Academics are constantly fighting the belief that information found anywhere on the web is equal to finding information from another more respected source. Here is an example of the problems that surface through the dissemination of information through modern technology such as blogs.
Back in August I heard that Coca-Cola was producing a specialty can with Muslim symbols on it in recognition of the Muslim holiday Ramadan. You can imagine that just that particular statement might cause an uproar among Conservative Christians and Right Wing bloggers. And sure enough, bloggers were spreading this information around but none of them were getting the full story. It turns out, according to this article, that the can will be sold and marketed exclusively to Muslim countries and regions and not the United States. So instead of the sky is falling conspiracy theorist sparking fear in the nation's gullible the truth lies in researching the facts. Through blogs a half-truth is proliferated but through the power of the web the truth can be discovered and verified.
The questions remains, who thinks critically enough to take that next step to identify the facts? In most cases, we take things for face value and move to something else. Again, the instant nature of blogs and web news leaves little time and space for discovering the truth. Is this a field that librarians could assist in? The verification and proofing of web information? A daunting task I know but one that is sorely needed and best suited for information professionals.
Wednesday, October 8, 2008
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
Librarian on Location: Live Blogging 10-1-08
2:20 p.m. - First live blog of the semester. Here are the things that have changed with our Librarian on Location program.
1. I am only going out at scheduled times (usually about twice a month)instead of every week. Reason: The school calendar and my personal schedule wasn't going to allow me to be consistent on a weekly basis. Also see reasons below.
2. Our locations have been trimmed to three. Reason: We determined that our presence at campus social settings were an encroachment and largely ignored by the students. When I went to more academic settings I was more well received. So this semester I will be going to the International Department (where I am now), a Soda Shoppe in a busy classroom area, and a location in the Science building that gets heavy traffic. The limited number of locations means it would be overkill to return to them every week.
3. The presence of a Writing Center representative. Reason: I broached the idea to the Writing Center director about the WC helping me out at the end of the semester when the research paper crunch starts to hit. A student worker came with me to my first stop. I don't know where he is today.
2:37 p.m. - My university has more than 400 international students, which is a huge number for a private Christian university. Their numbers grow each semester. There is huge potential for a quality library relation with the international students but there are also some complexities that prevent a current dynamic connection.
2:43 p.m. - It may be ironic that I am over in the international office because the largest clientele in our library comes from the international students. I could just have gone to the second floor of our library and seen more international students than the numbers I have seen thus far. But that would defeat the mission behind Librarian on Location.
1. I am only going out at scheduled times (usually about twice a month)instead of every week. Reason: The school calendar and my personal schedule wasn't going to allow me to be consistent on a weekly basis. Also see reasons below.
2. Our locations have been trimmed to three. Reason: We determined that our presence at campus social settings were an encroachment and largely ignored by the students. When I went to more academic settings I was more well received. So this semester I will be going to the International Department (where I am now), a Soda Shoppe in a busy classroom area, and a location in the Science building that gets heavy traffic. The limited number of locations means it would be overkill to return to them every week.
3. The presence of a Writing Center representative. Reason: I broached the idea to the Writing Center director about the WC helping me out at the end of the semester when the research paper crunch starts to hit. A student worker came with me to my first stop. I don't know where he is today.
2:37 p.m. - My university has more than 400 international students, which is a huge number for a private Christian university. Their numbers grow each semester. There is huge potential for a quality library relation with the international students but there are also some complexities that prevent a current dynamic connection.
2:43 p.m. - It may be ironic that I am over in the international office because the largest clientele in our library comes from the international students. I could just have gone to the second floor of our library and seen more international students than the numbers I have seen thus far. But that would defeat the mission behind Librarian on Location.
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
The Complexities of Instant Media
Two weeks ago as I was working late at the library I was perusing Google News and saw a Reuters story discussing Sarah Palin's Republican Convention speech. The story was complete with quotes from the speech and references to her tone towards Obama. The problem with the story was in the fact that the speech hadn't happened yet. Palin wasn't scheduled to speak until after 9 p.m. CDT and the current time was 7 p.m. But the story used the past tense and made no reference to an upcoming speech.
How does this relate to libraries and research? A cardinal rule for researchers should be "consider the source". Obviously, the Palin speech story, taken from a release of her speech to the foreign media, was pretty cut and dry which is fine but it couldn't speak to the crowd response or the flavor of her delivery. Plus, the ability to publish this article the instant it was written brings up the awkward timing and past tense deception that could disrupt those out there that don't understand how the media works and the context in which they publish there work (namely that much of what they published is prepackaged through other sources like press releases and media kits. Also, Reuters is based out of London where there is a 7-8 hour time difference and Palin's speech would have been in the middle of the night London time. Thus, the story was written so the reporter could go to sleep so to speak.)
Do you see why we still need librarians around? How is a college student supposed to make sense of all of this complexity to determine what makes a quality source.
