Commenting on Scapes and Reference Extract

I've been adding a number of comments to David Lankes' recent post on the connection between Scapes and Reference Extract. Rather than repeat those comments here, I'll just link to them here.

A deeper explanation of Reference Extract

In the past few weeks, the word in library land about Reference Extract has been that it is some sort of response to Google by librarians pining to build their own search engine of librarian-approved web sites. It is, in fact, the first step to build something more grand and interesting than just another web search engine. You can get a better idea of what that thing is from David Lankes, who posted this video recently on his blog:

Going public

One of the tantalizing possibilities of digital reference services is that there is a possibility of getting additional mileage from the artifacts of the reference interaction (a transcript in a chat reference service or the email exchange in an email reference service). Some libraries and services have found ways to dump the artifacts (in raw form or edited down for readibility's sake) into knowledgebases that librarians or patrons might be able to search. If those knowledgebases are set up so they can be crawled by search engines, then the hard and usually invisible work of librarians to connect patrons with information can be surfaced in a very public manner (i.e., theoretically, the interactions could show up in search engine results).

L-net, the statewide chat reference service in Oregon, has just started going down this public road by putting chat transcripts online for those patrons who have approved such use when logging in. The form on the L-net login screen has a "Sharing" section where patrons choose between the option to "Share my question and answer" or "Keep my session confidential." Below the radio buttons where patrons choose whether to share or not is this notice:

We're looking for a few examples of questions and answers to share on our website, but we need your permission to do it. See our privacy policy for more details.

The first chat session that a patron opted in for sharing is now online. I can see a lot of value in doing this:

• People who might want to use the service can see what chat looks like and what kind of help they might get if they elect to use it.
• People can actually see the work of librarians; while the concept of our library's collections may be somewhat easy for the public to envision, our reference services are probably not that well known among the public ("You can ask for help at the library?")
• A searchable archive of question and answer pairs can be easily created.
  

Tenure approved

Today I received official notification from Baruch College that I have been reappointed with tenure. Thank you to all those at Baruch and CUNY who helped me get to this point.

Guide to Reference is now digital only

You may want to listen to this PALINET podcast featuring an inteview with Robert Kieft about the standard reference work on reference works, Guide to Reference (formerly the Guide to Reference Books), that is now a digital only publication.

I am eager to get a trial subscription for my library to see how the guide looks online. It would nice for those awainting trial access if the web site for the guide offered a few sample entries.

I hear that users can add comments and make shareable lists, but I'm hoping for:

• WorldCat lookup links
• stable URLs that are easily found on the page (or the address window in the browser)
• RSS and email notification of new entries added or changes to existing entries
• user ranking features (users can rate sources in some way)

It would be really great if a title is held by your library, then the title on the web page would be linked to the record in your catalog. Once my library gets a trial, I'll report back on the interface in a later post here.