Author Archives: Ryan Phillips

Posts: 28 (archived below)
Comments: 7

Tech Sharecase, 13 November 2009

Posted on November 20, 2009 by Ryan Phillips

Attendees
Stephen Francoeur, Ellen Kaufman, Louise Klusek, Jin Ma, Kannen Mohan, Ryan Phillips and Michael Waldman

Searching Blogs
Went over a patron request for finding quotes on blogs. The patron wanted to locate negative quotes about the Marvel acquisition by Disney. Discussed the resources for searching blogs: Factiva, Google Blog Search, LexisNexis and Twitter Search.

Baruch Blogs   
Noted how to find the RSS feed for the Newman Library News “blog.”  One has to navigate to the “News Archives” on library website (RSS icon not visible until you get to the WordPress version of the News Archives). Or, click on the following link: http://www.newman.baruch.cuny.edu/wordpress/?cat=4

Amazon Kindle
Discussed recent news that two colleges, University of Wisconsin-Madison and Syracuse University, are not moving forward with wide distribution of the Kindle because of perceived discrimination against the blind.  Activating the audio feature on the current Kindle is a challenge for the blind given it requires navigating through the touch screen. Read the Associated Press article via NPR: “Schools shun Kindle, saying blind can’t use it”

Also discussed the Kindle application for desktop that was released this week.

Google Wave
Went over some features of Google Wave and Stephen and Jin demonstrated a discussion. Showed the Doctor Wave video which provides a good introduction to Google Wave. Cameron Neylon’s ChemSpidey robot, an application for tagging in Google Wave, was presented. Aunt Rosie translation robot was also shown.

EtherPad and Wikis for Student Participation
EtherPad and Wikis were discussed for use in class participation. Wikis in Blackboard can encourage class participation for those who prefer to type rather than speak aloud in class.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Google Discover Music & Social Search

Posted on October 30, 2009 by Ryan Phillips

Google. Discover Music
Google just unveiled a landing page called Discover Music specifically designed for searching music. Google has partnered social media services like Imeem, LaLa, Myspace, Rhapsody, Pandora and music companies/label owners such as EMI, Sony Music, Universal and Warner Brothers to customize search results and provide music content. Users can search by band names, songs, albums, lyrics et cetera.

As with typical Google search, precision can be a problem when using common phrases or words as search terms. The first result in a search on my favorite band Low returns the Google Finance page for Lowe’s Companies. This is a surprising example given finance and music are separate search platforms. Another example is the search for the popular Manchester band Oasis. This yields results typical of a regular Google search with inclusions from a number of organizations using the O.A.S.I.S. acronym and even local search listing for businesses with the name Oasis.

But when the search is successful, and returns results as Google and the Discover Music partners have designed, the first results are options to listen to the band from music streaming sites like MySpace, iLike and so on. You can then listen and even buy songs. The remaining results consist of the band website, fan pages, additional social music networks, Wikipedia and so on.

Context of Social Search
What’s interesting about Google’s new search is the featuring of social networking tools in the results for users’ discovery of new music. Discover Music isn’t guiding users to traditional online music retailers to facilitate purchases but rather online networks for music discovery. Discover Music results are directing traffic to Pandora, MySpace, iLike which are designed to guide people to new music based on what other people are listening to.

Related to the results of Google’s music search, last week public radio’s On the Media focused on music in the digital age. Particularly, their segment on “Charting the Charts” explored current and upcoming methods of ranking music popularity given the multitude of avenues people are able to listen to music.

With the economics of the music industry shifting from stores sales, to digital sales and file sharing/streaming, some feel traditional sources for music rankings like Billboard Charts are failing to capture important aspects of music popularity.

The show featured two sources that are trying to capture music popularity in different ways. BigChampagne is a media measurement tool that tracks legal and illegal downloads, online streaming audio, tour merchandise et cetera. Band Metrics is a service that hopes to collect music data based on interest from social networking sites, radio and show attendance.

“Google Makes Searching for Music Even Easier Than It Already Is.” Pitchfork. October 29, 2009. Web.

“Charting the Charts.” On the Media. WNYC. October 23, 2009. Web.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Google Discover Music & Social Search

Tech Sharecase, 16 October 2009

Posted on October 21, 2009 by Ryan Phillips

Attendees
Arthur Downing, Ellen Kaufman, Stephen Francoeur, Harold Gee, Joseph Hartnett, Ryan Phillips, Mike Waldman

ARC and ALEPH
We discussed the challenges that the CUNY Office of Library Services is facing as it tries to set up ARC (Aleph 500 Reporting Center), which is a product from Ex Libris that allows Aleph 500 customers to generate sophisticated reports on the items in the catalog and their use.

