Now that I've learned what a "mashup" actually is, I can review one. When searching for Libraries with mashups containing Flickr, I had some difficulty because I wasn't quite sure how to search for them. Regardless, I tried and I found a few promising results and selected one to try and look at. I don't know if this particular mashup has already been done, as I still can't access the course on WebCT, but at this point I have to post something.
The State Library of New South Wales Flickr and Google Street view "Then and Now" Mashup.
Hagon, Paul (2008). Flickr and Google street view mashup: State Library of New South Wales. Viewed 27 Oct 2010. <>
Having never before reviewed a flickr mashup, I find myself at a loss to really say what is and isn't good about them. In the case of this particular mashup, it has great potential as a tool for historic learning and it is such a pity that this project seems to have been neglected. I am put in mind of a series of "then and now" pictures published by the Mercury of locations around Hobart some years ago and I remember being amazed at what had changed and what had stayed the same. This mashup does the same thing, but uses Street view for it's "now" shots so that as Street view is updated, the mashup remains recent.
An issue that I had with this mashup, which might also explain why it seems so neglected is that it doesn't appear to be managed by the State Library of NSW, but was created by Paul Hagon, who is a Web Designer for the National Library of Australia. This is not bad in itself, but it means that the mashup relies on other users to tag locations and that it doesn't have very much advertising. I looked on the State Library of NSW website and I couldn't find any link to this mashup.
Using the mashup is simple if you've ever used Google Maps or Street view before. On one side of your screen is a map of NSW, on the other side is the street view window; tags on the map can be clicked and show up the street view in one window and provide a small picture taken at the same location at some point in the distant past.
As I mentioned before, the number of pictures in this mashup appears to be quite small and I would have liked to have seen more photos of buildings and events being geotagged. The pictures themselves display with a brief explanation of the event or location, which I found to be interesting and better than simply displaying photos with no context.
- piff
Sunday, October 31, 2010
Friday, September 3, 2010
Flickr
Today I'm looking at Libraries using Flickr.
Flickr is a combination of picture-hosting and social networking, it allows individual users and organisations to create accounts (which is free), upload pictures and then share pictures with other accounts that they "friend", with groups that they join or just with everybody. Flickr is a part of Yahoo, so if you have a Yahoo account (or have signed up for yahoo-mail) then you can sign in to Flickr using your Yahoo id. I didn't even have to make an account, because I already had a yahoo account; I found this very convenient, as it's one less username/password combo I have to remember.
As well as simply hosting pictures, you can make a variety of different galleries (Flickr calls them a "photostream") and even make simple slideshows with your pictures.
For Flickr, I have chosen to look at the Metro Library group, which is actually a Flickr group, created by the Dorothy Peyton Gray Transportation Library and Archive, which is located in Los Angeles county in the USA.
Dorothy Peyton Gray Transport Library and Archive (created in 2009). Flickr: Metro Library. Viewed 3rd September 2010. < http://www.flickr.com/groups/metrolibrary/ >
I chose the Metro Library because, while it only has a few members, it is active, with a lot of items in its group pool and its photostream. The biggest downfall with Flickr, I think, is with the design; Flickr is not made for quick and easy browsing and as a result you can often use up a lot of time searching or browsing for pictures. Flickr's on-site and group searching helps this a bit, but then in order for it to be truly effective, you have to know what you are looking for, which some browsers don't. Another feature I don't particularly like, is that you have to continually go back to the group home page to get to different things. While this problem could be solved with a navigation bar, Flickr already has two separate navigation bars and to add another would be creating a lot of clutter on the top of the screen.
I enjoyed looking at the pictures in the pool and photostream, even though I'm not particularly interested in the topic. The photostream contains many scanned items from the Archive section of the Library, including photos of tracks, roads, vehicles and scans of company advertisements and logos. Some of the individual collections manage to provide a kind of overview from past to present, as they contain both Archive and current items. Without context from the industry or living in the area, I don't have the knowledge to say whether or not this is a good resource, but I can say that it has many pictures on the topic of public transportation in southern California and for anyone interested in such a thing, it would be good to look into.
- piff
Flickr is a combination of picture-hosting and social networking, it allows individual users and organisations to create accounts (which is free), upload pictures and then share pictures with other accounts that they "friend", with groups that they join or just with everybody. Flickr is a part of Yahoo, so if you have a Yahoo account (or have signed up for yahoo-mail) then you can sign in to Flickr using your Yahoo id. I didn't even have to make an account, because I already had a yahoo account; I found this very convenient, as it's one less username/password combo I have to remember.
As well as simply hosting pictures, you can make a variety of different galleries (Flickr calls them a "photostream") and even make simple slideshows with your pictures.
For Flickr, I have chosen to look at the Metro Library group, which is actually a Flickr group, created by the Dorothy Peyton Gray Transportation Library and Archive, which is located in Los Angeles county in the USA.
