Multimedia presents a variety of ways to learn on topics these days. I found one on my topic about library digitization projects that is pretty interesting. I retrieved it from: http://www.slideshare.net/search/slideshow?q=digitization+libraries
Check out this SlideShare Presentation I found on The Smithsonian Institution Libraries' Digital Library:
Saturday, October 31, 2009
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Seek and Ye Shall Find... and Find... and Find...
Today a wealth of information is stored electronically, and is just waiting to be accessed. With a few keystrokes, one can search a database and retrieve thousands of hits on any given topic. Finding information is easy ... finding useful information that pertains to a specific area of interest can be more tricky though. For a librarian, being familiar with the different types of searches possible is crucial for helping patrons obtain the search results they need quickly and accurately.
This week in my librarianship class, we have been learning more about four types of searches commonly performed in databases. They are:
So this week's blog will be spent going over what each type of search is, how to perform each search, and what kind of results each search produces. For a little variety, I plan on performing each type of search in a different database.
1. Building Block
The Building Block search is useful because it has you identify the most important components, or facets, of your search topic and then search by the terms for each facet. These terms are joined by Boolean operators (and, or, not) when searching. My topic for this blog is "Approaches libraries take to organize information digitally". First, I break down this topic into three primary facets: digitization, organizing, and approaches. Then I designate search terms for those three facets:
S1 = digitization or digital or digitizing
S2 = organizing or arranging or planning
S3 = approaches or methods or strategies
I will join the searches with the Boolean operator "and" so that S1 and S2 and S3 become my total search. I decided to use the JStor database for this search:
This search yielded 11,602 hits. The results for this search appear like this:
2. Specific Facet First
The purpose of performing a Specific Facet First search is to determine which facet of your search is likely to produce the fewest results and then search for it to determine if it is too limiting. If this search doesn't return very many hits, say less than 30-35, it's probably not a very good topic for me to explore.
Because digitization is the most specific facet of the three I had when I did my Boolean search, I feel this facet should be used for my Specific Facet First search, which I decided to perform in the Project Muse database (which is a great database to use if you just want to browse journals, by the way). This search received 451 hits.
Project Muse displays retrieved items as follows:
3. Citation Pearl Growing
The third search method is Citation Pearl Growing, which is also known as "snowballing". For this type of search, you use known items or previous search results to obtain additional terms with which to search. My Specific Facet First search using only digitization was a little too precise, so I decided to pull the terms "project" and "preservation " out of that search to perform additional searches. I added these terms using the Boolean "or" function, and I performed the search in the WorldCat database.
This type of search can really expand the number of hits received. This particular search yielded 210,805 results:
4. Successive Fractions
The last search method, the Successive Fractions search, requires using the broadest facet first, then narrow by adding a second and third facet. In some ways, it's an opposite approach from doing a Building Block search.
Looking at the results from my Citation Pearl Growing search, I realize I have too many results, and not all of them relate to my specific topic. I look through my results, and decide to narrow my search by adding the limiting date range of 2005 to 2009 and to only retrieve full text articles. I used the LibLit database for this search:
This search produced 261 results:
Before taking this class, I never knew there were so many different ways to search! The only method I was familiar with was walking the stacks of my local library, which is known as browsing, and performing Google searches. It's now possible to browse in the virtual world, though I find that performing these types of searches and others in various databases procure for me the information I want much more quickly. What I found most remarkable is that so many results can be found that many methods have been devised for reducing search results, from applying limiters, using the Boolean "not" function, and performing searches like the Successive Factions search. The more I learn, the more I want to know... and now, I know how to find it.
This week in my librarianship class, we have been learning more about four types of searches commonly performed in databases. They are:
- Building Block Search
- Citation Pearl Growing Search
- Specific Facet First Search
- Successive Fractions Search
So this week's blog will be spent going over what each type of search is, how to perform each search, and what kind of results each search produces. For a little variety, I plan on performing each type of search in a different database.
1. Building Block
The Building Block search is useful because it has you identify the most important components, or facets, of your search topic and then search by the terms for each facet. These terms are joined by Boolean operators (and, or, not) when searching. My topic for this blog is "Approaches libraries take to organize information digitally". First, I break down this topic into three primary facets: digitization, organizing, and approaches. Then I designate search terms for those three facets:
S1 = digitization or digital or digitizing
S2 = organizing or arranging or planning
S3 = approaches or methods or strategies
I will join the searches with the Boolean operator "and" so that S1 and S2 and S3 become my total search. I decided to use the JStor database for this search:
(click any picture to enlarge)
This search yielded 11,602 hits. The results for this search appear like this:
The purpose of performing a Specific Facet First search is to determine which facet of your search is likely to produce the fewest results and then search for it to determine if it is too limiting. If this search doesn't return very many hits, say less than 30-35, it's probably not a very good topic for me to explore.
