, we have come to the point in my S603 technology course when I am going to start blogging about blogging. As we say here at SLIS, this assignment is über meta. The following are my reflections and opinions concerning the process of blogging in this class, WordPress.com, and blogging in general.

I found this entire process to be excruciatingly easy. In fact, it is sort of charming. WordPress is easy to access and provides an intuitive process for establishing a blog. The library of themes provided by WordPress is immense and growing larger everyday. This allows your blog to reflect your aesthetics, without having to be a CSS wizard. The WordPress dashboard system of management is comprehensive and provides satisfactory explanations under the “Help” tab (if needed.) I appreciated how “Widgets” could be dragged and dropped into my blog’s platform. The categorization and tagging system allows for the accurate/effective representation and organization of my ideas and posts. Additionally, it was easy to add media (pictures or video) to my blog. I drew all of my videos from Youtube and the images were either from Wikimedia Commons (drawn from their selection of public domain images) or were screenshots from my own computer. I found that adding media was the most critical part of making my blog viable, as it made the blog more than scrolling through text. While I hope that my text was adequate, I know that my blog was buttressed by making it more engaging visually.

I am getting old. I know this. I have accepted this fact, even though I still act like a fool. All of that said, I think that I am going to employ some of the lessons from this course, and put them into play. First and foremost, I think that I will continue to maintain a blog. I used to think of the blogosphere as a number of bloated egos spouting off. My perceptions are changing about this. Blogging is wildly democratic, and allows many marginalized voices to be heard in a powerful forum. While I truly do not have a following, I think that I will maintain this blog to continue posting music, news, images, and recipes that I find compelling. I like this as a means to share information with friends and perhaps the greater community. Not to be dismissive of these humble beginnings, but I will probably go back and delete some of the posts concerning library technology. I am afraid that new-comers to the blog might find that stuff to be a bit of a turn-off. But maybe I do not really know my audience yet.

One aspect of blogging that I truly enjoyed was the fluid prose that it allows. One does not need to be formal in this forum. My background is in writing hyper-technical and legal documents, ergo, this blog represents a dramatic shift in my voice and tone. While this is for a graduate level workshop, my approach has been whimsical. The Internet is terrible in conveying tone, as sarcasm is almost always lost, but I hope that this blog was able to capture my personality.

I enjoyed this classes requirement that we place our assignments on our blog. This wa san effective manner of turning in our work, but more importantly, this allowed me to witness the genius of my peers. I say that in all sincerity. (No, really.) I have actually learned about some stuff from others in the class, especially Nicholae’s exploration of LibraryThing. I feel that this process made our class dynamic more amicable.

This photograph was taken in 1916 of a classroom at the Horner Avenue School in Toronto, Canada. Notably, online classrooms look a bit different.

In library instruction, one difficult topic that often presents itself is a student’s failure to comprehend effective search strategies. It could be beneficial for libraries (be they academic, legal, or public) to provide online video tutorials of how to create effective searches for different databases. If well advertised by the library’s website, a student could access short (yet critical) instruction on database use. Given the nature of the training, it would probably be best to make this a tutorial video, so as to effectively co-mingle audio and visual learning. The video should not be too long in length, as the kids of today have the shortest attention span in the history of civilized people. Additionally, as all search engines have their quirks, I would direct the videos to address specific search engines (perhaps the most popular ones offered by the library.)

I find the best online tutorials meet the following criteria: succinct, relevant, high production value, and effective narrator. In my humble opinion, a great model for online instruction is a website called Lynda.com. (The site is offered via subscription, so, it is best to go through your member institution. In my case, Indiana University has a subscription to this service.) Lynda.com presents a comprehensive approach to various software applications and operating systems. The training can last many hours or just a few minutes. An individual can search for the exact topic that she wants to learn about or engage in a comprehensive session.

The audience for the online tutorial I am proposing would be users of an academic library’s website. Consequently, this could be all members of the academic community: undergraduate students, graduate students, staff, and faculty. I think it would be possible to craft a video that is engaging to all members of the community and would provide the necessary information. I have noticed that in my time at the reference desk, it is not only undergraduates that have trouble creating search strings.

