2 Hours

Because I now have paid temp hours at the community college, I had to limit how many hours I can give to the public library. For now, I'm only teaching the computer class. We'll take it one month at a time and see how things go.

Taught computer class (2 hours, 5 students): The entire class was spent on Google Docs. The first hour was spent getting everyone signed in. Most people have Yahoo addresses, so I'm thankful they could sign in with those, but getting the passwords to match both times they typed it in and then reading the spam protection sent a few people on a frustrating cycle. Those spam protection letters are hard to read!

After everyone finally got signed in, we took our break and then came back to look at what one can do with Google Docs. I started by showing them how to use the help section and then sending them on their own search in the help section. Next we went to a blank document. I showed them a sample of things one could do with font and alignment and let them experiment. At the end, we named our document, then deleted it. Maybe we should have named the document at the beginning. That was my plan, but I got side tracked.

Some of them were excited to realize they don't have to manually save their work. Others were most interested in the options for changing the font. 

I started this project out of my own curiosity, then I decided to make it into a blog post. Since I didn't begin with the idea of organizing the results, I didn't start with controlled vocabulary and a list of points to look for and all those other things that make good statistics.

Then when I realized I could turn this into a blog post, I became overwhelmed with the thought of having to start over (boring) or create perfect charts. Then I reminded myself that this is a blog post, not an academic articles, so naturally formed information is acceptable as long as people know what they are getting.

So here you are, obvious holes and all.

What prompted this project is that I occasionally like to check and see if what I think is true, actually is true. It had been a while since I compared search engines and I wanted to see if anything had changed. I also wanted to see what the best search methods are (keywords, short phrases, full sentences). 

All search engines gave 10 results per page.

I only looked at the first page.

All search engines contained duplicate results, meaning same or different pages from the same URL.

Suggested Searches in Dropdown = Suggested searches that show while typing in search box

I did not count carefully which results were the same across search engines. I looked at URLs and decided if all, some, or no results were similar to Dogpile's results.

Compared all search engines results to Dopgile because it searches the other three.

I ran an organic search. That is, I started with the vague idea "I want to know something about painting my own car," and then refined the search based on what I wanted to know as I read the first set of results.

Helpfulness of suggested searches, ranked best to worst: 

Relevancy of results, ranked best to worst by search type

Broad keywords:

Short phrase: 

Full sentence: 

Search method, ranked best to worst: 

Does the best search method depend on the search topic and/or the words used? Would keywords or short phrases be better for more common topics, such as a biography of an actor, while short phrases or full sentences are better for topics with less available information?

This is a fantasy post about how I think Twitter and blogs could help us teach students about keywords and subject headings in the library catalogue. It's a fantasy because in my, admittedly limited, experience, there is only time for a quick 45-minute "this is the catalogue and this is a database and this is how you search them" class. But, if I did get a chance to teach a more leisurely class, I might try these ideas. Or maybe this could be a self-lead video or Prezi tutorial for the more academically inclined students?

Hash tags create categories. Some hash tags create categories with lots of information about a topic and some are random words someone thought was important to their tweet. So the more useful hash tags are similar to subject headings and the less useful ones are similar to keywords.

Half the class could search Twitter for a topic and half could search the library catalogue for the same topic. How do the results compare? How does the process of finding information compare?

I'm thinking primarily of WordPress blogs here because of WordPress's tag cloud. The idea could be altered to look at the tag cloud for all of WordPress or for the tags in an individual blog.

The categories on a particular blog are similar to subject headings. Click on a category link and you find more posts about that particular topic. Tags are similar to keywords. Click on a tag and you will find posts about many topics.

Similarly, in a database or catalogue, subject heading links lead you to more information about that particular topic. Searching for a keyword leads to information that may or may not be relevant.

Of course, these ideas would only work if students were already comfortable with Twitter and blogs. Also, I don't have all the details worked out, but thought I'd post the ideas in case they are useful to someone else.

On my other blog, I posted about how to properly give credit to other bloggers, including an explanation of why it is important. 

My target audience is a beginning-intermediate computer user - someone who is comfortable navigating online, but still wonders if he can break the Internet. This imaginary person also vaguely knows that plagiarism is bad, but isn't quite sure why that is or what exactly is plagiarism. 

As I learn more about WordPress, I will look for ways to edit the formatting to make the post more readable. It turned out much longer than I anticipated.

I have two weeks before I teach the blogging class, so there is still time for me to make changes if anyone has feedback. Thanks. :)

Why do I decide to keep records of some things and not of others? I don't know.

I only keep track of the most important things I do at the academic library where I volunteer, but when I started volunteering at the public library, I started keeping a list of what I did each day.

Then I asked myself, "Why are you keeping a paper list, that you have to force yourself to fill out each week, when you could be writing a blog post which serves the double function of adding to your blog and keeping a record of activity?"

