There will always be a need for Information Managers

I was trawling the web looking for information.. as one does, when I came across this journal article on a web site called O'Reilly discussing structuring URLS in what is termed the Presto approach. As I read down the article I couldn't help seeing the cataloger at work and how important it is becoming to use every opportunity to structure information and code it in a way that describes what the material is pertaining too. Here the Library of Congress is describing how is uses handles as a form of persistent identifiers to documents, and in this case legislative documents.

LOC example

How to create a Legislative Handle

Begin the URL with the handle domain name -- http://hdl.loc.gov/ -- then add loc.uscongress. Add a slash and the name of the collection, legislation, followed by a period and the congress number, 110. Finally, add the bill type abbreviation and the bill number.

http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.uscongress/legislation.110s254
http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.uscongress/legislation.110sconres33
http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.uscongress/legislation.110hr4544
http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.uscongress/legislation.110hres655

I had a look at the State Library of Victoria and the National Library of Australia and it seems they are not using handles is this way

This about sums it all up

The more contact I have with web 2 under the consideration of its application in the library or information management environment the more I deduce it's presently more about participation. It looks to me like libraries have been missing the opportunity to participate in the free love movement of sharing, collaborating and developing ways to communicate with people. The big fear is that when the love fest has burnt out in a time where libraries might not be the powerhouse of information they once were, will the usual offenders of control try and take over what was once free and turn it into paid under the banners of copyright, intellectual property or the like?

The following YouTube clip is a presentation by Michael Welch, Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology, Kansas State University.

What is the Semantic Web?

I've been hearing the term Web3 and Semantic Web around the traps and thought I would investigate a little further. The following is a quote from an interview with Ivan Herman who is a member of the International World Wide Web3 Conference Committee.

The shortest way is to say it is a data Web. Now, that by itself doesn’t say too much. But if you look at the Web as of today, it’s sort of a Web of documents. People put up documents in HTML or generated from a database or whatever that are linked together and humans look at it. In this sense, it’s a bunch of documents that are on the Web. But in fact, there’s a huge amount of data, and you would like to have the data relate to one another directly. So, you have big databases, and the databases together represent knowledge and information, not necessarily individually, and you want the same kind of linkage among the data the way you do it with documents. In this sense, it’s the Web of data. You also find people calling it the data Web—more or less the same thing. The Semantic Web technologies, the various things that we do, are all the building blocks to realize that properly.

I love this quote:

Ivan Herman says the Semantic Web will lead to “mash-ups on steroids”. As the World Wide Web Consortium’s Semantic Web activity lead, Herman has a lot of influence on the development of Web 3.0 technologies. The computer scientist has coordinated all of the standards body’s work on the Semantic Web since 2006.

Full Interview here.

I found this information using Twine

Leading open source with Pytheas

There is no doubt that if libraries are to regain some authority over the quality of information being disseminated to the online information user, headway into more flexible instant information sharing is going to have to be implemented. University libraries and progressive public libraries are becoming aware of this and starting to experiment with open source software and integrating these tools into existing web presences or rebuilding whole sections of the web sites to accommodate more web 2 applications. The University of South Caroline has used free open source wiki software to build what looks like a normal university library web site. This site allows staff and registered public to edit material. More exciting is the work being carried out by the University of Virginia which has developed an open source OPAC which is calls Project Blacklight and has been build as an open source initiative that will be available to all libraries who dare to cut the strings to more established vendor OPAC systems.

DSpace a free open source software solution for accessing, managing, and preserving scholarly works is being used by a plethora of institutions to foster open source knowledge sharing and information networking.

Pytheas is one application which is attempting through XML code to integrate open source software into the library environment. Although the graphic interface leaves a lot to be desired the code paths protocols that pytheas is using look very interesting. Here they are marrying Marc, RDF, HTML, XML, WorldNet and Google API into one searchable user interface.

