Tags and Catalogues
Following up your comment Bertha about tags and catalogues, I went to a conference on Web.2.0 in Sheffield on Friday and this site was shown by one of the speakers.
It is the Ann Arbor District library catalogue, which uses tags alongside its traditional catalogue. (It is quite well-known I think, as I remember Lorcan Dempsey talking about this site at the Cymal conference last year, illustrating how much more appealing libraries need to become if we are going to make kids excited about them, and make them relevant to adults who are using the web in an altogether new way).
I think this site does show how much more interesting Public Library catlaogues could be with tags. However I am not sure how this works do you know perhaps Bertha?
My reservations for health cataloguing though are ofcourse consistency and relevance:
- Would it be useful for our users to use tags in addition to catalogue entries? If we are talking about being relevant to the workflow of our users, can tagging help or not with this?
- Are there aspects of clinical work flow for which information retrieval would be enhanced if we had tags, which the catalogue entry does not serve,… and how would this be best done..with publicly available software or spending on specific tools as they have obviously done in this case.
- How would we keep the tags consistent enough to be useful?
My main interest in this site was the tagging feature, but Blogs are well integrated and the new books section would be a useful addition on any library blog. At the Sheffield conference they were talking about getting RSS feeds for new books directly from the catalogue in to Library blogs . I don’t suppose this is a feature of our Sirsi OPAC is it?Does anyone know?
Current Awareness
Another demo at Sheffield showed this current awareness site, based upon a database of material for Health Management. This site has the same terms/ expectations as a creative commons license, in that they don’t mind their material being used as long as the source is acknowledged. Helpfully, they have a tool by the RSS feed button that enables you to write the javascript to enter the RSS ink straight into a web page (or a blogsite). Anyone thinking of setting up a library blog with current awareness features might like to look at it.
http://www.tin.nhs.uk/welcome/keeping-up-to-date/health-management
Podcasting and Digital Fottprinting
I have created a podcast file but this site doesn’t support mp3 format uploads. This is a shame as it would be great to have library inductions and training materials on a library blog for reference as they would be so easy to update. I believe an upgrade might make this possible but I have not been able to get feedback from Word press about this as their support line doesn’t seem to work at the moment.
Found it interesting that CSS stylesheets can be uploaded as an upgrade as well. If trusts have issues about ‘digital footprinting’ for library blogs, this might be a way around that?
Thank you for sharing your thoughts on the conference on Web.2.0 in Sheffield.
Ann Arbor District Library is highlighted in Week 2’s readings. Jon Blyberg was the one behind Ann Arbor works; worth checking out his blog. There is also two pieces from him in this week’s readingsthis week readings. Ann Arbor uses Innopac; and SirsiDynix does provide RSS.
Library Elf is a Web-based tool for keeping track of what’s due, overdue and ready for pickup. It is independent of any library systems but can talk to various systems. Another way to enhance your communication with your users making use of the data of your library systems.
It would be good for 3CsT2 participants to listen to your podcast. Check out the following article and see if you could find a service to host your file:
Herrington J. (2005) “Hosting your podcasts.” O’Reilly Digital Media, 7th September, 2005. Available at:
Bertha
Definately would be interested in your podcast!
Some blogs can host them or there is always YouTube!
Will look forward to watching it when available.
Thanks Bertha for the tip on Library Elf. It appears to be limited to the LMS it deals with, but I have submitted a query on the off chance.