[LISNews] The LISNews For February 11th 2010
The LISNews Librarian News By Email
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Thu Feb 11 11:11:53 CST 2010
Be sure to check out all the essays!
http://lisnews.org/essays/
The contest runs until the end of the month and we already have more than a few great essays!
Let's see what the most popular stories have been for the past 30 days:
-[1] - Coming Out Now...the iPad (aka the Apple Tablet)
http://lisnews.org/node/35773/
-[2] - If Your Password Is 123456, Just Make It HackMe
http://lisnews.org/node/35710/
-[3] - It's Good to Be a Librarian
http://lisnews.org/node/35600/
-[4] - Book Marketing Idea: Jacket + Bookmark
http://lisnews.org/node/35704/
-[5] - Former librarian indicted
http://lisnews.org/node/35709/
And here's the latest from LISNews:
--Librarians seek linguistic key to unlock mystery book
- http://lisnews.org/node/35923/
-Front Page Story by Blake Posted Thursday February 11th at 12:06 PM
-Read 26 times - 0 Comments
Librarians seek linguistic key to unlock mystery book There's a mystery at the main branch of the Reading Public Library.
And it doesn't take Sherlock Holmes to suspect it involves a book. Above, Librarian Kathy J. Hess handles the mysterious
book, written in an unknown script and language, that she found in a room at the Reading Public Libary. Behind her is
Reading Public Library Director Frank Kasprowicz. The book, with its frayed and flowered fabric cover, has yellowed pages
filled with handwritten black and a faded orange cursive script, evoking a highly decorative ancient manuscript in Hindi or
Sanskrit, perhaps from India or Persia.
--E-Book Price Increase May Stir Readers’ Passions
- http://lisnews.org/node/35922/
-Front Page Story by Bibliofuture Posted Thursday February 11th at 11:31 AM
-Read 70 times - 1 Comments
In the battle over the pricing of electronic books, publishers appear to have won the first round. The price of many new
releases and best sellers is about to go up, to as much as $14.99 from $9.99. But there may be an insurgency waiting to
pounce: e-book buyers. Over the last year, the most voracious readers of e-books have shown a reflexive hostility to prices
higher than the $9.99 set by Amazon.com and other online retailers for popular titles. Story in the NYT
--The Importance of Word-Sense Disambiguation in Online Information Retrieval
- http://lisnews.org/node/35921/
-Blog Entry by Anonymous Patron Posted Thursday February 11th at 11:04 AM
-Read 21 times - 0 Comments
By Jeffrey Beall The Problem Word-sense disambiguation is the ability of an online system to differentiate the different
senses, or meanings, of words in online searching. Say for example that you need information on boxers, so you access an
Internet search engine and enter "boxers" in the search box. The search engine then finds documents that contain
the word "boxers" and returns those documents to you as search results. You probably already see the problem here
-- the word "boxers" is a homonym with several different meanings, and the search engine doesn’t know which
meaning you want. Boxers are a breed of dog, a category of athlete, and a kind of men’s garment. It’s also the possessive of
a surname, as in "Barbara Boxer’s bill …" Finally, boxers were those who participated in the Boxer Rebellion in
China from 1899 to 1901. There may be additional meanings. Information retrieval in libraries has transitioned from the
high precision and recall that legacy library systems offered to the probabilistic and linguistic free-for-all that internet
search engines now provide. One of the great values of legacy library databases was that they effectively handled polysemy
-- the ability of a term to have multiple meanings -- in searching. Because online searching needs word-sense disambiguation
to be effective and precise, it’s important for all librarians to understand the problem and its solutions. The Past
Traditional library systems deal with word-sense disambiguation deterministically. Controlled vocabularies, such as the
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH), artificially force multiple concepts known by the same word to be expressed
differently and unambiguously in metadata. Take the word "poles" for example. It can mean a tall, thin
structure, such as a light pole, and it can mean people from Poland. To separate these concepts out, LCSH creates metadata
records that use "Poles (Engineering)" and "Polish people" to name the two concepts, instead of the
ambiguous "poles." In this way, it eliminates the ambiguity and creates unique headings for each concept. In the
past this disambiguation has been known as an element of "authority control," but I hesitate to use that term
because it makes some people instantly stop reading. The term "word-sense disambiguation" comes from information
science and has become the more current term for this aspect of authority control. Search Precision Disambiguation in
