Libraries and web application transparency
I have continued to read a number of posts about Ajax, Web 2.0 and the current state of web applications since my previous post on this topic. One of the things that continues to impress me is the relevance and potential of these technologies for libraries. Dion Hinchcliffe has written a post about Why Ajax Is So Disruptive and makes a number of great observations. One that stuck out was his remark that with new Web 2.0 applications the software is invisible. He writes, “I never worry about if I have the software installed that I need, whether I have ...
Clandestine Librarianism
As a tester to this new theme and slick new composing screen, I thought I’d point to a new project that has popped up in Chicago, headed by folks with some involvement in the graphic novel and visual arts communities. The Chicago Underground Library is in the planning stage, and they describe themselves this way:The Chicago Underground Library is a project that aims to create an archive of self- and small press-published works in Chicago. Through a searchable on-line archive and eventually a physical space, it will open new opportunities for research, inspiration, and collaboration among those in ...
Change
I have been offline as far as RSS feeds are concerned and have just gone back to my Bloglines account to find 717 posts waiting for me to read. Yeah, right. I missed Dave’s glorious return to Circulatable with another piece of first rate commentary and musings. Since I have been wandering in the same mental realm I am going to post on the same topic rather than just comment.My library has a lecture series called “Evolving Directions in Academic Research and Resources” where we invite a faculty member to talk about his/her research and comment on the role of ...
Abstractness, FRBR
Karen Coyle recently pointed to a paper by Allen Renear and Yunseon Choi [pdf] in which they claim that inheritance is a poor way of describing the hierarchy in Group 1 FRBR entities. Renear/Choi mistakenly claim that the work entity is a model of an abstract thing and therefore work entities have some kind of “is-abstract” attribute. There is no thing like an “is-abstract” attribute for works. Rather the attributes of a works, expressions, manifestations and items are the pieces of bibliographic description such as “title”, “uniform title”, “copy number”, “call number” etc…Karen Coyle has is right and Renear/Choi are ...
An alternate view on the catalog’s purpose
I have to strongly disagree with what I saw as Nate’s primary point in his last post, What I want from a catalog. First, he pointed out that, “Library catalogs, by definition, contain only your library’s stuff,” and went on to conclude that this “is the killing blow to any idea of catalog-as-research-tool.” The primary argument is that a library can never compete with the amount of data amassed by the likes of Google or Amazon or Worldcat.I agree with the fact that it is futile to try to beat these companies at their own game. That will never happen ...
Is search != search
Here is a simple question with profound implications: is library search the same thing as the “search” in the way the population at large understands search or Googling?The question is very simple and one that I think has been in the back of my mind for quite some time, but I just read an excerpt on statelessness on the Web from RESTful Web Services that provided me with a new way to frame the question. Richardson and Ruby write:When you ask for a directory of resources about mice or jellyfish, you don’t get the whole directory. ...
No, It’s the Network Effect, Stupid
My former boss and colleague Andrew Pace recently commented on the nature of the network and how he was rebuffed by a colleague for overlooking the fact people that make up the network and this is the most sigificant piece of a network. I would like to respectfully disagree with his post. Andrew used to boast that he is 100% right 50% of the time and in this case I believe he was right during the initial part of his musings on this topic.What is the significance of the network in the 21st century? What we understand as the network ...
Know Yourself First
It does not matter that Microsoft may buy Yahoo–the acquisition is based on a flawed premise. Technology companies cannot operate like the GEs and General Motors of the world and serve as the be-all-end-all of technology. The New York Times today put the acquisition in the right context. Describing the business culture of Silicon Valley, they write:The economist Joseph Alois Schumpeter had a name for this principle of capitalism: creative destruction. Perhaps nowhere does it play out more dramatically — and more rapidly — than in Silicon Valley, where innovation unleashes a force that creates and destroys, over ...
Google influenced by librarians?
The New York Times has a short piece on a new Google service called Knol that sounds like it could have been conceived by librarians: “We believe that knowing who wrote what will significantly help users make better use of web content,” wrote Udi Manber, vice president of engineering, on the official Google blog.The service appears to be a wiki-style hosting service that puts a premium on identifying authorship.
Modeling Things or Revealing Things
Karen Coyle has a great piece on Hierarchies vs. Relationships in bibliographic modeling. She points out that the point of the FRBR model is not so much the hierarchy that you get to model, but the relationships that you can reveal among things.This is a keen insight in my view since it really begins to get at the fun stuff that the Googles, Amazons, etc are doing with data that libraries long to do with bibliographic data. Coyle starts to articulate something here that I have not been able to put my finger on: the way that FRBR is a ...
I have one after another to review a series of posts about Ajax, Web 2.0 as well as a stream state of web applications given my prior post upon this topic. One of a things which continues to stir me is a aptitude as well as intensity of these technologies for libraries. Dion Hinchcliffe has created a post about Why Ajax Is So Disruptive as well as creates a series of good observations. One which stranded out was his acknowledgement which with latest Web 2.0 applications a program is invisible. He writes, “I never be concerned about if you have a program commissioned which you need, either you have a confidence permissions, if my interpretation is nearby. All of these concerns trip divided as well as I’m removing finished what you need to get done.”
