Re: [CODE4LIB] Google can give you answers, but librarians give you the right answers

[Karen Coyle]

Eric, there were studies done a few decades ago using factual questions. 
Here's a critical round-up of some of the studies: 
http://www.jstor.org/stable/25828215


Basically, 40-60% correct, but possibly the questions were not 
representative -- so possibly the results are really worse :(


kc

On 4/5/16 1:11 PM, Eric Lease Morgan wrote:

  I sincerely wonder to what extent librarians give the reader
(patrons) the right -- correct -- answer to a (reference) question.
Such is a hypothesis that can be tested and measured. Please show me
non-antidotal evidence one way or the other. --ELM


--
Karen Coyle
kco...@kcoyle.net http://kcoyle.net
m: +1-510-435-8234
skype: kcoylenet/+1-510-984-3600

Re: [CODE4LIB] Google can give you answers, but librarians give you the right answers

[Stuart A. Yeates]

"Google can give you answers, Librarians can help you reflect on your
questions"

cheers
stuart

--
...let us be heard from red core to black sky

On Wed, Apr 6, 2016 at 8:11 AM, Eric Lease Morgan  wrote:

>  I sincerely wonder to what extent librarians give the reader
> (patrons) the right -- correct -- answer to a (reference) question.
> Such is a hypothesis that can be tested and measured. Please show me
> non-antidotal evidence one way or the other. --ELM
>

[CODE4LIB] Job: Web and Mobile Applications Developer at Kansas Historical Society

[jobs]

Web and Mobile Applications Developer
Kansas Historical Society
Kansas Museum of History

The [Kansas Historical Society](http://kshs.org) (KSHS) seeks an innovative,
future-thinking web and mobile applications developer with a passion for using
technology to enhance the cultural heritage organization customer experience.

  
The successful candidate will have the opportunity to:

  * Update and enhance the Historical Society's flagship websites, 
[kshs.org](http://kshs.org) and [kansasmemory.org](http://kansasmemory.org);
  * Develop web and mobile applications to improve access to KSHS archives, 
museum, and archeology collections;
  * Design web and mobile applications to streamline delivery of KSHS services;
  * Contribute to KSHS initiatives to ensure the long-term preservation of 
digitized and born-digital collections;
  * Create interactive exhibits for the KSHS museum and historic sites.
  
Preferred qualifications for the position include knowledge of:

  * Application development best practices, tools, and techniques;
  * A web programming language, such as PHP or Python;
  * A web development framework using the Model-view-controller architecture, 
such as CakePHP or Django;
  * Web markup, including HTML5 and CSS;
  * Web content management systems such as Drupal, Joomla, or concrete5;
  * Relational database systems and SQL in support of web applications;
  * Responsive web design;
  * Search enhancement technologies, including search platforms such as Solr;
  * Web application load and performance testing tools;
  * Web analytics, including tools such as Google Analytics;
  * Mobile application development on multiple platforms, including both iOS 
and Android;
  * Web and mobile application accessibility requirements and technologies;
  * Linux operating system; software versioning and revision control systems 
(e.g. Subversion), and the Apache web server.
  
State of Kansas job posting:

[http://admin.ks.gov/services/state-employment-center/job/job-
postings?id=183295](http://admin.ks.gov/services/state-employment-center/job
/job-postings?id=183295)

  
Complete position description:

[http://www.kshs.org/about/pdfs/pd_applications_developer.pdf](http://www.kshs.org/about/pdfs/pd_applications_developer.pdf)



Brought to you by code4lib jobs: http://jobs.code4lib.org/job/25208/
To post a new job please visit http://jobs.code4lib.org/

Re: [CODE4LIB] Google can give you answers, but librarians give you the right answers

[Eric Lease Morgan]

 I sincerely wonder to what extent librarians give the reader
(patrons) the right -- correct -- answer to a (reference) question.
Such is a hypothesis that can be tested and measured. Please show me
non-antidotal evidence one way or the other. --ELM

Re: [CODE4LIB] Google can give you answers, but librarians give you the right answers

[Bebe S. Chang]

"Google can give you answers, but librarians give you the right answers."

True, indeed, "right" is relative! And, while I may consider phrasing this
statement a little differently -- for the inconsistency thrown up by an
unnecessary modal verb, for a start! - perhaps, "librarians" should not be
interpreted too literally as they speak through the refrain of using
library resources for their information evaluation and literacy goals.
After all, students are already spending a lot for a university education,
so why not get them to use these exorbitantly-priced resources, organized
and made accessible by librarians?

