January 27th, 2007 Brian Herzog
Eccentric patrons are actually kind of fun to work with when they are nice and polite. This week’s reference question was asked, not only by a very nice and polite woman, but also someone who was previously featured here.
She called Thursday afternoon, and again wanted to know when her SSA check would arrive. Very happily, I accessed my own blog and used the links I put there to find the 2007 calendar to answer her question. I know I’ve used other peoples’ blogs to answer reference question, but this is the first time I’ve used my own. Neat.
Anyway, the patron continued:
Patron: …so you think the check will be in my mailbox on Friday? Thanks. Okay, can you help me with a personal matter? Can you find out if a company named Hillard in Chelmsford is still in business? They came to fix my outside hose faucet that was leaking and he replaced it and then it was leaking again and he replaced it and now since its cold and the town is flushing the pipes the faucet is leaking again and when I called them last week they told me that two faucets couldn’t both be bad and I am just wondering if they are still in business after talking to their customers like that.
Me: Oh. Well, I don’t think I can tell if they are still in business. But I can see what I can find on them. [type, type, type] Well, I did find them mentioned on the internet, although they’re listed as being in Lowell.
Patron: Well, I guess that’s possible. I never can keep straight the town lines, since they move them all the time.
Me: And I checked a database we have of all the businesses in the country, and they are listed in there. It looks like they’ve been in business for 12 years, and the owner is Gary Hillard.
Patron: Okay, I guess I’ll give them another call…
Now, I didn’t feel like I completely gave her the answer she wanted, but I wasn’t sure what else I could do. How do you tell if a company has gone out of business in the last week? But she must have been satisfied, because she very quickly moved on to the next topic:
Patron: …not to change the subject, but can you find a web space on your comptraption that sells things not made in China?
Me: Oh, I think so - are you looking for products made in the U.S.A.? [type, type, type] I found a couple website that…
Patron: Yes I used to work at a store and there was a woman on the second floor who wouldn’t touch any of the products because she said they were covered in sweat and that those oriental girls only get five cents a day and I don’t like that so I was just looking for a way to not buy from Chinese people. Well, thanks for listening to me, good bye. [click]
If you’ll notice, I never did give her any of the websites I found. I’m only making a presumption here, but I can’t imagine this patron shopping online, anyway - perhaps she just wanted someone to listen to her.
But I got interested in it, so here are a few of the websites I did find (no endorsement implied):
libraries, library, made in usa, reference question, referenceusa, ssa
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Posted under Library, Reference Question, Resources, Websites | 3 Comments »
October 26th, 2006 Brian Herzog
While at NELA last weekend, I attended a session by Linda Braun, who talked a lot about RSS feeds. One of the tools she presented was PageFlakes, which I had never seen before. During her talk, she kind of offhandedly commented that one of the reasons she likes PageFlakes is that it lets her save stories she wants to read, but doesn’t have time to save at the moment. That way, the text of the article gets stored on the PageFlakes server, and, obviously, she can go back and read them later.
She then commented that this is sort of a loophole to subscription news services, like the New York Times. The NYT provides free access to their stories for 14 days, but stories older than that require a subscription fee to read. However, by saving the stories on PageFlakes, she creates her own archive, and never has to pay to read older stories she had saved before they were 14 days old.
I found this interesting for two reasons: first, I like loopholes. Second, though, it made me wonder about RSS feeds, which I think most people take for granted right now (if they know about them at all). But what if RSS feeds go the way of bank ATMs - something that started out as being a free service provided by pretty much all the major players, and then, after people incorporated them into their lives and essentially became dependant on them, were suddenly no longer free (at least, to use another bank’s ATM).
So right now I can get NYT articles for free through RSS, but I don’t see it as unfathomable that they would see this as a viable way to make money in the future - after all, people pay for convenience, and RSS feeds are much more convenient than visiting their website every day.
nela, new york times, pageflakes, rss, technology, web 2.0
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Posted under Conferences, Resources, Technology, Websites | 1 Comment »
October 4th, 2006 Brian Herzog
As you are all no doubt aware by now, I haven’t put much effort into this website over the past few years (which is why I felt the need for an overhaul). The content was stale, the design well past its prime, and the coding not even close to current standards. All this, despite the fact that I developed websites for a living. You’d think that a web developer would have a wonderfully designed website of his own, but that is not the case (but I’m working on it).
In addition to being a web developer, I am also a librarian. When the two are combined, the result is someone who looks critically at a lot of library websites. Now, one would think that libraries, who are all about organization and information access, would have easily-navigated and content-rich websites. But I find that this usually isn’t the case. It seems pretty hit or miss, depending on the people at the library, and, I surmise, how much they care about “new” technologies.
But then I thought, perhaps the idea that libraries should naturally have great websites isn’t all that logical. After all, libraries generally don’t create information - they organize it. The various classification systems libraries use were given to them, and don’t really take any input or creation - it’s just a set of rules to follow. So, perhaps that is the approach that should be taken with library websites. If you take away the creation aspect (which does take time and skill), and just provide libraries with a structured framework to fill in with their content, online patrons would have a better chance of finding what they need, and the librarians could spend more time doing what they do best.
I know this sounds very draconian and like it would lead to blandly identical websites, but I don’t think it would be that bad. Besides, I’m still working on the idea.
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October 1st, 2006 Brian Herzog
I’ve had a personal website pretty much since about 1996. It has varied greatly in how much attention I have given it, but for the last six or so years, it has pretty much gotten no attention from me. However, in the last month, I’ve decided to revamp it a bit - give it a face lift, convert it from flat HTML files to PHP, etc. And as part of The New Way, I’m starting a blog, too. I can’t make any promises on being better with my attention, though - because I hear everyone else is going to jump off a cliff, so I’m going to need to go soon. But until then, let me say welcome.
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Posted under Personal, Websites | 4 Comments »
