Crash Blossoms and the Garden Path

I found the following article on MSN today; we love to talk about ambiguity and the garden path in my linguistics classes, so I thought I would link it here:

Confusion Caused by Crash Blossoms

Over helping: the Wal-Mart experience

Since starting to investigate the ways that people conduct reference interviews and fill information needs, I've become a little hyper-sensitive to the ways that businesses conduct themselves when interviewing/helping clients.

One such experience involves every time I walk into a Wal-Mart. Every single employee will ask "Can I help you find something? Are you finding everything okay" This is a good thing--but generally after the 5th or 6th time I get asked, it's getting pretty old. I've noticed that some employees will not even stop what they are doing while voicing this offer. They will continue walking right on by you, or stocking, or whatever they happen to be doing. Has anyone else noticed this trend? --It almost seems to me that they know you've been asked a handful of times, and expect the "No, I'm fine, just looking" response.

After mulling this over for a while, I have to wonder what the science and statistics of this scenario are for large corporations. They have to know that the bulk of their employees are paid too little and generally don't stay long enough to warrant a level of training that would make for high-quality interviews every time; in the same breath, libraries seem to handle this just fine, and the pay isn't always great (and is sometimes non-existent). They unmeaningful "can i help you" gets on my nerves after five mumbles in a 10 minute period; I find myself avoiding the large chains because the insincere question drives me mad. After reading about the science that goes into grocery stores in 804, these places must have a motive to make every employee ask, no matter how little actual intention may be behind it.

Does an insincere, unenthusiastic offer of help really help sales? Or does it drive customers (like me) away?

I've had discussions with others in this class about how the reference interview seems so over-done in the literature we read because it seems so intuitive: ask, listen, clarify and confirm, research, dialog, repeat if necessary. But I'm starting to wonder if it isn't as intuitive as I have previously assumed. Of course one needs to stop and make eye contact during an interview, right? I've received a whole new appreciation for the researchers that went after this one after starting to pay attention to some of the interviews that happen in my life on a daily basis. I would love to see more literature, even, on the interview and approachability.

For example, what makes an interviewee want to voice their problem when asked? Is a librarian's approachability created in part by the reputation of the profession? If so, why have other service professions (i.e. sales reps) failed to develop this reputation to such an extent?

Just had to share this...

Fellow librarians (and some of my linguistics buddies as well will be amused),

A friend sent this to my email, and I had to share:

http://www.boingboing.net/2009/10/15/radical-militant-lib.html

How cool is that?

Why I favor online data back up methods over flash drives

Hi again all!

So, after 2 hard drive crashes and Dell sending me a new drive (free under warranty! thank you for your prompt response, all you wonderful people at Dell) I am now able to upload my backlog of blog entries. Expect to see all those things I been talking about posting with all of you since early October pop up in the next few days. :)

After some discussion on this topic in class, I would now like to post my opinion on why I don't trust flash drives as back up storage devices. It's because I've had them stolen, lost on loan, and erased by computer error. The computer error is what did it for me.

My husband, who was much better versed than I in security years ago, warned me not to use flash drives as the standard backup device. When you tote around the contents of your computer, you have to worry what's on that device--your name? Copies of bank statements? A list of (even encrypted) passwords? Any other personally identifying information? Anyone else's identifiers, like their grades or private college papers? --It's one thing to put these items on an external hard drive that hangs out in your office, but to keep this information in your pocket or purse is quite another. Things do get lost, and there's no guarantee that the person who finds it will return it. Chances are they need to look at the drive to even figure out who you are, unless you've printed your information on the tiny exterior.

I had a drive stolen out from a computer station on a college campus once, stepping away for 5 minutes to see something a friend wanted to show me on her screen. I lost the 3 pages of term paper that I had been working on, not to mention the 20-30 other copies of documents that were on there. Thereafter I had to follow up with professors to warn them that if suspiciously familiar term papers started cropping up, it wasn't because I had sold them on the black market. That was fun. People get up and forget their flash drives all the time, too, and it's really a shame these tiny and easily lost or forgotten devices don't come with a built-in password protection program.

The one time I had a drive erased, it wasn't a school paper (thank goodness, right? --not so much). It was a novel I was writing. Picture this: I'm 50 pages into writing the 4th book in a planned 7 book series, cruising along and happy as a lark with my progress. I've forgotten some mundane detail of something and need to recheck my details in the previous book. I pull it up on my flash drive and open the document, check the details, fix a misspelling, and go to close. Word asks me if I want to save the changes, so I click yes--and then my virus software pops open and the save freezes. There's been an error--"Continue with save?" I click cancel, it was only one misspelling, and I don't want to tie up the RAM if the virus software needs it. Well, when I clicked cancel, my virus software (it's a mainstream brand offered by one of the largest PC providers out there) scrubs my flash drive of the open file. Book 3, gone. Because it was in save and linked to the backup copies on the flash drive it scrubbed those too. Not even a readable temp file in sight.

It could be said it's bad to keep your primary copies on a flash drive, and it was totally my fault in that case that there were no back up copies. I had become used to the convenience of having my work wherever I was, so I just worked my primaries off the flash drive (please, do not ever, ever fall to this temptation). But flash drives are not computers. They do break easily, and they are not for primary storage.

Now I use online back up methods. They go wherever the internet is (which, let's face it, is anywhere there is a computer anymore). They are password protected, and the providing agent makes the back up copies for you--sometimes in triplicate or more. Many even offer off-line desktop versions. Most of them are 100% free. And, it removes the risk that you will lose the drive or have it stolen.

So maybe online back ups are not for everyone; neither are flash drives. Anyways, those are my thoughts on why I do not use flash drives for large scale storage and back-ups.

Delicious and Google Chrome

Most of you have heard by now that I figured out why my computer was acting squirrelly recently. Part of my hard drive (the part you don't want to mess with) went bad last week. The part that went bad was essentially the table of contents--that part of the disk that tells the interface where everything is located. I flipped out for a while because I thought I had lost a bunch of pictures and videos (irreplaceable family camping trips) that I hadn't backed up yet. Thanks to my husband's unceasing ingenuity, we were able to find an old recovery program that located the shadow copy and got all my personal files. We formatted the drive and things have been good since.

Following the loss of all of my cookies and internet history, I've finally started using Delicious. What an amazing difference this has made in my life, even just over the last 48 hours. Delicious is basically an online bookmarking service--you can make your bookmarks public or private, and you take them everywhere with you (even if your computer crashes, even if you are using a machine you haven't before) because it's all online and you just have to log in. Why didn't anyone think of this sooner?

Also, I'm now giving Google Chrome a whirl. I typically don't jump right on the bandwagon when new technologies come out, because there's usually a string of real world errors and problems that need correcting (think new game consoles, most Microsoft software, and the Volkswagen and Audi Flash of Death ). I let everyone else find these and correct them before I spend my hard-earned money. However, my husband loves Chrome and put it on my machine when we did the system restore, so now I'm using it and generally liking it. It's different. The biggest differences are the way bookmarking and favorites work, and the downloads bar that pops up at the bottom of the screen.

