Google Search Being Challenged!!

Google Search is being challenged by those associated with Wikipedia - no, not legally challenged in court, but by new engineering efforts to challenge Google Search's predominance in web searching. Will there be new improvements on the horizon? What will this mean for libraries and librarians, as well as others who seek and access information on the web? Right now, search engines are proprietary, so we don't know how they rank what they locate. Will that change? See this article from NewScientist.

Women Hybrid Librarians/Technologists

Here's a link to an article from Library Journal.com about women librarians who like to play with technology, and how they have pursued their technological interests as librarians. It is interesting to see women as active and instrumental in how technology has been applied to reference services and circulation in libraries, right from the start. When I first learned that there are two basic ways people tend to approach technology - those who see it as a tool to get something useful done and those who like to play with it - the former was often connected to women and the latter to men. What is interesting here is that these women really seem to combine both qualities.

Luddites Still Abound!!!!

I think it is essential for libraries to consider their full range of users - from those who are technically savvy to those who are either indifferent to, or annoyed by technology. How this may be done may vary according to what type of library it is - public library, children's library, academic library, industry library.....etc. Here's a link to an article about a Pew survey, as reported in The Star, originally from "The Economist". Apparently, in a survey of 4000 American adults - the ages of the adults are not indicated which I see as a weakness in the reporting, if not, perhaps in the study - 49% seemed to have Luddite tendencies, instead of being "early Adopters" of technology. The latter is a marketing notion, like that of focus groups, used to try to determine future marketing campaigns. This survey does not indicate whether early adopters actually act as leaders of the pack. If they do, then we would expect many of these Luddites to eventually be won over to technology. The question also becomes one of whether there should be an educational campaign to overcome their initial resistance, and what part libraries should or should not play in such an educational campaign. When does such education in computer literacy become one of propaganda, of one seen as limiting choice rather than maximizing choice? However, a full 48% of the respondents to this survey did say that internet technology has given them more control over their lives, while 67% stated they enjoyed the choice given them through the world wide web. One wonders then whether the headlines of this article "Attention, tech laggards. You're not alone" is simply misleading.

Turing, Internet Security and Digital Libraries

Turing's test was originally intended to determine whether computers could be considered "intelligent" or "think" - if one could not distinguish a human from a computer then the computer was considered "intelligent", leaving completely aside whether or not this meant the computer was actually "thinking", which is a vague term. This plays an important role in artificial intelligence programs. However Turing's test has also become important for internet/computer security in the use of CAPTCHAs, which stands for "Completely Automated Public Turing Text to Tell Computers and Humans apart". These are those distorted letters you see in registering for certain websites that you need to copy - humans can recognize these letters, while generally computer programs cannot. Now, here's a link that describes another use for the Turing Test, dubbed reCAPTCHAs which is directly related to digitization of books and manuscripts: Through reCAPTCHAs multiple computer users can be used to identify words in print that OCR (optical character recognition) often cannot understand because of fuzziness in the original, underlined text, and marginalia. This is interesting collaborative effort, depending upon the cooperation of strangers, and their agreement with each other. One wonders what its implications could be for various archives and private libraries, such as those of Nietzsche, etc. where books often include marginalia. One wonders whether there will be a future use for handwritten notebooks that have to be deciphered.

Humor Helps!

Check out this URL to

http://live.psu.edu/story/24385

cheer yourself up or at least to know why you should cheer yourself up!!!

Marlo's View

This post is about my parent's dog, Marlo, who was an abandoned waif my parents took into their Cape Cod home. In a later post I can post some photos of Cape Cod. Marlo, despite the fact that she was abandoned, and her hair was long and tangly and all coated and dirty when she was found (or rescued), has always been a very social and friendly dog and took well to a haircut and bath (unlike many other dogs). This isn't one of her most interesting poses and I cannot tell if she is glum or quizzical in this photo, but she looks comfortable enough. Perhaps how I feel after spending half the night on-line :)

Experimentalism

Today I will comment on my last blog, which was an experiment in using ScribeFire to make entries on my blog - obviously I did something wrong because interesting random letters appear at the end of each sentence. I think I entered that blog having clicked on rich text icon - perhaps it was the wrong icon. A friend tells me that the fonts between the browsers I used I might not watch, but I am not sure that that is the problem. I might try ScribeFire again tomorrow, and see if I can get it to work correctly.

I am thinking that I should have named this blog "Ambrosia's Experiments", because it is more likely to be a series of experiments in collecting photos, and links from the web. In any case, I do not pretend that these experiments are unified by any sense of method except trial and error, and if they come under any paradigm (I've been reading Thomas Kuhn's "Structure of Scientific Revolutions") I am not conscious of it.

Mixfusion and Disorganization Strike

This is the first blog I have ever done, and the first post on the blog.  I have to maintain this blog for library school, and I am presently mixed up and confused - what my junior high science teacher used to call "mixfused":  I seem to be eternally catching up with what I am supposed to do, that is,  when I can even keep track of what I am supposed to do.  In fact, I am supposed to post on this blog at least three times per week, and it is now the end of the week - as I stated, I am behind;  not left behind as in those NY Times best sellers, but running behind, regardless of how fast I run, and how late or early I am on-line.



I had to check out other blogs of my classmates to see what could in fact be put on a blog.  I don't presently know how to put photos, or audio clips or links on my blog, but, if I figure out how to do all that, I will adding such info in the future. 



So, so far, there is not much info in Ambrosia's Info blog, and it doesn't sound as if there's much ambrosia (food for the gods) either.  If you have any info or ambrosia to share, please feel free to respond to this blog.  Info on how to add photos, audio clips, links, etc. would be appreciated.

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