Sept. 25: Atkinson, Lindgaard

Ross Atkinson's article "Transversality and the Role of the Library as Fair Witness" brings up several extremely important points to consider for the future of libraries and librarianship. Atkinson explains four attributes that make a library a library. First and foremost, a library must have a collection of information from which to choose and this collection must be made up of authoritative sources. Atkinson calls these first-order attributes. Secondly, a library must exhibit metafunctionality and preeminence in its collection, or what Atkinson calls second-order attributes. Metafunctionality refers to the contextuality of other objects in the collection, while preeminence signifies the library's place in the community. Atkinson discusses these aspects of modern libraries in conjunction with the digital information explosion that is currently changing the face of libraries; especially academic libraries. The library as "fair witness" (a term taken from Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land) comes into play with the accuracy and believability of the library as cultural institution. Atkinson proposes (and I wholeheartedly agree with him) that libraries take on the role of "trusted agent behind the technology" - or fair witness (178). This is librarianship at its core. Ranganathan's Five Laws of Library Science came to mind as I was reading this article. Number four - save the time of the reader - seems especially appropriate here. Atkinson goes on to explain the concept of transversality in regard to the library as fair witness. Transversality takes first-order and second-order attributes, along with the idea of fair witness, and gives the user the capacity to make value judgements and draw conclusions from the information and services provided by the library. Transversality is, simply, interoperability (182). Atkinson also discusses the trend of treating libraries as commercial information services, which goes against every librarian grain of my being. Information for sale? No. Wrong. Free information for all. The author cautions against going in this direction and says that, although it is important for libraries to find new sources for funding, "[i]t is...absolutely essential that the library take the greatest care not to emulate too stringently the values of commercial information intermediaries" (185). As we all know, information brokers do not embody the "fair witness" ideal of the library. The article is wrapped up by the (at least in my mind) positive note that libraries must sometimes act in opposition to their own political or even financial interests in order to serve as fair witnesses in society. This reminded me of the many times I've heard about some group or other wanting a particular book removed from library shelves. For example, a group might want a homosexual-themed children's book taken off the shelf, even when the book is specifically targeted to a juvenile audience (such as a book about having gay parents). I think in cases like these, libraries should take a stand and keep the "controversial" book on the shelf. Parenting should be the responsibility of parents, not librarians. As a fair witness, the library has the responsibility to present the true record of society, regardless of whether it ruffles someone's feathers!

Gitte Lindgaard's article, "Attention Web Designers: You have 50 milliseconds to make a good first impression!" presents the results of three studies on how users perceive web site design. The participants viewed a set of 100 preselected web sites in random order for 500 milliseconds and again for 50 milliseconds and rated each on its visual appeal. Interestingly, results showed that participants made a decision as to whether a site was visually appealing in a matter of 50 milliseconds. The authors indicate that preliminary favorable or unfavorable attitudes toward the aesthetics of a particular site would most likely color the users' subsequent impressions of the site, regardless of whether it was well-designed (from a usability standpoint) or not. The article delves somewhat into what constitutes the aesthetics of "good design" but states that further research is still needed to arrive at a conclusion. I know that the use of color and white space, as well as the choice of font, can make or break a web site for me. If I see Comic Sans, I run the other way in terror!

This is an interesting site I found while searching the web for "bad web sites," which felt just a little surreal... I think I'll bookmark this one for my final project. It has some great tips for avoiding "trainwrecks on the Information Superhighway". Most of the ones I viewed featured really bad color combinations that almost hurt my eyes. Check out the Association of International Glaucoma Societies page if you want to be really confused and, dare I say, disgusted.

Sept. 18: Gradmann, Mohamed

This week's readings were about implementing metadata and Semantic Web technology to make searching the web easier and more fruitful for the user. Khaled Mohamed's "The Impact of Metadata in Web Resources Discovering" was interesting in that it explored the supposed effect of metadata tags on the findability of web sites using search engines. It also looked at how sites with metadata ranked in the results set compared to those without metadata. I found it hilarioius that almost half of the sites that were about metadata standards (for example, a Dublin Core tutorial web site) did not employ metadata elements on their sites to improve finability and ranking. The search engines Mohamed used for the study (Go, Alta Vista, and HotBot) "claimed that using metadata influenced page rank order" (165) but the author found that wasn't the case at all. He found that there was just a slight effect on page rank order when meta tags were used. Mohamed also notes at the end of his article how he had previously researched Arabic web sites and that most (98%) of them used no metadata whatsoever. He stresses the importance of looking at Arabic web sites in comparison to other international sites in terms of government information services.

