Wednesday, April 16, 2008

Tagging and Taggers

A recent research paper, "Can Social Bookmarking Improve Web Search?" by Paul Heymann, Georgia Koutrika, and Hector Garcia-Molina, draws numerous interesting conclusions about the effect of taggers and tagging on findability. The authors used del.icio.us as the source for tags. Several of the results they found:
  • "Tags are present in the page text of 50% of the pages they annotate and in the titles of 16% of the pages they annotate" (p. 8). It seems that taggers are not particularly original in their tagging.
  • "Pages posted to del.icio.us are often recently modified" (p. 4) and "approximately 25% of URLs posted by users [of del.icio.us] are new, unindexed pages" (p. 5). By monitoring tags of interest to you, you can find out what's new more effectively than you can by setting up standard search queries.
Their closing section, in which they discuss how tagging could be improved in the long run, bears quoting at length:
In terms of tags, we believe that user interface features could have a large impact on improving the quality of tags for search. For instance, interfaces that recommended tags not in the page, or not common for the given domain, might help alleviate those two problems. Another approach might be to have domain-specific sites (e.g., photography) which might have higher quality tags due to the shared context of the users.

EUFeeds -- 300 European Newspapers by RSS

EUFeeds is a special-purpose RSS aggregator for European newspapers that provides access to more than 300 papers from the European Union. Provided by the European Journalism Centre in the Netherlands, this site lets you quickly browse the print media from each EU member nation. The site defaults to UK newspapers; there is no apparent way to set a different country as your default entry page. It also does not provide an RSS feed for the aggregated content -- so you cannot subscribe to the aggregated Czech Republic news, only visit it on a web page.

Goodbye, Enterprise - Hello, Socialprise

Here's another word to add to your lexicon: "Socialprise." It's meaning is somewhat obvious: social tools + enterprise = "socialprise." It's a new term, but one we hope sticks around, since it's currently representative of one of the biggest shifts in business today. We covered some socialprise tools before, in discussing Worklight, Google Sites, and HiveLive, but here's a new avenue for social tools in the workplace: Social CRM. A company called InsideView is bringing the social web to CRM, and they're not the only one to do so.

InsideView isn't a new company, but what they're announcing today is certainly new: it's called "SalesView," and it brings social media to Enterprise CRM. This on-demand business application scours the web, then presents relevant customer data, discovered through that web harvesting, as well as through specialized research providers and social networks.

Out of the some 20,000 sources utilized, some are traditional, but many are "web 2.0" like Facebook, LinkedIn, Jigsaw, ZoomInfo, as well as web-based news sources, blogs, and job postings.

LinkedIn Integration

The data which is found is then presented within the context of enterprise CRM applications in use today. Currently, SalesView is available as a mashup for Salesforce.com and SugarCRM, but will soon be offering mashups for Microsoft CRM and Landslide Technologies, and, by the second quarter of 2008, a standalone application will be available.

Salesview/Salesforce Mashup

The product will be offered based on the "freemium model - their words, by the way, meaning they're at least tapped in enough to subscribe to Wired - starting with a free version for light research. Pro and Team versions round-out the offerings, including more features, like unlimited watch lists, specialized providers, and the sharing of customized agents among members of the sales team.

InsideView's customers already include some big names like Ariba, Centive, Cisco/WebEx, Jobscience, LucidEra, Rearden Commerce, ServiceSource, StarCite Inc., SuccessFactors and Symantec.Cisco/WebEx, Jobscience, LucidEra, Rearden Commerce, ServiceSource, StarCite Inc., SuccessFactors and Symantec, among others.

In addition to InsideView, there are more companies that are also blurring the line between enterprise business and the social web. Another CRM offering, this time from Tactile CRM, started using the Google Contacts API to import Gmail contacts into their web-based CRM tool.

And then there is Oracle's CRM on Demand service that was announced in November 2007, which includes social networking features like those found in MySpace or Facebook, such as the ability to create and join groups, ala Facebook.

Another is Kintera, whose software-as-a-service has been calling itself "social CRM" for awhile, since their product captures online activity, like email and web form donations, and merges it with offline activity, entered via standard data entry techniques.

However, InsideView claims to be one of the first true examples of a Socialprise CRM application, and, in comparison with others, it seems like a valid claim.

"We are experiencing an inevitable convergence of social media, user generated content and enterprise applications. SalesView is born of this trend, and delivers on its promise with a smart, fresh and complete approach to business search and intelligence," said Rand Schulman, chief marketing officer of InsideView.

The connected social web in business? Bring it on. And while you're at it, maybe it's time to consider unblocking Facebook on the firewall, too.

Ten Sites for Finding Wonderful Things

Read/Write Web aggregates the four most recent posts from ten websites you may never have come across and presents them in an annotated guide to finding fantastic things. Here are their ten sites, click through to the original article to view the posts from each:

  1. BoingBoing
  2. Waxy Links
  3. Neatorama
  4. Laughing Squid
  5. JoshSpear.com
  6. Fresh Creation
  7. PicoCool
  8. Swiss Miss
  9. NotCot
  10. We Make Money Not Art

As an aside, it’s interesting to note their use of the AideRSS tool to link to the most recent popular posts for each blog.