Right. Of course. So sometimes the train is a little slow leaving the station. It's more proof that I am human ('cause some may think I'm Hobbit-Vulcan progeny).

So this post is a recap of what I've done since August. Let's see how this form of record keeping turns out. Maybe I'll decide there's no reason to keep these records after all. Maybe I'll learn something else. Who knows?

And don't worry. I plan on updating every week, not once every two months, so future posts on the topic will be much shorter.

• Helped 1 orient to the Local History Room collection
• Helped 1 with the copier
• Scanned 18 envelopes of negatives (1-10 negatives per envelope)
• Searched Access Newspaper Archive
• Searched microfilm for an obituary
  

• Indexed* negatives (1.5 hrs.)
  
• Searched Access Newspaper Archive 
  
• Shelved microfilm
  
• Sorted negatives (3 hrs.)

• Indexed negatives
  

• Indexed negatives
  
• Searched Access Newspaper Archive
  

• Indexed negatives
  
• Searched microfilm for will and estate records
  

• Copied newspaper articles for local history files
  
• Searched microfilm for will and estate records
  
• Shelved non-fiction books
  
• Taught beginning computer class (2 hrs., 1 student): How to use keyboard; How to use mouse; Set up email account
  

• Indexed negatives
  
• Taught computer class (2 hrs., 2 students): How to send an email; How to take a picture from email and post it on Facebook; Typing and mouse review; How to log into email when you forgot your password; Scrolling using arrow keys
  

• Indexed negatives
  
• Taught computer class (2 hrs., 1 student): How to place a book on hold using the library's online system; Review of typing in URLs and clicking the search button or hitting Enter; Review of scrolling using arrow keys or mouse; How to zoom using CTRL and "+" keys; Review of logging into email and sending email; How to add a contact when someone emails you; Why strong passwords are important and characteristics of strong and weak passwords
  

* I use the term "index" because that's what the librarians refer to it as. What I do is read 70-year-old handwriting, decipher it, and type the information into an Excel spreadsheet. Then I count the number of negatives in the envelope and enter their number and size (3.5 x 5 or 5 x7).

Anna*: Does your computer work now that you've restored it?


Creig: I don't know. I can't get on the internet.


Anna: There's more to your computer than the internet.

Creig (who regularly uses off-line programs): There is?!

I'm not posting this to make fun of someone; I'm posting it to help demonstrate how people interact with and think about computers. For many, "computer" and "internet" are synonyms. This was made even more clear to me while teaching my second Intro to Computers class yesterday.

While talking with the students about what computers they have at home and how they might be different from the new laptops we use at the library, I asked if anyone had internet access. The response generally was, "I don't know, I think so, but my computer is very old."

"Just because you have a computer, that doesn't mean you have internet access," I clarified.

Surprised looks resulted from this statement.

My further explanation, "You have to pay for the internet like you have to pay for phone service," produced nods of understanding.

Now, I don't have any great lesson to draw from knowing that some people think "computer = internet," but I find interesting this indication of how people think about common things.

I do wonder, though, if the internet was never invented, would computers be as necessary in daily life as they are now?

*Not their real names, but names are more interesting than "Person 1" and "Person 2."

I'll eventually get around to posting the next "Thing." I was distracted today when I read this post on one of my favorite websites, Ask A Manager. 

Read the post, then come back, so that what I write next will make sense.

_________________________________________________________

Although I want people to have access to as much information as possible, giving credit where credit is due is very important to me. Stories like this and its comments show once again how important it is for educators to practice proper crediting/citation and to explain things to their students. 

And by explain, I mean to do one's best to answer the "it isn't hurting anyone" and "who cares; information should be free" objections to the limits imposed by fair use. Simply telling people what do do without answering the opposition is one-sided.

Sure, copyright is confusing, but the basic ethics of "don't use what isn't yours without asking and crediting" can be taught (and the opposition answered) without going into the technical details. After all, all the laws in the universe won't change behavior as effectively as someone understanding the value and personal benefit of an action. Attitudes control actions more than laws do.

When I was in high school, people gave us their old computers, saying how wonderful computers are. I never figured out what was so wonderful about typing games and I never figured out exactly how to play Minefield, or whatever that game was called that I could never figure out how to navigate or what the purpose was, but occasionally a bomb would explode.

When I was 14 or so, I helped my aunt with her business for a few weeks. One day, proclaiming the wonders of the internet, she left me alone to browse. I stared at the screen. What do I do? There's a world of information there, is there? How do I get to it? How do I avoid getting something I don't want to see?