The library resources, actually, are what, *with librarians' guidance*,
provide the answers.with "right" albeit relative, In agreement with you
all, let the discoverer of knowledge determine through his or her own
critical thinking the matter of right or wrong. The skills that research
databases and OPACs impart to users are transferable for mining the Web to
appropriate needs.

Bebe

Bebe S. Chang
Research & Instruction Librarian
Arts & Humanities – E250H
University Libraries – Norlin
University of Colorado Boulder
bebe.ch...@colorado.edu
(303) 735-8119


On 5 April 2016 at 13:20, Bebe S. Chang  wrote:

> "Google can give you answers, but librarians give you the right answers."
>
> True, indeed, "right" is relative! And, while I may consider phrasing this
> statement a little differently -- for the inconsistency thrown up by an
> unnecessary modal verb, for a start! - perhaps, "librarians" should not be
> interpreted too literally as they speak through the refrain of using
> library resources for their information evaluation and literacy goals.
> After all, students are already spending a lot for a university education,
> so why not get them to use these exorbitantly-priced resources, organized
> and made accessible by librarians?
>
> The library resources, actually, are what, *with librarians' guidance*,
> provide the answers.with "right" albeit relative, In agreement with you
> all, let the discoverer of knowledge determine through his or her own
> critical thinking the matter of right or wrong. The skills that research
> databases and OPACs impart to users are transferable for mining the Web to
> appropriate needs.
>
> Bebe
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On 5 April 2016 at 07:41, Wilhelmina Randtke  wrote:
>
>> That statement is pretty old.
>>
>> Today, much of the internet is written for machines or by machines.
>> Poorly
>> written rehashed fluffy content dominates.  As time goes on, even though
>> search algorithms are getting better and the general public is getting
>> more
>> savvy about how to use a search engine, the problem is that lots of the
>> content is written mechanically.  Information literacy hardly helps for
>> some searches, because there are searches where every hit was written only
>> for SEO value with no agenda beyond SEO value.
>>
>> I think the way forward is a focus on how to push out quality content to
>> machines, rather than focus on how to sift through fluff or focus on how
>> to
>> purchase quality from monopoly vendors.  Librarians also tend to fall into
>> the rut of doing what they have skills and training to do, and years of
>> experience in information literacy training are easily rolled into more
>> information literacy training.
>>
>> -Wilhelmina
>>
>> On Fri, Apr 1, 2016 at 12:31 AM, Cornel Darden Jr. <
>> corneldarde...@gmail.com
>> > wrote:
>>
>> > Hello,
>> >
>> > "Google can give you answers, but librarians give you the right
>> answers."
>> >
>> > Is it me? Or is there something wrong with this statement?
>> >
>> > I've been hearing statements like this since I've been in the field.
>> > Tonight I saw a public library post on FB:
>> >
>> > Library: "because not everything on the internet is true"
>> >
>> > Some people applauded the statement and were like: "yay librarians!"
>> >
>> > Others thought it was a very ignorant statement. And many patrons
>> caused a
>> > huge backlash. It was interesting as the library responded to the
>> irritated
>> > patrons.
>> >
>> > Thoughts?
>> >
>> > Thanks,
>> >
>> > Cornel Darden Jr.
>> > Chief Information Officer
>> > Casanova Information Services, LLC
>> > Office Phone: (779) 205-3105
>> > Mobile Phone: (708) 705-2945
>> >
>> > Sent from my iPhone
>> >
>>
>
>

Re: [CODE4LIB] SomCom Technology DRM

[Will Martin]

I eventually got it working (sort of).

Windows 7 was simply a no-go.  I tried everything, and it just died no 
matter what.  Emulating XP didn't help, making sure everything was 
running as admin didn't help, there were no logs or feedback anywhere.  
It just died.


However, I gave it a go under Windows 10, and got it to go.  The 
procedure I had to do was:


1) Unblock Port 103 in Firefox by adding the following line to user.js 
in the default profile:


user_pref("network.security.ports.banned.override", "103");

Attempts to jigger the system associations to open the URL with IE, 
Chrome, or some other web browser failed.  No idea what I was doing 
wrong, but even after I changed all the protocol associations for HTTP 
and HTTPS, it still came up in Firefox.


2) Under Windows 10, I did not need to manually specify a compatibilty 
mode for any of the five executables involved.  It worked that out okay 
on its own, apparently.


