Book Lists and Other Adventures

Well.

Concocting a list of books that I'd like to read should take me, oh... ten minutes tops. But I think I just lost a couple of hours of my life browsing through WorldCat and Library Thing. And I'd do it again in a heartbeat.

Both WorldCat and Library Thing were easy to use and helpful, and I had a really hard time really deciding between the two which one worked better for me. Since I liked them both about equally and I chose the same 10 books on each site, I'm just going to go through my book list and talk through the experience a bit.

The MockingJay by Suzanne Collins

I thought I'd be really clever and search for this book on both since it's not out yet. Foiled. Of course both systems are hooked up to Amazon so I should have figured. Still, score one for both WC and LT. And I didn't even have to dig for it. Searched by title, and BOOM! There it was.

Before I Fall by Lauren Oliver

I've been meaning to pick up this book for a while, as all my students are saying it's fantastic. Although I trust my students (most of the time), I checked out reviews on this book and they convinced me that I needed to order it. From the reviews I picked through on both sites, it sounds life-altering. About the reviews themselves: prominently displayed on the book's page, with links if they were longer, with a rating system. Very clear, very organized. I loved the reviews because I do rely heavily on them, being that I sort of fell in love with Amazon's system right away, and they sway me almost always.

Will Grayson Will Grayson by John Green and David Levithan & The Bermudez Triangle by Maureen Johnson

I follow all three of these authors on Twitter and I love everything they've ever written, so for these searches I merely used their names, and both resources provided a list of everything they'd penned. The best thing about browsing through the lists was discovering books I hadn't read by them, and finding recommendations from people who had liked these authors. It was so easy to browse other people's lists, that I added a few books to my pile based on them.

Hush Hush by Becca Fitzpatrick and Angel Time by Anne Rice

These two books came from a list that I connected to from a different list, one that was a YA Favorites. It took me to one specifically about angel books, which I've sort of had a fascination with lately, so I added a few to my list. These two choices were cited on a lot of lists as good reads, had good reviews, and good ratings - all of those factors helped me decide that the two of them would be my best choice.

The Battle for God by Karen Armstrong

Religion fascinates me, especially fundamentalism because its views are so different than mine. A keyword search for 'fundamentalism' brought up a huge list of books and, well, here's where I should explain some of the differences between WC and LT.

WorldCat's search results come up in a list complete with book covers, options to view other versions of the book, and lists on the side to narrow down by author, date, format, audience, and more specific topic. To add a book to your list, easy as can be, check the box next to it and select the list you'd like to add it to from a drop down menu and viola! It's on your list. From this menu I found the name Karen Armstrong, who is a trusted writer on this topic, and selected her book.

Library Thing worked a little differently, but also in a good way. I went into the search option and typed in 'fundamentalism' in the keywords box, and this is where I favor Library Thing just a bit. It brought up what looks to be a real bookshelf, with the top books tagged with 'fundamentalism' sitting on it. Armstrong's book was the first result. On the side it gave me awesome other ways to either narrow down my choices or explore further. Related subjects, related tagmashes, authors who had used that tag, and related tags were all listed as well, and one click on any of them could have helped me browse. Really convenient, really user-friendly, and really a time suck for a book lover like me. I could have spent all day going from tag to tag and finding new books.

Finding Your Writer's Voice by Thaisa Frank, Writing Down to the Bones by Natalie Goldberg, Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott

Using the keyword searches again, I typed in "writing", hoping to find some great books on the craft of writing. Neither site really was specific enough for me, so I started playing around with the tag clouds and user lists, but for this particular search, what I found to be most helpful was the Subject Lists on LT and the Recommendations on WC. Both operated sort of the same way, by suggesting books on the same topic. Going into the entry of my favorite book about writing, Stephen King's On Writing, LC showed me a whole lists of recommendations for similar books, as well as a tag cloud that led me to Writing Down to the Bones. WC, on the other hand, had direct links to specific subject lists or user lists at the bottom of the page, where I found the other books listed here. Again, both sites made this painless and really easy, and also had me wanting to browse for a few hours.

The Lists

The lists themselves are easy to access from your account homepage on both sites, and when you're done, they look like this:

LT: The Next 10
WC: The Next 10

LT allows you many different display options for your lists, as well as ways to organize it to your liking right on the list page. A drop down menu lets you easily flit between lists.

