Week 8: Mashups and API

In An introduction to mashups for health librarians, Alan Cho writes about mashups. "Originally a term used in pop music by artists and disc jockeys when two songs were remixed and played at the same time, Web experts have borrowed the term when two or more software tools are merged."

Mashup between map data and (non-geographic) data-data can form a visual location aid for finding anything from ferry paths to coffee shops. Some of my favorite mashups lately have to do with exercising, particularly riding my bike around Seattle and running. Clock miles. Find a route. Check on the elevation of hills, even!


Exercise 1 - Pick a mashup… any mashup
There are a few mashups investigating for this assignment.
1. Lunchbox: http://lunchbox.allbusiness.com/
2. Dog Park USA: http://www.dog-park-usa.com/dog-park-usa
3. Flickr Sudoko: http://flickrsudoku.com/
4. Veloroutes: http://veloroutes.org/

I was compelled to check out each one for accuracy. For Lunchbox (and other restaurant map/ratings mashups browsed), there were some restaurants missing. One lunch mashup did not have a 'sushi' category. The dog park missed a couple of places in Seattle. It would be great to know how current some of these mashups are, whether their feeds come from static or dynamic sources. Was this created in 2006 and left to sit? One great mashup for Seattle taco trucks, Los Taco Trucks Unitos, has sadly gone this way.



Veloreoutes has a really in-depth "About" section that reveals how, when, why the mashup was created and includes candid information about data sources. This mashup wins out over the rest because it is *so* useful to me. I can create a cue sheet and that will help me get from Point B to Point A. Sure, finding sushi nearby is great, but using something that helps me go is tops.


Exercise 2 - Head over to Rollyo and search for librarian blogs & privacy.

So, I can pick where I want to search from a subset of domains I specify. Further, I can combine domains to find what I want from sites I already like. That's smart. I rolled my own search engine to create rugby-specific search. I wanted to shop for shoes and accessories from only a few vendors, but not necessarily compare prices across the board. Using Rollyo, I entered a few URLs to define my search domains, saved the search, then ran a test search. The results in context are great; the sponsored results interrupting my list are annoying. Still, the ads are not such a detraction that I'd skip over Rollyo all together.

As for other mashups, I've enjoyd watching Hubmed evolve. A few months ago, the Touchgraph visualization was basic. The API looks more user-friendly, the navigation and keys to help me know what Touchgraph is "about" have changed for the better. Has it always been in color? remeber gray. Lots of gray.

I have used the Facebook/photo identification mashup, but didn't know it came from Touchgraph as well.

What did I read about librarians and privacy on librarian blogs?

• The DIY Librarian wrote about Web 2.0 and anonymity. "...Library 2.0 applications (e.g., those that encourage social interaction) should not necessarily use the same privacy standards as traditional library services."
• On The Law Librarain Blog, a blogger wrote about the privacy ranking of Internet Service Companies. "According to Privacy International, Google Inc.'s privacy practices are the worst among the Internet's top destinations."
• The Arizona State Univerity's blog, Technology for Law Libraries, includes a post about the availability of the 2007 OCLC report, Sharing, Privacy and Trust in Our Networked World and provides some links to other blogs that comment about the report.
• In patronizing, the privacy of library patrons is discussed in reference to an article on slashdot, Library Chief Criticized for Requiring Subpoena. A librarian who protected the privacy of library patrons received public criticism in 2006.
  
  
  
  

Week 7 - Podcasting and Online Hosted Video

Questions for this week:

• Discuss how you felt about the experience of using YouTube. What you think about this service. Do you see any potential uses for Podcasting in the library? If so what and why?

I feel confident about using YouTube to share videos for the worldwide audience of Web users. YouTube has been going strong for years now and is adept at providing search tools, channels, and user development tools to help users fine tune their experiences. I'm excited that I can push videos directly to my Facebook or MySpace account.

Podcasting can be used in a library to help make user tools more portable. Boring! Who wants to *hear* how to wrangle PubMed or find impact factors. What's really useful for a user community is the podcast content that comes from a library as a place (and not many other places). There are podcasts of authors speaking, library dedications, story hours for kids, and local history narratives. I haven't found one yet, but a walking tour of the town could be distributed via the local library's podcast set. Library Sucecss, a Best Practice Wiki, provides a list of libraries that do podcasts. The Sunnyvale Public Library has one podcast of a storytime presentation featuring Russian songs. Librarians at schools are using podcasts to share events and kid creations. At San Mateo High School, kids in Ms. Pennington's 7th period class have podcasted book reports. What a great way to share resources and engage learners.

