Robbins Library Notes

Clearly something important and fundamental is happening to books and reading. Libraries need to be part of this reading revolution, supporting and defending the rights of digital readers, experimenting with new reader services, collecting new genres and media formats, and providing access for all readers to the devices, networks, content, and online communities that will continue to emerge.

Tom Peters — Library Journal, 11/1/2009

Good morning, readers!

Three weeks ago, I wrote about an editorial/advertisement for the vook that appeared in The Crimson.  This week, I want to follow up with a recent article by Tom Peters from Libraryjournal.com, titled “The Future of Reading.”  Peters talks about the crisis facing reading now — will reading and literacy decline and become the province of historical reenactors?  Or will it morph and change as new technologies emerge?  Or will it remain as one, but not the only, way of interacting with a text?

Again, I don’t think we need to adopt an either/or mentality.  A plurality of ways of reading and interacting with texts, both traditional and new, should be able to co-exist peacefully and learn from each other.  I’m actually very intrigued by and excited about these new forms of reading, even while I remain a practitioner of the more traditional form of reading.

What are  your thoughts, readers?

Administrative note: With next week being the Thanksgiving holiday break, I will not be posting then.  Posts will resume on 4 December.  See you then!

Good afternoon, readers!

I’m posting Thursday afternoon, rather than Friday morning, this week as I will be out tomorrow.

Today’s offering is an editorial on the vook that appeared in a recent edition of The Crimson.  While I think the author, James McAuley, raises some interesting points, his claims for the imminent demise of the “traditional reader” and the printed book are, I think, a bit exaggerated.

There’s no doubt that electronic media and books will reshape the way we read and interact with words and text.  There’s no doubt that certain things will fall by the wayside and be lost.  This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, either.  Admittedly, the change will be difficult at time, but, then, when is change otherwise?

Nonetheless, I still fail to understand why there must be a simplistic either/or when it comes to the future of books and print media — i.e., it’s either print/or electronic, nothing else, or so the message seems to be.  Why?   Isn’t the vook a blending of print text with multimedia?  Why can’t hybrids such as the vook exist comfortably along print-only and electronic-only texts?  Why can’t different forms of reading exist without one “having” to vanish?  For a good counterpoint along these lines, see Lane Wallace’s recent piece in TheAtlantic.com.

And “must” the “traditional reader” vanish completely?  Seems more like marketing hype to me.  (Indeed, the second comment makes the interesting claim that the piece is merely an advertisement for the vook masquerading as an editorial.  I’m inclined myself to agree.)

While I’m no longer a Luddite, I still must repeat — caveat lector.  Don’t mistake marketing hype, propaganda, and advertising spin for the way things “must” be.  And don’t throw out print texts simply to ride the wave of mere novelty for novelty’s sake.

What are your thoughts on this, readers?

Good morning, readers!

I haven’t posted a link to recent podcasts from Philosophy Bites, so I want to include the link today.  Recent podcasts include:

• John Armstrong on What Can You Do With Philosophy?
• Sabine Döring on Emotion
• Ben Rogers on Pascal’s Pensées
• Marilyn McCord Adams on Evil
• Luciano Floridi on the Fourth Revolution

This is a great series of podcasts, and definitely worth taking some time to listen to them.  The interview with Armstrong is especially good.

Good morning, readers! Welcome back after several weeks of vacation!

Today’s post is about a review of Web browsers in PC Magazine that I found via “American Libraries Direct.” Firefox, Internet Explorer, Chrome, Opera, Safari are all reviewed — both with a short review and with a more detailed review. Pros and cons are listed for each.  It’s useful when comparing which browsers you might want to use.  (For the record, I remain a firm believer in the Firefox browser.)

Enjoy!

Good morning, readers!

Lots of great items in this week’s Library News & Notes. Some of the most interesting include:

• A Bing/Google comparison
• “The end of theory in science?”
• “How Many Scientists Fabricate and Falsify Research? A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Survey Data”
• “58 Essential Resources For Every Mac Geek”
• More on Twitter and Wolfram|Alpha

Enjoy!

Good morning, readers!

This week, I have a number of items on search engines that may interest you:

Via Garrett Eastman’s Library News & Notes, several articles on Wolfram|Alpha, which I mentioned last week.

