Connecting Librarian

I’ve been pondering again. So I’m going to inflict it on you.

We have recently added Chili Fresh reviews to our catalogue.  I like it, its easy to use, easy to add reviews, we have the weight of Chili Fresh reviews from around the world to populate our catalogue and they have some really cool social networking features coming soon.

Tagging from the Darien Catalogue

But Chili Fresh doesn’t have user tagging (at least not yet).  Which of course got me thinking about tagging.

A common problem experienced in public libraries and I’m sure in other libraries too, is when you have a user come up and say something like:

“Can you help me, I’m looking for a book that I have had before. Its about gardening, its green and its about this big (demonstration using hands).”

They can’t remember anything about the author, but sometimes they can remember more about the content.  In the above type of example, it would be something about vegetables.

Barring miraculous circumstances, (like you have read that same book), or the luck of finding said book on shelf or trolley in roughly the place you would expect it to be, the likelihood of finding it with that information alone is nigh impossible.

So my reasoning was that if users could tag our catalogue records with that sort of information, it we be of great use to both them and us in finding that same title in future.

A few problems with my reasoning as I pondered further.

First would be getting the users to tag the details in the first place. Although we have a few people (more than we expected) putting reviews on our catalogue, it is nowhere near critical mass.

Second, do you know how many green books about gardening, let alone vegetables, we have?

And finally, the piece de resistance.  You finally find that book that the user was so desperate for and the only thing they got right was that it was about gardening. As for the rest of it, the subject was hydroponics, the book was orange and it was a very different shape and size.

Now only if we could tag each item by its actual details as well as its perceived details, we might have something.  But by then, the tags will take up more than a screen of detail and would probably send the catalogue search feature into meltdown.

When we do get tagging (and we will somehow, someday), we won’t stop our users from adding this sort of information, but I guess only experience will be able to tell us if it will be of any help.

What sort of ideas have you had about new technologies, which might not work so well in a library situation?  Maybe we can help you resolve your problems around it. Would also love to hear your thoughts on this one.

Came in late, so I missed the start while I set up. Library Thing has a page for every work. Shows how many people share the book in their collections, how many reviews have been written, the top 32 tags that have been attached and more.

Has a recommendation feature. Those who have this also have that, similar tags, ratings, all the different versions of the covers that people have uploaded.

Library Things treat authors as an entity as important as a book, so the same features. Related tags, pictures uploaded by members, links, similarly tagged, also known as (ie. In different countries)

Tags – have own pages, what has been tagged, who has tagged with it, related tags – could be used as a reading list for a particular category. Eg paranormal romance has 1800 tags, yet it falls through traditional indexing systems.

Recommendations feature, includes a Unsuggester feature – if you like this, you will not like…… Using the data in the system in a multitude of ways.

What does it mean for social networking – not a niche site, as books are the centre of life for many, a Second Life for readers is books! Amazon is not the best book site forever, nor is Google Books. Books are not just items of commerce. Library Thing is what people kept, what books remain with people even after they no longer have it physically. Library Thing is about our identity which has been influenced by the books we have read. Books are objects of obsession.

Tags – every item is tagged. The bolder and larger it is, the more times it has been assigned that tag. Click on that tag and you will link to all titles that have that tag assigned. Tim did a comparison between the Library of Congress subject headings and Library Thing tags – very amusing and very demonstrative of the power of tags – not that he advocates that we no longer use subject headings, instead use both!

There is now Library Thing for libraries. Top is normal ILS data, but then all social networking tools are from Library Thing, included recommended titles, but only to titles that you hold. Integrates seamlessly to the back end of your ILS. This is not the solution – Tim says that in about 10 years we will be able to get all that we want from our vendors – getting it as XML if we want, and probably coming from Library Thing. Library Thing will offer these enhancements in the meantime.

Libraries need an OCLC type group for user generated data, which can be collected by libraries and then shared between libraries.

I know this is not blogging the Online Conference notes, but I had to take a break from my endless notes! So its back to Learning 2.0.

I had looked at Del.icio.us a while ago and although I have a lot of bookmarks, I didn’t want to share them. I use a lot of bookmarks, but they are all at home and link to things like banking, games etc. However, whilst I was distracted by other things recently (like a conference, organising a paper and a study tour etc), I was thinking about all the websites I come across (usually through RSS feeds) that I can’t use right now, but I know will be of use in the future.

Its been quite a few weeks since I did week 5 of this course, but I knew it was about del.icio.us, so finally those two pieces clicked in my mind and I thought why not use it to create a list of these useful websites, so that I don’t lose them. In discussing them with my computer programmer husband, we also talked about the possibilities of having topic bookmarks organised by topic and potentially private bookmarks in del.icio.us. So from here its explore and find out more!

As for Technorati, as a long term blogger I am well aware of this fabulous tool. But as with everything I have learnt from this Learning 2.0 program, there is always something new to learn, even from things you may already know.