Once Again, An Assignment is Snatched from the Jaws of Death

For the second week in a row, I had to wade into unfamiliar waters. Last week it was RSS feeds (blogging wasn't new); this week it's CMS - WordPress in particular.

I was mainly familiar with WordPress as it is used for blogging by various people who forward links to me when they think I'll be interested. I never dreamed that with a modicum of effort that it would be way more customizable than Blogspot, Salon, or Vox. That's probably because it's way more than just blogging software. It's a full-on CMS.

I created a login, and went about joining my teammates Sharon, Melanie and Brittany in forming a joint blogging team on the site that we were re-purposing. It looked like we still didn't have our Akismet Key entered to activate spam filtering, so I obtained that and entered it first. The I dove into the rest of it.

When I think about how we each had a separate profile and could blog individually, even under shared categories, something made sense to me. I thought about how I had seen teams of three or four people sharing a blog to post info on rare music. They took turns posting under the various categories on the site. It was almost like having some of the most knowledgeable people on the subject available in the same location, each adding their own flavor. I always liked that, and now I know of a way to do it.

After creating my "About Bill Davis" page and adding a picture, then editing my personal profile with a bunch of things that are absolutely untrue (hey, this is just an exercise, right?), I changed the theme on the page from Multi-color 1.7 to Arjuna X 1.3.9, then back to Multi-color. I was very impressed by how seamlessly I was able to do this. Then I added a widget to display weather information for Valdosta and moved some of the other widgets around.

I also embedded a YouTube video into a post, but it won't play. I'm guessing that since the other video on our site doesn't work either, it must be restricted by Valdosta's servers. I also tried to download and install a Tweeter plug-in which would allow you to highlight any string of text on a site post (up to 140 characters, of course), and immediately "Tweet" it to followers, and it would contain a link back to the original post. Alas, I learned after spending too much time on this that the plug-in portion of the assignment was withdrawn. I seem to remember something written (in Hieroglyphics or Cuneiform, no doubt) in my grade school report card about paying attention and following instructions...I guess I'll get that right eventually.

Overall, this has been another very instructive week, leaving me feeling both smarter for the things I did and dumber for the things I should have known but didn't.

Now if I can just get the "Global Impact of RFID" video to work, I'll be happy.

Someone Much Smarter Than Me Talks About Librarianship and the Future of Search

I received a link to this blog posting between the time I applied to Valdosta's MLIS program and the time I was accepted. It gave me plenty to think about.

This is the reply by a librarian and author, Cathy Camper, in response to an earlier blog post called "Nine Ways the Internet Could Change that Would Make Search as We Know it Obsolete." Very important reading.

Forward and Backward; Musings on Librarianship and the Future of Search

xobni

In Paul Miller's Principles of Web 2.0, he describes the building of Web 2.0 virtual applications which "(draw) data and functionality from a number of sources as appropriate,... tend to be small, ...relatively rapid to deploy, ...and bring power that was previously the preserve of corporations within the reach of suitably motivated individuals."

This made me think about Xobni. Xobni offers a plug-in to Microsoft Outlook. It offers the utility of allowing you to quickly search through a giant in-box to find material related to a specific person or email address. But the way I saw it being used gave me pause. A Human Resources employee showed me how she used it to click on the email address submitted with a job-seeker's resume. It brings up every social networking or Linked-in profile associated with that address, including pictures, etc. Obviously, it can only access content which isn't restricted, but man-oh-man was I surprised when she used my email address as a demo. Be careful what you put out there when you're looking for work.

If you want to learn more about Xobni - which is free in its basic offering - here's the web site:

http://www.xobni.com

A Wiki for Emory's Health Sciences Library

Emory University’s Health Sciences Library at one time operated independently of the other Emory libraries, and answered only to the School of Medicine. However, budget cuts have resulted in the medical library being folded into the University’s general library as a “subdivision”.

The library is a private medical library (though open to the public for browsing), and currently serves a student, staff, and alumni population numbered at approximately 2,000, and has a total of 5 locations. The library's budget is a sub-section of the greater Emory libraries' budget, and in the current budget atmosphere, all costs out of the ordinary must be approved by the head of the main campus general library. As a result, the medical library is looking for a free, open-source program to avoid going through the approval process for expenditures.

In order to maintain a unique identity for themselves and to help with recruiting for the medical school, the Health Sciences Library would like to create a wiki to provide information on their history and services.

