Subject: [CODE4LIB] Bookmarking web links - authoritativeness or focused searching

From: Cindy Harper <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 29 Sep 2009 10:53:34 -0400

I've been thinking about the role of libraries as promoter of authoritative
works - helping to select and sort the plethora of information out there.
And I heard another presentation about social media this morning.  So I
though I'd bring up for discussion here some of the ideas I've been mulling
over.

Last week I sent this message to the "Suggestions and Ideas" forum at
delicious.
http://support.delicious.com/forum/comments.php?DiscussionID=3237&page=1#Item_0
The basic idea is to develop a delicious network of librarians. Or a network
of faculty members.  Then have one login whose network included those users,
and share that login so that lots of people could share that network.
Delicious responded that we could have a wiki where people posted their
delicious names so that others could add them to their personal networks,
but that doesn't scale up very well.

Or another project I've toyed with, involving focused searching:  I started
with Robert Teeter's index to Great Books lists.
http://www.interleaves.org/~rteeter/grtalphaa.html<http://www.interleaves.org/%7Erteeter/grtalphaa.html>.
I've almost completed pulling them into a MySQL database so that I could
sort the titles by the number of Great Books lists that mention each title.
Then I thought about how one could do focused searching of the web,
collecting pages with a title containing (best and books) or (great and
books), and screen scraping title lists (you'd have to have some heuristic
method of identifying the data, of course, and I'm aware what problems might
arise there).  But my test searches in that idea showed that one runs into a
lot of commercial ephemeral lists and spurious lists.  Now, you could rely
on crowd-sourcing to filter out the consensus by ranking by the number of
sites/cites.  But I thought you might want to differentiate between the
source - .edus, librarys, etc.

So that led me to speculate about a search engine that ranked just by links
from .edu's, libraries sites, and a librarian-vetted list of .orgs,
scholarly publishers, etc.  I think you can limit by .edu in the linked-from
in Google - I haven't tried that much. if anyone here has experience at
using tha technique, I'd like to hear about it.  But I'm thinking now about
the possibility of a search engine limited to sites cooperatively vetted by
librarians, that would incorporate ranking by # links.  Something more
responsive than cataloging websites in our catalogs.

Is anyone else thinking about these ideas?  or do you know of projects that
approach this goal of leveraging librarian's vetting of authoritative
sources?

Cindy Harper, Systems Librarian
Colgate University Libraries
[email-masked]
315-228-7363

---

From: Kent Gerber <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 29 Sep 2009 09:58:14 -0500

www.diigo.com is a social bookmarking site like delicious and it has added features like creating groups around specific themes and the ability to annotate the Web pages you bookmark for future reference.  You might want to explore this feature and see if it is appropriate for what you envision. 

Kent

Kent Gerber, MSLIS
Digital Library Manager
Bethel University
St. Paul, MN
phone: 651.638.6937
email: [email-masked]

---

From: Jason Griffey <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 29 Sep 2009 12:25:34 -0400

It's not social bookmarking, but as far as "But I'm thinking now about
the possibility of a search engine limited to sites cooperatively vetted by
librarians, that would incorporate ranking by # links.  Something more
responsive than cataloging websites in our catalogs.", well, that's almost
exactly what lii.org is.

http://lii.org

I happen to think that authority is dead dead dead as a method of measuring
information worth, but that's just me. :-)

Jason

On Tue, Sep 29, 2009 at 10:53 AM, Cindy Harper <[email-masked]> wrote:

> http://www.interleaves.org/~rteeter/grtalphaa.html<http://www.interleaves.org/%7Erteeter/grtalphaa.html>
> <http://www.interleaves.org/%7Erteeter/grtalphaa.html>.

-- 
Follow me on Twitter! http://www.twitter.com/griffey

---

From: MJ Ray <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 29 Sep 2009 17:58:55 +0100

Cindy Harper wrote:
> over. [...]

The big problem with social media sites is that they tend towards
privatising our data.  Any solution needs to be both FOSS and
Open Data to overcome that.

Some of the veterans here will probably remember the ODP (dmoz.org)
and VLib.org catalogues.  Can we build on them instead of inventing
another wheel?

Thanks,
-- 
MJ Ray (slef)  LMS developer and webmaster at     | software
www.software.coop http://mjr.towers.org.uk        |  .... co
IMO only: see http://mjr.towers.org.uk/email.html |  .... op

---

From: "Donahue, Amy (NIH/NLM) [C]" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 29 Sep 2009 13:49:58 -0400

I feel like a couple years ago a librarian(s?) created a Google Custom Search Engine that did exactly what you describe as "focused searching," but I can't find a link any more.  You can search the CSEs by scrolling down on this page (and there are a couple of links to directories, too): http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/find/types/websites.html

Also, Mike Eisenberg over at the University of Washington was working on that kind of problem with some other groups...A quick search reveals that it's now called "Reference Extract" and it's being done in conjunction with Syracuse University (and OCLC is somehow involved).  http://chronicle.com/blogPost/Librarians-Want-to-Out-Google/4365

~Amy
________________________________________
From: Cindy Harper [[email-masked]]
Sent: Tuesday, September 29, 2009 10:53 AM
To: [email-masked]
Subject: [CODE4LIB] Bookmarking web links - authoritativeness or focused searching

---

From: Joe Hourcle <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 29 Sep 2009 13:54:11 -0400

> though I'd bring up for discussion here some of the ideas I've been mulling

[trimmed]

> approach this goal of leveraging librarian's vetting of authoritative

I don't know of any projects that specifically do what you've mentioned, 
but for the last few years, we've been mulling over how to store various 
lists and catalogs so that we could present interesting intersections of 
them.