Revenge of the Experts

Revenge of the Experts

Newsweek discusses the return of the pro in their article Revenge of the Experts which postulates that the time of the amateur on the Web is coming to a close.

“In short, the expert is back. The revival comes amid mounting demand for a more reliable, bankable Web. “People are beginning to recognize that the world is too dangerous a place for faulty information,” says Charlotte Beal, a consumer strategist for the Minneapolis-based research firm Iconoculture. Beal adds that choice fatigue and fear of bad advice are creating a “perfect storm of demand for expert information.”"

via Social Media

State of America’s Libraries 2008

The ALA has published the 2008 State of America’s Libraries report. Here are their key findings:

  • Americans check out over 2 billion items annually from public libraries.
  • The average user checks out over 7 books/year.
  • The average taxpayer bill for public library services - $31/year.
  • Public libraries are engines of economic growth, contributing to local development through programming in early literacy, employment services and small-business development.
  • Libraries provide excellent ROI, positively impact the local economy, and contribute to neighborhood quality of life.
  • School library media centers help students learn more and score higher on standardized tests, but their funding continues to lag.
  • Teens are regular users of public library services.
  • Almost all of the nation’s public libraries offer YA programs & over half employ at least one full-time staff equivalent in this area.
  • Computer and on-line games have become part of the mix at many public libraries, and some use gaming to attract new patrons.
  • Spanish is the top-priority language to which libraries devote non-English language services and programs.
  • Most libraries serving non-English speakers are in communities with fewer than 100,000 residents.
  • Ebooks continued to emerge as a regular feature of libraries of all types.
  • Library supporters won an important victory in 2007 when the Environmental Protection Agency was ordered to re-open many of the libraries it had closed in the past year.
  • College and research libraries continue to find innovative new ways to meet the rapidly evolving needs of the academy.
  • Libraries and librarians of all stripes continue to stand up for the First Amendment rights of all Americans, responding in public discourse and in court to unconstitutional snooping and aspiring book-banners. The right to read — freely and in private — remains a core value of the profession.

Libraries as Architects of Collaboration

The latest issue of Educause Review has an article by Peter Brantley entitled Architectures for Collaboration: Roles and Expectations for Digital Libraries in which he discusses the need for change within today’s libraries. In the article he asserts a set of “library mantras” which he feels are key to this change, including:

  • Libraries Must Be Available Everywhere.
  • Libraries Must Be Designed to Get Better through Use.
  • Libraries Must Be Portable.
  • Libraries Must Know Where They Are.
  • Libraries Must Tell Stories.
  • Libraries Must Help People Learn.
  • Libraries Must Be Tools of Change.
  • Libraries Must Offer Paths for Exploration.
  • Libraries Must Help Forge Memory.
  • Libraries Must Speak for People.
  • Libraries Must Study the Art of War.

“The success of libraries is not to be counted by the number of books, either digital or paper, held by libraries or the number of pretty pictures that libraries can put online. Libraries are successful to the extent that they can bridge communities and can leverage the diversity of the quest, the research, and the discovery. Libraries are successful when they offer new services and when they help others discover services provided by others. By building bridges among these various sectors, libraries will be able to define themselves in the next generation. They will become the architects of collaboration.”

Why do people participate in social applications?

The Forrester analysts at Groundswell discuss the top reasons that people take part in social activity online. These motivations are important to keep in mind when designing your own online social environment. Here are their top motives:

  • Keeping up friendships
  • Making new friends
  • Succumbing to social pressure from existing friends
  • Paying it forward
  • The altruistic impulse
  • The prurient impulse
  • The creative impulse
  • The validation impulse
  • The affinity impulse

CIL2008 Presentations

This year’s conference was jam-packed with informative and entertaining sessions. Here are a few links to presentation slides, but be sure and keep an eye on Slideshare for more:

Libraries Solve Problems (Keynote) - Lee Rainie

Online Outreach for Libraries: Successful Digital Marketing - Sarah Houghton-Jan

Transparency, Planning & Change: See-Through Libraries - Michael Stephens and Michael Casey

Pecha Kucha 2.0 Podcasting Edition - Greg Schwartz

Technology Training for Library Staff: Creativity Works! - Sarah Houghton-Jan

Podcasting & Videocasting Bootcamp - David Lee King and David Free

Innovation Starts with “I” - Helene Blowers and Tony Tallent

From Avatars to Advocacy: Innovation through Un-marketing - Helene Blowers and Michael Porter

Harnessing New Data Visualization Tools - Darlene Fichter

Mashups for Non-Techies: Yahoo! Pipes - Jody Fagan

and the InfoTubey award winners

The Open Source ILS

I know that we're all (or mostly all) special librarians here, but I attended an academic library event that I think translates into our environment as well. Last week, I attended the Next Generation Academic Library System Symposium and hosted by VALE (Virtual Academic Library Environment of New Jersey). I wrote up summaries of the presentations for one of my other blogs and wanted to share the links with you all: