week 5, thing 11: linking to library thing catalog

http://www.librarything.com/catalog/sjsmith8670

library thing reminds me of a more down-to-earth version of novelist. i think the word i might be thinking of is community, which makes me think of wiki. there's the human factor, whereas

i also found it incredibly deep, again for lack of a better word. the fact that it links to loc and amazon allows it to provide such a wide variety of information on titles... it had all sorts of editions, versions, publishers, etc. for just the little bit of information i entered for all of my titles.

instead of just one set of tags, you get tags from users all over the world. and these people are not just librarians or catalogers - which is a good thing!

you can see what other people who have enjoyed your favorite titles have also read. this more "humanistic" way of suggesting items is more user-friendly. sometimes you just want to find a book that has nothing to do with the book you just read, you just want the language and the story to be "right." if you found someone with similar tastes, you'd be able to find a book that just seemed "right," without having to type in endless keywords and then get back a set of titles from 2001 and 1999 that you would have to wait 3 weeks to get through interlibrary loan.

this is wordy, and it doesn't completely explain my feelings, but hopefully you get the idea. it's friday and has been a long week, give me a break ;)

week 3, thing 7: write about anything techie

This comes after playing around a little on Flickr (and I mean a little - do not pretend to have any idea of all of its features):

All through the school year, we (educators, teachers) emphasize the importance of including citations, according to whatever style guidelines your assignment calls for. We emphasize the importance of crediting the source of articles, books... primarily print- or text-based mediums. It is important to keep the original intact.

But with Flickr, it's different. Not only can I take your pictures (who hasn't indulged in a little shameless cut and paste?), I can doctor them up a thousand ways with mashups, and then save them. Messing around with the original is the point.

Granted, playing a game of sudoku with hamster pictures is not the equivalent of writing a paper and crediting sources using a particular format. However, this exercise has made me think about the difference between visual/audio file sharing and the "usual" written word.