InfoScope

I tried…I really did.  But I just could not figure out how to get the code from Feed2JS or RSS2HTML into my blog.  I ended up cheating by adding an RSS widget into my sidebar (which was easy but only lets you add one).  I did find using Feed2JS was pretty straightforward (until the part where I had to paste the Java Script command somewhere) but RSS2HTML was kind of baffling and I’m afraid that didn’t get too far with it.    Can anyone using WordPress tell me what I’m doing wrong? 

So I moved on to OPML.  I checked out the OPML generator  and success!  I was able to create an OPML file.  Great.  But now what do I do with it?  I guess this might be what you’d call a bad technology day.  Tomorrow it will all probably seem obvious.  In any case, it seems that one of the ways that libraries could OPML files  would be to to group feeds together by interests or categories.  University of Manitoba Health Sciences Library has gathered together a long list of feeds, which is a really useful resource, but could they use OPML files to group those feeds by category?  I wondered whether this is what Bloglines uses for its Quick Pick Subscriptions. 

 I also got kind of excited about the feeds now available through Engineering Village 2, EBSCO and ProQuest.  Customized queries can be fed right into an individual’s aggregator.  This could be a really helpful tool for students, scholars and researchers. 

I now collect information using Bloglines, Netvibes, My Yahoo, and Rojo.  I have feeds from news, weather, parenting blogs, music information, the Kansas City Public Library and Quirks and Quarks, just to name a few.  I get all kinds of information delivered fresh and tasty right to my very own desktop.  But it’s too much.  I’m having trouble stepping away from the information buffet.  I’m consuming information that I don’t need, just because I can.  I’ve become an information glutton.

Feeds of every type are now available.   Some give very specific information like the Hispanic/Latino subject guide feed from the Kansas City Public Library or the new romance arrivals from Tacoma Public Library.   Other provide access to services like account information.  But there is now such a vast array of feeds available that it can be overwhelming.  It make me wonder if anyone has done any usability studies looking at the types of feeds that are actually useful to people?

I was talking with a friend of mine the other day who is a freelance writer and as part of her work  she scans a number of news sources each day.  I was excitedly describing the beauty of the RSS feed and was surprised to see her looking somewhat horrified.  Maybe some people like the control of going to the information when they want it instead of having it coming in at them. 

As both consumers and suppliers of RSS feeds, I think this is an issue that information professionals should be considering.  The key seems to be making the distinction between the amount of information that is helpful vs. the amount of information that is burdensome.    This, of course, will vary from person to person. 

So I’m going on a strict feed diet.   The lesson I’ve learned is that just because you can doesn’t mean you should. 

Wow – there are a lot of libraries with RSS feeds.   I notice them everywhere now.  On the public library front, Kansas Public Library lets patrons subscribe to what they call subject guides that provide library information on different topics such as health, sports, and so on.  The library also subscribes to related feeds within each subject page.  So for example in the Sports subject guide, they have a feed coming in with sports news.  At the Hennepin County Library  you can subscribe to a feed with your account information.   I would really find that feed useful.   Tacoma Public Library supplies feeds that provide information on new arrivals of CDs, DVDs  and books and they categorize by genre (historical, etc.) which allows the patron to get exactly the information that they want. 

In academic circles, the North Harris Montgomery Community College District Library   allows users with valid i.d. to get feeds from e-journals (presumably listing the most recent contents).  I thought the feeds offered by Western Kentucky University suffered from some labelling/organizational problems.  I mean there’s a feed for Announcements, Coming Events, Current Events and even Past Events.  Is it just me or does this seem excessive?

I signed up for Rojo just to check it out and see how it compares to Bloglines.  The biggest difference is that Rojo has a tagging feature.  Unfortunately, I think they’re still working out some bugs, so I was unable to tag any of my feeds.  One of the options when displaying your feeds is to have them sorted by tag.  I’m not sure how this would work if you have more than one tag per feed, but since it wasn’t working properly I couldn’t play around with it and find out.  Another feature is that it allows you to rate different feeds (or give them mojo).  The feeds that are tagged, read and mojo-ed the most are given a higher relevancy rating, which essentially tells you which ones are “hot”.  Rojo will also recommend new feeds based on the relevance system and your interests.  The front page also allows you to see what everyone else is reading.  As a result of these features there is more of a community feeling to Rojo.

In comparison Netvibes allows you to create a home page by customizing modules and feeds to suit your needs and interests.  I actually find this layout easier to read in that the categories (news, weather, etc.) are grouped together with the contents.  It just seems easier to scan through the information.  You can also add features like search, flickr, and gmail onto your page.   I might just give it a try to see how it works.  Stay tuned…

In Luke Rosenberger’s RSS tutorial he discusses three kinds of aggregators.  There are the ones that you can download and install on your desktop, there are the web-based aggregators like Bloglines, and the third is the custom web portal.  So I really didn’t know what the custom web portal might look like so I clicked on the link to My Yahoo , and then clicked on “Get a Page” and lo and behold…my homepage!  My Yahoo lets me customize my homepage with continually changing news, weather, showtimes, TV guide, etc. etc.   In retrospect it makes perfect sense that these are RSS feeds, but I had just never put two and two together.  Once I realized that I wasn’t completely limited by the choices that Yahoo had initially offered me, I was able to add some other content to my homepage by doing a news search and subscribing to a feed.  I’ve been using RSS for ages and didn’t even know it.  Duh!

