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aarontay › Comments
Could we create a citation alert for Google Scholar?
novoseek, Alain Marois, io2a and 5 other people liked this
I was thinking of a small program that regularly checks GS for additions to specified citation lists.
- Björn Brembs
As far as I know, there is a quota for accessing G. Scholars. If you're doing too many queries, your account will be blocked.
- Pierre Lindenbaum
Some sort of yahoopipe maybe. http://mikelove.wordpress.com/2007...
- aarontay
Pierre is right that this is a problem. Google's policy on this has effectively put down http://pubfeed.cs.toronto.edu/ .
- Daniel Mietchen
Hmm, every use would need his/her own version. Checking once or twice a week can't be all that bad.
- Björn Brembs
Thinking big for a moment: What would have to happen for citation styles to cease to exist?
Ana Ivkovic, Michael Habib, Pete and 15 other people liked this
If everything had a DOI...
- Jiahao Chen
What I don't get is why there are so many different ones for the same disciplines. Is it really superior to have a semicolon here instead of over there? Really? There should be two styles: numbered and alpha. That's it. We really don't need more than two. OK, maybe law gets their own.
- Jenny Reiswig
Lots of things that have DOIs still have citation styles, though. Just wondering why we can't just pick one format and stick to it.
- Mr. Gunn
I understand that different fields have various types of things they need to reference (like law referencing case numbers and such or art history referencing folios or repository pieces, but here's what I was thinking - Have a format that contains fields for all the information that might be needed for anything, then let the tool that generates the bib output what's needed (for the...
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- Mr. Gunn
On paper I find alpha style much easier to follow than numeric. But online doesn't matter as all info should be available by just hovering over ref in body of text. Good question! Part of scoialisation to being an academic?
- Anne Marie Cunningham
I have wondered this for a long time. This is a constant source of stress, vexation, and wasted time (especially for undergraduates). I especially dislike it when faculty ask their students to use the citation style of a particularly esoteric journal in their sub specialty. I also dislike citation styles that call for abbreviated journal titles (like ACS style, a classic holdover from the print world).
- Bonnie Swoger
EndNote lists over 3,000 citation styles, would be interesting to see how this number has risen over the years!
- aarontay
The world would be a better place. I'm holding onto http://friendfeed.com/karenja... in the hopes that it might someday come about.
- Peter Murray
Theoretically, if some of the big journal editors and publishers could agree on some kind of streamlined style (or two styles maybe - one for footnotes and one for in-text citation) this would save everyone a lot of time. How much time (and therefore money) is wasted making sure that the date goes after the authors name or at the end of the citation?
- Bonnie Swoger
Wonders are reference management software like EndNote actually benefiting from the proliferation of styles? But on second thought no, I go crazy trying to see if it's possible to duplicate some obscure feature in a obscure citation style that reference management software don't quite do yet. If there are say only a dozen styles, it would be possible for reference manager software to perfectly duplicate all of them.
- aarontay
aarontay - I'm thinking that there probably are parallels between the obscure holdings many academic libraries have and the proliferation of citation styles Endnote has developed. In other words, it's a user-driven accumulation of things over the years, badly in need of a pruning.
- Mr. Gunn
There's http://citationstyles.org that Zotero and Mendeley are working with which should at least reduce the effort required to support the variety of styles available, (and for someone technically inclined, you can submit your own format) but we really don't need them all. My question is: What would be the first item on a todo list written today if the goal was eliminating all but a few styles?
- Mr. Gunn
I think the first item on your list would be what was mentioned first in this thread: a unique identifier for anything potentially citable.
- Daniel Mietchen
I agree that having DOIs for things is the next thing that needs to happen for citation infrastructure, but I'm thinking more near term. Is there any reason that cell, nature, science, and the antarctic journal of snow biology need different citation formats? Couldn't this change almost overnight if the will to change existed?
- Mr. Gunn
I don't think the unique identifier would be enough on its own (though I agree it's needed). If I'm reading through the reference list, I want the titles not a list of DOI's -- so we still need some way to turn the unique ID into a human-readable citation, and then we're back to citation styles and how do we kill off most of them? Bottom-up approaches seem likely to fail since everyone is going to want their own favourite style or element.
- Bill Hooker
To do list: 1. design Universal Citation Style that will satisfy most requirements for most people; 2. start campaign to have all journals accept submissions in their own style, or in UCS. Once authors had a single style that they could use for most submissions, they'd want it for all submissions -- and journals could either just use it or reformat the ref lists if they really wanted their own style.
- Bill Hooker
They will "go away" when the document is configurable by the end user, to whatever style they want, for whatever purpose they're using it for, in whatever medium is convenient.
