Semester I wrap up

To SCLS gurus, thanks. Often it is difficult to get the news from PlayAway; but non-players fade every day for lack of what is found there. (with apologies to William Carlos Williams). I'd suggest keeping the instructions as they are; for one needs to learn these technologies by doing. Wrestling with sites as they are on the web is informative; and SCLS teachers do help when queried.

The movie for this wrap-up "Information Revolution" moves too fast for my central nervous system. I became a bit sea sick, literally. Not enough time at sea, perhaps.

When discussing authority files vis-a-vis tags, it is interesting to note that authority control terms can be readily added as tags to entry; whereas the converse is not true. One can cut and past any old authority file one likes. In fact, it would be interesting to consider domains of tags. One could, for example, ask for a set of tags applied by oceanographers to a topic as opposed to say tags applied by travellers on cruise ships. These sets of tags would be represented as different tag clouds; a bit like stratified random sampling.

As to the material culture of the web, one always wonders just where is the web? It is actually held on several large storage computers somewhere. (Old missle silos in Kansas? Who knows?) As for libraries, we do need physical space for the equipment and data storage. This alone is a different physical conception than the old catalogue files; but it is physical.

A dizzying set of concepts: humbling and awesome.

Looking towards Semester II and hoping to play while dropping the nagging awareness that I am playing.

Good sized city saves work

Madison WAS listed at Wikipedia, thus giving Lesson 9 an easy out. But I was interested in the Wikipedia explanation of their incoming data process. And, if time allows, I'd like to peruse the ProjectPlay sandbox wiki.

Also, I'd like to reviews the first 8 lessons to strenghten any memory cells that are up to it.

Thanks again to the mentors of ProjectPlay hurtling us into the Social Sphere 2.0.

Eureka!

Wednesday a library customer asked if we "had a list" of volunteers to help catalogue a small collection. I was able to suggest LibraryThing to the customer. Knowledge is out most important product! Thanks to PlayAway

del.icio.us Popular tags

Finally for this week I looked at the del.icio.us site (in lieu of creating yet another account; as I'm weary of accounts). But a look at the Popular tags on del.icio.us was interesting (as is learning re social networking). I tried history, and found a link to a NY Times article re The Manhattan Project of WWII and how it got its name. A family member of mine had worked on the project in Chicago, but the article described how the name was taken from Army Engineer offices at 270 Broadway in New York, which was the first headquarters for the project. The name was developed from the standard bureaucratic method then in use and was simply named for the location (Manhattan Engineer District -- later shortened). Thus, no secret spy name; just administrative naming.
Interestingly, while using the back button the link didn't appear again; that is, the link to the del.icio.us subscriber. Clicking the Tag Cloud brings up different links at different times. I think. Alas, it's a continually morphing world.

Delicious Tags

Have added labels to previous posts; labels are the equivalent of tags. Editing the layout for the blog, I preferred to post the labels list below outside sources.

Libraries can use social tagging much as the example libraries given in the instructions for this week. For my particular niche, I have been thinking of the Madison Community Grant Foundation DVDs at Lakeview. This collection is for film studies; and film studies in the myriad senses that such studies can be conducted. Tagging/Labeling is a "prime suspect" for how to do such in the public sphere. Users of the collection could comment at a library blog or del.icio.us site and form a Tag Cloud that maps out the collection as conceived by the users. This is quite different from a strict, formalized structure (say only watching films in chronological order) that a syllabus might provide.

Concerns: Would customers respond to such a process; and if so, what is the meaning of their tags? As with WIKIs, must we beware the chronic overuser, who might load tags on the site (perhaps silly, or nonsense tags)? As with GOOGLE hits, which can be loaded with advertising vocabulary, how do we limit responses to the Tag Cloud?

