The attempt to present services to students is a matter of much hand-wringing in academic libraries. “They want Google!” “They need databases!” “Convenience!” “Depth!” “Hopeless!” “Infinite!” & etc. In my informal tour of various library interfaces today, one presentation has really stood out: The University of Minnesota’s Undergraduate Virtual Library. Take a look: We have …
The old personalized web portal wars may have been bloody, but the concept is obviously here to stay. My Yahoo, My AOL, even serenely uncluttered Google plays with personalized searches and feeds. So why wouldn’t an academic library offer a similar service? A one-stop expandable agglomeration of the kind of information a prof might want …
The folksonomy juggernaut is rolling towards museums, as an intriguing article in this month’s D-Lib Magazine (“Social Terminology Enhancement through Vernacular Engagement”) makes clear. As anyone who has tried tagging images with metadata knows, it’s tricky business; opening up the effort to a collective, in its instictive wisdom, seems a path to the social engagement …
While Wikipedia is the standard reference for what wikis can do, its newer cousin Wikibooks is, in many respects, a more daring venture. This is a collection of open-content textbooks – that is, modules freely available to and updatable by anyone, covering a wide range of subjects. (General FAQs here) Material on Wikibooks is searchable …
September is the new summer. In the latest batch of merry photos Flick’d up, we travel to Cape Cod with David, park Jessica in lovely Raina’s lovely yard, and camp. Scott raises almost $1400 by powering through 1.4 miles of choppy waters in the Provincentown Swim for Life. Kate spirits us to the dune shack. …
In what’s turning into something of a tradition, I made a pilgrimage to Boulder & thereby aged within the safe confines of my origin. Though it’s been overrun by money, Boulder is ever beautiful, & it’s nice to see my globetrotting parents settle back in amid the deer.
Jason Kottke’s remaindered links today point to a slick PDF presentation by Marc Rettig and Aradhana Goel illustrating design principles. Of particular interest here is a case study of library redesign; these designers helped Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh transform from a cluttered headache into what looks like a perfectly pleasant place to find information. The …
