The Librarian in Black points to an article on WebJunction called “Technology Watch List for Small Libraries” and I have to say that I am also unimpressed. The difference between reading blogs and RSS feeds and creating blogs and RSS feeds is substantial, as is the difference between employing a thin-client solution to the centralized server problem and just learning how to do ghosting effectively. Ebooks are not a good solution for cash-poor libraries [which is what I hear when I hear “small libraries” though maybe this is geared towards small rich suburban libraries] and when I think “cost effective” for virtual reference, I think IM — which isn’t even mentioned — not joining a consortium. In short, this article seems to be more effectively titled “shopping tips for small libraries” because by and large it is much more geared towards things to buy than things to learn.
Category: ‘puters
Legislation for Librarians
Here’s another great acronym for all librarians to know SPY BLOCK (Software Principles Yielding Better Levels of Consumer Knowledge). It’s an anti-spyware bill which, like most legislation written by people who don’t truly understand technology — or who are willfully ignoring what they know about it — is overbroad. Susan Crawford explains more. [copyfight]
thousands of hits, good news or bad?
Somehow missed this last week — an excellent point/counterpoint [in the form of a blog entry and comment] over at the OCLC blog. Topic? That ongoing “Do we make the library more like Google, or make Google more like the library?” I think it also points out another hidden conflict area that is fast becoming a favorite topic of mine: to what extent do we let the software dictate the way the user can search, and hopefully find? ALA’s ballots are being distributed over a one week [for e-ballots] or two week [paper] schedule. Why can’t we send them all at once? Because ALA worries about server overload problems. Is this saving the time of the user? Does Google?
Pretend you’ve never ever been in a large library. Pretend you know absolutely nothing about taxonomies. Pretend you don’t know the difference between a magazine, a journal, an index and a book. Pretend you don’t know what you don’t know, and don’t know how to articulate your unknowingness. Once you’ve pretended all this, make a pretend visit to a very large library for the first time.
I go to Utah for all my porn, you?
The biggest laugh of my talk was probably when I was discussing classes I’d like to teach but can’t. I mentioned where to find the really good porn and people thoughtit was funny, something about a sort of frumpy library lady saying that made it double-plus-good, even though I really do know where it is… Thanks to Utah’s new censorware law, maybe we can just get the list of good porn sites from them.
I’ll say it again: folksonomy
Folksonomy, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Mess. An impressionistic transcript by Cory Doctorow.
It’s a deep philosophical issue: Ontology is a controversial subject. The idea that it’s possible to cleave nature at the joints is controversial. Yes, there are countries, Uzbekistan is a country, but ask a physicist or a biologist and the categories are very fraught.