Bias in Classification

Sitting in class right now, I'm contemplating the issues that surround the inherent biases in classification systems. I think there are strong arguments that any specialized group of people would benefit from a custom-fitted classifiaction system for organizing and retreiving information; however, I don't think it's possible to create a universally useful system.

In order to create such a system without any bias, the system would have to be composed of an entirely arbitrary classification system (...and who is that useful to? No one!).

I'm wondering if a database sorting system could help with this. For example, every work in a database is assigned an ID number. It doesn't matter how te numbers are assigned. Then, librarians could go through and customize organization systems for specialized groups of users by using a tagging system to identify works of a group and assigning labels to the categories. This might work similar to the way that Pandora has music specialists assigning works in relation to each other.

Then, users could come in and pick the organizational schema that fits their needs best, or possibly even create their own.

Grocery Stores and the Dewey Decimal System

Ah, crossover. This represents one of the many times thus far that I have had a reading assigned for one of my MA programs that I have already read for the other.

This one was assigned for LI804, but I read it (many times) during my linguistic undergrad studies:

LAKOFF, GEORGE (1987). Women, fire, and dangerous things. University Of Chicago Press.

What does this matter to grocery stores and DDS?--It demonstrates the principle that one's cultural or individual background can have a large influence on the way classification systems are created and perceived. As talked about before in my post on Linguistic Relativity, people divide up the world in many interesting ways.

Grocery stores are masters in the art of classification and seeking behaviors, which is the reason they know that when you find your target quickly you spend less time in the store. And the more time you spend in the store, the more you are apt to buy. But no one will shop a "disorganized" grocery store, so they have to keep things organized while at the same time keeping people in the store longer.

This is the reason things like milk and eggs, which people always run in to get when they notice they're out, are at the back of the store. It's so a customer has to pass through aisles of food before they get to the target and then back, hoping they pick up another item or two on the way.

Melvil Dewey. What an interesting guy--one of many to attempt reform of the English language with regards to spelling, among other OCD organizational tasks. Here's a link to the Wikipedia page on Melvil Dewey. (And for the record, there are no spelling rules in English. Absolutely none. Zero sound to letter combination correspondance. It's amazing anyone ever learns to read and write in English given that the history of the language means there are no phonological-spelling rules. Check out my favorite poem demonstrating this here.)

Now, the DDS. I've never been a DDS fan. It's not user centered, and by and large, library subjects and media (I feel) have outgrown it. I never learned DDS until I started my MA in Library and Information Management Science; without the headers on the end of the aisles that listed subject matter I would have been lost in a library. For me, it's bookstore model all the way. In my dream world the computer system will also help a person find things on the shelve by providing exact directions (maybe a map) to the location of the book.

804 first weekend

Theory of Organization of Information



Classification: putting a letter and number scheme to something to put things in a particular order



Categorizing: putting things into categories "we do it all the time"? (I believe this means a looser fit organization, like a blog tagging system)



Annotated Bibliography: What is this?



There used to be a position in most libraries called "Bibliographer." These individuals would pick a core area of speciality, i.e. French Fiction or the Spanish War, and write bibliographies. These positions have largely disappeared due to lack of funding.



The supermarket experience:

Reference Librarianship: not for the timid.

This was the first class weekend for LI 813.

For fun, I've decided to give Wordpress another go by using it as the class blog for this class. I may still do all my posting here and post it there via RSS. Here's a link to that location: Caro's 813 Class Blog.

Tonight we had two guest speakers who talked about the reference interviews and reference librarians. Something one of the speakers said really struck a chord with me when she said that librarianship at an academic library is more about showing people how to help themselves with the database systems. I feel that I would really enjoy this, as it's something I already do as a hobby by teaching friends about my latest flings with new internet finds. I don't think I would be heavily satisfied with the scenario described in a public library, where the patron just expects the librarian to find the resource for them. I'm starting to think this is part of my greater desire to make better systems that are easier for people to interact with.

They also talked about capstone, which was encouraging. I'm very excited at the prospect of capstone, and I'm hoping to do something a little off the wall and creative for mine--I think my multidisciplinary and unusual paths through the education system warrants it. I can't wait to see how my Lakota class influences and meshes with Library Science this semester.

First Week of Class for LING 6510

Well, I signed up for a class on Language Structures in my linguistics program this semester. As happens in this program, the class isn't actually on "Language" structures, per se, because the professor has tweaked the curriculum to play to his current research.

The class is on the language structure of Lakota.

This was both exciting and disapointing to me. Learning about Lakota gets me all excited as a linguist. But the theory of language structure was really what I was after, because it was more pertinent to my career interests.

840 Final Project

I've just returned to this blog after a very brief summer hiatus. So brief, in fact, that some of the professors started giving us assignments for this semester while we were completing finals for last semester.

(Note to my library science program: this is bad. Don't do this. My stress level was so far through the roof that I actually laughed when I found out yellow jackets had taken up residence in my kitchen ceiling, thereby giving me an excuse to not think about school for five seconds.)

But anyways, I wanted to give a brief feedback on how that project went. I loved putting it together--in fact, this class really made an impression on me in many ways. It was very influencial in my decision to create a website for my final project in 802. I put together this outline for my website where I work, and then gave a presentation on it to my supervisor, the senior member of the team, and my contact for the web team.

And now they changes are in the works. They are actually using some of my suggestions in the redesign of the website, and I've found it very confirming. I'm finding myself drawn more and more to a career path that isn't traditionally librarian, but definately serves the same functions in a more technological way.

I created it using Zoho, which I am now using for a lot of things. Not everything, though--Zoho inserts 3 spaces instead of an actual tab when one pushes the tab key, which has created some formating issues for me while exporting. I created my diagrams using Gliffy, which also has some issues, but worked well enough.

Here's a link to my final project for 840:
LI 840 Final Project

Linguistic Relativity

At our last class meeting for 802, I had some people approach me after class to further discuss the at times controversial subject of linguistic relativity. The theory of linguistic relativity, which is tied to the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis, is the idea that an individual's linguistic, cultural, and life experience background can hold some bearing on his/her way of thinking. In a determinist approach, a theorist might say that the majority of an individual's thought patterns and eventual decisions are based on this linguistic and cultural background. In the more common theory of linguistic relativity takes a weaker stance that while these things may have some influence on some situations, they by far will not determine an individual's general cognition.

For example, a lot of papers on this topic deal with issues of tangible senses across languages. Did you know that is some languages, there are only two colors--dark and light. There are no words for red, green, purple, blue, etc. Would that affect the way a person views the world?

Some papers deal with the way languages describe space and a person's location in it. In English, we have the small-scale ideas of items being relativistically located to one's right or left, but the big scale ideas of buildings being located to the north, south, east or west. However, some languages lack one or the other--everything is described in either relative terms (i.e., right, left, in front of, behind, etc.) or definite terms (i.e. north of, south of, east of, west of). Would that affect the way a person constructs a mental model or metaphor of the world?

In English, the typical metaphor for time is that we move forward through it, boldly going where no man has gone before. So when we look ahead, we are looking into the future. In some Native American languages, the metaphor could go something like this: a person is standing in a river facing downstream. The future is upstream--this makes sense when you consider that the future is unknown until it comes to pass. In these languages, the metaphors make reference to the future being behind a person, where it cannot be seen, whereas the past is in front and seen, and ever moving away. How would that affect those mental models?