Dorothy Peyton Gray Transport Library and Archive (created in 2009). Flickr: Metro Library. Viewed 3rd September 2010. < http://www.flickr.com/groups/metrolibrary/ >
I chose the Metro Library because, while it only has a few members, it is active, with a lot of items in its group pool and its photostream. The biggest downfall with Flickr, I think, is with the design; Flickr is not made for quick and easy browsing and as a result you can often use up a lot of time searching or browsing for pictures. Flickr's on-site and group searching helps this a bit, but then in order for it to be truly effective, you have to know what you are looking for, which some browsers don't. Another feature I don't particularly like, is that you have to continually go back to the group home page to get to different things. While this problem could be solved with a navigation bar, Flickr already has two separate navigation bars and to add another would be creating a lot of clutter on the top of the screen.
I enjoyed looking at the pictures in the pool and photostream, even though I'm not particularly interested in the topic. The photostream contains many scanned items from the Archive section of the Library, including photos of tracks, roads, vehicles and scans of company advertisements and logos. Some of the individual collections manage to provide a kind of overview from past to present, as they contain both Archive and current items. Without context from the industry or living in the area, I don't have the knowledge to say whether or not this is a good resource, but I can say that it has many pictures on the topic of public transportation in southern California and for anyone interested in such a thing, it would be good to look into.
- piff
Email and WebCT
Leeane, if you are reading this, I can not access my Poly email. It keeps asking me to log in twice and it's not accepting my poly network login for the second one.
I also can't find the list of discussions in WebCT where we post our weblinks and items we're evaluating on our blogs.
I'm going to have to proceed blindly here, I only have flickr left to do, I hope I don't pick one someone else has already done.
- piff
I also can't find the list of discussions in WebCT where we post our weblinks and items we're evaluating on our blogs.
I'm going to have to proceed blindly here, I only have flickr left to do, I hope I don't pick one someone else has already done.
- piff
Thursday, September 2, 2010
Podcasts
Today I am looking at podcasts.
Podcasts are, basically, videos online. But what makes them different is that poscasts are often kept on the organisation's or individual's website and tend to be informative in nature. They are "streamed" from the server, instead of pre-loaded, so people with poor internet service may have trouble veiwing them. Some podcasts require specific software to view them (though this is usually provided to download for free).
I am looking at podcasts by the Library of Congress.
Library of Congress (last updated 2010), The Library of Congress - Webcasts. Viewed 2nd September 2010. < http://www.loc.gov/today/cyberlc/index.php >
The initial page of webcasts in quite compact and small. The individual pages are all set out neatly, with the player in the rough centre of the screen. It is seperated into broad subjects for ease of browsing. The on-site search engine also contains the ability to uise the webcasts section as a limiter, allowing the user to search just webcasts. I looked at a few webcasts, and they all played smoothly, despite being streams.
As well as being able to browse webcasts, there is also provided on the webcasts home page a list of popular and featured webcasts. I browsed through a few of the categories and after doing so I concluded that, while containing a great wealth of webcasts, browsing, even by subject was impractical becuase of the quantity of casts available. The on-site search is most likely the best way to search for specific webcasts.
- piff
Podcasts are, basically, videos online. But what makes them different is that poscasts are often kept on the organisation's or individual's website and tend to be informative in nature. They are "streamed" from the server, instead of pre-loaded, so people with poor internet service may have trouble veiwing them. Some podcasts require specific software to view them (though this is usually provided to download for free).
I am looking at podcasts by the Library of Congress.
Library of Congress (last updated 2010), The Library of Congress - Webcasts. Viewed 2nd September 2010. < http://www.loc.gov/today/cyberlc/index.php >
The initial page of webcasts in quite compact and small. The individual pages are all set out neatly, with the player in the rough centre of the screen. It is seperated into broad subjects for ease of browsing. The on-site search engine also contains the ability to uise the webcasts section as a limiter, allowing the user to search just webcasts. I looked at a few webcasts, and they all played smoothly, despite being streams.
As well as being able to browse webcasts, there is also provided on the webcasts home page a list of popular and featured webcasts. I browsed through a few of the categories and after doing so I concluded that, while containing a great wealth of webcasts, browsing, even by subject was impractical becuase of the quantity of casts available. The on-site search is most likely the best way to search for specific webcasts.
- piff
Library Wiki citation, take2
This is take-2 on my citation for a Library Wiki.
Fran Huges, (1998), 21cschoollibrary. Viewed 11th April 2010.
< http://21cschoollibrary.wikispaces.com/ >
This wiki seems to have been created by someone named Fran Huges, for whom I can find only a Flickr page. As I mentioned before, the wiki is quite small and seems to consist primarily of links to other places and sources of information, with a small number of videos scattered throughout. Just by looking I can see that most of the information linked to is either for, or from sources within Australian Schools, or topically relavant.
The photos section of the site was one of the more filled out sections and seemed to me to be the most interesting, as it contained links directing me to many different Flickr photostreams, most for individual Libraries and one to a series of pictures showing the before and after of a refurbished Library.
