Thursday, October 4, 2007
Leadership
Here's a link to an article about leadership and a new book about leadership, which could be relevant to managing and providing leadership in libraries. The author has both academic and corporate experience.
Leadership
Here's a link to an article about leadership and a new book about leadership, which could be relevant to managing and providing leadership in libraries. The author has both academic and corporate experience.
Saturday, August 18, 2007
Wikipedia's Downside
Here's an article from the NY Times on corporations editing articles in Wikipedia - or editing out information that they don't like. This seems to be the downside of wiki's. We really will need a wikiscanner - one already exists.
Powered by ScribeFire.
Friday, August 17, 2007
New TableRank Search Engine
Here's a link to an article about a new tableRank (cf. Google's pageRank) search engine, coming out of the IT school at Penn State. It searches for tables on the internet. The world of searching is constantly changing, and perhaps we will be getting more and more refined tools!!
Powered by ScribeFire.
Skype Problems
Yesterday Skype went down for unknown reasons, but the reasons might be found in the software that has been downloaded by absolutely all users since 2003. Here's a link to a NY Times article which will probably become unavailable within a week when it is no longer free. This seems to show the vulnerability of networks, especially hubs. They are resistant to everyday errors, but because they are arranged into hubs, shooting at hubs brings them down. Yet Skype is a peer-to-peer system, so maybe you wouldn't expect this.
Powered by ScribeFire.
Monday, July 30, 2007
Reflections on Computer Assignments: Need CSS help!!!
As I went through the past announcements on our course management system, in order to find out more about how to do an external style sheet for a webpage, I found an announcement on how to delete reserves from Koha. For some reason, I had missed this before. It might be the solution to the problem I had with Koha, where some books were listed as "nonreservable" - see my earlier Koha Assignment post. However, I will not have time to investigate this possibility.
Also I would like to report that my search engine page is now appearing on the web - apparently it did publish, but did now show the other day. So, if I need to, I will be able to link it to my main personal webpage. However, I don't need to right now.
I might not complete the final leg of my computer assignment, I am sorry to report. I have started it, by including the Thoreau excerpt as Thoreau2.html document in Kompozer, and, following directions given, I tried to link el to the external style sheet provided by the instructor. However, even though the sheet showed, the formatting of the document did not change, and I couldn't get the editor to work.
The problem might be that I couldn't directly link to this particular style sheet without first making sure it was in the same directory. I am not sure how to make sure it is in the same directory, unless I upload through FileZilla through my public and html directories. However, I am not sure where and how to save it first. I don't even know where or how to use notepad, which others keep mentioning in their posts on a discussion board. Can I save it in microsoft word, and, if so, what type of document should I save it as? CSS is not available there, at least not under that name.
I have been looking through some instructions from a website on external CSS stylesheets, but I am still not sure how to link them up. These instructions tell you how to include the information in the code of your html document - would that be the Thoreau document? And how do I find an external style sheet. I simply do not understand. I understand why an external style sheet is useful, because it can globally control format, but I don't understand where you find such sheets or how you would create them. I tried checking the code of some of my fellow students webpages, but I still don't understand what I am supposed to do.
I have a similar problem publishing webpages. I know how to do it in FileZilla, but when I create new webpages, I do not know how to do it in Kompozer - am I supposed to publish to a new site and fill out new information? When I try to do that, it reports that directory was not found, although it seems to say it is published. Nonetheless, I can't find it on the web. Although I understand the importance of public and html directories, I do not understand how to actually fill out the menus that Kompozer has. I end up wildly trying to different things.
Only recently have I figured out how to make a folder in Kompozer.
Sometimes I feel very foolish asking the questions I do. Really, I often find that nobody wants to answer them. It could be for a variety of reasons: 1) I post the questions really late, and nobody sees them; 2) My questions are not clear, so nobody understands what my problem is; 3) The information is available elsewhere in the course (although I might not realize it), and people figure I should know this. 4) I might give the impression that I have not even tried to find the solution before asking the question. This is seldom true - sometimes I have spent hours and hours trying to solve a problem, without any success. 5) People think I have not read elsewhere in the discussion board - I actually spend a lot of time reading the discussion board, but sometimes I do forget what I have read, even if I have copied it down. 6) Other students - especially those posting to the discussion boards - are just as confused as I am.
