I decided to use the tool Library Thing to determine a list of 10 books that I would like to read. I had been meaning to take a closer look at this site all semester, and now seemed to be the perfect time to do it.
My first challenge was to successfully navigate the site. In turn, I explored all of my profile areas (empty, as I had not yet done anything with it), and then moved on to the public spaces. I started with the “talk” section, but this quickly became too overwhelming. The discussion topics used acronyms that I was not familiar with and had responses to challenges I had not heard. Many discussion topics had hundreds of replies. Even when I saw a topic that sounded interesting (such as Fantasy Book Club suggestions), the thought of wading through the sheer number of replies discouraged me.
The next place that I explored, “groups”, was far more helpful. At the top of the page was a tag cloud, showing some of the most popular tags. These were self explanatory, such as “religion” and “science fiction”. This gave me a much clearer way to navigate the wealth of information on this site. It also featured the trending discussions of this week and groups devoted to specific interests (science fiction fans, writer readers). It seemed that perhaps the best way to compile a list of books that I would be interested in reading was to explore some of the groups that seemed aligned with my interests.
On a whim, I saw that there was a group entitled “Tea!” with the description of “tea drinkers everywhere, unite!”. A little bemused, I clicked on this group. Being a tea drinker myself, I was interested to see what kind of book recommendations I could get from a group devoted to the drinking of tea on Library Thing. I clicked on the discussion topic “which tea book are you currently reading?” and was astounded to find the many, many different kinds of books on and including the subject of tea.
As I began to comb through the archives of this message topic, I began to think about the kind of books regarding tea that I might like to read. I was not terribly interested in recipe books. While I'm certain that at some point I might want to casually pick up a recipe book to try some new teas, I do not have a burning thirst (pardon the pun) to read such a book cover to cover. It seemed to me that a book about the history of this beverage, or perhaps a novel in which tea plays a significant role, would be of interest to me.
My criteria for selection was to gather a list of 20 or so books whose titles interested me, to click on those hyper-linked titles in the discussion board to read the reviews page, and then to pare it down to a list of 10 books that I am very interesting in reading. I realize that had I uploaded books to my “library”, this process would have been very different, as the site would let me know if it thought if I would like the book or not. Still, despite doing it the “hard” way, I think that I found a very worthwhile reading list. My final selections are as follows:
A Social History of Tea by Jane Pettigrew
Steeped in the World of Tea by Sharon Bard
The Teahouse Fire by Ellis Avery
Cup of Tea by Geraldene Holt
Strong Tea by John B. Keene
Tea: The Drink that Changed the World by Laura C. Martin
Death by Darjeeling by Laura Childs
Tea: Addiction, Exploitation, Empire by Roy Moxham
A History of the World in 6 glasses by Tom Standage
Seeds of Change: Six Plants that Transformed Mankind by Henry Hobhouse
7 of these books are histories (specifically, social histories) and three are novels. These books seemed to be to me the most interested, most comprehensive, and highest reviewed of the “tea” books. I also spent some time exploring the entire “tea” tag, and my results were about the same. The recommendations of others on the message board seemed to match my own evaluations of the top books from the entire “tea” list.
In the end, I emerged from this with a list of 10 interesting books on a topic that I never would have thought to explore on my own. I also emerged with a time sucking website addiction to rival facebook, as one tag leads to another and a librarian-in-training can all too easily be lost in all the books.
Monday, July 19, 2010
Monday, July 12, 2010
Assignment #9
Copyright and Access
Arms, CR (1999) Getting the picture: observations from the library of congress on providing online access to pictorial images. Library Trends, 18(2), 879-400. 20 citations.
Atherton, Paulene (1978) Books are for use: Final report of the subject access project to the council on library resources. 1-190. 34 citations.
Band, J. (2006) The Google print library project: a copyright analysis. Journal of Internet Banking and Commerce, 10(3). 11 citations.
Bennett, S. (1994) The copyright challenge: strengthening the public interest in the digital age. Library Journal, 119(19), 34-37. 9 citations.
Chen, HL and Rasmussen, EM (1999) Intellectual access to images. Library Trends, 48(2), 291-302. 32 citations.
Coleman, A (2997) Self-archiving and the copyright transfer agreements of ISI-ranked library and information science journals. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 58(2), 286-296. 9 citations.
Coleman, A and Roback, J (2005) Open Access Federation for Library and Information Science. D-Lib Magazine, 11(12). 18 citations.
Covey, Denise (2005) Acquiring copyright permission to digitize and and provide open access to books. Digital Library Federation Council on Library and Information Resources. 1-72. 16 citations.
Gadd, E (1997) Copyright clearance for the digital library: A practical guide for gaining electronic permissions for journal articles. Serials, 10(1), 27-31. 7 citations.
Gasaway, Laura (2002) The new access right and its impact on libraries and library users. Journal of Intellectual Property, 10, 269. 23 citations.
Ginsburg, JC (1993) Copyright without walls? Speculations on literary property in the library of the future. Representations, 42, 53-73. 18 citations.
Jensen, MB (1993) Is the library without walls on a collision course with the 1976 copyright act. Law Library Journal, 85, 619. 17 citations.
Jun-ping, Q and Shao-qiang, Z (2006) Copyright protection technology of digital library and the legal limits of its circumvention. Information Science. 9 citations.
Ke, Q (2008) The copyright policy and construction of open access. Library Work and Study. 5 citations.
Koehler, AEC (2006) Some thoughts on the meaning of open access for university library technical services. Serials Review, 32(1), 17-21. 8 citations.
