RSS -- sssssssss

I have to confess, I did not complete the assignment by actually setting up an RSS aggregator and attaching feeds for two reasons -- I didn't have the time and I didn't want another thing out there that I wasn't going to use with my name and account on it. I did, however, look at Topix.net and Syndic8. I preferred Syndic8 to Topix; Topix tried to "help" me more than I wanted and I wasn't successful in searching it. Syndic8 was easier to just dive in and use.

So instead of actually setting up an RSS feed, I'll just talk about their usefulness in institutions. They can be a great tool for pushing information to your patron (and thus reminding them of you) -- provided you have pertinent information that is updated frequently. News organizations are making heavy use of RSS feeds. For Libraries and Museums, the most common use appears to be for regularly updated lists (new materials, exhibit schedules, press release items, etc.) However, this information has to be useful and timely (i.e. updated at least weekly) or you'll become irrelevant to your user. But if you have such information, RSS feeds can be a very useful tool in reaching your audiences.

Flickering Flickr

Our assignment this week was to look at Flickr. I've looked at it before. It's a fun tool for individuals to post their photographs around to their friends and share them easily. But I'm not sold on its usefulness for institutions.

The Library of Congress, Library of Virginia and a handful of others have signed up and posted collections. But I feel that we're just throwing things out the door, hoping someone will want to pick something up. It's certainly one approach, but I'm not sure it's the most effective one for institutions that are short on time and money.

Rather than spend time uploading images to the Flickr server, I'd rather see us upload our Museum and Manuscript records to OCLC. OCLC is a partner of Google and other search engines and provides portions of their database to add to the search engine's databases. Then all that material will be available for searching through search engines. If there's a hit, they'll see the record and any image we've digitized.

Now that Cross database searching is up (yippee!), we'll soon be launching a list of digital collections. Because the main page will be hosted on the VHS web site, the search engines will crawl the collection titles, and because it launches a predefined search through STAR, new images will be added to each collection as created. Everyone who's seen it thinks it's very cool.

So while Flickr serves a purpose for individuals, I'm not sure it provides good solutions for institututions wanting to get their collections out.

Ta-Dah!

After 11 years of work, we have finally made cross database searching available. This means so much to me. This is the project I was brought here to work on -- install the system, help everyone get the data on it, make the online catalog work, have searching work across databases, and oh yes, let people see the images when something is digitized. We have successfully accomplished all of this. There are very few institutions who have pulled this off and we should be proud of what we've done.

Happy dance!

Why E-Luddite

I decided to call this blog "Views from an E-Luddite" because while I work with technology for a living, I prefer not to be on the cutting edge. One of my favorite tech columns was called "The Trailing Edge," and that's really my comfort zone. Let other people be on the cutting edge and bleed -- I prefer less painful advances in technology.

Regarding Web 2.0, Library 2.0, Whatever 2.0, there are a lot of useful things there for a museum/library/historical society -- and some things I have to wonder whether they'd ever be worth doing. So, as this exercise progresses, I'll be giving my opinions and feelings on each aspect. If you care, you can read my blog, if not, don't.

This is way more fun than I thought it was going to be.