How does this relate to libraries and research? A cardinal rule for researchers should be "consider the source". Obviously, the Palin speech story, taken from a release of her speech to the foreign media, was pretty cut and dry which is fine but it couldn't speak to the crowd response or the flavor of her delivery. Plus, the ability to publish this article the instant it was written brings up the awkward timing and past tense deception that could disrupt those out there that don't understand how the media works and the context in which they publish there work (namely that much of what they published is prepackaged through other sources like press releases and media kits. Also, Reuters is based out of London where there is a 7-8 hour time difference and Palin's speech would have been in the middle of the night London time. Thus, the story was written so the reporter could go to sleep so to speak.)
Do you see why we still need librarians around? How is a college student supposed to make sense of all of this complexity to determine what makes a quality source.
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
Internet Radio in Trouble
I am a big fan of internet radio. I listen to Pandora almost everyday because I love the way they classify and categorize their music. Instead of heavy handed labels from journalists or casual fans they do listeners a great service by actually analyzing the music and letting the music dictate its classification. If I am a fan of Rod Stewart's "Hot Legs" I can search for this song and Pandora will create a radio station with songs that are similar to "Hot Legs" no matter if the song comes from as an unlikely a source as Bob Seeger or Great White. This is really brilliant and much better than its most common rival last.fm.
Internet radio sites like Pandora may become a thing of the past though as the recording industry starts demanding higher royalties for the use of their music. The industry sees internet radio as a way for them to recoup the money they are losing through album sales. It is unfortunate that they would try to hit these quality resources for the sole purpose of making up for a change in industry. They may not even understand how internet radio works but what they do understand is a chance to make a buck. Why don't they create their own internet radio and provide the quality of a Pandora. That would require creativity and ingenuity. Something that will be lacking if these internet stations are priced out of the game.
Internet radio sites like Pandora may become a thing of the past though as the recording industry starts demanding higher royalties for the use of their music. The industry sees internet radio as a way for them to recoup the money they are losing through album sales. It is unfortunate that they would try to hit these quality resources for the sole purpose of making up for a change in industry. They may not even understand how internet radio works but what they do understand is a chance to make a buck. Why don't they create their own internet radio and provide the quality of a Pandora. That would require creativity and ingenuity. Something that will be lacking if these internet stations are priced out of the game.
Wednesday, August 6, 2008
6 Things I Couldn't Do Four Years Ago
The Olympics help us mark the decade into sections. Here is a list of things that I couldn't do four years ago but can do today because of advancements in internet technology.
1. Watch the Olympics live online. More than 2,000 hours of events will be streamed through the NBC Olympic webpage. This is great for us who consider the Olympics more than gymnastics, swimming, and track.
2. Watch ESPN sports broadcast through my computer. I refuse to get Cable or a Dish but can watch countless College basketball games and foreign soccer games on my computer through ESPN360. This has been my greatest web discovery of the past year.
3. Watch TV shows online. Do you see a trend here? My wife and I have a handful of shows that we must watch every week. Whenever we miss one, we usually have the option to watch the replay online through the network website. The quality standards of these broadcast are getting better and better by the week.
4. Streamline my web reading content to one location. RSS was probably around four years ago but I wasn't using it. Today, instead of wasting time clicking around to all of my web hot spots, I go to Google Reader and get my news, commentary, and blog posts in one location.
5. Do database and word processing through the web. Google Docs has been a life saver for my wife and I over the past two years. We were a Cares Team at our apartment complex and we used Google Docs to manage the resident database. It was so helpful to not have to be at one computer to make updates and changes. I have also used Zoho to do word processing.
6. Save trees. Before becoming a Delicious user, I would print out sites or pages that I wanted to keep or read later. Now when I want to remember a web site or page or need to set aside something for later use, I simply tag it with my Delicious Firefox Add Ons and skip the printing process.
What are you doing now that you weren't doing four years ago?
*photo from striatic
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
Book Wrangling Review: Cuil
Positives: The search results page is incredibly inviting and attractive. The designers realized that users do not move beyond the first two pages of results in a standard list display so they must have worked on a alternative to the gigantic list. The results are impressive as your eye easily moves around the page instead of focusing directly at the top of a list and moving down. Also, there is more descriptive content under the link than in other search engines.
The liberal use of images, logos, and graphics.You will find it confusing when you move to the second and third pages of the results and see the same pictures that you saw on the first page of results. Your first inclination is that the same pages are popping up again and again but they are simply using the images again and again with unique links. Obviously, if you do this then you are misrepresenting the link as that image may have nothing to do with the link. This isn't the point though. The point is to provide visual access to the subject matter. I like this approach much better than a separate image search or a distracting frame filled with pictures.
The explore more categories on the right are excellent. My Google searches often lead to more and more refined versions of my original search query. By checking the explore by category options on the right I can take my search to another direction and one that I might not have originally thought of before.
