As mentioned in the previous post, one of my biggest complaints about del.icio.us was its very ugly interface. Well, I logged in yesterday to tag an item (it had probably been a couple of weeks) and lo and behold the interface has been updated.
It's a lot less haphazard in appearance, however, the font is a bit tiny, but that's generally because of my work monitor and the screen setting I have to have it on to not have things be blurry. I'm still trying to decide what I think of the new interface, but I will say that it's better than the old. The awful pink and pale pink highlighting is gone. It did take me a while to figure out that the "inbox" is now where I find things tagged for me (I will eventually read the information on the new interface), though the font color still leaves a bit to be desired. In this case, I say there's nothing wrong with black... the shade of blue they use can sometimes be difficult to read.
Overall, though, I'm glad to see it cleaned up.
August 06, 2008
July 09, 2008
Social bookmarking....
My library is doing a series of short, lunch-time technology exploration sessions to introduce staff to some of the technologies that are out there, be they Web 2.0 or not. We've covered Firefox extensions, Google Docs, Wiki's, and Social Bookmarking. Actually, I and a co-worker did the Social Bookmarking session today.
For as familiar as most computer users are with bookmarks/favorites, many have never ventured out to the social bookmarking arena. Quite honestly, many wonder why they should. Because I have a work pc and a home pc and have had one blow-up, I started using Yahoo! Bookmarks a couple of years ago. In fact, it expanded to one account for personal links and one for professional. I didn't realize I was participating in social bookmarking for quite some time as Yahoo! feeds your saved bookmarks into a social bookmarking site called Yahoo! My Web. They look a little different, but with the My Web component others can see your saves and tags, like in del.icio.us.
A year or so ago, after reading and hearing oodles about del.icio.us, I decided to check it out. I got to the site and promptly left. What an ugly interface. And, IMHO, somewhat difficult to read. I stuck with Yahoo! My Web. However, in preparation for this session, I again ventured on to del.icio.us and several other social bookmarking sites. While, del.icio.us is still ugly (making me wonder if it's so popular because it was one of the first), it does have a few features I like - your network, subscriptions, and links for you. However, it's not exactly geared for group collaboration, though I'm seeing where libraries are finding work arounds for this. I've found a couple of other sites (I'm sure there are others) that are better for group collaboration and will discuss those here.
Yahoo! My Web is one. In addition to making bookmarks public or private, it provides the ability to share only with contacts (of which you can create different levels), making it easy to collaborate with different groups.
Another is Ma.gnolia. In addition to saving, tagging, and sharing sites, this site offers a few unique features. One is a built-in mail system. Another is the ability to create Groups. Groups can be public (as in UTA Library STEW) where all members can add links; moderated, where the group is public but only designated members can add links; or private. There is also a discussion feature, but I've not tried that one out yet.
Last, but not least, is Jumptags. Jumptags does not offer networks or contacts, but it does offer something called Collections. Collections are created by a member, who can keep the collection Private or make it Public. With either type, there is the ability to invite others to be Contributors to the collection. You can even let invited Contributors invite others to the Collection. Coming soon will be the ability to Subscribe to a Collection.
Yahoo! My Web, Ma.gnolia, and Jumptags all offer much better interfaces. They offer bulk editing, the option to import your del.icio.us bookmarks in addition to importing bookmarks from your browser, and Yahoo! My Web and Ma.gnolia also offer the ability to send a site to someone, much like tagging a site for:somone in del.icio.us.
Just for the record, they all also offer buttons or toolbars for the browser which make tagging sites easy. I will say, there were a couple of problems. One was with Ma.gnolia. It seems that creating an account here is more difficult than it should be and could be a turn off for many. And, trying to install the Jumptags toolbar on IE turned out to be something I couldn't pull off, at least at work. It installed beautifully on Firefox, though.
If you scroll down the left hand side bar you will find My Del.icio.us link roll and My Jumptags. Both are the result of my preparing for today's session. Obviously, I probably won't keep four of these things going, but I see the strengths of each.
If your curious, I'm kewllib2 on all these sites.
Update 5/14/09 - Yahoo! has closed Yahoo! My Web. Sad. However, there bookmarking feature is still available - just no ability to share.
