Personal Preferences Analysis

Our personal activity this week involved thinking about discussing affective, cognitive and behavioral issues that someone might have when working with a reference librarian. The prompt will be in italics, and my thoughts will be after it.

Affective issue: The library evinces interest in or respect for the topic on which you are working. Is this perceived as more of an affirmation of professional engagement or an invasion of your privacy? Why? I think that showing interest or respect can demonstrate friendliness and enthusiasm. That said, it is imperative that the interest is genuine. The level of interest should also be appropriate depending on the type of information sought by the patron. The librarian should read the patron's nonverbal cues like body language to get information. If the patron seems annoyed or blank when the librarian shows interest, the librarian should back off.

Cognitive issue: You feel that as an iSchool student you "should" know how to find this on your own but can not do so efficiently. The librarian recognizes your school and lack of domain knowledge from the question. What are the more effective means he could use to help you learn how to use basic databases for our field? Why? The librarian should be careful not to insult the iSchool-attending patron, and walk the student through processes and point out that there should be multiple applications for this- both immediately, and in the future, when the patron will become the librarian him/herself. They should point out that one of the advantages of being a librarian is that one is always learning, and this is just a part of that. Make a connection between the librarian now and the librarian of the future. Use this as an opportunity for scaffolding- build upon what the patron already knows and teach them something new, and go all out, because the patron will definitely use these skills again.

Behavioral issue: You are searching in a database of one of our sister disciplines (e.g., psychology or education) and it's not going well. A librarian with a nametag on who is slowly roving the banks of computers makes eye contact and gives you the social cues needed to establish contact should you so choose. What do you do and why? Could anything else have been done that might be of more use to you? I would raise my hand quietly to get the librarian and ask for help. I am frequently surprised in life by other's reluctance to ask questions, and never mind admitting that I don't know something. As a librarian, I would make sure not to be too attentive to patrons who'd rather work on their own, as to not annoy them. I wonder what would happen with a patron who has trouble reading social cues, though? How do you best handle those situations? I work at the children's desk at the Central branch of the Austin Public Library, which is located in a very high-traffic area, so I often am not sure whether someone is just walking by and happens to make eye contact, or if they have a question and are a little shy to ask, so I always just smile and say "hello," to establish myself as available and friendly, but not directly getting in their face.

Using CV and NL in searches

In the Medline Database, I was looking to find sources for the following prompt:

How are people using the Internet for self-help or support group work on psychological problems (like depression) or social problems with psychological components (like domestic violence or gambling addiction)? I need scholarly articles based on solid research, not descriptions of bulletin boards or forums.

I began by thinking of controlled vocabulary and natural language terms that fit the reference question. I started by using words in my natural language to begin to look for appropriate sources. I made a list of terms including the phrases "online therapy" and "e-therapy." When searching for this terms, I discovered some suggestions for controlled vocabulary as well, including the terms "Internet," "remote consultation," "mental disorders" and "psychology."

From there, I used various combinations of terms, and found that the most productive searches were ones that included the "AND" Boolean expression, and connected a CV and NL term. I got the most successful hits when searching for "online therapy" (one of my natural language terms) and "remote consultation" (one of the controlled vocabulary terms I discovered). This use of both CV and NL is a logical way to best search for information because it covers both bases.

CV vs NL

This week, we learned about the differences between using natural language and controlled vocabulary in searching. I loved learning the concept of pearling, which is when you search with a natural language term, then mine the hits for controlled vocabulary (like I did with "code cracking" and "cryptology" in the last entry, for instance). Use this new controlled vocabulary for a new search, and then with those hits, mine for controlled vocabulary. Continue this cycle until you find what you need.

This led me to think about folksonomies (also known collaborative tagging, social classification social indexing or social tagging, according to Wikipedia), which definitely blur the line between controlled vocabularies and natural language. One of my favorite sites, librarything.com, is a website where you catalog your own books. I started using it over a year ago to keep track of the books I read. After I read a book, I tag it, so that the next time a child comes to the library asking me for books on elephants, I can go to my list of tags to see what books I tagged "elephant." I have even further blurred the lines between controlled vocabulary and natural language by making my own controlled vocabulary out of my natural language! It's easy for me to find what I want because it's in the term that is most natural to me- the terms are one and the same.

Reference Practice Question

Here was our prompt:

During WWII an eccentric scientist cracked a German code that was critical to Allied military success. Credited with inventing the foundations of artificial intelligence, he died quite young. What was his name, how did he die, why did people think him eccentric, and what was his most famous mathematical finding?

While I didn't realize it at the time, I used "pearling" to figure out answers to this prompt. My initial search (on Google, I can't resist its pull!) was "WWII German code cracker." That gave me some responses that included the word "cryptologist," so I changed my search terms to "WWII German cryptologist." Again, I didn't realize it at the time, but I was changing my search terms from my natural language terms into a more controlled vocabulary. I instinctively knew that "cryptologist" would garner more hits than "code cracker," both because it was one word and because it was a more controlled vocabulary word.