WC also allowed for different views of the list and ways to organize it directly on the list page, but it's not quite as attractive a setup as LT. LT just seems tailor-made for browsing because it's actually set up, visually, like a bookstore. So, I guess LT wins by a hair. But a very thin hair.

Google Scholar

For this assignment, we were challenged to look up the same topic we chose for our last assignment in Google Scholar. So, using the same search terms as for assignment #8, I used Google Scholar to find articles about Social Networking. Here is the bibliography that produced:

Title: Social network(ing) sitesrevisiting the story so far: A response to danah boyd &Nicole Ellison
Author(s): Beer, D. D.
Source: JOURNAL OF COMPUTER MEDIATED COMMUNICATION -ELECTRONIC EDITION- 13 (2):516-529 2008
Times Cited: 53

Title: Homophily in Myspace
Author: Mike Thelwall
Source: Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 60 (2): 219-231 February 2009
Times cited: 17

Title: The Taste for Privacy: An Analysis of College Student Privacy Settings in an Online Social Network
Author: Kevin Lewis, Jason Kaufman, Nicholas Christakis
Source: Journal of Computer Mediated Communication, 14 (1): 79-100 Oct 2008
Times cited: 21

Title: The Faces of Facebookers: Investigating Social Enhancement and Social Compensation Hypotheses; Predicting Facebook™ and Offline Popularity from Sociability and Self-Esteem, and Mapping the Meanings of Popularity with Semantic Networks
Author: Jolene Zywica, James Danowski
Source: Journal of Computer Mediated Communication, 14 (1): 1-34 Oct 2008
Times Cited: 17

Title: Functions of Social Networking Services
Author: A. Richter, M. Koch
Source: Proc. 8TH International
Conference on the Design of Cooperative Systems, Carry-le-rouet, France, Institut d'Etudes Politiques d'Aix-en-Provence, 87-98
Times Cited: 14

Title: Informal Learning and Identity Formation in Online Social Networks
Author: Christine Greenhowa; Beth Robelia
Source: Learning, Media and Technology, 34(2): 119 - 140 June 2009
Times cited: 9

Title: Facebook and Online Privacy: Attitudes, Behaviors, and Unintended Consequences
Author: Bernhard Debatin, Jennette P. Lovejoy
Source: Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 15: 83-108 2009
Times Cited: 10

Title: Youth and Their Virtual Networked Words: Research Findings and Their Implications for School Libraries
Author: Dr. Ross J. Todd
Source: School Libraries Worldwide, 14 (2): 19-34 July 2008
Times cited: 8

Title: Too much of a good thing? The relationship between number of friends and interpersonal impressions on Facebook
Author: Stephanie Tom Tong, Brandon Van Der Heide,Lindsey Langwell, Joseph B. Walther
Source: Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 13 (3): 531–549 April 2008
Times Cited: 35

Title: Personality and motivations associated with Facebook use
Author: Craig Ross Emily S. Orra, Jaime M. Arseneaulta, Mary G. Simmeringa, R. Robert Orra,
Source: Computers in Human Behavior, 25 (2): 578-586 March 2009
Times cited: 19


My thoughts on Google Scholar vs. the Kent databases:

To be honest, I didn't feel that there was much of a difference between Google and Kent's searches. Although Google Scholar felt a bit more relaxed as far as searching terms went, they both pretty much returned the same kind of results, in both number and quality (accuracy and relevance.)

I will say that since the assignment depending on the number of citations used for the source, Google Scholar was easier to use in that regard. It listed right below the search result how many times that particular article had been cited. I didn't have to go anywhere else to see how many times the article was cited. It also, wonderfully, gave a link that took you directly to related articles, which I used several times in this assignment. Another plus to Google Scholar was that it also linked to multiple versions of the article right from the results page.

All in all:

• I felt Google was just as trustworthy with its results as the Kent databases
• both systems provided accurate results and I will use them both again
• Google Scholar had a more convenient layout overall, which made linking to other sources easier
• For this particular assignment, which asked for citation numbers, Google wins on convenience, but only for that reason
• I felt only slightly more comfortable with my search terms in Google Scholar, mostly because I knew that, like a regular Google search, it would most likely find something relevant even if it wasn't the best search term. In other words, I was more okay with making mistakes on Scholar and this is probably sort of a learned response to Google in general. I'm just prepared to search again or to have to filter through dud results. Which... really isn't a positive thing for Google, now that I think about it.

