User Choice - Blip.tv (FPL 23 Things)

David and Michael (of Library 101) list "know the difference between YouTube and Blip.tv" as one of the many things I still need to learn.

Fortunately, they link directly to a short article that pretty well sums up the difference, at least the difference according to the founder of Blip.tv. My even-shorter version: Blip.tv doesn't cover your video with advertising and gives you more stats on viewership.

Basically, they're trying to reach the segment of the streaming market that wants vidoes embedded into their own site to look clean and professional.

I found the Blip.tv statement about "Total Potential Audience" fascinating.

"We believe in Total Potential Audience. Every show has one. It's impossible to gather your Total Potential Audience in any one place. That's why blip.tv distributes your show everywhere."

It starts with Ranganathan's Laws (sort of): Every show its audience. And then states what libraries have to learn: our full audience isn't going to come to us (at least, not merely for content - maybe for experiences, but that's another discussion) so we have to take our content to our audience.

I have to confess that while I'm pleased that Blip.tv provides a home for independent shows, I didn't see anything that struck my fancy. And these days, browsing for new talent doesn't fit into my schedule.

Still, it's nice to know that Blip.tv is out there. So often these days it seems like one only hears about the single market leader for any particular technology.

Hulu (FPL 23 Things)

Why would I keep buying movies in format that become obsolete more and more freqently (requirng me to buy new hardware to view them) if I can freely (or very cheaply) access them on demand?

Libraries may really be about information or entertainment and not "books" or "DVDs," but they've always been about physical objects. Until now.

Digitial content and digital access completely changes delivery models. And that's a pretty scary thing for libraries -- because people are all about convenience. And businesses are working a lot harder than libraries to make their services convenient to customers.

The best we have to offer in comparison to one-click viewing is a 75-zillion-step process to install the correct software and download the material.

Granted, I have to watch the annoying commercials on sites like Hulu, but I get the same with my legally purchased DVDS -complete with unskippable previews, FBI warnings, and disclaimers- so that's pretty much a wash.

That said, Hulu is not a repository or archive. It only has a few recent episodes of currently-running shows. It's trying to offer an on-demand alternative to television, not competition for Blockbuster or Netflix (or libraries with extensive TV Shows on DVD collections).

I do think that Hulu offers some uses for collection development in libraries. I could see browsing the trailers to see what upcoming movies will drive demand for books. I noticed several "based on books" movies coming out in the next year without even starting with that goal in mind.

At the very least is poses some interesting questions. Given a limited budget, should we steer away from purchasing movies that are freely available streamed online? Is our budget better spent on high-demand items that aren't freely streamable? Or, do a greater percentage of our customers still prefer physical copies to streamed media?

I don't know the answers. But I would not bet on physical objects (DVDS or books) reigning supreme forever. Neither do I see them disappearing completely. But I do think dealing with a continually increasing number of delivery mediums will become necessary for libraries.

And if we don't do it well enough that we're as easy, if not easier, than commerical options, we're quickly going to become irrelevant.

Google Maps (FPL 23 Things)

I've been wanting to visit a Dewey-less library for some time. So, it makes sense to visit the library where the concept got started:

Maricopa County, AZ

Since the Maricopa County libraries didn't have Google street views to share in my maps, I tried some other searches, too. For the house I grew up in and the house in which my parents now live. I got street views of both of those - though Google had a hard time dropping me at the exact addresses, so I had to travel myself down the street.

I think it's kind of amusing that the dinky little town in upstate SC where I grew up is well photographed, but the street I live on here in "progressive" Frisco hasn't been (apparently. I can't get my little orange person icon to land on my street. Only one north or south.)

This is a really good reminder that social media tools are always works in progress. If we try to wait until we have everything completed (or even half done) we'd never get anywhere because the tool would be obsolete before it premiered. That's probably a good lesson for us to remember with some of the things we do, too!

And it wouldn't hurt for us to get into Google and provide some information about the library at our address. No reason for City Hall to have all the glory.

Music Streaming & Sharing (FPL 23 Things)

I know I'm behind the curve, but this was a completely new thing for me. I generally perfer silence to a soundtrack, and a story to a song, so when I do put something on to play, it's generally an audibook - if anything.

I started with last.fm and found it amusing, but not compelling. I was initially excited to discover that I could listen to Muppets-themed "stations," but quickly discovered a lack of authority control. Apparently there's a punk group named "Cookie Monster." My interest is in the blue, fuzzy, googly-eyed puppet. Last.fm doesn't seem to distinguish between the two. Makes for an odd juxtaposition of songs to go from one to the other.

On the plus side, I heard a disco version of "C is for Cookie" and came across the song "A smile connects us," sung by Kermit. New to me.

I liked Pandora better. I started a radio station based on one of my more mature musical preferences (The King's Singers) and must say that I liked something about each song that was recommended. Enough that I actually created an account. Since, from time to time, I do actually want to listen to music. And now I won't have to go all the way from my desk on the 3rd floor to the CD collection on the 1st floor and try to find something I'd like despite my complete ignorance of all things musical.

I have to say, Pandora would make a much better "listener's advisory" librarian than I would. It's probably worth having the account just in case I'm ever asked for listen-alikes on the desk.

Looking at the big picture, however, I'm faced with the inevitable question: what is the library's place in a world where people can listen to music without possessing a physical item (cassette, CD, whatever...) that houses the music? Can the library do better than an easily accessible, convenient, free account from an online source that I can search to listen to a particular song, artist, or style of music?

Do we need to stop spending money buying CDs and teach classes about all the freely available music streaming sources online instead?

Tiny URL & YouSendIt (FPL 23 Things)

Tiny URL:

I've tried to make this fun, so here are some tiny URLs linking to comics that I intended to put in our 23 Things blog posts, but forgot about at the appropriate time:

http://tinyurl.com/mggtwitter
http://tinyurl.com/mgglibcard

So easy! I really love the "custom alias" feature. So, if I ever get into Twitter I'll make the best use of my 140 characters.

YouSendIt

I received a file via YouSendIt from a coworker trying this out before I had a chance to try it myself. I must say, it was simple. Very intuitive. I sent myself a file, too, just so I could see both ends of the process. It was odd to have a progress bar that didn't progress during the upload process, but otherwise, it couldn't have been easier.

In summary:

While I don't see much need for these tools in my personal (or professional) life at the moment, I think that knowing about them is useful. I can certainly see myself demonstrating YouSendIt to a library user who's trying to start a small business and needs to send large files to a client. And the KISS rule for today could be "keep is SHORT...." Great for sharing links via social media outlets.

Linked In (FPL 23 Things)

Since I try not to ask other people to do things that I'm unwilling to do myself (though, just for the record, organizing a 23 Things program was *not* my idea), I thought I'd better blog a bit about the few Things we're doing at work that weren't a part of the North Texas 23 Things program in which I participated.

You'd think that after creating a Facebook profile, LinkedIn wouldn't be a big deal. And I have to confess that I like the idea of having separate networks for my personal and professional lives.

But I also feel like I need to provide a quality, professional presentation of myself -- and I don't have the time to fill in the details of my professional life right now. On the other hand, I haven't updated my resume in awhile so I went ahead and created a LinkedIn profile. I'll try to fill in the details gradually and keep it up-to-date in the future.

Thus far, however, LinkedIn feels kind of like our ILS: un-intuitive, clunky, and not that attractive. I tried to connect with my graduate school advisor. Sending an "InMail" was the most obviously advertised method of connecting, but required upgrading my account. Instead, I used an "add to network" message, which felt kind of like Tweeting, what with the character-use limitations. (What's up with that? Is there a world shortage on characters? You wouldn't think so working the reference desk!)

As a concept, though, I can see where some professionals (especially self-employeed) would get a lot of benefit out of the sort of connections that LinkedIn makes possible. And I think online connections are great in a world where working parnerships and collaborations are not so much limited by geography.

Will I get much use out of LinkedIn? Probably not. So far, I haven't found many of the people I'd be interested in Linking to -- mostly far-flung graduate school friends and other colleagues from past jobs. After all, I'm already connected to my current co-workers by.... work.

And (do I admit this on a blog my boss might be reading?) I tend to let my career happen to me*. No 5 year plan, no 10 year plan. Frankly, it's worked well for me so far. I really enjoy what I do. And (pessimist that I am) I kind of doubt that someone's going to contact me with a jack-of-all-trades-master-of-none job offer that lets me (to mix cliches) have fingers in many of the library's pies without supervisory responsiblity. I mean, it took me 5 years in my current library that have that job description (and it's mine, not HR's) happen to me. I wouldn't know how to go about making it happen on purpose. [For the peace of mind of my current boss, before leaving I'd also need (1) even better pay, (2) relocation closer to family, (3) a great community, and (4) temperate climate.]

I think LinkedIn has potential. I hope I can find the time to fulfill it.


*Disclaimer: In graduate school I did outline a future for myself in which I would be able to bridge technical/material and public services with a goal of improving customer service. I think my current position lets me do that more than most other library jobs would (though still less than I might like), and that's probably why I'm content where I am.

Google Squared, part 4: Summary

Having had my fun, what are my thoughts?

I understand that what people want is to get from their question to the answer with the fewest possible steps - and preferably without having to formulate and implement a search strategy. (That is, they want the computer to understand what they want and provide the answer rather than the source of the answer.) This incarnation of Google Squared does not do that. (Neither does any other computer that I'm aware of. Maybe in science fiction somewhere, though.)

The user still has to know (1) to use Google Squared instead of the ubiquitous Google search box (moving away from the "one simple little search box that does just about everything" is not to be undertaken lightly - for many reasons that's the golden standard everyone else tries to emulate) and (2) which types of searches will and will not work well in a Google Square. Those are basic elements of search strategy.

What it does do is provide a different search starting point that works well for particular kinds of searches. If you want to compare particular items within a category, Google Squared returns results in a format that facilitates that activity. (But it still doesn't tell you which flat screen TV to buy, given your budget and viewing habits.)

And, depending on the purpose of the search, one still has to link through to the website to get the desired information and evaluate the quality of the website from which the information actually comes.

And a lot of the description information Google Squared retrieves seems to come from Wikipedia. Are we more willing to trust the veracity of Wikipedia because it turns up as a response in a Google Square as opposed to a regular Google search? (The use and reliability of Wikipedia deserves an entirely separate blog entry....)

What I come away with is the sense that artificial intelligence (for all the advances in the field) still has a long way to go. Computers generally understand search terms, but they don't understand question context. The lack of coherence across rows demonstrated that in several searches.

Google Squared may be an early step on the long, long, long journey towards computers even more intelligent than the ones in Star Trek. I won't be holding my breath, but I'll probably continue to try it out now and again. Mostly for fun.

Google Squared, part 3: Free Play

Free of obligations and ready to try my own searches, I started with my interests.

A search for "Juvenile mystery books" returned only 1 result. Nancy Drew. "Teen mystery books" returned 4, but taking out the author/title redundancy leaves only 3. "Young adult mystery books" nets me 7 hits: 4 genres, 2 authors, and 1 award. This does not seem to be working.

A search for "Young adult authors" nets better results. The first 20 results nets me 18 people and only 2 titles. The fact that I'm familiar with the top 20 authors/books may indicate that there is some relevance ranking bringing the more popular people to the top. But it's also a disappointment - I haven't discovered anyone new to try.

Can Google Squared be used for reader's advisory? The search "vampire books teens" suggests maybe yes. The search "Harry Potter read-alikes" suggests no. The jury is still out.

What can be deduced, I think, is that some knowledge of search strategy is still necessary.

Alright, what about my other fallback search interest?

"Muppets" returns pretty good results. I get a mix of characters and TV shows, but that's okay.

• Down around item 42 Nelson Eddy comes up as a result, and I can't figure out why. There's no mention of "Muppets" on the website (Wikipedia, again) the description comes from. I find this irritating. Why, why why....
• On the other hand, I'm simply amused by the images pulled for the items "Semi-formal" (43) and "Foo-foo" (45). The concepts and descriptions are perfectly legitimate for the search, but the images aren't Muppet-related at all.
• I try adding columns for "Created by" and "First Appearance" but return no/inconsistent/poor information. Apparently the system knows what it knows, and automatically returns those columns when creating the square.

Searching for "Muppet movies" returned pretty good results, but some irony as well. All of the major Muppet movies returned high in the square, except for The Muppet Movie.

As the list extended, more and more false positives showed up.

Also notable was the lack of a sense of context and consistency across rows. For example, Frank Oz was returned as an item. (Of course, he is a muppeteer, but not a Muppet movie.) However, the image for him was the cover art for "The Muppet Movie" - which was not returned as a result.

Possibly my favorite result came from Tim's search for "philosophers." I had no idea that Plato lived until "8 May 1999." And, apparently all philosophers (even ancient Greek ones) speak English.

Now I'm curious as to whether Google Squared can help with some of the frequent questions fielded at the youth reference desk.

As I expected given the failure of the National Book Award search, trying "Texas Bluebonnet list" and "Texas Bluebonnet Award" did not net useful information. Better off doing a regular Google search. As both bring up the TLA website as the first hit.

"Arctic animals" is actually really nice, as far as it goes. This might be a good first step for finding an animal. Of course, then you have to find a book on the animal as that's required. And searching outside of the catalog leads to finding arctic animals we don't even have books about. Ditto "Birds" and "African American inventors."

When the day comes when students are taught to evaluate the quality of a website rather than "find a book" we might be in pretty good shape, though. Certainly browsing an instantly created list of "African American inventors" is a lot easier than trying to figure out the relevant LC subject headings and searching them all. Plus it extends our 'collection' if quality websites can be used instead of books.

How is Google Squared useful? Comparisons: places where a spreadsheet is handy, but you don't want to have to populate it yourself. A place to start shopping, for example. Searches on "Flat screen TVs" and "Digital cameras" retrieved useful results. And you can add columns for features of interest.

Google Squared, part 2: Assigned Play

I began with a few suggested (by my boss) searches to get a feel for Google Squared.

"Superheroes AND powers" quickly demonstrated a few of the shortcomings that continue to challenge programmers of automated search engines (and researchers in artificial intelligence).

• The "item name" column includes a mix of not only superheros, but also super powers and concepts common to the world of superheros (magic, masks, and -possibly my favorite- supporting characters).
• I also laughed out loud when I added a column for "Genre" and received not only 'superhero' and 'action', but also 'rap' and 'thrash metal'.

By way of contrast, I performed a regular Google search for the same terms. The 1st hit linked to a Wikipedia article offering an extensive list of superhuman features and abilitites in fiction. It was sorted by ability rather than character, however.

My immediate reaction to "Orchids" was that the images were beautiful (never discount visual impact).

• I began to wonder, however, about the exhaustiveness of the results. Without an authoritative source to compare to, how would I know about the quality of the results?
• Which led me to wonder about the default sort order. It seems like items are returned in descending order of information completness. If that's the case you're losing what makes Google useful so much of the time: relevancy ranking of results.

Again I performed a regular Google search. The first hit was for the American Orchid Society website - authoritative information, most of it freely accessible to non-members.

The third hit was for http://www.orchids.com/, a commerical site, but including a pronunciation guide and list of orchid gardens open to the public.

Since I'm always interested in quick and easy ways to access information from popular book lists and awards, the square for National Book Award recipients was the most disappointing.

• While it was fun to see pictures of all these famous authors, I thought, "Oprah Winfrey, really?" I had to track that down. Turns out she won the 1999 "Distinguished Contribution to American Letters," awarded by the National Book Foundation.
• Odd that the Michael L Printz is listed as a winner.
• I tried to add a column for "Year Awarded" but Google Squared did not retrieve any information.

The first hit in my comparison Google search brought up the National Book Foundation, which presents the NBA. Browse to find out who won, for what, when. Or search by author. This is where I found the answer to my Oprah question. The third hit was for the Wikipedia article with a quick-refernce list (easier than the NBF website) of NBA winners in each category.

Google Squared, part 1: Providing Context

This week's topic: the future of online searching.

Google describes Google Squared :

Google Squared is an experimental tool that takes a category (like US presidents, roller coasters, or digital cameras) and attempts to create a starter "square" of information, automatically fetching and organizing facts from across the web. You can modify your square by removing rows and columns you don't like--or by adding new rows and columns and having Google Squared attempt to fetch the relevant facts. Verify and correct the facts in your square by exploring the original sources and investigating other possible values. If you're happy with your square you can save it and come back to it later. Google Squared does the grunt work for you, making research fast and easy.

"Fast and easy" sums it up, doesn't it? That's what people want. And with every improvement in technology, that standard gets higher (or, should that be shorter?).

"Save the time of the reader."
-Ranganathan's Fourth Law of Library Science

Fast and easy isn't necessarily a bad thing. I'd much rather research in an online database than go through the steps of searching an index, finding the issues with the relevant articles, and finally photocopying them. All at the library, of course. It's a much more convenient method of getting to the same information.

"Same information" is the catch, though, isn't it? As librarians, we're concerned with the accuracy of the information retrieved. Online databases housing electronic journal articles provide the exact same information as the print versions.

As we all know, "information" on the world wide web varies widely in accuracy, relevance, and timeliness.

So, the question is: do changes in search format correspond to improvements in search results' quality?