In my nightly browsing, I came across this post, the contents of which I find quite disheartening:
"Ok, I hold a student position at the medical library and my boss is this super conservative republican lady. It was Friday afternoon and me and a coworker were just sitting around waiting for the clock to tick 6 P.M. so we could go home, then I get a phone call and after I got off the phone the conversation with the co-worker went something like this:
co-worker: Was that your special girl friend?
Jose: What do you mean my special girl friend?
co-worker: Yeah, was that your girlfriend?
Jose: No.
co-worker: or your boyfriend, if that's the way you go
Jose: No
co-worker: No what, not your Boyfriend or not the way you go?
Jose: Not the way I go (here I had to lie and the only reason was because my brother also works here and im not out to my family)
co-worker: Well, that's good because you know [the boss' name] is not too fond of the issue
Jose: Well, it's not like she has a say in the issue, now does she?
co-worker: Well, no you're right but you know how those republicans are.
Does that sound like harassment? The comments were all made in a non-threatening tone and just as a friendly chat between co-workers. Now I know that if I was to come out my boss would not be comfortable with me being gay and I do think she would either make it difficult for me to work here or would give me less hours for work next semester. Probably even at the time when she wasn't at the office."
It's sad that his concern is quite reasonable. And to see such an atmosphere of intolerance manifest itself in an environment that should be known for its respect, if not celebration, of diverse identities, backgrounds and viewpoints is tragic. Of course, the author and his co-worker could be off-base in their perception of the boss, but a workplace culture that even suggests intolerance, especially on the managerial level, makes me cringe.
For all you content management fans out there, Objectis is offering freely-hosted Plone and Zope accounts. You can choose either and when you register, you get your own subdirectory of the objectis.net domain. My as-of-yet unused site is at http://openstacks.objectis.net. We played around with Plone some in my Network Technologies class back in grad school. Loads of potential. Now I just need a good excuse to invest some time in it.
I've read about Furl a number of times as a product similar in function to del.icio.us. Having put del.icio.us through its paces, and on the encouragement of creator Michael Giles, I gave Furl a test drive this evening. The following message is my response to Michael after having played around a bit (although here I've properly capitalized Furl, which I did not in the email):
Hey Mike,
Thanks for the push (and for checking out my humble blog). I've been meaning to give your baby a go-around for a while now. And I must say, it's very nicely done.
Let's take it for granted that I like the things that make Furl unique: archiving of pages, full-text search, selective privacy of links, easy-to-use toolbar (even as over-toolbarred as I am!). In the interest of either making Furl better or becoming a better Furl user, let me point out some things I like about del.icio.us (hereafter dlish) that appeared (to my novice eye) to be different/missing in furl.
First, one of my favorite things about dlish is the ability to apply multiple categories to a link.* Now I see that I can add keywords to a archived page, but there doesn't appear to be a way to browse an index of those keywords as you can with the topics. Adding that kind of functionality would appeal to me. I also like that dlish shows me the number of times I've used each of my topics. Perhaps you have included a way to view that info, but not in an obvious way. If not, I suggest adding it, since it allows users to analyze their classification schemes for maximum utility.
But I think the central difference between the two managers is the relative emphasis on social bookmarking. While both offer it, dlish makes it the priority, presenting the collective bookmarking of its users as the primary content. Furl comes off as more of a power user tool whereas dlish feels something like a community blog, much like Metafilter without the wit and sarcasm. This is in no way a criticism, just an impression.
Mike, I think you have a great thing going. I would be happy to discuss it further and hope you won't mind me posting these general impressions on Open Stacks, so that others can join the discussion and be encouraged to experiment on their own.
Might I also suggest you get a development blog going. I'd be interested in learning about ways you are moving furl forward. And if you do that, please share the feed URL!
Keep up the great work,
Greg
* [I will save discussion of the relative merits of offering a controlled topical vocabulary (furl) vs. natural language (dlish) for a different time. One can create their own topics in furl, but some people won't go through the trouble; in dlish, they have no choice.]
Anyway, at this point, I think I'm still a del.icio.us user, but given Mike's interest in the opinions of potential users, I can't help but want to help him succeed in making a convert of me. He offers a ton of great features, most notably archiving of actual pages, which allows for full-text searching of your bookmark content. I highly suggest checking out Furl and offering opinions/comparisons either here or via the contact form. Let me know which you'd prefer to use (and why, but I'm sure I didn't need to tell you that).
Just did a quick search on the new Yahoo! search engine (thanks, MP) for "Open Stacks" and not only was I listed first, I was given the option to "View as XML" and "Add to My Yahoo!" Nice.
Gary Price linked to the new Copernic Meta toolbar that brings the "add any search engine" functionality of Needlesearch (only for Mozilla - I mostly surf with Opera) to the IE environment. It took me about 30 seconds to add a "Search dmoz" function and a search for my library's catalog, by simply typing "addengine" into the search box for the desired engine. So simple! Library Lookup never worked on my library's catalog, but Copernic Meta made it seem so basic, I can hardly believe it took so long to bring it to the masses. Plus Copernic offers a nice starter list of searchable sites to broaden your search horizons. Despite my limited test time, this toolbar is very highly recommended for you to at least give a test drive.