- Cameron Neylon
Print probably has to become near-marginalized before this happens, right? But seriously, couldn't they just agree to accept one of the formats in use today and it would work for pretty much all life science papers? I guess, Bill, that leaves Step 2, but why should it be necessary to even campaign. Do academic publishers NOT want to save on manuscript preparation costs?
- Mr. Gunn
Bill - I do not think of a reference list, rather some direct linking from the article to a page hosting the metadata (and possibly more for OA stuff) of the reference, as at http://en.citizendium.org/wiki... . Ideally, these metadata pages (example:...
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- Daniel Mietchen
I'm guessing that change is resisted by the old guys with a million hard-coded references in their chosen style. If you use EndNote, Zotero etc then changing from one style to another is pretty much trivial, isn't it?
- Chris Rusbridge
The bibo group are working on an ontology of bibliographic information. The depressing thing is to see it get more & more rococo as it tries to take in more and more attributes from different groups, especially Law.
- Chris Rusbridge
I guess I ought also to mention David Shotton's cito ontology, which (in part) looks at the "flavour" of the citation, eg supportive, background, refute etc. But perhaps I'm straying off the point here!
- Chris Rusbridge
Well, Chris, it isn't trivial, even with a citation manager. "Why doesn't my reference manager support my favorite citation style?" is a question I hear with some frequency. Now, because they work with http://citationstyles.org, Mendeley and Zotero support more styles than any other product, but the whole thing just strikes me as, well, just damn silly. It's one of those things that hasn't been given much thought and over the years has evolved into a monster. It's time for that to change.
- Mr. Gunn
Changing the reference style is often trivial if you use BibTeX. However, even then adaptation to the post-rejection journal's style still often requires changes in the format of the abstract, figures, figure legends and so on, and these have usually stolen more of my time than the references.
- Daniel Mietchen
My understanding is that even "supported" styles in citation managers aren't 100% supported if you look closely at the obscure rules, causing a lot of hair pulling. I've being at the end of this, where people come and tell me.. they want EndNote to do this thing that is actually supposed to be in, but the default style can't duplicate. Multiple that 3000x and you go crazy
- aarontay
well, yeah, so that could easily be handled by journals giving authors a BibTeX template and telling them submissions will only be accepted using the template.
- Mr. Gunn
Except we, ahem, can't currently accept LaTeX and hence presumably BibTeX for our journal... (#shame!)
- Chris Rusbridge
The "Uniform Requirements" style is pretty good and I don't understand why more journals don't sign on to it. It's got a lot of use in clinical medical journals, less in basic science. I agree with dumping journal abbreviations - useless holdover.
- Jenny Reiswig
Citation styles are ridiculous. We should all just use Chicago. Or Harvard. No wait, Chicago. Then again...
- Neil Saunders
But seriously, +1 Cameron.
- Neil Saunders
@Cameron way up there: I like that idea: user decides on reference format.
- Steve Koch
@Peter way up there: Thanks for that link! Very interesting, I'll relink it again here: http://friendfeed.com/karenja...
- Steve Koch
I just had this conversation with my 8th graders - we use NoodleBib and they wanted to know the difference between MLA, APA and Chicago. I did my best and they asked "why are there three different styles". For the life of me, I couldn't tell them why we're still at that stage.
- Lazygal
There really shouldn't be any need for this discussion...
- Björn Brembs
Citation styles - stupidest things on earth! (sorry, I had to say it, I feel better now)
- Cesar Sanchez
The Attention Frontier – Moving beyond crawlers with the wisdom of crowds - http://www.altsearchengines.com/2009...
"I’m calling to state the obvious here, but Google with their personalized web history and cookies http://www.google.com/support... , will have far more implicit data than any of their competitors and I would be amazed if they are not using this information in the ways you suggest."
- aarontay
Edublog Award 2009 Nominations - http://theunquietlibrarian.wordpress.com/2009...
"Hi Buffy thanks for the mention.Yeah there are many amazing librarian blogs, which makes it an honour to be listed in your blog roll.Thanks again."
- aarontay
walking paper - http://www.walkingpaper.org/2399...
"Intriguing blog title. When I saw it, my first thought was that for the library to become better with use, was that basically the more you use the library, the better it works for you. This is basically personalization, auto-customization of some kind, the library starts to know what resources you tend to access, anticipates your collection requests etc. The “Library made idea” is really interesting. Reminds me a little of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign/Elsevier white paper http://libraryconnect.elsevier.com/whitepa... , where they try to link the use of library resources (citations) to successful grant proposals"
- aarontay
SciPlore MindMapping: Mind Maps, PDF Management and Reference Management Combined - http://www.sciplore.org/softwar...
SciPlore MindMapping, support for other reference managers like zotero, mendeley coming soon
- aarontay
CT State Library, Stephen Francoeur, Junebug (aka Sarah Jill) and 3 other people liked this
iPac.
