Catalogs, Catalogs, Catalogs...

When I saw that this week's topic was catalogs, I thought finally it was a chance to express my grievances with online catalogs.  From being both a library patron and library staff member I know that the online catalog is a major asset to many library functions.  Most days I think I would be lost without it.  However, the more I use it the more issues I have with it and the more flaws I find in it.  Quite honestly I feel that OSL needs to do a major overhaul of the online catalog.  As I was reading through the articles, many of the things the authors mentioned about problems with older OPACs are many of the same issues I have with OSL's online catalog.  Some of the major ones I have come across are no option for Boolean searching, no spell checking, required to search author last name first, no option to browse, inability to use multiple filters, etc.  Overall the main problem is the lack of forgiveness of mistakes.  I think OSL tried to offer a more modern option by offering a version of the catalog through encore, but quite honestly it is even worse.  I have tried to search for books several times in encore and every single time the book I was searching for did not show up, however when I used the classic catalog it was one of the first options.  (So Aggravating!!!)
I think in a world of Google and Amazon searching, OSL needs to update their OPAC to allow it to be searchable in the way that patrons are used to searching outside of the library website.  Since we are in the business to serve our patrons in the best way possible, it would make sense to design a user friendly online catalog.  It seems like OSL might need to read up on some literature on next-gen catalogs and start working on implementing these things.  Although the literature, for me, was a bit technical at times, the message is clear about what is out and what is in and the OSL catalog features almost everything that is considered an issue/problem with older catalogs and almost none of the features of next-gen catalogs.  Although I haven't heard any word, I truly hope that the folks down at the OSL offices are working to create a next-gen catalog that is user friendly, but also librarian friendly and incorporates forgiving features. One can only hope... 

Book Review

Since spring break ended last week, I have being going 100 miles an hour working on trying to get through all the assignments due this week (never mind all the things I need to start working on that are due in April).  But I finally finished my book review for Personal Connections in the Digital Age by Nancy Baym.  I finished reading the book over spring break, but I couldn't really decided in what medium I wanted to present my review.  After toying with a few different things I decided to go with an animated video.  I found it to be a bit of a challenge as I had limits to how long/how many characters could be put into the video.  Although it did limit some of the things I wanted to say about the book, it allowed me to only include the most important points and weed out the unnecessary ones. 
Here is the link to my Book Review .

Social Tagging Sites

In my last post I gave my impression of the social tagging site delicious.com.  In addition to that I checked out both LibraryThing and CiteULike.  I first looked at CiteULike and I really like the idea of it and kind of wish I had found out about it sooner.  You can collect all of your scholarly articles in one place as well as search through all the articles in the Everyone's Library (which is enormous).  Funny enough the first article I saw was about social media use in libraries. Overall this site would have been quite useful for me in both undergrad and graduate school to keep track of all the articles I was using for papers, but now that I'm in the home stretch it really won't be of much use to me.

I've visited LibraryThing before and found it to be a great resource for those looking to catalog their home book collection.  You can add all your books, interact with others, review books, and once enough books are added to your library see what books are recommended for you.  However I have to admit that I am a dedicated Shelfari user.  I personally like the design better as it is more appealing to the eye, I can see my shelf streamlined with what I have read, what I am reading, and what I plan to read.  A while back I also checked out Goodreads, but in the end Shelfari has come out on top as my favorite.

Folksonomies and Tagging

When seeing that the topic of the readings this week were folksonomies and tagging, my first thought was "What the heck is a folksonomy??"  I was well aware of tagging, but folksonomies were a complete mystery to me.  Before I even started the article on it I will admit I Googled the term first to get a basic definition.  From what I gathered a folksonomy is essentially social bookmarking/tagging.  As I ventured on to read the article by Wichowski, I saw a quote from David Weinberger in the section on scholarly response that really seemed to sum it all up.  “The old way creates a tree. The new rakes leaves together.”  Tagging creates a collection of subjects for one person, however folksonomies/social tagging bring each persons collection of subjects together and allows them to interact about them. 

Although reading both articles gave me a good idea of what social tagging was, I thought the only way to understand it fully was to explore a social tagging website.  Since both articles mentioned delicious.com I decided that was the one to go with.  I wasn't really sure what to expect, but from what I gathered people add different tags to their stacks.  From there you can click on the tag to see what articles are included in that tag and view the other people that also follow that tag.  Definitely an interesting concept, although not sure it particularly appeals to me.

The Importance of Circ and Reference.

I remembered seeing this posted somewhere a while back and I happened to stumble across it again this weekend and knew I had to post it here!

So I am currently 2/3s of the way done with my book review book, Personal Connections in the Digital Age by Nancy Baym.  So far the points made in the book are interesting although a bit theory heavy, which makes for slow reading, especially when you are taking notes at the same time.  But this does not bother me to much, my real complaint is that the size of the text is a bit too small and would be more agreeable to read if the text size was increased. 

Thoughts on Twitter...

So I have been extremely busy the past week working both my jobs and attempting to do as much homework as I can before I leave for vacation in a few days, so hence my absence the past 3 or 4 days from the blog.

Anyways, about Twitter.... I have had a Twitter for about 3 years now and I have to admit that I never really could get into it.  I am much more of a passive user than an active user.  I enjoy reading the tweets of the celebrities I follow as well as my friends who tend to update their Twitter far more than their Facebook.  However I am not the kind of person that feels the need to constantly say things, so I rarely tweet, at that I don't really update my Facebook status that often either...  But for the sake of this class I will attempt to check Twitter a few times a week and send out a tweet or two.

In terms of people/organizations that I follow, I at one point got a bit overzealous with my following of celebrities, but recently I unfollowed a whole bunch since I realized many of them I didn't care about anymore (I'm now down to about 80 or so).  The ones that I most enjoy are:
1. Chuck Palahniuk (one of my favorite authors, he posts great links)
2. ModCloth (I want to buy all the clothes from their site, following them on social media is dangerous)
3. Emmanuel College (my former college)
4. Neil Gaiman (another one of my favorite authors)
5. Adam Richman (serious who doesn't love Man vs. Food!)

I am going to try to follow some more library related things in the coming days...