Kousha, K and M Thelwall (2006) Motivations for URL citations to open access library and information science articles. Scienceometrics, 68(3), 501-517. 26 citations.
Laughlin, G. (2002) Sex, lies, and library cards: The first amendment implications of the use of software filters to control access to internet pornography in public libraries. Drake Law Review, 51, 213. 32 citations.
Mitev, Nathalie N. and Venner, G. M. and Walker, S. (1985) Designing an online public access catalog: Okapi, a catalog on a Local Area Network. Library and Information Research Report, 39. 60 citations.
Moyo, LM (2002) Collections on the web: some access and navigation issues. Library Collections, Acquisitions, and Technical Services, 26(1), 47-59. 27 citations.
Oakley, RL (1990) Copyright and preservation: a serious problem in need of a thoughtful solution. Commission on Preservation and Access, 1-69. 10 citations.
Proskine, EA (2006) Google's technicolor dreamcoat: a copyright analysis of the Google book search library project. Berkeley Tech Law Journal, 21, 213. 26 citations.
Samuelson, P and Glushko, R (1991) Intellectual property rights for digital library and hypertext publishing systems: an analysis of Xanadu. Conference on Hypertext and Hypermedia, 39-50. 65 citations.
Shannon, DM (1996) Tracking the transition to flexible access library program in two library power elementary schools. School Library Media Quarterly, 23(3), 158-163. 14 citations.
Simpson, C, and Worthington, O (2007) Copyright for schools: a practical guide. Library Student Journal. 46 citations.
Terry, R (2005) Funding the way to open access. PLOS Biology, 3(3). 22 citations.
Toushnetr, R. (2005) My library: copyright and the role of institutions in a peer-to-peer world. UCLA Law Review, 53, 977. 11 citations,
I found Google Scholar to be a much easier resource to use than the conjunction of the Library Literature and Information Science Full Text Database and the Social Sciences Citation Index. The problem was not with locating articles that related to my topic (Copyright and access). I found plenty of intriguing articles on the Full Text database. Had our assignment been to compile a 2 page bibliography of the most relevant sounding articles, it would have been simple. (Which is why, I suspect, we were not assigned to do that.) The difficulty lay in searching for the article on the Social Sciences Citation Index. Many authors of very interesting sounding articles could not be found. Strong publications in the library community, such as Information Outlook, were not to be found on the Citation Index because they are not peer reviewed. It soon became apparent that my promising list of potential articles to include was not so promising after all, because I was unable to locate many of them on the Citation Index. Additionally, for whatever reason the search terms like “library”, “copyright”, and “open access” turned up innumerable medical journal articles that, as far as I could see, had nothing to do with my search terms.
It was clear that I needed to shift strategies. Recalling the class demonstration of the Index, I began to follow the citation trees. Once I finally found an article that a) I had found on the Full Text Database and b) had more than 5 citations, I began to see what articles had been cited, who had cited the original article, and what the articles who had cited the original article had cited. It felt rather like cheating, as I was beginning to come across articles that I had not originally found on the Full Text Database, but it also felt like the best way to use the tools that I had to meet my requirements. This process was fairly slow, and I hit several citation tree “dead ends”, but eventually I was able to fill two pages with solid citations.
Using Google Scholar, on the other hand, was a much simpler and straightforward process. I chose the same search terms from my initial assignment, hit the search button, and immediately had hundreds of pages, about 2/3 of which were relevant hits. It was also very gratifying to have the number of citations displayed on the search page. This enabled me to gauge the criteria for inclusion in my bibliography all at once. Relevant title? From a reputable journal? Has sufficient citation? It spend up the process immensely. I was able to find two pages of highly relevant, highly cited journal articles much more quickly.
In addition, I was able to find articles by two authors (Gadd and Gasaway) whose names showed up many, many times in the Full Text Database but who I was unable to locate in the citation index. As they have both written many articles on this subject area, my first bibliography felt far from comprehensive leaving them out. I was also pleased to find relevant articles from journals that are not officially library science affiliates, such as law journals, or the journal of intellectual property. The abstracts of these articles seemed to fit my topic perfectly, but I would not have found them in the Full Text Database.
I do note, however, that my two bibliographies have very little overlap. A few of the same articles appear on both lists, but by and large these two methods turned up very different sources. I'm certain that one way to account for the differences is that Google Scholar and the Citation Index are pulling articles from different sources. I suspect that the Full Text Database might provide the overlapping point between the two. Still, perhaps the most comprehensive way in which to build a bibliography is to utilize all three of these resources to be certain that no stone is left unturned.
Arms, CR (1999) Getting the picture: observations from the library of congress on providing online access to pictorial images. Library Trends, 18(2), 879-400. 20 citations.
Atherton, Paulene (1978) Books are for use: Final report of the subject access project to the council on library resources. 1-190. 34 citations.
Band, J. (2006) The Google print library project: a copyright analysis. Journal of Internet Banking and Commerce, 10(3). 11 citations.
Bennett, S. (1994) The copyright challenge: strengthening the public interest in the digital age. Library Journal, 119(19), 34-37. 9 citations.
Chen, HL and Rasmussen, EM (1999) Intellectual access to images. Library Trends, 48(2), 291-302. 32 citations.
Coleman, A (2997) Self-archiving and the copyright transfer agreements of ISI-ranked library and information science journals. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 58(2), 286-296. 9 citations.
