Riot Librarian

Category: technology

  • Library Websites: Assessing the Problems

    When I first came to the SSU University Library, the number one thing I heard from people across the Library was that the website needed to be redesigned. It was hard to navigate, no one could find anything, it took too many clicks to get to what you wanted. I knew without a doubt that…

  • Planning a Website Re-Vamp, Part I

    Before I started working in the Sonoma State University Library, I knew re-designing the Library website was going to be a priority. Everyone made it clear to me during the interview process that they weren’t happy with the site and that it had historically been one of the bigger challenges in the Library. Fixing the…

  • Learning about Linked Data: SPARQL and Content Negotiation

    My ad hoc learning about linked data continues, and this past week I feel like my knowledge grew in leaps and bounds. A few weeks ago I installed Joseki on my local machine. Joseki is a SPARQL query engine (and apparently is no longer being developed; I guess I will have to upgrade to Jena…

  • Linked Data Baby Steps

    I’ve been thinking A LOT about linked data over the past few months. To be less specific, I’ve been thinking about ways that librarians can better share library resources and metadata on the open web, and make our resources more discoverable. We know that Google, to use one search engine example, ranks things on the…

  • Standards for Social Reading

    On Wednesday, I had the privilege of attending a NISO working meeting on creating a standard for Open Ebook Annotations. The meeting was held the day before the Books in Browsers conference, and was the third such working meeting, after meetings held in New York and Frankfurt. The purpose was to brainstorm around what the…

  • Ranganathan has a posse

    In the “I’m a dork” files, I just installed a fun little WordPress plug in created by Steve Lawson, called Hello, Ranganathan. If you’re a WordPress user, I’ll leave you to go find out more. Not sure who this Ranganathan fellow is? His Five Laws of Library Science are considered guide points for librarians around…

  • Kindle Library Books

    The inability to check out books from my library using my Kindle irked me from the first moment I started using the Kindle. When Amazon and Overdrive announced that they were finally partnering to allow library lending on the Kindle, I was pretty excited. Sure, as a librarian I know it’s far from a perfect…

  • The Big Picture

    Since I got back from ALA, I’ve been thinking about how to tie together everything I saw and thought and learned while I was there. I’ve been looking for the big picture. Throughout the week, in a variety of sessions, a few phrases kept popping into my mind: Re-think the ILS, re-think the bibliographic record.…

  • Michael Porter on Library Renewal and eResources

    Michael Porter presented a session with a nice, attention-grabbing title at ALA Annual: “You Mean Libraries Will Be Able to Deliver Content Better than iTunes and Netflix?” The session wasn’t really about how libraries will deliver content better than commercial providers; it was more like a rousing exhortation to libraries to start re-thinking how we…

  • Library Linked Data

    Over the last year I’ve read and heard a fair amount about library linked data, and I have not yet been able to form a whole and coherent picture of what this means for libraries. I see examples, and I understand the idea and the benefits, but I don’t see how the examples and the…