PPS Converter

My hubby asked me.. do you know how I can convert a Powerpoint presentation into a video file that I can upload into a Blog. Of course I didn't so he went away, surfed the net and came back this nifty little program which I thought might be very usual for the future. This software is a free download from Presenter Soft and it worked perfectly.

Wikiman Brion Vibber

I was watching a video presentation on Wiki's by Brion Vibber that Skye posted on his blog. This guy is seriously cool and his perception of where things might go was inspiring! So I googled him to see if he had a blog, which if he does I couldn't find. But what I did find was a site where he loads up his powerpoint presentations on Wiki's and the Web. I haven't had time to go through it but I really think there could be some gems here, he's doing a lot of thinking about Web3 and how through fuzzy logic we won't have to find the information.. it will find us!!

http://leuksman.com/pages/presentations

Brion Vibber keeps a pretty low profile but I will certainly be watching out for him

Everyone is talking Twitter.. but why?

Of all the Web 2 social mediums, Twitter continuously seems to baffle me. I keep fluctuating between trying to ignore it, see it as evil or accept it as just another way to chatter to the people of the world. When the report of the Mickeyy hack started last week I was... yes .. see I knew something wasn't right! There has been a lot of talk about the weakness of the platform, the crashing and how unstable it was, and this really just confirmed my doubts. If something can easily be replicated by a bored teenager and taken over, then what does that say about the privacy of the user?

The online community is , I think beginning to wake up a bit. I was reading an article by one of my favourite bloggers Brian Solis who is a Twitter advocate and talking a lot about how users can keep it real for them. As consumers of information, it is important that we keep the power! As deliverer's of information what controls do we need?

Our new "Library World".

Somehow, amongst the information jumble the people who run libraries have to use all their powers of discrimination to filter out the chaff from the wheat. The good news is that there are some real gems out there that will make the dissemination of knowledge quicker, easier and available when the user needs it. The hard part is .. which ones? I think that we need to maintain an open mind to all information sharing mediums, we need to experiment with everything that is out there and out of that some applications will stick and will be useful and others will just gather dust. Our Web2 adventure has given us a reason to go and get dirty with lots of different applications and share that experience with people who are going to be the new generation guardians of truth and knowledge.

Like it or not Libraries do have to deliver services in pace with the way people are expecting to get their information needs. It's pretty rare that someone is prepared to wait months for a copy of an article written in an obscure print periodical that will need to be copied and couriered to destination user. This means.. a lot of information will not be used simply because of its accessibility. We need the power of millions to get the information out there where people can find it and really.. that's where our strengths will lie. There is 100 years of human thinking that is filed away in some dusty archive that is not presently accessible.

Everyone is talking online. Whether it's an email or instant message system, or their "facebooking" (I do feel sorry for the OED people), communication is happening .. out there..! Super computers are here and now and that's how we are doing all this stuff.. for free? How free is it really? Consumer profiling is THE way that marketer's can target their audience and sell their products. We all think that we are not susceptible to these sales pitches but.. hey.. I really do need an Iphone.. I think? The reality is that business is using our information needs as a tool to market things to buy. They have become the new master of information because they saw in advance that people need information in a much better way that what old information services were delivering i.e. libraries.

As potentially the new generation of information managers we need to stop chasing and start leading. We can only do that by embracing the new and letting go of old habits and beliefs that slow down the way we deliver information.

Google Maps

Technology sometimes can be a scary thing. I was busily uploading markers for my recent trip to Rainbow Beach where I had escaped to for some well earned R & R. When I entered the address of where the family house is at Rainbow Beach.. bingo a marker was located AND a picture of the house. Now I knew that this was available but when its something that you see as private being broadcast to the world its kinda "big brother" isn't it? Do you think, somewhere in the future when the novelty wears off, there will be invasion of privacy issues? I guess we'll find out soon enough!

The Library Patron

I've just had the opportunity to participate in a very large survey of users and no-users of library services. The most revealing thing is that there is a huge difference to the way people are perceiving the library and its services. The customer who doesn't visit or use a library see's the library at a safe place with free services that is old fashioned and not able to deliver the information they want when they want it. The user of the library perceive the library as a wonderful place to participate in community activities and read books, get free DVDs and use free internet. The demographic is really vastly different in these user groups. I think in a lot of cases we have lost touch with the general community and isolated ourselves into more specialised communities.