Why use podcasting in a library setting? To capture what would otherwise sit on a VHS tape and be available only to the one person who wants to check it out or to the three people who want to come in to the library to see it on-site. Podcasting can help libraries provide a nearly immediate outlet for what "what are you doing for me" questioners. It helps raise literacy in a new community of users. It provides a quick link to the library's activities and a record of events that can be enjoyed again and again. Podcasting can fortify the library's place in the community as a creator and keeper of culture.

I am currently enjoying a great series of posts from UNC-Chapel Hill about knowledge management, digital information, library science and learning. Check out the background article and then see all of the YouTube videos on the UNC-Chapel Hill channel. Below, danah boyd, a blogger, thinker and student (who discusses issues I care about) gives an "impromptu talk on the development and applications of social networking on the WWW with particular emphasis on young adults and implications for personal relationships" in one of the UNC-CH “Information in Life” series casts.

Week 6: Online Photo Sharing

1. Set up an online photo sharing account.
   
2. Upload one or more digital photos.
3. Post the photo(s) on to your Facebook site and your blog.

Wow, that was easy.

This week's assignment:

• Blog about the process on your personal blog for this course. I logged in to my Flickr account to see what was loaded. Most of my items are on Snapfish. I'll have to experiment a bit more with organizing the photos behind the scenes on Facebook. Can I choose to show my photos to only selected people? What about those crazy Halloween photos? I'll just share the "all audience" ones. Since I'm not a big photo taker, I won't have to micro-manage my collections anyway. The Flickr display templates are kind of fun. However, it looks like I can't display items within albums. I can see why Flickr would be my photo bank and Facebook would be one outlet for display. Flickr keeps my stuff mine; Facebook permits me to share with a selected audience.
  

• Share how this concept might be used in your library. It really doesn't fit in my library at all. Photo sharing via Flickr might fit into my institution's collections of photos for web pages and (future) social networking site use. My organization hosts several conferences per year. It could be useful to host conference photos in Facebook, particularly if we can identify individuals and link them to the conference site, the institution, and each other.

On another note, Duke University Medical Center Archives (with Duke Medicine) is using blogging technology and to facilitate identification of selected images from their online repository. The project Demystify Our Mystery Photos, is over a year old now, but there are still many photos to be identified. Loyal alumni and support from active partners contribute to the success of this project.

Week 5: Web Office Tools

I love talking about collaborative software and tools for sharing files across multiple locations. I just don't have an opportunity to really spend time with the tools. A few months ago, I checked out some documents-to-go sites that promised to help people get organized. Backpack lends itself to intranet functions, offering shared user spaces and sharing of different file types. It seems robust, but doesn't integrate with shared network drives on site or provide substantial security for sensitive content. It seems to be challenging to adopt personal organization tools at a corporate level, where one-size-fits-most is bound to be a better investment of support and money and provide a potentially more satisfying return to more people.

My organization has implemented SharePoint (Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007), which works great--for those who can figure out how to use it. The "My Sites" function could provide substantial support for personal organization, but it is tied to the whole set-up of the system, which isn't' yet tied to our intranet site here. There are some growing pains, but I'm eager to see how SharePoint can help us manage intranet-type content.

Back to file management and sharing... Google Docs does great with items native to Google Docs. However, even for presentations created in MS PowerPoint (2003), Google Docs loses some formatting and positioning. My attempts to work with a document while tracking changes or using bibliography management software were met with dismal results. Overall, Google Docs is good for quick exchange of non-critical documents. Google Docs doesn't meet my organization's needs for file sharing, but if I were employed at a much smaller non-profit organization, I would advocate for the use of Google Docs.

Questions for this week:

• Is this the future of all software products? What do you think? Collaboration is hot right now, and it makes more sense to post a link rather than send a whole document--most of the time. However, controls for collaboration for certain types of projects need to be mediated by local IT managers. I think all in-office software packages should provide a means for publishing documents to the web a-la Google Docs--without having to manage some server technology. Seamless is easy; setting access for users by non-IT personnel is priceless.
  

As part of the Optional Assignment for this week, I created a document in Google Docs and then posted it here.

To expand this presentation, click "Menu" above, then the link "SharePoint Portals for Collaboration" under the slide image. The expanded presentation will open in a new window. If you would like the speaker notes, click "print slides" in the lower right corner of the expanded presentation screen.

