History of the Printed Book

I recently took a class at the Chicago Botanic Gardens called "History of the Printed Book." It was a great class in which we got to work with and learn about incunabula (books printed, not handwritten, before 1501) and discuss the future of the printed book. At the end of the semester, we watched Farewell, Etaoin Shrdlu, a short film on the last day of the New York Times hot type press and the transition to cold type. The class and the movie left me with the question of what is the real future of the book? How will future generations use and value paper and printed materials? How will librarians be perceived in this ever-changing environment?

Our professor, Ed Valauskas, brought up many interesting points about the future of the printed book. He mentioned a book, Born Digital, that provides interviews with young people that have grown up with computers and what books and digital mediums mean to them. I have yet to read this book, but it's definitely on my list!

Another point that was made is that there are more books being published now than any point in history. One possible reason for this is that books sell better if they are online. If you like what you read in an abstract, then you are more likely to purchase the actual book. Publishers can also use the internet to their advantage and use marketing tools to see what people are looking up, and then print more or less copies on that topic or book depending on what users are interested in online. One example of this is Erasmus Darwin, Charles Darwin's grandfather, who has come into popularity over the past few years.

My conclusion is that technology does not mean the end to the book. Quite the contrary - I believe it means a greater interest in the value of printed materials, new innovations (which this country needs now more than ever!) such as digital paper, and the future of the library as a place for technological and literary exploration.

How will books look in the future? Only time will tell. Will everyone be reading Kindles? I doubt it. Will printed books go the way of the dinosaur? No way!

What an exciting time to be a librarian!

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The Semantic Web

Web 3.0,or the semantic web, is a fascinating concept - and one I think librarians need to capitalize on immediately! Web 3.0 can be thought of as performing searches that involve many complex facets all pertaining to the same subject on a multitude of different databases (sites) - making the web one large database. While web 3.0 has been envisioned as something completely automated, it is also time consuming and presently beyond our technological capabilities. From the article Tim, Lucy, and the Semantic Web, "You get the ability to do all these very complex queries, but it takes a tremendous amount of time and metadata to make that happen."

I think this sounds like the perfect opportunity for librarians to grab a piece of the pie!

Managing and retrieving information/knowledge has always been a major task at hand for library professionals and knowledge management. To have software that would take any search or word or picture that we look at and then link to all the most pertinent data related to that piece of information with accuracy, would be a huge breakthrough.

But can computers and software manage this task alone?

Maybe. But the addition of human know-how, nuances in language or idioms that might take artificial intelligence time to catch onto, the ability to read a question deeper than the words on the page, that's where I believe librarians can, and should, be a part of.

In a recent article PC.mag article Why Google Must Die, the author mentions how SEO would affect an automated semantic web. There is a disconnect between what humans can make a system believe, and how humans can control what the systems does. This again, is what information professionals should be on the cutting edge of - if not right in the middle!

Food for thought, and I'm sure not the last time I will discuss this topic!

Some "web 3.0" sites to try out:

Like

Riya

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Bringing it all Together...

When it comes to remembering all the different options for online searching, news, image and video sites, etc., it's hard to know if you are using all the relevant sites. I have been introduced to InfoDesk, and it is AWESOME! Any feeds that you are currently receiving from Factiva, Nexis, RSS, Google Alerts, etc., can all be managed through InfoDesk. And, they are an aggregator - not like Alacra where you are charged per article or database you access.

The options are endless...do you want to pull together all the technology news you are receiving from Nexis, Factiva, CNN.com, RSS alerts, and the like? Do you want to create newsletters quickly with all the most pertinent information for your constituents? Are you having trouble with maintaining feeds on your SharePoint webparts (you can't modify what is put on the part or how many articles are added to the widget?)?

Here comes InfoDesk!

A competitor to this product might be Alacra - but really, it's not. They don't have the capability to aggregate feeds from multiple sources, or provide newsletter templates...and they charge per viewing - not so with InfoDesk! NewsEdge, a big name in the early 00's, was the head cheese when it came to this technology, but InfoDesk has ripped that title right off their head.

I love InfoDesk.

Thank you for understanding what Librarians need. Why have I never heard of you before?

This gets me thinking and wanting to share some other "all in one" sites with you. They are NOTHING like InfoDesk, but they are places to start when you want to use mulitple sources for searching.

I think Intelways does a really good job at pulling many different options together for certain subjects of interest and providing appropriate sites to use. While it's definitely not a comprehensive list, it's a good place to start a search if you're not sure where to go.

If you want to find a web 2.0 application for a specific subject, or if you just want to browse all the amazing sites, Go2Web20.com

Another one I like is Silobreaker

Another fun search engine that I like that is refereed (not by librarians, per se) is Mahalo. I've been unimpressed by Mahalo in the past few months. I would put it at the end of your list of where to go, but still a site to keep an eye out for.

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Reference Extract

The new search engine endeavor by OCLC and the information schools of Syracuse University and the University of Washington called "Reference Extract":

"The best search engines are great for basic search, but sometimes the Web site results lack credibility in terms of trust, accuracy and reliability. So, who can help? Librarians. If a librarian recommends a Web site, you can be pretty sure that it’s credible. RefEx will take hundreds of thousands of librarian recommendations and use them in a full-scale search engine."

The article goes onto say that this will be as good as other popular search engines (Google, Yahoo), but the results will be based on those most used by librarians!

I'm interested to see how this evolves and how successful the marketing will be to the general public. I'll keep my eyes peeled for updates on this one! Yeah! It took awhile, but...yeah!

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Get Zen With Your Inner 2.0

We all feel overwhelmed - here are a few questions that come to my mind when I think of internet and implementation:

• There are so many sites, so much news, so many things I don't know. Where do I start?
• Where am I supposed to go? What am I to do?
• Google = good. Is there anything else I'm missing?

Relax.

Ask yourself these questions, and choose one to begin with:

• Do I want to connect with old friends/classmates/colleagues?
• Do I just want to read news and stay up to date?
• Do I want to share my opinions with the world? Am I more interested in news than anything else?
• I kind of want to do all of the above.

In my next posts, I will give helpful sites and tips on how to best use the internet for your purposes. Not everyone cares about everything. I want to give you free alternatives / options to what you really want.

Stay tuned!

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Meta Photo

I love Photosynth and Taggalaxy!!

Photosynth
This is a Microsoft program that pull pictures from all over to give a 3-D view of certain locations/landmarks

Taggalaxy
Uses Flickr to pull together different photos based on tags people have assigned to them

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Veering off the "Path"

I am very interested in the technical, computer and database-oriented side of librarianship. I feel strongly for people to be able to access and retrieve quality information. Information that is the best of the best, what they really need and want - targeted answers that our users can feel confident with.

I feel my purpose is to find a way to guide people to the answers that they can rely on, feel safe with, and not have to question their results.

Is this possible? I don't know. Hopefully, people will always question what they find, but that is not very realistic. As a librarian, I want to make possible that they can find the best, and question those results -- and in turn challenge their own ideas and those set forth before them.

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