Because digitization is the most specific facet of the three I had when I did my Boolean search, I feel this facet should be used for my Specific Facet First search, which I decided to perform in the Project Muse database (which is a great database to use if you just want to browse journals, by the way). This search received 451 hits.
Project Muse displays retrieved items as follows:
3. Citation Pearl Growing
The third search method is Citation Pearl Growing, which is also known as "snowballing". For this type of search, you use known items or previous search results to obtain additional terms with which to search. My Specific Facet First search using only digitization was a little too precise, so I decided to pull the terms "project" and "preservation " out of that search to perform additional searches. I added these terms using the Boolean "or" function, and I performed the search in the WorldCat database.
This type of search can really expand the number of hits received. This particular search yielded 210,805 results:
4. Successive Fractions
The last search method, the Successive Fractions search, requires using the broadest facet first, then narrow by adding a second and third facet. In some ways, it's an opposite approach from doing a Building Block search.
Looking at the results from my Citation Pearl Growing search, I realize I have too many results, and not all of them relate to my specific topic. I look through my results, and decide to narrow my search by adding the limiting date range of 2005 to 2009 and to only retrieve full text articles. I used the LibLit database for this search:
This search produced 261 results:
Before taking this class, I never knew there were so many different ways to search! The only method I was familiar with was walking the stacks of my local library, which is known as browsing, and performing Google searches. It's now possible to browse in the virtual world, though I find that performing these types of searches and others in various databases procure for me the information I want much more quickly. What I found most remarkable is that so many results can be found that many methods have been devised for reducing search results, from applying limiters, using the Boolean "not" function, and performing searches like the Successive Factions search. The more I learn, the more I want to know... and now, I know how to find it.
Monday, October 12, 2009
Tagging: More Than Just a Kid's Game
Until a few weeks ago, if anyone had said "tagging" to me, I would have immediately thought of the child's game Tag where one kid taps another, yells "Tag! You're it!", and runs away. For the past few weeks in my librarianship class, I've had reason to consider what it means to tag someone or something.
Loosely defined, tagging means that you have provided something with a label, some sort of classification or category, or a way to track it. Scientists tag animals in the wild. Grocers tag canned goods with price labels or bar codes. In the game, one child tags another as being "it".
In recent years, the Web has applied this word to mean a specific function in its virtual reality. On the Internet, tagging is now defined as labeling objects that exist there. Some examples of objects which can be tagged are pictures, books, articles, Youtube videos, or blogs.
You may have already performed tagging without realizing that is what it's officially called. I've posted pictures on my Facebook and Myspace pages for years now, and have labeled them so my family and friends would know who's in the pictures. Those labels are considered tags. Though useful for my intentions, tags on the Internet also serve a far larger purpose.
Tags can be read by search engines and used to organize, categorize, and identify various forms of information available on the Internet. They help to bring a small measure of order to the vast chaos of data posted daily. When I first learned about tagging in my librarianship class, I had some difficulty imagining exactly how tags could assist me in finding information I might want. I have since performed a search for information on my blog topic - digitization - using only tags, and was pleasantly surprised to obtain useful information immediately in this way.
To perform my search, I first visited a website called LibraryThing at http://www.librarything.com/ and opened a free account with them. LibraryThing has over 44 million books cataloged online for the benefit of its users. It allows users to perform searches by author, title, subject, tags, and several other ways.
Once I had my account set up, I clicked on the Search tab and entered "digitization" into the Tag search box and clicked Search:
(click on image above to enlarge / see full image)
Next, I read through the results it provided:
(click on image above to enlarge / see full image)
Finally, I clicked on one and looked at the book I had selected.
Notice at the bottom of the image directly above, there is a list of words associated with this book. Those words are all the tags assigned to this particular book within LibraryThing. One of these tags, digitization, is how I was able to find this particular book out of 44 million in a matter of seconds.