• Impressive: The Wolfram Alpha “Fact Engine”
  http://searchengineland.com/wolfram-alpha-fact-engine-18431
  (Source: Pandia Search World)
• See also: Ask Alpha: Quizzing the world’s first answer engine
  http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20227075.600-ask-alpha-quizzing-the-worlds-first-answer-engine.html
  (Source: Science in the News)
• See also: Wolfram Alpha and Google Face Off
  http://www.technologyreview.com/web/22585/
• See also: Wolfram Alpha vs. Google: Answers to Your Queries
  http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/editors/23495/
  (Source: dweinberger)
• Wolfram Alpha vs. Google = Power vs. Simplicity?
  http://ow.ly/5N9N
• See also: Little search engines that could
  http://features.csmonitor.com/innovation/2009/05/07/little-search-engines-that-could/

It’s my understand that Wolfram|Alpha will launch this coming Monday, 18 May.

I don’t think Wolfram|Alpha will be a “Google killer.”  The data it collects and parses is somewhat different from the majority of Google searches.  My guess is that it will become a very useful niche search engine, to be used in conjunction with Google.

In other search engine news:

• Google announces that is offering “smarter” searches
• CNN.com/technology looks at alternative niche search engines to supplement Google.

Good morning, readers!

I came across these two articles while browsing through Bookforum.com a few days ago.

In the first article, “Knowledge Overload,” Ken Coates examines the explosion of scholarly publishing in recent years, arguing that this explosions makes it basically impossible for anyone to keep up with any scholarly research, except in very narrow sub-disciplines.  After offering examples of how the flood of information and knowledge results in little to none of it being assimilated and making a difference, he concludes by writing:

We have collectively created the equivalent of an academic monsoon over the past three decades, with no change in the forecast for the coming years. Without a major reconsideration of how we share and use information, how we keep up with the field, and how we recognize academic accomplishment, we will continue to add to the floodwaters, all the while spending less attention on whether or not anyone reads our work, listens to our presentations, or appreciates our professional contributions. Academe 2.0 offers tools to build more effective dikes and even to regulate the flow. But we need to realize that the lakes at the end of the bloated academic rivers – our faculty, researchers and students – have finite capacity, in terms of time and ability to assimilate information. Controlling the scholarly input is crucial to ensuring that we actually learn from and about each other, and ensuring that our academic work truly makes a difference.

What do you think, readers?

Scott McLemee, in “Print or Byte,” offers his views on how the current economic crisis will push academic publishing to a more digital environment, one in which print on demand and digital editions will become more common.  He argues, though, that this will not signal the death of the printed book, as some claim.  I like his predictions, and agree that print and digital media can co-exist.

Thoughts?

Good morning, readers!

I found this interesting article on print-on-demand publishing yesterday, and offer it for your reading pleasure this morning.

Why?  Well, for one thing, it’s my belief that print-on-demand publishing will be the direction in which book publishing moves in the future.  It is more economical, for one thing.  For another, it is more environmentally friendly: books are only printed when purchased, rather than having huge runs of copies printed, as they are now.  For a third, it is more democratic, allowing more people to publish their work, rather than having publishers rely on a small stable of highly-profitable authors.  Finally, books will be able to remain in-print for longer periods of time, since publishers will not have to keep inventory on hand.

Naturally, there are drawbacks, such as the potential for lack of editorial review for manuscripts.  Also, there will likely be an increase in vanity publishing.  Another potential problem is how to link these works to e-book readers like the Kindle, with its closed architecture platform?

Still, I don’t think that these drawbacks are insurmountable.

What do you think, readers?

Good morning, readers!

Last Friday, I attended an overview session of the new HOLLIS interface, HOLLIS beta. From what I’ve learned, the new interface comes out of the recognition that the current HOLLIS interface simply isn’t working well, and is no longer sufficient for the needs of Harvard users.  HOLLIS beta is an attempt to develop a more user-driven search interface, rather than one solely designed by librarians and experts.

