Leader's Digest November 2006
From PLN
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Leader's Digest November 2006
by Leslie Dillon
November 7, 2006
“Ask is hot!”
Shore Communications’ Jean Bedord’s report on the Internet Librarian conference describes Chris Sherman’s enthusiasm about the new implementation of Ask (the service formerly known as AskJeeves). He said that the search module was “very good...with a clean intuitive interface, including a nice blog and RSS interface.”
An article about Ask’s Smart Answers in SearchEngineWatch last month re-ignited my interest in them. They really are beginning to actually answer questions, rather than just supply a set of links. For example, if you enter “madagascar population” in the Ask.com search box, you’ll receive this answer near the top of your screen: The population of Madagascar is 18,040,341. Enter “1974 best actress oscar winner” and you get: The 1974 Best Actress award was given to Ellen Burstyn in "Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore." I entered the same search in Google and got 213,000 hits; the 6th and 7th entries had the answer, but you had to scroll down and read the fine print. By the way, Ask doesn’t provide a smart answer for every question you ask, but it’s still definitely worth a look!
E-book developments
Ms. Bedord also reports that audio e-books are being put on iPods for “reluctant readers,” “which makes them ‘cool’ as well as quite useful for long school bus trips.”
OPAC problems and solutions
OPAC problems and solutions were widely discussed at the recent LITA National Forum in Nashville. Greg Silvis, Assistant Director, Library Computing Systems at the University of Delaware Library, talked about the impending demise of the local OPAC and stressed the need for “radical change.” Conference attendees indicated a need for more than just incremental changes from vendors. Solutions:
- Universal OPAC: The University of Washington is in talks with OCLC about use of WorldCat as an OPAC.
- Faceted Search: North Carolina State University’s much-touted Endeca-powered catalog offers subject browsing and also has relevance ranking and faceted search. With faceted search, users see a list of ranked results and can refine their search by topic, author, genre, location, language, material type, etc. A “preview count” gives the number of works in each category and there are no dead links. The University of Rochester’s CUIPID project also uses browsing and faceted search and got its inspiration from “web sites like Sears’ and Home Depot’s.”
- Do-It-Yourself Teams: These innovative libraries are hiring staff who can do the work themselves—-at NCSU a team of 7 staff implemented Endeca in 6 months.
- Research User Needs: University of Rochester research into how freshmen write a paper discovered that freshmen were not afraid of the reference desk and also that they know less about technology than expected.
MySpace victim of fickle teens
The Washington Post reported last week that MySpace is now passé with teenagers! A lot of teens “are more into Facebook now.” Teenagers are “constantly looking for new ways to communicate and share content they find or create, and because of that group mentality, friends shift from service to service in blocs.”
Implications for libraries: We need to be out there on the Web where our users (and potential users) are, but how do we keep up with them? I think it’s a lot like our collections now; we just have to deal with multiple formats, and we have to be lots of places at once while we find out what works (and what doesn’t).
November 14, 2006
Web 3.0?
If you missed the article on Web 3.0 in yesterday's New York Times, you might want to read it. (Free registration required.) Web 3.0 is what we've heard called the Semantic Web, the effort to add a layer of meaning to the Web that would make it "less of a catalog and more of a guide.".
One advocate calls it the "World Wide Database." The goal of Web 3.0 is to develop better ways of organizing information that's already there to provide a Web that would supply complete answers to complex questions. It's not that this is new--it's not--but "the Web is now producing...useful intelligence-based systems grounded in commercial efforts.". And Web 3.0 is the subject of a story on the front page of the New York Times!
What else is on the technology horizon?
- Terabyte CDs: A new device that tightly focuses laser light could increase the density of optical data storage. This is important because optical discs such as CDs and DVDs are written and read with laser light. A smaller wavelength means more data can be crammed onto a disc.
- Cell phones that predict our next moves: MIT researchers have developed a technique that can predict behavior and determine social allegiances. This means that cell phones could actually learn to schedule meetings or recommend activities. (Kate Greene, "From the Labs: Information Technology," Technology Review, Nov. 14, 2006. )
Technology trends in higher education
One of my favorite reports every year is the Horizon Report from Educause. The report identifies key trends and describes six emerging technologies that are likely to impact higher education. It classifies these technologies into three "adoption horizons": one year or less, two to three years, and four to five years. Here's a brief summary of what they've said, but it's still worth your time to skim through the whole 32-page PDF.