Week 7 learnings

The widget at LibraryThing for creating a link to this blog was certainly a "thin description" of what to do. I guessed that the (to paraphrase) copy and past this HTML was the clue. Then in the blog I found a place to paste the HTML. Interesting, LibraryThing instructions assume that users would somehow know that copying the HTML would allow users to paste it somewhere on the blog. Even knowing that HTML probably stands for hyper text markup language I was only guessing when creating the link. I also, found LibraryThing not as useful for a DVD collection as I would like (what about e-books on a Sony book reader?). Interesting.

HTML from LibraryThing

Lakeview Madison Community Foundation Grant

The Lakeview branch will have a special collction of DVDs and books devoted to film history and film studies ( in its myriad definitions). LibraryThing offers the possibility of linking a set therein to this blog. I've listed five of the special DVDs ordered for the collection and hope to see how it would work with a LibraryThing file.
Tags chosen so far are: Lakeview, DVD, film studies, and Criterion.
Books will include studies of film (such as books by renowned UW professor David Bordwell); and the special film genre of Bollywood will also be part of the collection.
The goal is to have a special and unique collection for the branch.

Lakeview Madison Community Foundation Grant

Created a five item list at LibraryThing for five of the Criterion DVDs ordered for the new grant at Lakeview. The topic of film studies (including film history [perhaps in all its possible ramifications {i.e. tags}] is the goal of this grant. Along with Bollywood titles, original Criterion editions (all of which are important to film studies) will be added to the collection. The focus is to have a collection at the location that is very, very special. Books on the topic have also been ordered (such as books by UW renowned film scholar David Bordwell).

Perhaps the LibraryThing concept can be used to feature this collection. I need to try to link it now to this blog.

Tags chosen so far are: Lakeview, DVD, film studies, and Criterion

Week6

Learning for week 6 reminded me that ProjectPlay informs us regarding the frustrations that library patrons often encounter in this e-age. It also recalled to me the learning of irregular foreign verb conjugations. This week I had to learn how to register at Yahoo/Flickr in order to post a Flickr photo to my blog. I'm tired of registering, and I'm running out of passwords. (Athough, it was interesting to find photos from my grandfather's "piece of the old sod" to post.) All of which reminds me also of the frustrations with virus protection, spyware software, and firewalls that I've encountered with home computing.

Is this play? Perhaps. But it reminds me of playing with my older brother (an explanation of which I leave to imagination and more personal blogging.)

Tettnang

Tettnang,
originally uploaded by alte_kuh_sjn.

My grandfather was born in this German village in 1865.

Flickr

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

To Emily Scharf

Good to see an optimistic post re RSS feeds within the plethora of the blog universe. I like the idea of "Google blog search" for first order screening of some reference questions. Perhaps similar to using Wikipedia with a large grain of salt. Thanks.

To Jayne

Thanks for the great picture of Nessie at the Lake.

Active v. Passive

It is important to note that passive responses from customers are welcome, and may often highlight an area for library action. However, it is also the case, that such responses are like the proverbial "Ann Landers Survey." This means that it is not statistically valid, for it is not a random sample. Yet, like a suggestion box, libraries should allow such feedback.

Active surveys, on the other hand, can be quite useful. Would it be possible to select samples from the registered library users? If so, a random sample of 400 would yield statistically significant responses. Also, good surveys are not easy to produce. It would be good to do such, but with care, and as part of a learning organization. Learning about valid survey techniques, therefore, is quite important. A cycle of plan (learn how to survey), do (post the survey), check (analyze the survey), and act ( respond to results) could be useful.

Week3/RSS

Ah ha! I recall MIT's Media Lab proferring selected feeds of info as early as the 1970s. Now all can enjoy such. The dilemma in crating 10 for the assignment, is how to select 10 on the nonce. So it goes. Interesting to learn about the myriad ways to limit the infinity of the Web.

Instructions

The instructions show Tasks before Help with Blogger. Thus, a user might click on "Register for a blog at Blogger," first. However, reading "Register for a blog at Blogger," before going directly to creating the blog might help some learners.