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Factcheck.org, which is one of my five favorite research-oriented websites, has just composed a surprisingly complete timeline of what happened in the days preceding and following Katrina:
They state right up front that it will take months to get past all the bluster and B.S., but it’s a pretty decent resource, and I trust these guys’ judgement quite a lot.
Google Announces Plan To Destroy All Information It Can’t Index
Believe it . . . or not.
"Google, the Naked Emperor," by Roy Tennant, from this week’s Library Journal.
The upshot: Google relies on search algorithms that do some things very well and other things (say, finding brand new web pages or even finding the last entry in the web index) very poorly. Google is just not in the business of providing information the same way Dialog is, so we need to keep these limitations in mind when searching to fill patron requests. Now let’s say it all together: "Hmmm . . . something to think about."
This comes courtesy of Lily Pregill, NYAM’s Special Projects Mgr.:
Worth Remembering for the Google Addicted
Chris Sherman, points to a new study that shows that the various generic web search engines (the big 4), have even less overlap in their results than in previous studies and that’s not much overlap. You can find his posting here. Just how unique are the results on each engine? On average: 73.9% of Ask Jeeves first page results were unique to Ask Jeeves 71.2% of Yahoo first page results were unique to Yahoo 70.8% of MSN search first page results were unique to MSN search 66.4% of Google first page results were unique to Google Hmmmm. The study looked at results listings for more than 485,000 first page search results. First page results have two key qualities that are important. If I remember my old studies something like 98% of ‘ordinary’ searchers do not go past the third page of results and 95% don’t get past the first. Also, the first page is the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow for search engine optimization (SEO) consultants – those folks who attempt to ensure that their clients’ pages (not just their ads or sponsored links) show up on the first page of hits by using a wide range of techniques and strategies. The study also found that: 84.9% of total results are unique to one engine
11.4% of total results were shared by any two engines
2.6% of total results were shared by any three engines
1.1% of total results were shared by any four engines
It’s worth a quick read and the questions I would ask about our library strategies would be: 1. We offer many databases for searching inside the library’s walls and many for virtual access through our websites. I think that we can safely assume that the ‘quality’ information in our licensed resources has even less overlap with the public web content acessible through searches. 2. I think we can also assume that few hits in our licensed resources are being manipulated extensively by marketers and SEO experts. 3. Many of our library websites choose to offer our users a link to one or more of the popular search engines. With such little overlap in the search results (which could be driven by the sorting or search algorithm or by the web harvesting differences or even by the timing of the scrapes for the search index)should we be preferring a metasearch engine like Dogpile or building our own using federated searching technologies and OpenURL resolvers? 4. Can we get better service delivered to our users by combining OPAC results seamlessly into web searches? Our experience at SirsiDynix is that OPAC use goes up exponentially when users ‘trip’ over the results in a federated search instead of having to ‘remember’ to use the rich OPAC, usually a library’s most vauable asset when meaasured by investment over time. There are a lot of questions here and the answers may be quite different for different types of libraries and commnunities. It’s also interesting though. You can review stuff about Sirsi SingleSearch or Sirsi Resolver on our website.
Here’s a bit of librarian humor that’s just too funny not to share. Sometimes a good cartoon gets the point across better than reams of text.
I'm not sure how many folks reading this have an interest in foreign libraries,
but in case there are some of you out there, this is for you.
The IFLA Working Group on Functional Requirements and Numbering of Authority Records
is pleased to announce that a draft of "Functional Requirements for Authority Records"
is now available for worldwide review. The draft in English and French is on the IFLA
web site at http://www.ifla.org/VII/d4/wg-franar.htm
Comments can be sent to:
Glenn Patton
OCLC Online Computer Library Center, Inc.
6565 Frantz Rd.
Dublin, OH 43017-3395
USA
Fax: (614) 718-7187
E-Mail: Pattong@oclc.org
By Shirl Kennedy, Deputy Editor
"Our resource for you this week is a European-based research portal for economic and financial data. Sites like this are very handy, especially when a reliable academic source has taken the time to select and organize the available information."
Occasionally the internet drops something totally suited to librarianship-oriented wiriting into my lap. This happened this morning as I cleared out the past week’s e-mail from my Yahoo account. It’s an article written by Gary North, whose politics I almost never agree with but who is one of the most prolific writers and researchers I’ve ever encountered. The article in question has to do with how he cleared out his old files and why. He’s not a librarian, but these sort of issues plague all of us, librarian or not. I guess the ultimate point is that we are not the only ones whothik about these sorts of things in our daily work.
I’ve clipped the most pertinent bits and stored them behind the link, but the entire article sits here for those interested in reading more.
Gary Price offers a few thoughts on The Digitization of the Library along with abunch of links worth perusing when you have some time to spend on it (you can easily spend an hour reading this, so set time aside.) Also, here is an article on how to Browse and Search CNN Video for Free, which can only be called a major tip.
Take a look at Roy Tenant’s column ("Doing Data Differently") in the latest Library Journal and tell me again that "anyone can catalog". No, sorry, they can’t. If they could, than everybody would be a cataloger. In my cataloging class at Queens College, we had maybe 45 people in the class, a few of whom did "well" (showing a real affinity for the work), some more who were "not bad" and the rest did so poorly that the class literally had to be dumbed down to the point where everyone could master the basic elements in time for the end of the semester. I took a metedata class with the same professor later that year where we had the same problem. People are generally bright, but cataloging is like machine coding or any other kind of intensive detail-oriented work–it’s not an intuitive skill. Certainly it can be taught but matering it takes time, patience and a lot of work. My point is that it’s not for everyone (but neither is reference work, so it goes both ways) –and the overal quality of metadata resources suffers if people don’t have the time or inclination (or imagination) to think about smarter ways of integrating existing data structures into existing access systems. It happens here, too–project deadlines loom and when all the smaller tasks for the week/month/quarter are completed, there’s less time and energy to think about how to improve our ILS at the macro level. Argh . . . reality . . .
Having said that, we’re hip deep in finishing up all the records we’re creating to send to OCLC in CatME because we found out through trial and error last week that MARC records can’t be swapped between CatME and Connexion. The work file database formats are different. So we’re going to do pretty much what the NYC William Hallock Park Memorial Public Health Library did earlier this year . . . code like crazy in CatME, finish the grey lit entries, and then empty out the work files by the switchover date (July 1, 2005 as I write this). Then, we’ll start up a new Connexion database and work from there. It’s probably not the best solution (actually, it’s certainly not the best solution) but it will work and it will make us pull less hair out of our heads than some of the alternatives.
This isn’t a proper library website, but it is a very nifty and reasonably cosmopolitan collection of WWII era war posters. Also, I’ve traded email with the author, and read his work on a regular basis. So I figured I’d share this. Enjoy!
I know this is not strictly library news, but this is becoming genuinely disturbing. Actually, it was genuinely disturbing a month ago when the story first broke, but now it’s mind bogglingly insane.
This bit by Ted Koppel is not much better.
Training in the art and science (!) of Connexion Client at the Brooklyn campus of Long Island University. Wish me luck and I’ll let you know how it went.