Before you say how weird those languages must be, please know that English is actually the weird one out in terms of world languages. Most languages don't have as many words for color as English does. And most languages describe things in definite terms. So please remember to take a step outside the belief that English is "normal" or "easy" before reading any of these papers--English is really pretty exotic on several fronts as languages go.

For further reading, I highly recommend starting with the overview of linguistic relativity presented on wikipedia: Linguistic Relativity.

For further reading, these are the articles that most of my teachers taught in class during my undergraduate career. A lot of them are very popular, and there is a lot on the topic posted on the web, so I suggest anyone that's interested pokes around some:

BERLIN, BRENT & PAUL KAY (1969). Basic Color Terms: Their Universality and Evolution. Berkeley: University of California Press.

GUMPERZ, JOHN, & STEPHEN LEVINSON EDS. (1996). Rethinking Linguistic Relativity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

KAY, PAUL & CHAD K. MCDANIEL (1978). "The Linguistic Significance of Meanings of Basic Color Terms.". Language 54: 610-646.

LAKOFF, GEORGE (1987). Women, fire, and dangerous things. University Of Chicago Press.

LEVINSON, STEPHEN C. (1996). "Language and Space". Annual review of Anthropology 25: 353-82.

LUCY, JOHN A. (1992a). Grammatical Categories and Cognition: A Case Study of the Linguistic Relativity Hypothesis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

LUCY, JOHN A. (1992b). Language Diversity and Thought: A Reformulation of the Linguistic Relativity Hypothesis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

MALOTKI, EKKEHART (1983). Werner Winter. ed. "Hopi Time: A Linguistic Analysis of the Temporal Concepts in the Hopi Language". Trends in Linguistics. Studies and Monographs (Berlin, New York, Amsterdam: Mouton Publishers) 20.

PULLUM, GEOFFREY (1991). The Great Eskimo Vocabulary Hoax and other Irreverent Essays on the Study of Language. Chicaco University Press. http://users.utu.fi/freder/Pullum-Eskimo-VocabHoax.pdf.

WHORF, BENJAMIN (1956). John B. Carroll (ed.). ed. Language, Thought, and Reality: Selected Writings of Benjamin Lee Whorf. MIT Press.

LI 802 Learning Group Project

For my LI 802 Learning Group Project, I decided to present my Expert Group research by creating an interactive website presentation.

http://sites.google.com/site/li802hcit/home

I tried to make the presentation as multi-modal as possible to accomodate all learning styles. I made a handout to accomodate the information on the site and the verbal presentation, and it is available for download from the resources page. I also put in a lot of links to extra resources throughout the presentation for active independent exploration, as well as some technology demonstrations.

Overall, the feedback from my group was very good--they enjoyed the presentation and seemed very pleased that I had taked such care to address all learning styles. In terms of Google Sites, I was most frustrated by the fact that the templates don't allow much manipulations of the headings, but I was very pleased with the final poduct.

I can honestly say I'm proud of my work on this one and happy that I took a risk by doing the project via a website--it expressed both my personal style, the presentation content and form, and contained and displayed a great deal of information for my group's later reference.

Adding a search box! Yes!

So over the past week I've been dealing with an issue I thought I had with the required government templates for my project. My supervisor had mentioned to me that he had been unable to get a search bar on our site so far because of some issue with the templates, he thought.

After getting to know the web team and chatting them up for a while, and assuring them I wasn't out to make their lives difficult by adding fancy design elements to the site because my focus was organization and architecture, I casually asked a quick and theoretic question--hey, if we wanted to, how hard would it be to add a search bar to the site?

My contact wrote me an email back saying she wasn't sure--in fact, they had never tried to do that before. Turns out it wasn't an issue with the templates, but with the fact that the USGS had signed a contract with Google so that they were doing all the searches on the main USGS sites. Were they also covering the smaller side sites, and was there a stipulation to the effect that all the searches needed to be run through the main pages? We had no clue. My contact said she'd have to do some research and get back to me.

As it turns out, yes, we can definitely add a search bar ("...would you like me to do a mock up for you?"). And my contact even thanked me for getting her to learn something new--we can add more than one site to the search bar; this was a concern because my site is currently under 2 domain names. However, they are merging to one as we migrate data from one to a new section on the other.

So my lesson of the day: it pays to be nice to the web team by trading strategies on simplifying 508 compliance, because they will return the favor when you ask them to go out of their way figuring out something new for you. Also, it never hurts to ask, even when you think the answer is going to be "no".

Wireframing

I started wireframing the first week of class because that's when I started doing some user interviews concerning what we wanted out of our site. All of the page direction outlines were done on scraps of whatever paper was available at the time and have been residing taped into my notebook for the last 2-3 weeks. Seeing as things are moving forward, and the lesson content on wireframming was posted, I thought it might be time to revisit the wireframing I had done and do some touch-ups and revisits concerning the interviews.

Looking at my scrappy do up, I thought it might be good to give Gliffy a go so I wouldn't lose my plans in a horrific coffee incident. So I got on, and I have to say, it's easier than any other electronic method of the sort I've tried when attempting web-type layouts. However, it still seems a little cumbersome for initial brainstorming sessions--I would still prefer the scribble and jot method for that. However, I would use it for final versions and presenting.

Why 508 applies to Information Architecture

Someone pointed out to me that my last post on ADA and section 508 was a little confusing. My particular site, being a government site, also uses approved templates--these tie in to 508 because the idea is that the templates are designed to handle resizing of text without jumbling or distorting. To be honest, there is a web team at my work that deals (very bravely) with all of these highly important and sometimes frustrating issues.

As described in my last post, I think that fair and equal access are huge issues in providing information. However, providing fair and equal access is sadly the road less traveled, and those of us who strive to do it do need to put in extra effort.

To reframe how 508 (a GUI issue, seemingly) applies to Information Architecture, I'll aim this post at individuals who were not in 501 last semester where we talked about different needs exhibited by different groups in information seeking behavior.

In a technical light, "fair and equal access" is most frequently called "universal usability." In "Chapter 14: Ethics" of Moreville and Rosenfeld's Information Architecture, under the section about physical access, section 508 is discussed. Also discussed is Ben Schneiderman, who extended the sentiments of 508 to include not just differences in physical ability, but uniqueness in all ability in the concept of universal usability. Different people think differently. Labels aren't intuitive to everyone--this concept is one we explore frequently in the field of Linguistics.

For a prominent example, read here about Benjamin Lee Whorf and the "empty" gasoline barrel. An "empty" gasoline barrel might be perceived as less dangerous because it is labeled "empty"--but "empty" gasoline barrels are actually more dangerous because it's the fumes that ignite. This opens the door to the idea that different cultures, languages, backgrounds...anything, really, could affect a person's cognition and what they perceive as useful or intuitive in the ways of information architecture and labels. To put it simply, what works for me might not work for everyone--I need to consider different abilities (physical and mental, with all abilities being equal and different) to more fully serve my users.

