I know you know about del.icio.us. However, you may not know about Pasta. Every now and again I have something I would like to link to here but it lacks a web component. Sometimes it’s an email, sometimes it’s an IM, sometimes it’s a press release. Pasta allows you to post up to 100k worth of text and auto-bookmark it on del.icio.us for you. As an example, here’s an IM I had with a random web stranger asking about library schools.
Category: ‘puters
RFID not being used for new federal ID cards
Hey if RFID isn’t good enough for Homeland Security and their privacy concerns, maybe it’s not good enough for libraries? Read the article for more information on what RFID is, and what it is not.
one more privacy concern: printers?
EFF’s blog has a post about a new way libraries could accidentally infringe on patron privacy. Some common color laser printers have the ability to encode uniquiely identifying and traceable information into pages they print. If you care enough about patron privacy to not reveal if a patron has a library card, would you care enough to not reveal that they have used your computers/printers?
According to experts, several printer companies quietly encode the serial number and the manufacturing code of their color laser printers and color copiers on every document those machines produce. Governments, including the United States, already use the hidden markings to track counterfeiters.
Peter Crean, a senior research fellow at Xerox, says his company’s laser printers, copiers and multifunction workstations, such as its WorkCentre Pro series, put the “serial number of each machine coded in little yellow dots” in every printout. The millimeter-sized dots appear about every inch on a page, nestled within the printed words and margins.
advice on library school and learning technologies
Meredith and Jenny have both posted very astute summaries of technology competencies that either are or should be required for incoming professionals to the librarianship field. Meredith focuses on what you should think about learning while you’re at school and Jenny adapts a list of skills for educators into her 20 Technology Skills Every Librarian Should Have list. Not a surprise that there is more than a little overlap between these lists. If you’re already out of school and in the field, think of this as a laundry list of opportunities for professional development, or catalysts for librarian skillshares.
OCLC Google LC and you
There’s a lot of talk going on lately about whether cataloging as it has been done really matters in the age of Google and keyword searching. I’ve been reading about it a lot, both online and in the print materials sent to me by the Sanford Berman postal express, including his back and forth letters to the head cataloger at LC. Sometimes it seems that everyone starts with the same data point, but still arrives at different conclusions. So, the OCLC team [who has a dog in this fight] tell us that “Ordinary people do not search subject headings, Berman or LCSH. They search key words. ” which I think many people agree with. Then we read Thomas Mann [another dog-holder] who has a longish article in Library Journal about scholarly research and the ancillary functions of subject headings as more than just entry points to the information held in a catalog.
Keyword search algorithms, no matter how sophisticated their “relevance ranking” capabilities, cannot turn exactly specified words into conceptual categories. They cannot provide the linkages and webs of relationships to other terms (in a variety of languages, too), nor map out in any systematic manner the range of unanticipated aspects of a subject. Keyword searches cannot segregate the desired terms in relevant contexts distinct from the same terms used in irrelevant contexts.
In contrast, LC cataloging and classification—done by professional librarians rather than computer programs—accomplish exactly these functions that are so critical to scholarship. The search mechanisms created by librarians enable systematic searching, not merely desultory information seeking.
We all know Google is useful and is changing the way the average person searches for information. However, when we start to discuss whether Google is changing the way the average researcher does scholarship, then I think we have to be a lot more careful about understanding its [proprietary] mechanisms and thinking about what Google’s goals for Google are as well.