Taking a look at the K-State Libraries homepage, I found that they have an RSS feed, but I didn’t see any evidence of the K-State Libraries blog. I even looked at the site index and searched “blog” on the site. I couldn’t find any direct and obvious links to the blog as a whole. I think this is too bad since the blog is well kept up and informative. Unfortunate that many people won’t be liable to stumble onto it, or even find it if they know about it.
Finally, I tracked it down. Under “About the Libraries” on the homepage, I clicked on “more about us…” and that took me to a page that listed “Library blogs” as a link. Whew! It’s not very simple to find, but I’m not very simple, either. Given that the library has a blog, I wasn’t surprised to find that it is using other “Web 2.0″ technologies (and formats) as well.
The blog doesn’t use tags, but they have chosen to display their categories as a cloud. I find this interesting because it is kind of the opposite of what I mentioned in my post about the MIT virtualref del.icio.us page. Where the virtualref del.icio.us page has the tags in list format, resembling the familiarity of category lists, the K-Libraries blog uses the cloud for categories, resembling tagging. I find the cloud inviting and informative in an intuitive way. I automatically know roughly how many blogs are in certain categories as compared to others by glancing at the difference in type size and boldness. Click on the link to the blog above, or see screenshot below:
I suppose that a user who is new to the idea of tagging and tag clouds might find this format a bit bewildering. It might look more like a wordart project than a list of categories. I think that mousing over the terms, and clicking on a couple would clarify their purpose, though. It may still not be clear what the difference in type-size and boldness refers to. Either way, I like the borrowing from the tagging world for formatting traditional categories.
Looking into the OPAC (I always like to see what a keyword search for “fudge” brings up), I noticed that there is an option right in the entry to tag the item in del.icio.us. The link opens the del.icio.us login page in a new window. (Kudos on targeting it to a new window, avoiding one of my pet peeves).
I’m not a del.icio.us user. I tried when it first hit the market, but I found it too much work to keep it up. Actually, I think my issue was that I was encouraged to set up an account by a friend and fellow poet. She was looking forward to creating a small community of poets and writers who could share their links with each other and enrich each other’s lives, poetry, etc. I felt kind of stressed to keep hunting for, and tagging new and interesting literary sites. It overwhelmed me and I gave it up, never turning back, until now.
Usually, there is some sort of way on an OPAC to save the items you find. I find that you can then save them to file, print them, or email them to yourself. All of these ways seem to reformat the entries so that I find them difficult to read. I think it is so much better to be able to set up a del.icio.us account and then tag the entries in there. That way they can be organized however I want. I could also share them with other students who might benefit from my research in future assignments. I like the idea. I would use this tool if I found it in an OPAC.
The K-State Libraries seem to be concerned about adapting to new technologies with their blog and RSS feed. I wasn’t surprised to find the link to del.icio.us, given the other technologies. I would suggest also setting up a del.icio.us account for the library. I think that is a great way to add to the library’s effectiveness as a place to look for information.