In terms of real world examples of information architecture being affected by issues of universal usability, I have quite a few. First, I couldn't find the page requirements for my final project in 840 (this probably sounds really stupid to some of you, as we're in a program about finding information). I was looking near the top of the project description, where I had trained myself to look because that's where other syllabuses have located it. After asking, I was told the page breakdown was located within the project directions; a completely valid way to do things, but not intuitive for me. Now, if I had read more thoroughly, I would have found it--but if everyone read websites thoroughly, there would be no sense in creating information architecture, would there?

In libraries, we are now seeing a shift from using the Dewey Decimal System to one that organizes the book as they might appear in a book store. Why? Well, the short answer is that DD is designed for use by librarians (who love highly organized structures, like databases) but not for patrons (who like browsing bookstores). Dewey Decimal is intuitive for librarians who are socialized to use it, but not for the end user patrons. The information architecture wasn't developed with the consideration that not everyone thinks like a librarian--the patrons are differently abled in their information seeking habits.

In terms of my project, 508 and universal usability are central to development, and because I work on a team with programmers and designers, and because I like those people, I'm not going to sit back and say "not my problem" to 508 and usability issues. Even Morville and Rosenfeld say that "information architects have a role to play in creating useful, usable systems, that work for diverse audiences" (pg 343). They also advocate that:

"As an information architect, you can define any or all of these ethical dimensions as 'not my problem'. Maybe the responsibility really belongs with the client, the business manager, the authors, the usability engineers, or the users themselves. Or, maybe we'll all just wait for a superhero to save the day." (pg. 344)

When working in a team, I believe that information architecture is the problem of the information architect because everyone is there to serve the user, and where 508 and the template allows things to go on the screen can change how many labels are used or what they appear as. It can change how much information we put on any given page for easy readability. It can change the amount of explanation we feel necessary for the terminology and jargon used on the site. I may not even be allowed to use a search bar (for some reason that will be explained to me via email), and that would affect my information architecture a great deal.

508 strikes again!

I tried to write up a quick workflow diagram today detailing the workflow of my workplace. What a disaster. I'd like to state for the record that I love the 508 compliance rules and W3C, and I would love to see more private sites make their content more available--but boy oh boy, why are pdfs and ppts created so hard to tag?

The way workflow goes at my workplace is as such:

Researchers write papers in hopes of getting them published. These papers wind up sitting for a while, and in the mean time, other papers are written. These new papers site the unpublished waiting papers and then get published and posted to our site. To get them posted, the get sent to me for collection and organization into where on the site the are going. Then I send them to the web team. The web team really likes Word docs because they are easy to tag; sadly I don't get to send them a lot of Word, just pdfs and ppts. These typically do not pass 508 compliance and so must undergo rigorous testing and tagging before they can be put up, creating a lag in keeping the site current. Once they are compliant, a mock-up gets sent to me and we correct any errors, then the papers are up. Once these papers are up, the old unpublished ones are now published, making the references to "unpublished" works in the other papers outdated. I sigh heavily, and we might decide to go back and update the references--creating a new round of needing to make things compliant.

As you can imagine, the circularity of this workflow diagram was fun to look at. There were a lot of those finger looking delay symbols mentioned on the video in my guide, because I've got nothing but waiting when I need to request a paper from a researcher, send things to the web team, or wait for a decision on updating old references. Methinks I'm going to have a challenge creating a ROT policy given the current culture of citing unpublished works.

Facebook, anyone?

Today I had a rather informative foray into the friendlier of Web 2.0 when a co-worker requested a quick tutorial on Facebook. Now, I have never actually owned a Facebook account; I've done MySpace, but by and large I only use it to spy on people in the least malevolent way possible. You need an account to view other people's pages, and my sister is constantly asking me if I saw this/that/the other on someone's page. So I have an account with minimal information so people can't find me and suck me into the vortex of online social networking. Social networks are great, but becoming cyber-glued to them via phone, email, and chat just isn't for me. Maybe I'll give them another try now that I'm out of high school, and perhaps the experience will be more beneficial.

Anyway, we were trying to set up a Facebook account with some basic applications and a layout and user pic, and I was really taken by a few things I encountered. First, some of those applications really aren't intuitive to install, even the second time around. I much prefer a good old place to edit code as opposed to ambiguous box moving and accepting applications, but that's probably just me.

Second, some ads are really gaudy and annoying. I recognize that ads are the price we pay for free code and downloads (those site owners have to put bread on the table somehow), but when did sites start plastering them over 75% of the screen, sacrificing good design for a few extra bucks? I know I won't be going back to those sites. Is it really profitable for them to lose return visitors over whatever the ad placer is paying? I would love to see the statistics on how annoying those ads need to be before the site is actually *losing* visitors.

So me and my friend set up the Facebook account, and then got to talking about other fun things the Web now offers. I do hate to admit this, but I worship at the "evil" throne of Google. Whatever you think of the materials that search engine returns, my goodness do they deliver on great applications. And even then, the search engine is sweet (it's frequently the crap posted online that's the problem). I think Google is great for beginners and even experts--it's simple and straightforward for people who need it, and you can tool around with Google sites or dabble with some open source at Google code. Google does things well. I have a strong belief that the sheer simplicity and ease of customization play a big role in their success; anyone who doesn't believe me need to check out iGoogle for a couple of weeks, then decide if they want to leave.

Where I was this week

I've been rather remittent in my postings this week--some of you are probably wondering where I was and why I wasn't here. It was a busy week for me. My husband and I adopted 2 kittens from the Humane Society of Boulder Valley last Sunday, and they've been keeping me on my toes all week. Due to my father's birthday being in close proximity to Father's Day, and the fact that it's very difficult to get my whole family together on any given holiday, we held a birthday/Father's Day celebration yesterday for all of the dads in the family. I'm going to have to leave here shortly to celebrate Father's Day (again) with my husband's family, so I'll hurry through all of my posts that have built up in my brain this week.

For anyone that doesn't know, the BVHS has a wonderful facility and website. Given the amount of animals they adopt out on a regular basis, it's amazing they can keep up. Check it out here:

www.boulderhumane.org/

If you hover over the animals tab, it will show the animals available for adoption. These are updated regularly with pictures and descriptions of available animals--I've even noticed that they update the pictures regularly, too. While I was in the shelter I was amazed at the number of people who had come to see a specific animal they had found online, which really demonstrated to me the power of a good website with intuitive design that handles ROT very well--the two kittens we adopted were taken down from the online listing by the time we got home.

Capstone and Technology

On Thursday I got to meet the library staff at my work, including Jenny, who was the one who passed on the job opening. She gave me a little heads-up on Capstone, which I've had a lot of questions about. I should note that though I had searched, I couldn't find this information on the ESU site--talking to a few other students in my cohort, I think the idea of Capstone has been a little murky for everyone. Jenny explained that Capstone is basically a general overview of all of the classes and experiences of the program and how they relate to the overall program objectives and outcomes. She recommended writing down the course outcomes from each class I take and then relating them to the desired overall program outcomes.

For this reason, I'm becoming ever more attached to this blog--I'm hoping I'll be able to use it to document my program and class experiences from here out and then use it as a resource for my Capstone.