For as familiar as most computer users are with bookmarks/favorites, many have never ventured out to the social bookmarking arena. Quite honestly, many wonder why they should. Because I have a work pc and a home pc and have had one blow-up, I started using Yahoo! Bookmarks a couple of years ago. In fact, it expanded to one account for personal links and one for professional. I didn't realize I was participating in social bookmarking for quite some time as Yahoo! feeds your saved bookmarks into a social bookmarking site called Yahoo! My Web. They look a little different, but with the My Web component others can see your saves and tags, like in del.icio.us.
A year or so ago, after reading and hearing oodles about del.icio.us, I decided to check it out. I got to the site and promptly left. What an ugly interface. And, IMHO, somewhat difficult to read. I stuck with Yahoo! My Web. However, in preparation for this session, I again ventured on to del.icio.us and several other social bookmarking sites. While, del.icio.us is still ugly (making me wonder if it's so popular because it was one of the first), it does have a few features I like - your network, subscriptions, and links for you. However, it's not exactly geared for group collaboration, though I'm seeing where libraries are finding work arounds for this. I've found a couple of other sites (I'm sure there are others) that are better for group collaboration and will discuss those here.
Yahoo! My Web is one. In addition to making bookmarks public or private, it provides the ability to share only with contacts (of which you can create different levels), making it easy to collaborate with different groups.
Another is Ma.gnolia. In addition to saving, tagging, and sharing sites, this site offers a few unique features. One is a built-in mail system. Another is the ability to create Groups. Groups can be public (as in UTA Library STEW) where all members can add links; moderated, where the group is public but only designated members can add links; or private. There is also a discussion feature, but I've not tried that one out yet.
Last, but not least, is Jumptags. Jumptags does not offer networks or contacts, but it does offer something called Collections. Collections are created by a member, who can keep the collection Private or make it Public. With either type, there is the ability to invite others to be Contributors to the collection. You can even let invited Contributors invite others to the Collection. Coming soon will be the ability to Subscribe to a Collection.
Yahoo! My Web, Ma.gnolia, and Jumptags all offer much better interfaces. They offer bulk editing, the option to import your del.icio.us bookmarks in addition to importing bookmarks from your browser, and Yahoo! My Web and Ma.gnolia also offer the ability to send a site to someone, much like tagging a site for:somone in del.icio.us.
Just for the record, they all also offer buttons or toolbars for the browser which make tagging sites easy. I will say, there were a couple of problems. One was with Ma.gnolia. It seems that creating an account here is more difficult than it should be and could be a turn off for many. And, trying to install the Jumptags toolbar on IE turned out to be something I couldn't pull off, at least at work. It installed beautifully on Firefox, though.
If you scroll down the left hand side bar you will find My Del.icio.us link roll and My Jumptags. Both are the result of my preparing for today's session. Obviously, I probably won't keep four of these things going, but I see the strengths of each.
If your curious, I'm kewllib2 on all these sites.
Update 5/14/09 - Yahoo! has closed Yahoo! My Web. Sad. However, there bookmarking feature is still available - just no ability to share.
June 23, 2008
Library Statistics...
I'm in the process of writing an evaluation for my assigned areas based on the usage statistics we recently did (see Evaluating Usage). While I was writing this up, I got off on a semi-tanget to find out if there were any standards for percentages of collections that should circulate. If there are, I couldn't find them.
Among the places I looked was ACRL and their standards for Academic Libraries. They basically aim for comparison with peers rather than setting a number or a goal to aim for, so to speak. And, they suggest ratios. Several of them actually. When applied to a small sub-set such as what I'm looking at, well, it's sad and a little depressing.
Then I came across the Library Statistics Program from the National Center for Education Statistics. Interesting website. I did compare my library with several others. Not sure what to do with it, but it is late on a Monday afternoon. It will come to me.
I still don't know if there is a benchmark I should be aiming for or if it really matters. Maybe what matters is knowing how much is circulating, especially since I'm looking at a very specific set of titles. Unofficially, I've selected 30% for my benchmark. If anyone else is doing anything like this, I'd like to hear from you regarding what your library considers good circulation, i.e. 30%, 40%, 50%.
Among the places I looked was ACRL and their standards for Academic Libraries. They basically aim for comparison with peers rather than setting a number or a goal to aim for, so to speak. And, they suggest ratios. Several of them actually. When applied to a small sub-set such as what I'm looking at, well, it's sad and a little depressing.
Then I came across the Library Statistics Program from the National Center for Education Statistics. Interesting website. I did compare my library with several others. Not sure what to do with it, but it is late on a Monday afternoon. It will come to me.