Key trends:
- Dynamic knowledge creation and social computing tools are becoming more widespread.
- Mobile and personal technology will become delivery platforms.
- Consumers increasingly expect individualized services, tools and experiences.
- Collaboration is critical.
Technology areas:
- Social computing. Time to adoption: one year or less. One interesting aspect of this technology that enables interaction and collaboration is "shared taxonomies."
- Personal broadcasting. Time to adoption: one year or less. Campuses are already significantly impacted by podcasting and video blogging.
- Mobile phones. Time to adoption: two to three years. Delivery of educational content to cellphones is "just around the corner."
- Educational gaming. Time to adoption: two to three years. Research into gaming is increasing, and we're about to see "what games can really teach us."
- Augmented reality and enhanced visualization. Time to adoption: four to five years. These technologies "have the potential to literally change the way we see the world."
- Context-aware environments and devices. Time to adoption: four to five years. These environments become "transparently responsive to [their] human occupants."
Malpractice among health information seekers
Pew Internet and American Life reported recently that 75% of people who search for health information start at a search engine, and they don't check the source of the information they find. Pew did a similar survey in 2001, and the 2006 survey showed that people check the source less now than in 2001.
This "lack of scrutiny suggests that many people...could in fact be relying on incorrect or even potentially dangerous sources." Here's a frightening fact: 74% of health information seekers felt reassured that they could make appropriate health care decisions after their last search. This "translates to about 85 million Americans gathering health advice online without consistently examining the quality...of the information." (Online Health Search 2006, 21-page PDF; from SearchEngineWatch, Oct. 31, 2006.)
YouTube: best invention of 2006
Time Magazine named YouTube the best invention of 2006. Why?
- YouTube is ultimately more interesting as a community and a culture...than as a cash cow. It's the fulfillment of the promise that Web 1.0 made 15 years ago. The way blogs made regular folks into journalists, YouTube makes them into celebrities. The real challenge old media face isn't protecting their precious copyrighted material. It's figuring out what to do when the rest of us make something better. As Hurley puts it, "How do you stay relevant when people can entertain themselves?" He and his partners may have started YouTube, but the rest of us, in our basements and bedrooms, with our broadband and our webcams, invented it. (via SearchEngineWatch, November 7, 2006.)
State of the blogosphere
Here's brief summary of a report on the state of the blogosphere from Technorati's founder and CEO, Dave Sifry.
- Technorati is now tracking more than 57 million blogs.
- The blogosphere is doubling in size approximately every 230 days.
- About 100,000 new weblogs were created each day.
- English and Spanish are the 2 main blog languages.
First Wiki Book Project
The MIT Collective Intelligence Laboratory is launching the first wiki book publishing project. Authors are invited to help write the first networked book about how the emergence of community and social networks will change the future rules of business. We Are Smarter Than Me has been formed to prove that the community itself can write a compelling book better than individuals. Pearson will publish the book next fall and each contributor will be listed as an author. (Paula Hane, Information Today NewsLink, Issue 85/November 2006. Paula Hane's article wasn't available on the NewsLink archive when I posted this, but in case you want to check later, the archive is here.)
Quick takes
Amazon's TitleZ
Take a look at Amazon's TitleZ! It's a new site that lets you compare sales rankings of books on Amazon. It's free while it's in beta, and worth a try, even tho it's primarily for authors, publishers and book marketers. But it could have value for libraries as well, don't you agree? (From Micro Persuasion via Shore's ContentBlogger.)
Ms. Dewey
If you haven't already seen Ms. Dewey from Microsoft Live, you might want to take a quick look at that too, not for its value as a reference tool (it's not a serious attempt, or at least I hope it's not--it takes too long for one thing, and Ms. Dewey is intrusive for another), but for what its designers (netgen gamer folks?) are implying about libraries and librarians!
Wikipedia use increases when school's in session
A Hitwise study of seasonal patterns of web traffic found that visits to Wikipedia increased in May (during finals) and declined slightly in the summer. YouTube overtook Wikipedia in August, but as soon as school started, Wikipedia's growth outpaced that of YouTube. See this post for more detail on the Wikipedia school year trend. (From OCLC VP Lorcan Dempsey's blog.)
Web reaches 100 million sites
I missed this on CNN, so in case you did too, I'm including it---picked up from one of my RSS feeds!