Today’s post will cover the highlights of what I learned about the new interface, which is expected to go live tomorrow soon.  (Update 4/7/2009: The new interface is now live, and you can find it at http://lib.harvard.edu/catalogs/hollis.h… Or, you can find it listed as “HOLLIS” under the HOLLIS Catalogs button, at http://lib.harvard.edu.)  If you would like to see what the new interface looks like before it goes live, please stop by my desk, and I’ll be happy to show you.

General Information

• The new interface is called “HOLLIS beta.”  This is to indicate that the new interface is under development, and that the developers are actively seeking user input to shape and craft the interface over the next several months to conform to Harvard users’ online search expectations and practices.
• Thus, feedback is expected and welcomed. There will be links to evaluation forms for you to fill out throughout the search form, and to note mistakes in HOLLIS records needing correcting.  Again, the new interface is meant to be user-driven, not librarian-driven, reflecting your searching patterns and habits.  Your feedback will help to make this happen.
• Given that the new interface is in beta testing, the older interface — called “HOLLIS Classic” — will remain in place until at least the fall of 2009, from my understanding.  Also, all Request Item forms and Account forms will leave the new interface and return to the HOLLIS Classic page for the time being, as will results obtained from the LibX search tool.

Searching

• The default search is the Basic Search box.  For now, users are being advised to use this search option, as the Advanced Search option is limited, at present.
• You will also have the option to search “Text-only,” without all of the graphics and Word Cloud present.  (Very useful, too, if you are having trouble reading the current layout, the colors and font of which are still being refined.)
• Searching in the new interface is much closer to natural language searching.  You do have the option of using the Boolean operators AND, OR, and NOT, which must be capitalized in search strings.
• Searches are not case sensitive.
• Nested searches are possible, e.g., plato (forms OR ideas)
• If you are using multiple search terms, the default search is a Boolean AND search (no need to add in the word “AND.”)  So, if you search virtue ethics, the new interface will treat it as virtue AND ethics.

Unfortunately, there is no phrase searching at present, so if you enter the phrase “virtue ethics,” the search engine will ignore the quotation marks.  However, it will return results with the two terms next to each other at the top of the results list.

• The back button on your browser works such that you will not lose a search or search terms, as is the case with HOLLIS Classic
• To start over, simply click on the HOLLIS beta name.

Refining searches

• To the right of the results list, there will be a list of “facets.”  These include a drop-down menu of library locations where the results are found, and options such as Online, Publication Date, Topic, Format, and so forth. Click on these facets to refine your search results.
• Facets can be added sequentially, but not all at once.  It is much easier to explain how to do this in a training session, so please contact me if you are interested in learning more about how to do this.
• Facets that you’ve clicked on will also be listed just above the search results.  You can “remove” or “keep” the facet in your search by clicking on it.

One thing to note about choosing a library location: doing so will lock into in future searches that you undertake during your session.  Thus, if you are looking for books in Robbins in your first search, but forget to remove it for subsequent searches, you may find that you return no results.  Simply remove the limiter, rerun your search, and you should be all set.

Advanced Searching

• There is a link to the Advanced Search form next to the Basic Search box.
• As noted above, this option is very limited at present, so you may want to use the Basic Search option for the time being.
• Searches can be limited by format and fielded keyword searches.
• This option will be refined over the coming months and improved.

Command Searches

• Advanced searching can be done using Command Searches in the Basic Search field. The most common Command Searches that you’ll likely use are Author (author:first name last name or author: last name first name) and Title (title:full title), entered exactly like this.  So, e.g., author:derek parfit title:reasons and persons — since the default search is the Boolean AND search, you don’t need to put “AND” in between the author and title Command Search function. (If you would like to use things like ISBN numbers, subject, publisher, and the like, please contact me for a complete list of Command Searches.) This option is useful for looking for specific books, without having to wade through long lists of results.

Results

• Results are returned in order of relevance, though you do have the option of resorting the records by year or author.
• Journal titles are sorted to the top of the list, which should help for short journal titles like Ratio, and indeed for all journal searching.
• Also, journal records will show holdings of that journal at all locations.
• Word variants: the search engine automatically looks for variations of a word, along with words formed from the same stem.  E.g., Disobediance also returns disobedience; adolescent also returns adolescents and adolescence. If you do not want this to happen, simply add quotation marks around the word.
• “Did you mean to search for…?” suggestions: if you misspell a search term, or enter in a term that returns no results, the search engine will ask you, “Did you mean to search for…?”  Thus, if you enter in “pyschology” as your search term, you may be prompted for “Did you mean to search for psychology?”
• Individual records of books, journals, and other items contain a URL that can be bookmarked.
• If you check items from searches to save in a list, the list of results is cumulative across multiple searches, and you will not lose this list should you move on to another search.