Obviously, the critical parts of having online tutorials are (1) whether your audience knows that the tutorial is available, and (2) whether the tutorial’s content is effective. On the latter point, I would attempt to create a good storyboard and script with my colleagues before doing one of these myself. The generation of curriculum is usually best when it is collaborative. While I may think I have a grasp on the issue, there are certain concepts that I may fail to convey. The tutorial that I would aim to create would include the following elements.

• The beginning would be the end. In other words, I would start the tutorial with the result of the tutorial. In this case, the narrator might introduce the topic by noting the challenges that researchers have in finding relevant articles. I would start with an obscure article or resource, and then teach an individual how to find that item.
• I would show the individual how to access the database.
• One of the first lessons in database use is RATS, which stands for Read All of The Screen. Researchers often fail to comprehend all of the search options presented to them, and jump straight to typing in the search box. Many researchers fail to take advantage of advanced search features, such as limiting results to peer-reviewed journals, items for which the database has the full PDF file, limiting by date, etc.
• I would then begin crafting a search with a focus on the two key areas of using: synonyms to garner more results and truncation on certain words. While there are many search strategies to employ, I feel as if researchers at all levels fail to use these techniques on a regular basis.
• The tutorial would then employ the techniques and revel the results.
• Finally, the tutorial would conclude with a pitch for asking a librarian id assistance is needed.

The following are three PDF files that display general ideas of how the tutorial would be presented to users.

1. Structure of Tutorial on the User’s Monitor
2. Interpreting the Advanced Search Screen
3. Interpreting the Search Results Screen

To explore social bookmarking in-depth, I registered with a site called Diigo. This website markets itself as a research tool. In fact, the homepage focuses on three areas: research, share, and collaborate. Each area is couched in terms that appear to be directed at the academic community as the website uses terms likes annotate, archive, and knowledge repository. This does not appear to be directed at people who use the Internet to satiate their popular culture interests.

An example of the marketing language used by Diigo.com.

The process of using Diigo was relatively simple. Their website contains a number of “how to” videos when you register your account. To begin bookmarking websites, I just started to add resources to the page called “My Library.” Its interface looks like this:

My Library at Diigo.com

As you can see from this screenshot, My Library is a list of the bookmarks that I have added to the site. The system defaults to having these bookmarks be “public”; meaning that everyone with a Diigo account can see what items I have bookmarked. Notably, you can set these selections to private. I assume this would be helpful if you wanted to bookmark a lot of pornography (or if you wanted to visit politically charged sites but wanted your leanings to be secretive.)

My List of Tags for Diigo

This screen also allows you to access your list of tags, which can be expanded and collapsed. This is obviously one of the critical methods for representing and organizing your knowledge base. Herein lies the promise and peril of social bookmarking. On the one hand, it is amazingly helpful to organize your information via a tagging system. You can label a website with numerous tags that relate to your use of the website and how others might perceive that source of information. Ideally, you can then use the community’s wealth of knowledge to examine topics that interest you. The peril is that sometimes people apply tags in an inaccurate or haphazard manner. A good example of this can be seen in the tagging of photographs on the National Archives Flickr page. It is amazing to see people add tags to photos, however, some of the tags include incorrect information (the wrong year or the wrong person in the photograph.) This it the potential problem with relying a network of tagging.

Diigo allows for a user to search its network through tag searching, but it is not very intuitive. When you do searching with tags, it is generally focused on the tags in your library. This makes sense, as Diigo is designed to help you organize your information. Here you can see that I could search for a tag within my library:

The "Afghanistan" tag in My Library

The problem came when trying to search the larger Diigo community for tags. I could find a tag cloud for popular tags, but when I tried for searches of the tag “library” my searches were failures. I think that this is a user error and not a problem with the system. I must not be able to figure out how this works, as opposed to a social bookmarking site that does not allow for tag searching. I could search for the word “library” in searches, and received a lot of titles with the term “library” included. However, as shown below, my search for the tag “library” did not bear fruit. This also failed when I tried to search for the tags “vegan” and “news” in the larger Diigo community. Once again, I think that maybe the Diigo website is experiencing some database problem. Although, I was able to search users who had used the tag “library.” From that page, I could go from user to user looking at the public bookmarks that they had marked with the “library” tag.

