Since this week's discussions are about Facebook and internet privacy, I thought I'd share this podcast featuring the thoughts of Denise Howell (a California lawyer who specializes in technology-related legal matters) and her guests on those subjects ... Here are links to the relevant parts of their discussion:
0:29:30 - Two creators of the Twitter account "omgfacts" are suing each other over which one actually "owns" the account and its two million-plus followers. This case brings up the issue of online ownership and what it actually means to "own" an account and the stuff that's created for that account; whose intellectual property is it (and is there such a thing as "copyright of tweets")? Collaborative efforts like this within the social-media realm may give rise to other ownership/legal issues in the future (which is something that librarians might need to be aware of).
0:47:38 - This talk was more about for-profit businesses, but it may still be applicable here ... If a librarian creates a Twitter account for their library, does their employer actually "own" the intellectual property created therein? Even if the librarian maintains it on their own time, they're using "company" equipment/resources.
0:57:04 - Privacy and the workplace (when people apply for jobs, some potential employers are now asking for their Facebook passwords in order to nose around and see what they're up to!)
1:00:48 - Story about a school teacher who posted private photos of herself drinking alcohol on Facebook, but the pictures still managed to find their way to members of her school district and led to her termination ...
1:15:20 - Do we need new laws on the books to govern social media in regards to privacy issues? It is voluntary, after all (no one's forcing people to have a Facebook account), but it's getting so ubiquitous that it may cause problems down the road ...
1:29:17 - Could you be liable for embedding an infringing YouTube clip on your blog (not uploading copyrighted material yourself, but just linking to it)?
Thursday, July 7, 2011
Wednesday, July 6, 2011
"Academic libraries, Facebook and MySpace, and student outreach: a survey of student opinion" by Ruth Sara Connell
Connell's article is another example (in my opinion) of librarians trying to skew the numbers to create a desire for social networking tools where none actually exists ... Unlike the previous article, this one at least attempts to gather patron input on the subject, but - as you'll see - that still provides data that can be easily manipulated to "prove" the authors' point.
Connell starts off with a literature review of other attempts to drum up support for social-networking tools within the library profession, and she comes up with some interesting observations: one librarian at the Georgia Institute of Technology sent out more than 1,500 Facebook messages to students (in an apparent attempt to spread the word about the library's collection), but received a paltry 48 responses. The librarian actually had the temerity to claim that his venture was a "success," but the more logical conclusion would be that students were not interesting in hearing from a "stranger" (especially one in a position of authority like a librarian).
Another librarian mentioned in Connell's literature review had her staff sift through MySpace profiles in order to find "4,000 Brooklyn College students, faculty, and graduates.". Aside from the fact that these actions could be construed by some as "stalking" (and thus having the potential to negatively affect these students' view of the library and drive them away), the librarian sent "friend requests" to her designated targets and "seven months later had approximately 2,350 friends." On the surface, this story appears to be a success, but what about the other 2,000-odd students who ignored the request? Were they "turned off" by the obtrusive nature of this "friending" campaign? Additionally, there is no indication that any of these friends had actually come from the original 4,000 targeted; for all we know, those "friends" were nothing but MySpace spam accounts!
Connell also highlights the Mississippi State University libraries as using a different (far less "creepy") approach to attracting students via Facebook, as they advertised their site through posters and ads - but not through unsolicited "friending" - and were able to accumulate 180 members; she applauded this approach as allowing "those interested to participate but … not [forcing] the library on those not interested." It certainly seems like a more successful method, although once those students became friends, how "engaged" did they remain? The literature failed to establish whether they checked out the library's Facebook page once, and then ignored it; we do not learn what effect (if any) the method had on "repeat business" for the library.
Connell starts off with a literature review of other attempts to drum up support for social-networking tools within the library profession, and she comes up with some interesting observations: one librarian at the Georgia Institute of Technology sent out more than 1,500 Facebook messages to students (in an apparent attempt to spread the word about the library's collection), but received a paltry 48 responses. The librarian actually had the temerity to claim that his venture was a "success," but the more logical conclusion would be that students were not interesting in hearing from a "stranger" (especially one in a position of authority like a librarian).
