The Job of Organizing

Organizing information is a job, and one that not necessarily everyone should do. People organize things every day, but since we all do not think in the same way, it may be difficult to find that one piece of information you need if someone else organized it. An article about teenage girls getting free makeovers from a Mary Kay cosmetics representative could be located in many different files; teenagers, cosmetics, makeovers, or possibly Mary Kay, depending on who did the organizing and what their focus point was about the article. 

The implications of this for today’s librarians are far reaching. More than ever, the knowledge a librarian possesses about how to organize information in a way that is easily retrievable is a great asset to researchers, students as well as professionals.  With the instant access to an overwhelming amount of information available today, many people need a knowledgeable guide in their quest for quality information.  The training a librarian receives, as well as the practice in organizing information that is a daily part of the job, makes the librarian the first person most researchers will reach out to for assistance.

The Diigo tags I recently created as part of my SLIS coursework are an example of this concept.   The websites tagged had quality information, thanks to what I have learned about evaluating websites, and each were given several tags that will lead others to  the information I found to be helpful. While there is a possibility that my thought processes in tagging may not match another researcher’s looking for the same information, I added several tags to each website, which makes the tags helpful to many people, even those who think a little differently than I do!

 

The Machine is Us/ing Us

The machine, the computer, is us. We are the computer because we place our creations, our thoughts, our images on the Web, in a very interactive way. We now use this medium to collaborate in real time, across vast distances. We meet on line to read, watch, hear, discuss, learn, inform, even debate with friends, colleagues, possibly even strangers. Our lives are cataloged on websites that sort and arrange our financial data, educational data, favorite photographs, even our memories written in blogs and tweets.

The machine, again the computer, is using us. The World Wide Web uses people every day to add to its vast store of information, trivia, music, and videos.  When we store “our” thoughts, feelings, knowledge, lives on the Internet there is program code there as well, code that was designed to learn from every bit of input. We sort our lives using folders, brackets, and software applications; all the while the programming of these applications is also sorting our information following guidelines written by programmers unknown to us. The machine can then begin using these bits of input information and digital media to expand the knowledge the web contains, thus making it even more useful to us, and thus, making us useful to the machine to help it grow its knowledge base.

I believe Professor Wesch gave his video this title because the Web 2.0 is interactive; it grows and expands daily as we spend more and more time inputting the information of all aspects of our lives into the computer, onto Web 2.0.  

Using Quick Response Codes in the Library

 I love the ease of the QR tag and how cool it is that my link opens immediately on my friend’s phone! The tag was so easy to make using the Microsoft application, that once I was sure it worked I wanted to tag everything.  While I am not yet in my own library, I could definitely see making a tag for the library website and sending home a flyer with each student advertising this quick link to resources for both parents and students.  After the initial flyer was sent home the tag would be incorporated on any newsletter masthead, book fair advertisement, or other paper document produced in connection with the library, including my business card.

 Other possible uses for these tags in the library might be to link current Book Club questions and topics to posters hung advertising the date and time of club meetings , new professional inventory for teachers could be tagged with a brief description of each title so they would know what books they wanted to actually look through , tutorials on how to use the website  or the databases linked to the website could be tagged beside each computer and on simple bookmarks for library patrons to take with them. 

One of my favorite ideas as a classroom teacher is probably incorporating a tag within the on-line catalog linking me to a hold request system. That way if I find the perfect book for my lesson it will be waiting on me when I need it!  Tags with links to suggested reading lists organized by topic, author, or genre could also be incorporated on the books themselves. This new technology will make quite an impact on how libraries serve their patrons.