Assignment 8 - The Bibliography

I searched the Library Literature and Information Science Full Text Database and the Social Sciences Citation Index for articles about Social Networking. The bibliography I came up with is a combination of resources pulled from search terms like:

• social networking
• internet communication
• Twitter
• Facebook
• Myspace

Bibliography

Title: The role of friends' appearance and behavior on evaluations of individuals on facebook: Are we known by the company we keep?

Author(s): Walther, JB; Van der Heide, B; Kim, SY, et al.

Source: HUMAN COMMUNICATION RESEARCH, 34 (1): 28-U60 2008

Times Cited: 23

Title: The benefits of Facebook "friends": Social capital and college students' use of online social network sites

Author(s): Ellison, NB; Steinfield, C; Lampe, C

Source: JOURNAL OF COMPUTER-MEDIATED COMMUNICATION, 12 (1): 2007

Times Cited: 20

Title: MySpace and facebook: Applying the uses and gratifications theory to exploring friend-networking sites

Author(s): Raacke, J; Bonds-Raacke, J

Source: CYBERPSYCHOLOGY & BEHAVIOR, 11 (2): 169-174 2008

Times Cited: 16

Title: Too much of a good thing? The relationship between number of friends and interpersonal impressions on facebook

Author(s): Tong, ST; Van Der Heide, B; Langwell, L, et al.

Source: JOURNAL OF COMPUTER-MEDIATED COMMUNICATION, 13 (3): 531-549 2008

Times Cited: 13

Title: Personality and motivations associated with Facebook use

Author(s): Ross, C; Orr, ES; Sisic, M, et al.

Source: COMPUTERS IN HUMAN BEHAVIOR, 25 (2): 578-586 2009

Times Cited: 6

Title: The Faces of Facebookers: Investigating Social Enhancement and Social Compensation Hypotheses; Predicting Facebook(TM) and Offline Popularity from Sociability and Self-Esteem, and Mapping the Meanings of Popularity with Semantic Networks

Author(s): Zywica, J; Danowski, J

Source: JOURNAL OF COMPUTER-MEDIATED COMMUNICATION, 14 (1): 1-3 2008

Times Cited: 5

Title: Friend networking sites and their relationship to adolescents' well-being and social self-esteem

Author(s): Valkenburg, PM; Peter, J; Schouten, AP

Source: CYBERPSYCHOLOGY & BEHAVIOR, 9 (5): 584-590 OCT 2006

Times Cited: 23

Title: Personal information of adolescents on the Internet: A quantitative content analysis of MySpace

Author(s): Hinduja, S; Patchin, JW

Source: JOURNAL OF ADOLESCENCE, 31 (1): 125-146 2008

Times Cited: 19

Title: Taking risky opportunities in youthful content creation: teenagers' use of social networking sites for intimacy, privacy and self-expression

Author(s): Livingstone, S

Source: NEW MEDIA & SOCIETY, 10 (3): 393-411 2008

Times Cited: 20

Title: New ties, old ties and lost ties: The use of the internet in Diaspora

Author(s): Hiller, HH; Franz, TM

Source: NEW MEDIA & SOCIETY, 6 (6): 731-752 DEC 2004

Times Cited: 13

Title: Postmodern society and social networks: Open and anticipation dialogues in network meetings

Author(s): Seikkula, J; Arnkil, TE; Eriksson, E

Source: FAMILY PROCESS, 42 (2): 185-203 SUM 2003

Times Cited: 13

Title: Social networking profiles: An examination of student attitudes regarding use and appropriateness of content

Author(s): Peluchette, J; Karl, K

Source: CYBERPSYCHOLOGY & BEHAVIOR, 11 (1): 95-97 2008

Times Cited: 8

Title: Social networks, gender, and friending: An analysis of MySpace member profiles

Author(s): Thelwall, M

Source: JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN SOCIETY FOR INFORMATION SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY, 59 (8): 1321-1330 2008

Times Cited: 15

Library of Congress vs. Flickr - A Bitter Battle

I always love the opportunity to pore through historical photographs. My hometown is very rich in history (Chillicothe, Ohio) and so I was excited to browse through the LoC's photos and see what they had.

