April 21st, 2007 Brian Herzog
During Jessamyn’s Pimp My Firefox talk at cil2007, something occurred to me. So much of the code used on websites today was written by someone else - themes, rss feeds, widgets, etc.
I think this is great, as freeware/open source/creative commons all allow people to share good ideas - repacking them, repurposing them, resuing them.. you know, recycling.
(not to mention that this has been my style of coding ever since I started coding in 1996. I am almost exclusively self-taught, which means I learned from seeing something I liked on the web, viewing the code, and figuring it out. Often, this meant I grabbed the code and tweaked and modified it to do what I wanted. You can learn a lot through trial and error)
So, it was during that session that I got the idea for this new movement, the “made with recycled code” movement. By “movement,” of course all I mean is create a little icon and stick it on my webpage. And not being a graphic designer, it’s not even a very good icon, but I think it’s a catchy phrase.
If you like it, grab it from flickr or the psd file from my website (big [575x575px, 316kb]; small [130x130px, 119kb]).
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April 19th, 2007 Brian Herzog
The last session of the day was called “Tech Freebies & Program Ideas,” given by people from different libraries covering successes they’ve had with technology-related programs in their libraries.
The Princeton (NJ) Public Library puts a tremendous amount of resources into their Technology Training (which is a better phrase than “computer classes”). Their classes include both staff and patrons, and cover a varied of topics: Photoshop/GIMP, Blogger/Wordpress, Bloglines/Google Reader, social bookmarking, creating & hosting podcasts, digital scrapbooking, and more.
They also listed a few ways to keep up with emerging technologies (PC Magazine’s Top 101 websites, SEOmoz’s Web 2.0 awards, Filehippo, and Time’s 50 Coolest websites), and some of the more interesting online tools:
After them, a team from another library showed a mobile animation setup they used (a Mac laptop, camera, and portable greenscreen designed to let teens create and edit their own stop-animation videos. Which was neat and interesting (actually, quite amazing), but since this was geared towards Macs, and teens, and it was the last session of the day, I wasn’t paying as much attention as I should have been.
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Tags: AjaxWrite, cil 2007, cil2007, Cozi Central, eCalendar, EveryStockPhoto, flickr, GIMP, Google Calendar, Google Docs, libraries, Library, LogMeIn, OneTrueMedia, online Text editors, princeton public library, public libraries, public library, TaDaLists, Tech Freebies & Program Ideas, Text editors See Also
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April 19th, 2007 Brian Herzog
Another session I attended during the day were Mary Ellen Bates’ “30 Search Tips in 45 Minutes,” and she wasn’t kidding. Mainly she pointed out relatively unknown or underused search tools, and some of the 30 were:
- Q&A websites - you post a question on a website and real people volunteer answers (i.e.: answers.yahoo.com, qna.live.com, askville)
- Quick Answers - ask a search engine a question and it will give you an answer instead of search results (i.e.: Ask.com’s Smart Answers, Google’s OneBox, MSN’s Instant Answers)
- search engines you can customize (Rollyo.com, Yahoo Search Builder, Google Coop)
- Kosmix.com - search engine with excellent topic clustering
- NationMaster.com - source for national statistics on world countries, with data from government sources
- Yahoo Mindset - search features a slider bar to weight results towards “shopping” or towards “research” [pretty neat]
- Ask.com’s Maps - gives both driving and walking directions, taking paths, walkways and topography into account
- Academic web searches (Google Scholar, Live Academic)
- Search engine comparison (Dogpile.com’s CompareSearchEngines -
- Google’s searchmash - search all Google engines, and results from each are expandable on a single page
- OneLook.com’s reverse dictionary - you type in a definition and it suggests words (i.e.- throwing someone out of a window
- answers.com - free search website that pulls in answers from many other web resources
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Tags: 30 Search Tips in 45 Minutes, Academic web searches, answers.com, answers.yahoo.com, Ask.com's Maps, Ask.com's Smart Answers, askville, cil 2007, cil2007, Dogpile.com's CompareSearchEngines, Google Coop, Google Scholar, Google's OneBox, Kosmix.com, libraries, Library, Live Academic, Mary Ellen Bates, MSN's Instant Answers, NationMaster.com, OneLook.com, public libraries, public library, Q&A websites, qna.live.com, Quick Answers, reverse dictionary, Rollyo.com, Search engine comparison, searchmash, Yahoo Mindset, Yahoo Search Builder See Also
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April 19th, 2007 Brian Herzog
The final session in the “tailoring library services to patrons needs, based on patron input” theme was on Federated Searching, led by Frank Cervone (Northwestern Univ.) and Jeff Wisniewski (Univ. of Pittsburg).
They overviewed the various players in the federated search market, which were numerous. Their basic message is that this field is constantly changing, and it is difficult to keep up with all the mergers and acquisitions and name changes; but, that is no reason it not get involved. This is the type of searching our patrons need, so picking one tool and going with it is the best thing for libraries to do.
Current players in this market are:
Aquabrowser, cil 2007, cil2007, CSA Illumina, Encore, Ex Libris, federated searching, Frank Cervone, Fretwell Downing, Grokker, Jeff Wisniewski, libraries, library, Ovid Searcher, public libraries, public library, Serial Solutions, WebFeat
Tags: Aquabrowser, cil 2007, cil2007, CSA Illumina, Encore, Ex Libris, federated searching, Frank Cervone, Fretwell Downing, Grokker, Jeff Wisniewski, libraries, Library, Ovid Searcher, public libraries, public library, Serial Solutions, webfeat See Also
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April 19th, 2007 Brian Herzog
The second session in the “tailoring library services to patrons needs, based on patron input” theme was “Improving Content through Conversations with Customers,” led by Rich Wiggins from Michigan State.
This dealt primarily with analyzing search logs. The search logs from library websites can be viewed as an open letter from patrons to libraries, telling us exactly what they want us to provide to them. We need to pay attention to:
- what people are search for
- what they’re finding
- what they’re not finding
- how and when they’re searching
- where they’re searching from
Then, we need to restructure our offerings accordingly (including things like compensating for common misspellings). Pushing information to them will probably not work, so we need to be prepared (with efficient searches and findable information) with what they want, when they want it and how they want it.
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