Hello everyone,
I think we are starting to see some of what's on Prof. Burke's wish list in Google Books (which is still in Beta).
For example, here's a link to Roy Tennant's "XML in Libraries"
http://tinyurl.com/2rrk7f
* Notice the sections: "Reviews," "References from web pages," "References from books," and "References from scholarly works."
* The "Find this book in a library" goes to the corresponding bibliographic record in WorldCat.org
Here's a link to Walt Crawford's "Future Libraries"
http://tinyurl.com/ysc7g2
* Notice the "Key terms" at the bottom of the record.
Finally, here's a link to an edition of Boswell's "Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson"
http://tinyurl.com/226tp2
* Notice the "Places mentioned in this book" at the bottom.
My guess is that these are the results of mashups with Google Scholar for the 'references' and Google Maps for the 'places mentioned'.
Regards,
Steve
______________________________________
Stephen Cauffman, reQuest ILL Coordinator
Connecticut Digital Library http://www.iconn.org
Connecticut State Library http://www.cslib.org
Middletown Library Service Center
786 South Main Street, Middletown, CT 06457-5101
Telephone: (860) 704-2223, toll free in Conn: (888) 256-1222
Fax: (860) 704-2229
E-mail: scauffman_at_cslib.org
>>> Karen Coyle <kcoyle_at_KCOYLE.NET> 5/31/2007 11:57:32 am >>>
This is from my blog notes on the first LC meeting, the one at Google.
After describing how he does research and why he does research
(everything from moving into new territory to looking for an inexpensive
book to require for his class), he gave these as things he needs to help
him with research:
- tools that recognize existing clusters of knowledge; if you find a
book using lcsh, you probably already know it existed. tool that
recognizes the conversation the book was in. those that were written
after the book came out and have continued the conversation.
- tools that know lines of descent; chronology of publications; later
readers determine connection between texts
- tools that find unknown connections (full text search; topic maps?)
- tools that produce serendipity -- hidden connections.
- tools that inform me of authority
- tools that know about real world usage (those who bought x bought y;
how many people checked this out?)
- tools that know about the sociology of knowledge; the pedigrees of
authors: who were they trained by, how long ago; how trustworthy is this
institution?
As he spoke, I was thinking that his ideal tool is what I would call a
bibliography. It would give the "best books" in an area of study, would
describe various branches of thought, would put a document in an
intellectual context, would tell you what item was most cited, most used
in classes, most read. Authors would have "reviews" -- the founder of
this line of thinking; Harvard PhD; journalist writing for the NY Post.
They could also have "popularity" ratings, such as the timelines that
WorldCat Identities uses.
I can also see things on his list that could be machine-generated, such
as topic maps based on full text that would bring together documents in
a serendipitous fashion.
I think his criticism of LCSH is that it is atomistic -- it gives you an
entry into a topic but it doesn't relate items in the library to each
other. Call numbers do that but for some reason we haven't played much
with giving people an interesting navigation of the classified catalog,
something that I think has potential. It would undoubtedly be easier to
do with Dewey, which is more hierarchical than LC classification.
--
-----------------------------------
Karen Coyle / Digital Library Consultant
kcoyle@kcoyle.net http://www.kcoyle.net
ph.: 510-540-7596 skype: kcoylenet
fx.: 510-848-3913
mo.: 510-435-8234
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Received on Thu May 31 2007 - 12:34:15 EDT