Well, on a lighter note this week, I want to mention the walking librarian. It's an interesting article from the November issue of Library Journal. Stuart Hamilton is a librarian from Denmark. He has been on a journey through the United States, walking across the United States, library to library. I'll admit I do try to visit libraries in every city or town I travel through, but I have never considered walking from one to another across the US and I loved that book Walk Across America by Peter Jenkins. Anyway Stuart and his walking partner noticed across their 5000 miles, big cities and little towns alike all have public libraries. And most notably they all (1 exception) have high speed Internet access. This is definitely something we can be proud of here in the US of A, however, they did mention some concerns with filtering and misconceptions, even ignorance about the patriot act. They were surprised to find that some librarians didn't even know of its existence not to mention its implications. This for me is hard to believe. Even the small town librarians went to library school, they have access to the Internet, hopefully receive some sort of library publication and are possibly even members of the ALA or their state library association. Can it be possible they have missed the Patriot Act and all its intrusion? Well, maybe larger metropolitan libraries and staff (I hope they are up to date) should start an adoption program or something like a sister program where they "adopt" a rural library. These larger libraries could help with resources, information or a sort of support system that I am sure on the whole would benefit all the libraries involved.
Well, I'll let you guys think on that one and in the meantime, yeah to libraries everywhere. Stuart and his friend were able to read, maintain their website, blog, check email, news and anything else they wanted all across the country and I think that is AWESOME! And Stuart, next time come to Oklahoma City!
Thursday, December 6, 2007
Sunday, December 2, 2007
Relevant Terminology
I have been thinking over things I have learned recently. Maybe I knew certain words or concepts but didn't fully grasp their full meaning or how they affected the library profession; and how they might impact the profession in the future. So, I thought I would list some of these important terms and their definitions for everyone to look at, to either refresh your memory or learn something new. I think everyone of these terms should be very familiar to all librarians and information professionals.
Folksonomy-(also known as collaborative tagging , social classification, social indexing, social tagging)is generally a term used to describe the process of categorizing content. Metadata is used for the classification or categorization as opposed to traditional subject headings. One intended purpose is to make information easier to search and navigate.It is often criticized because of its lack of controlled vocabulary which is seen as unreliable. Here's an article from the New York Times and of course Wikipedia has a great overview with lots of links.
Social Networking- Basically a network that connects people to other people, jobs, information, etc. Just watch this video.
Tagging-It's really a label or keyword to describe the content of any type of information. It's seen as a type of metadata that associates descriptors with an object.Tags allow keyword-based classification and a more "extensive" search of information.
RSS(real simple syndication)-XML-based format for content distribution; a family of Web feed formats used to publish frequently updated content such as blog entries, news headlines or latest books on a subject of interest to you, for example. A user has only to subscribe to an RSS feed to receive the new updates of information. Check out this article.
Wiki-A wiki is a type of computer software that allows users to easily create, edit and link web pages. Wikis are often used to create collaborative websites, books and community websites. The most known of all wiki's is Wikipedia, but wiki are springing up all over the place. Why not use your expertise to contribute to one today.
Technorati-is an Internet search engine for searching blogs, competing with Google, Yahoo and IceRocket. Technorati indexes over 94 million weblogs. The name Technorati points to the technological version of literati or intellectuals. Technorati uses and contributes to open source software.
text-mining-also referred to as data-mining, is the process of extracting information from text. Here's an article for a full explanation.
Ontology-As a data model, it seeks to describe basic categories and relationships between entities (of information). Ontologies are used in artificial intelligence, the Semantic Web, software engineering, biomedical informatics and information architecture as a form of knowledge representation about the world or some part of it. One example of an ontology known to librarians would be Dublin Core.
Taxonomies-is the practice and science of classification. Taxonomies use controlled vocabulary ie subject headings and is not itself metadata. Need more help, try this article.
Metadata- most simply it is described as data about data. More specifically it is information about objects(document, image, film, book)with the ultimate purpose of classification for findability.The vocabulary from Dublin Core is the most prevalent. It's properties contain information such as title, creator, subject, description, publisher, and so on.
KM(knowledge management)-comprises a range of practices used by organisations to identify, create, represent, and distribute knowledge. Here is an interesting take on KM from a KMer himself.
Semantic Web-is an evolving extension of the World Wide Web in which web content can be expressed not only in natural language, but also in a format that can be read and used by software agents, thus permitting them to find, share and integrate information more easily. For more clarification check out this site.
Semantic Search Engine-Well, I'll let you read about it.
OSS(open source software)-Free software, available on the web for everyone to use, even you.
Invisible Web-is what you cannot retrieve ("see") in the search results and other links contained on the web. It is estimated that the invisible web contains approximately 7,500 terabytes of data and 550 billion individual documents. Federated searching is one way to access the invisible web.
Folksonomy-(also known as collaborative tagging , social classification, social indexing, social tagging)is generally a term used to describe the process of categorizing content. Metadata is used for the classification or categorization as opposed to traditional subject headings. One intended purpose is to make information easier to search and navigate.It is often criticized because of its lack of controlled vocabulary which is seen as unreliable. Here's an article from the New York Times and of course Wikipedia has a great overview with lots of links.
Social Networking- Basically a network that connects people to other people, jobs, information, etc. Just watch this video.
Tagging-It's really a label or keyword to describe the content of any type of information. It's seen as a type of metadata that associates descriptors with an object.Tags allow keyword-based classification and a more "extensive" search of information.
RSS(real simple syndication)-XML-based format for content distribution; a family of Web feed formats used to publish frequently updated content such as blog entries, news headlines or latest books on a subject of interest to you, for example. A user has only to subscribe to an RSS feed to receive the new updates of information. Check out this article.
Wiki-A wiki is a type of computer software that allows users to easily create, edit and link web pages. Wikis are often used to create collaborative websites, books and community websites. The most known of all wiki's is Wikipedia, but wiki are springing up all over the place. Why not use your expertise to contribute to one today.
Technorati-is an Internet search engine for searching blogs, competing with Google, Yahoo and IceRocket. Technorati indexes over 94 million weblogs. The name Technorati points to the technological version of literati or intellectuals. Technorati uses and contributes to open source software.
text-mining-also referred to as data-mining, is the process of extracting information from text. Here's an article for a full explanation.
Ontology-As a data model, it seeks to describe basic categories and relationships between entities (of information). Ontologies are used in artificial intelligence, the Semantic Web, software engineering, biomedical informatics and information architecture as a form of knowledge representation about the world or some part of it. One example of an ontology known to librarians would be Dublin Core.
Taxonomies-is the practice and science of classification. Taxonomies use controlled vocabulary ie subject headings and is not itself metadata. Need more help, try this article.
Metadata- most simply it is described as data about data. More specifically it is information about objects(document, image, film, book)with the ultimate purpose of classification for findability.The vocabulary from Dublin Core is the most prevalent. It's properties contain information such as title, creator, subject, description, publisher, and so on.
KM(knowledge management)-comprises a range of practices used by organisations to identify, create, represent, and distribute knowledge. Here is an interesting take on KM from a KMer himself.
Semantic Web-is an evolving extension of the World Wide Web in which web content can be expressed not only in natural language, but also in a format that can be read and used by software agents, thus permitting them to find, share and integrate information more easily. For more clarification check out this site.
Semantic Search Engine-Well, I'll let you read about it.
OSS(open source software)-Free software, available on the web for everyone to use, even you.
Invisible Web-is what you cannot retrieve ("see") in the search results and other links contained on the web. It is estimated that the invisible web contains approximately 7,500 terabytes of data and 550 billion individual documents. Federated searching is one way to access the invisible web.
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