databases is directly related to the concept of search precision. Precision here is the proportion of relevant items
retrieved in a search to the total number of items retrieved in the search. For example, you may search "tanks" to
get information about military tanks, but if your search results are mainly about water or fuel tanks, the search suffers
from low precision. Ideally, databases should only include relevant hits in search results. The Solutions -- Users
There are several solutions to the homonym problem, and each has its advantages and weaknesses. First, users themselves
often solve the problem by adding additional words to their search terms. For example, if you are looking for information
about cookies, that is, the files that some web sites put on your computer, you might enter "cookies computers" to
increase the precision of the search. Similarly, if you are searching for information on edible cookies, you might enter
"cookies recipes" to eliminate many of the hits that deal with computer cookies. -- Vendor Databases Second,
some library vendor databases, such as Ebsco’s Academic Search Premier, attempt to algorithmically separate out search
results by concept when the searcher enters a homonym as a search term. Usually this works by the system generating a column
with links grouped by subject. For example, a search on boxers might generate a link to "Boxing (Sports)" and
"Boxers (Dogs)." The problem with this approach is that is a probabilistic guess that the search engine makes, and
these guesses are often wrong. They only work to a certain level of accuracy. -- Other Algorithmic Approaches Third,
much research has been carried out on word-sense disambiguation in large textual corpora. This solution is expensive to set
up, but after the programming is done it’s cheap to re-use it. Much of this type of word-sense disambiguation is done using
ontologies (mappings of concepts and relationships), so it works best when it’s limited to a specific domain or area of
study, such as mathematics, for example. This approach also is probabilistic and is therefore always less than 100%
accurate. -- Legacy Library Systems The final approach is the one used in legacy library systems such as online
library catalogs. For example, the fields of psychology and chemistry each use the term sublimation to mean two different
things. In psychology, according to WordNetWeb, it means "modifying the natural expression of an impulse or instinct …
to one that is socially acceptable." In chemistry, the term refers to a change from solid to gas without passing
through a liquid phase. In LCSH, these terms are differentiated using glosses: Sublimation (Psychology) Sublimation
(Chemistry) Of course, the weakness of this authority control approach (oops, I said it again) is that it requires humans
to perform the indexing, so the process is often too expensive for large databases. Ultimately, the most successful
solution may be one that incorporates the best of both manual and algorithmic processes such as automated processes that use
manually-created authority records to carry out the disambiguation. The Future Word sense disambiguation is an important
and crucial element of online information retrieval because it saves a searcher’s time and because it increases search
precision. As online databases grow exponentially in size, word-sense disambiguation will garner more attention among
library and information scientists, who will improve existing solutions and who will develop new solutions. Library users
and online searchers will come to benefit from the greater search precision that word-sense disambiguation provides.
Jeffrey Beall is Metadata Librarian at the University of Colorado Denver. Email: jeffrey.beall at ucdenver.edu
--Library Anti-Valentine bash canceled because of complaints
- http://lisnews.org/node/35920/
-Front Page Story by Blake Posted Thursday February 11th at 9:51 AM
-Read 144 times - 0 Comments
Hearts may be broken now that Anti-Valentine bash is canceled Teens who planned on protesting all things chocolate and
mushy at an Anti-Valentine’s Day Party will have to find another outlet for their angst. The event, originally slated for
Saturday, was canceled Monday due to what interim library director LeeAnn Briese said was a misunderstanding about the
spirit and intent of the program, planned for ages 12-18 who don’t get excited about the holiday.
--Wintry Literature for a Snowy Day
- http://lisnews.org/node/35919/
-Front Page Story by birdie Posted Thursday February 11th at 9:20 AM
-Read 118 times - 0 Comments
A four minute piece from NPR's All Things Considered. Story mentions many of the classics, such as Ezra Jack Keats "The
Snowy Day", Laura Ingalls Wilder "The Long Winter" and Orhan Pamuk's "Snow" (in which the word snow appears maybe...500
times?? I'm still reading it). Commentors added their 'snow' titles.
