Web 2.0 and Reference - A Testimony About Library Thing

Last Friday, I received a call at the reference desk from a student looking for a book. The problem was that this student did not know the title of the book or the author. All she could tell me was the book was a collection of letters between a London antiquities dealer and an American writer and that they discussed literature and building a collection. I made a couple of rudimentary attempts while she was on the phone but I was getting no where. I told her that I would have to call her back after I searched a little more. I thought this might take some time but I didn't realize how difficult it would be to locate this book.

Here were some of the terms I punched into Google and Amazon to try to locate the book - London literature antiques dealer collection writing letter. All of these terms will trigger many results dealing with antiques and shops and purchasing and dealing but I was getting no where near a book that resembled the one I was looking for. The closest I got was a book called Letters from London but this was not the correct book. My search in WorldCat was giving me incorrect results as well. I was getting frustrated and was about ready to call this student to let her know that I couldn't distinguish which book she was looking for until I thought I would try one more thing.

My search experiences with LibraryThing have been good (quick and accurate results). Still, those experiences had been with books that I knew the title or author. What could I do in LibraryThing to locate the book? On the search page, they have a way to search for tags. I suddenly realized that if you were going to tag this book you would use some of the terms that I had been using with no luck in Google. So I tried the tag string of London, letters, literature, New York, classics. Their tagmash search feature (it can take several minutes) gave me as a first option the book 84, Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff. The reviews and descriptions of the book identified the book as the one I was looking for.

By being a LibraryThing user and being accustomed to tagging things I could easily put myself in the shoes of someone who would inventory this particular book. I simply chose the terms that I thought they would use to tag this book and I found the book.

This is a perfect example of the social aspect of finding information. Whenever someone tagged this book they were wanting to describe the book so they could locate it later and maybe they had a thought to how other people might discover the information as well. This was a Web 2.0 success story.

Observations From The Google Zeitgeist List

Google provides a nice service to the public by publishing their Zeitgeist 2008 list. I found the following items interesting.

Chuck Norris was ninth on the South Africa fastest rising list.???

Why do people insist on typing out things like Youtube, Facebook, and Hotmail in a search engine? Do they not understand how to add .com to the end of the word?

What is the fascination with movie trailers? Google even noted that they were becoming more and more popular for people to share with friends. Most trailers have a sameness to them that limits creativity and appeal.

Michael Crichton died? Who knew?

"Who is Martin Luther?" made the top ten "Who is..." list. Two spots removed from Chris Brown and three spots from the Jonas Brothers. Weird.

Sarah Palin almost won the U.S. Triple crown. She was the top Google News search, top Google Image search, and seventh on the Google.com search.

People love Fox News. Personally, I think their website is lacking graphically.

Live Blogging: Librarian on Location Dec. 10

2:23 p.m. Last Librarian on Location for the semester. I am in my favorite spot next to the Soda Shoppe in the main academic building. I see lots of students and faculty. I have a special sign out today that reads "Need Research Paper Help? Ask Here". Finals start tomorrow so the students should be done with their papers but we know how that goes.

2:44 p.m. I also have candy out including chocolate. Bribes never hurt.

2:52 p.m. I am going to be teaching a course in the spring semester. I am looking for interesting ways to get my students to use the library more. Hopefully I can help them become more accustomed to the library.

2:59 p.m. The biggest benefit of these ventures away from the library has been in my interaction with faculty and staff. Though our conversations are little more than chit chat and catching up, I find them valuable public relations. When students voice their frustrations with locating resources from the library to their professor it would be great if the professor has someone they can direct the student for assistance. If I had zero relations with the faculty then the students would simply be told to ask a librarian. Many students do not know who is a librarian and who is a staff person. They would prefer to have someone who they can locate specifically.

5 Things I Learned From Teaching Web. 2.0

For one session a month starting last June I have taught a new web technology that could be described as social technology or Web 2.0 technology. These technologies included Delicious, RSS, blogging, and Flickr. My students were my fellow librarians and staff. Here are five things that I learned in this process.

1. There was limited exposure to these technologies throughout the staff. Limited exposure usually meant that the staff was excited to learn something they had been wondering about. Sometimes it meant they were sceptical of new technology and had trouble embracing it.

2. Delicious and RSS are underutilized among our librarians. These two resources are a life saver for me as a reference librarian and I would be less effective in my job if I had not started using Delicious and RSS. If nothing else, RSS saves time.

3. Flickr is addictive. One staff person has gone Flickr crazy. She was very cautious at first. She didn't want anyone looking at her pictures but within a week she had already made her photos available to the public.

4. Fear of technology is inhibiting. When we let our fear be stronger than our desire to learn we have failed to realize how much good we could be missing. I used to be and am still a hesitant technology user. I lack confidence in my ability to figure things out. The wonder of the web is that it has made computer geeks out of all of us. We need to embrace our hidden geek.

5. Teaching is a great learning tool. In Delicious, I learned how to send bookmarks to colleagues. In RSS, I learned how to subscribe to pages that just give you that code gobblygook that I never knew what to do with before. I also learned how Wordpress works and how to set up Groups in Flickr. The process has been invaluable to me.

Our sessions and exercises can be found here.