I also decided to try a search for a book regarding digitization projects for academic libraries using Books In Print (BIP), a database I can access through my college, and then see what tags were provided for it at LibraryThing. I performed a keyword search with the words "digitization," "academic," and "library." My search yielded 53 matches. I pulled up one of these books in LibraryThing:
New Challenges Facing Academic Librarians Today: Electronic Journals, Archival Digitization, Document Delivery, Etc by Jean Caswell
Here is what the tag cloud for that book looks like:
(click on image above to enlarge / see full image)
The truly great thing about tagging is that anyone can do it. This means that everyone is able to help organize the information available on the Internet at will. The only real downside I see to tagging is that, unfortunately, anyone can do it. Someone who's never even read the book above could, if they wanted to, post a tag for the book that has nothing to do with its subject matter - like "rodeo" or "amusement parks".
It is my hope that taggers will remember that tagging on the Internet is not a kid's game. Tagging succeeds on the honor system, and is performed on a goodwill basis. Done right, it has the potential for helping Internet users navigate the Web a little faster and easier, which is truly a huge accomplishment given the size and scope of this vast environment.
Loosely defined, tagging means that you have provided something with a label, some sort of classification or category, or a way to track it. Scientists tag animals in the wild. Grocers tag canned goods with price labels or bar codes. In the game, one child tags another as being "it".
In recent years, the Web has applied this word to mean a specific function in its virtual reality. On the Internet, tagging is now defined as labeling objects that exist there. Some examples of objects which can be tagged are pictures, books, articles, Youtube videos, or blogs.
You may have already performed tagging without realizing that is what it's officially called. I've posted pictures on my Facebook and Myspace pages for years now, and have labeled them so my family and friends would know who's in the pictures. Those labels are considered tags. Though useful for my intentions, tags on the Internet also serve a far larger purpose.
Tags can be read by search engines and used to organize, categorize, and identify various forms of information available on the Internet. They help to bring a small measure of order to the vast chaos of data posted daily. When I first learned about tagging in my librarianship class, I had some difficulty imagining exactly how tags could assist me in finding information I might want. I have since performed a search for information on my blog topic - digitization - using only tags, and was pleasantly surprised to obtain useful information immediately in this way.
To perform my search, I first visited a website called LibraryThing at http://www.librarything.com/ and opened a free account with them. LibraryThing has over 44 million books cataloged online for the benefit of its users. It allows users to perform searches by author, title, subject, tags, and several other ways.
Once I had my account set up, I clicked on the Search tab and entered "digitization" into the Tag search box and clicked Search:
(click on image above to enlarge / see full image)Next, I read through the results it provided:
(click on image above to enlarge / see full image)Finally, I clicked on one and looked at the book I had selected.
(click on image above to enlarge / see full image)
Notice at the bottom of the image directly above, there is a list of words associated with this book. Those words are all the tags assigned to this particular book within LibraryThing. One of these tags, digitization, is how I was able to find this particular book out of 44 million in a matter of seconds.
I also decided to try a search for a book regarding digitization projects for academic libraries using Books In Print (BIP), a database I can access through my college, and then see what tags were provided for it at LibraryThing. I performed a keyword search with the words "digitization," "academic," and "library." My search yielded 53 matches. I pulled up one of these books in LibraryThing:
New Challenges Facing Academic Librarians Today: Electronic Journals, Archival Digitization, Document Delivery, Etc by Jean Caswell
Here is what the tag cloud for that book looks like:
(click on image above to enlarge / see full image)The truly great thing about tagging is that anyone can do it. This means that everyone is able to help organize the information available on the Internet at will. The only real downside I see to tagging is that, unfortunately, anyone can do it. Someone who's never even read the book above could, if they wanted to, post a tag for the book that has nothing to do with its subject matter - like "rodeo" or "amusement parks".
It is my hope that taggers will remember that tagging on the Internet is not a kid's game. Tagging succeeds on the honor system, and is performed on a goodwill basis. Done right, it has the potential for helping Internet users navigate the Web a little faster and easier, which is truly a huge accomplishment given the size and scope of this vast environment.
Sunday, October 4, 2009
RSS to the Rescue
The web is changing so rapidly these days, it is difficult for people to keep up with all the information available online. I remember when I first started surfing the web several years ago. Sometimes I would find an article or website I liked, and I wanted to receive updates whenever it had new information to provide. Receiving updates then involved signing up to the website, providing my email information, and checking my email regularly to see if I'd received any update notices. At the time, this worked well enough because I didn't receive a lot of emails in those early days. Every email was exciting and wonderful.
