November 2004 Archives

Just so you know, the Internet Librarian PowerPoints have started to appear on the InfoToday site. If I spot presentations for any of the programs I've covered, (I haven't yet), I'll go back and link to them.

It's time to start winding up my coverage of Internet Librarian 2004. We're almost there! But I can't fail to mention "Research Tools: Turning Search into Research." Speakers Marydee Ojala, Darlene Fichter and Sebastian Gard discussed a variety of different tools available to help you manage all that useful information you find out there on the web. Just a few tidbits.....

It's not bad enough that we have to worry about spyware, we also have to worry about spyware from companies that claim to protect us against spyware. A recent PC World article, "Poor Defenders," provides the results of test of seven heavily advertised spyware-removal tools and found that none were as good as the free Spybot Search & Destroy, and a couple even installed new spyware.

Included is a picture of Eric L. Howes, a University of Illinois library school student. Eric has analyzed more than 100 anti-spyware utilities for SpywareWarrior.com. He confirms something I've always suspected. The pop-up ads that claim that they have found spyware on your computer, have, in fact, done nothing and found nothing.

It seems like only yesterday that Adobe Acrobat 6.0 was released. In fact, it was shipped mid-2003. My, my, software ages quickly these days! Adobe announced last week that version 7.0 will be released by the end of the year. Both PlanetPDF and PDFZone have already reviewed the new functionality offered by 7.0.

Interesting...you'll be able to use Acrobat 7.0 to subscribe to RSS feeds using the "Tracker" tool. This I've got to see! But unfortunately the only mention I could find of this particular feature was in the first part of the Planet PDF Product Tour. It goes without saying that it will be a simple matter to convert those RSS feeds to PDF. It's unclear whether both Standard and Professional will include the Tracker tool.

According to The Stanford Law School Center for Internet and Society, "In a pretrial evidentiary ruling, a magistrate judge in the Northern District of Illinois held that “snapshots” taken by the Internet Archive that depict web pages as they appeared in the past are admissible under the Federal Rules of Evidence. The court rejected the arguments of plaintiff Telewizja Polska USA that the archived pages constituted hearsay and that the Internet Archive was an “unreliable source.” " So I guess you could say the court has accepted the Internet Archive as a reliable source, and IA's valid use as a research tool is firmly established.

[Spotted on Librarian in Black]

There's no question, the Internet is becoming a scary place. Between phishing, viruses and spyware, it's enough to make you want to turn off your computer and hide under the covers. Even experienced users can be fooled as scam artists become more sophisticated. But don't panic, Genie Tyburski offered hints on how to avoid scams and bad information in her program, "The Art of Detection."

Not to worry, I'll get back to Internet Librarian again, but in the meantime the new Yahoo-OCLC Toolbar was announced, and I thought you should know.

Remember that OCLC has offered the complete Worldcat database to Google and Yahoo so that searchers can find books and the libraries that own them. All the information isn't there yet, there's only 2 million of the 57 million records available in the full WorldCat, but more is coming.

This new joint toolbar let's you search for a book by simply popping your search terms in the search box, and selecting "libraries" from the search drop-down:

I'm back from Internet Librarian, and it's time for catch-up. I still have several sessions to tell you about. The conference was excellent...now I just need to get the CD so I can listen to all the stuff I missed! Monterey was much warmer this year than usual and the rain threatened by weather.com last week certainly never materialized. My raincoat and all those warm jackets I brought along just took up space.

Back to the program. Usability seems to be somewhat of a moving target. Are we gradually learning more about how people use the web, or are people using the web differently as they become more experienced? I don't know the answer to that one, but Darlene Fichter gave us a great update on the current thinking on usability.

The AIIP Technology Awards were announced at Tuesday's Keynote....the envelope please......and it goes to Netsnippets! Netsnippets is a product designed for organizing, compiling and presentation of web research.

Runner ups were Dialog 4 and Microsoft's Onenote. By the way, Onenote has very recently become one of my favorite programs.

As the number of newsletters available via email grows I hope that we will start to see more tools for managing them. Subscribers have to be added and removed, usage needs to be monitored (is there anybody subscribing to this anymore?) and the issues need to be sent out to everyone on the list as soon as they are received. For whatever reason the serials software used by libraries to check in and route materials seems to be lacking in any tools for email list management.

In addition to the standard newsletter-type current awareness materials, customized email alerts are also are proliferating. Think Westclips and Lexis Eclipses, for example. In this morning's program (Internet Librarian 2004), A Web-Based Current Awareness Management System, Michael Rogers and Mary Talmadge-Breebenar (Bristol-Myers Squibb) showed the in-house system they developed to manage all of the various email alerts that are set up for their users.

Does it make sense to maintain lists of generic web links when that information is available on the web from other sources? David King at Kansas Public Library started re-thinking the time and energy the library staff devoted to their lists of links, and at the same time wondered what they COULD do to better serve their patrons. While this case study centered on a public library environment, the questions and solutions are quite pertinent to all kind of libraries.

It's not very often that you can go to a conference, attend 4 programs in a row, and find them all informative and well-done. But that was my first day at Internet Librarian in Monterey. Yes, I know, I should tell you all about it, but sorry, I'm just too tired. The best I can do for now is to give you a few good alternatives for an IL fix and promise more later.

If you missed KM World, you might want to peruse the PowerPoints from selected presentations at the KM World web site. For recordings of the sessions, see The Digital Record. The exhibit hall must have been fun...according to the exhibitor list the search engines were really out in force.

[Spotted on TVC Alert]

If the new Google Desktop search isn't right for you, that's okay, there are several other tools out there to help you locate your data in a hurry, including emails, Word files, text documents and more. Though unlike the Google product, most of them will cost you. PC World reviews the major contenders in desktop search, giving editors picks to DtSearch Desktop With Spider and Lookout Software.

Note what they have to say about DtSearch: "I could easily see this program serving a reference librarian." So there you go...

Do you know the difference between personalization and customization? Greg Linden, at Findory.com, does: "..personalization learns what you like from your actions...customization requires you to explicity specify what you want..." Considering the difficulty in getting people to do their own customization, personalization obviously has a lot of advantages in a many different areas. Personalization is what Amazon uses to display other items that might interest you, and it's what Findory uses to give you the news that you want to read. If that sounds interesting to you, take a look at the recent Searcher article by Gary Price, "Good Things Come in Small Packages, or Findory Gets Personal."

Perhaps some of the Lexis software engineers have been working just a little too hard. See a SiliconValley.com article dated November 3, Programers Hold Funerals for Old Code. Does anyone know what CCI is/was?

[Thanks, JP!]

This is what happens when you get behind on your reading..but better late than never! The September issue of Law Technology News has an article by Peter Ozolin, Case Study: Paul Hastings (requires registration) discussing their choice of Recommind as a universal search tool, and the Practice Technologies Real Practice product as a targeted work product retrieval system.