Negatives: The results are odd and don't always make much sense. A search for an author gives you many results on books to purchase but shows very little that discusses the life of the author. Also, the results seem to be absent of any timeliness. Typing in the latest news makers gives you very little that points to recent activity involving the subject. The results seem to be heavy on Wikipedia and Mahalo entries which is fine but offers a rather static feel to the results rather than enlivening the ever expanding nature of the web and the information found in it.
The liberal use of images, logos, and graphics.You will find it confusing when you move to the second and third pages of the results and see the same pictures that you saw on the first page of results. Your first inclination is that the same pages are popping up again and again but they are simply using the images again and again with unique links. Obviously, if you do this then you are misrepresenting the link as that image may have nothing to do with the link. This isn't the point though. The point is to provide visual access to the subject matter. I like this approach much better than a separate image search or a distracting frame filled with pictures.
The explore more categories on the right are excellent. My Google searches often lead to more and more refined versions of my original search query. By checking the explore by category options on the right I can take my search to another direction and one that I might not have originally thought of before.
Negatives: The results are odd and don't always make much sense. A search for an author gives you many results on books to purchase but shows very little that discusses the life of the author. Also, the results seem to be absent of any timeliness. Typing in the latest news makers gives you very little that points to recent activity involving the subject. The results seem to be heavy on Wikipedia and Mahalo entries which is fine but offers a rather static feel to the results rather than enlivening the ever expanding nature of the web and the information found in it.
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
The End Result
My indoctrination into web 2.0 and library 2.0 has come to an end as I have completed Helene Blowers' 23 Things and Meredith Farkas and Company's 5 Weeks to A Social Library. Below is a list of some of my most significant discoveries.
1. Delicious is now one of my most used web tools. I hadn't used it in the past because I wasn't interested in a tool that I thought was a duplication of something I didn't use that often anyway (bookmarks). I have a pretty good memory and recall and since Google is so easy to use I thought I was saving a step by just repeating searches. But then I realized how inefficient and time consuming that could be if my memory wasn't as strong as I expected. With Delicious, I don't have to have superhuman memory or incredible search skills. Whenever I find a site that will be useful for research or returning to later I simply post it in Delicious and tag it so I can locate it later. Using Delicious has already improved presentations, instruction sessions, and reference help.
To make life really easy, I have installed the Delicious add-ons into Firefox so I don't even have to locate the Delicious homepage to post an article.
2. StumbleUpon: see this post for my thoughts on this search technology. It works best in conjunction with Delicious. I am not convinced that I will be using SU a year from now.
3. WordPress: I had always used Blogger before but messing around with WordPress has been fun and beneficial to other blog efforts I am involved in.
4. Flickr: Photos have always put me off because of how you usually have to adjust and modify them once they are on your hard drive. I don't have the time or in most cases the expertise to do this easily. Flickr takes the adjustment level out of photo storage and continues to find new ways to make photo sharing enjoyable.
5. If I spend 70% of my work time on the internet it just makes more sense for me to want to do my wordprocessing and database doodling with a web based service that I can return to on my laptop or at home instead of holding my work hostage on my office computer. Google Docs is easy to use and improving all the time and I have used Zoho some as well.
6. This entire process has inspired me to share some of the things I have learned with my co-workers and we are in our second month of training in Web 2.0. The response has been very positive.
1. Delicious is now one of my most used web tools. I hadn't used it in the past because I wasn't interested in a tool that I thought was a duplication of something I didn't use that often anyway (bookmarks). I have a pretty good memory and recall and since Google is so easy to use I thought I was saving a step by just repeating searches. But then I realized how inefficient and time consuming that could be if my memory wasn't as strong as I expected. With Delicious, I don't have to have superhuman memory or incredible search skills. Whenever I find a site that will be useful for research or returning to later I simply post it in Delicious and tag it so I can locate it later. Using Delicious has already improved presentations, instruction sessions, and reference help.
To make life really easy, I have installed the Delicious add-ons into Firefox so I don't even have to locate the Delicious homepage to post an article.
2. StumbleUpon: see this post for my thoughts on this search technology. It works best in conjunction with Delicious. I am not convinced that I will be using SU a year from now.
3. WordPress: I had always used Blogger before but messing around with WordPress has been fun and beneficial to other blog efforts I am involved in.
4. Flickr: Photos have always put me off because of how you usually have to adjust and modify them once they are on your hard drive. I don't have the time or in most cases the expertise to do this easily. Flickr takes the adjustment level out of photo storage and continues to find new ways to make photo sharing enjoyable.
5. If I spend 70% of my work time on the internet it just makes more sense for me to want to do my wordprocessing and database doodling with a web based service that I can return to on my laptop or at home instead of holding my work hostage on my office computer. Google Docs is easy to use and improving all the time and I have used Zoho some as well.
6. This entire process has inspired me to share some of the things I have learned with my co-workers and we are in our second month of training in Web 2.0. The response has been very positive.
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