Coleman, A and Roback, J (2005) Open Access Federation for Library and Information Science. D-Lib Magazine, 11(12). 18 citations.
Covey, Denise (2005) Acquiring copyright permission to digitize and and provide open access to books. Digital Library Federation Council on Library and Information Resources. 1-72. 16 citations.
Gadd, E (1997) Copyright clearance for the digital library: A practical guide for gaining electronic permissions for journal articles. Serials, 10(1), 27-31. 7 citations.
Gasaway, Laura (2002) The new access right and its impact on libraries and library users. Journal of Intellectual Property, 10, 269. 23 citations.
Ginsburg, JC (1993) Copyright without walls? Speculations on literary property in the library of the future. Representations, 42, 53-73. 18 citations.
Jensen, MB (1993) Is the library without walls on a collision course with the 1976 copyright act. Law Library Journal, 85, 619. 17 citations.
Jun-ping, Q and Shao-qiang, Z (2006) Copyright protection technology of digital library and the legal limits of its circumvention. Information Science. 9 citations.
Ke, Q (2008) The copyright policy and construction of open access. Library Work and Study. 5 citations.
Koehler, AEC (2006) Some thoughts on the meaning of open access for university library technical services. Serials Review, 32(1), 17-21. 8 citations.
Kousha, K and M Thelwall (2006) Motivations for URL citations to open access library and information science articles. Scienceometrics, 68(3), 501-517. 26 citations.
Laughlin, G. (2002) Sex, lies, and library cards: The first amendment implications of the use of software filters to control access to internet pornography in public libraries. Drake Law Review, 51, 213. 32 citations.
Mitev, Nathalie N. and Venner, G. M. and Walker, S. (1985) Designing an online public access catalog: Okapi, a catalog on a Local Area Network. Library and Information Research Report, 39. 60 citations.
Moyo, LM (2002) Collections on the web: some access and navigation issues. Library Collections, Acquisitions, and Technical Services, 26(1), 47-59. 27 citations.
Oakley, RL (1990) Copyright and preservation: a serious problem in need of a thoughtful solution. Commission on Preservation and Access, 1-69. 10 citations.
Proskine, EA (2006) Google's technicolor dreamcoat: a copyright analysis of the Google book search library project. Berkeley Tech Law Journal, 21, 213. 26 citations.
Samuelson, P and Glushko, R (1991) Intellectual property rights for digital library and hypertext publishing systems: an analysis of Xanadu. Conference on Hypertext and Hypermedia, 39-50. 65 citations.
Shannon, DM (1996) Tracking the transition to flexible access library program in two library power elementary schools. School Library Media Quarterly, 23(3), 158-163. 14 citations.
Simpson, C, and Worthington, O (2007) Copyright for schools: a practical guide. Library Student Journal. 46 citations.
Terry, R (2005) Funding the way to open access. PLOS Biology, 3(3). 22 citations.
Toushnetr, R. (2005) My library: copyright and the role of institutions in a peer-to-peer world. UCLA Law Review, 53, 977. 11 citations,
I found Google Scholar to be a much easier resource to use than the conjunction of the Library Literature and Information Science Full Text Database and the Social Sciences Citation Index. The problem was not with locating articles that related to my topic (Copyright and access). I found plenty of intriguing articles on the Full Text database. Had our assignment been to compile a 2 page bibliography of the most relevant sounding articles, it would have been simple. (Which is why, I suspect, we were not assigned to do that.) The difficulty lay in searching for the article on the Social Sciences Citation Index. Many authors of very interesting sounding articles could not be found. Strong publications in the library community, such as Information Outlook, were not to be found on the Citation Index because they are not peer reviewed. It soon became apparent that my promising list of potential articles to include was not so promising after all, because I was unable to locate many of them on the Citation Index. Additionally, for whatever reason the search terms like “library”, “copyright”, and “open access” turned up innumerable medical journal articles that, as far as I could see, had nothing to do with my search terms.
It was clear that I needed to shift strategies. Recalling the class demonstration of the Index, I began to follow the citation trees. Once I finally found an article that a) I had found on the Full Text Database and b) had more than 5 citations, I began to see what articles had been cited, who had cited the original article, and what the articles who had cited the original article had cited. It felt rather like cheating, as I was beginning to come across articles that I had not originally found on the Full Text Database, but it also felt like the best way to use the tools that I had to meet my requirements. This process was fairly slow, and I hit several citation tree “dead ends”, but eventually I was able to fill two pages with solid citations.
Using Google Scholar, on the other hand, was a much simpler and straightforward process. I chose the same search terms from my initial assignment, hit the search button, and immediately had hundreds of pages, about 2/3 of which were relevant hits. It was also very gratifying to have the number of citations displayed on the search page. This enabled me to gauge the criteria for inclusion in my bibliography all at once. Relevant title? From a reputable journal? Has sufficient citation? It spend up the process immensely. I was able to find two pages of highly relevant, highly cited journal articles much more quickly.
In addition, I was able to find articles by two authors (Gadd and Gasaway) whose names showed up many, many times in the Full Text Database but who I was unable to locate in the citation index. As they have both written many articles on this subject area, my first bibliography felt far from comprehensive leaving them out. I was also pleased to find relevant articles from journals that are not officially library science affiliates, such as law journals, or the journal of intellectual property. The abstracts of these articles seemed to fit my topic perfectly, but I would not have found them in the Full Text Database.
