Evaluating Websites

Overwhelmed by amount of websites and information and bombarded by information and advertisements it is necessary to have some criteria to evaluate websites.

During the exercise on resources for readers I visited many sites, some I likes some I did not like. However, in each case, my judgement is based on certain criteria:

• purpose and authority: who and what are important questions for me as I look for trusted information;
• audience: who this site is for, do I fit into this category?
• content and scope: scanning home page, what are the links, how deep the site is?
• currency: any regular updates? It is important as there are so many sites born once and left by itself...
• accuracy: any facts I can trust or is it just random writing on anything.

Armed in this knowledge I enjoyed these sites:

Encompass http://www.encompassculture.com/

BookTalk http://www.booktalk.org/


I am conformist and prefer safe E-environment, mainstream, and going with the crowd. I believe it also helps in many aspects of my job in the public library.

I plunged into Yahoo and Google book lovers' websites and got lost...
The BookLovers' Club (yahoo) http://groups.yahoo.com/group/thebookloversclub/
Alt+books+reviews (google) http://groups.google.com/group/alt.books.reviews/topics?lnk

These resources seem to be a waist of time for me, and this is only my own opinion. I believe there are some users who enjoy them but looking at certain posts, there is not much interaction nor authority, or clear purpose. It pays off to explore these sites as library customers may ask for advice regarding "Book lovers' e-resources".

I really enjoyed this activity! I have learnt a lot and I am looking forward to share my experience with others.

An Author's Perspective

I visited suggested websites with authors interviews, stories, shows. I am very impressed by the amount of websites and interviews produced! I searched for few names, Picoult, Diaz, Patterson, Butler, to name a few. Each of them had given at least two extensive interviews. I really enjoyed them all. It gave me so much insight into their books and stories and explained so much about their characters.

I believe that library customers would be very happy seeing some of these interviews too. One idea is to screen them during book clubs, especially short interviews, max 3 minutes and then continue the discussion.

I like Reading Rockets and Adolescent Literacy websites. It offers so much to readers, librarians and teachers! I wish it was available when I was at school! It would be great to screen some of the interviews and presentations at kids'&teens' book clubs, or permanently on a big screen during school holidays.

I subscribed to a couple of websites through ITunes and I am looking forward to receive what's hot in the literary world.

File Converters

Saved in the cloud...
I uploaded a MSWord document to GoogleDocs and ... what a disappointment...
Graphics have gone! Bullet points changed, bold and italic changed as well, Monotype corsiva font transformed into Verdana! Thanks God the table is still in the same place!...
I believe GoogleDocs are great idea for simple documents, word, spreadsheet, and simple PowerPoint slides. With Internet access in many places, business people, students, teachers, everyone, may work on the document collaboratively, if the content is more important than a layout, fonts, etc.
I used GoogleDocs few times while working on a project in a group and thoroughly enjoyed this application.

In a library computer centre environment, it is a good solutions for computer users. The only challenge is the time and people willingness to learn something new.
In my experience I had encountered few customers who were very suspicious about this application and did not want to use it. Well, I did my best to clear out any doubts. The choice is individual.

Readers and Booklovers

I had no idea that there are so many websites for readers&booklovers!
Yes, the Internet era has allowed users to build their own book lists, write and publish reviews, chat online about books, authors, genres. There are endless resources for discussions, questions, comments, suggestions...
However, not all websites are so great and worth our trust... I always remember to evaluate the site before signing in with my email address.
I got annoyed by google, yahoo and twitter book clubs sites. I believe it is not for me.
On another hand I enjoy Encompass and BookTalk, and few other site with more trustworthy editors.
I would love to join a book club chat online on day to have an experience of cyber book group. I may make it my extra step for this exercise!

Specialist Search Engines

Searching blinkx.com is so much fun! I searched for videos on NZ South Island, Milford Sound and Te Anau in particular. Results are fantastic: from commercials to private movies from trips, with full comments and music!
The menu on the right side of the screen lists snap shoots of each result so I can see the preview of each one. I believe if saves some time during research. Results are mainly from YouTube, however blinkx.com brings up also from Ifilm and bliptv.

Second part of my exercise consisted on searching Google Magazines. I got confused by results, lack of clearly indication what I am dealing with and what the results are. This is not my favourite search engine for magazines. If I wanted to search for articles in Times magazine I would rather search its archives rather than using a search engine for all web resources.

Google Web Searches

I searched all 4 search engines: Google, Bing, Yahoo and Exalead for the topic/keyword of "ebook".

I was very pleased with all features of all search engines. Each of them offers something different and makes the search more interesting. I enjoy timeline and wonder wheel on google.com as I find it very useful and entertaining as well.

The search results differ on each search engine as all of them use different algorithm for the search crawler. It seems that google.com dominates, however using exalead.com can bring great results too.

Yahoo.com offers a very large amount of results related to images. I believe there is a connection between yahoo.com and flickr.com.

Bing.com seems to be more commercially focused and not as sophisticated as others, but still good as a search engine.

I use google.com very often and take advantage of google.com/books as it brings text, cover, publications in an approachable manner.

