TagCloud

I've been tinkering around with the TagCloud that is linked to on the right side of this page (see the Feeds section). Rather than fumble around trying to describe how TagCloud works, let me offer a description from the DRM Blog about their TagCloud:

The box that you see below contains a TagCloud for DRM news and articles. The service will grab any RSS feeds from Yahoo! News that you tell it to use. In this case we found a bunch of DRM related sites to use. TagCloud then caches those feeds locally in the TagCloud database. These feeds are then fed into Yahoo's content analysis service to extract the keywords. The Yahoo service returns a set of keywords (tags) that the article is associated with. The tags are stored on the TagCloud server and a script determines which keywords are most important (occur most often). We use CSS to change the size and color of the tags that are most important. Finally, the tags themselves are links to the TagCloud page that contains a list of articles associated with that keyword.

In the case of my TagCloud, I've added all the blogs/feeds I follow (via my Bloglines account) that have something to do with librarianship (I'd guess that's over 100 different blogs). I haven't tinkered with the layout or formatting of my TagCloud, though; instead, the link just sends you over to the TagCloud site where you can view it.

Links from database interfaces to digital reference services

A colleague of mine here in the library with administrative access to our database subscriptions helped me add links in the user interfaces for EBSCO, ProQuest, and FirstSearch to our library's chat and e-mail reference services. In some cases, we could add GIFs with links; in others, just plain-text links. Sadly, some of our databases don't seem to allow for such customization (e.g., Factiva and all the Gale databases with the Infotrac interface). There are dozens of other databases our library subscribes to that we haven't looked into customizing yet; it will take a while before we can get to every one. We'll also have to look into adding links in our online catalog, too.

The value of adding links within the search interface is obvious: you're offering help at a key location where your users are frequently stuck. Riffing on an oft-quoted line of Anne Lipow's, I'd say that adding such links is just one more effort in which librarians can make themselves less remote to their users (or, as Anne also used to say, we can work toward "in your face reference.") (Bonus material: here's some vintage Anne Lipow ideas about remote users vs. remote librarians.)

We've had some success with the links to our Ask a Librarian service that we've added elsewhere: the default main page for all Blackboard accounts and a desktop shortcut on most public PCs around campus. I'm hoping the links in the databases will get noticed; at the very least, it can't hurt to have them there.

List of libraries providing virtual reference services - LISWiki

I recently gave permission to John Hubbard, creator of the LISWiki and the Library Link of the Day, to copy my outdated index of chat reference services into this page on the LISWiki: List of libraries providing virtual reference services. Now that the list has been wikified, those of you who might want to update it can do it yourselves. I'll soon put links all over my web site to this new wiki list.

I've already done a little editing myself on the new wiki list. On the listing for the service at my library (the one for Baruch College in New York), I added some details about what software we've used. I think it would be great if there were little annotations like that next to each of the libraries. People could indicate not only the software they use but also offer links to any web pages on their library site that discuss implementation of the chat service, administration of it, and statistics for it (some libraries have such materials publicly available on their web sites).

Who knows how this list in the wiki may evolve. Perhaps libraries with chat services will create pages for themselevs in the wiki in which greater detail is offered on their chat service (and perhaps e-mail reference, SMS reference, and any other kind of digital reference you can think of). That's the beauty of this wiki: we can all help to shape it into the resource we want and need it to be.

Library Success wiki

The wiki that Meredith Farkas just launched, Library Success: A Best Practices Wiki, has already been announced across the biblioblogosphere (thanks Free Range Librarian for this new slang!) and mailing lists. As a librarian interested specifically in instruction and reference (and the intersection of the two), I want to point out the "Reference Services and Information Literacy" section in particular.