- cecily
Opac. Periodicals. Circulation. Reference.
- Laura H.
E-resources.
- Jàson Puçkett
monograph
- mita
acquisitions, collection development, serials, subject guide, article indexes & databases, ugh, ALL OF IT!
- jambina
"institutional repository"
- D0r0th34
ILL
- Christina Pikas
metadata
- D0r0th34
Thesaurus. Classification.
- Pete
Dorothea, I actually shuddered when I read "institutional repository".
- cecily
"pathfinder"
- cecily
reserves
- cecily
place a hold / on hold
- Megan Fitzgibbons
I read some of these and think, "but that's what they are -- is it entirely the library's fault if users don't learn what things are called?" Yes, I know we have a problem with using jargon in a public setting, but are you going to start calling dictionaries the "thingy with all the words and stuff"?
- ǎňňǎ
Anna, I'd say "thats what they are, because we named them that way", and then say that we need to be more thoughtful about natural language use before we name anything else, as a profession.
- Jenica
Anna, any information architect -- or anyone who is a classification expert -- could work with the community being served to come up with a list of suggested terms that actually make sense, and then select the best of those. Calling something a "thingy with all the words and stuff" doesn't make sense. And also: what Jenica just said.
- cecily
anna, I agree, mostly. But "opac" and all variants, and "cute" local names for the catalogue, like "Melvyl", all need to die. it's the catalogue. Calling it anything else hides it not just from naive users, but from experienced ones.
- DJF
DJF that reminds me - when my undergraduate school finally got an electronic catalog, the brand name for it was OLLI. The terminal screen showed a large cheshire cat (in ASCII) with the letters OLLI where its face should be. OLLI Cat. Get it? I remember that because it's a spectacularly bad example of how cutesy library names don't work in the real world.
- cecily
Cecily, I run the damn things and have to live with that name.
- D0r0th34
One thing for the older terms like "Reference" is that it's impossible for me to objectively know if that's confusing jargon. I learned those as a wee thing from my school and public librarians, so they just make sense to me. So I tend to find just the "newer" things too jargony, like DDS, OPAC, etc. Except "monograph," which just drives me crazy. :)
- Rachel Walden
festschrift (though this one isn't OUR fault)
- D0r0th34
One word that drives me crazy for no good reason is "consortia."
- s t e v e
I have some sympathy with Anna's position, but I also agree that local terms for catalogs, and acronyms of virtually all sorts, are pretty much meaningless to most users. But I also wonder how much of the acceptance/non-acceptance of library terminology is a generational thing. When I was learning to use libraries in elementary, middle, and high school, there was no online catalog. You...
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- Catherine Pellegrino
What we have with the branded OPAC is an empty brand. Before you can brand something, there has to be *something* in the brandee's mind to slap a brand *on*. Calling an empty space Melvyl doesn't fill it. :) As to Catherine's point, I think what we're standing on is a satisficing gap. It's ever so much easier to information-satisfice than it used to be.
- D0r0th34
There's lots and lots of specialized terminology out there. Every sport has it, video games, card games, and board games have it, many novels develop their own terms... What matters, then, is a community's willingness to accept that the terminology is worth learning. (And the branded catalog thing is more complicated if you have a local catalog and also WorldCat, which is also a branded name.)
- lris' ghost
I would add that while information-satisficing has become easier, the information landscape *inside the library* is more complex. Used to was, when you walked into the library the information that was available to you was basically the library's physical holdings (plus fillips like ILL that weren't used much). That is soooooooooo not the case any more, and it makes life as an info provider rather difficult. (What do we "collect"? What do we catalog? What do we "provide access to"?)
- D0r0th34
I also object to all the database names. Everything should be in JSTOR.
- s t e v e
Yeah, that's huge Dorothea.
- lris' ghost
Translate from unhelpful to better understandable here? http://ff.im/bxtyN
- awd
We all have examples for opaque terminology; I think most, if not all, of mine are listed above. How about we offer thoughts on translating into more transparent terms?
- awd
"Special collections." :P
- not making you smarter
"Stacks", "Bibliographic Instruction", "Library Instruction"
- Junebug (aka Sarah Jill)
reference to mean something that the user can't take out, or items that don't circulate. or in my library LUO (library use only).
- tara
Sarah June, would you please suggest alternatives for "library instruction" in the other thread (http://ff.im/bxtyN)? I'd love to have a better term to use with faculty.
- Catherine Pellegrino
Let me think about this one Catherine. I'm struggling with it as well.
- Junebug (aka Sarah Jill)
oooh! and citation management tool, and digital image collection. no idea what to call these in plain english.