Tag cloud of popular tags in the Diigo community

Failed tag search in Diigo

In stark contrast to Diigo’s failures on this front, Delicious seems to focus on tags and tag searching. I was not registered with Delicious, but I was able to access the portion of their website devoted to searching tags. Needless to say, I could find countless bookmarks that had been tagged: library, vegan, and news. I could even find bookmarks that had been tagged vegan and library or library and news. However, I could not find a bookmark with all three tags. I also tried searching for these three tags in Netvouz. Notably, the search function allowed me to search for a term, but then suggested tags that would watch that term. So, it was a two-step process. Netvouz did allow me to access a tag cloud, but once again, this page did not allow for searching tags.

Notably, in looking at the interface of the three products, Diigo is more pleasing on the eyes. Netvouz is primitive. Delicious is garish. Diigo is just about right.

While I could not track down certain tags in Diigo, I was able to ascertain whether other individuals in the community had bookmarked the same pages that I added to my library. In the “Friends” section of Diigo, I was able to see other individuals who shared an interest in the same websites. This screen also allowed me to search by email, tag, site, url, and other options. I found that 8 people had bookmarked The Awl, yet only four members did so publicly.

Other members of the Diigo Community that have bookmarked "The Awl" website.

I think that the most useful aspect of Diigo is not the connections made in the community, but they organizing, annotating, and archiving that it allows you to perform. Diigo allows users to highlight and add “sticky notes” to various webpages, and this type of note taking stay with you. As you can see, Diigo allows a toolbar to be added to your browser. This was not a program that was downloaded, it is merely a drag and drop application.

Across the top of this image, you can see the additional toolbar that Diigo allows on a browser. These are the tools that make Diigo attractive.

Here you can see the toolbar in action…

Highlighting and adding notes to a webpage.

The endgame – and perhaps the coolest part of Diigo – is that what you highlight shows up in your personal library. Consequently, as you search the Internet, and highlight what interests you, Diigo is keeping up with you.

Easily the best part of Diigo. When you highlight something, your Diigo library copies your highlights into your library for searching and viewing. That is something that I can get behind.

I have been thinking about investing my time and energy into a social bookmarking site, and I find Diigo’s system of highlighting and annotating very attractive. I often times find myself thinking about some article or quote from a website, and this system would allow me to successfully organize this data.

Here is the original trailer for comparison.

Fortunately, there are people with talent in the world who can make mashups that make sense and work. My friend Michael owns and operates a website devoted to this called youmapper.com. My favorite map that he has created is the one to track meth labs.

If you go to my webpage, you just might find a slide show of images from the American Civil War. And a bunch of other random crap.

Herbert Putnam was the eighth Librarian of the United States Congress from 1899 to 1939. He introduced the Library of Congress classification scheme. He was also an extremely sharp dresser. From top to bottom, he looks great: tie, waist coat, jacket, and pants.

Reference departments need to examine, analyze, and adjust to the ways in which people communicate with one another. Just as librarians from yesteryear introduced innovations, the librarians of tomorrow will continue in their footsteps. Herbert Putnam, the eighth Librarian of Congress, did not spend his days updating the reference blog at his desk. He was responsible for introducing the Library of Congress classification system. Which I am sure at the time was met with more bewilderment and questioning than virtual reference. Librarians across the country are implementing virtual reference services with varying degrees of success. As we discussed in class, the success of these programs relates to two main issues: (a) whether the virtual reference services being advertised and (b) whether your librarians are competent and willing to engage in virtual reference work. The first issue involves marketing savvy and a willing audience, and the second issue involved successful hiring practices. All of this can be relatively difficult to control, and managers in the library setting just have to do their best and hope it works out.

