Catch Up Library Learning 2.0

customized search engines

2006-11-21T11:12:00.000-06:00

Today I created my own customized searh engine using rollyo and google. I am searching for authorative medical information that geared toward patients and non-medical personnels.

Creating the tool itself is quick easy and the management is not hard. You may customize the look to some degree and intergrete the search tool into your own website -- cool! But I had such a hard time to put them on the sidebar of this blog. I think that my logger template was not setup correctly.( I really don't like blogger's templates, too little to choose, too different to understand, too hard to customize...). Now I list the two search engines here side by side, let me know which one you like better.

By the way, Rollyo is powered by yahoo search engine and google, of course, powered by Google.

Google CSE on Consumer Health:

Rollyo searchbox on Consumer Health:

Two interesting search engine

2006-11-19T22:19:00.000-06:00

Two interesting search engines:
- MsDewey.com: This is not a new search engine, rather a new searching interface with a bad taste avatar woman talking to you while the Microsoft Live search engine brought the answers to you.
An interesting concept, though she need more librarianship training, especially the customer services training. A good point is that I heard she asked "Do you want to refine the search?". Wish to hear more of such things when she does her "searching interview". I also would like to see a better display and navigation of the results.

- Google launched some customized search engines at CustomSearchGuide.com. It is the products of Google Co-Op. I tried the health search forms, the "patient's medical illness search" is just so-so. The results are from medicinenet.com, familydoctor.org, webmd.com, emedicinehealth.com, some associations and a whole bunch of UK websites. Surprisingly, the medlineplus.gov and some other government websites are not included here. The other one, the "health professional medical search" are much better, you can refine the search results, with lots of reputable government websites as the first sets of results. The "Vitamin Info" is a good focused search engine, I like it. I would like to see more focused search engines, maybe kids health search; geriatrics health search; nutrition search etc.

Library Tech Support

2006-11-16T11:10:00.000-06:00

Just viewed Jessamyn West's updated presentation "On the Fly Tech Support: Hey, this isn't my job!", especially like the quote from salon:

Something funny happened on the road to the digital library of the future, though. Far from becoming keepers of the keys to the Grand Database of
Universal Knowledge, today's librarians are increasingly finding themselves in an unexpected, overloaded role: They have become the general public's last-resort providers of tech support.

I cannot agree with it any more. Not only the public library, but also the academic library, they somehow are playing the role of hardware and software help desk at some times. It kind of supports and gives credit to my role in this library. Now I can make the local hero meetings and MCDST more important to me and to others in the library.

LibraryThing

2006-10-19T23:05:00.000-05:00

I tried LibraryThing today. What a smart idea! Using the existing library catalogs to build our personal library catalog, and also links people with similar reading taste! The site also recommends books to read, gather similar topics, what a useful services for me as I stepping into American children's literature. I would love to find out what the other people read, what they have in their bookshelves so that I can find and read to my kids.

As a matter of fact, since I moved to American 6 years ago, I left all my Chinese book collections at home. There are so few Chinese books to read; I occasionally read American newspapers and magazines, but haven't really read any American literature, not till I start to read to my son. I first got to know American literature at the Nashville public library children's room. I was amazed to see so many board books and picture books that tailored to littler readers, wish we had that in China. Since he was two we borrowed 10 - 20 books every week to read before bedtime. From randomly picking books just by looking at covers, to picking books by his favorite characters, by topics, then by authors, by Caldecott Medal books, we explored the American children literature together and had so much fun. Now he is such a good reader, he reads in a much higher level than his age, he reads chapter books and enjoys reading more than anything else. One and half year ago, I finally changed my idea of borrowing books from the library to collecting books and build a personal library in my home, and we started to collect some of his favourite books. Recently I also found out several blogs reviewing children's literature, and several children's book websites. I guess my casual interest in American children's literature will grow to a more serious one. With this libraryThing, I will be able to get more on the Children's literature. Hopefully I will find out some type of literature that I like to read about later.