I couldn't think of a single thing to search for. Finally, I typed in "New York Times." That won't bring up anything repulsive, will it? Hmm, those pages need a subscription to view. Now what? I spent the better part of the hour staring at the screen, wondering what I was supposed to do. When my aunt came back, she cheerfully exclaimed, "It's interesting isn't it?"

I half-heartedly agreed and was relieved when we moved on to Excel. Input numbers, the sum comes out. I understood that.

Through dual enrollment in my high school junior and senior years, I learned how to type a paper on a computer, but I didn't understand the purpose of saving to a disk. If anyone explained to me about editing, I missed it. I thought the word processing program was essentially an electronic typewriter, but more complicated. The only thing I liked was that I could fix mistakes without having to retype the entire page or use whiteout, but I thought you could only do this editing before you printed the paper. After the paper was printed, I thought you had to go back and retype the whole page if there was a mistake, the same as on a typewriter.

Then there was the time I needed help doing research for a class and the library lady told me to get on the internet.

"What do I do?" I asked.

"Search for what you want."

Clearly she wasn't going to help me, so I sat in front of the computer, trying not to cry (I had already fruitlessly searched the library and was running out of time) and wondering how I would find the information I needed. I knew enough to open the web browser, but I didn't know what to do from there. I was comfortable using a library catalogue, but the search engine didn't seem to work the same way. No keyword or subject search? I can't limit by author or title? What do I do?

I faintly remembered that to find things online, one should go to Ask Jeeves, or something like that. Tentatively, I typed that in and clicked the search button. Hey! I found what I wanted.

Now what.

I tried typing in my topic. How do I find anything relevant in all these results? What do I do from here?

I had no idea what I was doing and was so frustrated. I just wanted to figure out which microfilm to look at or somehow find something that would get me the information I needed. No way was I going back to ask the library lady for more help. She already made it clear that I was on my own.

As I'm staring at the computer screen, wondering why I'm stupid and what I'm missing that's so obvious to everyone else, another student leans over, and, clearly trying to start a conversation with a girl (the student was a young man), asks, "Have you used Dogpile? I know it's not a nice name, but it's a good search engine."

Well, at least that gives me something to do so that I look like I know what I'm doing. As I try to send signals that I'm not interested in the boy, I manage to navigate to Dogpile. I still don't know what to do, but start typing and clicking, anything to look busy so the boy will leave me alone.

In the end, I found something minimally useful and escaped the boy. I left exhausted and frustrated, still not understanding what was so great about computers and the internet.

Fast forward a year or two to freshman year at college. I'm attending the required computer literacy one-hour session where some lady is explaining how to use the college's email system. Why would I want to use email instead of walking up to the person and talking to them?

That question may have been addressed, but it wasn't answered to the point that I understood the value of email, but never mind all that. The lady was zipping so quickly through her lesson, I was lost before she had started.

"Press this button... Now if you do this... And on this screen.. If you go here..."

Finally, hoping I wouldn't look like an idiot, but figuring momentary embarrassment was better than a year of getting bad grades because I lacked a skill, I leaned over to a girl who seemed to know what was going on. "What do I do now?" I asked.

She quickly showed me and went back to playing her computer game. I left the class sort of knowing how to send an email, but not much else.

The computer literacy class specifically for music students lasted the whole first semester. I learned enough about emailing, searching online, and creating a website that I began to think that maybe I liked computers.

In the dorm, the girls in the room next to me had a computer and they introduced me to Hotmail and AIM. I was hooked. By the end of freshman year, I couldn't imagine life without email. I also understood the attraction of the internet.

Sometime after that, I don't remember which year, I needed information for a music paper. The library yielded little. I searched online and found a site for a music organization with a "contact us" link. So I contact them and asked my question.

Many days later, I receive an email from a man whose name was strange to me. Because I recognized the subject, I opened the email. The man said he received my question, wondered why I contacted him, and suggested I contact such-and-such a person for the information I needed.

I emailed the first man, thanked him for his response, and told him how he ended up with my email.

I don't remember if I contacted the second man, but I do remember that I was impressed that emailing a stranger resulted in a suggestion to contact someone else. "This would never happen to me in person," I thought.

It was quite some time before I realized that professionals helping people find the information they want by referring them to other people is normal. I thought I had discovered hidden treasure. All you have to do is ask and you get information leading you to a better source, how amazing is that? When I mentioned the experience to a professor and she seemed unimpressed, I began to wonder if the experience was more common than I thought. Even so, the idea that all I have to do is ask and a new world opens left me a bit giddy.

Since undergraduate school, I have learned much more about connecting with professionals and using the internet for research. Multiple people online helped me because I asked, whether or not we have a mutual acquaintance. Asking online for research help is common, but I will always remember the excitement of that first encounter.

From boredom to crying in public to confidently contacting people online, this is how I came to like computers and discovered the thrill of research through asking strangers for help.