Piano playing

Posted on August 26, 2006 by Steve

We recently had our new piano tuned and it sounds wonderful! I try to play it every chance I get. Unfortunately my hands are not as flexible and strong as they used to be so they tend to ache after playing the piano for a while. I miss having the sheet music I used to play when I was taking lessons. One of the pieces I remember playing is Sonatinas by Muzio Clementi. A few days ago I found a website offering downloadable/printable sheet music that is out of copyright. The Clementi piece I used to play was there so I printed it out. I can’t play it very well yet but it sure brings back memories!

Michele bought an introductory piano book for Tristan and maybe others to use to try to learn how to play the piano. Tristan in particular is very eager to learn and right now he is dancing around me as I sit here typing this post, anxious for me to sit with him to look at the book and begin learning! I’d better go.

An alignment of stars? Google Book Search and library holdings

Posted on August 24, 2006 by Steve

When I first read the official announcement posted today by Google about their new library catalog search feature, I thought, Hey, good deal! A closer alignment of library holdings with Google Book Search is, in my mind, a very good thing.

Then I went immediately to Google Book Search to try it out, only to end up confused about the results I was seeing. You see, I had one of those reflexive moments when reading the announcement, kind of like when a doctor taps your knee with the little hammer in just the right place, causing your leg to kick. When I read it, what I thought the hoopla was about was the fact that, finally, a link to find a book in a nearby library would appear in search results right alongside the prominent “Buy it from X Vendor” links that currently display. This is something that librarians have advocated for some time but it seemed a lost cause. Publishers apparently are afraid that if the “Buy It…” and “Find It in a Library” links were both displayed, people would choose to get something for free, that is, from a nearby library, rather than cough up the money to purchase their books. This is precisely what I thought Google had changed, in favor of libraries.

Sorry folks, not so. Read the official announcement very carefully, and try out the new feature for yourself. The only change Google has made is to include — distinctly separated from and below all other results, such as those for books from publishers who hope to increase their sales — some possibly relevant results from library catalogs in the search results pages. That’s it. Ok, you might argue that that is cool and that it is a welcome improvement. I don’t think so, frankly. The hoopla surrounding this new library search feature is, to me, just a lot of hot air and doesn’t change the fact that publishers will always have the upper hand in terms of steering users their way in GBS.

Am I overreacting? Maybe. Is my initial response too simplistic? Maybe. Regardless, I just can’t help feeling let down.

The Abbott Report

Posted on August 23, 2006 by Steve

I recently read a final report from the task force on the university library at The University of Chicago, written by Andrew Abbott, a professor of sociology there. It is fascinating reading and I hope it will receive widespread attention because it touches upon many issues that large academic and research libraries are facing. The angle at Chicago may be somewhat different than some other places but I think it is broadly illustrative and informative. It is interesting to note Abbott’s discussion on the theory of library research. For example, he boldy states the following:

“There is a good deal of writing about libraries and library knowledge from an informational science (IS) standpoint, but the theory of knowledge it presupposes is rooted, like IS itself, in engineering-based theories of information that turn out to be largely irrelevant to what it is that humanistic research actually produces. And in any case the information science literature arises basically within the professional debates, which to this writer seem driven more by the familiar dynamics of interprofessional competition than by deep thinking about knowledge.” (emphasis mine)

Another highly interesting point made in this report is that research data on library usage at Chicago points to the fact that the dramatically increased availability of e-resources such as e-journals, e-books, and databases has not replaced reliance by Chicago students on traditional library material. As Abbott puts it:

“There is no evidence whatever of substitution of electronic for print resources at the individual level. The two seem synergistic.”

This is great stuff because it flies in the face of assumptions that we too easily make about e-resources vs. print materials. We often assume, in other words, that print resources are less valuable, less often used with the advent of e-resources. Granted, the mix of students and the culture at Chicago may be somewhat unusual, but even so, this conclusion has significant ramifications.

There is more, much more here to enjoy and to stimulate thinking about the role of libraries.

A virtual visit with LibraryThingers

Posted on August 9, 2006 by Steve

This past Saturday I logged into iChat and saw that Tim Spalding was online as well, so I sent him a request to do a video chat. (For those of you unlucky enough to not be Mac owners, well, this kind of interaction is a piece of cake!) Tim accepted my invitation and he and I were able to have a brief conversation. Abby Blachly was there too, in the background, so I got to say hi to her as well. It was nice because none of us has ever met in person. One of the things I asked them was why on earth they appeared to be hard at work on a Saturday?! Turns out they were just minutes away from hosting the first official LibraryThing barbeque/picnic. Wish I could have been there!

Back and forth about tags, categories

Posted on August 9, 2006 by Steve

I’ve gone back and forth a few times about use of tags vs. categories in FML. I’ve also tried various methods for making insertion of tags and categories easier to do, with limited success. This leads to a messy blog, I guess, but hey, this wasn’t intended to be a cataloging project or a demo site for the efficacy of tags! As an aside, using tags or categories is kind of like authority work for library cataloging in that it is or can be the part of the process of creating a blog post that takes the longest. Another piece that I am beginning to hate to do because it takes a long time, is put in all of the possible or necessary URL links. OK, I’m link lazy, get over it. Yet neglecting these two aspects of blogging has a very detrimental effect because links and tags are, in my view, the two discovery pieces that drive most of the traffic in the blogosphere. Steven Cohen of Library Stuff may be able to get away with not using tags or categories but based on my experience, if I want something I have to say to be read or picked up elsewhere, it had better be tagged or categorized somehow.

