headers
DrWeb | 1 Aug 01:27
Picon

Re: Google single search box combined with browse

Martha,

This is one of the more innovative notions I've seen recently on the list,
IMHO.. most of the complaints come from "we don't have the right (meta)
data, so we can't make a good search" camp and also, we have to have browse
*and* search, and the "Google" has made one single search box the Gold of
Findability.. I almost typed God of.. so, if you get a chance to experiment
or nibble with others in this area, I'd encourage you to try.. tools of the
day to move rapidly (think breadcrumbs on speed) between pieces of the pie
are around.. like > (jump 1 page) >> (jump 100) and so on.. I don't think
this is a repro of a card catalog, inasmuch as taking the raw material
within data into more usable and browsable forms..

My $.02 won't buy anything these days.. but, back in the day, it wouldn't
either.. well, maybe a piece of bubble gum..

Best,
DrWeb

On 7/31/07, Martha Yee <myee <at> ucla.edu> wrote:
>
> I have always thought users of libraries were pretty smart, smart enough
> to
> be able to tell us whether they were doing a search for a known work or a
> search for works on a particular subject, thus enabling us to provide them
> with more precise searching.  However, if most of you violently disagree
> (especially those of you who are fans of Google's single search box),
> perhaps a compromise could be reached by reviving what used to be called
> the
> "dictionary catalog," that is an A to Z listing of all headings (authors,
(Continue reading)

Permalink | Reply | 0 comments |
headers
Wayne Jones | 1 Aug 01:52
Picon
Picon
Favicon

Re: Martha Yee paper

Fifty years from now, librarians and information professionals and even library users won¡¯t be looking
back on Martha Yee, Michael Gorman, and Thomas Mann and thanking them for saving the profession from being
devoured by the AmaGoogle monster. Instead, their brand of reactionary hyperbole will be a curiosity in
the history of a profession which will have decided to embrace the habits of its users and adjust
accordingly, rather than denigrating keywords and other practical searching and promoting an
old-fashioned and unrealistic attitude toward information and the people who organize and use it.
Yee¡¯s testimony, which was posted in full on the Cataloging Futures blog on July 25, is highly overstated
and misleading, and the calm Canadian reader doesn¡¯t really know where to start. Well, in the beginning,
as one book put it ¡­
1. Yee reduces the research that has been done on users¡¯ information-seeking behaviour to a mere ¡°All
this because some research studies show that undergraduates prefer to use Amazon.com and Google rather
than libraries and their catalogs.¡± The rationale is evidently to continue to deny any validity in the
way users actually search and to insist on forcing them to do it the ways we have been doing it for decades.
Yes, those old ways have served the profession and users quite well, and so did button shoes and the 8-track
before we found superior replacements, which I don¡¯t mean completely flippantly. Things change: the
internet is a major enough shift in the information landscape to make us reconsider the advisability and
practicality of our former organizing practices.
2. Yee writes: ¡°A computer cannot discover broader and narrower term relationships, part-whole
relationships, work-edition relationships, variant term or name relationships (the synonym or
variant name or title problem), or the homonym problem in which the same string of letters means different
concepts or refers to different authors or different works.¡± That¡¯s true, of course, computers can¡¯t
do that all by themselves, but human beings can program them to achieve that or a practical, semi-fabulous approximation.
3. Yee cites the example of ordering the Lummox by Fannie Hurst on Amazon.com, but receiving a play adapted
from the novel, because none of those bibliographic details appeared in the Amazon description. I see
this as an error in searching and verification on the part of the buyer rather than an indication of
something profoundly wrong with the way Amazon operates. Unless someone has the time and money to ensure
that the millions of web pages and the thousands of books produced every year are fully catalogued, this
kind of thing will happen. If I do the same search (¡°lummox¡± as title) in the Library of Congress
catalogue, for example, I get four hits for books that do appear to be different editions or printings of
the novel. If one of them is actually the adaptation, then LC has made the same mistake as Amazon in its
(Continue reading)

Permalink | Reply | 4 comments |
headers
Alexander Johannesen | 1 Aug 07:51
Picon

Re: Hot (MARC) metadata!

On 8/1/07, Rinne, Nathan (ESC) <RinneN <at> district279.org> wrote:
> I personally do not understand how Eric can
> say everything that he says and still think that librarianship, library
> cataloging, library catalogues, can survive.

Ok, so as the devils advocate ; *why* should it [the library] survive?
With all these technologies and possibilities, what do the human
librarian add to the future of knowledge management?