3) Upon launching the SomVer.exe (the file specified in autorun.inf), it 
successfully ran, and pulled up an index.  BUT ... clicking through to 
any other page yielded a screen full of uninterpreted HTML code instead 
of an actual web page.  So on to Step 4:


4) Read the code and manually copy-and-paste URLs into the location bar 
to slowly work your way to the actual file you want.


Once you get that far, the decrypted PDF can be saved to the hard drive 
like any other.  It's just a supreme pain to get there.


I view this experience as a tidy demonstration of the abject stupidity 
of DRM.  The chances that this software ever prevented anyone from 
illegally copying a bunch of chemical engineering papers is pretty close 
to nil.  But it has absolutely gotten in the way of legitimate use by 
licensed users, namely the patron who wanted to read this paper.


Furthermore, the use of DRM virtually guarantees that the data will be 
permanently lost sooner or later.  Until I tried it out on Windows 10, 
it was looking very much like it would be unrecoverable a mere 11 years 
after the disc was produced.  I pity anyone who is called on to retrieve 
one of these articles forty years down the road when we're on Windows 28 
and nobody has seen an optical disc drive in several decades.


I'm tempted to take the time to extract all the PDFs now, while we have 
a functioning (if awkward) way to do that, and burn our own damn CD to 
stick in the little sleeve in the book.  But last time I checked, 
bypassing DRM in that manner was illegal under the Digital Millennium 
Copyright Act, even if you otherwise have a legitimate license to use 
the protected content.  Plus it would be a ton of work in the thin, 
faint hope that someday somebody will want one of these articles again.


Will Martin

Web Services Librarian
Chester Fritz Library
University of North Dakota

On 2016-04-04 16:03, Lolis, John wrote:
I don't know what version of Windows you're running, but make sure you 
try

to launch the executable
​or the command prompt window ​
as an administrator
​ (even if you're logged in as an admin).​
​ I imagine that anything that tries to have the system listen on port 
103

would require elevated privileges with Windows 7 and up.​


I'd also check the event log to see if any clues can be gleaned from it 
(my

apologies if this was obvious to you).

If you have a system running an older version of Windows (as far back 
as

Windows 98 from what I saw in the system requirements), try that.

Good luck.  I'd be curious how you make out with it.



John Lolis
Coordinator of Computer Systems
White Plains Public Library
100 Martine Avenue
White Plains, NY  10601

tel: 1.914.422.1497
fax: 1.914.422.1452

http://whiteplainslibrary.org/


On Mon, Apr 4, 2016 at 1:33 PM, Will Martin  
wrote:



All,

We've got a copy of this book of abstracts for presentations at a 
chemical

engineering conference in 2005:

http://odin-primo.hosted.exlibrisgroup.com/und:und_all:ODIN_ALEPH006134188

It's got a CD-ROM included with the full papers for hundreds of them, 
and

now we have a patron who wants to consult one of them.

Unfortunately, we can't get the dang thing to work.  The files on the 
disc
are encrypted.  There's a utility which is supposed to decrypt them, 
but it
doesn't work.  When you run the program, it starts a web browser and 
takes
to localhost:103.[1]  After that, it times out and reports that it's 
unable
to connect.  Yes, I disabled the Windows firewall completely and tried 
it

in multiple browsers.

There are several little executable files on the CD, all of which 
appear
to do the exact same thing -- open a failed connection to 
localhost:103.


Executing them from the command line yielded no useful information, 
even
using command-line switches like -h, --help, /?, and /h.  None of them 
had
any help text, though a few produced badly written HTML output 
claiming
they couldn't access things, or that they were corrupted.  I take that 
as
an indication that my wild-ass 

Re: [CODE4LIB] Google can give you answers, but librarians give you the right answers

[Bebe S. Chang]

"Google can give you answers, but librarians give you the right answers."

True, indeed, "right" is relative! And, while I may consider phrasing this
statement a little differently -- for the inconsistency thrown up by an
unnecessary modal verb, for a start! - perhaps, "librarians" should not be
interpreted too literally as they speak through the refrain of using
library resources for their information evaluation and literacy goals.
After all, students are already spending a lot for a university education,
so why not get them to use these exorbitantly-priced resources, organized
and made accessible by librarians?