I believe librarians should be familiar with search engines features as they offer good search options. With all respect to OPACs, online searching has advantages...

Google Alerts

I set up Google Alerts for "solar energy" topic.

Over a week, I received daily updates on this subjects. The results come from news, blogs, or companies publishing some improvements and achievements.

I did not redefine the search query as I was satisfied with results. However there were few duplicates. Overall I am happy how this service works and I would recommend to everyone interested in news on particular topics. Google Alerts offers an alternative to RSS and similar services.

I would recommend this application to library users as it is a good way of keeping an eye on news regarding their interests.

Keeping up to date with RSS feeds

I do agree that RSS feeds have their advantages in the world of constant communication and new information.
I have set up RSS feeds to my Google RSS reader and unfortunately the amount of information is just overwhelming! I would need to spend a couple of hours a day to read all new postings.
So, thanks but no thanks for RSS feeds.

Twitter and Libraries

Public Libraries fully embrace Twitter! It is great to see it happening!
I had a good look at Twitter accounts and postings of public libraries in New Zealand and overseas.
It seems that libraries use Twitter as a digital bulletin board by passing on information of all kinds: from available services and collections to particular events.
Some public libraries have more interaction with other members going on than others. I believe it is due to consistency and regularity of tweets from the library. There must be a dedicated and motivated staff members with technical knowledge and knowledge about the Library itself to pass this information on.
Some messages follow the same, repeated format (boring...!) others make an effort to tweet more entertaining and surprising posts.Yes, it is easier to have the same format, but members will get very tired of the same phrase. So make some effort and use great wealth of English vocabulary!
Public libraries use all kind of Web2.0 applications to present their collections&services. Flick seems to be the most popular to publish photos, there are some Facebook accounts/fan groups, and use of YouTube.
I would definitely follow on Twitter some libraries, these in New Zealand and overseas.

If I was tweeting in behalf of my library, I would tweet:
* Feeling creative? Get your hands on books from Interior Design collection (link to the catalogue displaying books from the collection)
* Get the autograph from (author's name) at the (book title) launch in ... Library on 20 June at 6pm
* Latest news from newspapers around the world via PressDisplay
* Looking for some warming reading this winter? Ask the librarian for the latest books in the Library

Searching in Twitter

I had an experience to search using Twitter search engine http://search.twitter.com/ and AskOnTwitter http://www.askontwitter.com/index.php on Sunday, 20 June 2010 - a day of presidential elections in Poland.

I was pleasantly surprised by the amount of tweets, these positive and negative. The search results are very similar: the similar number of hits and in similar order. However Twitter search engine shows time of the posting (e.g. 2 minutes ago) while AskOnTwitter does not. I consider it disadvantage of AskOnTwitter as it is quite important aspect of such a hot topic like presidential elections.

I spent some time watching new tweets coming on the subject of elections in Poland. Some tweets encouraged participation, some were negative towards politics and politicians, as you would expect in any society... I believe Twitter plays an interesting role in these elections and shows the dynamics in the society.

Twitter

Auckland City Council Twitter account is used to inform about current project of the Council, council meeting, promotion of events in the City and about current transport difficulties due to road works. The Council also reminds about obligations, like registering your dog, but in a friendly manner, for example: through a quiz about most popular dogs' names.
I do like its short and simple messages and also the fact that the number of posts changes every day.

FitMotivation/Fitness Motivation Twitter account aims to provide motivation and advice to its followers. The messages contain suggestions to keep fit. I believe the idea is good however postings are not regular which may be a problem for users as well.
This account has a lot of retwitts which may suggest that the community interacts a lot OR the owner is not motivated enough to post his/her own posts...

Creative Commons

1.a "Get with it.." is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 New Zealand License.

1.b The photo a bike that can only run on special roads http://www.flickr.com/photos/vrogy/514733529/sizes/o/ is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic License.

It means that the user is allowed to:
share — to copy, distribute and transmit the work, and
remix — to adapt the work.
Under the condition:
Attribution — You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work). http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

OpenID

Open ID is an interesting aspect of online security. It definitely has some advantages to a user: no need to relay on human memory to remember all user names and passwords! It is indeed very convenient and easy. However how safe is it? How long are user IDs and passwords kept for?

I believe a user needs to ask himself/herself how useful Open ID is in his/her case.

Personally I prefer to keep my user names and passwords in my memory and limit my membership in different websites. This assures me that it is only me who has control over my privacy and security.

And it keeps my brain and memory working well!

Online Privacy and Security

I believe that it helps to remind ourselves, family, friends and library patrons about online privacy and security.
The link to the video by the Office of Privacy Commissioner in Canada
helps to understand what this is about and how private information can be used even against users.
Libraries are public spaces and have an opinion of being safe. Users of public computers may forget that going online exposes them to the whole world, even from a safe environment of the public library. So yes, it is important to remind our patrons about online privacy and security issues, wherever they access Internet.
I would advice patrons to remember about the online security, especially while accessing bank accounts. I short message on the Pharos account docket: "Be safe online, don't show us your bank account!" could wake up the consciousness of online surfing.