SLA Conference

For anyone who hasn't heard (or read, I guess), lbenkert got to go to attend the Special Libraries Association conference in DC. I'm flaming jealous because I got my first taste of conferences back at midwinter in Denver, and they're so cool. Anyone who hasn't been to one needs to find one and go--you will meet so many people, it's worth it just for the networking. Then there are the talks, the presentations, the freebies from booths, the emails about new things being offered to libraries...

My mother-in-law (a school librarian) is attending one today or tomorrow that is aimed at new technologies, and she's going to bring back the schedule for me so I can see what they're talking about. I forget the name of this conference, but in the past they've talked about Twitter, blogs, RSS, etc.

But anyways, Lee Ann tipped me off to the conference handouts for those with library tech backgrounds:

http://www.sla.org/content/Events/conference/ac2009/Conference/handouts/index.cfm

What I found most interesting was the "Needs Assessment Questionnaire" listed for Sunday; a lot of the same questions I started with when trying to decide the best changes for the project site assessment in terms of the Content, Context, and Users. Some of you might remember that I actually started these interviews some time back (see Chapter 10 and my job); I think my real life has jumbled my approach to this class in that I read through the book pretty quick the first week so I could tackle some issues at work.

I pretty well had a handle on the diverse needs of my users (everyone from the general public to the researchers that post to the site). Using the new material made available this week, I more closely examined the content available and the context. My new impressions are that I may need to talk to my supervisor about possible jargon problems and the purpose of our content. The issues I'm now looking at are tat while the site is supposed to serve as a reference for both researchers and the general public, there is very little presented in the way of explaining the conferences referenced or much of the highly academic and specialized vocabulary.

Scopus

On Thursday, I attended a work training on Scopus, which is a literature and website database. What got me most about Scopus is that the mainpage (if you have an account) resembles an iGoogle page a little--it has several independently updated fields for your unique information searching needs. Given the success of customizable homepages like iGoogle, I was wondering if this method of information display might be more readily accessible to users because the concept is becoming more familiar.

ADA and section 508

On Monday of this week I made a point of making contact with the Web team at my work; this contact happens 100% through email because the team is actually in a different state. My first email was basically a heads-up to watch for the email I was going to send about new documents we needed to add, and I talked a little about the class project for 840 and how I might send those suggestions on towards the end of the semester. I got a less-than-enthusiastic and very apologetic email back about how they would be happy to do what they can with my project suggestions, but that the site was really dependant on several government approved templates and ADA restrictions.

I mostly already knew this from chatting with my supervisor, but let me discuss it here because it's highly relevant to Library Science. The Americans with Disabilities Act and 508 compliance basically sets out rules for government websites to make them as highly accessible as possible to everyone regardless of their unique abilities. For example, all video clips need to be captioned so they are accessible without audio, and all pictures need to have text descriptors so they are described if a user is employing a screen-reader. While color can be used on a site, it cannot be used as a sole indicator of navigation (i.e. "press the red button....") for users who have color blindness. For a complete description, check out the 508 compliance codes here:

http://www.access-board.gov/sec508/guide/1194.22.htm

It has implications for my project because it does add a extra level of consideration, but it's also part of the ethics of the profession we discussed in 801 last semester in terms of providing fair and equal access to patrons.

Anyways, I wrote back telling my contact on the web team that I understood about the unique needs of government sites and that I had read over 508 compliance, and explained about how the project was really more an exercise in reducing the number of clicks between a user and the information they are seeking through intuitive design. I also said that I was 100% here to learn on this one, so it would be great if there were any resources they could send on to me. I got back a very relieved email stating what a frustration it was every time someone wanted to add something neat they saw on another site, and they had to explain the rules--they would be very happy to work with me, and highly recommended Krug's "Don't Make Me Think!" (a book we discussed in class) for user-centered design in websites.

Drupal and Plone

I've just spent some time catching up on the rest of this week's lesson content and perusing through Drupal and Plone. My initial impressions of these sites compared to Joomla! is that Plone seems to have (for me, at least) the most intuitive layout. The site seemed to know where my thoughts were going in terms of the most prominently displayed links, and offered up easily accessible case studies and lists of hosting providers--I haven't decided yet if I'm going with a hosting provider or setting up one of our old boxes in the closet to do it myself. Probably the later because I tend to be a control freak.

I think Joomla! has the "friendliest" language in that it approaches the subject of CMS from a beginner's standpoint in the pages and documentation I found. Drupal's three-column layout was a little overwhelming at first, and it seemed that the menus kind of jumped around a little as I paged through and I got a little lost--however, Drupal also offered some readily available forums for the contributors which openly discussed problems and fixes.

I'm going to need to do a little more research before I pick one, I think, because I'm really looking for a CMS that would allow me more access to play with the "guts" (the back-end programming language). Ultimately, I think I'm going to spend some time looking through the case studies more to see how the final sites turned out. Aesthetics are important, and good layout potential is currently topping the list of "needs" for my friends' blog.

Joomla!

Last night we had the presentation on Joomla!

I was trying to download it when we suddenly lost audio--I thought the download might have been eating into my RAM so I aborted the operation. As it turns out, that wasn't the issue, but oh well--long story short I don't have Joomla! downloaded yet because it was too late last night to get the ball rolling. I have, however, read over some of the user manual and instruction guides, and I'm very excited at the possibilities.

I've been wondering about expanding the functionality of some of my blogs for a while now. In particular, I have a personal blog that I keep with 4 of my friends from high school. We use it as a sort of small in-group newsletter where we keep current on each other's lives. Because we live pretty spread out--everywhere from Colorado to Georgia--this is our typical way of keeping in touch. However, with five of us posting, and five different ideas on how the site should be, things get cramped. I'm hoping I can expand us comfortably using Joomla! somehow. From what the presenter said, Joomla! is a pretty friendly environment for people who do or do not want to deal with XML, so I'm looking forward to some good templates and maybe some of my own upgrading.

However, I do feel the need to remark on the guides I looked over. For a product designed to be so user-friendly, the install looks to be pretty complex. Also, it looks like it might be a little confusing for individuals who are not familiar with hosting and hosting services. After I scope this one out, I'll report back.

Design gripes about operating systems...

In light of recent reading from Ambient Findability, I need to gripe a little about Windows. Today I was chatting with Lisa, who I work with, about school (she's in my program, but opted for the online tech course this summer over 840--so we're trading knowledge back and forth in the practice of good information sharing for universal benefit). Anyways, she asked me about where to find the add/remove programs list in Vista, and off hand all I could remember was that they stuck it somewhere different from where it was in XP. I had to come home and look at my machine to figure out it's in Control Panel->Uninstall Programs.

Why Uninstall Programs? Why not Manage Programs, or Program List, or something else? You don't just uninstall things when you're there, so why call it that?

I'm guessing this is part of what I like to call Windows Intuition. There's regular intuition, and then there's W.I. W.I. is what people have developed in response to the fact that Windows really isn't that intuitive. You have to push start to turn the thing off. Things need to "download" to "update". You need to go to a highly specifically named place "Uninstall Programs" to do anything with your programs. People have come to accept these things and hardly give them a second thought because the have become so ingrained...hence Windows Intuition. Of course you push start to stop using your computer--makes total sense because that's the way it's always been.