--Facebook as a Library Tool: Perceived v. Actual Use
- http://lisnews.org/node/35917/
-Front Page Story by Blake Posted Thursday February 11th at 7:59 AM
-Read 297 times - 3 Comments
Ye Olde Resource Shelf pointed the way to a preprint of Facebook as a Library Tool: Perceived v. Actual Use. Libraries, in
the past few years, have begun to examine the possibilities available to them through social networking sites like MySpace
and Facebook as a tool for library awareness and marketing. As Facebook has come to dominate the social networking site
arena, more libraries have created their own library pages on Facebook to create library awareness and to function as a
marketing tool. This has spurred a large amount of how-to articles about the uses for Facebook in libraries as well as
research about how librarians and libraries use Facebook. This paper examines reported versus actual use of Facebook in
libraries to identify discrepancies between intended goals and actual use. The results of the 2009 study by Hendrix,
Chiarella, Hasman, Murphy and Zafron, about the use of Facebook in libraries, is used as a guide to gauge the perceived and
actual uses for Facebook in this study.
--Libpunk Mentorship
- http://lisnews.org/node/35915/
-Front Page Story by Blake Posted Thursday February 11th at 7:33 AM
-Read 173 times - 0 Comments
Libpunk Mentorship Sarah Glassmeyer: "here is a compilation some of the best advice I’ve been offered by mentors through my
life – from high school through law school to present day." 1) Own Your Stuff 2) It's Okay to Say "No" 3) It's Okay to Cry
4) Fake it Until You Make It 5) Forget'em if They Can’t Take a Joke
--Instantly online-17 golden rules for mobile social networks
- http://lisnews.org/node/35914/
-Front Page Story by Blake Posted Thursday February 11th at 7:32 AM
-Read 155 times - 0 Comments
Instantly online-17 golden rules for mobile social networks Instantly online-17 golden rules to combat online risks and
for safer surfing mobile social networks The EU ‘cyber security’ Agency - ENISA (the European Network and Information
Security Agency) today presents a new report on accessing social networks over mobile phones, ‘Online as soon as it
happens“. The report points out the risks and threats of mobile social networking services, e.g. identity theft, corporate
data leakage and reputation risks of mobile social networks. The report also gives 17 ‘golden rules’ on how to combat these
threats.
--New Owner For Kirkus Reviews/now Kirkus Media
- http://lisnews.org/node/35913/
-Front Page Story by birdie Posted Wednesday February 10th at 9:14 PM
-Read 159 times - 0 Comments
Looks like Kirkus Reviews will live another day to praise — and skewer — authors, but with some rather unorthodox owners
for a publication with a long literary pedigree. Herb Simon, the owner of the Indiana Pacers, the NBA team, and chairman
emeritus of Simon Property Group, a shopping mall developer, has bought the venerable journal of prepublication book reviews
from the Nielsen Company, which announced in December it was closing the magazine. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Mr. Simon, who is co-owner of an independent bookstore in Montecito, CA, Telecote Books, has appointed Marc Winkelman, chief
executive of Calendar Holdings, owner of several chains of seasonal retailers, to be chief executive of what will be
re-named Kirkus Media. Mr. Winkelman is also taking a small stake in the company. NYTimes Media Blog.
--Man to Serve 140 Days in Jail for Beating Houston Librarian
- http://lisnews.org/node/35912/
-Front Page Story by birdie Posted Wednesday February 10th at 8:43 PM
-Read 346 times - 2 Comments
He must serve 140 days in county jail for brutally beating a librarian in December. Here's the story about the assault
incident. The sentence against the man was finalized Wednesday after he reached a plea deal with prosecutors for his
misdemeanor assault causing bodily injury charge. The 57 days he already has spent in jail will be credited toward his
sentencing. He pummeled a librarian at the Houston Public Library's Robinson-Westchase Branch after she warned him twice
about his disruptive behavior. Houston Fox reported on the sentencing.
--RIP: Lillian Moore Bradshaw, Librarian and Trailblazer
- http://lisnews.org/node/35911/
-Front Page Story by birdie Posted Wednesday February 10th at 4:43 PM
-Read 175 times - 0 Comments
The news came in late last night that former Dallas Public Library director Lillian Moore Bradshaw had died at 95. Jerome
Weeks, in his blog Art & Seek memorializes the woman who more or less made the downtown library what it is, not just the
building but its remarkable collections in first editions and art books, and who also significantly expanded the city’s
library system. And from The Dallas Morning News: According to City Manager Mary Suhm, herself a former librarian,
Bradshaw, 95, was the first woman in the United States to direct a major library system. She directed the system from 1962
to 1984. "She was an amazing woman and set an example for all of us in government," Suhm said this morning. Bradshaw was
key to the raising of $40 million for the construction of the J. Erik Jonsson Central Library.
