Wendy Clark's Bookmarks

Basophobia or Basiphobia- Inability to stand. Fear of walking or falling

Enosiophobia or Enissophobia- Fear of having committed an unpardonable sin or of criticism

Eremophobia- Fear of being oneself or of lonliness.

Kakorrhaphiophobia- Fear of failure or defeat.

Social Phobia- Fear of being evaluated negatively in social situations.

Topophobia- Fear of certain places or situations, such as stage fright.

Cocaine bestows its takers with a preternatural enthusiasm for talking about themselves, often to the great irritation of the people around them

Extremophiles are organisms that can tolerate and even thrive in environments that will destroy most other living things

For reasons that are not entirely clear, many compounds which attack cancer cells are also harmful to brine shrimp, therefore most modern assay tests include the brine shrimp lethality test as a standard procedure.

First,
the reticular activating system (RAS) in the brain stem is the center
of alertness.  From the busy stream of sensory data pouring into
the brain stem, the RAS “decides” what to pay attention to and what
to ignore. 

the brain is wired to notice events
that affect survival first, events that affect emotions second, and
events that contribute to “regular” (such as classroom) learning,
third

the reticulating activating system, which filters the thousands of things we see or hear.

If you think health is important you'll more likely notice cheap gym offers.

Though there is considerable overlap, parts of the brain appear to have
their own responsibilities. The overarching cortex deals with motor functions
— the cells controlling speech, vision and hearing being concentrated
in certain areas. The hippocampus is responsible for long-term memory. The
basal ganglia act with the cortex in choosing between plans of action. The
cerebellum smooths gestures. The limbic system generates emotions. The reticulate
formation (RF), situated at the top of the brainstem, but with nerve cells
(RAS: reticulating activation system) reaching into the limbic system and
cortex, is responsible for three matters. The first is consciousness: what
part of sensory input reaches the brain. Second is control of the sleep/wake
cycle: damage to the RF results in coma. Third is the level of activity
in the brain — when stimulated, the RF generates neurotransmitters
like dopamine, excess levels of which are associated with schizophrenia.
{4} In fact, all parts of the brain are interconnected, and all are subject
to multiple feedback. Nerve cells connect in synapses, in a multiple fashion,
and these synaptic connections seem able to repattern their activities.
Memory, therefore — apart from that of DNA replication, and possibly
of antibodies formed by cell action — lies in the reflex actions of
neurons, i.e. in re-categorization under the stimulus of the body as a whole
and stimulus from the world outside. {5}

reticulate formation
(RF: attention, sleep-wake cycles, control of the body's physiological functions)

By regulating sensory input through
the reticular activating system, the RF decides which inputs need to be
processed in consciousness, which should be inhibited, and which can be
handled by unconscious stock responses

Many students were concerned that the steep learning curve and technical requirements made SL reference a luxury that few librarians or patrons could currently afford

The libraries resemble libraries I've seen in real life, and include lots of art and colors

Libraries strive to provide equal access, and this is something to consider when determining which modes of reference service to make available to their patrons.

Displays can also allow users to experience or "see" a collection that they may never have the opportunity to explore in person

By being a
part of SL now, librarians believe they are positioning
themselves for the tools, services, and user environments
that will come after it. (9)

Right now there's a lot of hype about SL among librarians, and I feel that careful thinking about what we want to accomplish in SL has yet to catch up with the enthusiasm

It’s wise to continue to distance yourself from that hotbed of drama until you have no feelings about the past. Time heals all wounds, but it also wounds all heels. He’ll eventually self-destruct.

The most useful insight we gained from the Audit was the mismatch between supply and demand or current collection mix compared to circulation of particular items. It indicates the areas of YPRL's collections that are over and under-invested According to this measure the collection has much more non-fiction than is being used by the community; and less fiction, junior material including picture books, children's fiction, CDs and DVDs

selection decisions have sometimes focused more on what communities should be borrowing rather than what they want to borrow and indeed do borrow.

The Horizon Report

Information literacy increasingly should not be considered a given.

Danbury Library in Connecticut is using the Library Thing tags in their catalogue.

The Greensborough "third place library" is a concept that is bringing together the local council, the regional library, a Living and Learning Centre, a local church, a volunteer association and a neighbourhood house. Third Places are public spaces that are important features for democracy, civic engagement and establishing feelings of a sense of place. We are working through what this might look like, what sort of governance it will have and how the existing partners and infrastructure might fit. The key opportunity identified for the Third Place is connecting the community--providing connections to people, information, resources, events and programs. We are looking for a space that is an identifiable community "heart"; providing flexible spaces will also enable the delivery of programs that will evolve and adapt as community needs and aspirations change.

It's great to see applications offered that stand ready to help libraries improve their online presence, but it's frustrating to realize that there's yet one more category of software to purchase, install, and maintain as part of their automation strategy and service delivery infrastructure.

Basic expectations for a web-based interface for today include relevancy ranking of search results, facets (automatically generated terms that can be clicked to narrow results), cover art to liven the page, corrections and suggestions to search terms, and recommendations of related items--not to mention Web 2.0 features such as the ability for users to suggest tags, contribute reviews, and rate content.

Many next-generation products also work toward a more comprehensive scope. Ideally, they provide a single point of entry to search all the components of the library's collection, physical and electronic, saving users from having to visit different applications within a library's website as they conduct their research.