Now, when Microsoft discovers that 90% of the time people are removing programs when they visit the program list, they think "hey, let's just call the link Uninstall Program." This actually works counter to Windows Intuition, because we've all developed the tendency to look elsewhere for this link (say, under "Add or Remove Programs", as it was in XP, or "Add/Remove Programs" in Windows 98). Another fantastic example are the personal settings. It used to be difficult to change the personal settings on your computer because it involved a few well-placed clicks to get to the right screen; when I updated to Vista, I just about lost my mind when my husband explained that in Vista, you just right click the desktop and click "Personalize."

"Personalize" makes sense. So easy; so intuitive. But not Windows intuitive.

Windows isn't intuitive. Now that they are trying to correct their design flaws, I find myself getting lost, ironically. I understand that they want to create a better, more intuitive and useful architecture, but the years I spent building Windows Intuition resist. Why go changing things around after your audience has already learned the nuances? Is anyone else confused by the simplified operating systems, or have I just been hanging around too many engineers lately?

I am the "Cybrarian" of which Morville speaks...

I was reading through Chapter 2 of Information Architecture today when I found the section on who's qualified to do information architecture, and I was absolutely taken with the word "cybrarian." It's page 19, for anyone who wants to check it out. I've also been doing some readings from Ambient Findability, so if I start talking about stuff that's not in our text, that's where it's from.

I think becoming a cybrarian is my ultimate career goal through all of this; this class has been so helpful in just giving things names. I used to tell people I wanted to use my librarian skills to design better databases and search systems, and now I have terms--real career terms, and not words I bumble around trying to explain--for information architecture and cybrarian. (And even better, the jobs actually sound as cool as I think they are!)

Somehow in my brain this whole phenomenon of naming ties back to good labeling practices in design. It's like when a website is poorly designed and you kind of have to hit around a lot of related concepts before you get where you want to go vs. having a direct keyword link. Words for concepts are absolutely amazing in the power they can give you; I think that's why I first became interested in linguistics.

I.A. for me

In a previous post I talked about the wave of new information (mostly papers and presentations) that were handed over to my inbox when I started talking about updating the webpage where I work. Yesterday brought a new complication when an email arrived asking me if I had 8 particular papers, and I realized the file names of the documents I had weren't descriptive enough for me to tell; they weren't even consistent, as they arrived from several different individuals who each have their own idea of what is descriptive enough for a file name.

Thanks to a project I'm already doing, I knew what was already on the site, which was a huge plus. However, I realized I'd been pushing off sorting my email attachments because I wasn't ready to do anything with them yet. Looking through, I realized I'd received some files more than once (or maybe the files were different, but the file names weren't). What a mess I'd made for myself by not being ready for the information--having a personal information management system is where designing one for someone else starts.

I made a folder on my desktop and created a new text document in it where I listed the things people "wanted" me to have for posting to the site. I downloaded all of my attachments into that file, and then started the ardous task of detailing which posters, presentations, and papers I had. I got rid of duplicates and renamed files that had the same name and different content. Now I have a system to deal with incoming papers and a list of what's in there and what needs to get in there, so it's all ready when I am to go to the site (hopefully not more than 2 weeks).

First Weekend LI802 (part deux, after the break)

Robert Taylor created the levels of information need; his article is on reserve for my class. Maybe I'll be able to find a copy to link to here. Update--I found a link to this article and posted it below.

Robert Taylor's Process of Asking Questions

Taylor's Levels of Information Need:

-Visceral Need (actual, but unexpressed)

-Concious Need (within-brain description)

-Formalized Need (formal statement of the need)

-Compromised Need (as presented to the information system)

Lynch (1978) wrote in her paper that most librarians used close-ended questions in most reference interactions. This is important because it defines the user in terms of the library instead of vice versa; it forces the expectations of the library onto the user instead of asking what the user desires. Also, open-ended questions tend to create a more welcoming environment ("How may I help you?") than closed-ended questions ("Can I help you?").

Grover's Diagnostic Cycle (1993) also explored the librarian/user interaction.

-Diagnosis Stage: What? Where? When? Who?

-Prescription Stage: resource is proscribed

-Treatment Stage: user considers resource in relation to need, perhaps the need is fulfilled--the librarian should always ask.

-Evaluation Stage: If information need is not fulfilled, then the cycle starts all over again.

First Weekend LI802

Theoretical Foundations of Service: Diagnosis and Customization.

For the record, I rarely remember the names of the classes I take. I remember the content, and the people, but not the complex names. For me this class is 802. This class is about how people seek information from a cognitive and cultural perspective; I'm hoping the lessons will go hand in hand with some of the cognitive science classes I've taken for my CompLing MA.

non-human intermediaries: exactly what we discussed in 840. It's information architecture; providing effective information services and easily accessible resources to humans through computers.

information seeking behavior/information use behavior: how people seek and use information.

diagnosis: process of assessment/examination of a condition to determine needsand responsive solution

customization: design and construction of a service to suit an individual's or group's needs based on their specifications.

system-centered: prior to the 1960s, the librarian was the Keeper of Information. In a system-centered approach, the research focused on the library (i.e., how many people came there, how often, and for how long).

user-centered: the research focuses on how people seek and use information (notice the removal of focus on the library).

We apply a user-centered and interdisciplinary approach in LIS.

A note on social linguistics: linguistics is my *other* MA, so I was pretty pleased when the professor started talking about research she'd read on social linguistics. Social linguistics in big now, especially in the way of conversation analysis. The bond between culture, language, and cognition is huge in research in many fields (psychology, speech language and hearing sciences, artificial intelligence, linguistics, computer science...). Also big right now (and usually the topic I pick when I have to do a conversation analysis project) is language and technology--how texting, emailing, and IMing has affected language. One of the most interesting facets of texting analysis is the invention and use of emoticons--the little smilies and faces that convey emotion when we don't have a facial expression or vocal tone to accompany our words. ;)

And a funny story on GPS devices (the professor mentioned GPS devices as a major change in information exchange): I don't own one. However, a lot of people do, and a lot of things are now getting defined in terms of coordinate location. This affects me because the nerds on World of Warcraft have invented a GPS coordinate system for the game. So when you're looking for something, you go online and find, "Oh yeah, thats in Winterspring area at XX, YY." And it's really annoying because I do not have this game app installed, so whatever coordinates are given do not help me. I need directions such as "go southwest from the major town and look for a cave..."

My story on the importance of information: My first semester of graduate school, I also got married and bought a HUD house. The house was missing windows, had holes in the walls and doors, needed repairs to the heating system, and needed all of the floors and major appliances replaced. Before we did any of this, we got internet. Literally. I was without floors, heat, laundry services, fridge, oven, dishwasher, home security, and privacy, and all I wanted was my access to world information. We had it before we even moved all of our furniture in, because there was no way I could turn in my assignments without it (...and this program wasn't even internet based).

Egads! No weekend?