- tara
holdings
- marthalib
This may be a local issue: "Lower Level" "Main Level" "Upper Level" (3 floor building, rooms 000 are downstairs, 100 is the floor everyone come in on, 200 is upsatirs) - also, nobody notices the stairs they pass on he way in and the eleveator is key-access only
- awd
Aaron: that floor-numbering scheme seems reasonable to me. We have: Lower level, 1st floor, 1st mezzanine, 2nd floor, 2nd mezzanine. When they make me Director (ha!) the first thing I'm going to do is renumber the floors to 1, 2, 3, and 4.
- Catherine Pellegrino
We have "main", "ground" and "lower ground". We also have "stack 1" through "stack 6". "main and "stack 3" are the same floor. but G and LG do not line up with any stack level. Oh, and S6 is the top floor (obviously, floors count up), but the call numbers go from the top down: "A" is on Stack 6, "Z" is on Stack 1.
- DJF
But it could be worse, the Chemistry building next door has basement, lower ground, ground, 1, 2, etc. (all of B, G, LG, and 1 have direct access to the outside; it's built on the side of a hill)
- DJF
Sigh. I actually love the term festschrift. And what do you call a hold if you don't use the term "hold"? I am with you all on most of the rest, though
- laura x
I used to correct people when they asked for the "card catalog." I finally realized that they could give a crap about the form of the tool, they just wanted something to help them find materials.
- Rochelle Rochelle
portal.
- Marie is monkeying around
book truck. And what everyone else said. ;-)
- Connie Crosby
Portal is a great game!
- DJF
Oooh. "Holdings" is a good one, Martha. We have a links on our web page to "Subjects of Holdings" and "Formats of Holdings." I'm doing away with those during our redesign.
- not making you smarter
Unique to my library: Sabio (this was the ORIGINAL catalog/database access deal in the 90s, which went away, but there are still signs in the building that indicate "Sabio Access"). Also, Aaron, Catherine and DJF - my FPOW had floors Lower, 2, 3, 3A, 4, 4A, 5, 5A, 6 and 6A - the main floors were all available from 2 of the elevators, but the A floors could only be reached with the 3rd elevator (or the stairs). Most circulating books were on the A floors, but not all circulating books were.
- ÉllbeeÇee
"not on loan" for items not on loan. Personally I have no problems with the words, and have no alternative, but since moving to public libraries I get asked *waaaay* too often what it means. "Graphic Novel" is actually confusing I think. "Databases". Even "renew" confuses people - I find they more often say "extend" - again, maybe not libraryland's problem??
- Kathryn says love n peace
Kathryn, I'm not sure how to take "not on loan" - does that mean it's available for check out or that it doesn't circulate out of the building? :)
- ÉllbeeÇee
Does this map top LUO (from way back above)?
- awd
databases
- ♫Geek in the 410♫
one more: federated search. sounds like a very small country that was part of the USSR.
- tara
On the "library instruction" thing: I prefer "library research instruction" or just "research instruction" (at least to sell it to faculty; when they hear "research," it gives it more credence for many of them, I suspect).
- Dana Longley
Just about anything that comes out of librarian's mouth sounds like it's really hard to do.
- ɥsıuɐʎɹ
I also agree on the "databases" term. I prefer "search tools" and am making a push here to get everyone on board to start using that terminology instead (but it's an uphill battle).
- Dana Longley
Pretty much every acronym out there. If you don't know what the letters stand for, you can't get even an initial clue as to what the thing being named is.
- Katy S
"Federated search", "Openurl resolver" , "proxy" , . I had the impression that the library world went through a period where convention wisdom was you had to "brand" your services, so you ended up with libraries giving individual cutey names to services that were essentially the same because they all bought it from the same ILS vendor.
- aarontay
yeah, we don't start with "proxy". we start with "off-campus access".
- DJF
We tried renaming "e-reference" to "e-encyclopedias & dictionaries" on our website, and nobody figured it out. I've yet to find a library website with a better label, and I've been looking for three years. Either patrons know what reference means, or they think it means creating citations.
- Kaijsa Calkins
Kaijsa, what to call electronic resources is one of the greatest mysteries of the world. Personally, I think that we shouldn't call them by what they are, but what you can do with them, but creating a suitable noun/verb pairing for these items has been quite a challenge for yours truly.
- cecily
Really, we all just need to form a working group on terms and standardise the heck out of this. Not only do we have all this crazy jargon, we also expect library users/patrons/clients/customers (your choice) to learn different ones in every library they use. That's just crazy.
- Fiona Bradley
In case anyone hasn't seen Jon Kupersmith's site, Library Terms That Users Understand, here's the link: http://www.jkup.net/terms.html
- Stephen Francoeur
@kaijsa Online Encyclopedias / Online Dictionaries? (though, really, why would one buy a general dictionary anymore? define:[term] usually gives on-topic results (as well as occasional innapropriate, yet humourous, results)
- awd
I'm going to just label everything on our site "CLICK HERE!!!" and "!#!#!#!# L@@K #!#!#!#!#!"
