I don’t remember who originally linked to this screed opining that librarians should gird themselves for obsolescence (oh, Tab Candy, your ability to add metadata to tab groups cannot come soon enough), but this quote: It is time to end the epidemic of Munchausen by Proxy in our public service librarians, and instead acknowledge that [...]
Entries Tagged as 'findability'
all the news that’s fit to print (but not find)
June 12th, 2010 · 2 Comments · Uncategorized
Man, speaking of techie patrons not liking an interface… Someone in a web community I frequent linked to a newspaper article, noting that you could only read the first bit for free and the rest was paywalled. I thought, hey, I *totally* bet you could read that for free online through the library site. So [...]
Google Translate
December 14th, 2009 · Comments Off · Uncategorized
In the continuing saga of our information overlords, they’ve come out with Google Translate. As a former Latin teacher, I mostly love and partly dislike this system: + The on-the-fly translation is pretty sweet. In particular I love seeing how it recalibrates its concept of whole phrases as it gets new input — something I [...]
data mining for fun and…
November 10th, 2009 · 1 Comment · Uncategorized
That slideset yesterday was funny, so I’ve RSSed the guy’s blog. Liked this recent post about data-mining your circ records. His university now has a recommender system (both “people who liked this book also liked” and “people in this course of study tend to like”) and a course-of-study-specific search functionality (nursing and law students want [...]
Tags:data mining·dave pattern·discovery layers·findability·library 2.0·opacs·user needs
discovery interfaces in the Chronicle
October 12th, 2009 · 7 Comments · Uncategorized
Chronicle of Higher Ed article on discovery layers in library catalogs. Doesn’t say much I haven’t already seen (although if you have no idea what I mean by “discovery layers” do read it; it’s a good overview). I did like this bit, though: “It’s sort of our answer to, Why it is you need a [...]
Tags:chronicle.com·culture clash·discovery layers·findability·google·library 2.0·usability·user needs
“why google and apple win and you don’t”
October 3rd, 2009 · Comments Off · Uncategorized
This cartoon doesn’t realize that it’s making the same claim as discovery interfaces and other current OPAC design thinking, but it is.
Tags:findability·funny·opacs·usability
the perfect is the enemy of the good; the good is the enemy of the perfect?
September 18th, 2009 · 2 Comments · Uncategorized
In my Library Automation class yesterday, the concept of satisficing came up. Digression: satisficing is where I feel most acutely the cultural conflict between the librarians I read and talk with in school, and the software geeks I socialize with. So any time that comes up, there’s a lot going on in my head. Someone [...]
Create Your Own Economy (part I?)
August 13th, 2009 · Comments Off · Uncategorized
I’ve just started reading Tyler Cowen’s new book, Create Your Own Economy. (That is to say, I’ve just finished Chapter 1.) I should preface this by saying that Cowen is one of my great intellectual crushes and his blog, Marginal Revolution, has taught me a lot and strongly influenced my thinking on some matters (as [...]
Tags:cataloguing·create your own economy·culture clash·findability·library 2.0·tyler cowen·why librarians
why even the future needs librarians
July 4th, 2009 · Comments Off · Uncategorized
So I was watching the new Star Trek movie and… (bear with me here). At the end of the movie, offstage, we’ve got 10000 Vulcans on some colony, bereft of their planet, trying to rebuild their culture. And what’s one of the first things they’re going to do? Re-establish libraries. And hand out research grants [...]
Tags:digitization·findability·indexing·star trek·why librarians