The customers we have lost like being able to retrieve information from google, are very techno savvy and are right up to speed with the latest technology. It was amazing how many non-users pulled an Iphone out of their bags and told me they can read digital books when they want instantly, and access information immediately. What was really interesting was that people who are now self-sufficient with their information needs are not aware of the disparity of information available. In other words.. they don't know what information they are missing.

The whole journey of the Web 2 Adventure that we have just engaged in has really enlightened me as to how we might bridge the gap between the self-sufficient non-library user and how we can help the existing library patron to engage in the web community in a more productive way. I can already see easy applications of blogs into activities like Bookclub. How we could develop more user friendly catalogues and online services. Promote more interaction between Web 2 applications like social networking sites and information sharing forums with our web site interfaces. I am actually quite excited about projects are that using open source collaboration and uploading them into library OPACs. It's a new frontier and I can see that for the traditionalist it will be a quantum leap of faith to embrace the user of the future .. not in the future .. but now!

FlashWidgets

Some really excellent add ons from here:
http://www.flashwidgetz.com/

Flock Tutorial

I found this in the Media Streams of Flock.. its a drag and drop system

Holy FLOCK!

I promised myself that I would try out the new social web browser that Firefox have developed called Flock. I have downloaded it and installation allows you to transfer all you old Firefox setting into the Flock browser.

They have a fantastic video tutorial which runs you through all the different features and I am presently blogging on my blog through the Flock browser. I can't say I am totally comfortable with it yet but I really think I will get to like it.

I have already been able to drag and drop web abstracts into my Facebook acount.. very very easily.

This is the address for Flock

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Mashing Information

I was reading the latest post on Ilibrarian which was discussing mashing. She mentioned Twist which creates a visual interpretations of data like graphs. There is a function there which with one easy click allows you to embed a graph into your site. Lets see how it works!



There is an option for large or small and for Static and Dynamic. Static being a chart fixed current period of time and dynamic for staying up to date.

Social Network for the NLA

I was following up an article I read in a blog by Kerry Webb about different kinds of blogging services and stumbled upon Exectweet on Wordpress which is a twittering site for business in the USA which got me to thinking what kind of twittering categories there might be for libraries. A simple search revealed this piece of innovation the NLA is running and it's worth a look.

http://www.nla.gov.au/initiatives/meetings/innovative-ideas-forum/2009/web.html

Here are some interesting innovations happening in Melbourne

Colabforge

FutureMelbourne wiki

Share This

I really like this tool for information sharing. Share This is a free open source program which links together all your cloud storage sites and allows you to easily access information you may wish to keep. By clicking the Share This icon you will get a box which looks like the image above and allows you to select the cloud storage site you want the information stored in. You can DL the software from this link http://sharethis.com/. It also has its own storage area as well as a plug in for firefox. You can tag your own web site or blog as I have down with the icon. For a video tour go here

Video Sharing

YouTube

Everyone knows YouTube.. its owned by google.

Here's a C&P from the about YouTube blurb which describes best whats YouTube is about

Founded in February 2005, YouTube is the leader in online video, and the premier destination to watch and share original videos worldwide through a Web experience. YouTube allows people to easily upload and share video clips on www.YouTube.com and across the Internet through websites, mobile devices, blogs, and email.

Everyone can watch videos on YouTube. People can see first-hand accounts of current events, find videos about their hobbies and interests, and discover the quirky and unusual. As more people capture special moments on video, YouTube is empowering them to become the broadcasters of tomorrow.

Vimeo

From Vimeo I learnt how to embed video .. finger crossed if it works!

http://vimeo.com/


Jakob Lodwick talks about Vimeo from Song Hia on Vimeo.

WOW yes it does.. they provide the code to C&P into your web site ... nice!