January 2005 Archives

what I was talking about

Jenny chimes in on what the library overlap is or could be with the social bookmarking services we’ve been seeing get so popular lately. She’s doing a tech summit to tell librarians about it which I’ll be sorry to miss.

When someone gets used to retrieving items using the words they think of, not the words we think of, do you think they’ll still be willing to type “LastName, FirstName” to find an author? Will they understand a title search that accepts exact phrases only? (Those are rhetorical questions and the correct answers are “no” and “no,” even if you offer keyword searching hidden elsewhere on your catalog.)

the interstitial library

Posted on 20Jan05 by jessamyn

While I am busy fixing the broken world of my here and now, please amuse yourselves exploring the arty and mystifying Interstitial Library. [thanks robert]

ALA Council Work in process

Posted on 18Jan05 by jessamyn

– ALA referred a Workplace Speech resolution encouraging free exercise of workplace speech to legal counsel before it was voted on by council.
– ALA passed a resolution endorsing the Health Care Access Resolution.
– ALA debated a cell phone ban during ALA meetings but wound up voting it down after some amusing discussion.
– Council debated a resolution supporting lobbying to include standards for school libraries in a revised version of the expanded No Child Left Behind legislation. “If you can’t beat them, we join them” according to one Councilor. Passed unanimously.

me – metabrarian shout-out

Posted on 18Jan05 by jessamyn

Here’s another picture of me from the weekend, at a meetup for Metafilter members, an online community that contains quite a few librarians or librarians-in-training. This was a shoutout to the people that couldn’t make it.

folksonomy downsides

Posted on 18Jan05 by jessamyn

Back on the free-tagging thing. One downside which is getting some play lately. It’s one thing to use offensive or hurtful language when you are tagging your own content, but what about when those tags are shared in a large nebulous community of people with widely disparate political and personal beliefs? Rebecca Blood talks about some of those issues. [jjg]