One more thing to be mentioned, LibraryThing just added language support, but they don't have Chinese yet. I wrote to them suggesting to add it and offered my help. Wish one day I can catalog all my Chinese books and share with my friends both in China and in America.

PS: I saw a library is using this service to promote their newly arrived books. We need to adapt it.

Be a good blogger

2006-10-18T23:55:00.000-05:00

I felt guilty for not posting things in the last couple days. This post "the first 7 days of blogging" gives some good advices to bloggers, I will try my best to do as he suggested. ( I rearranged the orders since I rank the importance differently from the author)
- Pick a blog topic and stick with it
- Be consistent on the post frequency (here I need improvements)
- Get to the point on the contents
- Add flavor and unique things to your post
- Set up your post properly (I need to work on this, but I think you can do it gradually)

web2.0 services

2006-10-09T23:52:00.000-05:00

I've been introduced to so many web2.0 services in the past couple days, below are some of my comments on those websites:

NetVibes: A webpage based RSS reader. I may call it a portal page. Things I like:
- The modular design
- Pre-loaded feed suggestions
- Mouse over to show the bri contents
- Searching modules: include several search engines
Things I don't like that much: - Busy interface

Topix.net A news aggregator, sorts news by zip code first. Also collecting blogs, city government websites and alerts. Nice place to find localized information. It boasts has 360,000 subjects. I looked specially the medication, health(by disease), medicine (by subjects, such as endocrinology, surgery, pediatrics, etc). I might be able to use this site to search for some latest news or hot debates on specific drugs, disease treatment plans, et al.
I tried to run a search for "Eskind biomedical Library" or "Eskind" using the site search engine, found several art listings mentioned Eskind Art works, an education grant with Eskind's involovement, and a news about Nancy M. Lorenzi. Interesting.

Feedster: A blog search engine. you may subscribe to a customized feed. Two results on Eskind, one intern position, the other post on Evidence based practise tool.

NewsVine: A social news publishing site. The news are published by major news agents (the wire) as well as general users(the vine) ; news are pushed to the top by the use of the communities. Nothing was found on "Eskind" search.

Technorati: A blog/live web search engine. A search for "Eskind" found a post on Becky, the library intern job ads, library umbrella bag picture on flickr, several Eskind pictures by WangYun at flickr, two posts on Mark Hodges, a Chinese post mentioned about studying at Eskind, a post on Eskind book sale (will send to Mary, don't quite understand the post, but Mary should get some hints from the post). So far this engine provides the most complete coverage.

Del.icio.us: A social bookmarking site. A strange, hard to remember name, but the services is good. The difference between social bookmarking software and personal online bookmarking software (such as google bookmarks) is the social nature, that is you may shyour bookmarks and subscript other people's bookmarks.

Furl.net: Using this service, you can create a personal archived web. This service is different from Bookmarking software, it records the real page contents, not just the URLs, at the time of "furling". In the help file, they pointed out that you can export/archive your personal web to CD. Copyright, security issues are also addressed. More time and fooling around are needed for me to offer any thoughts on these topics.

ZOHO Test

2006-10-07T22:45:00.000-05:00

zoho has been mentioned several times in my catch up tech readings in the past couple days. I finally had time to give it a try. My first impression of the zoho products is pretty good. They offer most of the common Office product elements, such as table, list, font formats, etc. Here are couple nice features I liked:

Zoho Writer:

Publish directly to the blog. (Unfortunately I tried but not successful, saying wrong login info)
Create doc roll - kind of web 2.0 concept.
Export file to multiple formats, including PDF, HTML
I like the way special characters are being presented, make it easy to use. I also noticed the special buttons for subscript and superscript, crossthrough. Things are getting easier.
smily faces are included - online language

Zoho Creator:

automatically convert excel type of information to online form. Very nice and useful tool.
useful tools to give you ideas on how you can use this tool: helpdesk mini, inventory form, to do list form

Zoho Sheets: Looks better than Google spreadsheet; Has Multitab support, which is not available in Google

Zoho Show: automatically generate online presentation

There are other products: zoho planner, zoho chat, I will definitely give them a try.