Another librarian mentioned in Connell's literature review had her staff sift through MySpace profiles in order to find "4,000 Brooklyn College students, faculty, and graduates.". Aside from the fact that these actions could be construed by some as "stalking" (and thus having the potential to negatively affect these students' view of the library and drive them away), the librarian sent "friend requests" to her designated targets and "seven months later had approximately 2,350 friends." On the surface, this story appears to be a success, but what about the other 2,000-odd students who ignored the request? Were they "turned off" by the obtrusive nature of this "friending" campaign? Additionally, there is no indication that any of these friends had actually come from the original 4,000 targeted; for all we know, those "friends" were nothing but MySpace spam accounts!
Connell also highlights the Mississippi State University libraries as using a different (far less "creepy") approach to attracting students via Facebook, as they advertised their site through posters and ads - but not through unsolicited "friending" - and were able to accumulate 180 members; she applauded this approach as allowing "those interested to participate but … not [forcing] the library on those not interested." It certainly seems like a more successful method, although once those students became friends, how "engaged" did they remain? The literature failed to establish whether they checked out the library's Facebook page once, and then ignored it; we do not learn what effect (if any) the method had on "repeat business" for the library.
"Use of Facebook in academic health sciences libraries" by Dean Hendrix ... [et al.]
In many of the article I've read for my literature review, I see librarians give glowing recommendations for social-networking sites like Facebook as tools to "create and market library services" ... That may very well be true, but the problem with those articles (and I see it in this article as well) is that the authors offer very little in the way of hard data to actually back up their claims; the "evidence" provided is either skewed to better reflect their already-established opinions, or they fail to take the actual patrons' input into account.
This article, for example, examines the results of a 2008 survey on the use of Facebook by academic health sciences libraries as a marketing/promotional tool ... While the authors eventually decided that the "small number of actual libraries using Facebook" at the time made the resulting data inconclusive, there were still some details that (in my opinion) were "glossed over" when they were establishing their argument.
Let me give an example: Of the 72 librarians who responded to the survey, only nine reported that their libraries maintained a Facebook page, and (of that number) thirty-four percent of their total "fans" were "employees of the same library" ... In other words, over one-third of the library's "fans" were other librarians; now, that doesn't really speak very highly for Facebook as a "marketing" tool, when you're pretty much only talking to other members of the same staff!
That's not all, however ... Reading the results a little more closely, we see that the authors use the phrase "of the same library" when describing these employees; now, there's no indication that the other 66 percent of the "fans" couldn't have been librarians from other institutions who were looking to network! As such, the percentage of "fans" of these libraries who were actual patrons (the people that marketing tools are supposed to be targeting) might be even lower than this report would have us believe; there's just no way of knowing with the way that the data is presented here.
The results of this survey, as reported by the authors, go on to say that many of the librarians that maintain Facebook pages "felt more positive about the future success of their library's Facebook page", while 28 percent of the librarians who do not maintain Facebook pages believe that "Facebook demonstrated little to no utility in an academic setting" ... This all sounds well and good, but statements like these are replacing hard evidence with opinions and conjecture. Not only that, but it's leaving out the most crucial element: patron input.
If the librarians surveyed bothered to actually find out what their users thought of Facebook as a part of the online presence provided by academic health sciences libraries, it's not evident in the article; we're merely left to speculate on guesswork. After all, when the authors use a phrase like "positive feelings", are the librarians they're questioning basing that on user feedback, or do they just have a "hunch"? On the flip side, when the other librarians dismiss Facebook as having "little to no utility" in an academic setting, do their patrons feel the same way, or are they simply making a kneejerk reaction without taking their opinions into account?
This article, for example, examines the results of a 2008 survey on the use of Facebook by academic health sciences libraries as a marketing/promotional tool ... While the authors eventually decided that the "small number of actual libraries using Facebook" at the time made the resulting data inconclusive, there were still some details that (in my opinion) were "glossed over" when they were establishing their argument.