The library resources, actually, are what, *with librarians' guidance*,
provide the answers.with "right" albeit relative, In agreement with you
all, let the discoverer of knowledge determine through his or her own
critical thinking the matter of right or wrong. The skills that research
databases and OPACs impart to users are transferable for mining the Web to
appropriate needs.

Bebe






On 5 April 2016 at 07:41, Wilhelmina Randtke  wrote:

> That statement is pretty old.
>
> Today, much of the internet is written for machines or by machines.  Poorly
> written rehashed fluffy content dominates.  As time goes on, even though
> search algorithms are getting better and the general public is getting more
> savvy about how to use a search engine, the problem is that lots of the
> content is written mechanically.  Information literacy hardly helps for
> some searches, because there are searches where every hit was written only
> for SEO value with no agenda beyond SEO value.
>
> I think the way forward is a focus on how to push out quality content to
> machines, rather than focus on how to sift through fluff or focus on how to
> purchase quality from monopoly vendors.  Librarians also tend to fall into
> the rut of doing what they have skills and training to do, and years of
> experience in information literacy training are easily rolled into more
> information literacy training.
>
> -Wilhelmina
>
> On Fri, Apr 1, 2016 at 12:31 AM, Cornel Darden Jr. <
> corneldarde...@gmail.com
> > wrote:
>
> > Hello,
> >
> > "Google can give you answers, but librarians give you the right answers."
> >
> > Is it me? Or is there something wrong with this statement?
> >
> > I've been hearing statements like this since I've been in the field.
> > Tonight I saw a public library post on FB:
> >
> > Library: "because not everything on the internet is true"
> >
> > Some people applauded the statement and were like: "yay librarians!"
> >
> > Others thought it was a very ignorant statement. And many patrons caused
> a
> > huge backlash. It was interesting as the library responded to the
> irritated
> > patrons.
> >
> > Thoughts?
> >
> > Thanks,
> >
> > Cornel Darden Jr.
> > Chief Information Officer
> > Casanova Information Services, LLC
> > Office Phone: (779) 205-3105
> > Mobile Phone: (708) 705-2945
> >
> > Sent from my iPhone
> >
>

[CODE4LIB] Cybersecurity conference livestream on this Friday 4/8

[Kim, Bohyun]

Hi all,

This is a conference whose planning and organization committee I have been on 
for the last several months. Thought some of you may be interested in watching 
the livestream of this conference this Friday. (No RSVP required.) The 
recordings will be also made available afterwards.

(Also if you are located nearby and want to attend, I can register you as well.)
Cybersecurity and You: Issues in Higher Education and Beyond
http://www.hshsl.umaryland.edu/cybersecurity.cfm

Cheers,
Bohyun

--
Bohyun Kim, MA, MSLIS
Associate Director for Library Applications and Knowledge Systems
University of Maryland, Baltimore
Health Sciences and Human Services Library

Re: [CODE4LIB] Google can give you answers, but librarians give you the right answers

[Wilhelmina Randtke]

That statement is pretty old.

Today, much of the internet is written for machines or by machines.  Poorly
written rehashed fluffy content dominates.  As time goes on, even though
search algorithms are getting better and the general public is getting more
savvy about how to use a search engine, the problem is that lots of the
content is written mechanically.  Information literacy hardly helps for
some searches, because there are searches where every hit was written only
for SEO value with no agenda beyond SEO value.

I think the way forward is a focus on how to push out quality content to
machines, rather than focus on how to sift through fluff or focus on how to
purchase quality from monopoly vendors.  Librarians also tend to fall into
the rut of doing what they have skills and training to do, and years of
experience in information literacy training are easily rolled into more
information literacy training.

-Wilhelmina

On Fri, Apr 1, 2016 at 12:31 AM, Cornel Darden Jr.  wrote:

> Hello,
>
> "Google can give you answers, but librarians give you the right answers."
>
> Is it me? Or is there something wrong with this statement?
>
> I've been hearing statements like this since I've been in the field.
> Tonight I saw a public library post on FB:
>
> Library: "because not everything on the internet is true"
>
> Some people applauded the statement and were like: "yay librarians!"
>
> Others thought it was a very ignorant statement. And many patrons caused a
> huge backlash. It was interesting as the library responded to the irritated
> patrons.
>
> Thoughts?
>
> Thanks,
>
> Cornel Darden Jr.
> Chief Information Officer
> Casanova Information Services, LLC
> Office Phone: (779) 205-3105
> Mobile Phone: (708) 705-2945
>
> Sent from my iPhone
>