> In my mind, he
> inadvertently empties out the content of the profession, more or less
> making it irrelevant (please read: http://slc.bc.ca/response.htm)

What if you are irrelevant? Seriously, what if all you learnt at
library school don't fit the following two future directions ; 1)
there's going to be *seriously* more information available, much more
than any human or human-maintained system can keep up with, and 2)
computers, software and algorithms are going to be increasingly clever
at finding, cataloging and deliver stuff.

The interesting part here is that I originally posted the "Hot
metadata" posting to see what in our metadata we can use in more
clever ways in so to create a better model for knowledge management
(well, knowledge representation, really). What is our killer metadata
which makes our stuff rock? Is it our millions of subject headings in
a somewhat coherent system that's best to analyze?

Here's what I'm doing ; I'm creating huge Topic Maps of generic
subject headings using frequently used subject headings (where
"frequent" is up to the analysis to determine) in conjunction with a)
(Continue reading)

Permalink | Reply | 15 comments |
headers
Bernhard Eversberg | 1 Aug 09:41
Picon
Picon
Favicon

Re: Martha Yee paper

Wayne Jones wrote:
> Fifty years from now, librarians and information professionals and even library users won’t be
looking back on Martha Yee, Michael Gorman, and Thomas Mann and thanking them for saving the profession
from being devoured by the AmaGoogle monster. Instead, their brand of reactionary hyperbole will be a
curiosity in the history of a profession which will have decided to embrace the habits of its users and
adjust accordingly, rather than denigrating keywords and other practical searching and promoting an
old-fashioned and unrealistic attitude toward information and the people who organize and use it.

Well well, fifty years! You can argue like this about most anybody
saying whatever they say these days!
But predictions are always difficult, esp. about the future.
You are not saying, or are you, that the AmaGoogle monster will still be
at large, and much larger even, 50 years from now? Who had been able to
say it was lurking round the corner even in 1997? Who can say what's
lurking there now? What makes you sure it will be something better?

The difficulty, as always, is to find the grain of salt among the
overabundance of chaff, and prophets are seldom recognized and
acknowledged in their own time and day. So where is it?
Let me risk one prediction: It will take a considerable step
forward in artificial intelligence development to enable the current
monsters, or new ones, to do better and to integrate in new ways what's
being done today. What the contemporary monsters are doing is still not
a lot more than number crunching. That's artificial, but hardly
intelligent.
Libraries do contribute intelligence as an ingredient to their products,
non-artificial intelligence. Machinery to render it obsolete has
yet to be invented. If it comes, much more will be obliterated or
profoundly changed than libraries and catalogs. For now, this is mere
speculation.
(Continue reading)

Permalink | Reply | 1 comment |
headers
Jimmie Lundgren | 1 Aug 13:27
Picon
Favicon

Re: Hot (MARC) metadata!

Hi Alexander,
        One example of what I would consider "killer metadata" is
geographic coordinates (034 field). While this data is now only seen in
bibliographic records for cartographic materials, it will have powerful
potential for connecting users to place-related sources of all kinds
when this data becomes available in authority records for places.
Current status of this development is that the field has been added to
MARC 21 Authorities format, but is among the recent changes not yet
implemented in OCLC or the many ILS systems. Thanks,
Jimmie

-----Original Message-----
From: Next generation catalogs for libraries
[mailto:NGC4LIB <at> LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Alexander Johannesen
Sent: Monday, July 30, 2007 9:10 PM
To: NGC4LIB <at> LISTSERV.ND.EDU
Subject: [NGC4LIB] Hot (MARC) metadata!

Hi folks,

I'm doing some semantic data modeling, and was wondering what people
in general would consider the "killer metadata" we catalog that puts
us in a better position than the world at large. Any thoughts? (You
can speak MARC or otherwise :)

Kind regards,

Alexander
--
(Continue reading)

Permalink | Reply | 0 comments |
headers
Rinne, Nathan (ESC | 1 Aug 14:55

Re: Martha Yee paper

B.Eversberg:

Libraries... have to invite readers to try more
sophisticated methods and ways that are more taxing for their native
intelligence instead of trying to tell them they can leave it at
home.

Translation?:

"We librarians are smarter than you who are searching for information by
keyword, and we don't care how you want to get your information: do it
our way."

Whatever.

(Wayne, I am NOT saying that this is how you would care to react to
Bernhard's email - you obviously would not.  I am just trying to make a
point about the circularity - impasse - that we seem to be saddled with
here).

Come on everybody!

