On curiosity and the joy of learning

I love learning. I find it to be a truly joyous experience. I wasn't always this way though. If you ask my friends from college, they will laugh, and tell you what a miracle it is that I managed to graduate (cum laude, no less) while attending so few classes, and doing so little work. So what changed? Obviously I'd like to think I just got older and wiser, but evidence suggests otherwise. Personally, I think what happened to me was the internet.

The internet has obviously drastically changed the way we interact with information, by making so very much accessible to us, almost anytime, almost anywhere. But that, in itself, is not enough to make us *want* to seek out that information. To read it, to synthesize it into knowledge, into our world-view.

Working in the realm of education (and being a pretty much life-long student who is almost done with her third masters degree), the answer to this little riddle is of vital importance to me. I feel we're on the cusp of an educational revolution, and I want to help shape it. I want to help us storm the right castles, and march on in the right direction.

I recently read an article about Michael Wesch, a professor at Kansas State University, where he talks about fostering a sense of curiosity in students. Let's skip over the part where he coins the term "knowledge-able", which, while cute and fitting, brings back library school nightmares of reading article after article from researchers using quirky acronyms to build their personal brand. (Just "ask" Nick Belkin about "ASK". UGH.)

Aaaaanyway, this article really struck a chord with me.

"It's just not enough anymore to know a bunch of stuff... Instead, we should be concentrating on making them truly knowledge-able. Imagination and curiosity are the heart of that idea; if we have those qualities, learning becomes joyous."

Right? RIGHT?! Many teachers fought (and still fight) the use of calculators in math classes. But others saw this as an opportunity. If students spend less time doing simple calculations (after they truly understand *how* to do them, of course), there's more time to delve into more complex problems and ideas. Graphing calculators especially, can allow for more creative and imaginative assignments, assignments that might actually grab the students attention.

So back to the internet, and why it helped me learn to love learning. Social networks have added something into the information mix, something that is vital to a lot of people: context. Instead of information existing in a void, we can now see who's reading what, and what they think of it. The information now has a personal aspect for us. And also, there's the joy of finding something on our own that we know our networks will enjoy. We like seeing our content shared by others. And it's exciting when discussions happen around that content.

I have so much more to say about this, but I think I may save that for part two, where I can get into what I think the implications of all this are for education. I have thoughts, people. Copious amounts of thoughts. I'm excited for all of us in academia. Things are about to get SO COOL.

Bridging the gap from Wikipedia to scholarly sources: a simple library bookmarklet

So I know I have been alluding to a fancy-shmancy "project" for awhile now, and it's finally at a point that I can show it off! Barbara Arnett and I (mostly Barbara, but I set the project in motion, so that counts for something I guess) have created a javascript bookmarklet that can be used in any browser to execute a search in Ebsco Discovery Service from any web page.

The impetus for this project was a tendency for novice researchers to rely on internet sources that may not be up to the standards required by their professors for college-level research (read: Google & Wikipedia). Unfortunately, those users were not only beginning, but ending their search with those websites, without ever trying the library’s subscription databases, or even making it to the library’s website.

Stevens is currently undergoing a trial of Ebsco Discovery Service (EDS), a federated search tool which includes the library catalog data. To make it easier for students to search the library resources, we decided to create a bookmarket that eliminates the step of having to go to the library website first before searching library resources.

The bookmarket provides an important bridge between common search behaviors (especially among undergraduates), and the "deep web" content located in library-funded, proprietary databases, thus easing their transition into scholarly research. You just drag-and-drop it into any browser, after which a search can then be initiated from any webpage the user visits. When the bookmarklet is clicked, the search terms default to the title of the page (so it works especially well with Wikipedia articles), and a prompt is displayed that allows the user to edit the terms, if so desired. When they press the OK button, the search is automatically executed in the Discovery tool and the results are displayed in a new browser window.

The bookmarklet is written in simple Javascript code, which resides on the library’s server, so it can be edited or updated without the user having to reinstall it. It works on all major browsers, and can also be edited to work with various search tools, such as specific databases, library catalogs or competing federated search tools (such as Serial Solutions’ Summon.)

A short demo:

Barbara and I will be participating in a webinar for the Metro New York Library Council in December, demonstrating various tech tools for libraries. See here for details: http://bit.ly/aYud4Q

11/19/10 - NOTE:

Ken Varnum at the University of Michigan has used our code to create an ArticlesPlus bookmarklet for their users. To make it easier for other developers to adapt our code for their projects, here it is, in its entirety. You'll have to edit it to use whatever search tool you want it to run, and change it to link to your own Google Analytics account (or just take that part out if you're not using GA), and we ask that you keep the attribution statement in there.

Thanks!

~val

Google Instant: an early review (with references!)

In the spirit of full disclosure, I had to write a journal entry for my Engineering of Enterprise Software Systems class, and I figured, hey, I wrote the damn thing, why not post it as a blog entry, since it's about search(-ing), and thus relevant to libraries? And yes, leave it to a librarian to have 8 reference for a page-and-a-half long paper.

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This week, Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) announced “Google Instant”, featuring predictive, real-time search results, meaning you can see your search results update according to each character you type in the search box, as you type it. The company claims this speeds up searches by an average of 2 to 5 seconds per query.

Based on what I understand about databases and search technology, this would require a database call for each character typed, which, given the millions of people using Google’s search at any given moment (they recently reached 1 billion users a week, according to USA Today), would place a huge load on their servers/system.

Google’s new real-time search functionality uses AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML). This technology (or really, groups of technologies, including JavaScript, XML or JSON, XHTML, among others) allows web applications to run independently of a web page, so data can be retrieved from the server while the rest of the page loads (asynchronously). In other words, it allows different portions of a page to load/update separately, or asynchronously.