I do note, however, that my two bibliographies have very little overlap. A few of the same articles appear on both lists, but by and large these two methods turned up very different sources. I'm certain that one way to account for the differences is that Google Scholar and the Citation Index are pulling articles from different sources. I suspect that the Full Text Database might provide the overlapping point between the two. Still, perhaps the most comprehensive way in which to build a bibliography is to utilize all three of these resources to be certain that no stone is left unturned.
Monday, July 5, 2010
Assignment #8
Copyright and Access Bibliography
Antelman K (2004) Do open-access articles have greater research impact? College and Research Libraries, 65(5), 372-382. (69 citations)
Bar-Ilan J (2008) Informetrics at the beginning of the 21rst century:A review. Journal of Informetrics, 2(1), 1-58. (18 citations)
Barjak F (2006) The role of the internet in informal scholarly communication. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 57(10), 1350-1367. (16 citations)
Borrull AL, Oppenheim C (2004) Legal aspects of the web. Annual Review of Information Science and Technology, 38, 483-548, (5 citations)
Correia AMR, Neto MD (2002) The role of eprint archives in the access to, and dissemination of, scientific grey literature: LIZA- a case study by the National Library of Portugal. Journal of Information Science, 28(3), 231-241. (6 citations)
Correia AMR, Teixeira JC (2005) Reforming scholarly publishing and knowledge communication – From the advent of the scholarly journal to the challenges of open access. Online Information Review, 29(4), 349-364. (6 citations)
Craig ID, Plume AM, McVeigh ME, et al. (2007) Do open access articles have greater citation impact? A critical review of the literature. Journal of Informetrics, 1(3), 239-248. (23 citations)
Davis PM, Lewenstein BV, Simon DH, et al. (2008) Open access publishing, article downloads, and cirations: randomized control trial. British Medical Journal, 337(7665). (24 citations)
Drott MC (2006) Open access. Annual Review of Information Science and Technology, 40, 79-109. (5 citations)
Eysenbach G (2006) Citation advantage of open access articles. PLOS Biology, 4(5), 692-698. (70 citations)
Gadd, E., Oppenheim, C., & Probets, S. (2003). RoMEO Studies 3: how academics expect to use open-access research papers. Journal of Librarianship and Information Science (Folkestone, England), 35(3), 171-87. (10 citations)
Nicholas D, Huntington P, Rowlands I (2005). Open access journal publishing: the views of some of the worlds senior authors. Journal of Documentation. 61(4), 497-519. (11 citations)
Nicholas D, Huntington P, Jamali HR, et al. (2006) Finding information in (very large) digital libraries: A deep log approach to determining differences in use according to method of access. Journal of Academic Librarianship, 32(2), 119-126. (7 citations)
Nicholas D, Huntington P, Jainali HR (2007) Open access in context: A user study. Journal of Documentation, 63(6), 853-878. (5 citations)
Nicholas D, Huntington P, Jamali HR (2007) The impact of open access publishing (and other access initiatives) on use and users of digital scholarly journals. Learned Publishing, 20(1), 11-15. (8 citations)
Norris M, Oppenheim C, Rowland F (2008) The citation advantages of open access articles. Journal of the American Society of Information Science and Technology, 59(12), 1963-1972. (11 citations)
Palmer CL (2005) Scholarly work and the shaping of digital access. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 56(11), 1140-1153. (19 citations)
Piwowar HA, Day RS, Fridsma DB (2007) Sharing detailed research data is associated with increased citation rate. PLOS One, 2(3). (18 citations)
Rowley J, Urquhart C (2007) Understanding student information behaviour in relation to electronic information services: Lessons from longitudinal evaluation and monitoring, part 1. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 58(8), 1162-1174. (8 citations)
Sotudeh H, Horri A (2007) The citation performance of open access journals: A disciplinary investitation of citation distrubution models. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 58(1), 108-120. (5 citations)
Wouters P, de Vries R (2004) Formally citing the web. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 55(14), 1250-1260. (6 citations)
Wren, JD (2005) Open access and openly accessible: a study of scientific publications shared via the internet. British Medical Journal, 330(7500), 1128-1131. (28 citations)
Yitzhaki M, Hammershlag G (2004) Accessibility and use of information sources among computer scientists and software engineers in Israel: Academy versus industry. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 55(9), 832-842. (8 citations)
Antelman K (2004) Do open-access articles have greater research impact? College and Research Libraries, 65(5), 372-382. (69 citations)
Bar-Ilan J (2008) Informetrics at the beginning of the 21rst century:A review. Journal of Informetrics, 2(1), 1-58. (18 citations)
Barjak F (2006) The role of the internet in informal scholarly communication. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 57(10), 1350-1367. (16 citations)
Borrull AL, Oppenheim C (2004) Legal aspects of the web. Annual Review of Information Science and Technology, 38, 483-548, (5 citations)
Correia AMR, Neto MD (2002) The role of eprint archives in the access to, and dissemination of, scientific grey literature: LIZA- a case study by the National Library of Portugal. Journal of Information Science, 28(3), 231-241. (6 citations)
Correia AMR, Teixeira JC (2005) Reforming scholarly publishing and knowledge communication – From the advent of the scholarly journal to the challenges of open access. Online Information Review, 29(4), 349-364. (6 citations)
Craig ID, Plume AM, McVeigh ME, et al. (2007) Do open access articles have greater citation impact? A critical review of the literature. Journal of Informetrics, 1(3), 239-248. (23 citations)
Davis PM, Lewenstein BV, Simon DH, et al. (2008) Open access publishing, article downloads, and cirations: randomized control trial. British Medical Journal, 337(7665). (24 citations)
Drott MC (2006) Open access. Annual Review of Information Science and Technology, 40, 79-109. (5 citations)
Eysenbach G (2006) Citation advantage of open access articles. PLOS Biology, 4(5), 692-698. (70 citations)
Gadd, E., Oppenheim, C., & Probets, S. (2003). RoMEO Studies 3: how academics expect to use open-access research papers. Journal of Librarianship and Information Science (Folkestone, England), 35(3), 171-87. (10 citations)
