Learning HTML:A Report on the Evaluation of

Three Educational Resources

Description of Audience

The audience for this resource evaluation is represented by a college-educated person who wants to learn basic Web design, in particular HTML and CSS. The person has no prior experience whatsoever with Web design or coding for the Web. Rather than attempt to learn Web design through software like Adobe Dreamweaver, this person wants to learn the fundamentals of Web design, i.e. creating Web sites from scratch. Although her main goal is not to become a professional Web designer, this person wants to become proficient enough to put these skills on her resume.

Resources Evaluated

http://www.w3schools.com

Castro, E. (2007). HTML, XHTML & CSS. Visual quickstart guide. Berkeley, CA: Peachpit Press.Online Course, e.g. University of Washington – INFX 503

LIS 520 notes 11/19/09

As the librarians of the future, we are not going to be answering factoid questions, because the answeres have been essentially automated by search engines.

Saxton’s Dissertation Study:

He studied 15 libraries in SoCal. He looked at the

Studied whether answers for questions were:

1. Accuracy
2. Useful
3. Satisfaction

He found that utility was the most important measure of the effectiveness of answers to reference questions.

Wordle Graphic – Undergrad English Lit Paper

Just learned about this cool Web site. I put in the full text of a final paper I wrote in a class I took on Shakespeare during undergrad. The paper focused on the villains Iago and Edmund in the plays Othello and King Lear, respectively. Cool Stuff.

LIS 520 – Search Assignment #2

Question #1: Can you tell me when the first news article about Google appeared, like in a magazine or newspaper?

I started by searching in the Access World News database. I quickly checked Wikipedia for the time range when Google came into existence. The Wiki entry said Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the company’s founders, began working on their search engine in 1996 when they were Ph.D. students at Stanford University. I decided to search for news articles before 1999 with “google” or “google inc.” in the full text.

There were a few results from 1995, one of which referred to a comic strip entitled “Barney Google.” I decided to focus my search to the term “google inc.,” but this didn’t help either. There were no results returned, which was a little surprising. So, I tried a new search using the terms “google” and “search engine” combined with a Boolean “and,” and narrowing the search to North American news sources.

LIS 520 notes – 11/5/09

 

What do you find in serials/journals?

• Research – newer research – lag time from research conclusion to publishing = a few months to a year or so

• Kinds of research:

1. Science, Medicine, Social Science

• A diversity of authors and viewpoints on the journal topic
• citation and reference between scholars
• written for a very specific, specialized field with its own jargon
• reference to earlier iterations of the serial
• focus – temporality
• trends/review article or lit review/survey or book review

LIS 520 notes 11/3/09

What is a scholarly journal?/journal functions (also called serials, periodicals, continuations, conference papers):

• communication/publishing/reputation
• research/scholarship
• priority claim
• community-building/creating
• gathering
• collection/thematic/topical
• education/training the next gen of scientists
• peer review function
• professional standards
• expedites publishing – intersects with communication and gathering functions
• tenure
• speed and length

LIS 520 readings and assignment 11/3/09

Brief Assignment

Looking at the Philosopher’s Index:

“The Philosopher’s Index [which is owned by a nonprofit organization called the Philosopher's Information Center] includes 622 regularly indexed current journals from more than 40 countries and is updated quarterly” (Philosopher’s Information Center)

The Philosopher’s Index includes: subject, author and book review indexes. Although, the book review index is also organized by book author.

The Philosopher’s Index is available through a number of other databases, including: Ebsco Host, OVID, OCLC First Search and ProQuest.

“EBSCO has served the library industry for more than 60 years. By placing customers at the core of our business, we have tapped their ingenuity to assist us in developing the high quality products and services for which EBSCO is known. EBSCO is the only company to provide customers with an integrated service that combines reference databases, subscription management, online journals, books, linking services and A-to-Z solutions. Always at the leading edge, we continue to work to identify new challenges and combine technology with data to meet the information needs of our customers worldwide” (ebscohost.com)

Notes LIS 510 or Sitting in class and daydreaming…

Model — Theory — Metatheory (i.e. philosophy)

This is the model of theory presented in class.

Belkin is using a linguistics/computer science/information retrieval background as he develops his Anomalous States of Knowledge (ASK) model.

Question in class from Kate: how did Belkin’s model change IR (information retrieval)? Couldn’t be answered.

Comment about the cost of search in the early days of the Internet and then the Web. Interesting.

Berrypicking:

Murray says the reformulation of the query is the most important aspect of berrypicking.

The search itself is an integral part of the information searching process. Interesting, me extrapolating, to be implying that information can only exist in a query

———————

“What is browsing – really?” by Bates

Bates says that Rice et al.( 2001) have conducted the most comprehensive analysis of browsing behavior based on research in wide ranging fields.

Bates argues that Rice et al. are missing something in their research.

Scanning, which has been thought of as the quintessential browsing behavior, is shown to have divergent, somewhat contradictory meanings in English. Bates seems to want to exploit this ambiguity to criticize its use in browsing literature.

Passage from Bates’ text:

In the final, refined framework for browsing (Rice et al. 2001: 295), which is a slightly modified version of the original tentative model presented on page 234, the process of browsing is seen to consist of 1) a behaviour: scanning; 2) motivation: a goal; 3) cognition: an object; and 4) resource: form. Rice et al.’s summary of these components of the model goes as follows:

Thus, in the new model for describing the browsing process, scanning is the salient component of the behavioural dimension. Goal is the central element of motivational dimension. Object is the major cognitive process. And form appears to be characteristic of the resource dimension. (Rice et al. 2001: 291-292).”

Bates’ informal description of browsing (I like it better, too):

I would argue, browsing consists of a series of glimpses, some glimpses leading to further, closer exploration of the thing(s) glimpsed and some not. In this view, browsing consists of numerous stops and starts, with some reading, or surveying, alternating with other actions, such as sampling and selecting.

This idea of “stops and starts” is definitely more in tune with my idea of browsing, and it seems more intuitive as well.

Bates’ formal definition of browsing:

Browsing is the activity of engaging in a series of glimpses, each of which may or may not lead to closer examination of a (physical or represented) object, which examination may or may not lead to (physical and/or conceptual) acquisition of the object.

Her definition exhibits a broader trend that I have noticed in other scholars such as Manovich, for instance, namely, a visual/ocular bias in perceiving human behavior. The body is left out of the equation, or if it isn’t left out, it remains secondary to the behavior of one’s eyes and the visual stimuli one perceives.

Works Cited

Bates, Marcia J. (2007). “What is browsing—really? A model drawing from behavioural science research” Information Research, 12(4) paper 330. [Available at <http://InformationR.net/ir/12-4/paper330.html>]

LIS 520 – Search Assignment #1

These are  research questions posed by my instructor for which we had to find answers.

Bask in the librarian’s goodness.

Question #1: My brother just saw Stalag 17 and now he wants to read a novel about POWs or set in a POW camp.  Can you suggest a good book or two, or author for him?

First, I needed to look up what Stalag 17 was, because I was not familiar with the title. I went to Wikipedia for a quick summary. After learning that it was a set in WWII, I decided to search “Stalag 17″ in Amazon.com to see if they provided any quick recommendations. I scrolled down to find a few customer recommendations, one of which was very helpful, namely, the book The Flame Keepers by Ned Handy. This is a true story about the Stalag 17 POW camp.