Let me give an example: Of the 72 librarians who responded to the survey, only nine reported that their libraries maintained a Facebook page, and (of that number) thirty-four percent of their total "fans" were "employees of the same library" ... In other words, over one-third of the library's "fans" were other librarians; now, that doesn't really speak very highly for Facebook as a "marketing" tool, when you're pretty much only talking to other members of the same staff!
That's not all, however ... Reading the results a little more closely, we see that the authors use the phrase "of the same library" when describing these employees; now, there's no indication that the other 66 percent of the "fans" couldn't have been librarians from other institutions who were looking to network! As such, the percentage of "fans" of these libraries who were actual patrons (the people that marketing tools are supposed to be targeting) might be even lower than this report would have us believe; there's just no way of knowing with the way that the data is presented here.
The results of this survey, as reported by the authors, go on to say that many of the librarians that maintain Facebook pages "felt more positive about the future success of their library's Facebook page", while 28 percent of the librarians who do not maintain Facebook pages believe that "Facebook demonstrated little to no utility in an academic setting" ... This all sounds well and good, but statements like these are replacing hard evidence with opinions and conjecture. Not only that, but it's leaving out the most crucial element: patron input.
If the librarians surveyed bothered to actually find out what their users thought of Facebook as a part of the online presence provided by academic health sciences libraries, it's not evident in the article; we're merely left to speculate on guesswork. After all, when the authors use a phrase like "positive feelings", are the librarians they're questioning basing that on user feedback, or do they just have a "hunch"? On the flip side, when the other librarians dismiss Facebook as having "little to no utility" in an academic setting, do their patrons feel the same way, or are they simply making a kneejerk reaction without taking their opinions into account?
"Viewing American class divisions through Facebook and MySpace" by Danah Boyd
It was interesting to read Boyd's theories on how adoption of social networking sites by American teens was initially divided along social/class lines: the "hegemonic" (or "good") teens gravitated towards the more professional look and feel of Facebook, while the "subaltern" (or "bad") teens were still drawn towards the "outsider" status of MySpace.
It's a nice little theory, but I'm not convinced that the divide (if there even was/is one) can be defined so easily ... For example, she argues that the "showy, sparkly, brash visual displays" found on many MySpace pages were acceptable to those teens who valued the flash and "bling" of hip-hop culture; this contrasted with the more "clean" and "mature" look of Facebook, with its homogeneous style and color scheme. However, I really don't think this can be explained as a mere cultural aesthetic - I remember many a MySpace page which featured clashing graphics for background images and tons of animated GIFs dancing all over the place; that's not "bling", that's just people with no sense of style!
In fact, I would argue that this was one of the reasons why MySpace began losing ground to Facebook (cultural differences notwithstanding): the makers of MySpace allowed users to alter the look of their pages pretty much anyway they liked, to the point of people creating MySpace pages which were nothing more than a jumbled mess of incoherent nonsense (if one's site is so visually disruptive that you can no longer even read the text on the screen, then people will simply move onto other sites that don't give them such a headache). People could even run arbitrary code on their sites, leading to a lot of the security holes/issues which eventually drove even more users away from MySpace.
I believe the reason for MySpace's disintegration is a lot simpler than laying blame on class divisions or such things ... The bottom line is that social-networking sites live and die by how social they are; it seems obvious enough, but people go where their friends are, and if their friends are using Facebook instead of MySpace, then they're going to use Facebook too!
Boyd says at one point that many of the "good" kids ("goodie two shoes, jocks, athletes") are still using MySpace because of "their connections to participants who joined in the early days"; once again, these kids' friends are still on MySpace, so that's where they're going to be too. However, even if these good kids are separated from the "bad" kids in high school, there are eventually going to be some "goths" or "gangstas" that run in the same circles (at college, at work, in the same neighborhoods, at a bar, on another website, anywhere!) and they're going to suddenly want to "keep up" with their new friends where they're socially congregating ... and right now, the most active place online for that type of interaction is Facebook.
The "exodus" from MySpace (whether users were switching to Facebook or just giving up on the site entirely) may have started off in some small way as a "cultural" clash, but soon more and more people began leaving the site, meaning there were less and less people for teens - good or bad - to socialize with ... No matter what group or clique one was associated with, if there's no one else to talk to or share information with, then the site becomes useless, so why bother sticking around?
