My computer has just crashed twice in the last 20 minutes.
Here, have some rain.
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
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