Augmented
Here's a web log called Augmentation.
This is my friend Robert's find. An IT weblog run by graduate students
out of U. Maryland's Government and Politics Dept. He came across it at
a talk on Google's future for the library and higher education world
("Google Libraries / Google Scholar: Ideologies of Knowledge Work,
Knowledge Retrieval").
Given by MITH
(Maryland
institute for Technology and the Humanities) who live in our libraries
basement. Susan Schreibman the former head of MITH is now one of the Library's asst.
deans and has edited a recently published large dense book:
A companion to digital humanities.
That same day, elsewhere, I listened to a similar talk: OPACs and Our Changing Environment by a
librarian, Dale Flecker, from Harvard. They also run an Ex libris Aleph 500 system. An OPAC is just one
part of an ILS (integrated Library system). Google and Yahoo can search
the whole web and come up with books in our libraries faster than our
opacs can. Amazon can find books faster, suggest other editions,
similar titles and give reviews. So can Barnes and Noble and they have
a quirky facet search browser. All this on brute force keyword
searching made presentable with various algorithms designed to
tease out what the searcher might be looking for. Against this what
libraries have is metadata: the MARC record, and subject and name
authority files. This could be re-purposed to faceted classification
arrangements The FRBR initiative may also help place the
particular item the user wants to consume into his or her hands with
the least amount of auxilary searching. Whats FRBR? Well, just Google
it: define FRBR.
All this is fine for books and analyzed serials. Then begin an OPAC's
blind spots - nonanalyzed serials and nonprint materials. Flecker also
indicated he thought the entire idea of library "research ports"
for outside db's was a move in the wrong direction. Less than
seamless.. The MITH talk was less tied to library catalogs but the
effect of Google on information generally traces a similar pattern.
Robert thought the whole affair at MITH was tedious and that
meeting the people who run this Augmentation weblog was the highlight
of the whole thing. Since they were from the GVPT dept, to which in a
very technical sense I still belong, he threw it to me. I like
this web log, such beautiful, focused, informative posts. I can never
seem to write like that. Make your point, then stop wasting the readers
time.
10:32:33 PM  ;;
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