Here is what I am thinking: Next time when a frustrated library patron comes to me and ask where to work on his paper/presentation on our library public workstations, I may ask them, do you have a zoho account?

New working environment

2006-10-02T23:05:00.000-05:00

I am experimenting ways to improve my productivity at work, of course at home also. Here are some effective steps that I've taken today:

- Since my new computer supports the multiple monitors, I decided to take full advantage of it. I set up a retired monitor beside my regular one. Although they are of different sizes (one is 15" and the other is 17" flat) and different resolutions, they worked beautifully together. After a few adjustments on monitor's physical locations, software settings, and desktop shortcuts, I am up running. So impressed and extremely happy with the results. Especially when I run searches on different databases, with an online dictionary open for looking up unfamiliar terms, also a Word or Excel sheet opened for recording results, while checking and responding to emails in-between, with this two monitors setting, I was able to have both my searching windows and the online dictionary displayed at the same time, it made the copy and paste more easily and I can multitask more efficiently.

- I also installed a desktop clock widgeton my spared monitors. I like to have a clock hang on my wall(my monitors) so that I can keep track of time more easily. There are so many desktop widgets, I need to spend some other times to dig out new/neat stuff.

- Here is another tip I saw somewhere and really agree with it. I started to follow it ever since then. Just don't remember the exact sentence, but the main point is: If you can do it in less than 5 minutes, just do it now. I am applying the rule while dealing with emails, dealing with reported computer problems, and dealing with junk mails at my home mailbox. Now I feel like more controllable over my chores.

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My "new" findings about Google

2006-10-01T22:57:00.000-05:00

I believe what I found today have been existed for a while. Those are not new to the Google world, but they are "new" to me.

Background: There are several kids in my son's school have "head lice", I ran a search on "head lice" on google and was surprised to find the refine result suggestions at the top of the result page.

Finding: The refinements, I later found a little more information from Google Co-OP health, or so called labels are: Condition info ( includes treatment, symptoms, tests/diagnosis, cause/risk factors), info type (include: for patients, for medical authorities, for health professions, alternative medicine), drug info and publication types (such as practice guideline, patient handouts, continuing education, clinical trials). The results for each label was not bad, I saw medlineplus, CDC websites, emedicine, familydoctor, clinicaltrials.gov, NEJM, and big name medical school websites are displayed on the top on each category. Those labels was assigned by Google co-opers. Here are some basic on how to use Google co-op.

My thoughts/concerns:
- How trustable / authoratative are those co-opers?
- Will they label the sites honestly and correctly?
- Will the labels increase the labelled sites' rank on the search result?

Hey, is this operation using the social software philosophy and bear the same good/evil of the social software?

Another finding is that the Google reader, an online RSS reader, just like Bloglines.

Technorati

2006-09-30T23:15:00.000-05:00

I was learning the searching function of Technorati and surprisingly found a picture of the library umbralla bag was posted in flickr. In web 2.0, you never know who will comment about your library, and how they will do it. Intersting, should I add comments to this picture? Here is another one related to Eskind, but not tagged.

Just like what is said about Technorati in its help page:

Technorati allows you to find out what people are saying about you, your company, your products, your competitors, your politics and, other areas of interest, on the Internet in real time.