It’s not science fiction, but it’s getting there.  Lamson Library  has created an OPAC using Word Press!  My brain is still struggling to understand all of the ramifications, and I still don’t quite fathom how this fits in with their other system (which includes another OPAC as far as I can see), but it does bring to light the fact that you can do some really interesting and innovative things with a blog.  I’m imagining future OPAC features like user ratings, ways to link to groups that are using materials for specific purposes (like courses or book clubs), and of course (my favourite) – discussions about the resources! 

Given that one of the features that makes a blog more appealing to users is the notion that there is a real person behind it, the issue of multi-author blogs becomes troublesome.  Not only do I think that it is difficult for a user to have an interaction with an organization, but this would also seem to be true when there are many authors writing on one blog.  After reviewing the case studies for this week here are a couple of thoughts:

The Garfield County Public Library blog certainly lets you have an up-close and personal view of the library staff.   A little too personal.  In fact, it almost seems as though the blog is there for the librarians and not the library users.  Even the comments seem to be made by other librarians.  I think a blog like this could alienate users by making them feel excluded.  This blog also made me think about some ethical issues.  Is it alright to share information about other people without their permission (including photos)? 

One approach to take to establishing a personal yet professional tone is to have more than one blog.  Darien Library takes this approach, yet each blog may still have many authors (although in some cases only one or two).   The best solution seems to be multiple blogs each with its own author.  MabryOnline has many blogs, each with a separate author.  This approach seems to be the most user-friendly.  The user can engage in a more personal interaction within the area of their choosing.  Sounds good to me.

Reading Blogging Strategy 101:  A Primer, made me think about some of the discussions that have been taking place regarding the use of blogging in libraries.  In particular, the following quote caught my attention:

Blogging culture is about real people sharing their personal experiences and insights, and engaging others in thoughtful conversation.

On her blog, Kelly writes: 

…identifying the librarian(s) writing the blogs would make them seem more personal, and would be a way for patrons to get to know their librarians.

I agree with Kelly.  It’s hard to interact with an organization.  Libraries must realize that if they are going to have a blog, they become part of the blogging culture and inherent in this is the notion of interaction.    This also violates one of Jakob Nielson’s weblog usability design rules.  He says that “anonymous writings have less credence”.  Readers want to know about the writer. 

Rebecca Blood’s article outlines the shift from filter-style blogs to the more recent journal-style of blogging that emerged with the appearance of Blogger. It’s interesting to note that the Wikipedia entry on “blog” doesn’t reflect the same history. It talks about the blog evolving from the online diary. So as a librarian (in training!), one of the issues that this raises is “authority of information”. I graduated from my first term of the MLIS program with the idea that some sources of information are more authoritative than others, especially when it comes to the Internet. I still think this is true. But in reading blogs lately, I’ve begun to realize something. There is no one truth or authority. Everyone has biases (including the so-called authorities). To me, it seems that next to allowing anyone to state their opinion in the first place, the most powerful part of the blog is the comments section.

In another article, Rebecca Blood talks about the “participatory media” that has emerged as a result of blogging. The beauty of this participatory media is the notion that everyone can express their views, listen to all opinions, and then make up their own minds about what they believe. And in many cases this is played out in the comments sections (for example there is quite a discussion on the talk page for the Wikipedia entry on “blog”). Does this mean that I’m going to ignore all of the “authoritative sources” that we’ve come to know and love? No, but there may be a real benefit to looking beyond those sources to see what else is out there. And isn’t this what information literacy is really all about?

 This brings me to the second point I’d like to make about libraries and blogging. I think it’s great that libraries have blogs. However, in the spirit of Web 2.0 and Community 2.0, one of the best things about the blog lies in its ability to facilitate an interaction. Otherwise it is little more than a static bulletin board of facts for people to read. So if libraries are going to use blogs, then part of the challenge should be to find ways to encourage a two-way dialogue that will make the library users feel that they are participating in the library’s on-line community and making contributions. The Ann Arbor District Library blogs seem to have had some success with this. The Madison-Jefferson County Public library blogs not so much…although I thought it looked pretty good and had interesting information on it. It might be interesting to look a little more closely at the reasons for the difference in the public’s interaction with these blogs.

According to Levy and Stone Web 2.0 or The Living Web is not the collection of static HTML pages of the original Internet, but rather includes websites that harness collective intelligence, contain user-generated content and organization, have porous boundaries and are about community.  The article concludes with the following quote that really illustrates the point:  “Cyberspace was somewhere else. The Web is where we live”.   In essence what they are saying is that we’re no longer leaving our “real” lives behind when we are on the Internet, but that our lives are on the Internet (at least some of the time). 

Kroski discusses the notion of this Internet community which she calls Community 2.0:

Community 2.0 is about user-generated content and collaboration. It is a “contribution culture”. It is all the more prevalent because our community now comes with us through our handhelds, our phones, our laptops. It is mobile, it is ubiquitous, and it is continuous computing.

Community 2.0 is all about empowering the user to share, collaborate and create which sounds pretty good.  Not so, according to Nicholas Carr.  He states that “Implicit in the ecstatic visions of Web 2.0 is the hegemony of the amateur. I for one can’t imagine anything more frightening.”  This seems somewhat alarmist.  What Carr has overlooked is the fact that in Web 2.0 this “hegemony of the amateur” also has a self-regulatory function.  It may not always work perfectly, but there is a satisfying transparency to the process, which is not present in traditional expert-driven productions.