Spring Semester, coming up!

For my spring semester, be ready to hear about these three classes"

458, Instruction and Assistance Systems: "Provides an overview to instruction and assistance methods used in a variety of information systems, including libraries, archives, museums, and electronic environments. Includes an overview of theoretical and applied research and discusses relevant issues and concepts. Students will have an opportunity to design and present an instruction or assistance program.

507, Cataloging and Classification I. One of the "classic" courses of library school: "Theory and application of basic principles and concepts of descriptive and subject cataloging; emphasis on interpreting catalog entries and making a catalog responsive to the needs of users; provides beginning-level experience with choice of entries, construction of headings, description of monographs (and, to a lesser extent, of serial publications and nonprint media), filing codes, Dewey and Library of Congress classification systems, and Library of Congress subject headings."

590PDL, Digital Preservation.  It seems that everyone wanted to take this course this semester....AND it counts for the Special Collections certificate:  "This course examines the current problems with and approaches to digital preservation that are fundamental to the long-term accessibility of digital materials. We will examine the range of current research problems, along with emerging methods and tools, and assess a variety of organizational scenarios to plan and implement a preservation plan. Topics will include basic information theory, preservation of complex digital objects; standards and specifications; sustainability and risk assessment; authenticity, integrity, quality control, and certification; and management of preservation activities. [Elective course for Graduate Certificate in Special Collections]"

I was going to take one more class, but then I realized that due to certain things happening, I had no $.  Let's hope I can take these classes and still eat through May!

Reading Response #4

Please read the rules about posted assignments before reading onward. 

Alenka Šauperl’s and Jerry D. Saye’s article, “Have we made any progress?  Catalogues of the future revisited,” is a follow up of an earlier article they wrote nine years ago.  In the earlier article, they provided suggestions intended to improve a library’s online catalog, in the user’s eyes.  They recommended showing the table of contents of books, and allowing users to comment on books they checked out.  The new article tries to answer the question of whether these catalogs made any progress within the past several years, in terms of user friendliness.  The authors wrote these articles hoping that with these suggestions, library catalogs would “survive ‘Google attack’” (Saye and Šauperl 2009).
    During this semester, Google has come up in our discussions, in both, positive and negative ways.  The projects Google Books and Google Scholar made some of my classmates angry, while others were awed by Google’s ability to spearhead such a movement.  “Google attack” seems even more likely today than it did nine years ago, as much as the search engine still retains its simplicity and popularity.  The word Google even became a verb in 2006, when the Oxford English Dictionary defined it as such (Bylund 2006). 
    As Google grows, how do Saye and Šauperl suggest for library catalogs to improve further?  One area that could use improvement is the results page.  Google lists its results by popularity, something the authors find alarming.  Google Books and Google Scholar lists results by loading date, another poor form of listing results.  The authors pointed to the North Carolina State University Library’s OPAC as an example of a sophisticated results page.  Unlike Google, their results page is listed by subject.  If a large amount of results are retrieved, the user is able to limit the results with various options (Saye and Šauperl 2009).  These intuitive results pages should be inclued in more OPACs, which hopefully will draw more users into adopting them.
    The authors also mentioned the need for OPACs to have multiple interfaces.  In my opinion, OPACs should become “pioneers” in creating different interfaces for specific groups of people.  As professionals, librarians strive to ensure freedom of information for everyone.  To me, this means providing information regardless of a user’s language barrier, disability, or age.  If a library is located in a multilingual neighborhood, the library’s OPAC should have an interface for those local language speakers.  If blind people use the library, screen readers should be installed, and the OPAC should have a voice input/output option.  For children, an OPAC using “Simple English” could make browsing easier.  Google and Amazon do not have such functions, and could bolster OPAC’s popularity with these groups of people.
      In their conclusion, Saye and Šauperl urge librarians not to “take ‘no’ as a satisfactory answer” when OPAC vendors and other librarians resist these changes (2009).  Librarians must demand these new features in their OPACs in order to keep up with the “Google attack” and to ensure the existence of OPACs in the future. 



Bylund, Anders. (2006, July). To Google or Not to Google. Retrieved from  The Motley  Fool website: http://www.fool.com/investing/dividends-income/2006/07/05/ to- google-or-not-to-google.aspx
Sauperl, A.; Saye, J. D. (2009). Have we made any progress? Catalogues  of the future  revisited. Journal of Documentation 65(3): 500-514.

(looks back again)

Wait, what?  It's already December?  New Year's resolution- work on blogging  >.<

For those of you in GSLIS, you can check out my group project's website on Oral History.  It's not fancy, but I coded it all by hand so it better work (shakes fist at computer)

	https://courseweb.lis.illinois.edu/~kdurba2/501

It is almost the end of the semester

This semester went by too quickly.  I look back at the past few months, and think about all of the missed opportunities for participation on the Moodle.  Remember for next semester: write more on the Moodle.

On the Short List!

For 590 RBL, I had to suggest a book that would fit into the University of Illinois Rare Books and Manuscript Library from some old catalogs. The class then would pick out 5 of the top recommended books, and vote for one to be potentially bought by the RBML. Now, the catalogs are old, and it would have to go through an official RBML recommentaion panel, so its not certain that they would end up buying it.

Guess what- mine is on the short list! I am super excited that my recommendation was picked. Here is the paper I wrote:

Please read the rules about posted assignments before reading onward.

Irish American Radicalism At Its Best

Devyr, Tho[mas] Ainge. The Odd Book of the Ninteenth Century, or, “Chivalry”
in Modern Days, A Personal Record of Reform-Chiefly Land Reform, for the last
fifty years. 8vo, original gilt lettered brown cloth (rubbed & dull; spine
extremities little worn; inner hinges repaired), pp. [6], [2] blank, [4], [4], xxii,
211, 220, [33] Appendix, [2] blank + 3 plates Greenpoint, N. Y.: Published by
the Author, 37 Broome St., Copyright Thomas Ainge Devyr, 1882. $1250.00

Hello all who come from the GSLIS community forum!

....if anyone comes in the next few days, hello!  That's of course, if anyone comes hehe

If not, that's ok.  I'll still be writing in here....:D

Reading Response #3

Please read the rules about using posted assignments before reading onward. 

      Gene Smith's Tagging: Emerging Trends taught me one important thing, that tagging has not gone "stale." Tagging has indeed evolved from the mess of delicious tags to the organized, semi-controlled, vocabularies of LibraryThing and Etsy.
       Since tagging has become such a part of the Internet today, it was surprising to read about two websites I use, LibraryThing and Etsy. Their creative mix of controlled and uncontrolled vocabularies could be the future of Internet libraries. Though Etsy does have a “controlled vocabulary,” it only exists at the very top tier. Sub-tags can be either chosen from a list or typed in by users. This system assures that at least in the main categories, redundant words are not used, and allows users to find the items they need. LibraryThing’s solution to tagging arises from the community. Users can link together tags that mean the same thing, with the most popular appearing in tag clouds. This methodology resolves the problem of redundant tags and solidifies the user community.
       Folksonomies might become a permanent fixture for the average user, but I believe information architects and librarians will never fully let go of the controlled vocabularies they have used for years. There is a reason why controlled vocabularies lasted for so long -- they work. The problem with controlled vocabularies is that it is hard to change them after they have been adopted. A better way of “linking” words has to be developed, in order to keep controlled vocabularies relevant for today’s users.
       Tagging has not grown stale, but it can if information architects stop working on improvements. Two websites, LibraryThing and Etsy, show that tags and a type of controlled vocabulary can be useful for finding information. Ultimately, that is what librarians want the most.