Collection Development for My Random Life.

Just back from session 1 where as a group we redesigned federated search results pages. That was fun. Biggest outcome was the suggestion of a Pandora like results page with a HOT/NOT LIKE/DISLIKE option to help refine the search results to the users needs like Pandora does with music.

Session 2 about WorldCat Local is starting. Already heard from a few librarians in the last session about pushback from librarians about WCL. One library backtracked away from WCL as their federated search and is going back to their meta-search tool.  Good to hear that these critical discussions are taking place. Hopefully they might occur in my library about whether WCL is ready for prime-time yet.

I can grasp that organizing information can bring about hidden connections between things, but at the same time can organization of materials also hide information? For example for a long time LC hid nuances of gender and race (it probably still does… ). I wonder if the pre-organization of information ala a library has become to some degree obsolete. With tagging and sorting features of most search engines / databases now the user selects how they would like the material organized. Yes, there still needs to be a framework of organization and meta-data in order to retrieve the information but the final context as to how the organization of the information makes sense is defined by the user.

Do users subconsciously expect this reordering of information to suit their needs, and thus have trouble using a library and its static organization of materials? I wonder…

The latest issue of the Economist contains their quarterly (duh!) Technology Quarterly section. The first article that caught my eye was Rummaging Through the Internet… you can read it here (if you didn’t already click back there, if you know what I mean).

The article mentions the company Cooliris and their PicLens and Previews tools which provide a visual representation of what images and videos are on a website without the clutter of text/metadata. PicLens is like a massive wall televisions ala Elvis’s living room in Graceland which provide visual information without having to “next” through everything.

Pretty sweet. I like the idea of “seeing” information on website so it isn’t hidden behind a link.