Organizing the Stuff You Find and Getting Stuff to Find You
Liam Hegarty
Larchmont Public Library
What We'll Cover
Organizing what you find
- Browser Tools (focusing on Firefox)
- Online Tools
Getting stuff to find you
, 
, or 
- Database tools
- email subscription
Caveats
- Many different ways of doing things
- by the time you get home, the technology will have changed
- Sorry, Apple
Problems
- Reinventing the Wheel
- Web addresses are finicky
- Finding something again
- recreating long click paths is difficult.
- What if only need a little bit of a huge page?
- Web sites move
- We move. Office to Reference Desk to to Office to Home etc. etc.
- Volume, Volume, Volume
- huge number of websites
- huge amount of stuff within websites
Browsers
- Translates a web page's coding into something people can understand
- A browser is not a search engine.
- Most commonly used browsers:
- Internet Explorer – Just released IE 7 which replaced five year old IE6 thereby complicating my life.
- Firefox – Released in 2004. Continuously evolving – Netscape's grandchild – free download at www.mozilla.com. Just released Firefox 2 (which futher complicated my life).
- Safari – Apple Computer's browser
Bookmarks
"Bookmarks" (Firefox) or "Favorites" (Internet Explorer)
- If the Internet is a huge book, "Bookmarks" are its, well, bookmarks
- Use for two reasons
- convenience – don't have to type in Google's web address over and over
- Remembrance – being able to find a website again
- Be like Goldilocks – don't bookmark too much or too little
- Different browsers handle differently
- Different ways to handle bookmarks in specific browser, e.g. Internet Explorer's "favorites" button opens a sidebar
Bookmarks (example)
Organizing bookmarks
Organize like "My Documents"
- Don't put convenience bookmarks into folders.
- Folders by subject e.g. "Diabetes sites" "African Wolfhound Sites" and so on.
- Files and Folders can be dragged around
- No decision is final – "Manage Bookmarks" in Firefox and "Organize Favorites" in Internet Explorer
Choosing What to Bookmark
Web addresses change, so try for more general address
Change
into
by eliminating everything after the domain (".com," etc) or another appropriate place. Hit enter. If it works, bookmark it.
When you go back you should be able to find "washer drier combo," but you can also use the site for other searches.
Bookmarks – problems
Limitations
- They are not portable
- The more bookmarks you have the harder it is to find the one you want
- can't search your bookmarks
- only information about bookmark is title and whatever you decide to laboriously type in
- Hard to share with other people
del.icio.us
del.icio.us – Partial solution to problems
- Stored on Internet so always available
- Can give your bookmark a "tag" or subject
- can search yours and everyone else's bookmarks using tags
- Can make your tags available for public viewing – anybody considering something like a Librarians' Best Picks using del.icio.us?
"Social Software"
Other examples are Flickr (sharing photographs) and Wikis
Pros and Cons of Tagging
Pros
- informal – folksonomy
- accessible – can look for "french cooking" instead of "cookery, french"
Cons
- informal – folksonomy
- lose benefits of controlled vocabulary. Am I going to get all the books on french cooking?
e.g. del.icio.us search of "french cooking" returns 668 sites – "cookery french" gets 36
–keyword search of wls for "french cooking" returns 117 titles while subject word search of "cookery french" gets 355 titles.
How del.icio.us works
Important! The address is "del.icio.us" These will not work: "www.del.icio.us" or "del.icio.us.com
del.icio.us's main page
del.icio.us (cont.)
- del.icio.us needs to install software for you to save your own tags
- works in most browsers including Internet Explorer
- software creates buttons
- Use "View" menu to get appropriate toolbar to show up
Adding a page to del.icio.us
- Click on "post to del.icio.us" and you'll get this:
- click on "save" and the information will be saved to del.icio.us and you will automatically returned to the page you were tagging
Using your del.icio.us
Tips
- Think ahead – what tags would you give to similar sites in the future
- Can edit description box – make sure it's actually descriptive
Stupid Browser Tricks (Firefox)
- Firefox's search box in upper right – can add engines – can add wide variety of search engines. IE 7 has similar feature but harder to use.
- Tabbed browsing
- explore Firefox add–ons
- use little arrow next to back button to retrace your steps (also in Internet Explorer)
Really Simple Syndication (RSS)
- Acronym means many things
- A page with a feed will broadcast the fact it has been updated, e.g. Larchmont Library schedules – you don't have to check if there has been a change. Particulary good with blogs
- depending on the feed, you can get a summary of the change
- , , or alert you to fact that page has a feed
- Need an aggregator
- searches the web pages you've subscribed to and checks if updated
- Huge amounts of aggregators – confusing
- stand alones and integrated into browsers (Internet Explorer 7 only)
- created by techies so filled with jargon and TLAs, FLAs and more
Some blogs and frequently updated websites of interest to librarians
