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.

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 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!

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.

Introductions

One of my first assignments for class was to create an introduction presentation.

It was terribly awkward sitting in my living room talking to a webcam as if it were a room full of people, but I think it turned out OK. So far it seems I'm the only one that recorded a video--everyone else has gone the voice-over-Power-Point route. I'm not sure if that makes me a rogue or a pioneer, but I guess we'll see.

I used VoiceThread, which seems to be a pretty neat program. It's not life-changingly exciting, but it's good for what it's for.

You can watch it here if you're interested.

What is your experience with recording yourself? Do you find it as awkward as I do? Have you used VoiceThread, or something like it?

Evernote Love

Call me an overachiever, but I've already begun working on my paper for LIS 500. Hey, it's posted on the class website, the info's all there, why not? Plus I'm taking advantage of the fact that the LIS 510 site isn't up yet, so it's almost like I have only one class.

But the point is not that.

The point is this: I'm in love with Evernote.

I've had the app on my iPhone for a while, but I mostly just used it for grocery lists and taking photos of pages of books when I didn't want to copy down a whole quote. Last week, though, in preparation for school, I downloaded the application for my computer as well, and realized what a great asset it's going to be for this grad school journey.

You see, you can create not only text notes, but also photo and audio notes. You can even upload files (like PDFs of class readings) from your computer to make a note. Then you can organize into notebooks, use tags, and share them on Facebook, Twitter, email etc.

The best part for me is that you can access your notes anywhere.

I've been making notes for that LIS 500 paper using the website from my work computer all day, but when I leave for the evening, I'll be able to get to them (and edit them and export them) from my laptop at home, or my phone wherever I am.

You guys, I'm telling you. It's a dream.

Weekend Update--Seattle Edition

Seattle was a success! I had such a good time meeting everyone, and I feel very informed and ready to start classes on Wednesday. On the meeting everyone front--I want to create a link repository for other UW MLIS blogs. If you have one, please leave a link in the comments!

So, in short, here are a few highlights. While in Seattle, I

• Met a ton of awesome, like-minded people.


• Had good Mexican food. Yeah. In Seattle. I live in San Diego. This is a big deal.


• Drank. Every. Single. Day.


• Stayed with family I'd never met who were so kind and very fun (Hi, David & Eva!).


• Rode the city bus for the first time.


• Rode the wrong city bus, got lost, and had to call for help.


• Ate falafel for lunch every day.


• Visited the Burke Museum and saw some cool taxidermy & dino bones.


• Flew alone for the first time since I was 13.


• Bought this really cute ceramic origami crane for my office:

Classes start Wednesday, and I couldn't be more excited! This is gonna be great.