Here are the search terms I used:

• Chillicothe
• Chillicothe Ohio
• Adena Mansion
• Camp Sherman
  
• Majestic Theater
• Ross County
• First Capital Ohio

I expected that since this is a library and items would be cataloged in a standardized way, not in the way of user tags or groups, that the searching and search results would be more rigid. That was certainly true. Although the results returned to me certainly were more direct matches than Flickr, there were far less of them.

Because of the way the LoC catalogs, I was certain I would have to use more specific language to get the results I wanted, and that was true. In short, I felt as if I had to think like a cataloger, instead of using terms that popped into my head normally. Which is fine, if you know how to think like a cataloger.

To be honest, though, the biggest issue with the LoC in comparison to Flickr was the lack of variation in the results, and a lack of actual sources. All the photographs returned to me appeared to be mostly by the same photographer and mostly on the same subject (a snowstorm in the 40's). The results seemed shallow. Even photos that were not of the 40's snowstorm were the easy to find photos that every historical place or restaurant in town has up on their wall. I had hoped to find something new and fascinating. (Confession: I'd hoped to find one on Camp Sherman that is the back side view to the panorama shot I tagged in Delicious. I've been searching for that forever because I truly believe one has to exist. If that photographer had turned around, he would have snapped a shot of my mother-in-law's house because there's no doubt about it, that panorama had to have been taken from her front porch.)

Lastly, I found LoC to be frustrating because it appears as if they have more on file than is available on their searches. Quite a few results came back as "not digitized" or as "group records" and it would be fascinating to see the photographs they have records for.

All in all, not a bad collection of photos I ended up with, though. I definitely would rather use Flickr, simply because the features like Sets and Galleries are so easy to use, and it allows for a certain amount of networking as well, like groups that focus on historical photos of the area. The ease of the tags is also hard to deny, as is the scope of their collection.
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That said, Flickr doesn't allow for much record keeping, and it was great to see the details behind the photos of LoC

The Joys of Flickr

I don't know about anyone else, but I am a terrible photographer. Even when people are holding still, I have a hard time capturing a pose. It's really a crime because I live in the heart of Hocking Hills, which is gorgeous in the spring time, and summer time, and fall and winter too.

So my aim with the Flickr project was to find some great pictures of the Hocking Hills area, especially the caves and trails - pictures I am not talented enough to take myself.

I began with a simple search of "Hocking Hills" and got pages upon pages of results. Some of the results weren't exactly what I was after, but were things from the Hocking Hills region (like a shot of an owl). I collected quite a few pictures from that search regardless, and then went for specific cave regions, or variants on the terms. Here were some of my search terms:

• Hocking Hills State Park
• Ash Cave
• Old Man's Cave
• Conkle's Hollow
• Rock House
• Rock House stone stairs
• Hocking Hills waterfalls
• Hocking Hills trails
• Ash Cave Waterfalls

The Good:

Once I figure out how to create a gallery (I'm stubborn and pig-headed and therefor did not read the tutorial after I signed up, okay?) it was smooth sailing. No matter what terms I put in, I seemed to get relevant results. Of course this led to me searching for other places I love, like Sienna, Italy or Edinburgh, Scotland, and the searches all returned great results as well. I even got specific with a few (looking up the bell tower in Sienna, for example), and it was quite easy to manage.

The Bad:

To be honest, I felt like Flickr in general was twice the work it had to be, and let me preface the rest of this by saying that I could feel that way because I don't know better ways to do things on Flickr. (As I said, I'm stubborn. I'm also a child of the first internet generation. If these aren't easy right away, it's the internet's fault, not mine.) The site itself was a bit cluttered. There wasn't a way to move from one picture to the next, and you couldn't add pictures to your gallery from the thumbnails. You had to expand all the pictures. Also, the task of editing picture tags or descriptions or even the gallery name seemed to have more steps than necessary. Really, the whole thing could be fixed with a few more buttons and a whole lot less clutter.

Overall, Flickr is a convenient way of keeping track of your pictures, and letting you network and find pictures you'd like outside of your own. With a few more careful touches, it could be extremely user friendly and intuitive.

Here's my gallery of the Hocking Hills. Enjoy!