Nicholas D, Huntington P, Rowlands I (2005). Open access journal publishing: the views of some of the worlds senior authors. Journal of Documentation. 61(4), 497-519. (11 citations)
Nicholas D, Huntington P, Jamali HR, et al. (2006) Finding information in (very large) digital libraries: A deep log approach to determining differences in use according to method of access. Journal of Academic Librarianship, 32(2), 119-126. (7 citations)
Nicholas D, Huntington P, Jainali HR (2007) Open access in context: A user study. Journal of Documentation, 63(6), 853-878. (5 citations)
Nicholas D, Huntington P, Jamali HR (2007) The impact of open access publishing (and other access initiatives) on use and users of digital scholarly journals. Learned Publishing, 20(1), 11-15. (8 citations)
Norris M, Oppenheim C, Rowland F (2008) The citation advantages of open access articles. Journal of the American Society of Information Science and Technology, 59(12), 1963-1972. (11 citations)
Palmer CL (2005) Scholarly work and the shaping of digital access. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 56(11), 1140-1153. (19 citations)
Piwowar HA, Day RS, Fridsma DB (2007) Sharing detailed research data is associated with increased citation rate. PLOS One, 2(3). (18 citations)
Rowley J, Urquhart C (2007) Understanding student information behaviour in relation to electronic information services: Lessons from longitudinal evaluation and monitoring, part 1. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 58(8), 1162-1174. (8 citations)
Sotudeh H, Horri A (2007) The citation performance of open access journals: A disciplinary investitation of citation distrubution models. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 58(1), 108-120. (5 citations)
Wouters P, de Vries R (2004) Formally citing the web. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 55(14), 1250-1260. (6 citations)
Wren, JD (2005) Open access and openly accessible: a study of scientific publications shared via the internet. British Medical Journal, 330(7500), 1128-1131. (28 citations)
Yitzhaki M, Hammershlag G (2004) Accessibility and use of information sources among computer scientists and software engineers in Israel: Academy versus industry. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 55(9), 832-842. (8 citations)
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
Assignment #7
Previous to this assignment, I was unaware that this resource existed. I knew that the Library of Congress had digitized some items, but I had no idea the extent of their digitized photo collection. I chose the historical topic of the Women's Suffrage Movement, as it is a topic near and dear to my heart. I was interested to see what kind of records they would have. A few photos of Susan B. Anthony? A sketch of Elizabeth Cady Stanton?
I had no idea that the collection would be so extensive and varied. Political cartoons, pages from newspapers and journals, photographs of women marching and hiking and protesting, photos of many many women giving their time and energy to gain the right to vote. I wasn't even aware that this many photos of the movement existed, let alone were available for free access on the internet. I was impressed by the extensive collection, as well as the historical record that it represents.
My first search term was “Women's Suffrage”. This turned up 18 search results, several of which being print only collections that could not be viewed digitally. About 8 of the ten were photos that I could view, about only about 5 were relevant. (The remaining three having to do with civil rights.) My second search term, “American Suffrage”, was far more successful. That turned up 108 results, most of which were relevant hits. This set included a wide array of photos of historic buildings, leaders of the movement, and ordinary women coming out to march. It also included newspaper clippings and scanned journal pages.
My main criteria for choosing photographs was trying to represent a complete view of the movement. I tried to pick photos that showed groups of women gathering for marches and meetings. I chose a few of iconic leaders of the movement. I also tried to include some print photos and cartoons to give the sense of the larger societal commentary. I believe that the Library of Congress collection allowed me to do that well, giving me many excellent historical photographs to choose from.
I found this collection to be easy to use and fairly self explanatory. I also admired all of the information attached to the photos. I had all the data that I would need to find, cite, and do further research on these images. I was also impressed that they could be downloaded in multiple image formats. Tiffs are of course wonderful for archival quality photos, but they do have a very large footprint on your hard drive space. Having the jpeg option as well is convenient. I believe that this is an excellent service provided by the Library of Congress and I shall certainly be using it for future projects.
I had no idea that the collection would be so extensive and varied. Political cartoons, pages from newspapers and journals, photographs of women marching and hiking and protesting, photos of many many women giving their time and energy to gain the right to vote. I wasn't even aware that this many photos of the movement existed, let alone were available for free access on the internet. I was impressed by the extensive collection, as well as the historical record that it represents.
My first search term was “Women's Suffrage”. This turned up 18 search results, several of which being print only collections that could not be viewed digitally. About 8 of the ten were photos that I could view, about only about 5 were relevant. (The remaining three having to do with civil rights.) My second search term, “American Suffrage”, was far more successful. That turned up 108 results, most of which were relevant hits. This set included a wide array of photos of historic buildings, leaders of the movement, and ordinary women coming out to march. It also included newspaper clippings and scanned journal pages.
My main criteria for choosing photographs was trying to represent a complete view of the movement. I tried to pick photos that showed groups of women gathering for marches and meetings. I chose a few of iconic leaders of the movement. I also tried to include some print photos and cartoons to give the sense of the larger societal commentary. I believe that the Library of Congress collection allowed me to do that well, giving me many excellent historical photographs to choose from.