As someone who often engages in virtual reference, I would give the following advice:

• Have a document that is a list of common phrases that you can cut-and-paste into your virtual reference interaction. This speeds up the process for you and the patron. My phrases include things like: “Hello. This is the reference desk. How can I help you?” and “Thank you for this questions, please give me a minute to check the library’s catalog.”
• Use software like Jing to quickly create images and videos that explain concepts to patrons.
• Remember to provide a referral to a librarian that specializes in that field.
• Remember to type in complete sentences. I know this might be hard when you are instant messaging, but remember your role as someone who provides access to information. Broken sentences make you look like an ass-hat.
• And finally, be conscious of the service you are providing, your audience, and your commitment to non-discrimination. There has been some interesting research on the topic of whether virtual reference is “color-blind.” As a profession, we need to be cognizant of possible problems in this area. One article on this topic by Pnina Shachaf and Sarah Horowitz can be found here. (I hope this link works, it uses a DOI number and it requires you to have access to Indiana University.)

This has been my tune the past few days… The group is well-worth a listen: a mighty good range of instruments, darling lyrics, and inspiring.

This is NOT a RSS Feed Reader

My erroneous perception of the phrase does not alter the reality and usefulness of the RSS Feed Reader. (Fortunately.) To use a terrible and unfortunate analogy, the RSS Feed Reader is like the big box store (Target, Wal-Mart) of data collection. As you only need to go to one store for skin cream, pajamas, televisions, and groceries; on the web, you only need to go to one place to review all of your favorite websites. For the purposes of this blog post, I thought it would be useful for me to evaluate two different RSS Feed Readers. The following is merely my two cents, which is a gross over-valuation for my opinions…

The first RSS Feed Reader that I investigated was Google Reader. This is a reader that I personally use, so my evaluation comes with months worth of use.

The home page is relatively simple and is sparse in its color choices. It is primarily white and shades of blues. The viewer is guided to what has been read or not read by using bold or un-bolded fonts. The home screen highlights a series of blog posts that have not been read. The information architecture of this site focuses on what you have read

The home screen for Google Reader

The following are some of the positive aspects of Google Reader. One nice part about this RSS Feed Reader is that it is advertisement free, other than the Google branding of the product. Additionally, given the popularity of Google, a number of websites and blogs allow you to specifically click on following their site on Google.  The reader allows you to organize into folders and add your own tags.

One drawback is that the entire post is not always available on Google Reader, and you need to click a button taking you to the source website. This potential criticism goes to the heart of a RSS Feed Reader’s purpose: should it have all of the content or should it simply be an index that will direct you to the desired site if you want to read the article in toto.

Here is a Link to a Blog Post for Gawker.com. Notably, the entire post is not in the Feed Reader interface.

For comparison’s sake, I also examined a RSS Feed Reader called NetNewsWire, which is a product put out by a software developer called NewsGator Technology, Inc.

The interface is very “clean” and reminiscent of the Mail program put out by Apple, Inc. The buttons across the top are simple and perhaps more clear than those used by Google Reader. Both programs allow readers to sort the posts by date, read/unread, and source. I must say, there is something orderly about the NetNewsWire style of having alternating highlighted lines, as if you are looking at an inbox of emails.

NetNewsWire Interface

The main drawback of NetNewsWire is that it is not web-based. Consequently, you cannot follow your RSS Feed when you are on the go in another city, or you do not carry your laptop around with you. Additionally, as you can see, in the bottom-left corner is an advertisement. Bleh.

In conclusion, I could see myself using both products. Presently, I am a student who moves back-and-forth from home to the library without my computer. Consequently, Google Reader is a good choice for me. If I find myself “settling down” and being a one-computer kind-of guy, I can see myself having a relationship with NetNewsWire.

http://ella.slis.indiana.edu/~frunge/s603/simplepage.xml