It's a nice little theory, but I'm not convinced that the divide (if there even was/is one) can be defined so easily ... For example, she argues that the "showy, sparkly, brash visual displays" found on many MySpace pages were acceptable to those teens who valued the flash and "bling" of hip-hop culture; this contrasted with the more "clean" and "mature" look of Facebook, with its homogeneous style and color scheme. However, I really don't think this can be explained as a mere cultural aesthetic - I remember many a MySpace page which featured clashing graphics for background images and tons of animated GIFs dancing all over the place; that's not "bling", that's just people with no sense of style!
In fact, I would argue that this was one of the reasons why MySpace began losing ground to Facebook (cultural differences notwithstanding): the makers of MySpace allowed users to alter the look of their pages pretty much anyway they liked, to the point of people creating MySpace pages which were nothing more than a jumbled mess of incoherent nonsense (if one's site is so visually disruptive that you can no longer even read the text on the screen, then people will simply move onto other sites that don't give them such a headache). People could even run arbitrary code on their sites, leading to a lot of the security holes/issues which eventually drove even more users away from MySpace.
I believe the reason for MySpace's disintegration is a lot simpler than laying blame on class divisions or such things ... The bottom line is that social-networking sites live and die by how social they are; it seems obvious enough, but people go where their friends are, and if their friends are using Facebook instead of MySpace, then they're going to use Facebook too!
Boyd says at one point that many of the "good" kids ("goodie two shoes, jocks, athletes") are still using MySpace because of "their connections to participants who joined in the early days"; once again, these kids' friends are still on MySpace, so that's where they're going to be too. However, even if these good kids are separated from the "bad" kids in high school, there are eventually going to be some "goths" or "gangstas" that run in the same circles (at college, at work, in the same neighborhoods, at a bar, on another website, anywhere!) and they're going to suddenly want to "keep up" with their new friends where they're socially congregating ... and right now, the most active place online for that type of interaction is Facebook.
The "exodus" from MySpace (whether users were switching to Facebook or just giving up on the site entirely) may have started off in some small way as a "cultural" clash, but soon more and more people began leaving the site, meaning there were less and less people for teens - good or bad - to socialize with ... No matter what group or clique one was associated with, if there's no one else to talk to or share information with, then the site becomes useless, so why bother sticking around?
Monday, June 27, 2011
"WorldCat local task force report to LAMP" by Michael Boock, Faye Chadwell, and Terry Reese
A couple of thoughts after reading this report:
* The authors mention that one of the search tools in use at Oregon State University (as of March 2009) is called "LibraryFind", which they describe as a "locally developed open source research tool."
Curious, I decided to look into this further, and - sure enough - their website still incorporates this "software developed by the Oregon State University Libraries, in part funded from a grant from the State Library." Furthermore, there is a dedicated project website which boasts that "LibraryFind is an open source metasearch application developed by librarians for libraries."
Now, even though the point of this report is to see whether or not LibraryFind can be "effectively replaced" by WorldCat Local, I wish more libraries would look into developing their own tools and online applications; the authors seem to share this view, as they note that "giving up search and retrieval to OCLC" (in effect, giving up control of their online presence to an outside third party) may ultimately "[take them] out of the search and retrieval equation" while relegating the role of library staff to "teaching users how to use the system and cataloging materials for that system" (i.e. serving as "drones" who must follow how OCLC's system works, with no real input into how the system serves their local user community).
Kendall Wiggin gave a talk at this year's NETSL conference, where (amongst other topics) he spoke about how - and I'm paraphrasing here - "there are already enough nerds in the library profession, but now we need more geeks!" His point was that more librarians should be learning how to code and program and troubleshoot computer programs for themselves, so that they don't need to rely on the IT department or outside sources (like OCLC) to do the work for them ... It seems as if OSU's library staff has the "geek" thing well in hand (they have a web development group nicknamed "Team 200" working in-house on projects like LibraryFind), so perhaps they shouldn't be so eager to give up control of search and retrieval in their community, when they've developed a pretty robust system all on their own.