I found this collection to be easy to use and fairly self explanatory. I also admired all of the information attached to the photos. I had all the data that I would need to find, cite, and do further research on these images. I was also impressed that they could be downloaded in multiple image formats. Tiffs are of course wonderful for archival quality photos, but they do have a very large footprint on your hard drive space. Having the jpeg option as well is convenient. I believe that this is an excellent service provided by the Library of Congress and I shall certainly be using it for future projects.
Monday, June 28, 2010
Assignment #6
I had not previously used Flickr before this course, so when I began this assignment I had little idea what to expect. I believe that I imagined a larger version of the facebook photo album application. I had no idea that Flickr had such an extensive collection of photos that were searchable! I didn't realize the many ways that photos could be organized, or the existence of photo “groups” devoted to a specific theme. I was pleasantly surprised to find such a vibrant community behind what I saw as a basic photo sharing site.
I picked the theme “Hamsters” because they happen to be the only pets my family has ever had. (Thus far, eight in all). I was curious to discover what Flickr had for what I considered to be a rather obscure pet. As it turns out, I was incorrect. Typing the search query “hamster” onto Flickr returned exactly 128,377 results. It seems that many, many people have a hamster as a beloved pet. Not only that, but there are several groups devoted to hamsters, hamster cages, and hamsters in unusual places. I had more search results than I knew what to do with, and I could only fit 18 photos into my gallery.
I began to comb through the search results, marveling at how many international users I came across. As the content that I was initially looking for was “pictures with hamsters in them”, I had to refine my criteria. The photos that made the cut were a) deemed by myself to be exceedingly cute and b) clever or unusual in some way. Thus, the photo-shopped hamster pirate was included with the hamster eating a pepper.
I was very pleased with my results from Flickr, finding pictures of hamsters from Japan to Poland. It appears that hamsters are a very popular pet on the internet, as there seems to be a diverse group of hamster owners posting on Flickr. I found the gallery tool to be easy to use, collecting a group of photographs from many users on Flickr. In general, I found it to be a very user friendly tool that has a vast network of search results to call upon.
My gallery is called Access 60001 Summer II, and my user ID is rachel_fichter@sbcglobal.net
I picked the theme “Hamsters” because they happen to be the only pets my family has ever had. (Thus far, eight in all). I was curious to discover what Flickr had for what I considered to be a rather obscure pet. As it turns out, I was incorrect. Typing the search query “hamster” onto Flickr returned exactly 128,377 results. It seems that many, many people have a hamster as a beloved pet. Not only that, but there are several groups devoted to hamsters, hamster cages, and hamsters in unusual places. I had more search results than I knew what to do with, and I could only fit 18 photos into my gallery.
I began to comb through the search results, marveling at how many international users I came across. As the content that I was initially looking for was “pictures with hamsters in them”, I had to refine my criteria. The photos that made the cut were a) deemed by myself to be exceedingly cute and b) clever or unusual in some way. Thus, the photo-shopped hamster pirate was included with the hamster eating a pepper.
I was very pleased with my results from Flickr, finding pictures of hamsters from Japan to Poland. It appears that hamsters are a very popular pet on the internet, as there seems to be a diverse group of hamster owners posting on Flickr. I found the gallery tool to be easy to use, collecting a group of photographs from many users on Flickr. In general, I found it to be a very user friendly tool that has a vast network of search results to call upon.
My gallery is called Access 60001 Summer II, and my user ID is rachel_fichter@sbcglobal.net
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
Assignment #5
The first difference that I noted between using a reference service and just finding the information myself is that I needed to be much more specific about what I wanted. When I typed the general question into Google “What is a curriculum vitae”, it turned up that exact information, but also lots of information that I knew that I wanted but hadn't implicitly stated, such as “how do I make one” and “what should I include in a curriculum vitae?”. When I typed that question into Google, I was not looking merely for the definition of the term.
I used the same initial question in both of my queries to AskALibrarian and the KSU service. For AskALibrarian, she immediately asked me if I wanted just a definition, or if I wanted to know how to make one. She required further clarification from me. The KSU service simply gave me a definition, leaving me to ask follow-up questions to get the more accurate information that I needed. It caused me to realize the important of being very specific when another person is filtering results for me. If I am doing the filtering, I'm already on the lookout for the unspoken information that I want. When another person is performing this service, I need to speak the unspoken.
The results were also slightly different. While several of the search results were one that I had also found for myself, the AskALibrarian was also able to let me know that Microsoft Word has templates that can be downloaded. I did not know this, and probably would not have come across this in my own search because I was not asking the correct question. Simply finding the additional bit of information about these down-loadable templates made the additional query to a second party worth it.
I came out of this experience much more impressed by AskALibrian than the KSU service. Upon going to the service site, it asked me to enter my zip code and gave me the choice of the two closest libraries to my location (Lakewood Library and Cleveland Public). I chose Lakewood and within a minute I was in a chat with a librarian. As the page loaded, it told me that I was first in the line. While my line number didn't much matter, as I was first, I imagine it would be helpful to learn where you are in line if you did have to wait for the librarian's attention. Once in the chat, it provided me with the name of the librarian that I was speaking to. She did a good job of finding out what I specifically wanted, found me 3 good resources, and asked if there was anything else that she could help me with. At the termination of the chat, I was sent a transcript of our conversation in my e-mail. The transcript is as follows:
Rachel Fichter: What is a curriculum vitae?