- s t e v e
Books n Shit' Shit you can touch. Shit on a screen.
- Pete
"reference" and "circulation" are pretty common yet a brand new person walking into a library has no idea what those mean.
- Miriella
Sometimes "Information Desk" can be confusing if the library has a specific idea of what type of information is provided there. Some info desks don't handle reference questions. Some do. Although I generally like that more all purpose way of describing a service desk. And some of us only have one service point anymore.
- Junebug (aka Sarah Jill)
I have always always loved the idea of a single desk for everything - I can't stand sending someone here, there, upstairs, downstairs and everywhere to get the few things they need.
- Miriella
OPAC, ILS, ILL, libguide, finding aid
- Jill Hurst-Wahl
social search - insightful posts - http://brynnevans.com/blog...
Insightful posts on social search
- aarontay
Feeling v. intimidated. Agreed to participate in a symposium on the future of libraries, then found out that David Weinberger, Peter Brantley, Susan Gibbons, Joe Janes, and several other HUGE names are also participating. What could I possibly bring to the conversation???
Catherine Pellegrino, Mr. Gunn, John Dupuis and 4 other people liked this
Another X chromosome. The perspective of someone relatively new in the field. Yourself and your smarts.
- laura x
Sense, sensibility, and what Laura sez. Don't be intimidated by any of those names.
- Walt Crawford
Guess I'm just feeling out of practice and out of the loop, so not sure I'm a great choice as a futurist at this point.
- Meredith
I don't know any of those people, so they can't be that important ;) Everyone's version of the future is different. You're bound to have some creative and unique ideas.
- Kenton
Well thanks folks. :)
- Meredith
You'll bring what you always bring, Meredith: intelligence, enthusiasm, & a strong sense of balance.
- josh neff, geek at large
Are you frickin' KIDDING me? I know what you bring to the table: a reality check that won't bounce. All those people know is the view from 20,000 feet. You live in the real world of constrained budgets, unwary students and colleagues and faculty, and limited influence. Trust me. That panel needs you more than anyone else on it.
- D0r0th34
You probably have the best sense of what kind of service college students need now and in the future, since you talk with them everyday.
- Joe
As far as I can tell, what everybody else said plus OMG cute baby!
- Elaine Nelson
I guess that's true. I hadn't thought of the fact that I'm the only one on that list who is a front-line public services librarian right now.
- Meredith
what Dorothea said - oh, a LIBARIAN WORKING IN A LIBRARY! kookytalk that.
- jambina
Yeah, I'm going to echo a couple of comments here. I love hearing from front-line librarians alongside people like these. Joe was my adviser in library school, and I know he works a shift at the reference desk, but being a professor is very different than being immersed in the practice of librarianship. Same goes for those others.
- Kaijsa Calkins
agree (1000) with Dorothea. You're actually doing this stuff! Plus, you can point out all the other librarians who are working hard to keep it relative in this day and age--not just offering theories.
- Abigail
Ooh, I like what Dorothea said - a reality check that won't bounce. Meredith, I think you are an intelligent, articulate, and yet down-to-earth and approachable librarian. I think you'll be great at this, and I for one am interested in your view of the future of libraries. :)
- Laura H.
To put things in perspective I suspect I'm not the only one who is intimidated by a superstar librarian like yourself. :)
- aarontay
Thanks everyone! I'm feeling a lot less anxious now. :) Probably the hardest thing for me is playing the role of a futurist -- I am much more of a now-ist and I'm just not thinking in terms of 2020 or even 2012. I'm sure I'll come up with something. :)
- Meredith
Definitely what Dorothea said! Talk about what the future looks like on the ground. So important in panels like this!
- Sarah
Coming back a bit late: Some of us would say the future evolves out of a considered present--and since you think about what's happening and are actually grounded in that present, you're likely to be a breath of fresh air on the panel. (Sounds like an awfully big panel, though...five plus "several"?)
- Walt Crawford
they may have overstuffed the panel expecting a drop or two
- D0r0th34
Remember, futurist = guesser (thanks to Charlie Brooker for that) And I'm sure you're as good a guesser as anyone ;)
- Pete
Has anyone played with http://feedzero.com ? I'm currently training my set of feeds, and haven't quite got to where the recommendations make up for the web-only interface. Friendfeed still beats it.
Earnie Fisher, Jo Badge, manielse (Mark Nielsen) and suelibrarian liked this
intriguing, what feeds do you put in there? I'm trying with TOCs of journals. How do you compare FF with feedzero? Didn't know FF had bayesian or other algorithmic filters.
- aarontay
FF doesn't have bayesian filters. They do use a ranking for their "best of day" feature, but it mostly comes from user activity, so the comparison is between purely algorithmic rank and social filtering. So far, social filtering FTW!
