Tagging and Folksonomies (Thing #17)

What do I think about tagging and folksonomies? I'm of two minds about it. When I originally heard about it, I though "Great! No more cookery!" On the whole, I think it's common sense to let people label things in the language they use. However, I haven't been so very impressed with it in practice. For example, I looked at some of the titles users had tagged at Ann Arbor. The first, The Da Vinci Code, was tagged, among other things, "Mary Magalene." Now, this should be great--Mary Magdalene is not one of the LC Subject headings and might be a useful point of access. Unfortunately, for those of us who use the more traditional spelling "Mary Magdalene," it doesn't do any good.

One of the articles we read noted that tagging works best when a lot of people tag the same item, and this seems like a good example. If 100 people tagged The Da Vinci Code, surely some of them would come up with Mary Magdalene. It might also take care of one of the other problems of tagging--that nobody calls anything by the same name. On LibraryThing, the book Soon I Will Be Invincible is tagged "genre:scifi," "Sci-Fi," and "Science Fiction" (and, mysteriously, "gaiman"). The more people tag a thing, the better chance you have of someone tagging it what you would think to look for it under.

Lingro

I heard about a website called Lingro on Future Tense yesterday. From Lingro's homepage, you can open any website. When the site opens up, you can click on any word for a translation. It currently translates to and from English and either Spanish, French, Italian, and Polish. There's also an English dictionary for those needing help with vocabulary. You can create and save wordlists, and practice those words with electronic flashcards. I looked at it today, and it seems like it could be a great tool for language learners. (It has a 2.0 aspect as well, in that users can add or add to translations.)

Del.icio.us (Thing #16)

I've had a del.icio.us account for a little while--it seemed like it would be a useful way to bookmark sites for reference work, since I can't count on being at the same computer every day, or even every hour. It's since devolved into the place I store all the articles I mean to read one day and never quite get around to, but that's useful, too.

For this exercise, I looked at the Seven Habits of Highly Successful Del.icio.us users. I checked out some of the tools (you can see the last five items I bookmarked on the side of my blog now!), and subscribed to some tags. I also discovered that you can see what other people who have bookmarked sites have to say about them by clicking where it says "saved by 423 other people." It's amazing what you can learn when you read the directions.

Rollyo (Thing #15)

I had some trouble setting this up, and more trouble getting the search box on my blog, but I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. I meant to create a place I could search for directions on how to do crafty projects, but I included sites where you can buy handmade things, and now I have my own little shopping center, just in time for the holidays. Fun!

Library Thing, Again (Thing #14)

I cataloged all of my books on Library Thing a while back (see Thing #7), but I just now put the Library Thing search widget on my blog. You can search my library!

Image Generator (Thing #13)

I've always liked David Hockney, so I jumped at the chance to create a photocollage at the Hockneyizer. The results are so much greater than the effort required. I also very much enjoyed the Bob Dylan Message Generator.

Finding Feeds (Thing #12)

I did not have much luck finding feeds using Topix or Technorati (though it's nice to finally know what Technorati is--I keep hearing about it, but haven't ever cared enough to find out what it was). I tried library, libraries, and librarians, and found some blogs that looked interesting, but an equal number that didn't actually seem to have anything to do with library, libraries, or librarians. Maybe I haven't quite figured out how to use them? Or maybe it would work better if my searches were more targeted?

I also tried looking for Winona, MN, my hometown. Judging by the feeds, the biggest news out of Winona lately is that a woman is suing her petsitter for letting her potbellied pig get too fat while she was taking care of it. Sad.

Generally, I've had the best luck with blogs I read about or hear about from other people.

Pretty!

This was posted on the Craft magazine blog.

Audiobooks (Thing #10)

I've been kind of sulky about NetLibrary audiobooks ever since I learned they wouldn't work on my Mac or iPod, but I went and looked at the available titles today. I was, at times, confused by how they were organized. For example, when I browsed by subject, Eragon and The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants were listed under Young Adult Fiction, while their sequels, Eldest and Girls in Pants, were under Popular Fiction. On the upside, the titles seem high-quality.

Podcasts (Thing #9)

I'm skipping back a little to Thing #9. I subscribe to two podcasts through iTunes--This American Life and NPR's Sunday Puzzler--but almost never listen to them unless I'm going on a car trip. For this exercise, I spent some time browsing Podcast Alley and Podcast Directory. I briefly considered signing up for "A British Computer Reads a Paragraph of Moby Dick" but then I realized it had never gotten past the third paragraph...in 2005. A lot of podcasts I looked at seemed to have petered out around the same time--I wonder if podcasting's golden year was 2005.

I know some libraries are still podcasting--I found three browsing on iTunes: Denver Public Library podcasts children's stories and nursery rhymes, Kankakee Public Library podcasts programs, and Hennepin County has a teen podcast.

RSS Feeds Celebrity Endorsement

Bill Barnes, one of the creators of the all-too-true library comic Unshelved, pushed RSS feeds in his latest blog post. Check it out (and subscribe to the feed for the comic) at: http://www.unshelved.com/blog.aspx?post=928.

RSS Feeds (Thing #11)

I set up feeds at Bloglines for book reviews from the Star Tribune, Pioneer Press, and the New York Times, as well as a few for restaurant reviews and one for my favorite crafty magazine. There were a couple of things I thought would be fun that I couldn't make work, like the flickr feed and the news subject feed.

As entertaining as I can imagine this being (all my favorite timewasters in one place!), I'm just lazy enough that it still feels like work to have to log into another site--I like things that come directly to my email or show up when my browser opens.

I can imagine this being useful--HCL has RSS feeds on its subject guides, library news, book lists, and on catalog searches.

You may view my feeds at:
http://www.bloglines.com/public/KFS

Card Catalog

LII sent this out in their latest digest--a catalog card generator. You can find it at http://www.blyberg.net/card-generator/. Not really useful, but fun.