Joelle: Hi! Are you looking for examples of how to format one, or just a definition?
Rachel Fichter: Examples of how to format one, please
Joelle: About.com has a selection of samples and templates: http://jobsearch.about.com/od/cvsamples/a/blsamplecv.htm I'll see if I can dig up some sources for you.
Rachel Fichter: Thank you!
Joelle: If you use Microsoft Office, you can download templates for Word, as well: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/templates/curriculum-vitae-TC010169559.aspx
Rachel Fichter: That's great! I didn't know that Word could do that
Joelle: These look pretty good, too, and they're compatible with older versions of Word: http://www.cvtips.com/resumes-and-cvs/cv-example.html
Joelle: Word can be pretty helpful, sometimes!
Rachel Fichter: Thank you, JOelle
Rachel Fichter: * Joelle
Joelle: You're welcome! Can I help you with anything else?
Rachel Fichter: Nope, that was very helpful. Thanks!
KSU's service, on the other hand, is using a common screen name in the AIM service. I did not know to whom I was speaking, and it took that person a while to respond to me after my initial IM. They gave me a simple definition and it was up to me to ask additional questions. After giving me a single source, they did not ask me if I needed any more help and did not formally “end” the conversation in any way, simply ceased to respond. The transcript (which I copied from the chatbox) reads as follows:
Rachel: Hi! I'm a Kent student with a reference question
Rachel: What is a curriculum vitae?
imaksulibrarian: That is a professional version of a Resume
Rachel: How do I format one?
imaksulibrarian: it basically lists publications and professional associations
imaksulibrarian: There are many different ways to format one
imaksulibrarian: http://technicaljobsearch.com/resumes/center_7.html
Rachel: Thank you!
As this is done remotely, I have no way of knowing if that librarian was swamped at the reference desk with many people demanding their attention. This could account for the delay and the cursory answers. Not knowing if there were extenuating circumstances, I was more impressed with the customer service of AskALibrarian and more satisfied with the resources that I was given. I think that KSU's service was certainly satisfactory, but I was very impressed with the time and effort the state of Ohio has obviously put into their virtual reference resource.
I used the same initial question in both of my queries to AskALibrarian and the KSU service. For AskALibrarian, she immediately asked me if I wanted just a definition, or if I wanted to know how to make one. She required further clarification from me. The KSU service simply gave me a definition, leaving me to ask follow-up questions to get the more accurate information that I needed. It caused me to realize the important of being very specific when another person is filtering results for me. If I am doing the filtering, I'm already on the lookout for the unspoken information that I want. When another person is performing this service, I need to speak the unspoken.
The results were also slightly different. While several of the search results were one that I had also found for myself, the AskALibrarian was also able to let me know that Microsoft Word has templates that can be downloaded. I did not know this, and probably would not have come across this in my own search because I was not asking the correct question. Simply finding the additional bit of information about these down-loadable templates made the additional query to a second party worth it.
I came out of this experience much more impressed by AskALibrian than the KSU service. Upon going to the service site, it asked me to enter my zip code and gave me the choice of the two closest libraries to my location (Lakewood Library and Cleveland Public). I chose Lakewood and within a minute I was in a chat with a librarian. As the page loaded, it told me that I was first in the line. While my line number didn't much matter, as I was first, I imagine it would be helpful to learn where you are in line if you did have to wait for the librarian's attention. Once in the chat, it provided me with the name of the librarian that I was speaking to. She did a good job of finding out what I specifically wanted, found me 3 good resources, and asked if there was anything else that she could help me with. At the termination of the chat, I was sent a transcript of our conversation in my e-mail. The transcript is as follows:
Rachel Fichter: What is a curriculum vitae?
Joelle: Hi! Are you looking for examples of how to format one, or just a definition?
Rachel Fichter: Examples of how to format one, please
Joelle: About.com has a selection of samples and templates: http://jobsearch.about.com/od/cvsamples/a/blsamplecv.htm I'll see if I can dig up some sources for you.
Rachel Fichter: Thank you!
Joelle: If you use Microsoft Office, you can download templates for Word, as well: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/templates/curriculum-vitae-TC010169559.aspx
Rachel Fichter: That's great! I didn't know that Word could do that
Joelle: These look pretty good, too, and they're compatible with older versions of Word: http://www.cvtips.com/resumes-and-cvs/cv-example.html
Joelle: Word can be pretty helpful, sometimes!
Rachel Fichter: Thank you, JOelle
Rachel Fichter: * Joelle
Joelle: You're welcome! Can I help you with anything else?
Rachel Fichter: Nope, that was very helpful. Thanks!
KSU's service, on the other hand, is using a common screen name in the AIM service. I did not know to whom I was speaking, and it took that person a while to respond to me after my initial IM. They gave me a simple definition and it was up to me to ask additional questions. After giving me a single source, they did not ask me if I needed any more help and did not formally “end” the conversation in any way, simply ceased to respond. The transcript (which I copied from the chatbox) reads as follows:
Rachel: Hi! I'm a Kent student with a reference question
Rachel: What is a curriculum vitae?
imaksulibrarian: That is a professional version of a Resume
Rachel: How do I format one?
imaksulibrarian: it basically lists publications and professional associations
imaksulibrarian: There are many different ways to format one
imaksulibrarian: http://technicaljobsearch.com/resumes/center_7.html
Rachel: Thank you!