- There are now 100 million Web sites with domain names and content on them," said Netcraft's Rich Miller. There were just 18,000 Web sites when Netcraft, based in Bath, England, began tracking in August 1995. It took until May 2004 to reach 50 million, then only 30 more months to hit the 100 million mark in October 2006.
November 28, 2006
Information industry outlook
Outsell, Inc., an information industry market research firm, predicts that the search, aggregation, and syndication segment of the information industry market will reach $68 billion (U.S. billion, that is, thousand million) by 2009. This amounts to a four-year compound annual growth rate of 17 percent.
Key findings in Outsell’s report (price: $2,495.00):
- Ask.com is a rising star, one of the top “organizations whose innovation, agility and customer-centricity are driving growth.”
- Top 10 licensed content aggregators include Thomson Corp. (Dialog & Gale), LexisNexis, EBSCO, Factiva, ProQuest, OCLC, Copyright Clearance Center and Books24X7.
- Top 10 distribution and subscription services include Follett Educational Services, Dawson Holdings, Royal Swets & Zeitlinger, Ingram Book Group, Baker & Taylor, Blackwell’s Book Services and Publisher’s Group West.
Also, Google and Yahoo!’s continued dominance in search isn’t a given. “Efforts in vertical search, new ad models, social search, user aggregation, and hyper-personalized results point to future change.”
Six factors for successful teams
The key to successful teams is how they’re managed and whether an organization really supports teamwork. These 6 ingredients are essential for success:
- Clear, unambiguous objectives established by management.
- Metrics that allow the team to assess its performance.
- Ongoing training in communication, group leadership, and other skills
- Decision-making authority.
- Team-based rewards and evaluations.
- Easy access to information and to senior management.
(“Why Some Teams Succeed (and So Many Don’t)”, Harvard Management Update, October, 2006. Vol. 11 No. 10. Available on EBSCOhost.)
Breaking the tradeoff between efficiency and service
Frances X. Frei’s article in the November 2006 Harvard Business Review discusses ways service businesses need to deal with customer variability. Even though Ms. Frei focuses on service businesses, her article provides useful insights for libraries. The first step in managing customer variability is understanding the forms it can take.
- Arrival variability. The resulting inefficiencies have inspired lots of solutions, including those in W. Earl Sasser’s Match Supply and Demand in Service Industries.
- Request variability. Customers’ requests can vary widely and that “poses real challenges for virtually every kind of service business.”
- Capability variability. Some “customers perform tasks easily and others require hand-holding.”
- Effort variability. It’s up to your customers (not you) how much effort they put into a “service interaction.”
- Subject preference variability. Not every customer has the same definition of being “treated well.”
Managers must choose whether to try to accommodate customer variability or reduce it. The secret to success lies in correctly diagnosing the behavioral problem, designing a mutually beneficial role for customers, and testing new approaches. The whole article is worth reading and has examples of companies’ successes and failures, including Netflix, which has capitalized on customers’ resentment of late fees from other DVD-rental companies. (Frances X. Frei, “Breaking the tradeoff between efficiency and service”, Harvard Business Review, November 2006, Vol. 84, No. 11. Available on EBSCOhost.)
Quick takes
BookSuggester from LibraryThing
Have you seen BookSuggester from LibraryThing? They use the 7.1 million books and 9.5 million tags added by their 100,000 members and run algorithms against holding patterns and tags. Every book gets 3 lists of recommendations. BookSuggester will soon be ready for libraries, according to LibraryThing founder, Tim Spalding, who believes its focus fits libraries’ “interest in moving patrons ‘down the long tail’ and ‘into the stacks’.” (Mashable blog, Nov. 14, 2006.)
Google Scholar not on college and university library web sites
Google Scholar is featured on only 6 ARL library web sites (5.3%) and 2 Oberlin Group library Web sites (2.7%), according to Barbara I. Dewey, University of Tennessee Libraries, who conducted a study that concludes that Google Scholar needs more visibility on Google or improved integration in Google’s or libraries’ searches.
Google News Archive
Mary Ellen Bates says Google News Archive still feels like a beta and it can’t compete with fee-based services like Factiva and LexisNexis, but sometimes it can provide free access to articles from the last couple of years that you’d otherwise have to pay for.
Library Technology Reports on Gaming
Jenny Levine’s long-awaited issue of LTR on gaming is out, and if you don’t have a subscription, you might want to consider getting a copy ($63.00), or looking at it article-by-article when it finally gets to EBSCOhost (not there yet as of November 28, 2006).