I was leaving a comment on Library Stuff, when I decided I should just air my opinions in my own forum, created specifically for the purpose. There's a comment from Alan, the author of Blue Hole:
"It's fine to point to a blog, but if you know a person's full name and it's not revealed on their blog, wouldn't it be wrong to use that person's full name in your pointer? I think yes."
Now I think it's clear that something personal prompted Alan to write this. If I'm wrong about that, then I'm a poor judge of tone in writing. Anyway, I tried to think back to any posts that we may have made with Alan's full name in it. Couldn't think of nor find any. Then I figured I would check the other place where I tend to list blogs: dmoz.org. Sure enough, Alan's full name is sitting there in all its glory.
So looking through Alan's blog, I tried to figure out how I knew his last name to include it in the listing. I've said it before and I'll say it again: I go through no great effort to identify blog authors, but if the info is there for the taking, I'm gonna grab it. Well, I looked back at the editing logs for his category and sure enough, when it was first listed back in June, his last name was the domain name!! Doesn't take a researcher to pull that information out of the magic hat.
So here are my points:
1. If you want anonymity on your blog, don't do things like pepper your name onto the site. Don't place an anonymous journal in a subdirectory of a site where you freely use your name (myprofessionalsite.com/blog). Don't link to your resume. Don't link to your organization that has a staff directory on its website, after you've just posted about how awful your life is as the Metadata Librarian for your organization. You get the idea.
2. If you are going to take steps towards limiting your exposure via your blog, consider letting the people who link to you know about it. In the case of dmoz, you would use the "update URL" link that's available from the category page where your site is listed. Some people have done this and I believe they have found me to be quite amenable to such requests.
To answer back to Alan's original question, I think it comes down to how you interpret "revealed." Speaking only for myself, I peruse any information I'm given: the about page, colophon, resumes, first posts, links to the author's other sites, etc. If your name is sitting in any of those places, that's "revealed" in my mind. On the other hand, I'm not about to do a WHOIS search on domain names (even though that information is freely available).
See the difference? My goal is never to suss the author out; it's to give the author as complete a listing as he/she makes possible. Most welcome the publicity and recognition. Some take exception to their own apparent vulnerability. Perhaps it's better that a third party such as myself highlights the chink in one's anonymity armor, so that steps can be taken to repair it before someone who counts notices. But again, if you take those steps, tell the highlighter!
Now that I've gone on entirely too long about that, here's a bonus treat for those of you who've read this far - a picture of the house that we are seemingly about to purchase. Our third offer was agreed to today (actually yesterday, gosh it's getting late) and so I thought I'd share our elation with the blogosphere. Perhaps tomorrow, I'll show you the lake view from that deck coming off the right side of the house.
It's been little more than a week since I promised I would meet all of you faithful readers some day. What a difference a week makes. It appears I will finally make my first step in that direction as I have been selected to attend the 2004 Computers in Libraries conference. I could hardly contain my excitement when I got the call.
So who's with me? Who will I get to meet in a month's time? And what social events have been/need to be coordinated? I'm up for anything and everything.
Got an interesting comment from Richard Soderberg that I wanted to share with you, in the hopes of eliciting some comments:
"I'd like to hear more from the library community about the shared and private ontologies being developed at del.icio.us; I'm crysflame on delicious. Glad to see that it's filling a need in such a relevant demographic :) I wonder if librarians are, by default, more attracted to del.icio.us than other folk -- being a librarian myself, and also having found it completely addictive to use."
Well, my ontology is woefully lacking as it essentially created on the fly, based on the things that I am cataloging (literary warrant, baby!). Unfortunately, I'm the type that could categorize an item one way on the first day and then forget my thought process the next day, left to wonder what the heck I was thinking (or where that article about ontologies went). I'm sure a little time spent reconsidering my previous choices would serve me well in the long run.
To the second question, of course librarians are drawn to del.icio.us. The opportunity to categorize our online reference sources and share them with an unsuspecting populace will always be a draw.
BTW, since Richard is a librarian, that would make floating atoll a library blog. Better go toss that up onto Blogsource.
It gives me a modest amount of pleasure (and relief) to announce the triumphant return of LIS Blogsource. Of course, new install means new feed. I've transferred all the relevant stuff posted here in the past three plus weeks over there, so you can ignore most of those posts and start with the welcome back post.
Steven just passed along this one:
Western Plains Library System Community Blog (Clinton, OK) - "Serving People in Custer, Dewey, Roger Mills, Washita Counties" (RSS feed)
The content on their front page also incorporates the bloggy convention of posting new content links at the top of the page.