* When describing how WorldCat Local works, the authors state that "maintenance of a local catalog would remain necessary, although less attention would need to be devoted to customization of the catalog." [emphasis mine]
Now, I understand that there is a movement within the profession towards less "localized" cataloging, while having large databases (like OCLC) do the work in order to save time and resources ... After all, the Boston Public Library's copy of "Blink" is pretty much the same as UCLA's copy (i.e. each institution's copy of the book has the same identifying information, and their individual user communities do not require much in the way of heavily-scrutinized editing by local catalogers in order to find them).
However, I do think that individual library collections will lose some of that "local flavor" if they rely too much on outside sources to do that kind of cataloging work for them. Besides, by employing this strategy, libraries are putting a lot of faith in tools like WCL to get every cataloging detail correct ... While many preach the mantra of "good enough" when it comes to catalog records (Who cares if a book has 235 pages but the record says "236", patrons won't even notice!), I can't tell you how many records we've downloaded from OCLC at my library where important information (titles, authors, etc.) is just plain wrong! In fact, their errors can wind up being misleading to the point where it would actually hamper a patron's ability to find that particular item (if there wasn't a "local catalog" system in place to correct those errors, of course!).
* The authors mention that one of the search tools in use at Oregon State University (as of March 2009) is called "LibraryFind", which they describe as a "locally developed open source research tool."
Curious, I decided to look into this further, and - sure enough - their website still incorporates this "software developed by the Oregon State University Libraries, in part funded from a grant from the State Library." Furthermore, there is a dedicated project website which boasts that "LibraryFind is an open source metasearch application developed by librarians for libraries."
Now, even though the point of this report is to see whether or not LibraryFind can be "effectively replaced" by WorldCat Local, I wish more libraries would look into developing their own tools and online applications; the authors seem to share this view, as they note that "giving up search and retrieval to OCLC" (in effect, giving up control of their online presence to an outside third party) may ultimately "[take them] out of the search and retrieval equation" while relegating the role of library staff to "teaching users how to use the system and cataloging materials for that system" (i.e. serving as "drones" who must follow how OCLC's system works, with no real input into how the system serves their local user community).
Kendall Wiggin gave a talk at this year's NETSL conference, where (amongst other topics) he spoke about how - and I'm paraphrasing here - "there are already enough nerds in the library profession, but now we need more geeks!" His point was that more librarians should be learning how to code and program and troubleshoot computer programs for themselves, so that they don't need to rely on the IT department or outside sources (like OCLC) to do the work for them ... It seems as if OSU's library staff has the "geek" thing well in hand (they have a web development group nicknamed "Team 200" working in-house on projects like LibraryFind), so perhaps they shouldn't be so eager to give up control of search and retrieval in their community, when they've developed a pretty robust system all on their own.
* When describing how WorldCat Local works, the authors state that "maintenance of a local catalog would remain necessary, although less attention would need to be devoted to customization of the catalog." [emphasis mine]
Now, I understand that there is a movement within the profession towards less "localized" cataloging, while having large databases (like OCLC) do the work in order to save time and resources ... After all, the Boston Public Library's copy of "Blink" is pretty much the same as UCLA's copy (i.e. each institution's copy of the book has the same identifying information, and their individual user communities do not require much in the way of heavily-scrutinized editing by local catalogers in order to find them).
However, I do think that individual library collections will lose some of that "local flavor" if they rely too much on outside sources to do that kind of cataloging work for them. Besides, by employing this strategy, libraries are putting a lot of faith in tools like WCL to get every cataloging detail correct ... While many preach the mantra of "good enough" when it comes to catalog records (Who cares if a book has 235 pages but the record says "236", patrons won't even notice!), I can't tell you how many records we've downloaded from OCLC at my library where important information (titles, authors, etc.) is just plain wrong! In fact, their errors can wind up being misleading to the point where it would actually hamper a patron's ability to find that particular item (if there wasn't a "local catalog" system in place to correct those errors, of course!).