Capturing User Experience
Ryan discussed capturing user experiences, some ideas and tools presented by Michael Lascarides as part of the NYPL Service Excellence symposium in September. Michael Lascarides is a User Analyst with the Digital Experience Group at NYPL. His presentation was titled  “Uncovering Stories”. Two takeaways from his presentation discussed were how to capture user experiences and how users react to bad design and bad user experiences. One tool he mentioned for capturing users’ online experiences is Google Analytics, a tool for analyzing web site traffic. (If you are reading this blog post on the web, then you can view the slides from Lascarides’ presentation below.)

20090922 Lascarides

SFX Page with Links to Google Books
We discussed the draft of the SFX FIND IT page that offers Google Books as a target when the item presented is a book that happens to be fully or partially available in Google Books. We also discussed the problems we had a few years ago with a trial to Safari Books.

SFX and bX
We also discussed the Ex Libris bX Recommender, which would function similarly to the Amazon recommendation feature (i.e., “You might also like…”). This tool, highlighted in Eric’s recent email about SFX options, presents article suggestions when you click the SFX Find It link next to an item in your search results. Stephen mentioned that Dave Pattern of University of Huddersfield gave a presentation at Internet Librarian International on how he uses transaction data from his catalog for “you might like” feature in his catalog. (If you are reading this blog post on the web, you can view the slides below; otherwise, you can find them online at Slideshare.)

ILI2009: Exploiting Usage Data

View more presentations from daveyp.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Tech Sharecase, 16 October 2009

Tech Sharecase, 4 September 2009

Posted on September 4, 2009 by Ryan Phillips
Attendees
Ryan Phillips, Louise Klusek, Stephen Francoeur, Jin Ma, Arthur Downing, Randy Hensley.

We started this Friday’s Tech Sharecase with a discussion of the recent news that Amazon, Microsoft & Yahoo will join the alliance opposing the Google Book Settlement. The Guardian interviewed Peter Brantley, director of the Internet Archive, who heads The Open Book Alliance’s opposition.
See the Searchengineland post about these developments with links to the Wall Street Journal & New York Times articles.

Blog Posts: Reading & Written Language
Next we discussed a couple posts at the Newman Library blogs from the past week. First, we discussed Stephen’s post on Groups/Tribes with no Written Language at Reference at Newman Library and David Broderson’s response. The impetus for the post was a class assignment that was driving several students to the reference desk. I brought up an example I’ve seen illustrating the difference between the interpretation of an illiterate vs a literate seeing the FedEx logo. A literate person fails to see the arrow in the FedEx logo between the ‘E’ &’ x’ while this is the first thing an illterate person sees.
We then discussed the Newman Library Idea Lab post about Maryanne Wolf and the current state of reading. Louise mentioned the Sunday New York Times article on the future of reading. The article discusses giving students the ability to choose the titles in their reading curriculum. Instead of adhering to the standard, required classics like “To Kill a Mockingbird” or “The Great Gatsby” the article highlights one teacher’s effort to engage students interest in reading by allowing them to choose what they read.

Feed Readers

We revisited Feed Readers as a topic given a few of us have changed or are considering a change in our preferred reader. Stephen offered Feedly, a Firefox extension, as an alternative to the Google Reader format.

New EtherPad Feature

EtherPad recently introduced a new Time Slider feature that displays the complete history of a document’s alterations. To demonstrate, the following link allows you to view Stephen and I taking notes for this week’s Tech Sharecase.
Google Books Metadata Trainwreck article
Stephen discussed the Language Log post concerning the multitude of metatdata errors found the the book records in Google Books. The Language Log post discussed the origin of the errors and also, featured in the comment section, has a response from an individual at Google Books.
The blog post was filed by Geoffrey Nunberg who also authored an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education on the topic.
Screenjelly
Stephen gave a quick tour and tutorial for Screenjelly which he’s used to build tutorials for “How to Look up Books on Reserve” and to display an online tours of the New Reference Wiki and New Reference Blog
View Stephen’s hands-on example from this Friday’s Sharecase.
Text Messaging Reference Service
The last topic of the day was SMS text messaging as a reference service. We discussed getting a smart phone for the library equipped with a QWERTY keyboard. The idea is similar to NY’s service where a phone is shared among the librarians with each scheduled a time to cover the service. We discussed the benefits of adding this service. If this extended service was still within the regular operating hours of reference service, might this be best wedded to the deskstop?