To me, this just seems like everything else in the world - everyone does things a little bit differently, even when they're doing similar things, and somehow the world hasn't ended yet. Credit card machines are an example of this. Go to a grocery store, a convenience store, a department store - they all have credit card machines that customers use to pay for purchases, yet all of them are probably a little different. The customer will have to slide her/his card in a slightly different way or the buttons will be in different locations or s/he may have to sign a piece of paper, a screen on the machine or not at all. I find this mildly frustrating but it's really not that important. If everything were the same everywhere, the world would be a pretty boring place.

Stefan Gradmann's article discusses the "hidden Web" and Semantic Web technology that could be used to free bibliographic information from the isolated world of the librarian and use it to interact with information on the Web to, I assume, make information easier to find and use. I had a pretty hard time understanding this article as I have no practical experience with FRBR (and I had to Google it to find out that it is, in fact, Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records) or Semantic Web technology. I found a good introduction to FRBR here. What I understood of the article is that Gradmann proposes to sort of mesh the two information representation systems together for the benefit of users who are searching for information on the Web. He lists several benefits to his proposed system, one of which is that an FRBR system would make the Web more transparent. Now, I don't really know exactly what that means to the world of librarianship, or at all to be quite honest. I've been reading the blogs of other classmates and I see that I'm not alone, which makes me feel a little better. I really have a hard time grasping concepts, especially having to do with computers, if I haven't had any experience using them. I'm sure if I did know what Gradmann was talking about, I'd think it was a really good idea. Wow, lame attempt at discussing the article, huh?

And now for something completely different... I'm using my Monty Python skit freebie this week! I recently read this article about searching the Internet and privacy. Imagine if everything, or every person, you ever Googled could somehow be linked to your identity. Scary thought, eh? Well, the Internet is still relatively new and the privacy issues that surround it are still up in the air. This article gives lots of tips for keeping your identity and other personal information safe and secure when using search engines and other information services on the Web. Be careful - Big Brother might be watching!

Sept. 11: Vaidhyanathan, Veith

While reading chapter 8 of Siva Vaidhyanathan's The Anarchist in the Library, "The Perfect Library," it hit me. The reason I got into librarianship in the first place. Of course it wasn't the money (ha ha) but I suppose I have just kind of lost sight of why this career path appealed to me. Vaidhyanathan ties everything up so well - the Enlightenment, terrorism, the library in Alexandria, the USA PATRIOT Act, and the commercialization of information that threatens to further widen the digital divide. I could not agree with the author more that "[p]ublic libraries are functional expressions of Enlightenment principles. We are about to let commercial interests shut them down" (124). I see it happening already at Bizzell Library. More and more, students are getting used to having access to information online. We've read in other classes about Google and Wikipedia being used as reliable sources by university students! Sometimes they even expect to be able to borrow something from another library because they can't get access to it electronically through our catalog. What happens often, though, is that our library does, in fact, hold a hard copy and just the newest issues are available online. Students and faculty as well would sometimes rather pay for our staff to locate and scan an article rather than come to the library and do it themselves. If things keep going in this direction, with more and more information available online and more and more libraries fulfilling this expectation by purchasing electronic journals and books, the library as cultural institution may well be, as Vaidhyanathan warns, on its way out. I think as future librarians and information professionals, it will be up to us to get the word out about where we want libraries to be in the future. Vaidhyanathan states that he "fear[s] we may be too late" (129); that the commercialization of information is imminent. I certainly hope he's wrong.

I will have to agree with Richard Veith that Vannevar Bush's Memex is not the Internet and is more like the desktop computer, wherein one searches only her/his own files (memories) and not the vast amount of material available to search on the Internet. The MyLifeBits Project interests me very much but I almost have to laugh at the enormity of it! I can't even seem to organize my underwear drawer, much less even think about attempting to organize everything I have ever heard or seen. I can see Veith's comparison of the Memex and the iPod/Tablet combination. Maybe something like the Treo or Blackberry with music capabilities comes closest to that today. I can see the eventual integration of all of the technologies we have now, including cell phone, tablet pc with Internet, iPod, and camera. It seems we're almost there.