Word Cloud

One of the features of the new HOLLIS interface is the Word Cloud, found in the left-hand panel next to your search results. What is this feature?

• The Word Cloud contains words that the search engine determines are closely related to the term(s) you searched.  It is more of a three-dimensional model of classification, rather than the traditional two-dimensional hierarchies of most cataloging systems.
• The Cloud only includes terms that will retrieve hits.
• The size of the font of the Cloud term indicates the relevance of the term.
• Please note that the distance or direction of a Cloud term from the center term of the Cloud has no significance.
• The color of cloud term indicates the type of relationship:

Associations are related words that are found by co-occurrence analysis, and are often found near the search term in the catalog

Discovery trail shows terms you have already searched or clicked in the Word Cloud

Spelling variations are terms that occur in the catalog and are spelled similarly

Thesaurus terms are Library of Congress (LC) Subject Headings that are similar to the term(s) searched

Translations are worlds from built-in dictionaries and are only displayed if they are found in the catalog.

• If you click on a Word Cloud term, this executes a new search rather than modifying the original search.  The previous search term affects the relevance ranking of the new results.  Records containing both the Word Cloud term and your previous search term will be ranked highest.
• Also, if you click on a Word Cloud term, you will be able to use the back button on your browser to return to your original search, without losing it.
• Clicking on a facet does not change the Word Cloud.
• Finally, the Word Cloud will often catch spelling errors and other mistakes in HOLLIS records, so, if you spot one, please report it via the Feedback tool, so that it can be corrected.

This feature can be useful when doing broad searches.  It is also best shown live, so please contact me for a demonstration.

When to use HOLLIS Classic

For some searches, HOLLIS Classic will be the better choice for searching Harvard’s library records.  These searches include:

• For string or phrase searching
• Complex Boolean searches
• Searches with a specific date range or date
• Sophisticated or targeted searches.

Known Issues

• There are known display issues with the fonts and colors, especially with the Internet Explorer browser.  For now, you might be better off using Firefox, Safari, or another browser with HOLLIS beta.
• The new interface will display non-Latin characters, but it does not fully support searching for these characters at present.

All of this is a lot to take in, so please don’t hesitate to contact me for an overview or tutorial — indviduals, groups, whomever — I’m happy to help in any way that I can!

Good morning, readers!

For my Harvard readers: I’ve received word that the HOLLIS interface will be changing next Tuesday, 7 April to a new platform.   Before this happens, I want to pass on to you a few things of note.

The e-mail announcment I received states: “For the initial rollout this spring, we will use the name ‘HOLLIS’ for the new discovery tool, and will rename the Aleph OPAC as ‘HOLLIS Classic’.”  Thus, from 7 April going forward, you will have the option to use the new search interface, or to use the “classic” search interface, though it’s not clear how long the “classic” interface will remain.

The new interface is promised to be “a fun and exciting way to explore the 11+ million records from Aleph.   The system is very different from HOLLIS Classic but many features are intuitive.”

You will also be able to provide feedback and critiques of the new interface over the coming months through a form on the new interface.  Please do fill this out — it’s very important that the maintainers of the interface know what you like/dislike about it, so that it can be modified and adapted according to user needs.

If you’d like to see what the new interface looks like, please stop by my desk, so that I can show you.  (I can’t, unfortunately, pass the beta URL around.)  I’ll also be attending a training session this coming Friday morning, to learn more about the quirks and idiosyncrasies of the interface.  I’ll pass around any information I learn.

I can tell you, from my few minutes of playing around with the new interface, that the two search options are very different.  The new basic search option, which features word clouds and facets, seems to be best used for large searches on broad topics, of the sort one might do for a dissertation or paper.  The “classic” interface seems the one to use when looking for a specific book or journal.  I will confirm this after the training session on Friday.