Library Stuff

Ellyssa Kroski has joined the OPML-Newbies group and has started playing with Reading Lists. She’s created an OPML file of library conference related stuff. Although, she writes:

“As I created and tested my OPML file, I discovered that although it is easy to add plain html links to the outline, the news reader tools are primarily focused on subscriptions. As it turned out, the majority of my resources were not RSS feeds and so didn’t appear within my reader nor did they look as snazzy in the outline. Hopefully future readers will provide increased functionality for non-rss resources because this file type is a great way to gather and display resources of all different file types.”

Shucks.

On another note, David Bigwood is playing with OPML and had an interesting idea about using it in MARC records:

“[W]e could include OPML files inside a MARC record. Field 505, contents, for example. Often a book will have topical sections with chapters and subchapters. There is no clean, easy way to mark-up this in MARC. Its a snap in OPML. Or how about links to an e-book and then to each chapter of that book. We could have a string of 856 fields or an OPML file in one field that our users could expand as necessary. Just some initial thoughts.”

Another potential use for Reading Lists, this time in education. Many professors are assigning blogs as required reading. If they want to add blogs during the course of the semester (or if the students want to add others), theyt could create a Reading List and update as needed. The students’ aggregators (they would have to be compatible with Reading Lists of course) will automatically update with the new blogs. No excuse for not reading assignments (“I totally forgot to add that feed to my aggregator”).

Heh.

Just a quick post to remind you that the Carnival of the Infosciences is coming to Library Stuff on Monday. Send all of your submissions to stevenmcohen [at] gmail.com.

Yet another neat looking (content wise) librarian blog:

aleah marie – “Tales of an aspiring librarian.”

Subscribed!

It’s a good thing LISfeeds is coming back online soon. We have so many new blogs to add.

This paper should be an interesting read:

“This paper analyzes the Web and raises a significant question: ‘Does the Web save the time of the users?’ This question is analyzed in the context of Five Laws of the Web. What do these laws mean? The laws are meant to be elemental, to convey a deep understanding and capture the essential meaning of the World Wide Web. These laws may seem simplistic, but in fact they express a simple, crystal-clear vision of what the Web ought to be. Moreover, we intend to echo the simplicity of Ranganathan’s Five Laws of Library Science which inspired them.”

In his latest column, he writes:

“Despite the lack of buzz on the vendor floor, there were some buzzwords that vendors and libraries could both latch onto and apply to their markets. ‘Library 2.0′ made the rounds as an extension of last year’s “Web 2.0.” Put simply, the 2.0 moniker denotes a next generation of web technology. Here are a few simplistic 2.0 juxtapositions (for which I will probably incur the wrath of technology mavens): Britannica Online is Web 1.0, Wikipedia is 2.0; Mapquest is 1.0, the new interactive Google and Yahoo maps are 2.0. More than just new applications, Web 2.0 connotes a platform that improves with usage and personal interaction. For instance, taxonomies are very 1.0; folksonomies—the individual tagging and creation of metadata—is tr�s 2.0.”

“Many librarians have branded the Web 2.0 concept as Library 2.0. As with most technology, libraries don’t embrace something until they can find a use for it. A few years ago, you would have thought that libraries had invented online chat for all the hype that virtual reference created. Some have gone so far as to suggest that anything new in libraries is Library 2.0 and everything old is anti-2.0. I bristle at this “if you ain’t fer it yer agin’ it” mentality.”

I’ve recently been formally introduced to Andrew Pace. He’s a wonderful speaker and a thought leader in our profession. And, best of all, he can be controversial (and not just controversial for controversials sake, he really believes what he writes – he’s no phony). He tells you what he thinks without having to wonder whether if he has offended you. A straight shooter who likes confrontation. Just the type of colleague that I hope to enjoy many more discussions with. Honest, open, and transparent.