I discovered as I was searching, that this wiki is listed under the teacher resources on the EDNA site, which rather makes it more of a Teacher's resource, instead of a Library resource. Despite that, the wiki seems to have promise. It has compiled quite a few resource links on various topics associated with making a modern school Library.
Fran Huges, (1998), 21cschoollibrary. Viewed 11th April 2010.
< http://21cschoollibrary.wikispaces.com/ >
This wiki seems to have been created by someone named Fran Huges, for whom I can find only a Flickr page. As I mentioned before, the wiki is quite small and seems to consist primarily of links to other places and sources of information, with a small number of videos scattered throughout. Just by looking I can see that most of the information linked to is either for, or from sources within Australian Schools, or topically relavant.
The photos section of the site was one of the more filled out sections and seemed to me to be the most interesting, as it contained links directing me to many different Flickr photostreams, most for individual Libraries and one to a series of pictures showing the before and after of a refurbished Library.
I discovered as I was searching, that this wiki is listed under the teacher resources on the EDNA site, which rather makes it more of a Teacher's resource, instead of a Library resource. Despite that, the wiki seems to have promise. It has compiled quite a few resource links on various topics associated with making a modern school Library.
Monday, July 5, 2010
FRBR citation
This is my citation for the FRBR Blog. this post will be very similar to the last one on the FRBR blog, but condensed and with the proper citation.
William Denton, 2005, The FRBR Blog, viewed 5th July 2010, < http://www.frbr.org/ >
Despite this blogs simple layout it is a pain to navigate around, if only because there is so much of it. The normally useful navigation bar on the left hand side has been packed with so much information, as well as the standard blog stuff, that it takes a while find something unless you already know exactly where it is. With that said, the information on the navigation bar is really quite useful, offering links to web documents, books and other sites all to help with the understanding of FRBR. The content of the blog itself is just as impenetrable as FRBR, at least to someone like myself who is only just beginning to learn about all of this, as it talks about manifestations and entities like they were old-hat; which, considering that FRBR has been around since 1998 and probably longer, to some it is.
The author and webmaster of the blog is William Denton, who is the web Librarian at York University. His entry in the Librarian's profile section of York University's site has a link to his personal blog, which in turn has a link to the FRBR blog. Unfortunately I couldn't find a link to the FRBR blog from the York University site, which would have made it's authority so much stronger. He seems to be quite knowledgeable and on top of the latest news concerning changes to cataloguing and has had a paper concerning that very topic published online by Libraries Unlimited. I think this site would be most useful for someone who already knows something or even a lot about FRBR and upcoming changes to cataloguing but due to the wealth of information and links links to information and other informative sites this site stands strong as a resource for anyone interested in the topic.
-Piff
William Denton, 2005, The FRBR Blog, viewed 5th July 2010, < http://www.frbr.org/ >
Despite this blogs simple layout it is a pain to navigate around, if only because there is so much of it. The normally useful navigation bar on the left hand side has been packed with so much information, as well as the standard blog stuff, that it takes a while find something unless you already know exactly where it is. With that said, the information on the navigation bar is really quite useful, offering links to web documents, books and other sites all to help with the understanding of FRBR. The content of the blog itself is just as impenetrable as FRBR, at least to someone like myself who is only just beginning to learn about all of this, as it talks about manifestations and entities like they were old-hat; which, considering that FRBR has been around since 1998 and probably longer, to some it is.
The author and webmaster of the blog is William Denton, who is the web Librarian at York University. His entry in the Librarian's profile section of York University's site has a link to his personal blog, which in turn has a link to the FRBR blog. Unfortunately I couldn't find a link to the FRBR blog from the York University site, which would have made it's authority so much stronger. He seems to be quite knowledgeable and on top of the latest news concerning changes to cataloguing and has had a paper concerning that very topic published online by Libraries Unlimited. I think this site would be most useful for someone who already knows something or even a lot about FRBR and upcoming changes to cataloguing but due to the wealth of information and links links to information and other informative sites this site stands strong as a resource for anyone interested in the topic.
-Piff
Videos on TeacherTube
Yes, another 'Tube!!
Jason Smith, 2007, Super Sock Monkey uses the library Catalogue, viewed 5th July 2010 (date of first viewing unknown), < http://www.teachertube.com/ >
At first glance TeacherTube is very similar to other video sharing sites, which is not surprising as most of them are modelled off of YouTube and each other. However, TeacherTube can not only host other media such as documents, photos and audio recordings, it had dedicated itself to hosting teacher and learning resources. This is useful in a number of ways. As an independent website, TeacherTube can be used by anyone around the world, from any school or other education facility, which offers users a wide range of resources that they may not have had access to before. It also offers the Teachers who use it a place to host informative videos for their students that is not a site used wholesale by the Internet public for dumping their video content.
