RSS

What I like about RSS, or Really Simple Syndication, is that you can subscribe to new content from a favourite website and it will appear in a link on your blog rather than you having to go to the URL of that website and check it for new content. This is Pull Technology versus Push Technology.

To subscribe to news feeds I looked for the Powerhouse Museum Picture of the Day; two topics on the ABC News website (environment and aboriginal); the White House 08 blog on the Sydney Morning Herald's blog website (www.smh.com.au/blogcentral/index.htm); and a blog from the Spooky Men's Chorale, a group of folk-singing comedians based in the Blue Mountains.

Another blog I saw and found interesting was by Helene Blowers who is credited with founding Learning 2.0 (http://plcmclearning.blogspot.com). She said she was asked whether the use,or growth in use, of Web 2.0 may be unsustainable. I found it interesting that she said that is not the point; she suggested we stop focusing on long-term issues and solutions and simply try things out, and think of pilot projects and the value of transience. I am not sure where I stand on this. On the one hand, I think some new inventions wouldn't happen if people only thought about the long-term implications. Also libraries are in danger of being left behind as information providers if they don't learn how to use Web 2.0. However I don't think Web 2.0 can necessarily be used to replace long-term solutions that may be outdated unless we think through the implications. I wonder how libraries in other cultures are handling this. In 2001 I asked in Germany whether they had corporate libraries there and was told no, corporations have information portals on the internet.

I wonder if there is some way a public libraries' users can "subscribe" to its continuous catalogue updates, whatever format these might appear in. Another possible use of RSS in a library could be updates of a writer talks program; the library where I work hosts regular talks by writers. Another could be updates of a book club program.

photos

This is an image of cats sleeping. I found it on Flickr by searching on "cats". The creator is tjflex2. I am not sure if this is how I am meant to acknowledge the author. I am a cat lover and had cats as a child, they always lived outside and lay around outside like the cats here.

I looked at one of the pages on Flickr relating to tagging and noticed that sometimes pictures are tagged with variants of a word. E.g. nyc, New York City and New York are all possible tags. This is less sophisticated than a library catalogue where there are cross-references to a "preferred" subject. However, if a browser accepts fuzzy logic this may not matter as the browser may look for variations on a word, so 'nyc' may bring up 'new york' and 'ny'. I'm not sure if this is how it works really.

The idea of Creative Commons is an interesting one, allowing you to set limitations on use of material so it is not "all rights reserved" and not "no rights reserved".

challenges and discovery in Week 3

Today I tried to access this blog from a PC loaded with Windows in Korean at my local internet cafe. I wasn't sure what the labels meant. Then I managed to "get in through the back door" by logging into http://www.blogger.com/. I then selected language=English from the right hand toolbar and logged in. This is useful to know because I use my local internet cafe if I need extra time for a lesson sometimes. Also, I don't have a PC at home. So this is progress. :-)

Hello, I am trying again the next day - at a public access computer in a public library. When I tried to open some links attached to the Week 3 lesson, the browser closed down. I had this problem with the Library of Congress photos link, the FAQ page on Flickr groups and the link at the text "look at this photo" under "Creative Commons". I also couldn't open an image to link it to my blog. As frustrating as this is, it illustrates that public access computers in libraries often have glitches, and library staff often have to assist users with them, especially on the weekend when specialist IT staff may not be there.

I looked at Mosman Library's photos on Flickr and saw many pictures of youth events including "Shoreshocked". I wonder if Mosman Library found it difficult to get permission to publish photos of minors there. When I typed in my community I found several libraries with the same name, some of them in the U.S.

Well, I did discover something else this week. I came across the AquaBrowser at Queens Library in the Borough of Queens, New York. I'm not sure if AquaBrowser or similar technology is covered later in this course, however I found this intriguing. It is a catalogue for a library which seems to have about 60 branch libraries. It uses fuzzy logic and shows a diagram a bit like a star with rays radiating out when you type in a keyword. It shows associations, translations, and spelling variants. I typed in "Josquin" and found a few similar words; you could select the one you wanted. It then brought up a library catalogue display a bit like a Google display. Some records were brief, others more detailed. I was impressed with the fuzzy logic because borrowers often misspell things and then it's hard to find them.