21. Aquabrowsing.

Is it my imagination or was there much more material to read this time? I keep clicking on links which lead me to other articles where there are countless more links and I become lost in an underwater labyrinth. I 'dived' in yesterday afternoon (Sunday) and it is already Monday afternoon, I've been frequently coming up for air! I'm really, really impressed with the Aquabrowser facility though even if I haven't quite got to grips with it yet.I'm also impressed with the online catalogue of OBA, Amsterdam Public Library.I've made my own 'My Discoveries' account(pleased to see instructions in English, when are we going to include that in our catalogue?)and added one children's book to my list(a bit confused as I thought this would not be made public but received the message that it would be) with tags, rating but no review as yet.I tried to access the '23 Dingen' account on Worldcat but was told that the password was invalid?? Perhaps I'll make my own account there too.
I found the article taken from bibliotheekblad- 2008/24 very interesting:'Als mensen willen vinden wat ze zoeken moeten ze ook weten wat ze willen zoeken. Mensen zijn daarvoor sterk afhankelijk van aanbevelingen. Aanbevelingen die op heel veel verschillende manieren georganiseerd kunnen worden. Dat kan de bibliothecaris verzorgen in de bibliotheek of op de website van de bibliotheek maar dat kan ook volautomatisch worden gegenereerd op basis van je aankoop- of leengedrag zoals bijvoorbeeld bij Amazon.com en bij onze eigen Muziekweb gebeurt. Maar je kunt je ook laten inspireren door wat gewone mensen van een boek, cd of dvd vinden.'
This raised for me the question as to how responsible libraries are for influencing the choice of reading matter for their public? I'm thinking aloud here and can answer my own question. A public library should provide readers for the most part with the sort of books/information/entertainment they want but 'popularity' should not be the only criterium for adding an item to the collection.If we are only influenced by those computer literate readers who are confident to contribute tags, ratings and reviews, will we ignore the needs of and therefore alienate others?
I'm certainly not finished with Thing 23 yet but for the moment will leave you with a glimpse of the future, also discovered in my 'aquatic exploration.'
Web 3.0!!!
“The Semantic Web is a set of technologies which are designed to enable a particular vision for the future of the Web – a future in which all knowledge exists on the Web in a format that software applications can understand and reason about. By making knowledge more accessible to software, software will essentially become able to understand knowledge, think about knowledge, and create new knowledge. In other words, software will be able to be more intelligent – not as intelligent as humans perhaps, but more intelligent than say, your word processor is today.” Nova Spivack
Spivack also says, in language I understand, that the Semantic web ,“helps individuals and communities mine and share information from Internet sites, blogs, and social media services, such as YouTube.” So, we're going to be replaced by robots after all!!

Book Festival Hay-on-Wye, Wales

I keep intending to begin reading 'ding 21' but am constantly distracted by reading my Netvibes page. Today I discovered a new (for me) podcast from Guardian Books about the Literary festival which takes place every year in Hay on Wye, Wales.It begins this weekend and goes on until 31st May. I've been listening to interviews with Sarah Waters (Fingersmith, Tipping the Vevet), my old tutor and ex poet laureate, Andrew Motion, the u.k children's laureate, Michael Rosen, A.S Byatt about her latest novel and the special guest this year, Desmond Tutu.
I was interested to read about a magazine called 'The Scribblers' which has been set up by the young people of Hay encouraging them to interview writers, write book reviews and recommend books to each other but also to write creatively themselves.The magazine is then sent to all the local schools. Perhaps we could encourage something like this in our Children's library in collaboration with the schools.
Also interesting for me is that this year my friend,Jo will be at the festival, promoting her short stories which have just been published in an anthology called "Chimera."

Library Thing.

I've been looking again at Library Thing and saw our library in the list of venues on the local events page. Are we going to post our up coming talks by writers in the list of up coming local events as Bibliotheek Den Haag have done?

20.I've been Scrobbling!

'Music makes the world go round' by Laura

I've been playing around on Last.fm via the 23 dingen account because I didn't succeed in logging in myself. I tried all sorts of combinations of user names and passwords but couldn't access it. I wonder what I'm doing wrong?

This is a really nice way to broaden one's knowledge of music of all genres. Again I think some aspects of the site are more useful than others. For example, It's interesting to see on 'Events' where music by a particular composer is to be performed in the near future although I haven't found something in the Netherlands yet. For some jet setting colleagues that shouldn't form a hindrance!
Less useful for me are the comments by other listeners but I was very curious to investigate the profile of one Honarius because his photo' looked suspiciously like President Poetin of Russia. However, he says he comes from the States so I guess he's using an alias.

As I write, I'm listening to "Fantasia on a theme by Thomas Tallis" by Ralph Vaughn Williams which I hope I've 'scrobbled', that is added to the 23 dingen list. I'm still not sure how you create a 'radio.' Music by Delius has now started to play but I'm going to stop now and next time I'm going to experiment with pop!

19. Social Networking

I seem to be losing my momentum when it comes to reading up on the 23 things. However, after some initial resistance, I'm beginning to see the usefulness of such sites as Facebook and Hyves. I've also been a visitor to Health forums on the internet before and found them very useful although it's important not to believe everything you read.
I have not made my own account on Facebook but, using the 23 Dingen account, I've reacted to the comments of a couple of colleagues.
I think it is inevitable that we, the library personnel will use the internet for social networking to communicate with colleagues and customers alike but it will take time for all of us to become comfortable with the medium.
I found the reference to the above book on Facebook and found it interesting to read around the subject of job stereotypes.