The website is the brainchild of Jason Smith, who at the time had 14 years of experience working on various levels of public schools. It is, from what I can see, a family-run site; created and developed by Jason, his wife (who also has education experience) and his brother (who is the site Webmaster). The only problem that i could find with the site was that it had advertisements on it, but this is a free sign-up site and the advertisements are not greatly intrusive.
The video that I viewed was entitled Super Sock Monkey Uses the Library Catalogue. the reason i chose it was mainly because the title interested me but also because the video is aimed at the younger students of an elementary school (like primary school), trying to teach them about the Library catalogue, using the sock monkey characters (of which there are quite a few videos). This is a technique used by a lot of children's television shows that are focused on education. I thought it was a useful video, even though it's really aimed at the students of one school, because it shows just one way that Librarians and Library workers can make a connection with young children and teach them some of what they need to use the Library.
- Piff
Jason Smith, 2007, Super Sock Monkey uses the library Catalogue, viewed 5th July 2010 (date of first viewing unknown), < http://www.teachertube.com/ >
At first glance TeacherTube is very similar to other video sharing sites, which is not surprising as most of them are modelled off of YouTube and each other. However, TeacherTube can not only host other media such as documents, photos and audio recordings, it had dedicated itself to hosting teacher and learning resources. This is useful in a number of ways. As an independent website, TeacherTube can be used by anyone around the world, from any school or other education facility, which offers users a wide range of resources that they may not have had access to before. It also offers the Teachers who use it a place to host informative videos for their students that is not a site used wholesale by the Internet public for dumping their video content.
The website is the brainchild of Jason Smith, who at the time had 14 years of experience working on various levels of public schools. It is, from what I can see, a family-run site; created and developed by Jason, his wife (who also has education experience) and his brother (who is the site Webmaster). The only problem that i could find with the site was that it had advertisements on it, but this is a free sign-up site and the advertisements are not greatly intrusive.
The video that I viewed was entitled Super Sock Monkey Uses the Library Catalogue. the reason i chose it was mainly because the title interested me but also because the video is aimed at the younger students of an elementary school (like primary school), trying to teach them about the Library catalogue, using the sock monkey characters (of which there are quite a few videos). This is a technique used by a lot of children's television shows that are focused on education. I thought it was a useful video, even though it's really aimed at the students of one school, because it shows just one way that Librarians and Library workers can make a connection with young children and teach them some of what they need to use the Library.
- Piff
Me on YouTube
After a lot of strain, my video was finally uploaded.
Here it is
(I haven't watched it becuase I really don't like seeing myself in videos.)
-Piff
Here it is
(I haven't watched it becuase I really don't like seeing myself in videos.)
-Piff
Monday, April 19, 2010
Vocaroo
Unfortunately repeated attempt to upload my video to YouTube has caused me to burn through all my allowed bandwidth, meaning my Internet is so slow it's almost impossible to use, which has not only killed my attempts at searching around for sites for Rollyo, but also has killed my attempts to do research for another class.
However, while it still works, I would like to tell you all about Vocaroo. This will not be a formal evaluation, because the website doesn't have enough information to do so and the service itself is still new and under development. The disclaimer page warns people not to use this service for anything very important.
Also the site itself is quite informal, the person who made it has a sense of humour.
Vocaroo is a web-based service designed to record and send voice messages over the Internet. It is very simple to use and all you need is a microphone (or, a pair of headphones, if you need to send a message right now but don't have access to a mic).
The site itself is very simple and clean, the help and information pages offer FAQ answers and general information for using Vocaroo. You can contact the Webmaster, donate and even pay for an express version of Vocaroo.
Here is a little toy that Vocaroo offers, it allows you to record and playback your voice. Please note that messages are not saved or downloadable.
- Piff
However, while it still works, I would like to tell you all about Vocaroo. This will not be a formal evaluation, because the website doesn't have enough information to do so and the service itself is still new and under development. The disclaimer page warns people not to use this service for anything very important.
Also the site itself is quite informal, the person who made it has a sense of humour.
Vocaroo is a web-based service designed to record and send voice messages over the Internet. It is very simple to use and all you need is a microphone (or, a pair of headphones, if you need to send a message right now but don't have access to a mic).
The site itself is very simple and clean, the help and information pages offer FAQ answers and general information for using Vocaroo. You can contact the Webmaster, donate and even pay for an express version of Vocaroo.
Here is a little toy that Vocaroo offers, it allows you to record and playback your voice. Please note that messages are not saved or downloadable.
- Piff
YouTube.
A while back I was browsing some of my sites and I noticed that a lot of video-sharing sites have followed the naming trend of YouTube, resulting in countless sites named Something-Tube.
The internet really is a series of 'tubes. Thanks Mr Stevens.
YouTube is a video-sharing site. It's very simple really, people create accounts (you need to have an email to do this, or if you have a Google account, you can use that account to sign in) and then they upload their videos to YouTube's server. There are filters and screening processes and user report functions in place so that videos with explicit content don't make it onto YouTube.
