Tag Archives: Google Books

Googlization of Everything

Posted on March 9, 2011 by Stephen Francoeur

Siva Vaidhyanathan’s 2010 book, The Googlization of Everything: (And Why We Should Worry), has been on my to-read list for a while now (the library’s copy is on order). In the meanwhile, I got a really good overview of the issues Vaidhyanathan wants to raise from this podcast from the Berkman Center for Internet and Society, where the author recently spoke.

On a related note, I want to say that if there were just one podcast that I could recommend to academic librarians, I would suggest MediaBerkman, which pulls together the interviews done at the center as well as the presentations by scholars.

MediaBerkman: home page | podcast feed

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Tech Sharecase, 22 October 2010

Posted on October 25, 2010 by Stephen Francoeur
Attendees
Stephen Francoeur, Ellen Kaufman, Chris Tutill, Stella Varveris, Mike Waldman, Kevin Wolff

WorldCat Local Search Interface for CUNY+
The Newman Library is in the process of becoming a member of the IDS Project, a program that got its start among the SUNYs as a way to rethink resource sharing, interlibrary loan, and collection development workflows. Among its initiatives is IDS Search, a service that runs member library catalogs in WorldCat Local. You can try out these catalog search overlays on this IDS page.

The search overlay connects to the WorldCat API, Google Books, and other web services to create a richer search experience than is offered in our Aleph catalog interface. The overlay also features spell check and “did you mean” functions. The catalogs that are up now are in pre-alpha state; some issues with the data are already apparent.

One major local issue is that there is a four-month lag between when we add a record for a newly ordered item in Aleph and when we upload it to WorldCat. We do this because by 4 months we have received 90% of the Coutts books we have ordered (as a reminder these come already processed and cataloged which is why it takes the books the time it does to reach us). We wouldn’t want to put records for books we don’t have in WorldCat. However, sometimes we get newly ordered items well in advance of the usual 4 month window, but there is no good way to upload these items as they come in. This means that the WorldCat data will not feature items that Aleph may correctly indicate we have received because they came in before the usual 4-month delivery/processing time. This applies mostly to books received from Coutts; any cataloging that is done locally is updated at time of cataloging.  Mike Waldman will be attending a meeting soon about IDS and will get back to us with more details on the project. Anyone interested in the project is welcome to attend as well.

Streaming Video
We talked about a new effort to stream videos from a Baruch server. The project allows us to embed a video player on a password-protected course-reserve page. Before we can make our own copy of a video to stream, we have to secure the license to do so, a process that can be complex. We also talked about UCLA’s decision this past spring to resume its practice of streaming of previously purchased videos without securing a license to do so.

Settings for Screecasting Software
We talked about using free and open-source software, CamStudio, for creating quick and dirty screencasts. At issue was what the ideal settings should be to ensure that when the files are uploaded to YouTube the picture is clear.
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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.
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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.
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