« January 2006 | Main | April 2007 »
March 30, 2007
Cool web tools: part 1
This is the first entry in a series of posts I plan to make over the course of the next few weeks. My plan is not to rate, endorse, or otherwise evaluate the included resources (perhaps I have evaluated by assigning the "cool" moniker), but rather to bring attention to these web applications that push the envelope on conventional methods of information search and retrieval.
Enough said -- on to the cool web tools:
- FlickStorm: enter a keyword into the search box and FlickStorm grabs a bunch of relevant images from the flickr website and presents them to you as thumbnails. A click on a thubnail loads the larger image to your web browser.
- Similicio.us: uses data from the del.icio.us social bookmarking website to provide a "users who like this website also like this one" listing.
- KwMap: pitches itself as "a keyword map for the whole internet". Enter a search term and KwMap returns a visual display of logically related terms across two intersecting axes.
- Ujiko: search engine that looks more like a game console or a component to a 747 instrument panel. Claims to search 6,000,000,000 web pages.
- Kartoo: Flash-based search interface displays results visually in groups of related clusters. Brought to you by the makers of Ujiko.
Posted by AnthonyMcMullen at 12:21 PM | Comments (0)
March 22, 2007
The 'Gray Lady' opens her doors: free access to New York Times archives
History is at your fingertips. The New York Times, through their new TimesSelect service", has opened up their extensive archive. This is fantastic news! What's even better is that the Times is offering students, faculty, and staff of educational institutions free accounts complete with 100 article views per month. This is huge! And it's this easy:
- Register for an account
- Select one of two archives: 1851-1980 or 1981-Present
- Conduct a search
- View PDFs of articles
What a great day for scholars, historians, or anybody who wants an old article from the Times. It's not as earth-shattering as a lunar landing, but it's a huge announcement nonetheless. The start of a trend, perhaps?
Posted by AnthonyMcMullen at 10:24 AM | Comments (2)
March 18, 2007
The long tail of Reeves Library
In his October 2004 WIRED magazine article The Long Tail, Chris Anderson describes statistical distributions as they relate to supply and demand. Sure, everybody knows there are far more "misses" than "hits", and most people have at least a general sense of the 80 / 20 rule. However, what may come as a surprise to some is that the aggregate demand for the "misses" often outpaces demand for the "hits". This is the long tail.
You can find a long tail almost anywhere you look. Anderson offers this bookstore example:
Take books: The average Barnes & Noble carries 130,000 titles. Yet more than half of Amazon's book sales come from outside its top 130,000 titles. Consider the implication: If the Amazon statistics are any guide, the market for books that are not even sold in the average bookstore is larger than the market for those that are.
The long tail is here at Reeves Library too. Click the graphic for a larger view (Ctrl + click if you have a pop-up blocker).
Posted by AnthonyMcMullen at 6:29 PM | Comments (0)
March 13, 2007
What else should I read?
I'm sure many people have heard of LibraryThing. Several national news outlets have featured LibraryThing and Mike Arnzen blogged it just the other day.
One of the cooler LibraryThing features is the BookSuggester which provides a "people who like this also like that" listing based upon LibraryThing user data. Here's a BookSuggester example using Larry McMurtry's "Lonesome Dove" as a point of reference.
Along with BookSuggester, LibraryThing offers the UnSuggester. It takes the "people who like this also like that" model and flips it around. I wonder what people who don't like McMurtry's Lonesome Dove are reading. Probably some stupid object-oriented programming manual...
Posted by AnthonyMcMullen at 9:23 PM | Comments (2)
March 7, 2007
Free of charge: one iPod Shuffle
That's right. The library is giving away one iPod Shuffle. Sound too good to be true? OK.... So we're not actually giving it away -- we're presenting it to the winner of our "Rename the library catalog" contest. Here are the rules:
- contest is open to SHU students, staff, faculty, and administration
- vote as many times as you like
- all votes submitted by 11:59 P.M. Saturday, April 7th will be counted
- winner will be announced on Friday, April 20
So what are you waiting for? It takes only a few seconds to cast a vote or two (or three), and your creativity could win you an iPod Shuffle. Additional information and online ballot available on the library website.
Posted by AnthonyMcMullen at 9:29 AM | Comments (0)