There are however more complex features to YouTube that can be explored. Users can create channels to showcase their own videos and any videos that they may have "favourited" these are then subscribed to and YT will send the users that have subscribed notices when changes are made to the channel. Users can friend one another, comment on videos and on channels (although be wary of the GID Theory, as it has shown itself to be a problem on YT). In addition, if you value your privacy, you can elect to have your videos only viewable by people on your friend list and you can elect to disable commenting on your videos. Recently, YouTube has allowed users to place captions and annotations on their videos and some people have managed to use them in some innovative ways.
I feel that one should always exercise caution when searching on YouTube becuase while you can find helpful, informative videos on a phenominal range of topics, you will most likely have to wade through quite a few videos which are pointless, silly or ultimately unrelated to what you were looking for. The "Reccomended for You" section of the YT home page always reminds me of this, as it very rarely has anything in it that I want to watch, despite being generated for me based on my video watching patterns.
Here is where I would try to embed the video which I recorded for this class, but I'm having trouble uploading it. (It takes forever and keeps giving me errors.) Hopefully one of these times it will work and I'll be able to embed it here, but until then, I'll leave you with a one of my favourite videos
Enjoy your YouTube!
Piff
A while back I was browsing some of my sites and I noticed that a lot of video-sharing sites have followed the naming trend of YouTube, resulting in countless sites named Something-Tube.
The internet really is a series of 'tubes. Thanks Mr Stevens.
YouTube is a video-sharing site. It's very simple really, people create accounts (you need to have an email to do this, or if you have a Google account, you can use that account to sign in) and then they upload their videos to YouTube's server. There are filters and screening processes and user report functions in place so that videos with explicit content don't make it onto YouTube.
There are however more complex features to YouTube that can be explored. Users can create channels to showcase their own videos and any videos that they may have "favourited" these are then subscribed to and YT will send the users that have subscribed notices when changes are made to the channel. Users can friend one another, comment on videos and on channels (although be wary of the GID Theory, as it has shown itself to be a problem on YT). In addition, if you value your privacy, you can elect to have your videos only viewable by people on your friend list and you can elect to disable commenting on your videos. Recently, YouTube has allowed users to place captions and annotations on their videos and some people have managed to use them in some innovative ways.
I feel that one should always exercise caution when searching on YouTube becuase while you can find helpful, informative videos on a phenominal range of topics, you will most likely have to wade through quite a few videos which are pointless, silly or ultimately unrelated to what you were looking for. The "Reccomended for You" section of the YT home page always reminds me of this, as it very rarely has anything in it that I want to watch, despite being generated for me based on my video watching patterns.
Here is where I would try to embed the video which I recorded for this class, but I'm having trouble uploading it. (It takes forever and keeps giving me errors.) Hopefully one of these times it will work and I'll be able to embed it here, but until then, I'll leave you with a one of my favourite videos
Enjoy your YouTube!
Piff
Sunday, April 11, 2010
SUDDENLY, A BLOG.
I almost forgot!!
During my searching today I found a blog I thought I'd share. It's probably already posted on someone elses blog but just in case it isn't, I thought I'd post it.
http://auslibrarytechnician.blogspot.com/
During my searching today I found a blog I thought I'd share. It's probably already posted on someone elses blog but just in case it isn't, I thought I'd post it.
http://auslibrarytechnician.blogspot.com/
Today, Wikis.
A Wiki is essentially an online database of linked webpages, using software that allows people to view and edit individual pages via their web-browsers. The software that powers the pages is called Wiki, thus the name.
The actual word "wiki" is Hawaiian for "fast"; the creator of wiki-technology, Ward Cunningham, talks about the etymology of the term.
It took me a while to find a wiki relating to Libraries or Library tech that really interested me, most of the good ones had alread been snaffled.
I'm going to look at the 21st Century School Library wiki, which I'm finding hard to form a proper citation of, mainly becuase the wiki itself is quite sparse.
http://21cschoollibrary.wikispaces.com/
This wiki seems to have been created by someone named Fran Huges, for whom I can find only a Flickr page. As I mentioned before, the wiki is quite small and seems to consist primarily of links to other places and sources of information, with a small number of videos scattered throughout. Just by looking I can see that most of the information linked to is either for, or from sources within Australian Schools, or topically relavant.
The photos section of the site was one of the more filled out sections and seemed to me to be the most interesting, as it contained links directing me to many different Flickr photostreams, most for individual Libraries and one to a series of pictures showing the before and after of a refurbished Library.
I discovered as I was searching, that this wiki is listed under the teacher resources on the EDNA site, which rather makes it more of a Teacher's resource, instead of a Library resource. Despite that, the wiki seems to have promise. It has compiled quite a few resource links on various topics associated with making a modern school Library.
A Wiki is essentially an online database of linked webpages, using software that allows people to view and edit individual pages via their web-browsers. The software that powers the pages is called Wiki, thus the name.