- Mr. Gunn
As far as what feeds I'm putting in, I just uploaded my whole OPML file. Took some time to sync, but works pretty well.
- Mr. Gunn
Well social filtering is great if it's things people are reading, but with Tocs of journals, doubtful FF can help you filter.
- aarontay
I'm not using bayesian filters for my "normal" rss blog feeds, think social filtering will work better, but for tocs of journals, where i'm looking for articles in my research area, i dont know any peers in this area, so bayesian filter is the only alternative
- aarontay
But it can! If my contacts are reading the same journals I am, and feeding in here things they're bookmarked using a bookmarking service, it brings those things to my attention.
- Mr. Gunn
Yes, that's my problem, I don't know any contacts working in the same area (besides my supervisor!), a problem facing many starting grad student, so we can't rely on social filters. Also i suppose it's a lazy way to prioritize journals, if you want to at least glance at them if you dont trust your social filters.
- aarontay
Deepak had some comments on learning to trust your social filters a while back, but yeah, it's hard sometimes. In other news...citeulike has a recommendation feature and Mendeley's great recommendations feature is coming soon.
- Mr. Gunn
Here's the question, are these recommendations based solely on social activity? What if you are working in an area that no-one else is (very likely particularly these days where a small percentage of people are only on such networks). Machine learning techniques like bayesian filtering would be very helpful.
- aarontay
Yes, that's certainly true. I always think of it as Bayesian filtering helps you find the best stuff you already know you like, whereas social search helps you find stuff you didn't know you were looking for,
- Mr. Gunn
I haven't, but now I'm going to. Looks interesting.
- Bill Hooker
In case you are interested in bayesian filtering, the other alternative is suxtor http://icbl.macs.hw.ac.uk/sux0r20... , which ls less commercial. There's a interesting project going along http://bayesianfeedfilter.wordpress.com/ .
- aarontay
I think I might have originally seen that from one of your tweets, actually.
- Mr. Gunn
Yes. I'm working on a blog post on bayesian filtering of rss feeds actually.. several alternatives
- aarontay
I keep hearing rumors of a product that will blow services like feedzero away, but haven't seen so much as a screenshot yet.
- Mr. Gunn
You can setup your own install, or just use the one hosted by Heriot-Watt University. The people there are pretty interested in feedback. main disadvantage so far, can't import opml! Also feeds needs to be approved by admin.
- aarontay
No OPML import is a major dealbreaker for me, unfortunately.
- Mr. Gunn
There's a beta- invitation only feedscrub/ rss bayesian filter, you can get the invitation code on some site, techcrunch or something. 1 got 5 invites if anyone wants them. the free version does only 5 feeds though, but the premium allows opml import. Also playing with hacks like converting rss feeds to POP/IMAP/NNTP then using POPFILE for bayesian filtering.
- aarontay
Converting posts to emails and filtering using the more well-developed tools available for spam is a interesting idea, but it's kinda hacky, isn't it? My income of feed items is way larger than emails - wouldn't that make popfile choke?
- Mr. Gunn
Yeah it's hacky. I've used Popfile for a couple of years in the past before i switched mostly to gmail, i remember going on holiday and coming back and it could handle hundreds of mails incoming at a time (think the mail server timed out first), but it's possible your rss feeds exceeds that by far. God knows i have thousands of unread articles in google reader.
- aarontay
Yeah, thousands, at least. There are whole categories of feeds I don't read directly, only filter/search.
- Mr. Gunn
Search v. Browse v. The Fractal Academic Library Website - http://www.newjackalmanac.ca/2009...
aarontay and Stephen Francoeur liked this
About sux0r - http://bayesianfeedfilter.wordpress.com/2009...
""But if you just want to try it out for RSS filtering, you’re welcome to use our customised installation. It is provided with no guarantees of service quality or privacy or promise of support. "Hi, I've being trying to register and login using your customized installation without success, is it currently disabled?"
- aarontay
Ahead - Prezi like alternative. - http://ahead.com/
Ahead is a web application empowering creative people to playfully easy layout, share, and present high resolution rich media content inside public or private zooming web spaces.
- aarontay
Hmm not sure if ahead is better than Prezi but for sure it's slower, seemsto need loading a lot particularly changing from "Edit" to "View". annoying.
- aarontay
The End of Impact Factors as a Measure of Research Quality [NGS] - http://www.nextgenerationscience.com/science...
suelibrarian, Shirley Wu, Mickey Schafer and 8 other people liked this
Dare I believe that "end the impact factor" is gaining momentum? It feels that way sometimes. Or is it just in my own small networks?
- Neil Saunders
@Neil: One of the most sought after talks that I give is the one on publishing and the feedback is always in favor of getting rid of IFs.
