Wednesday, October 26, 2011

Marcia J. Bates and the Google Bookcase

In this week's reading we have an article written by Marcia J. Bates in 1989, in which she talks about better ways to facilitate online browsing--making it more like real-life browsing, or what people are familiar with.

One thing she says is, “If the interface can produce a picture on the screen that looks like the books on a shelf, the searcher can transfer a familiar experience to the automated system. If then, a mouse or similar device makes it possible to, in effect, move among the books, a familiar physical experience is reproduced and the searcher can take advantage of well-developed browsing skills.”

So. Have you SEEN the video for the Google Chrome Bookcase?



We live in the future!

Technology amazes me.

Monday, October 17, 2011

In which I detail the reasons I suck at blogging

I apologize.

I am just no good at regular blogging. I'm usually OK at it for a while, and then I get bored of it and feel like I have nothing to say and I know I should at least post something (even if no one is reading it) because I said I would and then I feel guilty when I don't.

I'll be better. I promise. Maybe.

In short: I feel like I have nothing really to contribute. I'm learning things ever MLIS student learns and right now it's not super exciting to me because I don't particularly care about social research. OK, it's important. And I guess some of it is interesting. But still.

Also, I'm not feeling as overwhelmed or stressed out as my classmates are, so I feel bad because I don't want to just be like, "This is a piece of cake. Maybe I'll go bake a cake. And take a nap!" even though that's kind of what I did yesterday.

Anyway. I'll be back. Regular programming shall return. As soon as I get my blogging act together.

Friday, October 7, 2011

Friday To-Do List Report

It's the end of my first real week of class, and I'm feeling really good!

Figuring out a method of organization was a big goal in the last week, and I think I've settled on weekly to-do lists, created in Evernote. Putting together, all in one place, the lectures I have to watch and articles I have to read has been really helpful in making sure I get it all done. And I think in the following weeks I'll be adding discussion board posts I have to make and group-work-related things I have to do. (Speaking of group work, that's another post--it's good news!)

So here's my To Do List report for the week.
500

Lectures

Nature of Info Bearing Objects

Acts of Publication & Distribution

Notions of Aggregating, Collecting & Collections

Readings



Brown, John Seely and Paul Duguid. 2000. The Social Life of Information. Chapter 7: Reading the Background.

Benkler, Yochai. 2006. Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom. Chapter 3: Peer production and sharing. Yale University Press.

Waltham, Mary. 2003. Challenges to the role of publishers. Learned Publishing 2003 (16), 7-14.

Lee, Hur-Li. 2000. What is a collection? Journal of the American Society for Information Science 51 (12).




510

Lectures

Welcome & Intro

General Expectations & Midterm

Social IB & Reflection Papers

Course Overview: What is IB

Overview & Quantitative Methods

Qualitative Methods

Readings



Case, Chs. 1-2; Chs. 8-9

Julien, H. and Michels, D. (2003). Intra-individual information behaviour in daily life. Information Processing and Management, 40:3, 547-562

Fisher, K. E., & Naumer, C. M. (2006). Information grounds: Theoretical basis and empirical findings on information flow in social settings. In A. Spink & C. Cole (Eds.), New directions in human information behavior (pp. 93-111). Amsterdam: Kluwer.

Dill, E., & Janke, K. L. (in press). "New shit has come to light": Information seeking behavior in The Big Lebowski. Journal of Popular Culture.




I'm almost done with the reading from Case for 510 (just one chapter left) and should be done by the end of the day. Didn't finish last night because I was too obsessed with THIS LIST of 136 creepy Wikipedia articles. Crazy, interesting stuff!

Monday, October 3, 2011

Weekend Update

I'm up to my knees in readings and discussions for school, so I took this weekend to step out and dry off for a minute. It's interesting trying to get into a new rhythm of things.

This weekend I:

  • Went to Library Game Night and played Apples to Apples and Scattergories.

  • Saw the bioluminescent red tide. It was so amazing! I've lived in/around San Diego forever, but I'd never seen it before. Click here to see a video or here to read about how it works.

  • Had a visit from my mom and watched my cousin play basketball.

  • Did a little thrift shopping. Here's one of my finds:




(No, I didn't buy it. Too creepy!)

Sunday night I got back into my readings and school work. Definitely ready for week two!

Is the weekend your time to work or your time for play? I find I'm able to do schoolwork during the week, so I like to take the weekend off.