Another paragraph answered my question about RSS and Technorati:

What about an RSS search engine? Is that different from what Technorati does?
Yes. RSS feeds are a subset of the World Live Web. An RSS search engine searches only content structured in specialized XML formats such as RSS and Atom but does not look at a site's HTML or other markup. Not all blogs have RSS feeds, and some sites that are not blogs (such as The New York Times or some online event calendars) do have RSS feeds. Many blogs only send out a small portion or summary of their full postings and leave the full postings on their sites as HTML. Technorati specializes in searching all blogs, not merely those with RSS feeds, and instead of only indexing the RSS feed (often the first few hundred words of an article), Technorati reads all of the HTML code in a blog posting, and also tracks all of the activity around a blog or post such as inbound and outbound links.

blogline, social bookmarking, web2.0 and library

2006-09-28T01:22:00.000-05:00

I've been quiet and reading a lot these days. Jumping from one blog to another, I found a whole new area that I completely missed out, the web2.0 and its applications in the library and library services. Thinking about my own library, we are talking about redesign the library website a while ago, should we move onto web 2.0 now?

Just to mention a few,
- New books, library news as RSS feed;
- A library blog on library events, CE site, even for library comments page.
- Customized library search bar;
- Library training podcast;
- Library image tour using flikr;
- A wiki for service desk quick manual;
I need more time to work on the list, make a proposal and get it done.

What web 2.0 means to health libraries, instead of summing up myself, I will provide a introducing web 2.0 series articles to show what a canadian librarian says about it:
- RSS trends for health librarians
- webblogs and podcasting for health librarians
- Social network and social bookmarking for health librarians

On RSS, here is a link to a nice presentation abour RSS,RSS aggregator, and RSS applications in library

I also played with the following social bookmarking sites: del.icio.us, digg, topix.net, and feedster. I am working on comparation and will post later.

Another web 2.0 related article is posted by Michael Calore, who compiled "Web 2.0 winner and loser" of web 2.0", the following social networks are the winners:
-flickr
-odeo
-writely
-del.icio.us
-NetVibes

Too late, I have to stop here.

Ask.com Or Google

2006-09-24T01:46:00.000-05:00

Sarah Houghton-Jan posted "ten reasons that librarian should use Ask.com instead of google"

1. Ask.com's Smart Answers rock my world.
2. Ask.com clearly identifies their advertising.
3. Ask.com's Image Search is far superior to Google's in terms of relevancy
4. For all types of searches, Ask.com offers one-click links to narrow your search, expand your search, and provides links to results for related terms.
5. Ask.com provides a binoculars icon with each search result
6. Ask.com offers instant white pages searching from their main search box.
7. Ask.com offers RSS Smart Answers
8. Ask.com has a version specifically designed for kids, Ask for Kids, that users natural language searching and has a kid-friendly interface.
9. Ask.com's Maps and Directions Search has some neat features too.
10. Finally, Ask.com has far less ads overall

In the coming week, I will compare these two search engines and see what I feel like.

Joy of Learning

2006-09-19T00:01:00.000-05:00

Signed up for a bloglines account and subscribed to several library related blogs. The readings were so good and for me it seems an eye-opening look into a new librarianship. Got to 'steal' some ideas, application to use on our library website and services. I also steped into a MLIS course on "social software and library", the whole course in on blog format, using blog to study blog, what a great idea. The sidebar has a link to worldwide library or librarian blogs. Wow, never realized there are so many fellow librarians are doing blogs.

On Google, I've gathered lots of good sites in my "bookmarks" for my professional readings. Need to get it organized. I've been installing Google toolbar on all the workstations that I am using, my work computer, my home computer, the staff rotating laptop, and the service desks computer. Making the bookmarks available online does make the reading and learning more easiler.

I also discovered the "google webmaster tools", sound interesting, will look more closely later.

Compare photo services

2006-09-17T01:25:00.000-05:00

The online version can be seen from Google spreadsheet at here.

New technologies

2006-09-17T00:06:00.000-05:00

Tried SitePal. The character doesn't look professional at all. Probably will not be accepted in our library. Though it may be fun to receive some animated greeting emails from friends and coworkers occasionally.

Noticed the "text to sound" product, since it can speak 52 languages, I thought it will be cool to include translation component into the product. Imaging this, when I type in English word or sentences, the sitepal say it out aloud in Chinese. That will be way cool.

