Helen B’s blog

I think the following quote from James Gee in When “digital natives” Go to the Library is a clue to what we can get out of gaming:

A digital native would never read an instruction manual with a new game before simply trying the game out, Gee said. Similarly, students shouldn’t be expected to read long explanations of tools they may use before they start experimenting with them.

We need to make our website and instructional materials clear and simple. Cut out the excess words and we will go a long way towards keeping our users engaged. Material we offer should be intuitive.

My bookmarks at work and home are in desperate need of reorganising so signing up to delicious might be an opportune moment to do this. My bookmarks have grown over the years with changes in my job, use of different browsers and use of different computers. I can see the potential for using tags as well, so that I can use multiple categories for my bookmarks.

The Online Presence Group in the Library recently added the social bookmarking service “Add This” to our webpage. “Add This” includes delicious as one of its sites, so it’s now easy to add any of our webpages to delicious. We intend to put Add This in the catalogue too, once we can figure out how to avoid bookmarking searches rather than records.

Google docs looks like it would be useful for things like shared presentations, or where a number of people are drafting a document. I have experienced the issue of multiple drafts of a document going back and forth via email, and you end up not knowing if you are looking at the latest draft or not. So having all drafts on Google docs would get around that. I’m not sure I would use it for confidential documents - there could be issues here with storing documents on a Google server.

I have started using Zotero to collect readings and websites I come across during my work. Some of these come via emails from others, and it’s very easy to flag the emails and say I will come back to these later. but sometimes I don’t. So if I organise them using Zotero they are there in my browser without me going hunting for them again.

I am wondering whether we would promote Zotero in place of EndNote to our students, or as an alternative? Is it more suited to some users than others, for example undergraduates? Would we continue to teach both? Zotero appears to easier to use than EndNote at first glance, although I haven’t tried the Word plugin as yet so I don’t know what happens when you use it in conjunction with the writing process. But does Endnote allow you to do more? Is it more suited to the serious researcher?

I searched katsuo ishiguro, the author I last read for my book club, to get a feel for the various sites listed:

Connotea - I couldn’t connect to this one.

Cite u like: 187 articles. searched as words, so not all are on katsuo. i tried a phrase search and it didn’t let me. Has a cloud tag. Because I have LibX installed, it puts SFX links in the results, so obviously CoiNS enabled. Very useful for finding fulltext of articles on my topic.

Murdoch library catalogue subject search: had to fiddle with the search terms here - my spelling got no results, and subject searching requires the correct format, so I had to use ishiguro, kazuo or ishiguro k. So a lot more limiting. But the equivalent search to the others would be a keyword search. However, without the correct or”used’ spelling of kazuo, I got nowhere. No tags, but subject headings. But perhaps an added entry for alternate spelling would have helped, or a “did you mean…” option.

UQ (encore) 14 results - books, from library catalogue. Has cloud tag, facets using indexed terms. If i had access to the researchpro part of it, I would have got journal aricles also.

google: 2,390 results. relevance ranking good. But a real mixture of material. I notice Google now has a tagging like feature: “SearchWiki lets you customize your Google Web Search results by ranking, removing, and adding notes to them. You’ll see your changes whenever you do the same searches while signed in to your Google Account, or until you decide to undo them. You can also see how other users have tailored any given search results page with their own notes and changes.”

ZUULA - good way of searching lots of search engines. But the results are overwhelming. No tags or subject headings.

Kart00 - a visual representation of search results. I didn’t find this one useful for my particular search - I had difficulty working out what to click on next, and seemed to pick up a lot of irrelevant results. Perhaps this style suits some more than others.

The useful aspect of tags I think is seeing which tags are most used by others. Tags are a good visual representation of subjects or descriptors which are easier to pick up on than subject headings. they are not authorised headings like a catalogue, but is that so important now in the context of keyword searching? How many of our users use subject headings now? I suspect most just use keywords.

Image

Thing 13 completed - I have uploaded an image of librarian’s feet. If I had known I would be in a shoe fetish picture i would have worn more appropriate shoes!

Another image using an image generator - but the words are not too clear! I think this one needs a bit more time for exploration and playing.

One of the feeds I subscribe to is a Federated Search feed. This has discussions on the value of federated search, links to articles and comparisons of federated search engines, etc. Some of the discussion has recently focussed on federated searching and the deep web, and whether google can provide the same level of access. This is a useful feed in the context of where we are going with AARLIN and Metalib. Most of the discussion suggests that federated search is here to stay, but the format or nature of federated search will change and improve over time.

I think one of the hardest habits to come to terms with is accepting responsibility for your own lifelong learning. It’s not that I can’t do this, it is more that it is so easy to find reasons why I can’t learn something new - not enough time, too busy, too tired, etc. I think it is probably easier to accept responsibility if you feel enthusiastic about what it is you are learning, or if you can see the relevance of what you are doing. So motivation is probably the issue here.

The easiest habit is probably using technology to your advantage. I have the technology needed readily at hand at work and home, so there should be no impediment to finding the information needed to learn.

My goals: to become sufficiently familiar with and comfortable using the technologies presented to be able to make an assessment as to how they might be used in an academic library environment.