Libraries need to take a note here. In an preferred universe you would rise a little funny program apartment which a congregation would implement as well as afterwards operate to well find their library as well as report resources. If you wrote a program ourselves you would be means to carry out all a issues concerned with interpretation harmony as well as interoperability with electronic library resources. However, you don’t live in a undiluted universe as well as you can’t means to write such program ourselves.
Jul 11
4
Clandestine Librarianism
As a tester to this latest thesis as well as sharp latest component screen, we suspicion I’d indicate to a latest plan which has popped up in Chicago, headed by folks with a little impasse in a striking novel as well as visible humanities communities. The Chicago Underground Library is in a formulation stage, as well as they report themselves this way:
The Chicago Underground Library is a plan which aims to emanate an repository of self- as well as tiny press-published functions in Chicago. Through a searchable on-line repository as well as in a future a earthy space, it will open latest opportunities for research, inspiration, as well as partnership between those in as well as outward of a edition community. By putting fiction, vicious journals, zines, poetry, comics, domestic pamphlets, as well as art books side by side, CUL hopes to overpass a gaps following from stratification along a lines of content, prolongation value, as well as blurb viability.
Jul 11
4
Change
I have been offline as distant as RSS feeds have been endangered as well as have only left behind to my Bloglines criticism to find 717 posts watchful for me to read. Yeah, right. you longed for Dave’s stately lapse to Circulatable with an additional square of initial rate explanation as well as musings. Since you have been erratic in a same mental area you am starting to post upon a same subject rsther than than only comment.
My library has a harangue array called “Evolving Directions in Academic Research as well as Resources” where you entice a expertise part of to speak about his/her investigate as well as criticism upon a purpose of a library: a strengths as well as hurdles in a universe of a researcher or scholar. The final orator was a historian who in an brusque criticism referred to which a a single thing which is blank from a online sourroundings was an knowledge allied to browsing a stacks.
I brought this up with a series of colleagues when articulate about a state of a library catalogue as well as of march everybody rught away pronounced which you do have such an experience: a online catalog’s crop by call series feature. But there is a poignant undo in between what librarians know about apparatus find processes as well as how most a congregation know about those processes. This is where a single of Dave’s comments was quite poignant: “One thing you consider libraries need to consider harder about: a tangible prolongation as well as display of, as well as not only a pciking up of, informative materials.”
Posted in Culture Marketing/Outreach Technology by .
Jul 11
4
Abstractness, FRBR
Karen Coyle not long ago pointed to a paper by Allen Renear as well as Yunseon Choi [pdf] in which they explain which estate is a bad approach of describing a hierarchy in Group 1 FRBR entities. Renear/Choi incorrectly explain which a work entity is a indication of an epitome thing as well as thus work entities have a little kind of “is-abstract” attribute. There is no thing similar to an “is-abstract” charge for works. Rather a attributes of a works, expressions, manifestations as well as equipment have been a pieces of bibliographic outline such as “title”, “uniform title”, “copy number”, “call number” etc…
Karen Coyle has is right as well as Renear/Choi have been confused in there judgment of FRBR Group 1 entities. Coyle states, “I lend towards to cruise all aspects of metadata to be epitome in nature, given it is a illustration of something else.” Renear/Choi state
The evidence is simple: FRBR describes functions as epitome as well as equipment as concrete. If all properties of “higher” entities have been hereditary by “lower” entities afterwards equipment get a skill of being abstract, as well as thus equipment will be both epitome as well as concrete. But zero is both epitome as well as petrify – thus there is no total ubiquitous skill estate in FRBR.
Posted in Cataloging/Classification Technology by .
I have to strongly remonstrate with what you saw as Nate’s first indicate in his final post, What you wish from a catalog. First, he forked out that, “Library catalogs, by definition, enclose usually your library’s stuff,” as great as went upon to interpretation which this “is a murdering blow to any thought of catalog-as-research-tool.” The first evidence is which a library can never contest with a volume of interpretation thick with by a likes of Google or Amazon or Worldcat.
I determine with a actuality which it is fatuous to try to kick these companies during their own game. That will never occur by a singular library. They have some-more interpretation as great as they have something which competence be improved than all a alternative kinds: intentional data. They can set up their interfaces formed upon how people opinion with their wallets by purchasing interpretation from Amazon or library land interpretation during OCLC. They can follow a income as great as you cannot.
However, this is not to contend which libraries, as great as educational libraries in particular, do not have a niche in a report market. It is consequential for library systems developers to assimilate which libraries set up collections. We have deliberate, clever as great as researched choices about what goes in to a collection. We don’t have all a interpretation during a ordering precisely since you don’t have total budgets, so if you have been you do a jobs well, you have been usually selecting a great materials for a collections.
Posted in Collection Management Technology by .