--Casper the Commuting Cat to be Immortalised in New Children's Book
- http://lisnews.org/node/35910/
-Front Page Story by birdie Posted Wednesday February 10th at 12:26 PM
-Read 251 times - 0 Comments
Dewey was a great one, but he will not be the only cat to be remembered in a book. Such a fellow was Plymouth U.K.'s
Casper, who sadly was run over by a car while crossing the road to queue up for his daily bus ride last month. Casper was
an amazing cat who fancied himself a daily commuter. His life on the buses came to international attention last year. It
turned out that for four years he had been riding the no 3 bus, passing the Devon city's historic dockyard and naval base,
en route. He tended to curl up on a seat or sometimes purr around fellow passengers' legs, all the way to the final stop,
stay on and make the return journey. Drivers got used to letting him off at the correct stop. Owner Susan Finden, 65, said
she would be donating any money she makes from the book to animal charities. She said: 'It's lovely to think he will go on
in memories - and with this book his story will live on forever. The book will be published by Simon & Schuster next
summer. More on Casper in The Guardian and The Bookseller UK.
--Getting the Stats on Connecticut's Libraries
- http://lisnews.org/node/35908/
-Front Page Story by birdie Posted Wednesday February 10th at 8:43 AM
-Read 265 times - 1 Comments
Stamford Times: The libraries are always keeping records. They know how many books go out, how many are returned and which
ones are overdue. They know how many people come to their programs, and they know how many people walk through their doors.
But how many people use the public library on a single day? On Feb. 18, the state's libraries will find out. Next Thursday,
150 of the state's 285 public and academic libraries will closely monitor their activities for one day. The event is called
Snapshot Day. "It's like a slice of life," said Linda Avellar, spokeswoman for both Stamford's Ferguson Library and for the
Connecticut Library Association's publicity committee. "[We want to] get a sense of how heavily our libraries are used."
Snapshot Day -- a joint project of the CLA, the Connecticut State Library, and the Connecticut Library Consortium -- is
meant to collect specific data.
--Heat Up Your Kindle With a Free Penny-Dreadful
- http://lisnews.org/node/35906/
-Front Page Story by birdie Posted Wednesday February 10th at 7:18 AM
-Read 310 times - 0 Comments
It's a red-hot, red letter day for Amazon Kindle owners. The British Library has announced that 65,000 rare 19th century
literary first editions will be offered as free downloads to owners of the device beginning in Spring of 2010. Thanks to a
joint venture with Microsoft, the no-cost titles will reproduce the original type-face and illustrations from such classic
works as Charles Dickens's Bleak House, Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, and Thomas Hardy's The Mayor of Casterbridge.
While having an electronic facsimile of a valuable first edition is a treat for fans of highbrow literature, what about
readers seeking the pleasure that comes from biting into a nice, juicy, raw, piece of pulp? Can kinky Kindle owners looking
for graphic kicks with a side of sensationalism find anything to sate their savage appetites from the staid British Library?
Happily, along with the high class fiction, the UK library's freebies will also include the world's finest collection of
cheap, tawdry, lowdown, lowbrow, Victorian trash. Get ready to heat up your cold Kindle with a torrid "Penny Dreadful."
>From Seatle PI's Nancy Mattoon of Book Patrol.
--The Library Reloaded: Library Cards
- http://lisnews.org/node/35904/
-Blog Entry by AndyW Posted Wednesday February 10th at 4:34 AM
-Read 324 times - 7 Comments
While I was taking a break working on a blog entry, this post by Patrick Sweeney about getting rid of library cards showed
up in my Google Reader. He talks about replacing library cards with user names and passwords, with authentication control
happening at the library locations. I thought this was such a different take on the one traditional part of the library
experience that I started to write a reply. What I wrote grew beyond what felt like a simple note so I decided to drop my
current post and craft this one. So,  with the spirit of Patrick’s post in mind (getting rid of library cards), I
started to think about what existing technology that we have now that could be adopted to fit this ultimate goal. In leaning
back in my desk chair and rolling the puzzle around in my head, I brought it down to a few requirements: provide the same
level of authentication (for privacy), provide the same level of permissions on and off site (for access), and be arguably
easier and cheaper than the process it replaces (issuing library cards). Under those guidelines, I’d like to propose some
additional alternatives to the library card (with varying degrees of viability). 1.) Cell phone wallet: Popular in the
countries like Japan and South Korea, your library card information is stored on your mobile device. Simply by swiping your
phone on a signal reader, you can use it for all of your library business (e.g. checking your account, borrowing materials).