This one has not officially launched yet, but since they're live (and I was able to locate it without really looking), I can't help but point it out. You can just feel the potential oozing from it:
i4i : Eye (I) for an Eye (I): Information for Information Professionals - "An Information and Library Science Weblog" (RSS feed - not linked from the site, I just took an educated guess; bet ya I'm the first subscriber!)
From what I can gather, this is a project eminating from folks at the Pratt SILS. One of the coordinators is Michael, who authors the eGov Weblog I mentioned on Wednesday.
The author of Voice of Reason (RSS feed) just "took a job with the government documents division of Hauser Library today."
Jenny's got a good one, but you've probably already seen it, haven't you?
Our Journey to Innovative - "The Addison Public's Library journey to a new computer system!" (no feed)
Catalogue Blog - "a record of the small things in life that make a cataloguer smile." (no feed)
Rumblings Under Oscar's Porch - "Take off your coat, and stay awhile. Feel free to leave comments, or just a hello when you've visited." (no feed)
From the proof of librarianship post: "I would also like to publicly (I already thanked him in person) acknowledge the wonderfulness of the principal. It's teacher appreciation week, a week much dreaded by myself as it never ends up being LIBRARIAN APPRECIATION week or day (except for the flowers from the History teacher this Christmas). THIS year, the new principal has included me in all his little efforts at thanking the staff. Yesterday we all got a little thank you for your efforts and special contributions card with a lottery ticket (we got one at Christmas too), today was a tiny box of two EXQUISITE chocolates, and who knows what we're getting tomorrow. It's AWESOME! Also, the cafeteria lady has been sending us food. Yesterday there was a GIANT salad for everyone, and an equally giant platter of homemade cookies, and today was a cheese and fruit platter. YAY! "
This from the "old, but as of yet unnoticed" file:
eGov Weblog - "I'm an Information and Library Science Masters student. I believe that information is a public utility to be shared, used, and, yes, regulated. My areas of research are Government Documents, work flow / knowledge management, and the uses of technology to aid information transfer." (RSS feed)
I just love this:
Schoolhouse Rock - "Playlists and discussion topics from a weekly radio show on WSCB 89.9 FM, Springfield College, Springfield, MA, hosted by reference librarians Emily Alling and James Miller." (no feed)
Sadly, the radio station doesn't stream, but check out the playlist from their first week:
Sam Cooke, Having a Party
Belle & Sebastian, Wrapped Up In Books
Rolling Stones, You Can't Always Get What You Want
Smiths, Bigmouth Strikes Again
Led Zeppelin, The Girl I Love, She Got Long Black Wavy Hair
Internet Gem of the Week: Howard Dean, Remixed (http://deangoesnuts.com)
Ben Folds, The Luckiest
Modern Lovers, Girlfriend
Lauryn Hill, Can't Take My Eyes Off You
Plus, discussion of Boolean logic.
Anyone who can blend Belle and Sebastian, Ben Folds and logical operators scores big points in my book.
The Rest of Us Will Be Forgotten, Never Judy - "Garland + Libraries = FUN!" (no feed)
I've mentioned the blogs of the Pullen Library at Georgia State before, but I wanted to share two more subject-specific blogs that the library's subject specialists are producing:
Issues in Scholarly Communication - "A library weblog covering the Issues of Scholarly Communication for the faculty and students at Georgia State University." (RSS feed)
Social Sciences News - "A weblog featuring library related news, events, and resources for the Social Sciences at Georgia State University." (RSS feed)
As seen on EdBlogger Praxis, the Hunterdon Central High School (NJ) Library's web site now features a weblog. (RSS feed)
I believe this is the second blog using this title:
Digital Librarian - "A knowledgebase of tips, tricks, and ideas for the librarians of digital age" (no feed)
Is it me or did I see Walt's mug in the orkut Libraries community? Friendship is an interesting concept applied to the blogosphere. I've never met a single person on my orkut friends list, but my interactions with colleagues through this blog, email and IM have often felt more in touch than the communication I keep with my meatspace friends. In that spirit, I naturally added Walt to my friends list.
Of course, I will meet you all. Mark my words.
Mr. Standfast (no feed)
The author, Robert M. Spencer, is the Assistant Reference Librarian at the Glickman Library, University of Southern Maine.
The text I have about this blog is from a ODP submission (but we only accept English language sites in the LIS Weblogs category; however misguided the policy may be, other languages fall under the World blanket).
danesh-shenasi - "about library and information science and librarianship an information retrieval and searching information" (I honestly don't know whether there's a feed, but I couldn't find any)
Speaking of the Open Directory, indications from the ODP Weblog are that Google may be dropping dmoz.org entries as part of its search results. I can see why. Lots of online directories make use of ODP data, which means loads of redundant search results reflecting the same information. Although Google's use of ODP data has been great for the Open Directory, gaining lots of critical exposure and helping to recruit numerous editors to the cause, the time seems right for a change. Here's a screenshot of the directory-less Google (note lack of Directory tab) and an article discussing the relationship.