CiteULike

It’s Friday and I’m double posting.  Guess I’m trying to make up for my many months of blog delinquency.  Anyway, I thought I should share my thoughts on CiteULike, which bills itself as “a free service for managing and discovering scholarly resources. ”  I stumbled across this today, and since I’m always looking for ways to get quality academic journal articles for free, it piqued my interest.  The site is kind of like a cross-between Goodreads, Delicious and a more user-friendly academic journal database.  So far, I’ve found quite a few quality articles, added them to my bookshelf and friended some groups.  I’ll let you know when I have a more informed impression. 

Just for fun…here’s a picture from a homemade book I cataloged recently on traditional Central American clothing:

Costumely

Now Presenting

On Monday, I have my first real librarian interview at the library where I’m currently employed.   All week I’ve been practicing my presentation skills in the shower and holding mock Q&A’s in the car.   Hopefully, by Monday I’ll be ready to put the jitters aside and rock this thing.  One component of the interview is to deliver a 2o-minute example of information literacy instruction.  Preparing for the instruction has actually been really rewarding. I’ve found some great methods and criteria for evaluating internet resources, and it’s been fun thinking of how to present them. Anyway, here’s my PowerPoint:

Evaluating Web Sources For Research

View more presentations from mahrya. (tags: information literacy)

I would really love to hear any feedback about my slides or any suggestions people may have for preparing. Wish me luck!

Hiatus Concluded

It’s been awhile, dear blogland friends!  And while the last three months have been no slough, I don’t have a valid excuse for abandoning you…all three of you, that is.  I’m back in school again and need to finish the portfolio for which I set up this blog.  Eloise and I devised a metadata schema last semester that will look nice in the technology section, I think.   I learned XML for the occasion, and I’m glad I did.  With such extensibility and wide use, there’s no excuse not to. 

Besides the portfolio, I’ve been reading Everything is Miscellaneous by David Weinberger, which has been on my reading list forever.  As someone who’s interested in the details of search, classification and usability, the book has been a nice step back, a big picture kind of read.   I do take issue with Weinberger’s polarized view of folksonomy v. taxonomy and his opinion is the former is inherently better in a digitized world.   I will have to revisit this issue, though, because I’m only half way through the book.

Going to Camp

infocamp2008 banner

My summer is about to end.  The evenings of unchecked sloth will be replaced by paper writing and lecture watching, even as the weather continues to tell me otherwise.  *Sigh*  I suppose it’s time.  But, I do have one last hurrah planned before the great hunkering down.  On Sept. 27 and 28, I’m going to InfoCamp in West Seattle.  InfoCamp bills itself as an “interdisciplinary un-conference” where students and informational professionals get together to share ideas and find out about each other.  Its organizers do not pick the presenters.  Instead, participants sign up to speak about whatever topics interest them.   Through a wiki, participants can list topics they are interested in hearing about, as well as sign up to give a presentation.  It looks like there will be quite a bit about information architecture and the semantic web.  This event sounds like a lot of fun; I can’t wait!

Finding

Last week was a busy one for me in the world of information science.  At work, I began a project that involves designing a SharePoint library for the university’s policy documents.  I’ve been reading up on the search and taxonomy capabilities of SharePoint, while trying to get my site management sea legs.  SharePoint offers a lot of customizable views and search filters that should appeal to a lot of our users.

Also, I finally got Peter Morville’s book, Ambient Findability, from the library last week.  Ever since I discovered his blog called Findability.org, I’ve been meaning to see what he has to say about web navigation in the world of information overload.  Morville’s ideas are bounded by Moore’s Law, which acurately predicted an exponential explosion in electronic processing power, as well as Mooer’s law, which states that “an information retrieval system will tend not to be used whenever it is more painful and troublesome for a customer to have information than for him not to have it.”  Given the reality of both laws, Morville describes the various ways that we navigate the online world (which he also explains is becoming increasingly intermingled–or, as he says “intertwingled”–with the physical world) and find the information that we need.  So far, I haven’t encountered much in the way of concrete design or navigation solutions, but then again, I have a couple chapters left to go.

I also decided to check out the lastest developments in the Library of Congress’ upcoming adoption of RDA (stands for Resource Description and Access, the new cataloging rules that are slated to replace AACR2).  Apparently, LOC, the National Library of Medicine and the National Agricultural Library are recommending that RDA be more extensively reviewed and studied before it is adopted.  Hmmm.  I must admit that I haven’t had a chance to look over the proposed RDA rules yet.  Another something, something to add to my list.

Findability Rears Its Head

A month or so ago I spent a few hours helping a local non-profit  develop some prototypes in preparation for the redesign of its website.  I thought this would be a good chance to expand my embryonic knowledge of information architecture, see how IA decisions are made within an organization, and help out some nice peeps at the same time.  I ended up being pretty frustrated with my research and didn’t have a lot of solid advice to offer the folks I was working with.

Fast forward to today.  I’m at the copier, snatching somebody else’s copies by mistake, when I notice that I am holding a comprehensive bibliography of web design resources.  Turns out, two of the librarians at work are planning a redesign of our portal page and found this great resource from the University of Minnesota Duluth.  Why could I not have stumbled across it six weeks ago?  Because (1) knowing little about IA, my initial search strategy was flawed; and (2) the serendipity gods smiled on me six weeks too late.

One of the items on the bibliography is Peter Morville’s blog called findability.org.  For anyone interested in taxonomy, controlled vobabularies, folksonomies or IA, I would highly recommend checking it out.  In fact, I’m off to read one of Morville’s posts about folksonomy innovations at Buzzillions right now. I’ll let you know what I think.

LITA’s Top Technology Trends

I didn’t attend ALA this year, but the director at my library came back with many a story. One session about technology trends, put on by the Library and Information Technology Association (LITA), sounded particularly timely. Not surprisingly, the panel session is available via streaming audio or podcast.