Wednesday, October 29, 2008

VuFind

The VuFind demonstration was nice and straightforward.

The "Narrow Search" column that appears on the right is concise and clear - less confusing than the clusters used in Aquabrowser, if somewhat less happening and visually appealing to the MySpace generation.

For librarians who like cataloguing - and let's face it, who doesn't? :) - this look should appeal, as the layout looks comfortingly like Subject Headings.

These links work pretty effectively and Similar Items lists are also interesting - only as wrong as Amazon or LibraryThing, but not bad.

I thought I'd throw "armadillo" at the National Library's VuFind and the results were fascinatingly eclectic, including a picture, but somehow almost completely wide of the mark. Yes, it is the name of pieces of music, corporate authors and the rest, but it might have been nice to have had the term "Animals" at least appear in the subject area.

Poor old armadillo - the brand has been widely appropriated, but the beastie himself (apart from the one image) appears to have vanished from this main page.

Perverse, I know, but it gives some idea of the foibles of this kind scattershot approach.

Thursday, October 23, 2008

LinkedIn

LinkedIn appears to be a fine initiative. I was pleased to find that it actually had a category for "Libraries," rather than just "Education" or "Community Services" or similar. Yay, them - a promising beginning.

I do feel a bit over all the online "social networking" (how many MySpace friends does anyone need?!) - but LinkedIn appears to be achieving something a bit different.

This is my somewhat basic LinkedIn profile.

Looking under "Swinburne University of Technology Colleagues" seemed like a good place to begin, so I selected some and sent invitations. I also found a few who weren't in this list by searching their names.