The actual word "wiki" is Hawaiian for "fast"; the creator of wiki-technology, Ward Cunningham, talks about the etymology of the term.
It took me a while to find a wiki relating to Libraries or Library tech that really interested me, most of the good ones had alread been snaffled.
I'm going to look at the 21st Century School Library wiki, which I'm finding hard to form a proper citation of, mainly becuase the wiki itself is quite sparse.
http://21cschoollibrary.wikispaces.com/
This wiki seems to have been created by someone named Fran Huges, for whom I can find only a Flickr page. As I mentioned before, the wiki is quite small and seems to consist primarily of links to other places and sources of information, with a small number of videos scattered throughout. Just by looking I can see that most of the information linked to is either for, or from sources within Australian Schools, or topically relavant.
The photos section of the site was one of the more filled out sections and seemed to me to be the most interesting, as it contained links directing me to many different Flickr photostreams, most for individual Libraries and one to a series of pictures showing the before and after of a refurbished Library.
I discovered as I was searching, that this wiki is listed under the teacher resources on the EDNA site, which rather makes it more of a Teacher's resource, instead of a Library resource. Despite that, the wiki seems to have promise. It has compiled quite a few resource links on various topics associated with making a modern school Library.
Monday, March 29, 2010
Today, I am going to be doing quite a few things, beginning with looking to critically evaluate a blog that I found using Technorati, a search tool I spoke about earlier.
Now, I'm sorry if this blog has already been done by someone else in my class but I can't access WebCT at the moment, I don't know if this is because of something in my settings (although I have turned on cookies and allow redirects) or if this is because WebCT is down. Again.
The blog I'm choosing to look at the the FRBR Blog. Oh piff, what is FRBR? I hear you say. Well gather round childrins and I will try to explain. (Or you could visit the blog and click the convenient "what is FRBR?" link.)
FRBR is an acronym which stands for Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records. I know that probably doesn't explain anything, so I'll try to lay it out as simply as I can, if only because I know that when I was first trying to understand, it was pretty boggling. Currently items in our libraries are recorded as singular items, with very little ties to any kind of related material. If you wanted a translated, re-edited or movie adaptation of something you would have to search for that item manually, this is true even if you are searching for an item within a series. FRBR proposes to change this by redesigning the behind the scenes work.
What people will see is that by searching for an item, the record for that item will have references (and hopefully links) to other items in the series and related items; so a search for Tolkien's Unfinished Tales will have the item record providing links to perhaps more of Tolikien's work, perhaps the reader's companion or perhaps the unofficial encyclopedia of Middle Earth. This all works closely with RDA (Resource Description and Access), which is the new set of cataloguing rules being formed to replace the AACR2 (Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules) that we currently use.
William Denton, 2005, The FRBR Blog, viewed 29th March 2010.
At first glance, despite this blogs very simple layout it is a pain to navigate around, if only because there is so much of it. The normally useful navigation bar on the left hand side has been packed with useful information, as well as the standard blog stuff that unless you know exactly where you want to go, it takes a while to get there. With that said, the information on the navigation bar is really quite useful, offering links to web documents, books and other sites all to help with the understanding of FRBR. The content of the blog itself is just as impenetrable as FRBR, at least to someone like myself who is only just beginning to learn about all of this, as it talks about manifestations and entities like they were old-hat; which, considering that FRBR has been around since 1998 and probably longer, to some it really is.
The author and webmaster of the blog is William Denton, who is the web Librarian at York University. His entry in the Librarian's profile section of York University's site has a link to his personal blog, which in turn has a link to the FRBR blog. He seems to be quite knowledgeable and on top of the latest news concerning changes to cataloguing and has had a paper concerning that very topic published by Libraries Unlimited.
On the whole I don't feel like I have learned a great deal from reading this blog but I have to say that this is most likely due to the fact that I don't really know enough to make proper sense of it. What it has given me are numerous pieces of information, both knowledge and other websites and documents to read and learn about the changes to cataloguing in the near future.
Now, I'm sorry if this blog has already been done by someone else in my class but I can't access WebCT at the moment, I don't know if this is because of something in my settings (although I have turned on cookies and allow redirects) or if this is because WebCT is down. Again.
The blog I'm choosing to look at the the FRBR Blog. Oh piff, what is FRBR? I hear you say. Well gather round childrins and I will try to explain. (Or you could visit the blog and click the convenient "what is FRBR?" link.)
FRBR is an acronym which stands for Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records. I know that probably doesn't explain anything, so I'll try to lay it out as simply as I can, if only because I know that when I was first trying to understand, it was pretty boggling. Currently items in our libraries are recorded as singular items, with very little ties to any kind of related material. If you wanted a translated, re-edited or movie adaptation of something you would have to search for that item manually, this is true even if you are searching for an item within a series. FRBR proposes to change this by redesigning the behind the scenes work.