A few years ago, spamming was invented. Well, maybe it's been more than a few years now, but it didn't hit my inbox until about 2006 (maybe I was a lucky one). My Internet activity increased greatly that year, and I found myself inundated with hundreds of unwanted emails. I would mark them as spam so they would be filtered out, but I learned to dread checking my email. During that time, I lost contact with many websites I had enjoyed, as I would accidentally delete their emails or incorrectly mark one of their update emails as spam, tragically ensuring I would never hear from them again.
Apparently, this issue has affected many web users. To combat the problem of keeping interested parties notified of updates, a format called Really Simple Syndication - or RSS for short - was invented.* Similar to bookmarking a website page, RSS allows users to subscribe to updates called "feeds", which are delivered directly to your RSS reader. Some browsers like Firefox or Safari have these readers built into them. Since I use Firefox, this helpful feature saved me the extra step of downloading a reader onto my computer. When I subscribe to an RSS, Firefox automatically saves a folder in my Bookmark area that I can access and see the feeds currently available for that RSS.
RSS feeds are easy to subscribe to, as websites provide bright orange buttons to click on which bring you to an area that walks you through the quick subscription process. Mozilla Firefox browser originally created an RSS logo that was since adopted by Microsoft's Internet Explorer and Outlook in December of 2005. The logo is a picture of audio waves, and it looks like this:
Another common icon for RSS is an orange button with XML written on it, used by many websites because RSS is written in the Internet coding language XML (eXtensible Markup Language). Here is that icon:
For my librarianship class, we are studying RSS feeds this week, so I wanted to find one that deals with my topic of library digitization. I found a very interesting blog called "the future is yesterday", which has updates and sometimes discusses my chosen topic. I found this blog's February 10, 2006 article, titled "More details on Internet Archive’s Scribe Book Scanner Project", very interesting and relevant to my topic. The article discusses how small scale digitization projects are being implemented using digital cameras and mirrors to take pictures of book pages, which can then be uploaded to a virtual archive. It was worth the read, and I look forward to seeing what new articles this blogger may produce in the future. To facilitate doing so, I have added a link to its RSS feed, which is listed to the top right of this blog.
*RSS information and logos obtained from: http://www.usa.gov/Topics/Reference_Shelf/Libraries/RSS_Library/What_Is_RSS.shtml and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSS
A few years ago, spamming was invented. Well, maybe it's been more than a few years now, but it didn't hit my inbox until about 2006 (maybe I was a lucky one). My Internet activity increased greatly that year, and I found myself inundated with hundreds of unwanted emails. I would mark them as spam so they would be filtered out, but I learned to dread checking my email. During that time, I lost contact with many websites I had enjoyed, as I would accidentally delete their emails or incorrectly mark one of their update emails as spam, tragically ensuring I would never hear from them again.
Apparently, this issue has affected many web users. To combat the problem of keeping interested parties notified of updates, a format called Really Simple Syndication - or RSS for short - was invented.* Similar to bookmarking a website page, RSS allows users to subscribe to updates called "feeds", which are delivered directly to your RSS reader. Some browsers like Firefox or Safari have these readers built into them. Since I use Firefox, this helpful feature saved me the extra step of downloading a reader onto my computer. When I subscribe to an RSS, Firefox automatically saves a folder in my Bookmark area that I can access and see the feeds currently available for that RSS.
RSS feeds are easy to subscribe to, as websites provide bright orange buttons to click on which bring you to an area that walks you through the quick subscription process. Mozilla Firefox browser originally created an RSS logo that was since adopted by Microsoft's Internet Explorer and Outlook in December of 2005. The logo is a picture of audio waves, and it looks like this:
Another common icon for RSS is an orange button with XML written on it, used by many websites because RSS is written in the Internet coding language XML (eXtensible Markup Language). Here is that icon:
For my librarianship class, we are studying RSS feeds this week, so I wanted to find one that deals with my topic of library digitization. I found a very interesting blog called "the future is yesterday", which has updates and sometimes discusses my chosen topic. I found this blog's February 10, 2006 article, titled "More details on Internet Archive’s Scribe Book Scanner Project", very interesting and relevant to my topic. The article discusses how small scale digitization projects are being implemented using digital cameras and mirrors to take pictures of book pages, which can then be uploaded to a virtual archive. It was worth the read, and I look forward to seeing what new articles this blogger may produce in the future. To facilitate doing so, I have added a link to its RSS feed, which is listed to the top right of this blog.
*RSS information and logos obtained from: http://www.usa.gov/Topics/Reference_Shelf/Libraries/RSS_Library/What_Is_RSS.shtml and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSS
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