Second week in a row where I've had to run home from work to hustle through some chore duties before heading off to class. LI802 starts tonight, runs through tomorrow, and then I have just enough time Sunday to do laundry and dishes before the week starts again. Thank goodness for Sunday; I'm not speaking to my husband today because I left this morning before he got up and I have to leave for class before he gets home. I need to go to bed right when I get home tonight so I can be up in time tomorrow.

I'm still not sure how this is going to work when my linguistics classes pick back up in the fall. If nothing else, it should be interesting.

Influx of Information

In class, we talked about how one of the biggest challenges of information architecture was all the information. Today, I experienced this phenomenon.

After reading Chapter 10, I returned to work to ask some educated questions about our site (which I will most likely be using for the class project). My supervisor answered my questions about the things we needed to update, and then said he'd forward on a few things that we needed to add to update the papers. Two hours later I went to my inbox to find 15 emails containing several attachments in the form of papers and presentations to add to the site. Also, I had been cc'd on a handful of emails to other individuals asking them to forward more papers to me.

And in my head, I'm asking myself, "What have I gotten into here?"

So I wrote my supervisor an email and we had another brief meeting. Now we have a two step plan that includes putting the new documents on the web, and then dealing with some organizational upgrades. Piece of cake--communication is everything.

Chapter 10 and my job

I just got around to reading Chapter 10, and my initial impressions are that I wish I had read it earlier this week. Part of my job involves some management of the content and design of our website, and lately it's been lacking in updates and organization due to some shifts in upper management. Monday and Tuesday, I spent some time with my coworkers and supervisor discussing the ways we want the site to look and function, and I wish I would have had some of the lists of questions from the book with me. I'm not sure yet if this is the site I'm doing for the class project or not, but the book has proven helpful nonetheless.

I think my plan of action from here is to take the lists and suggestions from the book and target them to my needs before approaching some of the individuals who have been around a little longer. The site kind of functions as a respository for all of the publications, proposals, and presentations from over the years. I'm curious to see if many of the people in my workplace spend a lot of time there, or if they do more on our developing wiki (that's a separate site and project for employees only, whereas the website is open to the public).

New Pages!

Because Blogger has yet to institute a way to easily add pages, I have simulated links to aphabetized pages for the texts, sites, and terms discussed in class.

For anyone nerdy enough to care, I managed this as decribed by Nischal Shetty. Basically, the "pages" are past dated posts with comments disabled. Then, an if statement is created around the code that displays the date for the post such that if comments are disabled, date is also disabled. Then I added links to the "about" section on the blog. :)

This was my first try at this method of "pages" in Blogger, and I'm very pleased with the results. It was a good learning experience, and I'll probably be implementing the method again on other blogs.

Links to the new pages are located beneath the heading at the top of the page, just above the tag cloud.

More Sites, terms, and Texts

From today's class:


New Text:

Krug, S. (2005). Don't make me think: a common sense approach to web usability. 2nd edition. New Riders Press.

isbn: 0321344758


New Tech Sites:

camptasia: screen recording software.

google docs: online document sharing.

microsoft surface: the desk computer with touch screen usability.

gliffy: a free diagramming (wire framming) online tool.

zoho: free online web applications (i.e. word processor, presentation tools, document management, etc.)

duvaga: media management system.


New terms:

mashup: the combination of new technologies into new services.

web service: info that's created elsewhere and brought into a web application (like a site that displays local weather via a widget they don't manage in house).

waterfall (project management): the "one step to the next" approach; leaves the majority of testing until the end.

agile (project management): the "all at once" approach; testing and communication are contsant and back and forth

cowboy (project management): the "my way, or the highway" approach; one person dominates, thinks they know everything, and demands things happen their way

streaming (video & audio): streaming media is being constantly received by the user, as opposed to a download that must be completely downloaded to the user before viewing.

metadata: quite literally data about data. For example, consider a collection of books as data; the metadata would be the things in the catalog (like titles, authors, isbns, number of words, etc.). For a group of people, metadata could be names, ages, heights, etc. For a collection of online sites, metadata could be number of visits per day, number of links, average frequency of update, etc.

It occurs to me that these lists of texts, sites, and terms should probably be compiled into single pages; I'm going to try to establish some static pages to display this information. (Or, if you happen to be currently enrolled in my class, find the online glossary of terms on Blackboard.)

Why I picked Blogger

Someone asked me a question today about blogs, and why I use Blogger...

One of the primary differences between Blogger and Wordpress is the use of pages and widgets. In Wordpress, you can create static pages easily; in Blogger, you cannot--you need to do some backend legwork to get static pages going. However, Blogger makes it easier to install widgets (like the tag cloud at the top of this page, the count down on the right, or The Impossible Quiz at the bottom) because you have more access to your HTML; this requires more legwork in Wordpress.

The reason I choose Blogger is that I am very attached to my widgets and layouts. I like to mess with my site code and install a new toy every so often. It's my dogma that a personal webpage should be like one's home: decorated to suit one's personality.

For me, new blogs are like your first college apartment. At first, the walls are all white and you feel a little lonely and lost. As time goes on, you meet a few people who have done things to spice up their bland college caves with lava lamps and posters, and you start to do the same. Soon you're taping posters over posters, you've got a batik sarong tent around your bed, and you've figured out how to cook a can of beans on the heater in the corner. It's bright and filled with color, and it's become a space you're comfortable being. Because you've made it your own, other people like being there, too, and you're not so lost anymore. :)

These are some of my favorite sites for decorating around a blog in addition to some of my own tricks:

pyzam -- this is a great place for finding Blogger layouts to inspire you.

widgetbox -- a great place for finding games and other little add-ons for your site.

free flash toys -- I like this one mostly for the counters you can make there, but the full page pets are fun too.

phydeaux3 -- This is the best place I've ever found for a good blogger tag cloud; weeding through the HTML can be intimidating at first, but don't be scared. You can always revert back to a basic template if you muddle things this first time around. Your blog layout is for playing with--don't be afraid to do so!

I apologize for the popups generated by any of these sites, but dealing with advertisements is the way you get things for free online. Also, most of these sites are aimed at Blogger. To expand my own horizons I'm going to experiment with Wordpress some time this week and see what it's about since the latest updates.

P.S. If anyone in my class stumbles on this post, and is still feeling lost, I'd be happy to help you put up some posters so you're happier being in your new online home. :)

Reflection on the Guest Speaker

Yesterday we had a guest speaker, Amanda, who talked to us about Information Architecture and the practical applications "in the trenches."

adobe connect -- the online conferencing software we used to meet with Amanda.

What struck me most about the presentation was that I never knew careers of this kind actually existed. At a job I used to work at, I was the primary designer of the text mining and semantic mapping strategies, including search functionality and interface design. I have some decent programming skills, but they weren't really sophisticated enough to complete the project on my own, so I worked with programmers to get things done. I had never considered this kind of work as information architecture--when I was working there, I don't think I even knew that term to apply it to what I was doing.

Since getting into my program for library science, I've had several experiences with librarians frustrated with the catalog search systems they have to deal with. The most frequent dissatisfactions seem to be that the design is cumbersome because there are too many search fields to do with, or the search fields/algorithms do not return the desired results. With my background in computers, I've been greatly influenced to try to solve this problem. Before the presentation I had been considering academic or special libraries, but I think I'm going to add information architecture to the list. Some of the companies out there designing software for use in libraries or by librarians seem to need more input on how the programs are used and the importance of a simple design that can achieve "Find It" results fast.

