November 08, 2004
Findory Gets Personal
Do you know the difference between personalization and customization? Greg Linden, at Findory.com, does: "..personalization learns what you like from your actions...customization requires you to explicity specify what you want..." Considering the difficulty in getting people to do their own customization, personalization obviously has a lot of advantages in a many different areas. Personalization is what Amazon uses to display other items that might interest you, and it's what Findory uses to give you the news that you want to read. If that sounds interesting to you, take a look at the recent Searcher article by Gary Price, "Good Things Come in Small Packages, or Findory Gets Personal."
Posted by Cindy L. Chick at 09:20 PM | Comments (0)April 05, 2004
Keeping Current: Advanced Internet Strategies
I remember the exact moment that I became interested in the potential of RSS for research. I'd been familiar with RSS for several years and played around with feeds a bit, but RSS just wasn't thrilling me. Then I read Steven Cohen's article in Information Outlook, "The RSS revolution: Using RSS: An Explanation and Guide." When he said that he monitored news on a particular company via RSS I was hooked. My only complaint? He didn't detail how to do so in that particular article. But that's okay....he wrote a book!
Keeping Current: Advanced Internet Strategies to Meet Librarian and Patron Needs is a relatively short book with a long title; and it's chock-full of useful information on how to find current information on the web.
The book includes suggestions on current awareness sources for librarians including how to keep up on search engine developments, as well as information on reading and/or creating a blog. As he points out, creating a blog is one of the best ways to stay current on the web: "Although reading weblogs alone may allow one to keep current, librarians who write weblogs may tend to get more out of the material in that they are spending more time collecting the content, analyzing the materials and putting down their thoughts about it." He's right on the money; I consider that one of the biggest benefits to blogging.
Particularly useful are the chapters on web site monitoring and RSS feeds. The details on using Moreover content to monitor news on a company are included, as well as information on Hubmed for keeping current on medical research.
Things are changing fast in this area, which makes print publications almost immediately obsolete. So act fast...though sources for current information are increasing rapidly, the information in this book is still current and valuable. You can also supplement it with Steven Cohen's blog, LibraryStuff.
Steven definitely deserves the title, "Mover and Shaker".
Keeping Current: Advanced Internet Strategies to Meet Librarian and Patron Needs
by Steven M. CohenFebruary 29, 2004
Delivering Current Information to Your Organization - Presentation
There are a variety of ways to find and deliver news information to your organization, including tools offered by proprietary services as well as free options on the web. My presentation at the recent SCALL Institute discusses the methods of delivery, vendor tools, web services and a brief introduction to RSS feeds. (Be aware that the presentation is 3 meg in size, and could take some time to download.)
Posted by Cindy L. Chick at 06:10 PM | Comments (0)February 26, 2004
Delivering Current Information to Your Organization - Premium Alert Services
The traditional online venders, Lexis, Westlaw and Factiva all offer email alert services. These services notify users of new information added to the selected database that meets a specific search criteria. Figuring out which one best suits your needs can be difficult as there are sometimes subtle, sometimes significant, differences between them. I've summarized the basic features of these premium alerts in this handout compiled for my presentation at the SCALL Institute. Please do comment if you have any additional insights on any of these services.
[3/4/2004: Correction made on handout. Cost of full-text articles referenced in Westlaw's Intraclips is $2.75 per document.]
Posted by Cindy L. Chick at 09:18 AM | Comments (0)February 22, 2004
Delivering Current Information to Your Organization - Books & Articles
I will be presenting at the SCALL (Southern California Association of Law Libraries) Institute, Feb. 28th, on the various ways to deliver news and current information. Below is the bibliography for the session which includes selected materials on blogging, RSS, intranets and content licensing. I've included links when the materials are available on the web. Thanks to Marlene Bubrick for making this bibliography presentable.
INTRODUCTION
BOOKS
Cohen, Steven M. Keeping Current: Advanced Internet Strategies to Meet Librarian and Patron Needs. Chicago: American Library Association, 2003.
BLOGS
BOOKS
Blood, Rebecca. The Weblog Handbook: Practical Advice on Creating and Maintaining Your Blog. Cambridge, Mass.: Perseus Publishing, 2002.
Stauffer, Todd. Blog On: Building Online Communities with Web Logs.
Berkeley, Calif.; London: McGraw-Hill Osborne Media, 2002.
Stone, Biz. Blogging: Genius Strategies for Instant Web Content. Boston: New Riders, 2003.
ARTICLES
Huwe, Terence K. Born to Blog. Computers in Libraries, November 2003, at 44.
COPYRIGHT, LICENSING AND PRICING
Alford, Duncan E. Negotiating and Analyzing Electronic License Agreements,
94 Law Library Journal 621(Fall 2002).
White, Martin. Content at What Cost? EContent, August 2002, at 46.
RSS
BOOKS
Moffatt, M. RSS - A Primer for Publishers & Content Providers.
ARTICLES
Special: RSS? What is it? B/ITE - Bulletin of the Information Technology Division of SLA.
Broun, Kevin. Integrating Internet Content, Library Journal, October 15, 2003.
Cohen, Steven M. "The Rss Revolution: Using RSS: An
Explanation and Guide." Information Outlook, December 2002, at 6.
Kennedy, Dennis M. Beating Information Overload with News Aggregators, Law Practice Management (November/December 2003)
Mattison, David. So You Want to Start a Syndicated Revolution: RSS News Blogging for Searchers, Searcher, February 2003, at 38.
Tschabitscher, Heinz. Reading News and Blogs via Really Simple Syndication - Spam Free
INTRANETS
Fichter, Darlene. Blogging Software for Intranet Applications, Online,
January 2003, at 61.
WIRELESS DELIVERY
Steiner, Ina. Serving Up the Wireless Web, Online, September 2001, at 26.
Varnum, Ken. Information @ Your Fingertips, Online, September 2000, at 15.
MISCELLANEOUS
Smith, Steve. Push Back: An Old Technology Teaches Content New Tricks,
EContent, July 2003, at 33.
