Library Stuff

Well, this answers that question. Congrats to Feedster and Eurekster. (link via SEW Blog)

I don’t blog about search engines that much on LS. There is only so much that I can cover. Luckily for us, Search Engine Watch has just launched a weblog. My good friend, colleague, and partner Gary Price, will be heading up most of the posting there and I was thrilled when he IM’d me the RSS Feed. Suweeeeeeeeet.

As an aside, having a librarian working for Search Engine Watch provides more clout for our profession than many of us truly realize. Gary should be commended for his hard work and dedication to the profession. I for one, am glad to be his parter.

Note: Resourceshelf and Docuticker will not be going away, nor slowing down at all. We will continue to provide the quality resources that RS and DT readers have grown to love and appreciate.

I’ve been meaning to blog this for a few weeks. I was watching a Seinfeld re-run the other day:

“JERRY: George was scarfing shrimp at this meeting, and this guy says ‘Hey, George, the ocean called. They’re running outta shrimp.’

GEORGE: (really animated) Alright, alright. You see? This is why I hate writing with a large group. Everybody has their own little opinions, and it all gets homogenised, and you lose the whole edge of it. I’m going with jerk store! Jerk store is the line! Jerk store! Yess!”

I’m going to use this somehow in my proposal. The reason the group effort didn’t work (besides the fact that George has other wacky personality issues) is that they weren’t working independently of one another, they were not cognitively diverse (the Seinfeld four always had the same thought patterns), and it wasn’t a decentralized conversation (George wanted to be the top of the hierarchical schema – it was top-bottom, not bottom-top).

While the Seinfeld example is funny and a bit opaque, this a perfect example of why certain groups don’t work and how building the right social networks can enhance the collective intelligence of the group.

As an aside, I truly miss Seinfeld.

I mean to blog write about this last night, but I ran out of time. So here we go:

I ran across this article on Pivia, a company that helps huge employees in companies communicate with one another through a shared centralized resource. The article discusses a new feature called TeamTheme, which “is focused on providing information on the topic of improving the performance and effectiveness of distributed teams. Enterprises today have projects with teams scattered across the globe which include internal employees as well as contractors, suppliers, partners and customers collaborating at different stages of the project.”

While Pivia and its TeamThemes seem worthy of continuous monitoring, libraries could use this on a smaller scale. We would like to communicate with one another, but don’t need the fullness of an international community aggregate. What libraries need, IMO, is to be knowledgeable about their surroundings so that they can perform their tasks better. Which leads me to…

I’ve been trying to pinpoint a topic for an upcoming book proposal and I wasn’t sure how I wanted to approach it. Do I want to talk about cooperation in libraries? Probably not – this has been discussed to death the literature. Do I want to talk about collaboration in libraries? Most likely: Collaboration and cooperation are different. My thinking is that cooperation means working together to combine resources and collaboration means working together to create resources. Do I want to discuss collective wisdom and intelligence? Yup. Last, Do I want to talk about social networks? Today as I was thinking about that last issue, I realized that I wanted social networks to be the centerpiece of my proposal. I touched upon this the other day, when I discussed an article on the Social Butterfly.

Librarians who build social networks can and should be able to perform their jobs better, whether in reference, collection development, cataloging, children’s services, archiving, and more. Once these social networks are formed, then librarians can start collaborating with their colleagues. I’m also going to talk about group theory and how that affects collaboration and social networks. There is more to it than this, I know, but it’s a start.

I forgot where I saw this, but it looks worthy of a try. I’m too busy right now to test it though. Sorry.

Omea Reader:

“[A] tool which combines an RSS/ATOM feed reader, a newsgroup reader and a Web bookmark manager in a single easy to use interface. Omea Reader includes the full range of information management features of Omea Pro, including fast searching, views and categories, flags, annotations and much more. Omea Reader can be extended with new features or even new resource types through its powerful plugin development Open API.”

Grouper:

“Grouper is a new Windows based application that allows users to share their personal media within private groups. Grouper uses P2P technology connecting you directly to your friends’ hard drives where you can share large files in a safe, encrypted environment. Grouper is a simple install and requires no firewall reconfiguration”

Am I way off in thinking that this should support RSS? Shouldn’t I be able to send private messages via RSS and it display on a fellow “Grouperer’s” screen? I know that it has IM capabilities, but if the person is not at his/her computer, I wonder if RSS can be used to subscribe to messages…of course, the retriever would have to have Grouper running, right? Maybe not. Ouch. Brain freeze. (link via Jenny’s Furl Page)

One of my favorite weblog/RSS advocates, Amanda Etches-Johnson is back from non-blogging and mentioned the other day that she is teaching an 6 week online class on (what else), “Getting Started on Weblogs and RSS”:

“You will get a guided, hands-on introduction to blogging which will include the opportunity to create your own blog. You will explore the vast variety of library-related blogs on the Internet, and understand how blogs can be put to use in a library setting. Additionally, you will learn about the ways in which RSS feeds can be used in a library setting, and learn how to set-up and receive RSS content using aggregators.”

For those who still haven’t been bitten with the weblog/RSS bug for professional or library-related services, you may want to consider taking Amanda’s course.

Me? I’m just glad she’s back…

It’s resource day here at Library Stuff…

StepNewz:

“[O]ffers online news management services providing individuals and businesses with a friendly, secure and effective solution to effortlessly stay informed and up-to-date. StepNewz monitors thousands of web sites twenty-four hours per day looking for the latest news on every topic. In addition, StepNewz lets you design and publish your own news online. Web site managers can also take advantage of our services to display news headlines relevant to the content on their sites improving the experience for their users.”

Again, I haven’t tried this out, but comments are more than welcome if you have.

A PRWeb release led me to wURLdbook, a free web-based aggregator and bookmarking tool. I started an account and played with it a bit. While still in public beta, the features list is impressive. I’ve subscribed to the ATOM Feed for their weblog for future updates…

As an aside, I am a firm believer in web-based aggregators, especially those that can be placed on a personal server. This is why I use (and adore) Feed on Feeds. It has everything that I want and need in a aggregator. That is, until something better comes along…

It’s the end of a very sucecssful evening. I’ve submitted a consulting report, posted a bunch of blog stuff that has been sitting in drafts, and I’ve subscribed to the following RSS Feeds:

1) Amazon Books search for “Social Networks”

2) Blog 23 – “News and Information about Think Tank 23′s knowledge management and information retrieval products and services, as well as some punditry about the KM and search spaces.” (RSS Feed)

3) e-literate – “What Michael Feldstein is Learning About Online Learning…Online” (RSS Feed)

4) Laudably – “This website is a living website known as a weblog, where we will discuss issues that have relevance to our clients and anyone who is interested in learning about Social Software.” (RSS Feed)