What people will see is that by searching for an item, the record for that item will have references (and hopefully links) to other items in the series and related items; so a search for Tolkien's Unfinished Tales will have the item record providing links to perhaps more of Tolikien's work, perhaps the reader's companion or perhaps the unofficial encyclopedia of Middle Earth. This all works closely with RDA (Resource Description and Access), which is the new set of cataloguing rules being formed to replace the AACR2 (Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules) that we currently use.
William Denton, 2005, The FRBR Blog, viewed 29th March 2010.
At first glance, despite this blogs very simple layout it is a pain to navigate around, if only because there is so much of it. The normally useful navigation bar on the left hand side has been packed with useful information, as well as the standard blog stuff that unless you know exactly where you want to go, it takes a while to get there. With that said, the information on the navigation bar is really quite useful, offering links to web documents, books and other sites all to help with the understanding of FRBR. The content of the blog itself is just as impenetrable as FRBR, at least to someone like myself who is only just beginning to learn about all of this, as it talks about manifestations and entities like they were old-hat; which, considering that FRBR has been around since 1998 and probably longer, to some it really is.
The author and webmaster of the blog is William Denton, who is the web Librarian at York University. His entry in the Librarian's profile section of York University's site has a link to his personal blog, which in turn has a link to the FRBR blog. He seems to be quite knowledgeable and on top of the latest news concerning changes to cataloguing and has had a paper concerning that very topic published by Libraries Unlimited.
On the whole I don't feel like I have learned a great deal from reading this blog but I have to say that this is most likely due to the fact that I don't really know enough to make proper sense of it. What it has given me are numerous pieces of information, both knowledge and other websites and documents to read and learn about the changes to cataloguing in the near future.
Monday, March 22, 2010
This week, Delicious.
Yahoo!, 2005, Delicious, Yahoo!, U.S.A. first viewed 22 March, 2010, http://delicious.com
Delicious is a social bookmarking site. Strange as that sounds, the concept is a fairly smart one. You sign up for Delicious (it is free and becuase it is owned by Yahoo!, you can also use your Yahoo! sign-in if you want to) and then you create bookmarks using urls, just like you would normally do on your own computer but saved online. The smart thing about this is that it allows you to access your important bookmarks from anywhere, as long as you have an internet connection and can log in. As I learned during my trip to WA, I never realised how much I rely on my computer to remember things for me, particularly the websites I like to visit. But then we come to the social aspect of things. Using Delicious, other people can search for bookmarks that have been saved. When you save a bookmark you can add tags to it, these tags let people search out your bookmarks by topic and if somone else has already saved the same url as a bookmark, Delicious will inform you of this and provide a list of example tags that other people have given it. It's actually very similar to programs like digg and reddit (which, thinking about it, I should probably make some extra posts on). It took me a while to find out some information about the people behind Delicious, mainly becuase I was looking for the wrong thing. Instead of the traditional list onf contact details, Delicious has its very own blog, which I found interesting to read a bit of, although I didn't read too much, as it is BIG, having been around for five years now.
The only real complaint I had was that Yahoo! still is not the easiest online service to sign in to, it took me three tries today to get in and it's taken me many more than that in the past. I'm not entirely sure whay this is, although it may have something to do with the account names you use to sign in changing depending on where on Yahoo! you sign in.
In answer to a question, Assassin's Creed is a series of historically-based Sci-fi games about genetic past lives and biblical metaphors. The history in particular is what attacted me to them. They are, apart from a little bit of creative meddling with characters and holy artifacts, very historically accurate, which is rare in videogames. Also, the second game has unintentionally been teaching me some Italian...
piff
Yahoo!, 2005, Delicious, Yahoo!, U.S.A. first viewed 22 March, 2010, http://delicious.com
Delicious is a social bookmarking site. Strange as that sounds, the concept is a fairly smart one. You sign up for Delicious (it is free and becuase it is owned by Yahoo!, you can also use your Yahoo! sign-in if you want to) and then you create bookmarks using urls, just like you would normally do on your own computer but saved online. The smart thing about this is that it allows you to access your important bookmarks from anywhere, as long as you have an internet connection and can log in. As I learned during my trip to WA, I never realised how much I rely on my computer to remember things for me, particularly the websites I like to visit. But then we come to the social aspect of things. Using Delicious, other people can search for bookmarks that have been saved. When you save a bookmark you can add tags to it, these tags let people search out your bookmarks by topic and if somone else has already saved the same url as a bookmark, Delicious will inform you of this and provide a list of example tags that other people have given it. It's actually very similar to programs like digg and reddit (which, thinking about it, I should probably make some extra posts on). It took me a while to find out some information about the people behind Delicious, mainly becuase I was looking for the wrong thing. Instead of the traditional list onf contact details, Delicious has its very own blog, which I found interesting to read a bit of, although I didn't read too much, as it is BIG, having been around for five years now.
