April 2007 Archives

So what does "a box of bike parts" have to do with the small image of man and machine to the right of this text? A lot, really..... Both are tall-tales of sorts that gained credibility by being passed from one person to another; the former largely through word of mouth and the later via various forms of online communcation.

I suspect practically anybody who has spent more than a few minutes online has encountered one of these urban legends / hoaxes / campaigns of misinformation. The internet has changed everything -- even the ways we fool each other. Here are some other notable examples:

• Kurt Vonnegut's MIT commencement address (1997): It really is a clever speech. Problem is, Vonnegut never delivered it.


• Whales in the Minnesota River (1999): A hoax website for the city of Mankato, Minnesota advertised whale watching tours and sunny beaches. The site attracted hunderds of inquiries to Mankato's chamber of commerce and tourism offices.


• Retractable dome roof for U.S. Capitol Building (2002): Beijing's most popular newspaper, Beijing Evening News, picked up on a 2002 article form the satirical newspaper The Onion. What a hoot...

I've watched this clip three times and it hasn't gotten stale. I never really thought of the book as a disruptive technology. Enough said, enjoy the video.

A tip of the hat to the students who put together the Earth Day display on the lawn in front of the library. The recovered material wrapped in chicken wire is one of the most creative environmental displays I've ever seen. This doesn't have to be a partisan issue -- clean air and water is good for EVERYBODY. They say a picture's worth a thousand words so I'll shut up now and show you the goods.

[Part two in a series of entries on cool web tools]

Here are some more interesting web-based resources that push the envelope in terms of what I'd call business-as-usual functionality.

• Scribd: Ever wish you could painlessly convert a document to PDF without having access to Adobe Acrobat? You can with Scribd! This is is one of the more interesting resources I've run across in recent days. It'll handle multiple formats -- .pdf, .doc, .xls, .ppt, .html, .txt to name a few -- and enables you to share your document in an embedded environment. You've got to see this in action to really apreciate the coolness of Scribd


• ObjectGraph: AJAX ("Asynchronous JavaScript And XML) is one of the more stupid acronyms I've run across, but the technology is very useful. It drives many of the "type ahead" features that we see on the web these days, such as the value-added search on Google Suggest. ObjectGraph uses AJAX-like technology to take the usual online dictionary & thesaurus lookups to a new level.


• Pandora: Like to listen to music? If so, you may want to check out Pandora Internet Radio. This service allows you to input an artist or a song title and uses this information to return to you other songs or artists that are along the same vein. Brought to you by the makers of the Music Genome Project

Thomson-Gale, one of the world's premier publishers, has announced they will provide free access to 24 of their electronic resources during National Library Week -- April 15-21. You'll need to register to use the resources, (make sure you deselect the "send me information about special offers, products, services" checkbox if you don't want this sort of notification) but it's quick and painless.

To access the resources, go to the following website:

http://www.accessmylibrary.com/libraryweek

Elyssa Stern Cahoy, a librarian at Penn State, put this clip together in an attempt to illustrate some of the frustrations that often accompany seemingly simple, straightforward library searches. In responding to a few criticisms of the presentation on a library-related discussion list, Cahoy stated:

I (a librarian) made this video to show the varied paths that our users can take when searching for materials and the many dead ends they often encounter. This video was part of a presentation I gave at this year's CIC library conference on making our library web interfaces simpler, more intuitive and more educational.

I don't feel that the search choices made in the video were 'mistakes'. Good searching is often messy and involves much trial and error. I teach my students that there are no 'mistakes' in online searching---only learning opportunities that help the user construct a better search the next time around.

That said, I think it is up to us, as instruction librarians, to help design the next generation of library interfaces. We need to help reduce the multiple screens, clicks and dead ends that many of our users currently face. As Roy Tennant said, "I wish I had known that the solution for needing to teach our users how to search our catalog was to create a system that didn't need to be taught." (Library Journal, 11/15/05)

We need to go beyond viewing our library web presence as a front end for our search engines and an organizational tool, and develop it wholly as an intuitive learning application and as a teaching opportunity.

I couldn't agree with her more.

The small image on the right (click on it to enlarge) is borrowed from johnjron1's flickr collection. It's a great illustration of of a circa 1978 librarian accessing the Medline database with a dedicated terminal, acoustically coupled modem, and rotary telephone. This equipment was high-tech in '78. We've come a long way in a rather short span of time. Makes me wonder what we'll be saying about 2007 technology in the year 2037

Take a look at the rest of johnjron's 1970's collection for more trips down memory lane.