What the world needs now is another library weblog like I need a hole in my head August 17, 2005 At least that's what I thought after reading over Walt Crawford's investigation of the "biblioblogosphere" in the September Cites & Insights (pdf link). I knew there were a lot of library weblogs--I subscribe to close to thirty in my RSS reader--but Crawford analyzed over 230 library-related blogs, and ran down sixty of the blogs with the widest reach (according to his interpretation of his data; if you'd like to interpret it yourself, he's made it available as an Excel spreadsheet). The likelihood of my adding something entirely new to that mix seems low. And yet, here we are. This is the first real post to my new library weblog, See Also. While I am obviously feeling a little self-conscious about adding my blog to those 230+ that are already out there, I'm also very excited about the idea of thinking, writing, and conversing about libraries, librarianship, and more. I have had other blogs in the past, but most of those were just my outboard brain, a parking place for URLs I didn't want to lose (now I just use del.icio.us). I made no attempt to build a readership, to communicate, to connect. But over the last year as I read more and more library weblogs as they hashed out Gormangate and tried to understand the implications of tags and folksonomies, I wanted to become part of the conversation. I left the occasional comment, but it seemed like I needed a home base if I was really going to take part. See Also is intended to be that base. So the next few posts will probably also be navel-gazers like this one. Then I want to write up a few things I have been working on this summer (or longer). After that, though, I hope to take a wider perspective, and write about academic libraries and librarianship, libraries and technology, and similar topics. So the next time Crawford does his investigation, I hope that See Also will be right up there, and that I can thank my many (I'll settle for several) loyal readers for making See Also such a success. Posted 10:56 PM to Navel gazing Getting dressed in public August 18, 2005 If you are reading this entry close to the time that I'm publishing it, you will notice that the site design is a little...sparse. Or non-existent. I'm not a great web designer, but I do love to play around with (X)HTML and CSS. So much so, that I'm afraid if I waited to start posting here until the site design was "done," I'd never get started. So instead, I blew away the default CSS from Movable Type, and did some minimal styling on the fonts. I have made some changes to the index page template, including adding my own div's with id's. I was thinking if I got some content up here first, and made sure the markup was semantic and made sense, then I should be able to do the CSS as we go. Let's just hope you aren't reading this many months after I post it thinking "well, it still looks crummy." Posted 2:50 PM to Blogs and blogging, Navel gazing, Web design Google Maps and directions for Tutt Library August 22, 2005 A little project that I finished relatively recently was this map and directions page for Tutt Library, using Google Maps. To create the map, I used the Google Maps API. You sign up for a key to the API which then lets you place Google maps on pages your pages. Google Maps doesn't have a geocoding component, so to find out our location, I started with lat-long.com. Lat-long has locations for colleges and universities, so that got me close, but then I asked around and a colleague had a GPS device so we got the coordinates from right in front of the building. Google has what looks like pretty complete documentation for the API, but I confess that my JavaScript isn't all it could be. After several go-rounds of doing the programming-language equivalent of just speaking English louder and slower when in a foreign country, I started to look around for some code to copy. I'm sure that any idiot could read Google's documentation, and convert their "place 10 random points" examples to "place one very special point right where I want it," but I'm not just any idiot. So I found a nice, simple, real-world example at the Thomas Ford Memorial Library, designed not-so-coincidentally by Aaron Schmidt of the library blog Walking Paper. I made one further refinement to the Tutt map page by putting the map in an <iframe>, something I'd never used before. The Google Map API key is granted only for a particular directory on your site. In itself that isn't a problem, but the URL is case-sensitive. That means that, according to Google Maps, http://www.coloradocollege.edu/library/about and http://www.coloradocollege.edu/library/About are two different directories, and the key will only work with the one you registered with Google. That is a big problem for me, as our directories typically have capital letters, but we don't always use them in links. Grrr. The way around that is to put the map itself in an <iframe> so you can control the exact URL used to reference the map, and the URL used for the surrounding page doesn't matter so much. I'm not sure where I learned that hack; I think I found reference to using iframes on several pages, then tried the idea on my own. Last, I added the driving directions section (which doesn't require an API key) using the technique described here which I found via librarian.net. I tried to cover all the browser problems (Google Maps wants new browsers, need to have JavaScript enabled, etc.) with a link to the less-sexy MapQuest. Posted 4:23 PM to Tutt Library, Web design Integrating library services with the user in mind September 01, 2005 Last week, Tutt Library had a day-long retreat with other "academic support" groups on campus, including members of the IT department, the Writing Center, and other components of the Teaching and Learning Center, which is physically located in the library. One of the sessions had us responding to this prompt: What is your vision, or possibilities that you see for the future, that reflect/support an integrated learning support services model? Where do you see us presently relative to your vision, and how do you feel about it? I was on a pre-selected panel for that one, so I had time to put together my thoughts beforehand. I seem to have lost my notes, but here is the gist of what I said. First (I said), as we discuss this in late summer, I think it is safe to say that there is not a single student or faculty member who is, at this moment, saying to him- or herself "Gee, I hope the library and IT department and Learning Center staff are preparing an integrated learning support services model." There very well may be, however, a student thinking "I'm dreading doing the research for my senior thesis this year because I can never figure out where I am supposed to search for articles," or "I bet I have to take my new laptop over to the help desk some time when they are open; I wish I didn't have to do that." But in order to find out what they are thinking, we need to talk to them. We need to ask them questions, and then ask them more questions until we know what they really need. We are already doing this, of course. The IT department did a student survey of what their top priorities should be, and near the top was "offer an electronic reserve of articles and other readings that is better than the Library's current E-Res system." That's a start, but what does "better" mean? Faster downloads? An interface that is easier to use? Or do they just hate having to print all those articles themselves each semester? Without more asking and listening, we could spend a lot of time solving the wrong problem. When I think of what I would like to see integrated, I think of the back end of our many web services. Like many libraries, when we want to provide a new database or web-based service, we don't build it ourselves; we go out and license an existing product. As a result, we have many scores of databases, electronic journals, and specialized services, such as ERes and RefWorks, and most of them don't play very well together. I think if the library had a programmer/database expert who was dedicated to the library--not full time, perhaps, but enough to understand our problems and concerns, and to understand MARC and Z39.50 and other library-specific formats and protocols--we could go a long way toward addressing those problems. As an example, Sian Meikle at the University of Toronto Libraries has presented a system for adding a direct export link from your OPAC to RefWorks (PPT link). But the system involves writing a script in PHP or Perl or another scripting language.