Another video program I tried in the last couple days is the camstudio, a free screen capture software. The program records screen activities and audio into standard .avi file. It can also convert the .avi file to streaming flash file. With little video editing skill, I created a software installation tutorial movie for our staff, it works out pretty neat.

Another two programs worth mentioning are google spreadsheet and Writely. Pretty cool applications. comparable to Office software, but free and stored on the server. Other feathers include multiple output formats (including PDF files) and online collaboration. I will definitely recommend to our library users since most of the public workstations in the library don't have Microsoft Office installed. Thanks to Taneya bringing this to my attention.

More Flickr Funs

2006-09-16T11:28:00.000-05:00

Today I played more with flickr mashup. See the top image created with spell with flickr. I like it. We sure can used it in our library website or personal webpages.

2. Also created a flash photo show using my family photos in flickr. Compared with the picasa photo link, it looks more fancy.

Flash Slideshow

3. Used one of the flickr services to create this collage. Seems pretty cool.
Flickr does have some really cool services. Need more time exploring. Also, blog from flickr is easy. I start to like flickr. ;-)

Compare Online Photo Services

2006-09-15T00:54:00.000-05:00

[Photo]My children

I tried picasa today, I gave it 6 out of 10. An ok photo organizer. Like it separate the folder and album, similar to the "set" concept in flickr. Doing so a picture can be put into multiple albums. But lack of photo description, or keyword function, limited the search functions.

The photo to blog function was not working tonight, maybe because of the network. or because of the beta version blog. Will try later.

As for comparing the all online photo albums: Snapfish, photoworks, shutterfly are more geared to photo printing and sharing function. Traditional online photo services. Picasa is a desktop photo organizing application, with added online album functions. Flickr, a social software, is more focused on sharing, available for everyone to view and to comment, like blog. ( I was surprised to get a comment from Helen. Thank you for your encouragement. ) All photos are searchable and maybe viewed by anyone. Because of the different nature, snapfish and photoworks album sharing is a limited sharing, friends passively receive the link and view the photos you selected for them. In nature, they are commercial photo printing services, with added online sharing feature.

Learning about flickr

2006-09-14T23:44:00.000-05:00

Couple days ago I signed in for the flickr services. Nowadays everything seems google or Yahoo related. As long as you have those accounts, you are able to sign in for lots of services, namely avatar, flickr, writely, etc. I am exploring all the services along with this learning 2.0 program.

I am not so impressed with flickr itself. The interface is not clean. For photo service I like it simple, with enough space and descriptions to showcase the photos. I like the tag and the sets concept. A very nice thing is the note, especially to put a notation for selected area.

Another thing I learned is the 3rd party mashup. I like the idea of using it in other applications. Our library might be able to use it in our newsbox or library tour pages.

One thing I am been thinking is the differences between flickr and other photo hosting services, such as snapfish, photoworks, shutterfly. How about google's picasa? I will post my findings later.

Blog

2006-09-14T23:21:00.000-05:00

Blog is not so new to me. I started one for my family 2 years ago. Unfortunately was not able to keep up with it. Couple reasons: dull templates; long publishing time; not a good Chinese language support; the most important reason is that my family member at china cannot access the blog server. without audience, I stop the blog. That is the nature of those social software, isn't it?

This time I switched to the beta version, it seems much better, at least for now. No more long waiting for publishing posts. I haven't tried Chinese input. But I like the idea of being able to customize the templates, give me more flexibilities. I read about the multiple posting accounts and the categories, that what I've been wanting. Will try to use them in my future posts.

Get Started

2006-09-14T23:09:00.000-05:00

I noticed the learning 2.0 program couple weeks ago and liked it at my first sight. I finally jumped into the water to catch up. One of my coworker has a sign posted on her desk, "Having ideas is one thing, to make it happen is another thing." I turely believe it. I will make it happen this time.