Jul 11
3
Is search != search
Here is a elementary subject with surpassing implications: is library poke a same thing as a “search” in a approach a race during vast understands poke or Googling?
The subject is really elementary as well as a singular which we consider has been in a behind of my thoughts for utterly a little time, though we only review an mention upon statelessness upon a Web from RESTful Web Services which supposing me with a latest approach to support a question. Richardson as well as Ruby write:
When we ask for a office of resources about mice or jellyfish, we don’t get a total directory. You get a singular page of a directory: a list of a 10 or so equipment a poke engine considers a most appropriate matches for your query.
Posted in Technology by .
My former trainer as well as co-worker Andrew Pace recently commented upon a inlet of a network as well as how he was rebuffed by a co-worker for unaware a actuality people which have up a network as well as this is a many sigificant square of a network. you would similar to to respectfully remonstrate with his post. Andrew used to exaggerate which he is 100% right 50% of a time as well as in this box you hold he was right during a primary partial of his musings upon this topic.
What is a stress of a network in a 21st century? What you assimilate as a network is a ? la mode realization, or may be a programmed reality, of a aged proverb which a total is larger than a total of a parts. And utterly honestly this fulfilment was done probable by a extraordinary things which computers have been you do with data.
Page Rank is arguably a shot listened via a Web. With their Page Rank algorithm Google was means to compromise a complaint which was plaguing relevancy in Internet poke results: we’re all a garland of unwashed decaying liars. Back in a Yahoo/Alta Vista early days of poke engines people were reckoning out ways to diversion a complement by fibbing by their metadata. In sequence to have their crappy cover band’s web page uncover up when a user searches for a Rolling Stones a cover rope simply indispensable to put ‘rolling stones’ in to a metadata.
Posted in Culture Technology by .
Feb 08
3
Know Yourself First
It does not matter that Microsoft may buy Yahoo–the acquisition is based on a flawed premise. Technology companies cannot operate like the GEs and General Motors of the world and serve as the be-all-end-all of technology. The New York Times today put the acquisition in the right context. Describing the business culture of Silicon Valley, they write:
The economist Joseph Alois Schumpeter had a name for this principle of capitalism: creative destruction. Perhaps nowhere does it play out more dramatically — and more rapidly — than in Silicon Valley, where innovation unleashes a force that creates and destroys, over and over.
Technology companies are susceptible to creatively destructive forces when they try to expand too far beyond their original mission. Technologies like computer programming can only be successful if they break problems into smaller pieces that individually solve only a single component of the larger goal. At the time of writing, a computer programming function is defined by the masses (Wikipedia) as “a portion of code within a larger program, which performs a specific task and can be relatively independent of the remaining code” (my emphasis). This principle of modularization at the most basic level of contemporary information technology is important to a technology organization’s business model.
Microsoft and Yahoo both fail so horribly at the world of search and Internet advertising because those problem domains lie at the heart of neither companies’ core service: the operating system/desktop platform and the Internet portal. The reason Google so thoroughly dominates the world of search and Internet advertising is because that is its only core. Everything it does revolves around this core service and all of its activities support this model. The moral of the story is that you must choose your core, your identity and your raison d’être and you must choose it wisely because trying to be all things to all people is a futile exercise.
What does this mean for libraries? In the techie realm of libraries, an institution needs to determine what its core mission is and decide how it will define itself in a world of creative destruction. It will need to be able to clearly and succinctly articulate what those goals are to its affiliate institutions: universities or local governments. The library must not try to do everything; as the current computing paradigm of APIs and web services demonstrates, technology works when it is implemented singularly and exceptionally, but in a manner that is open and unafraid of sharing its data and services.
And finally, the modern library must not be afraid to get in the game and take a turn at trying to creatively destroy the old guard, lest it fall prey to the fate of the Yahoos of the world.
Posted in News Technology by .
Dec 07
17
Google influenced by librarians?
The New York Times has a short piece on a new Google service called Knol that sounds like it could have been conceived by librarians:
“We believe that knowing who wrote what will significantly help users make better use of web content,” wrote Udi Manber, vice president of engineering, on the official Google blog.
The service appears to be a wiki-style hosting service that puts a premium on identifying authorship.
Posted in Culture Technology by .
Karen Coyle has a good square upon Hierarchies vs. Relationships in bibliographic modeling. She points out which a indicate of a FRBR indication is not so most a hierarchy which we get to model, though a relations which we can exhibit between things.
This is a penetrating discernment in my perspective given it unequivocally starts to get during a fun things which a Googles, Amazons, etc have been you do with interpretation which libraries prolonged to do with bibliographic data. Coyle starts to clear something here which we have not been means to put my finger on: a approach which FRBR is a outrageous step brazen though still usually has an eye toward an doing secure in a approach libraries have traditionally finished things.
My library right right away has been in discussions about theme guides as well as how to most appropriate set up as well as yield entrance to them. we have felt for a little time right away which it would be good to get out of a next-generation catalogue a complement which imparts a kind of believe a librarians as well as theme liaisons put in to these projects.
Posted in Cataloging/Classification Technology by .