Library Stuff

I was about to post an interesting quote from Joyce Carol Oates and decided against it at the last minute. Then I read Meredith Farkas’s post on her foray into book writing. Here’s what she has to say:

“[M]y big fear is that it won’t be good. It’s one thing to write a sucky article that no one will remember a year later, but a sucky book will be on Amazon for a good long while and will be a constant reminder of your suckitude (don’t worry — I don’t write like this in the book!). I know I’m never happy with my writing and am just being paranoid, but I guess I’m just starting to become aware of the weight of what I’m doing”

So, here’s the quote from JCO:

“Self-criticism is an art not many are qualified to practice”

Very fitting. Writing a book is a rite of passage (for me at least), and one that I’m experiencing now and will continue into 2007. The end result is more satisfying than one realizes and that feeling can only come at the end of the process. Hang in there Meredith!

A Feed Is Born – RSS, Webfeeds and Information Overload!

How do I NOT subscribe to this one, based on the title alone. Now, maybe I shouldn’t judge a blog by its title…(link via Furl)

Steven Bell asked me to clarify how I use tagging systems for research purposes:

“I find that the tags are usually far too broad to help much with “keeping up” on a particular topic. For example, there are tags for “college” or “university” which yield far too broad results. What I really want is “higher education” but since tags can only be a single term (at least in the sites I’ve tried – unless you want to hyphenate – which no one has done) it’s difficult to get specific enough. Same thing with “academic libraries”. The tag “library” yields information on every kind of library, including data libraries. If you’ve found a better way to get specificity with these tools for research (other than having a highly unique single term) share your tips.”

Looking back, I wonder why I didn’t elaborate before (I must have had other stuff on my mind). So, here is how I do it. It’s not a completely thought out, but I have found that it works on a majority of the information I research.

As I mentioned, the concept of social capital is an interest of mine. In del.icio.us, I subscribe to three feeds that could possibly lead to new resources on the topic, based on my experiences with user-tagging personalities: socialcapital, social-capital, and social_capital. You’ll notice that most of the resources are different due to the different ways in which people tag content as Social Capital. Sure, there will be some hit or miss, but there’s always hit or miss when it comes to retrospective research (well, this has been my experience at least).

To take Steven’s example, take a look at highereducation, higher-education (heh – the first tag I see on this entry is Steven Bell’s blog, which he seemed to have tagged himself), and higher_education. The resulting resources aren’t bad, but they could be better. Social Capital is a narrower phrase than Higher Education

Thus, maybe this works for certain phrases and not others. I have had much success with many of the tag feeds that I read. This would make for an interesting scholarly study. Does anyone have any more suggestions for using social software (tagging resources in particular) in research? Maybe finding those who tag a lot on topics that interest you? That seems to work for me as well.