Tag: google

interruption – gorman & ala

I promise to get back to writing up my thoughts on the NASIG conference. It’s been a busy two weeks. As you can see, I ran out of what I had written while at the airport and I haven’t had the energy or time to get back to it. Meanwhile, I read Karen’s thoughts on … Continue reading “interruption – gorman & ala”

I promise to get back to writing up my thoughts on the NASIG conference. It’s been a busy two weeks. As you can see, I ran out of what I had written while at the airport and I haven’t had the energy or time to get back to it.

Meanwhile, I read Karen’s thoughts on the latest Gormangate episode, and they became the final tipping point in a decision I’ve been trying to make. As a result, I bring you my open letter to ALA, which I also sent to them by email this afternoon:

Dear ALA,

Some years ago, I let my membership lapse because my income and expenses were such that I couldn’t afford to continue it. Since that time, I have found myself in a better paying job and I have been thinking about re-joining the association. However, I have been unimpressed by president-elect Michael Gorman and the anti-technology, anti-progress statements he has been making publicly in the past several months (re: bloggers, Google Print, etc.). Since he is the future leader of the association, I have to wonder if ALA is right for me.

I have concluded that if the majority of members would choose a leader who prefers the past to the present, much less the future of librarianship, then it’s not an organization that I need to be a part of. For now, I will participate professionally in other areas of librarianship, and perhaps reconsider membership in the ALA sometime after Gorman’s tenure.

Respectfully,
Anna Creech

google sightseeing

“Google Sightseeing takes you to the best tourist spots in the world via Google Maps’ satellite imagery.” I am continually amazed at what can and is being done with free stuff online. I guess when you’re stuck behind a computer screen all day, “Why bother seeing the world for real?” [thanks emily]

“Google Sightseeing takes you to the best tourist spots in the world via Google Maps’ satellite imagery.”

I am continually amazed at what can and is being done with free stuff online. I guess when you’re stuck behind a computer screen all day, “Why bother seeing the world for real?” [thanks emily]

ouch!

I just read Michael Gorman’s scathing critique of the librarian blogosphere’s response to his op-ed piece on Google in the December 17th edition of the Los Angeles Times. If you have access to the February 15th issue of Library Journal, it might be worth your time to give it a read. Aside from snubbing his … Continue reading “ouch!”

I just read Michael Gorman’s scathing critique of the librarian blogosphere’s response to his op-ed piece on Google in the December 17th edition of the Los Angeles Times. If you have access to the February 15th issue of Library Journal, it might be worth your time to give it a read. Aside from snubbing his nose at the “Blog People,” Gorman writes the entire lot of us off as non-intellectuals in the following few sentences:

“Given the quality of the writing in the blogs I have seen, I doubt that many of the Blog People are in the habit of sustained reading of complex text. It is entirely possible that their intellectual needs are met by an accumulation of random facts and paragraphs. In that case, their rejection of my view is quite understandable.”

I vaguely remembered reading some thoughtful critiques of his op-ed, but in searching for them, I could find only this one. Granted, there are quite a few bloggers who may fit his description of the Blog People. However, if he thinks that all of the so-called Blog People are that intellectually dull, I shutter shudder to think what will come of ALA with this egotistical snob as the president.

Update 4:17pm: The Digital Librarian has linked to the LJ opinion piece by Gorman, which I didn’t realize was also online.

have you hugged your librarian today?

One of my colleagues passed on a link to William Brody’s column in the December 6 issue of the Johns Hopkins Gazette.

One of my colleagues passed on a link to William Brody’s column in the December 6 issue of the Johns Hopkins Gazette. Brody touches on his Google-envy, and then goes on to extol the virtues of cataloging subject headings for precision information searching. I’m sure this has been passed around the librarian blogosphere many times already, but maybe it would be nice to read it again if you’re wallowing in your own Google-envy.

You see, our library has the most effective search engines yet invented — librarians who are highly skilled at ferreting out the uniquely useful references that you need. Rather than commercializing the library collections, why not export to the public market the most meaningful core of Hopkins’ intellectual property — the ability to turn raw information into useful knowledge.

I hope by now you realize that any talk of taking our library public is simply to emphasize the point missing in all this Google mania: Massive information overload is placing librarians in an ever more important role as human search engines. They are trained and gifted at ferreting out and vetting the key resource material when you need it. Today’s technology is spectacular — but it can’t always trump a skilled human.

Have you hugged your librarian today?

openurl, firefox, and google scholar

Peter Brinkley of the University of Alberta Libraries has developed a Firefox extension that adds an OpenURL button to Google Scholar search results.[web4lib] “The purpose is to enable users at an institution that has an OpenURL link-resolver to use that resolver to locate the full text of articles found in Google Scholar, instead of relying … Continue reading “openurl, firefox, and google scholar”

Peter Brinkley of the University of Alberta Libraries has developed a Firefox extension that adds an OpenURL button to Google Scholar search results.[web4lib]

“The purpose is to enable users at an institution that has an OpenURL link-resolver to use that resolver to locate the full text of articles found in Google Scholar, instead of relying on the links to publishers’ websites provided by Google. This is important because it solves the “appropriate copy problem”: the link to a publisher’s site is useless if you don’t have a subscription that lets you into that site, and your library may provide access to the same article in an aggregator’s package or elsewhere.”

From all appearances, this is a fantastic tool that embraces Google while still providing even more of that useful service that librarians do. If you have an OpenURL link resolver that you are able to tweak like SFX, go for it! (Next step, educate your users about Firefox….)