"New generation of catalogues for the new generation of users: a comparison of six library catalogues" by Tanja Mercun and Maja Zumer
Mercun and Zumer's article touches on some subjects that I plan on bringing up in my paper, i.e. the belief by many within the library profession that "by not following technological innovations and the trends on the web, libraries will not be able to compete with services such as Amazon or Google and may lose their position as primary information providers". In other words, the theory goes that libraries must "copy" other Web 2.0 applications in order to remain relevant, and one of the ways to do this is to redesign and restructure the online catalog so that it can "bring convenience, trends and quality closer together" for the patrons.
One method of accomplishing this is to take advantage of the collaborative nature of the web by enticing patrons to contribute things like reviews, comments, and tags (the article calls this "[making] use of collective intelligence"); the authors argue that while traditional OPACs have "relied on the expertise of a small group of specialists" (i.e. catalogers), the next-generation catalogs should "take advantage of [patrons'] contributions" so that they can "become better and [have their] value enhanced."
Now, while the implemenation of social tagging and user-generated reviews into the library OPAC can certainly be helpful, the contributions of these "specialists" shouldn't be so easily dismissed (and I'm not just saying that for job security!); as I've previously mentioned, things like social tagging (which are generated by the patrons) and controlled vocabularies (which are generated by the "specialists") can work in tandem to produce the optimum search results for those seeking information.
Another problem with this strategy - and I again explore the subject in my paper - is that people are assuming that patrons are even willing to participate in their libraries in this way ... The article points out that "the problem with collective intelligence is that it is achieved only when a critical mass of participation is reached"; in other words, a lot of people have to contribute in order for the system to be useful. And yet, the authors admit that (at least at the time the article was published) "social features have added only little value to the library catalogue." In fact, they rightfully point out that libraries are "late-comers" in the area of user-generated content (patrons are already contributing content to sites like Amazon and Flickr and LibraryThing, why would they bother adding the library catalog to the list?), and that patrons have no real motivation to actively participate in such endeavors.
The bottom line is that if patrons aren't willing to contribute tags or reviews to the library catalog, then the very idea of a "social cataloging community" becomes meangingless ... If no one is providing content (other than the "specialists"), then patrons will not be motivated to participate, and the "next-generation catalog" will be ignored regardless.
Also, not to rehash old gripes, but I found that the authors used the same rhetoric in this article about "Web 2.0" that I just personally find to be very irksome ... In particular, they describe Web 2.0 as "a place of collaboration and participation where users no longer only receive but also create and share content"; the use of the phrase "no longer" implies that "Web 1.0" users could not create and share content, which is simply not true, they just did it on a smaller scale (back in the day people could "create" personal homepages and "share" information via message boards and newsgroups, it's certainly easier nowadays but the principles of participation and user-created content were still very much in place back then).
It doesn't stop there, though, as they go on to describe the "Web 2.0 trend" as "the collaboration of users in the creation of content on the web" ... which, once again, can just as easily be used to describe what "Web 1.0 did as well! In fact, that's been the whole concept behind the explosion of the "World Wide Web" since the '90s: the ability for everyday people to create content and share it with people around the world.
Seriously, were the people spouting this stuff just not paying attention back then?!
One method of accomplishing this is to take advantage of the collaborative nature of the web by enticing patrons to contribute things like reviews, comments, and tags (the article calls this "[making] use of collective intelligence"); the authors argue that while traditional OPACs have "relied on the expertise of a small group of specialists" (i.e. catalogers), the next-generation catalogs should "take advantage of [patrons'] contributions" so that they can "become better and [have their] value enhanced."
Now, while the implemenation of social tagging and user-generated reviews into the library OPAC can certainly be helpful, the contributions of these "specialists" shouldn't be so easily dismissed (and I'm not just saying that for job security!); as I've previously mentioned, things like social tagging (which are generated by the patrons) and controlled vocabularies (which are generated by the "specialists") can work in tandem to produce the optimum search results for those seeking information.
Another problem with this strategy - and I again explore the subject in my paper - is that people are assuming that patrons are even willing to participate in their libraries in this way ... The article points out that "the problem with collective intelligence is that it is achieved only when a critical mass of participation is reached"; in other words, a lot of people have to contribute in order for the system to be useful. And yet, the authors admit that (at least at the time the article was published) "social features have added only little value to the library catalogue." In fact, they rightfully point out that libraries are "late-comers" in the area of user-generated content (patrons are already contributing content to sites like Amazon and Flickr and LibraryThing, why would they bother adding the library catalog to the list?), and that patrons have no real motivation to actively participate in such endeavors.