Your resident elitist, inviting you to be (or recognize that you are?)
an elitist too,
Nathan Rinne
Media Cataloging Technician
ISD 279 - Educational Service Center (ESC)
11200 93rd Ave. North
Maple Grove, MN. 55369
Work phone: 763-391-7183
(Continue reading)

Permalink | Reply | 0 comments |
headers
Chris Gray | 1 Aug 15:45
Picon
Picon

Re: Google single search box combined with browse

I like your description of physical browsing through a card catalog.  If
we offer browsing we should try to emulate
this sort of thing as a computer interface.  There are other ways to
implement a browse than scrolls and links.  Think of slide shows or
rotating menus or dynamic interfaces that respond to mouse gestures.

Chris Gray
Library Systems
University of Waterloo

Karen Coyle wrote:
> Martha,
>
> I think you have to look at the realities of the different physicalities
> of card catalogs (where browsing originated) and the computer. The card
> catalog is three-dimensional and doesn't require an "interface."
> Basically, humans manipulate it with their hands, using their eyes as
> guides. If you want to jump ahead you merely reach forward a few inches
> and continue from that point. If you've gone too far you can very
> quickly hop backwards some amount. The computer screen is
> two-dimensional and has to have an artificial interface mediated with
> the keyboard and mouse.
>
> These are not insignificant differences. I don't know if we did any
> studies in the card catalog that would describe a user's physical
> behavior, but we know in the computer environment that people 1) often
> fail to scroll, since scrolling means taking the mouse and positioning
> the cursor in a fairly small area of the screen, then clicking and 2)
> rarely view more than two screens before giving up. (Even on google,
> apparently.) So browsing in the computer environment will be hindered by
(Continue reading)

Permalink | Reply | 2 comments |
headers
Rinne, Nathan (ESC | 1 Aug 15:38

Re: Hot (MARC) metadata!

Alexander,

There is much we agree on here - to my reading however, you have more
faith in technology to understand human language than I do.  In any
case, thank you so much for your answers, your passion, your engaging me
on this heartfelt topic, and your work.  I commend you - and genuinely
hope that it is fruitful (though again, I do not have your faith).

That said, you said.

" So, for us they are great tools, but for normal sane people they can
be a
huge constraint."

This is why I make the analogy between a librarian and a doctor.  Each
has specialized tools, technological, physical, mental, etc. (sometimes
costly) that treat "rare conditions" (for libs, in the case of curious
scholars who want tools that can help them dig very deep) - we don't
expect everyone to be perform specialized surgery on themselves, so why
should it be that different here?  Granted - we do need to make
"surgery" easier for our users who want to attempt it - which is many.
We must!

You said:

Ok, so as the devils advocate ; *why* should it [the library] survive?
With all these technologies and possibilities, what do the human
librarian add to the future of knowledge management?... What if
[librarians] are irrelevant?... computers, software and algorithms are
going to be increasingly clever at finding, cataloging and deliver
(Continue reading)

Permalink | Reply | 14 comments |
headers
Simon Spero | 1 Aug 16:01
Picon
Favicon

Elitism in libraries.

lCC PWN5 d3w3y l4mer5.
Permalink | Reply | 36 comments |
headers
Ted P Gemberling | 1 Aug 18:53
Picon
Favicon

Re: Martha Yee paper

Wayne, for a good example of overconfidence in technology, I think I'll
reproduce a little from the statement I sent to the Future of
Bibliographic Control people:

Sometimes technology progresses faster than we expect¡ªI¡¯d say that was
the case in the 80¡¯s for computer technology¡ªand sometimes more
slowly. There was an interesting article in Popular mechanics a few
months ago about NASA. I remember how excited I was in the early 80¡¯s
by the Space Shuttle. What a technological marvel! But now, after 25
years, NASA has figured out they have no way to make it safe and are
returning to the 1960¡¯s vehicle for manned space flight, the capsule.
They are designing bigger and more powerful capsules than the 60¡¯s
versions, but capsules nonetheless. Someone is quoted in the article:
¡°It took us 50 years from the Wright brothers to get to the Moon, and
it¡¯ll take us another 50 to get back to it.¡± Few would have expected
that in 1969. Could we experience a ¡°plateau¡± in the development of
computer technology, too, rather than the study upward trend Calhoun and
others seem to expect?

It¡¯s hard to say. I am not claiming to have much concrete evidence of
it. Though it is interesting that e-books have not taken off (in fact
have been discontinued by retailers like Barnes and Nobles) and portable
e-book readers are still rather clunky. There¡¯s no sign that people are
losing their interest in print monographs, though print journals really
do seem to be giving way to e-journals. Print books in the form of the
¡°codex¡± are a technology we¡¯ve been using for about 1400 years ...

Ted Gemberling
UAB Lister Hill Library
(205)934-2461
(Continue reading)

Permalink | Reply | 1 comment |

Gmane