Week 4: Social bookmarking and tagging

My del.icio.us / greensweaternation / account has been my favorite web resource for almost two years now. I use it to collect and store (selected) recommended resources that land in my e-mail inbox every day. I've also used it to locate items of interest by browsing the tags of other users who have bookmarked items the same items. I was drawn to this account by the use of the word "scientometrics."

I have 45 items in my list. The items most frequently saved by others were Gmail and Natalie Dee, followed by the associations (AMIA, MLA) and big search and literature tools (PubMed, PLos).

This week's questions:

• Can you see the potential of this tool for research assistance? As a provider of research assistance, I might consider using this resource to provide sets of links to patrons. I'd tag the links with a code for a patron, then tag the links as I normally would. After a period of time, I'd delete the patron's tag (but retain the tagged items). Maybe this would work... del.icio.us is just so easy to use that it would be a shame to continue to recreate lists and lose them again and again in e-mail exchanges.
  
• Or just as an easy way to create bookmarks that can be accessed from anywhere? For me personally, this is just a way to access bookmarks from anywhere. I'd be thrilled to use a tagged list, though, should anyone have the opportunity to share resources with me.
  

Week 3 - Social Networking Tools

MLA class make-up work continues! This week's assignment is to add some applications and an event to Facebook, build a social network on LinkedIn, and then blog about it.

I already had a Facebook account, so I added the Facebook applications for this week's class: Worldcat, PubMed search, and UAB Catalog Search.

I am very much looking forward to attending the MLA 2008 conference in Chicago this week. I've visited the conference site many times over the past few days, eagerly planning my schedule using the online program planner.

My blogging assignment for this week:

• How can social networking be used by MLA to connect members? I am a new fan of the MLA new members group on Facebook. We could plan a simple event or two pre-conference or grab a budy to go out to visit the Bean while in Chicago. I'm fortunate to know a handful of people who will be at the conference, but it will be welcoming to pre-meet and make plans to fill in the time between organized events.
  
• Should your library have a Facebook or MySpace page? My library doesn't have a Facebook site, BioQuest, my organizations' science education arm, does have quite a Facebook presence. It just works with the generation of the target audience: high schoolers. Facebook is less cluttered and seems infinitely more manageable than myspace. Myspace is great for bands; Facebook is great for people.
  
• Are there privacy concerns for individuals when using social networking sites. Yes, although anyone can be as "off the grid" as they like with regard to social networking sites.
  
• What did you like or not like about your experience with Facebook or MySpace. It was scary-easy to locate friends in Facebook suing the smart networking tools and by mining existing user profiles. I still prefer the shades of privacy for Facebook: show some features to some people. Myspace still seems to be "all or nothing" with regard to privacy options.

I'm on LinkedIn, too.

Week 2: Wiki for Scholalrly Publishing

This week for the MLA CE course on web 2.0 tools, I created a wiki, Scholarly Publishing in Biomedical Research Science and the NIH Public Access Policy, to help biomedical researcher authors (and those who support them) to navigate publisher policies with regard to the new NIH Public Access Policy.

My hope is that the publisher policies I have listed will be updated as policies change. However, since there is need for this information at many institutions, I hope that a new (and more robust) resource will be created out there somewhere. It would be fabulous to harness a subset of what is available in Sherpa/RoMEO--bypassing individual searches.

Finally, this week's question: " What is the difference between a blog and a wiki? What sort of things might be better suited for a blog and better suited for a wiki?"

Wikis are multiple linked web pages that are built using software that allows for multiple people to edit content over a period of time. Wikis are great for collaboration, sharing ideas, FAQs, and sharing content that may not me time sensitive, like explanations of processes, meeting coordination, collections of presentations. Also, since wikis are generally ordered by subject instead of date of creation of content (since content is created throughout), currency is not a primary focus. One wiki I use for example at work is the National Center for Biomedical Ontology Public Wiki.

Blogs, while they may be authored by many people, are better for communicating content from a small group to a large one. Fewer people are involved in the primary content and primary authors are identified. A blog is website where entries are commonly displayed in reverse chronological order, newest items displayed most prominently. Blogs are great for communicating timely information about a collection of similarly themed topics. Blogs can be mini news pages; many libraries use them to collect and display news bits. One blog I read regularly is Peter Suber's Open Access News blog.