Libology Blog

A Useful Amplification of Records That Are Unavoidably Needed Anyway is an essay by Brett Bonfield which, dare I phrase it this way, usefully amplifies several of the major web-based entities which are intertwined with libraries.  These include (but aren’t limited to) OCLC’s WorldCat, Amazon, and LibraryThing.  Brett clearly understands libraries, and does a great job detailing the interrelationships between all involved.

Not directly related to the essay, LibraryThing has posted an expansion of their Common Knowledge fields for Authors and Events.  This is an interesting read, as it addresses in a real-world way the need for authorities and relationships.

Lorcan Demsey has a post on metadata that does a great job of illustrating two types of data collections by describing them as lakes and rivers.  The idea did not originate with him; rather he encountered it via OCLC’s Eric Hellman.

• Lakes are repositories of information that change little over time, and are fed from a few well-defined sources, supplemented by occasional “springs”.  A good analog for this is the library catalog.
• Rivers are cascading flows of information, changing rapidly and fed by many sources.  The quote that describes this most effectively is often attributed to Heraclitus : “you cannot step into the same river twice.”*

This is a fantastic way to frame the ongoing transition that libraries face.  We are transforming ourselves (being forced to transform?  some combination of the two?) from a lake-based information service to a river-based information service.  We are having to learn as we go to navigage ever-changing waterways, dodging sandbars and debris in a boat that was designed over a century ago for lake use.

Keep this analogy in mind… it lends itself well.

* Wikipedia offers the following quote listed within their page on Heraclitus: “We both step and do not step in the same rivers. We are and are not.” This quote is simultaneously much more illustrative of the complexity of our situation, and much more confusing.

Lingro is a service that will allow one to have a dictionary available for text on any web site.  Simply enter the URL for a site, then click on any word.  Viola!  You get definitions for that word quickly and effectively.

This is great for those who are learning a new language, as you can get definitions in one of several languages.

from Metafilter

Karen Coyle has written a post on Coyle’s InFormation that I feel greatly helps to explain why it can be so complex to structure bibliographic information.

I first encountered Entity-Relationships (note:  right now this link is not a great introduction to the concept, but provides some good examples) when learning to create queries and reports from a Voyager database.  It was intimidating, to say the least, but was one of several steps that proved to be extremely helpful.

The diagrams, for whatever they represent, usually mirror the complexity of the system they represent.  They oftentimes are the most effective way to show this.

Understanding this complexity in bibliographic structure is important, I feel, because it allows us library types to better evaluate the tools that we use and select.  An OPAC search screen, or an ILS module, or any program we use is more useful when its structure better fits the entity-relationship that already exists for our materials.  A spreadsheet is great for certain types of information and presentation; a word processor for others.  A program that doesn’t fit the structure so well tends to be “clunky” to use in that context.

Read her post.  Repeat as necessary.  Don’t feel that you need to memorize the detail, or be able to re-create her diagrams.  Simply get the gist of what she has put into words and pictures, and know that it will help you in your daily work, and in your understanding of how things work.

For many years I thought that the latin-esque text known as “Lorem Ipsum”, commonly used as a placeholder when designing web sites, brochures, etc., was simply meaningless syllables that looked and sounded like latin. It turns out there is more to these words than many realize…

Lorem Ipsum web site (and try out their Generator).

Lorem Ipsum wikipedia entry.

stumbled upon here…

PlantFacts is a resource from the Ohio State University which provides a wealth of information about plants and horticulture through a plant web search, an image database, how-to videos, a collection of over 800 FAQs, and an illustrated glossary.

from ResourceShelf

The Bibliognost’s Handbook (pdf) is listed as an essay on the New York Time’s website, but it is a page of brief lists, definitions, and information that are fascinating to review.

thanks Jean!

One of the frustrations in life is needing to find the spelling of a word when it is the beginning of the word that you aren’t sure of. How does one find “phonetic” in the dictionary if you aren’t thinking of the possibility of the word beginning with “ph”? (well, I guess Google’s “Did you mean…” feature is also quite good for those types of questions!)

This dilemma, amongst others, is solved by Unscramble.net, a site meant to assist people playing word games (crossword puzzles, scrambles, jumbles, etc.). Turns out that it can be a pretty good site for many other types of word questions.

Now about those annoying flashing ads….

from BiblioTech Web

The Free Dictionary is much, much more than just a word lookup.  Do you know how a word ends, but not the beginning?  Look it up here!  Computer terms?  Medicine?  Acronyms?  All in one place!  Need to cite your results for a paper?  The Free Dictionary will do that as well.
from BiblioTech Web

p.s. this is my 100th post!  Not too shabby for a start!

In the 15 July 2006 issue of Library Journal, Jeffrey Beall writes a passioned defense of metadata against the forces of keyword searching. Much of what he says is valid, and I agree that metadata is necessary for effective storage and retrieval in the electronic age.

However, near the end of his essay he states:

There is also the problem of synonymy. For example, if a searcher needs information about plant science, but the best resources call it botany, then the searcher will likely be unsuccessful in his search. Our language is rich, and we often use many precise terms to represent a single concept. Full-text searching, however, is inherently imprecise in its execution.

This, to me, actually strikes me as one of the greatest challenges with the use of metadata: the need to know a controlled vocabulary. The average library user doesn’t necessarily know that botany, or cookery, or numismatics are the proper terms for subject searches, as opposed to more commonplace words.

Modern OPACs have plenty of “see” and “see also” examples, but this is only truly useful if the effort has been made to make the connections as complete as possible. I tend to use subjects only through the links available through results… results that I usually have reached by a keyword search. I like to tell patrons that, once you find a good result, track the subject headings to find other items, then check the shelves in each of the call number areas in which you found results.

The essay is well worth reading; we have a tendancy to forget the power of a controlled vocabulary and metadata, and it would be a shame to toss them aside in favor of the broad stroke of the keyword.

article discovered through Catalogablog

The Xooglers blog (”a gathering spot for ex-Googlers…” - as in former employees of Google) has a post about the increasing acceptance of the use of “google” as a verb. It is a very interesting post, but you don’t need to google it, just follow the link:

http://xooglers.blogspot.com/2006/07/this-word-just-in.html