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Category: Social Web

Tagging

Tagging

Published by Iris on Saturday, November 18th, 2006

Have you ever noticed that librarians often tag things using plurals for countable nouns, just as if we’re creating subject headings? I’ve noticed this in my own tagging, in other librarians’ Flickr tagging, and on Technorati. I smile every time I see other people who have the same habit I have. It’s so … cute. :)

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Woah! Meebo Got a Facelift

Woah! Meebo Got a Facelift

Published by Iris on Saturday, November 4th, 2006

I just logged in to Meebo (hoping to find a little human interaction) and almost didn’t recognize the new, spiffy interface. And according to their blog post, it’s not just the visual part that got an upgrade. Now you can pop a chat window out of the main browser window, drag and drop people into different buddy categories, more easily manage signing on and off of individual screen names, and more. Cool!

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To Furl or Not To Furl, That is the Question

Published by Iris on Saturday, September 23rd, 2006

When he wrote those worde, Shakespeare little knew the abuse his words would receive for generations to come. This is the second time this week I’ve abused them. The first was in the title of a library session for a Shakespeare class — “To Libe or Not To Libe, That is the Question: Skills and Strategies to Help You Libe.” (By the way, the students have a habit of shortening names at Carleton, so the library is the “Libe,” the arboretum is the “Arb,” etc.)

Anyway, I’ve come upon a dilemma. I don’t know whether to continue to use my Furl or whether to switch to Del.icio.us. Ironically, I haven’t been adding much to my furl lately for three reasons: the form that lets you describe and categorize pages is cumbersome, it often takes quite a long time to save pages, and there are days when I can’t access my archive. Combine these complaints with Del.icio.us’ easy entry form, complete with suggested tags and quick saving, and you see why I decided earlier this week that I’d start transferring everything in my furl over to del.icio.us.

No sooner had I made the decision, though, than two problems presented themselves. First, I was unable to make the export/import mechanism work, so I’d have to manually transfer my furl entries. “Oh, well,” I thought, “at least I’ve only saved 108 things in furl so far. How bad can it be?” It seemed like just the sort of job to do during an upcoming Sunday reference shift. But then came the second problem. I learned this morning that I can’t exceed 255 characters when describing the page in del.icio.us’ notes field. This is a problem because I often include information on the licensing or rights statements in my descriptions of digitized collections (example here). I’d hate to lose that information.

So, persuade me. Which tool is better? Why? Do any of you use both? If so, how do you decide what goes where?

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Wikipedia/Britannica Debate Misses the Point

Published by Iris on Thursday, September 14th, 2006

Library Garden pointed me to this article (from the Sept 12th issue of the Wall Street Journal). In it Jimmy Wales, the founder and chairman of Wikipedia, and Dale Hoiberg, the senior vice president and editor in chief of the Encyclopedia Britannica, converse about the relative value of their products and their business models.

The format of the article is reproductions of emails the two men sent back and forth in the format of a long-distance debate. And it doesn’t take long for the tone to take on a certain heated quality… At one point Hoiberg accuses Wales of being “sneaky” by including a link to Wikipedia in one of his previous responses. To this Wales replies (deliberately simplifying the accusation of sneakiness?):

Sneaky? I beg to differ. On the Internet it is possible and desirable to enhance the understanding of the reader by linking directly to resources to enhance and further understanding.

Temper, temper my dear Wales. No need to be snide.

This is all beside the point, though. The major defect of the debate quarrel presented is that while they each couch of their arguments in terms of quality and value, neither of them recognizes that quality and value only exist in context. Here’s their quarrel in a nutshell:

Wales: “My product is better!”

Hoiberg: “No, MY product is better!”

Wales: “My product allows linking.”

Hoiberg: “Your writers are stupid.”

Wales: “Well… My product allows linking. And besides, my product is better.”

This is all well and good, but imagine this, if you will. I go to the doctor for the results of some tests. He tells me I’ve got heart disease but offers me encouraging news: there’s a new drug on the market which has a 100% cure rate. Imagine my disappointment when I find out that this new drug is designed to cure mumps. It may be extremely valuable to mumps sufferers, but it does me absolutely no good at all.

I’m not saying either Wikipedia or Britannica can cure you of heart disease or mumps. In fact, I’ve never heard of either of them curing any disease. But where Britannica is of the highest quality for some research, Wikipedia beats it hands down on such subjects as superheros and cult movies. Wikipedia also provides a glimpse of what people think is important at the moment, and in that way is a useful tool for the study of popular thought. I might add that Britannica’s entries on Pluto are woefully out of date, through no fault of its own. So also Wikipedia provides a good starting place for the study of very current events.

The point is this: your research needs determine which reference source (or any source, for that matter) is valuable.

Now I just wish I could teach all my students to be able to tell which they need, how to use them appropriately, and when not to use each.

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