The only real complaint I had was that Yahoo! still is not the easiest online service to sign in to, it took me three tries today to get in and it's taken me many more than that in the past. I'm not entirely sure whay this is, although it may have something to do with the account names you use to sign in changing depending on where on Yahoo! you sign in.
In answer to a question, Assassin's Creed is a series of historically-based Sci-fi games about genetic past lives and biblical metaphors. The history in particular is what attacted me to them. They are, apart from a little bit of creative meddling with characters and holy artifacts, very historically accurate, which is rare in videogames. Also, the second game has unintentionally been teaching me some Italian...
piff
Monday, March 15, 2010
So, no post last week, both because it was a public holiday and there was no class but also because I haven't been keeping up with work outside of class, which is my own fault.
This week we looked at Technorati, even though we were meant to do it last class.
Technorati Media, 2008, Technorati, first viewed 15th March 2010, http://technorati.com/
Technorati is a blog-searching and service site. Once signed up (which is free) you can create a profile and "claim" any of your own blogs to that profile. You can then search in a few different ways for different blogs. Technorati is one of those things that seems really nice and useful for the tasks that it can do but it could use some refining. The site is still labeled "beta" and the support page addresses some known issues that exist on the site. Searching is a bit clunky and doesn't provide a lot of options to use for searching, but with some diligence you should be able to find what you need. The Directory search uses blog authority as one of the main categories and there is a link at the bottom of the page to find out what that means. The only thing that I didn't like about the site is that it has advertisements, which is an unfortunate consequence of being able to sign up to the site for free; the company that owns Technorati is a media company, which you can find a fair amount of information on, including board members and managers, on the site itself or on the company site.
Okay, it's been 20 minutes now and my activation email hasn't been sent. What is going on here?
... Now I feel silly. I could sign in without activation this whole time, even though it told me I would need to activate my account. Now I need to actually do my class work and claim my blog and use Technorati to find a blog related to my class topic to evaluate. More on this later.
Ubisoft, make Assassin's Creed 3 already! do it now!!
piff
This week we looked at Technorati, even though we were meant to do it last class.
Technorati Media, 2008, Technorati, first viewed 15th March 2010, http://technorati.com/
Technorati is a blog-searching and service site. Once signed up (which is free) you can create a profile and "claim" any of your own blogs to that profile. You can then search in a few different ways for different blogs. Technorati is one of those things that seems really nice and useful for the tasks that it can do but it could use some refining. The site is still labeled "beta" and the support page addresses some known issues that exist on the site. Searching is a bit clunky and doesn't provide a lot of options to use for searching, but with some diligence you should be able to find what you need. The Directory search uses blog authority as one of the main categories and there is a link at the bottom of the page to find out what that means. The only thing that I didn't like about the site is that it has advertisements, which is an unfortunate consequence of being able to sign up to the site for free; the company that owns Technorati is a media company, which you can find a fair amount of information on, including board members and managers, on the site itself or on the company site.
Okay, it's been 20 minutes now and my activation email hasn't been sent. What is going on here?
... Now I feel silly. I could sign in without activation this whole time, even though it told me I would need to activate my account. Now I need to actually do my class work and claim my blog and use Technorati to find a blog related to my class topic to evaluate. More on this later.
Ubisoft, make Assassin's Creed 3 already! do it now!!
piff
Monday, March 1, 2010
First Post
This blog, much like my other blog, will be related to my class work. (We apparently weren't allowed to re-use our last blog, which kind of confused me as I thought that by reusing it I could save space.) In particular, this blog will be about Libraries and the implementation and use of web 2.0 tech and other digital medias in them.
As this week is my first post it will probably be quite short and I still have to go make sure my igoogle is still up and running from last year before lunch.
So, here are some linkies, for things that we discussed in class today.
Athenaeum - This is a Library management program, marketed towards school Libraries. I think that is the correct link, there were a few from different sources.
Kompozer - A free web-authoring program that, according to my course supervisor, is relatively simple to learn and use.
Library Thing - An online cataloguing service.
We were asked to find out what LinkedIn was, which was referenced in an article we read in class. LinkedIn seems at first glance to be a kind of hybrid messaging/networking thing.
Also, becuase we discussed copyright issues today, here is a video on the subject of music "piracy" whose opinion I agree with.
- Piff
As this week is my first post it will probably be quite short and I still have to go make sure my igoogle is still up and running from last year before lunch.
So, here are some linkies, for things that we discussed in class today.
Athenaeum - This is a Library management program, marketed towards school Libraries. I think that is the correct link, there were a few from different sources.
Kompozer - A free web-authoring program that, according to my course supervisor, is relatively simple to learn and use.
Library Thing - An online cataloguing service.
We were asked to find out what LinkedIn was, which was referenced in an article we read in class. LinkedIn seems at first glance to be a kind of hybrid messaging/networking thing.
Also, becuase we discussed copyright issues today, here is a video on the subject of music "piracy" whose opinion I agree with.
- Piff
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)