Apparently, the underlying technology is so simple, users have begun creating imitation real-time search applications for popular sites such as YouTube and Twitter (15-year-old web developer Stephen Ou built “iTunes Instant” in just three hours.)

Although it’s still pretty new, users have begun weighing in on Google Instant. Reactions range from love to hate, as is usual with any new technology. In an opinion piece in The Guardian, Charlie Brooker laments:

I'm starting to feel like an unwitting test subject in a global experiment conducted by Google, in which it attempts to discover how much raw information it can inject directly into my hippocampus before I crumple to the floor and start fitting uncontrollably.

In general though, people seem to like the speed, but are unsure if a faster search was really necessary, especially at the cost of some well-liked features that Google has dropped with this launch, including the search box that used to be located at the bottom of any page of search results, and the retention and auto-suggest feature for recently-completed searches.

Although some people may be underwhelmed by this new search feature, they are voicing concerns about some aspects of it.

The company is apparently filtering search results, and not returning items from queries that are deemed “offensive”. This not only brings up censoring issues, but can have unintended consequences, like in the case of Irina Slutsky, a reporter for Advertising Age, who complained that results related to her were being blocked because of the first four letters of her last name.

There is also concern over how Google is choosing results, and the affect that this, along with quickly appearing (and disappearing) will have on sponsored search results and ads. IBM’s Todd Watson was quoted as saying:

Let me explain: go to www.google.com and just type in the letter "A." What comes up first in the listing? "Amazon." Followed by "AOL." Followed by "ATT." I skipped on over to "I," thinking that IBM might come up first. But no, it was "IKEA." ... what in the world is IKEA doing coming up when I search for the letter "I"??

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References:

1. Brooker, Charlie. 2010. “Google Instant is trying to kill me”. The Guardian. September 13. http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/sep/13/charlie-brooker-google-instant. (accessed September 13, 2010).
2. Hachman, Mark. 2010 “Google Launches Google Instant: Predictive, Real-Time Search.” PCMag.com. http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2368861,00.asp. (accessed September 13, 2010).
3. Holdener, Anthony T. 2008. "Ajax: the definitive guide." STEVENS INST OF TECHNOLOGY's Catalog, EBSCOhost (accessed September 13, 2010).
4. Jefferson, Graham. 2010. "Google starts searching before you finish typing; New Instant tool could change business strategy." USA TODAY (Arlington, VA), September 08. NewsBank, EBSCOhost (accessed September 13, 2010).
5. Jeffries, Adrianne. 2010. “Google Instant Search Inspires Mashups Across the Web.” ReadWriteWeb. September 12. http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/google_instant_search_inspires_mashups_across_the.php. (accessed September 13, 2010).
6. Jennings, Richi. 2010. “Google Instant results: reaction roundup.” Computerworld. September 10. http://blogs.computerworld.com/16922/google_instant_results_reaction_roundup?source=t3. (accessed September 13, 2010).
7. Metz, Cade. 2010. “Google Instant 'invented by Yahoo! in 2005'”. The Register. September 10. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/09/10/google_instant_v_yahoo_live_search/. (accessed September 13, 2010).
8. Paul, Ian. 2010. “Google Instant: Criticisms and Controversies”. PCWorld. September 10. http://www.pcworld.com/article/205241/google_instant_criticisms_and_controversies.html?tk=hp_new. (accessed September 13, 2010).

Hakia: Semantic Search Engine

From ars technica:

Search engines generally don't understand either content on the Web or the content of user queries; they work through keyword analysis, link weighting, and other statistical methods that allow an engine to produce more or less relevant results without ever needing to understand the implicit question in the search query. [Hakia] recognizes the concepts that lie behind the search terms and attempts to match those rather than keywords. Read more...>>

I Dreamed a Dream...

My coworker and I were discussing online services the other day, and we decided to get all wacky, and describe the attributes of our dream academic library website. So, here goes...

1.) Authentication through username and password, NOT a proxy server that requires you to configure your browser or a VPN. I know this is not a crazy wish, just a little beyond our over-worked IT department right now (and by that I mean the university's IT dept., we don't have our own, so you can see why they're so over-worked). Once logged in, the users would not only have accesses to all online resources, but also all features of the OPAC, instead of needing a separate PIN number, like they do now.

2.) One interface. Uno. Un. Solamente. Dream big, right? The interface would be Ebscohost-like, for no other reason than I like that particular interface. Through this interface, students can access our books, books elsewhere, e-books, journals, journal articles, newspapers/articles, etc. etc. They would be able to customize their search through a series of checkboxes that allowed them to choose which databases they wanted to search, and/or what kind of results they wanted (what format/media, that is).

The results would be sorted not by database (unless they wanted them that way), but by format (I'm sure most users don't care what database the journal article is contained in, so why not put all the journal articles together in the results, thereby allowing for sorting across all of them, and eliminating duplication?)

This interface would also contain links or buttons that allowed students to immediately request an item through ILL/DDS directly from the record (like in WorldCat). For requests that require a fee, students would be given an option to immediately charge their student account (or credit card or whatever...) In the case of requested articles, once the fee is paid, the PDF is immediately e-mailed to the user (one of the complaints we get most often is from users wanting immediate access to articles... No big surprise there.)

You'll note here that I am not a propronent of a simple, Google-like interface that searches everything. I know that such an interface as I propose would be very complicated, and have a steep learning curve, but it would be so much easier to teach only one interface in our library instruction sessions than 5, or 12, or 20... and it would be so much more useful if the user had control over what they were searching in, what they were searching for, and how they wanted their results displayed/sorted.

I'm definitely not techie enough to know just how much of this is currently possible, but I am internet-obsessed enough to know that this is what users will come to expect, and hopefully the direction we are going in.