On the wiki, the library would like to include:

• Their locations: Main campus, Emory Hospital Library, Grady Hospital Library and satellite library, and Crawford Long Library,

• The population they serve: medical school students, public health students, biology majors, nursing school students, medical residents, and clinical staff,

• Their collection: several hundred printed journals, access to approximately 40,000 journal titles online, and thousands of books, textbooks and other monographs,

• Their services: book checkout, laptop checkout, photocopy, reference, medical literature searches, interlibrary loan, wi-fi access, remote access.

The library’s wiki requirements include:

• An English-only wiki is acceptable, as students must know English to attend the university
• Wiki must support page history to allow restores to a previous point
• WYSIWYG editing is required so that all staff can edit
• Must be easy enough to operate that no commercial support is required
• No remote hosting is necessary, as the university is offering server space
• Wiki pages will be stored in a file system, as it will be small – a database would be overkill
• Finally, the primary staff supporting the wiki are most familiar with Perl and JavaScript, so a wiki using these programming languages would be ideal.

After a thorough search of available wikis, we have found that TWiki is the only platform supporting all of these needs.

Is the Long Tail a Fish Tale?

I remember when I first read about the concept of the long tail. It was in this review (of sorts) of the book:

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/10/books/10manly.html?scp=2&sq=%22the%20long%20tail%22&st=cse

It makes sense, particularly for large distributors such as Amazon. More recently, Amazon began acting as a conduit for studios who outsource the burning of a DVD for you on demand, rather than spending money up front.

I loved the movie "Captain Sinbad" as a kid. I have it on VHS, but wanted to get it on DVD. Unfortunately, it has such a small potential market, that it was not re-released on DVD. Until now: I can have a copy burned through Amazon by request! The Long Tail lives! Here's info:

http://www.amazon.com/Captain-Sinbad-Guy-Williams/dp/B002B97QKA/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=dvd&qid=1274387499&sr=8-1

Meanwhile, at least one blogger believes the Long Tail is dead:

http://ideas.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/05/21/declaring-the-long-tail-dead/?scp=1&sq=%22the%20long%20tail%22&st=cse

I beg to differ.

More on Web 2.0

I gave Twitter a try. I couldn't think of any valid reason to "tweet", however, and my account is more or less dormant. I don't get the attraction, and I can't think of anyone fascinating enough to follow that closely.

Facebook is another animal altogether. It can be extremely habit-forming. A friend refers to it as "Crackbook." I was very active on Facebook during 2009, but I've been less so this year, mainly due to time constraints. It's a great way to find people you've lost touch with over the years, and a good way to find like-minded individuals who share your obsessions.

Technology, MLIS 7505, and Me

Well, with a post title like that, who wouldn't drop what they're doing to read it?

But seriously, folks...

I'm in my 2nd semester of VSU's MLIS program. I was excited by the prospect of a library and technology applications class, as it's an area that interests me a great deal. I actually have a BS in Information Systems, so I'm pretty comfortable with the application of technology to solve problems, improve efficiencies and allow new things to happen.

In spite of my comfort level, I don't know that I'd be considered an early adopter. Other than being the first on the block to own a PC, and much later a DVD player, I usually wait until the kinks get worked out and the prices drop. My wife actually got an iPod before me, and I'm the music freak.

In terms of some Web 2.0 apps, I started blogging (sort of) in 2005. If a Blog is place where you post daily or weekly, regardless of whether you have anything to say, then I don't have a blog. If a blog can also be a place to post writings for a small audience, on an irregular basis, on a variety of subjects - things that you wrote only because you felt compelled to write them - (and had no other place to put them), then I have a couple of blogs. Both blogs are written under the pseudonym Graham Negative.

The first of these, "Segues and Non Sequiturs", was started as an exercise in 2005 when I was about to change careers, moving from a webmaster position to a job as a marketing writer for a non-profit organization. I felt like I needed to get the right side of the brain working again, and "Segues and Non Sequiturs" was my sandbox.

More recently, December of 2009 to be precise, I decided to see if a different blogging community might compel me to write a bit more often. And it might have... if I hadn't enrolled in school. Alas! "The Safe Folds of Cheerful Oblivion" is my second blog site, and I plan to eventually move most of the material from my previous blog to a new home here, interspersing it with new material as it leaks out of my keyboard.