Computers in the library could be fitted with readers. For offsite authentication (such as remote account and database
access), the user could simply retrieve their stored card number from the phone. The major con for this is that not
everyone has a cell phone, whether they are too young (think babies, toddlers, kindergarten through whenever their parents
want to five them phones) or they cannot afford one with cell phone wallet capability. While the technology is popular in
other countries, it has not taken off in the United States. In addition, this could also pose account management issues with
people wanting to lend their card to others to check out materials, use computers, and other situations of permissible card
lending. Unlike a card, a cell phone does not lend itself as well to lending. 2.) Fingerprint Scanner: No need to carry a
card when you are using your fingerprint for authentication. Fingerprint scanners have come down in price to being under
$100, a figure that is relatively easy to reach. Just scan your thumb or forefinger at the circulation desk or computer lab
to prove your identity. It’s more reliable and secure than a library card since fingerprints are a unique biometric. The
patron’s privacy is secure behind the fingerprint; it also completely removes the need to remember a library card while
providing an accurate way of identifying patrons. As nifty as this would be, it completely fails the off site
authentication test. It would have to rely on a supplemental piece of material so that people could remotely access accounts
and databases. However, for libraries where the materials and databases are not generally reached offsite (think of certain
types of special libraries), this might be the right approach to securing access to sensitive materials. Like the cell phone
wallet, it also creates the same issues for lending of library cards or allowing multiple people to use a card. Also, it
does not address the issue of the small number of people who are without hands. (My next suggestion doesn’t get rid of the
library card, per se. However, I think it does present another possibility to the alternative of the library card.) 3.) A
hybrid RFID card/’one button’ authenticator: Ok, so this device doesn’t exist, but it does take two types of existing
technologies that would not work for the purposes of this idea experiment and put them together. Yes, it’s still something
people would need to carry, but I think it could have broader implications and aspirations for a simple library card. The
RFID provides the on site identification for materials. Swipe the card past a reader, do your library business, done. I
think the potential for RFID in libraries goes further by acting as a library card in multiple locations. The idea of a
single card being able to access multiple locations (for example, your library, your state’s library, and the Library of
Congress) would be the ideal; a single library card to access everything. The one button authenticator provides the off
side identification. Pressing the button provides a unique and time sensitive series of numbers to be entered into the
interface to provide access. This is used currently in the private sector for secure computer networks (including the
largest massively multiplayer online roleplaying game, World of Warcraft, with over 13 million players) Within a combined
system, it could provide remote access to accounts and subscription materials for a spectrum of libraries. While it solves
the problems of remote access that are shared by the cell phone wallet and fingerprinting, each technology carries its own
baggage. RFID has privacy and security implications that make it a vulnerable means while the ‘one button’ authenticator has
the chance of failing like any other computer chip. In addition, there is the additional cost this would incur in the form
of cards, readers, and staff training. I will admit that it is a bit of technology overkill for solving a simpler problem,
but it was still fun to imagine. I really liked Patrick’s post because it was bold in its questioning of a status quo.
Perhaps libraries won’t replace cards, but it doesn’t hurt to go back and examine practices to either reaffirm, renovate, or
remove them. It is this kind of inquiry that tests the boundaries and makes the occupation and practice more interesting to
me. Overall, I think there are alternatives to library cards, but it is on a location and library type basis. There are
enough nuances to this that, in the right situation, a library could replace their cards with something else. Perhaps it is
on this micro scale that card alternatives could be considered, so long as it is a true replacement and capable of
community-wide acceptance. In any case, I wouldn’t think it would be a daring statement to say that anything that eases the
patron-library interaction would be possible welcome addition.   Previous Library Reloaded post: Collections AndyW
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