The bottom line is that if patrons aren't willing to contribute tags or reviews to the library catalog, then the very idea of a "social cataloging community" becomes meangingless ... If no one is providing content (other than the "specialists"), then patrons will not be motivated to participate, and the "next-generation catalog" will be ignored regardless.
Also, not to rehash old gripes, but I found that the authors used the same rhetoric in this article about "Web 2.0" that I just personally find to be very irksome ... In particular, they describe Web 2.0 as "a place of collaboration and participation where users no longer only receive but also create and share content"; the use of the phrase "no longer" implies that "Web 1.0" users could not create and share content, which is simply not true, they just did it on a smaller scale (back in the day people could "create" personal homepages and "share" information via message boards and newsgroups, it's certainly easier nowadays but the principles of participation and user-created content were still very much in place back then).
It doesn't stop there, though, as they go on to describe the "Web 2.0 trend" as "the collaboration of users in the creation of content on the web" ... which, once again, can just as easily be used to describe what "Web 1.0 did as well! In fact, that's been the whole concept behind the explosion of the "World Wide Web" since the '90s: the ability for everyday people to create content and share it with people around the world.
Seriously, were the people spouting this stuff just not paying attention back then?!
"Toward a twenty-first century library catalog" by Kristin Antelman, Emily Lynema, and Andrew K. Pace
Since I came into the library profession as a cataloger (and plan to keep on that path once I earn my degree), any discussion on the future of library catalogs holds great interest for me ... However, I found the language used in this article when describing the "traditional" catalog to be a little too negative for my tastes.
The article starts off with a very nice history of the development of the OPAC, but the authors seem to go out of their way to use terms and phrases that - for lack of a better term - "bad mouth" online catalogs as they are presently (at least in 2006) constituted: "stagnant technology"; "rich metadata trapped in the MARC record"; "closed, rigid and intricate online catalogs"; "the severity of the catalog problem"; "libraries are no better off."
Obviously, it should be the priority for the designers of these OPACs to update and adopt the technology in order to better reflect current trends in the world of searching, but there's no need to verbally tear down what came before just for the sake of making a point; after all, no system can achieve 100 percent search relevancy (they all have their own little "quirks" that keep them from reaching perfection).
Anyway, the article goes on to describe the implementation of Endeca's Information Access Platform at North Carolina State University; curious, I decided to see what kind of changes have occurred with NCSU's online catalog in the five years since this article was published.
Visiting the college's library homepage, I found that they are in fact still using the Endeca platform to power their online catalog (as helpfully pointed out by the "Guided Navigation by Endeca" byline at the bottom of the search results page) ... All of the bells and whistles touted in the article seem to be intact; for example, spell correction is present, as a search for "librerian" brings up "Also searched for: librarian". Also, subject headings and call number location are available in the left-hand column (180 results for "library science" appear under "subject", and 1046 results for "Z - Bibliography, Library Science" appears under "call number location").
The "Browse" tab mentioned in the article has been separated into two separate tabs: "Browse New Titles" (one can search for material newly added to their collection within the last week, the last month, or the last three months) and "Browse by Call Number" (which still includes a handy list of what all the groupings of Library of Congress call numbers stand for). Also, as the article suggests, users can still "submit a blank search and browse the entire collection by any of the dimensions" (taking this action produces a list of 2122255 results).
In addition, the article mentioned that there were "plans to pull out other dimensions, such as format, language, or library, for browsing" ... It looks like Endeca was able to live up to that promise, as clicking on the "Advanced Search" tab now provides these options (for example, selecting "Chinese" under "Language" in the "Optional limits" section produces a list of 2793 results, while selecting "Fiction" under "Genre" in the left-hand column cuts that number down to 127 results, just as the article predicted).