However, sometimes some fellow students have been very helpful.
For all the hours of time I have put into this course, I don't expect that I have accomplished all the goals that were set for us. However, I do get the impression there are some other students who have also had had difficulties. I am sorry to hear that, and I wish I could have been more help than I have been. However, at least, I realize that is not simply a personal problem.
Also I would like to report that my search engine page is now appearing on the web - apparently it did publish, but did now show the other day. So, if I need to, I will be able to link it to my main personal webpage. However, I don't need to right now.
I might not complete the final leg of my computer assignment, I am sorry to report. I have started it, by including the Thoreau excerpt as Thoreau2.html document in Kompozer, and, following directions given, I tried to link el to the external style sheet provided by the instructor. However, even though the sheet showed, the formatting of the document did not change, and I couldn't get the editor to work.
The problem might be that I couldn't directly link to this particular style sheet without first making sure it was in the same directory. I am not sure how to make sure it is in the same directory, unless I upload through FileZilla through my public and html directories. However, I am not sure where and how to save it first. I don't even know where or how to use notepad, which others keep mentioning in their posts on a discussion board. Can I save it in microsoft word, and, if so, what type of document should I save it as? CSS is not available there, at least not under that name.
I have been looking through some instructions from a website on external CSS stylesheets, but I am still not sure how to link them up. These instructions tell you how to include the information in the code of your html document - would that be the Thoreau document? And how do I find an external style sheet. I simply do not understand. I understand why an external style sheet is useful, because it can globally control format, but I don't understand where you find such sheets or how you would create them. I tried checking the code of some of my fellow students webpages, but I still don't understand what I am supposed to do.
I have a similar problem publishing webpages. I know how to do it in FileZilla, but when I create new webpages, I do not know how to do it in Kompozer - am I supposed to publish to a new site and fill out new information? When I try to do that, it reports that directory was not found, although it seems to say it is published. Nonetheless, I can't find it on the web. Although I understand the importance of public and html directories, I do not understand how to actually fill out the menus that Kompozer has. I end up wildly trying to different things.
Only recently have I figured out how to make a folder in Kompozer.
Sometimes I feel very foolish asking the questions I do. Really, I often find that nobody wants to answer them. It could be for a variety of reasons: 1) I post the questions really late, and nobody sees them; 2) My questions are not clear, so nobody understands what my problem is; 3) The information is available elsewhere in the course (although I might not realize it), and people figure I should know this. 4) I might give the impression that I have not even tried to find the solution before asking the question. This is seldom true - sometimes I have spent hours and hours trying to solve a problem, without any success. 5) People think I have not read elsewhere in the discussion board - I actually spend a lot of time reading the discussion board, but sometimes I do forget what I have read, even if I have copied it down. 6) Other students - especially those posting to the discussion boards - are just as confused as I am.
However, sometimes some fellow students have been very helpful.
For all the hours of time I have put into this course, I don't expect that I have accomplished all the goals that were set for us. However, I do get the impression there are some other students who have also had had difficulties. I am sorry to hear that, and I wish I could have been more help than I have been. However, at least, I realize that is not simply a personal problem.
Search Engine for Chemistry!!!
Here's a link to research on designing a search engine for chemistry which won't return as many irrelevant results. The algorithm was designed in the Penn State College of Information Sciences and Technology. "With the new engine, scientists searching for research on CH4 or methane no longer have to wade through search results about Channel 4 or Chapter 4 as ChemxSeer will only return documents with references to the chemical formula."
This seems to be an important achievement in search engines, because one common problem with search engines, such as Google, is unusually large search return sets. The other problem is a null set, when you think some information should be available. I had some trouble with the latter when I was searching for links to my Thoreau fragment, and had to think of some more creative ways to search.
This seems to be an important achievement in search engines, because one common problem with search engines, such as Google, is unusually large search return sets. The other problem is a null set, when you think some information should be available. I had some trouble with the latter when I was searching for links to my Thoreau fragment, and had to think of some more creative ways to search.
Powered by ScribeFire.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)