Update: One of the library coding gods, Art Rhyno, has developed a bookmarklet that prepends your library’s proxy server URL string to the links in the Google Scholar results. That’s another work-around if you don’t have an OpenURL link resolver. If it’s something your library gets, then you’ll get passed through authenticated to the full-text content. If not, then you can obtain access or the content some other way.

One snag I seen in all of this is that depending on how your proxy server is set up, this may not work. Some libraries *cough*UofKY*cough* use a proxy server that requires the user to make modifications to their web browser before authenticating them. I’m not sure whether or not this would cause confusion for the users who haven’t done that modification.

it’s all about the books?

Librarians love Google… and books, of course.

Earlier this week, Jessamyn posted an excerpt from the Playboy interview with Google founders Sergei Brin and Larry Page. Brin said, “Actually, more and more librarians love Google. They use it. They do an excellent job helping people find answers on the Internet in addition to using their book collections.”

I use Google almost every day. I like the interface and the search results listing, and usually I’m looking for something specific. Plus it’s integrated into my browser (without the annoying toolbar). I don’t use it for academic research, though. I wouldn’t use it to help a student do research, except as a finding tool for a resource I know should be online somewhere (like government information). I digress. I did not intend this to be a libraries v. Google rant.

What I take issue with in his statement is the implication that the only thing libraries have to offer to supplement Google is books. Books are great sources of vetted information that every researcher should use. However, in addition to books, libraries provide access to scholarly journals and indexing resources that are not on the public Internet. Libraries are more than books, and it is apparent that Brin either has forgotten this or does not want others to remember it, since it’s in his best interest if Google takes precedence over, say, EBSCOhost or InfoTrac.

closecomments

Yesterday I returned from spending the day with family to discover that I had been slammed with almost 350 comment spams from the same porn site.

Yesterday I returned from spending the day with family to discover that I had been slammed with almost 350 comment spams from the same porn site. Thankfully it was a quick fix. One entry into MT-Blacklist and I could delete the comments and rebuild the entries in just a few clicks. However, it was still frustrating to have to do this in the first place.

Last week, I discovered another MovableType plugin called CloseComments. You can set this to run everytime you re-build your main index, and it will close comments of older, inactive posts, depending on the variables you choose. I have mine set to close comments on posts older than 15 days and have been inactive for at least one day. I couldn’t get this to work at first, and last night gave me the motivation to figure it out.

The reason why it wasn’t working was that the database behind this blog was in the Berkeley DB format, and not the required SQL format. I didn’t know that there was an easy way to convert them until I did a few Google searches. I did the conversion process last night and in a few days, CloseComments should be doing its thing. Combine this with MT-Blacklist, and you’ll end up with very little comment spam.

Update 7/6/04: Make sure to check MT-Blacklist after the conversion process. I discovered this morning that my blacklist settings had been reset.

google bomb

Directing users to the correct website.

So, I’ve been told by a few reputable sources that there is a googlebomb directing web surfers to a pro-Bush website when they search for information on the 2004 Democratic National Convention, similar to the highly effective “weapons of mass destruction” googlebomb that almost everyone has gotten an email about by now. I haven’t been able to reproduce the googlebomb, so I don’t know if this is still an indexing concern.

feeders

Bloglines is a great tool. I’m going to blab on about it for a couple of paragraphs if you don’t mind.

I’m trying to get that word into common usage, but since I’m a virtual nobody in the library blogging scene (much less the wider blogging scene), it probably won’t happen. Anyway, that’s not what this post is about.

When I first got into reading weblogs, I initially had my favorites bookmarked in a special folder just for blogs. Then I learned about RSS (possibly from Greg or Steven) and decided to check out reading blogs through an aggregator, or what I like to call a feeder. I was hooked! The convenience of this method was very intoxicating. I began subscribing to more blogs and new sources than I had in my bookmarking days. Then I began to get overwhelmed.

Mondays were the worst. I would come into work early, turn on my computer, and SharpReader would load and then download the new entries for all of those blogs. It would take me close to an hour (sometimes longer) to catch up on the reading. Also, since I started maintaining a blogroll of my favorite blogs to read, I was having to add to both my feeder and to the blogroll every time I ran across a new one, which I didn’t always remember to do.

I had heard Bloglines mentioned a few times as being a good place for beginners to get familiar with reading RSS feeds, and Steven touted the capability to filter email to the feeder, which is a nice for saved searches in Google News and other sites that do not have RSS but do have email announcements. I wasn’t sure I wanted to give up some of the features that my desktop feeder provided for me, but there were two more aspects of Bloglines that convinced me in the end: blogroll generation from subscribed feeds (no more duplication of work!) and the ability to access my feeds from anywhere (no more ovewhelming Monday mornings!). I’ve been using it for a couple of weeks now, and I hardly remember any of the features that my desktop feeder had that Bloglines doesn’t have. Probably the only thing I miss is the automatic archiving of posts, but all I need to do for that is to go to the website of the blog in question.

West v. Ranganathan

Jessamyn West has more links in her Google/dmoz directory than Ranganathan himself. Is this sick and wrong?

Jessamyn West pointed out today that she has her own Google/dmoz category. Not only that, but she has more links in her category than Ranganathan. There’s something seriously wrong with the world when one innovative, blogging, rarin’ librarian can have more links in a web directory than one of the most important theorists on classification and indexing.

Incidentally, two of the Ranganathan links are duplicates and at least one is a 404. I think I might volunteer to edit that category just to clean up the mess that is in there at the moment.

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