Credible Search Engines & Readers

Yesterday I enjoyed a look at the Sony Reader. I'm actually quite favourably impressed with the readability on screen, although I confess that I feel as if it needs a bit of the iPhone - the ability to just run one's finger across the screen to turn the page rather than to press a button. I suppose that's something for future generations of the reader to have.

I was thinking about this in terms of storage, and thought that someday perhaps I will get to the point where a reader such as the Sony Reader or Amazon's Kindle will do for my book collection what MP3's have done for my music collection. I think I will always want some books - particularly those with heavy photographic content, children's picture books, coffee table books, and even some of the classics - but for those books I just want to pick up and read but not necessarily read again? I could see the Kindle or the Sony Reader being quite useful in that regard.

I also find the idea behind this credible search engine to be fascinating and potentially very helpful. I think it'll be good to keep an eye on this project and see how it works out.

The Reality of Web 2.0

Web 2.0 is not about widgets, mash-ups, or media. It's not Meebo chat widgets, flickr photos on maps, or youtube videos embedded within a static web page. It's about people creating content to share with other people. It's about taking the power of creating content in the hands of users. It streamlines information sharing.

I hadn't actually considered this to be a radical concept until recently. From the time I joined LiveJournal in 2001 I have played with aspects of Web 2.0. To date, I've posted youtube videos, use delicious links regularly, play with lists in worldcat.org, catalog my books in library thing, and keep in touch with my high school friends and my family through facebook. I never ask a computer administrator for assistance in sharing my information. I learned HTML and CSS and can create my own website from scratch if necessary, but these days although I find the skill useful it's not so necessary.

So what does that mean for my students? Freedom. I'm no longer tied to system approved software and web pages. I ask what the task I want to do is, and then I find the tool to do this on the web. And where it might take days to go through IT, it will take me anywhere from moments to hours for me to do it myself. And that's the true beauty of Web 2.0.

New Resources!

Things that tend to get me very excited about being a librarian: shiny new resources. Or just things I didn't know existed prior to browsing through some catalog or review in literature.

For instance I'm finally taking the time this morning to go through the Library Journal supplement Reference 2009, and stumbled across Social & Cultural History: Letters and Diaries online. Of course cost is always a factor with many shiny new resources, but I think about all of the students that need primary resources at the reference desk, and I am now aware of one more tool that could be potentially purchased to help them.

And that's always a fun feeling.

Unveiling.

It's been really nice to know that websites can be in constant beta, and it's made the pressure for designing the new University library website be somewhat less. Still, the process is basically complete and the site is ready to be moved from the development stage to live sometime next week after finals are completely finished.

We did usability testing with undergraduates, and while I'd like to complete usability testing with graduate students and faculty & staff as well, I feel overall good about the results we received from the undergraduates. The major problem was one of terminology, a couple of others were easy fixes to place links where students were looking for the answers.

Other problems lie not so much in the design of the website (students would end up in the correct place to find information) as the design of the tools used to search for the information or a misunderstanding of what databases & catalogs search for. This is something that a metasearch would possibly help, but more importantly, education will help.

Overall, I think the new design works. It's designed in a way that makes sense for the most part, and thankfully seems to make sense to students as well.

"I give them what they need."

I was reading The Librarian as Bibliotherapist today and really found that I liked some of the ideas in this article. The most difficult part of doing this sort of technique I believe, is that it makes it difficult to create a standards based lesson plan where you ensure that students at a certain level have the opportunity to truly learn and practise certain information literacy standards.

That doesn't mean that I disapprove of the idea of asking students what they want and working with more personalization. I actually love the idea of a discussion based library class room and have done something similar in the honors classroom. The problem certainly comes down to one of time and how best to ensure that the basics are presented, but students still have the opportunity to ask for specifics to their research.

The hardest part of setting certain standards for a class, is that in a general research writing class there is such a variety of topics, it can be difficult to hit the important aspects of research for each student. Some standard must be given to make the assignments uniform, but for some students a book will not be nearly so useful as a journal article or vice versa.

Relevance is hugely important, but can be extremely time consuming, so the challenge then is to somehow create relevance, and teach standards while doing so. That is no easy challenge really.