Libraries compete for the attention of our users in an ever more crowded landscape of information providers.

it's more common to find Web 2.0 ideas that either hurt users or simply don't matter to users' core needs

User-generated content can be a great supplement to your own content. The most famous example is Amazon's book reviews, which date from 1996 (not exactly "2.0."). Communities, which were the main recommendation in the 1997 book Net.Gain, are also an old idea

on the Web, most people are bozos and not worth listening to

Co-branding confuses users, who find it much easier to understand the simpler model of one site = one company.

Having part of your site effectively under another company's control means that you're at that company's mercy if they decide to change the terms of service

The hot-button Web 2.0 topic attracted the largest number of IL attendees to date, with a preliminary count of 1,385 registrants, 102 exhibitors, and 67 exhibits-only registrations. Librarians represented 48 states, the District of Columbia, and 11 countries

Second Life is attracting new users to traditional libraries through referrals. Librarians like Second Life because of its fun factor. The Alliance Second Life group on Google has about 600 members, and its virtual welcome and information center, staffed for 80 hours a week, answers more than 200 questions each week.

Web 2.0 tools won't solve all of your problems, but you may find some solutions that will make your work life easier.

We're implementing carefully chosen social tools that further the mission and vision of the library

Create a 2.0 project timeline featuring the tool you'd most like to incorporate. Make it short but detailed: research, exploration, prototyping, testing, and implementation. Create an emerging technology committee or technology trends team. Have good meetings--without endless agendas lacking action plans and deliverables. Make solid decisions based on evidence. Mine the biblioblogosphere for even more useful evidence and "in the trenches" thinking.

Discovery of next-generation content and validating its value are twin problems

The limitations include scope of coverage, sophistication of search software, and challenges of uncontrolled vocabulary

Ironically, you can search a fee-based database to uncover blog content that you could read for free if you knew it existed. But knowing of its existence is the sticking point.

Wikis are particularly useful as internal knowledgebases and conference-planning tools. Look at the wikis for Information Today, Inc.'s (www.infotoday.com) Computers in Libraries, Internet Librarian, and Internet Librarian International conferences for good examples

Be aware that not all blogs found by blog search engines are truly blogs.

Searching for wikis is even more problematic. There aren't a lot of search engines devoted to wikis.

n controlled vocabulary information sources, you can either substitute a ticker symbol for the company name, assuming a public company, or trust that the company name has been standardized so you can find it without entering numerous synonyms. In a world of folksonomies, there are no such shortcuts.

We've left the ability to tag items in the database open and unrestrictive. We encourage you to participate and to participate responsibly for our scholarly community. Thanks!

wo types of folksonomies, broad and narrow. The first type characterizes an application whose users assign tags to the same content. One of the fastest growing folksonomy communities is del.icio.us, a well-known and representative social bookmarking site. A user who wishes to apply a tag chooses one, applies it, and then a bookmark is stored in a personal folder. The site states that tags are just like bookmarks, and one can invent them as needed. The site emphasizes the social aspect of folksonomy, allowing one user to tag another's items, to monitor the top tags used by the group, or to review what others are bookmarking.

Narrow folksonomy has more of a focus on the individual user. Flickr, a photograph-sharing website, is an example of narrow folksonomy. In Flickr, the focus is on the individual's personal tags and finding one's own photographs, although tags can be shared. Narrow folksonomy lacks the social discussion and cohesion of the broader applications. One can add photographs to Flickr and assign tags that have personal meaning. One can choose a tag like Firenze, instead of Florence, or even one that is meaningless to the rest of the community, such as Uncle.

PennTags are intended for use by the University of Pennsylvania community to tag events and news items. However, individuals can also use PennTags on records in the online catalog. Folksonomy terms exist side by side with the LCSH headings (PennTags, 2007), although they are not yet prevalent in the catalog

Montana State University 's treatment of ETDs (Electronic Theses and Dissertations). Theses and dissertations are entered into the online catalog using standard LCSH headings. In addition to the OPAC, dissertations since 2003 are also entered in a separate relational database (Montana State University ETDs, 2007). The same LCSH subject headings appear in the ETD database that appear in the online catalog; however, within this database, users are given the opportunity to assign their own tags

A key feature of Web 2.0 is creating distinctive value for users.

Users are encouraged to take museum images, drop them into personal collection spaces, and write their own descriptions.

Are these hybrid efforts successful? Since most of the examples are recent undertakings, many in place for less than a year, it is truly too soon to tell. One benchmark for the future will clearly be use by patrons. As mentioned, the use PennTags do not yet constitute high numbers. In the case of the Montana State University database, 560 ETD titles are included and each title averages four LCSH headings, but users have assigned only twenty-three tags for the entire database. Applying folksonomy tags has the potential to be very popular, but the numbers are not there yet for their use in library catalogs and similar settings. They may increase over time as the database is used. On the other hand, the measure of success may be that patrons are being provided with something useful, however small the number, since folksonomy tagging has little actual cost for an institution. The question of whether library users look for the social interaction features of Web 2.0 in the databases where they conduct library research remains. The assumption that it is beneficial to blend Web 2.0 features into library databases may not be correct.

Open Library has the potential to shape the online presentation of library content and push the bounds of how libraries interact with users on the web. Open Library assumes users want to add their own voices to a record and trusts them with it's wiki-like editing interface.

A distinguishing Web 2.0 feature is the increasing significance of the individual user, as anybody (even a fifth-grader) can create and upload text, as well as audio and video, to the Internet. Another characteristic is the reliance on user participation, often referred to as the "wisdom of the crowd" and the "architecture of participation." Web 2.0 has an inherent trust in people and what they can contribute when working together toward a common goal for the greater good.