It appears that the old Web2 search system has been eliminated entirely (or else it has been "buried" to the point where I cannot easily find it), so I couldn't try the search results test that the authors used with the broad term "marsupial" ... However, I can report that the library's holdings in this area has jumped from 78 to 171 items, but the top five hits no longer have "marsupial" in the title and "marsupials" or "marsupialia" as a subject heading; of course, this is a minor gripe, as the top three results are e-books which do not include the traditional LC subject headings (anyway, there are no bogus "Tributes to Malcolm C. McKenna"-type results in the first several pages, so I think this search can still be considered extremely relevant).
One more thing: I wanted to take a look at the "More titles like this" feature that the authors spoke about in the article ... So, I clicked on one of the results ("A fragile balance : the extraordinary story of Australian marsupials") and noticed a "Browse Shelf" link under "More Like This"; I clicked that link, which displayed a "virtual book shelf" of titles found around that particular book by call number:
I found this to be a great way to capture the serendipity of browsing the physical bookshelves (in order to discover works that one might have otherwise missed), and I hope that more libraries take the opportunity to adopt this feature into their online catalogs!
The article starts off with a very nice history of the development of the OPAC, but the authors seem to go out of their way to use terms and phrases that - for lack of a better term - "bad mouth" online catalogs as they are presently (at least in 2006) constituted: "stagnant technology"; "rich metadata trapped in the MARC record"; "closed, rigid and intricate online catalogs"; "the severity of the catalog problem"; "libraries are no better off."
Obviously, it should be the priority for the designers of these OPACs to update and adopt the technology in order to better reflect current trends in the world of searching, but there's no need to verbally tear down what came before just for the sake of making a point; after all, no system can achieve 100 percent search relevancy (they all have their own little "quirks" that keep them from reaching perfection).
Anyway, the article goes on to describe the implementation of Endeca's Information Access Platform at North Carolina State University; curious, I decided to see what kind of changes have occurred with NCSU's online catalog in the five years since this article was published.
Visiting the college's library homepage, I found that they are in fact still using the Endeca platform to power their online catalog (as helpfully pointed out by the "Guided Navigation by Endeca" byline at the bottom of the search results page) ... All of the bells and whistles touted in the article seem to be intact; for example, spell correction is present, as a search for "librerian" brings up "Also searched for: librarian". Also, subject headings and call number location are available in the left-hand column (180 results for "library science" appear under "subject", and 1046 results for "Z - Bibliography, Library Science" appears under "call number location").
The "Browse" tab mentioned in the article has been separated into two separate tabs: "Browse New Titles" (one can search for material newly added to their collection within the last week, the last month, or the last three months) and "Browse by Call Number" (which still includes a handy list of what all the groupings of Library of Congress call numbers stand for). Also, as the article suggests, users can still "submit a blank search and browse the entire collection by any of the dimensions" (taking this action produces a list of 2122255 results).
In addition, the article mentioned that there were "plans to pull out other dimensions, such as format, language, or library, for browsing" ... It looks like Endeca was able to live up to that promise, as clicking on the "Advanced Search" tab now provides these options (for example, selecting "Chinese" under "Language" in the "Optional limits" section produces a list of 2793 results, while selecting "Fiction" under "Genre" in the left-hand column cuts that number down to 127 results, just as the article predicted).
It appears that the old Web2 search system has been eliminated entirely (or else it has been "buried" to the point where I cannot easily find it), so I couldn't try the search results test that the authors used with the broad term "marsupial" ... However, I can report that the library's holdings in this area has jumped from 78 to 171 items, but the top five hits no longer have "marsupial" in the title and "marsupials" or "marsupialia" as a subject heading; of course, this is a minor gripe, as the top three results are e-books which do not include the traditional LC subject headings (anyway, there are no bogus "Tributes to Malcolm C. McKenna"-type results in the first several pages, so I think this search can still be considered extremely relevant).
One more thing: I wanted to take a look at the "More titles like this" feature that the authors spoke about in the article ... So, I clicked on one of the results ("A fragile balance : the extraordinary story of Australian marsupials") and noticed a "Browse Shelf" link under "More Like This"; I clicked that link, which displayed a "virtual book shelf" of titles found around that particular book by call number:
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