Then, my hit list included some responses on two possible people. Searches on those two people quickly led me to the correct answer- Alan Turing.

If you're interested in Alan Turing, by the way, there's a movie about his life starring Dougray Scott and Kate Winslet called "Enigma." Put it in your Netflix queue- I did.

The Future of Reference in Libraries

Our ideal future for reference service is a mixture of both automated and human interaction. While people will become increasingly comfortable interacting with computer interfaces, there will still be a desire for human interchange. The library will still exist as brick and mortar but will evolve into an information hub and community center. For reference there will be a centralized area for service as well as the ability for librarians to circulate and to appear more welcoming for utility. Automated computer kiosks will be available for patrons who are comfortable interacting with electronic interfaces. Libraries will form a consortium to offer their patrons seamless video conferencing to provide them with access to a wider array of subject specialists. Reader advisory will be automated and user-oriented, building upon the success of sites such as Amazon.com. Patrons will be an important tool for organizing information within the library. Reviews, tagging, and recommendation of books are a few areas where patrons will be able to contribute to. Ready reference will be widely available in digital form with consistent interfaces to ease the transition from paper to digital resources.

The Internet, in case you didn't know

This is how I would explain the Internet to an intelligent recluse who has been in hiding since the beginning:

All computers are linked to access the same information. They were originally linked by dialing a phone number, upon whence your computer would screech tones that were translated into information, and the information was thusly transferred through the phone line and connected you to other people doing the same thing. Now, we transmit information faster through dedicated data lines. Once connected, you can type in an address to visit a website. A website is any place on the internet (also called a page) you can visit if you know the address. You could access any website on the World Wide Web (another name for the Internet) and you can also make one for other people to access.

If you don't know an address for a site (the address also being called a URL, for Uniform Resource Locator), there are some sites (most popularly Google) where you can search for a site or browse to find the best site to fit your needs. Sites usually are prefaced by typing the following:

http://www

After the three w's and a period, you typically type in the name of the site. Google, for instance, is http://www.google.com. The" .com "afterwards indicates that you are visiting a commercial address. Other things that appear after the period are "edu" (for education) or "net" (for internet). Since you can't make a space in an internet address (or URL), periods are typically used to indicate a stopping point between words or parts of the address.

Besides getting information, you can also send "mail," known as electronic mail, or email, to communicate. As long as you know someone's email address, you can send them a note. Email addresses usually begin with something that the user chooses, often their name. After the part they choose there is an @ symbol, then the company name that hosts their email. After the company name, there is another period, and usually com, because the company that sponsors the email is commercial. My email is my first name, then a period, then my last name, @gmail.com, for instance. Email address and websites are not case sensitive, so upper and lower case letters are not distinguishable.

Websites exist for many purposes. You can make a page with your basic personal info on a commercial site (mostly popularly http://www.Myspace.com, for instance) with the sole purpose of connecting with other users. Make a list of addresses of interesting sites and store the list on a website, and get to all these sites by directly clicking (using a mouse) on the address. The address will typically be underlined and in blue text to let you know that the text is linked to another site. That's why these instances of underlined blue text are called "links." Make a page for your business. Sell your products online in the global market- just tell your customers what you have available, and make a form they can fill out with their credit card information. Don't worry- many customers shop frequently online and are comfortable with giving you their credit card information. Once you get an order, ship out (or email) your good or service. In fact, you can buy and sell books, groceries, stocks, memberships to certain websites, or anything else you can think of on the web. Meet your future mate by joining a dating site that calculates compatibility using complicated mathematical algorithms. Got another idea for expanding the Internet? I bet you can put it on a website, get the word out, and chances are that it will catch on!

Scholarly Information on Presidential Elections

Since anyone can post anything on the Internet, it's imperative to evaluate your sources if gathering information on the Presidential Election. Information that has been reviewed and considered sound by a group of the writer's peers is referred to as "scholarly information." Sometimes it's easier for the researcher to immediately limit their search using only sources of scholarly information than having to evaluate previously unevaluated material. For this reason, many people, when researching a topic like the latest Presidential Election, go straight for sources of scholarly information, where they know everything they come across will be logical, reliable, and authoritative.

Typically, places where a lot of research is done, like schools and libraries, love to give lots of options of scholarly information to their students or users. They will use their funding to supply these sources, usually by subscribing to lists of information that is owned by a trusted company who has a reputation for only listing scholarly information. These lists of information are called databases, and can be mind bogglingly large. They can contain many kinds of information of many different subjects.

To find the information you need, you can perform a search. A search is just what it sounds like- you tell the database what you're looking for, and it tells you what it has on those topics. The trick is that you have to carefully choose your search terms. Perhaps using the name of a candidate would work- but make sure to be specific. Searching for "Clinton," for instance, will return scholarly information on both President Bill Clinton and his wife, Hillary Clinton, who is seeking the Democratic nomination for the 2008 Presidency.