Stephen mentioned MyInfoQuest, cooperative service designed to meet the need for text message reference. To demonstrate the need, a survey of library services desired by patrons via cell phone/mobile device was conducted at Ryerson College. The results are below.
Meanwhile, Questionpoint is integrating SMS text service through twitter feeds into their system in order to accept and push out answers to patrons via text.
Another service mentioned at the Sharecase was Text a Librarian, powered by Mosio.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

The Science of Reading and the State of Reading in our Society.

Posted on August 31, 2009 by Ryan Phillips

This past weeks episode of “To the Best of Our Knowledge” on Wisconsin Public Radio focused on libraries and reading. The episode as whole is enjoyable and informative but the first segment is particularily relevant to our work as it covers the state of reading in our socety and the efficacy of the book as a format.

Maryanne Wolfe, director of the Center for Reading and Language Research at Tufts University and author of “Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain,” spoke of her concerns about the younger generations of readers who were brought up in a world of computers. According to Ms. Wolfe, students are not reading as well as in the past.

In the interview, Wolfe also referenced Nicholas Carr’s article in The Atlantic, “Is Google making Us Stupid?” Wolfe’s worry is that even though younger generations are reading and have easier access to information, they are only becoming “superficially smart.” They are learning in a manner that lacks in analysis and fails to manifest into inference and deeper knowledge of the subject.

“Libraries.” To the Best of Our Knowledge. Wisconsin Public Radio. August 29, 2009. Web.

Carr, Nicholas. ‘Is Google Making Us Stupid?” The Atlantic. July/August 2008. Web.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment

Tech Sharecase, 6 August 2009

Posted on August 10, 2009 by Ryan Phillips
Attendees

Randy Hensley, Louise Klusek, Mike Waldman, Stephen Francoeur, Ryan Phillips, Arthur Downing, Frank Donnelly, Rita Ormsby.

AirBaruch

We discussed the history of AirBaruch and potential new services the library would want to offer.

Text Message Reference
Some ideas on how to market chat reference were shared, including promoting it as a service for students “on the go.” Since students are using the chat service from the convenience of their workstations, mobile devices, et cetera, it might be ideal to market chat reference as a service for “where you are.” NYU has a shared phone to cover the service.

Phone Reference

The text message reference led to a discussion on how we provide phone reference. We discussed to what extent should we promote and field reference questions at the reference desk? We also discussed how we could expand this service.

E-textbooks and E-books

Stephen discussed a pilot project for patron-initiated acquisitions of e-books at BMCC.

The library has been given funds to purchase textbooks in the fall for students; we are looking into the possibility of using some of that money to buy textbooks in an e-book format.

Mike is working with a CIS professor whose class has 2 required books that will be in ebook format (one a Kindle form and the other Books24x7). Newman Library will provide the Kindle.

Supporting Baruch’s Film Studies Minor

With the introduction of a new film studies minor, the library is looking into ways we can provide films to support the classes.
Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Tech Sharecase, 6 August 2009

Tech Sharecase, 23 July 2009

Posted on July 23, 2009 by Ryan Phillips

Attendees

Frank Donnelly, Joseph Hartnett, Louise Klusek, Linda Rath, Ryan Phillips

RSS Feed Readers

Discussed the various RSS Feed Readers the attendees used and the reasons why.

NYPL’s new catalog

The New York Public Library’s new catalog was discussed. The catalog replaces CatNYP and LEO, combining materials from the two defunct catalogs. The new catalog is powered by a product called Encore, developed by Innovative Interfaces. Georgetown University Libraries also has a beta version of an Encore catalog on their website.

Prezi

We have discussed Prezi, the non-linear presentation tool, in past Tech Sharecases, but Linda was kind enough to show a presentation that she had built using the tool.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Google Book Search Copyright/Monopoly Controversy

Posted on June 25, 2009 by Ryan Phillips

Recently a few articles have highlighted the ongoing Google Book Search controversy. The CNET article linked below does a good job of outlining the competing interests as pertaining to the copyright issues/proposed settlement and the monopolistic implications of the Google Book project.

One article I find really interesting is the second below from Reuters. This article glosses over the finer details of oppositions arguments to defend Google Books. The argument the author presents is that Google is advancing human knowledge, granting access to information where there was none, and in light of this the opposition concerns are either invalid or outweighed by Google’s lofty goal.

Shankland, Stephen. “Google’s digital-book future hangs in the balance.” CNET. 15 June 2009. Web. 24 June 2009.

Gimein, Mark. “In Defense of Google Books.” Reuters. 24 June 2009. Web. 24 June 2009.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | Comments Off on Google Book Search Copyright/Monopoly Controversy