I still don't know if there is a benchmark I should be aiming for or if it really matters. Maybe what matters is knowing how much is circulating, especially since I'm looking at a very specific set of titles. Unofficially, I've selected 30% for my benchmark. If anyone else is doing anything like this, I'd like to hear from you regarding what your library considers good circulation, i.e. 30%, 40%, 50%.
June 05, 2008
Evaluating usage....
Gads. I didn't expect it to be this long between posts. However, the job does sometimes take over. The past several weeks I have been working on usage statistics. Bascially, the question is: how well are we doing with regards to what we are ordering? We started last year with FY 2005/06 and this year ran those stats again as well as for FY 2006/07. We run them by department, then I compile overall (or summary) stats for the collection as a whole. I was especially pleased this year because the report was modified to indicate whether a title was recieved on approval or from a firm order. I wasn't able to look at this last year.
The results are interesting. FY 2005/2006 is looking at two years of data. Overall, we have thus far circulated 45% of the materials ordered during that FY. That was up a little over 10% from the first year. For FY 2006/2007 we circulated about 1% less than the previous year, but we also ordered less. The interesting statistic, to me anyway, is that while a small number of titles seem to circulate, a high number of them circulate multiple times. This was almost across the board for all departments.
Approval vs. firm order. How did we fare? Well, in most cases firm orders ciruclated more than the approvals. Interestingly, in several departments where overall firm orders circulated more than approval, the titles with the highest circulation had more approval than firm order. We also saw this in reverse.
I'm not sure what one should hope for. More approvals circulating? More firm orders circulating? Or, maybe 50/50. Anyway, what does one glean from this? Well, several of my funds had approvals circulating more than firm orders. What I took away was that my approval plan was good. No tweaking needed. Perhaps, though, I should tweak my firm orders. I'm still working on a plan for this. Where approvals aren't circulating as much as firm orders, I'm thinking those plans need to be reviewed. It's my understanding that the approval plans haven't been reviewed in several years, so it's time to do that anyway.
For the curious, we ran the initial reports in Voyager and did the analysis in Excel. Fortunately, I'm fascinated by statistics, so it's somewhat of a fun exercise for me.
The results are interesting. FY 2005/2006 is looking at two years of data. Overall, we have thus far circulated 45% of the materials ordered during that FY. That was up a little over 10% from the first year. For FY 2006/2007 we circulated about 1% less than the previous year, but we also ordered less. The interesting statistic, to me anyway, is that while a small number of titles seem to circulate, a high number of them circulate multiple times. This was almost across the board for all departments.
Approval vs. firm order. How did we fare? Well, in most cases firm orders ciruclated more than the approvals. Interestingly, in several departments where overall firm orders circulated more than approval, the titles with the highest circulation had more approval than firm order. We also saw this in reverse.
I'm not sure what one should hope for. More approvals circulating? More firm orders circulating? Or, maybe 50/50. Anyway, what does one glean from this? Well, several of my funds had approvals circulating more than firm orders. What I took away was that my approval plan was good. No tweaking needed. Perhaps, though, I should tweak my firm orders. I'm still working on a plan for this. Where approvals aren't circulating as much as firm orders, I'm thinking those plans need to be reviewed. It's my understanding that the approval plans haven't been reviewed in several years, so it's time to do that anyway.
For the curious, we ran the initial reports in Voyager and did the analysis in Excel. Fortunately, I'm fascinated by statistics, so it's somewhat of a fun exercise for me.
April 03, 2008
Typos....
No, not mine. Though, I make them occassionally along with everyone else. I'm in the midst of selecting titles for my assigned disciplines. We're past half way through with our Fiscal Year, so I'm stepping up my efforts. To aid this process, I get electronic slips from a vendor who shall remain nameless. Below is the last part of a description for one of the titles, which it states is from the book jacket. I'm not sure if the typo is their's or the publisher's, but it gave me a good laugh.
"Rather than look at overall conceptual issues, which are already well covered elsewhere, this boob looks at the finer details of implementation in order to identify lessons, ideas and opportunities, both at the planning and design phase, and during implementation and review and evaluation."
Or, maybe it really is referring to the author.
"Rather than look at overall conceptual issues, which are already well covered elsewhere, this boob looks at the finer details of implementation in order to identify lessons, ideas and opportunities, both at the planning and design phase, and during implementation and review and evaluation."
Or, maybe it really is referring to the author.
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