As this is done remotely, I have no way of knowing if that librarian was swamped at the reference desk with many people demanding their attention. This could account for the delay and the cursory answers. Not knowing if there were extenuating circumstances, I was more impressed with the customer service of AskALibrarian and more satisfied with the resources that I was given. I think that KSU's service was certainly satisfactory, but I was very impressed with the time and effort the state of Ohio has obviously put into their virtual reference resource.
Monday, June 21, 2010
Information Awareness Report
A. As my time at the Kent School of Library and Information Science begins to wind down, with my coursework finishing in September, I have begun to turn my attention to the arena of finding employment. As I began to educate myself about job searching strategies and pinpointed the job searching sites that I've begun checking daily, one serious gap in my knowledge became apparently. What in the world is a “CV”? And how do I get one? Because apparently, this is something that is important to have.
I realize now that I had somehow missed an important step in being a professional adult. Was I simply out of the room every time someone mentioned a Curriculum Vitae? How could I have never come across such a ubiquitous part of the professional toolkit? I still have no answers to these questions. Suffice to say, I somehow missed ever hearing of a Curriculum Vitae and I had no idea where to begin. But since quite a few job postings I was interested in required the submission of a CV, it became apparent that I was going to need to create one.
B. My first step was to call my parents and indignantly exclaim “Why did you never tell me about CV's?” As this was not a productive line of questioning, the conversation soon turned to what this strange and mythical document was. They explained that it was a documentation of your professional life and accomplishments thus far, beyond the scope of what can be contained in a resume. Skills, qualifications, publications, and relevant experience should be included in this document. They offered to send me a copies of their CVs so that I could see how they were formatted. Somewhat mollified, I thanked them and hung up the telephone.
My second step was a Google search, which turned up an enormous number of hits. As many people are searching for employment during this recession, a multitude of resources have sprung up detailing how to make a CV and what should be included, complete with sample CVs to show users how it is done. It was a little difficult to wade through these resources to pinpoint the “best” ones, but after I had read through a few of them I began to recognize common recurring steps for CV creation and maintenance.
C. My search query, for both in person and online searches, was the same. “What is a Curriculum Vitae?”. This query to both my parents and Google turned up so much information that I did not need to formulate a second query. At first I feared that it was too general and that I would have to refine the search term, that I had too many results. But after going through the first ten search hits, I found that most resources had both the answer of “what is it” and “how do I do it?” Many resources also focused on how to make your CV competitive for a tough job market, which I did not think to query but gladly learned about.
D. My first resources consulted were “My Parents”. My Mom is a public speaker who runs her own business and trains corporations on topics such as “Dealing with Difficult People” and “Balancing Work and Family”. My Father is a high school religion teacher. Their CVs both covered different aspects of professionalism, with my Mother's focusing on publications and committees that she's been affiliated with, while my Father's focused on different kinds of training that he'd received. Looking at their CVs gave me a basic template to start from, a general understanding of what I was trying to learn about.
The first hit that Google turned up for me was on jobsearch.com. (http://jobsearch.about.com/od/curriculumvitae/Curriculum_Vitae.htm )It outlined how to write a CV, when it was appropriate to use a CV, and included many templates and examples. The domain “jobsearch.com” made me more likely to see if it was a reputable source of information, and the step by step guides were very helpful in breaking the process down into smaller chunks.
The wikipedia article on CVs also proved to be helpful. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curriculum_vitae) This focused more on the history of CVs and how they are used in the job market. It also details many different CV practices between counties, alerting me to the fact that I should look for information from sites in American domains and not from, say the UK.
I then came across the following pdf from MIT: www.mit.edu/~career/guide/cv.pdf . I was interested in seeing what this guide has to say, as MIT is a very respected school that turns out many professional graduates each year. It provided a short checklist of all of the items that should be included in a CV, and also provided several links for more information. Many of these links seem to have a science career emphasis, which does not apply to my situation, but some of them may be useful.
Dartmouth also has a page about how to create a CV. (http://www.dartmouth.edu/~gradstdy/careers/services/vita.html ) I found this one more helpful as it does not simply list elements that should be included, but gives a description of what those elements are and how best to display them. I felt that this was a detailed and secure guide to follow, now that I had a better idea of the basic structure of a CV.
E. I was very satisfied with the results of my search. I felt that I had found 5 resources that explained to me how this process was accomplished and what its goals should be. I felt that I had a list of items to include and a step my step method for creating my CV. I understood the why, when, and how of the Curriculum Vitae. Now I simply had to undertake the daunting task of summarizing my life's experience in print.
F. At this point in my search process I decided to cease because I felt that I had the information that I needed to get started. I understood what a CV was and I had a battle plan at the ready. I felt that I could follow the steps outlined in several of these resources and come out with a working CV. I also planned to make an appointment at the Kent Career Center to give me a critique when I have finished, so that I can have a second opinion about anything I may have missed. I felt at this point that I could proceed with my project and do it well, and thus I ceased my search.
E. My first instinct was to consult people that I felt would be familiar with my information gap – in this case, my parents. Having gotten a basic idea of what I did not know, I was then able to strike out online and find it. Because of the nature of the information gap (in this case, a fairly well known document that most professionals have to create), there was an abundance of easy information available to me online. Had it been a more obscure topic, I may have consulted more print sources. But I think that my age has reinforced a belief that information found online is reliable providing that it comes from a reputable source. By being careful which sites I relied upon (and by looking for agreement between the resources), I felt that I had amassed information on my knowledge gap that I could trust. It was a fairly quick process and enabled me to get to work on a very important part of my job search.
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