Technologies

cooliris.com -- this one allows you to view large lists of images at a glance.

twitter.com -- a social networking site that allows users to "follow" other users online and, possibly, through their phones. Users twitter what they are currently doing to their followers in 140 characters (letters and spaces) or less.

wordpress and blogger--online sites to host your blog. If you have a gmail account, your login information will be the same for blogger.

flickr--uses a process of folksonomy for users to assign their own tags. Uses a collective intelligence method to categorize all of the images on the site.

gettyimages -- uses a lot more time and energy to categorize their images (compare a search between flickr and gettyimages--flickr has more returned results, but they may not be as accurate; gettyimages returns less that are categorized on a stricter set of rules).

pandora -- pandora is radio online that uses an algorithmic approach to determining user preferences. You enter a song or artist that you like, and pandora will generate a list of artists or songs that you might like.

Schemas and Elements

Schema: The information you want to collect.

Element: The information you have collected.

For example, imagine you have a box of fruit you want to organize into several different groups. How are you going to do it? By color? By size? By shape? By taste? The schema you decide to use will determine what fruit goes where in your piles.

Obviously, the way you want to organize your fruit will determine the information you want to collect and consider about your fruit. For example, if you're concerned with organizing fruit by the area of the world it's grown in, you don't care what color it is or if it has a citrus taste. All you care about is where it came from. The opposite is also true--if you just want to classify by size and color, you don't care if the fruit came from South America, Australia, Europe or Mars.

So, let's say you want to organize your fruit first by color, type, and then by size--your schema is color, type, and size. You conduct a survey to collect this information about each piece of fruit. There are large and small red apples. There are large and small green apples. There are large and small yellow apples. There is a group of medium size green pears, some large yellow bananas, and some small green bananas.

You might end up with a list of information that looks something like this:

apple, large, red
pear, medium, green
apple, small, red
apple, small, green
banana, large, yellow
apple, large, green
apple, large, yellow
banana, small, green
apple, small, yellow

So, in the schema of type, there are the elements of apple, pear, and banana. In the schema of size, there are the elements large, medium, and small. In the schema of color, there are the elements red, green, and yellow.

So, if you organized by color, you would get green, red, and yellow fruits in your piles. If you organized by type, you would get apples, bananas, and pears. If you organized by size, you would get large, medium, and small.

Now let's say you want to sell your piles of fruit online. You create a site and want to display your fruit using the schema. So you create lists of the schema and elements:

Type
-apple
-banana
-pear

Size
-Large
-Medium
-Small

Color
-red
-green
-yellow

So, if a potential buyer clicks on "red," they will get a list of large and small apples (as there are no red bananas or pears). If they click on the "large" element, a list of red, green, and yellow apples and bananas will come up (because there are no large pears).

Another Great Book

Morville, P. (2005). Ambient findability: what we find changes who we become. O'Reilly Media, Inc.

isbn 0-596-00765-5
(it has a lemur on the front)

Welcome, All!

Welcome, all! This is my blog for school this semester.

Please enjoy my graduation countdown featured on the right, and the Impossible Quiz, which has been set at the bottom of this page. Kudos to Pyzam and Widgetbox for these excellent features and the layout.

On the first day of class we covered the syllabus, and the professor passed around a fantastic programming text:

Segaran, T. (2007). Programming collective intelligence: building smart web 2.0 applications. O'Reilly Media, Inc.

isbn-13:978-0-596-52932-1
(it has penguins on the front)

The book covers several algorithms and programming strategies used on modern sites to compute probabilities of the "Find It" factor.

Terminology

agile (project management): the "all at once" approach; testing and communication are contsant and back and forth

cowboy (project management): the "my way, or the highway" approach; one person dominates, thinks they know everything, and demands things happen their way

customization: design and construction of a service to suit an individual's or group's needs based on their specifications.

diagnosis: process of assessment/examination of a condition to determine needsand responsive solution

element: The information you have collected.

Grover's Diagnostic Cycle: 4-stage cycle that explores the process of locating desired resources for a user. (See original post and notes.)

information seeking behavior/information use behavior: how people seek and use information.

Lynch: wrote in her paper that in reference situations, librarians used mostly close-ended questions (See original post and notes.)

mashup: the combination of new technologies into new services.

metadata: quite literally data about data. For example, consider a collection of books as data; the metadata would be the things in the catalog (like titles, authors, isbns, number of words, etc.). For a group of people, metadata could be names, ages, heights, etc. For a collection of online sites, metadata could be number of visits per day, number of links, average frequency of update, etc.

non-human intermediaries: exactly what we discussed in 840. It's information architecture; providing effective information services and easily accessible resources to humans through computers.

Robert Taylor: Wrote "Process of Asking Questions", which detailed for levels of information need. (See original post and notes).

schema: The information you want to collect.

streaming (video & audio): streaming media is being constantly received by the user, as opposed to a download that must be completely downloaded to the user before viewing.

system-centered: prior to the 1960s, the librarian was the Keeper of Information. In a system-centered approach, the research focused on the library (i.e., how many people came there, how often, and for how long).

user-centered: the research focuses on how people seek and use information (notice the removal of focus on the library).

waterfall (project management): the "one step to the next" approach; leaves the majority of testing until the end.

web service: info that's created elsewhere and brought into a web application (like a site that displays local weather via a widget they don't manage in house).

Recommended Texts

Krug, S. (2005). Don't make me think: a common sense approach to web usability. 2nd edition. New Riders Press.
isbn: 0321344758

Morville, P. (2005). Ambient findability: what we find changes who we become. O'Reilly Media, Inc.
isbn: 0596007655 (it has a lemur on the front)

Segaran, T. (2007). Programming collective intelligence: building smart web 2.0 applications. O'Reilly Media, Inc.
isbn: 13:9780596529321 (it has penguins on the front)

List of Sites

adobe connect -- the online conferencing software we used to meet with Amanda.

camptasia -- screen recording software.

cooliris.com -- this one allows you to view large lists of images at a glance.

duvaga -- media management system.

flickr--uses a process of folksonomy for users to assign their own tags. Uses a collective intelligence method to categorize all of the images on the site.

gettyimages -- uses a lot more time and energy to categorize their images (compare a search between flickr and gettyimages--flickr has more returned results, but they may not be as accurate; gettyimages returns less that are categorized on a stricter set of rules).

gliffy -- a free diagramming (wire framming) online tool.

google docs -- online document sharing.

microsoft surface -- the desk computer with touch screen usability.

pandora -- pandora is radio online that uses an algorithmic approach to determining user preferences. You enter a song or artist that you like, and pandora will generate a list of artists or songs that you might like.

twitter.com -- a social networking site that allows users to "follow" other users online and, possibly, through their phones. Users twitter what they are currently doing to their followers in 140 characters (letters and spaces) or less.

wordpress and blogger -- online sites to host your blog. If you have a gmail account, your login information will be the same for blogger.

zoho -- free online web applications (i.e. word processor, presentation tools, document management, etc.)