- Björn Brembs
Many of my students report that their PIs tell them to consider journal mission first, IF a close second, everything else a distant third. In fact, this is how I learned what IF was a few years back -- a student asked me b/c he didn't know what his PI was talking about (and didn't want the PI to know that he didn't know!). I didn't either. A few clicks and wikipedia reads later, we all knew.
- Mickey Schafer
Was at David Pendlebury's "Discover the Power of Quantitative Analysis - The Art & Science of Identifying Future Nobel Laureates", same message don't use IF as proxy for article influence. Pretty obvious really, but I suppose IF is okay for evaluating journals?
- aarontay
Re: Zooming into presentations - Zoomit, Prezi & pptPlex - http://musingsaboutlibrariansh...
"Wow, I wish i knew about www.ahead.com when i blogged. Indeed it should have being included as an an alternative to Prezi, will play with it and blog about my impressions later. Thanks a lot for informing me!"
- aarontay
Bayesian Feed Filter - http://bayesianfeedfilter.wordpress.com/about
The Bayesian Feed Filtering (BayesFF) project will be trying to identify those articles that are of interest to specific researchers from a set of RSS feeds of Journal Tables of Content by applying the same approach that is used to filter out junk emails.
- aarontay
Library 101...Now What? | Information Tyrannosaur http://andyburkhardt.com/2009... #library101 @davidleeking @libraryman
Great post, you expressed exactly what I felt when I looked at the 101 RTK list. I also feel the list isn't even halfway realistic, look at all the skills, attitudes or competencies listed! It would take half a dozen top librarians to cover the list I suspect.
- aarontay
Yeah, the list is a bit overwhelming and not all of those skills are necessary in my opinion. But there are likely some necessary skills that librarians need to have, like being able to adapt to change. I'm glad you enjoyed the post Aaron.
- Andy Burkhardt
from email
Does your library have an interactive 2d or 3d location map of your library interior? If so, please post it here!
Example 1 http://library.wichita.edu/techser...
- aarontay
Example 2 http://www.lib.nus.edu.sg/nus...
- aarontay
Example 3 http://libcat-dev-nhr-01.cante...
- aarontay
The Boolify Project - http://philbradley.typepad.com/phil_br...
"Thinking about the error warning given in your screenshot. When I do Librarian -archvist OR research Google seems to do a search fine.. though it seems to be doing (Librarian or research) NOT archvist. Is that why Boolify doesn't allow?"
- aarontay
RT @dsilverman: I can see it coming already: "Well, I'm on X number of lists. How many are YOU on?" Sigh.
Since you asked.. Currently 14, which isn't a lot really. It's the librarian instinct to create lists, and librarians generally follow other librarians on Twitter. So I bet librarians will all things being equal appear on more lists than most people.
- aarontay
Things you can do with a openurl resolver as an end-user.
Chris Keene liked this
2. Create your own library toolbar via LibX and include the details http://libx.org:8080/edition...
- Owen
3. Or install oclc's openurl referrer http://www.openly.com/openurl...
- aarontay
4. Create and Use openurl bookmarklet http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/distrib...
- aarontay
1. Plugin openurl base url into citation manager, endnote/zotero etc
- aarontay
5. Install Greasemonkey script for processing COINS http://alf.hubmed.org/openurl...
- aarontay
6. embed bibliographic data using coins generators http://generator.ocoins.info/ or wordpress
- aarontay
10 websites to help you keep up-to-date with scholarly journal contents « spineless? - http://hwlibrary.wordpress.com/2009...
10 websites to help you keep up-to-date with scholarly journal contents
- aarontay
The Value of Information in Library Catalogs - Special Libraries Association - http://www.sla.org/content...
The purpose of this article is an attempt to discover the value of the information contained within a library's catalog. It specifically assesses the value of MARC (Machine Readable Cataloging) records and location/status information.
- aarontay
New World Notes: Mixed Reality Message Wall Bridges SL to Singapore Library - http://nwn.blogs.com/nwn...
Using Arduino hardware, Singapore researcher Jungho Yeom (RobbieYeom Tomorrow in Second Life) created this mixed reality wall that displays messages between avatars in Second Life and people in the library of National University of Singapore. Messages from the real world...
- aarontay
CrossRef Labs: OpenSearch Description File - http://labs.crossref.org/site...
Opensearch for crossref search of metadata
- aarontay
If you've got 10-15 minutes to make a presentation at a department meeting for English faculty, do you bother mentioning your library's new subscription for Web of Science? Is it potentially useful enough to them to merit a mention or should your focus be on other tools/resources they are more likely to use?
For most of them, if they hear the word "science", they will tune out and think that it has nothing to do with them. Trust me on this one.
- Katy S
I don't have a good sense of whether it's worth it to you, but here's one way it can help Lit researchers: http://gouldguides.carleton.edu/content...