Currently I have settled for using Flock as my blogging platform of choice, mainly because I have found that it provides the easiest way for me to write, tag, and link of any of the tools I’ve tried to date. Also, instead of using categories I will now just focus on tags. And these tags will be Technorati tags, because in my experience, Technorati is arguably the blog search and navigation tool of choice.

Some new feature goodies

Posted on August 5, 2006 by Steve

Lots of nice improvements have been made recently in web-related software and services that I regularly use. Here is a list of the ones I can think of that are worth mentioning:

coComment: This service just keeps getting better. Now it allows me to track conversations via webpages or comments on individual postings. Cool! Even better is the fact that I can be notified when someone has commented on a webpage or posting or comment by seeing the coComment icon in my webbrowser change color. When there has been some activity on something that I have tracked in coComment, the blue coComment icon in my web browser’s status bar adds a red-bordered envelope. Another cool feature is that if I navigate to a webpage that anyone else is tracking via coComment, the coComment icon turns orange to let me know that others are discussing it. All in all, very nice!

Meebo: I have been using Meebo for a little over a month now and have found it to work quite well for the IM accounts I use, including Google Talk, AOL, and Yahoo! Messenger. A few days ago they really hit the ball out of the ballpark, in my opinion, when they announced a new service called Meebome. Basically this allows me to embed a live chat service in any webpage I want. I quickly put one here in my blog and I might add it to a few other places. With this service in place, I can be logged into Meebo and automatically see if/when someone visits FML! Noone has initiated a chat with me yet but it is really interesting to see in real time the number of people who visit the site.

Bloglines: Like coComment, this service, too, just keeps improving. The latest improvement allows users to use the letter ‘o’ to open up the original blog post when viewing it in Bloglines. The lack of this feature (which has been present in Google Reader from day one) has been the only major gripe I’ve had with the service ’til now.

Google Maps: I have always liked this service and again, it just keeps getting better! The latest improvements include the ability for me to use the service from my cell phone. Very, very nice. I’ve tried it out and it works very well. The only problem is that as one would expect, it takes up a lot of bytes and I will have to watch this carefully because of service limitations in terms of the size of data transfers with my cell phone service. Another improvement in the service is that I can now store favorite locations.

Comcast Digital Voice: This VOIP service from our cable TV and Internet provider is something we’ve thought about in the past but didn’t try because we didn’t think we needed a dedicated home telephone. We thought we could just rely on our cell phone service instead. After trying this for a few weeks, though, we concluded that it would be good to have a regular telephone service. We chose Comcast Digital Voice because it seemed to meet our needs quite well and we get a discount because we are already have other Comcast services. We’ve only had it in place for a few days but it seems to work great!

Blogged with Flock

A well-respected librarian and colleague dies

Posted on August 3, 2006 by Steve

The big news in libraryland this week has been the passing away of Fred Kilgour, founder of OCLC. But the bigger news for me, personally, was finding out that an excellent librarian friend and colleague, Kathy Zar, died recently. Kathy was a librarian at The University of Chicago whose career there spanned close to 40 years. Since 1994, she was responsible for the library collections of the Science Division. She was a very gracious and professional person — she had warmth and kindness combined with a sharp acumen. She particularly took interest in mentoring others, and she made young, fresh-faced librarians such as myself feel welcome and appreciated. I spoke with some friends there who told me that she literally stayed on the job up ’til the very end.

A mention in the Carnival

Posted on August 3, 2006 by Steve

The Carnival of the Infosciences is an informal, weekly roundup of interesting or worthwhile blogs and news items relating to library and information science that is hosted on various library-related blogs, usually a different one each week. I’ve never participated in this before but I’ve always read each installment with interest. Much to my surprise, a post I wrote last week about the visibility of the library on institutional web spaces was mentioned in the most recent Carnival issue. Hey, thanks, Mark (Lindner), for the mention! This is the library equivalent to being Slashdotted!

A discussion with Karen Calhoun

Posted on August 1, 2006 by Steve

Tomorrow during class, Karen Calhoun, Associate University Librarian for Technical Services at Cornell, will be a guest to discuss the report she authored for the Library of Congress, entitled “The Changing Nature of the Catalog and its Integration with Other Discovery Tools.” I am really thankful that Karen so graciously agreed to meet online with my students and others from the UIUC GSLIS community and this final class session is one I have been anticipating with excitement for a long time. Karen’s report was part of required reading for class and the themes and issues it contains have cropped up time and again throughout this entire semester. I remember, for instance, with what passion the UIUC technical services librarians who met with the class on the first day discussed the report and its implications. This made a big impression on the class.

I have no idea how many people will tune in to join the online discussion but I suspect it will be quite a few, perhaps as many as 40 or 50 people. The report and Karen’s visit to the class tomorrow have generated a lot of interest among other faculty in the school as well as from other parts of the extended GSLIS community. Mark Lindner will do his sterling job as usual in terms of broadcasting the session and I know that he, too, is really looking forward to it.

Amazon moves into library business