- lris' ghost
Iris: Thanks for that. I had noticed that little nugget of wisdom recently when I was admiring your LibGuides.
- Stephen Francoeur
Agreed with both Katy and Iris: if you possibly can, call it "Web of Knowledge," not science. And talk up the cited-ref searching! (I'm still unclear on whether "Web of Knowledge" and "Web of Science" are two different names for the same creature or not.)
- Catherine Pellegrino
Katy: Yeah, I was afraid the name might be a problem. And it probably won't get better if I sell it as "Arts and Humanities Citation Index," which is snoozerific as a database name.
- Stephen Francoeur
Actually, *I* prefer "Arts and Humanities Citation Index," because that actually describes what it is and does, which "Web of Knowledge" soooooo does not. But then, I'm a librarian.
- Catherine Pellegrino
Maybe they should just call it the "Who Cited Me" database.
- Stephen Francoeur
I kind of like "web of knowledge" because it fits with the way I teach it: http://pegasuslibrarian.com/2008...
- lris' ghost
Iris: That's a great metaphor that I'm sure I'll be borrowing.
- Stephen Francoeur
Web of Knowledge sounds like the Tree of Knowledge (an encyclopedia) that was sold door to door in the 1970s
- awd
Sorry to nitpick but I think technically, Web of Knowledge is the platform (like OVIDSP), Web of Science is one of the databases hosted on it. We have JCR, BIOSIS Previews and Zoological record as well. Had the same problem with calling it WOS also.
- aarontay
I got $5 to the first library who lists it as "Magic Citation Fairy" on their database list.
- s t e v e
Don't tempt me, Steve. I've got rights to update that database list.
- Stephen Francoeur
Leave it like that for a week and I'll send you a fruit basket or something.
- s t e v e
but would anybody notice?
- DJF
Maybe the faculty from the Prestidigitational Arts Department would stumble on it.
- Stephen Francoeur
Good point, DJF. It will be a great case study for my forthcoming book "Confusability Studies: Build a Better Web Site By Screwing With the User."
- s t e v e
Think of it more as, "The Library Website as a Puzzle: Applying the Lessons of World of Warcraft to Information Architecture"
- DJF
Back to the original question--I would mention it, perhaps at the end if I had time. Something like "And you may have seen us promoting Web of Science--don't let the name fool you, it's really a citation database to see where article and books have been cited. If that interests you, give me a call and I"ll show you how it works, or do a demo for the department."
- s t e v e
Steve's approach just above rocks. I'd definitely sell it as a "citation database." Also, I have rights to update our list of databases, but we don't have WoS, so I can't get that $5. :(
- Catherine Pellegrino
I have rights to edit our web page, and we have Web of Science ... but I don't think it's worth trying to sell to the journalism / mass comm. folks. At least, it's not in the top 10 or 15 databases i'd promote. I do like the "magic citation fairy" name though. ... One thing I might try before deciding if I should promote it is to see if my faculty were actually listed in the Arts & Humanities Citation Index. Might give you an idea if it's worth promoting to them or not. Plus what Steve Lawson said.
- Stephanie_Thankful
Reconsidering Relevance and Embracing Interaction - http://www.asis.org/Bulleti...
Ironically, the success of commercial search engines has marginalized many of their concerns: search engines do well enough without considering the users – at least for web search – that many search engine researchers and developers have been content to ignore Goffman’s warning.Lately, however, there have been signs that our honeymoon with purely ranked retrieval systems is coming to a close. Bing, Microsoft’s recent re-launch of its web search offering, touts itself as a “decision engine” rather than simply an engine to match search queries to documents. More substantively, Bing’s interface offers users a variety of ways to interact with the search engine. For example, a search for “Barack Obama” offers a set of query refinements that includes news, biography and interviews. Google, though not quite as aggressive on this front, has been slowly promoting similar features, initially relegating them to its advanced search and experimental interfaces but increasingly raising their visibility.
- aarontay
from Bookmarklet
wonders if any1 know of any research showing that putting slides up on @slideshare increases number of views as opposed 2 just linking 2 it?
it's a really interesting Q ... curious to know what you find.
- Stephanie_Thankful
Powerpoints of library tutorials in our social science team are embedded using slideshare widgets in our subject guides. The other teams do not and just link to the powerpoint. Is the downloads of powerpoint/ page views higher or lower on average? I can see it happening either way, Maybe just seeing the widget viewer means they don't have to download, so downloads per page view will be...
more...
- aarontay
An experiment. One set of subject guides just creates a plain html link to the powerpoint on our server. Another set of guides has the same links, PLUS the slides are displayed using a slideshare widget. In terms of no of downloads of slides (local) / page views, the later is more than 2x the former for last month. Is this evidence that slideshare helps drive downloads?
- aarontay
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