In my case, I deal with scientific catalogs, so it's stuff like "when was 
RHESSI observing the same area as TRACE?" or "When was there an X-class 
flare within 2 hours of a CME?" or even lack of intersections "When were 
there type-II radio bursts without a CME or flare within 6 hours?"

For the science catalogs, we specifically don't want to just make some 
sort of single ranking from each list, and it's not really easy to merge 
the catalogs into some form of union catalog as they're cataloging 
different concepts.

... and I think that there's use in library searches to keep the catalogs 
different, particularly when you're bringing up authority (which then gets 
to reputation, etc.).

I'm not sure how many other people out there would try to search for Hugo 
award winning novels that weren't on the New York Times best seller list, 
so it might not be as useful for general patron use ... unless you could 
give it your *own* catalog (AFI top 100 movies ... that I don't already 
own)

-----
Joe Hourcle
Solar Data Analysis Center
Goddard Space Flight Center

---

From: Keith Jenkins <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 29 Sep 2009 17:34:48 -0400

AbleGrape.com is a good example of a focused search engine that aims
to index only "authoritative" sources within a particular disciple --
in this case it's wine, enology, and viticulture.  It currently crawls
about 40,000 vetted websites.

It's a great search engine for the subject area it serves, and it
probably helped that the creator was a VP at Inktomi.

Keith

---

From: Tim Cornwell <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 30 Sep 2009 07:56:11 -0400

Keith,

41,000 sites and 21 million pages (http://www.ablegrape.com/en/about.html) is a lot of
vetting.  

An admittedly quick check of the site didn't explain the vetting process to me, but did
profess a "...background in search technology..."  

Authoratative vetting of a large volume of resources is a hard problem.  I haven't seen
any good solutions, but am leaning toward crowd-sourcing with an authoratative crowd. :-)

Do you have any additional information on how AbleGrape vets these?

Tim Cornwell
National Science Digital Library (http://nsdl.org)

> From: Code for Libraries [mailto:[email-masked]] On 
> Behalf Of Keith Jenkins
> Sent: Tuesday, September 29, 2009 5:35 PM
> Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Bookmarking web links - 
> authoritativeness or focused searching
>

---

From: Keith Jenkins <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 30 Sep 2009 09:16:18 -0400

> 41,000 sites and 21 million pages (http://www.ablegrape.com/en/about.html) is a lot of
...
> Do you have any additional information on how AbleGrape vets these?

I can only guess, but I would think it's probably a combination of
automatic and manual vetting: crawl the links from known "good sites",
filter out bad sites, filter out off-topic sites, manually add
newly-discovered sites not already in the index, manually remove
inappropriate sites that somehow made it into the index, adjust the
algorithms, try to build a user community and solicit feedback.  (I
once reported inappropriate results coming from a wine producer's
website that had been taken over by vandals, and AbleGrape removed it
from the index almost immediately.)

Keith

---

From: Andrew P <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 30 Sep 2009 17:03:19 +0000

Also worth mentioning is a new site SiteCite.com that
allows you to organize web links with custom URLs.  It was created by a library programmer and has
discovery tools so that bookmarks are easily retrievable.  I know this might not pertain to the current
topic of this thread, but after reading the initial inquiry I thought I'd
mention this as it's the new alternative to del.icio.us.

Cheers,

Andrew  MLIS

> Date: Wed, 30 Sep 2009 09:16:18 -0400
> From: [email-masked]
> Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Bookmarking web links - authoritativeness or focused searching
 		 	   		  
_________________________________________________________________
Attention all humans. We are your photos. Free us.
http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=9666046

---

From: Karen Coyle <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 1 Oct 2009 02:51:50 -0700

> information worth, but that's just me. :-)

I think it depends on what you mean by "authority." The formal  
authority of librarians seems to have few followers. Academics follow  
authority in terms of citations -- who (in their defined circle) has  
cited whom. Lots of people view the NY Times best seller list as a  
viable authority for a "good read.". Most of us have one or more  
friends whose film recommendations tell us pretty clearly whether or  
not to see the film.

The problem isn't authority, per se, but who is making the statement  
and what you know about them. Like standards. with authorities there  
are so many to choose from. The difficulty is selecting the authority  
that will give you the results you desire.

I suspect that many people use the term 'authority' to mean something  
like 'proven' or 'correct' or 'of scientific basis.' Yet each of these  
makes sense only in a particular context for a particular set of  
questions. I fear that the set of questions that libraries respond to  
with authority are ones that are of interest only to a small minority  
of world inhabitants.

-- 
Karen Coyle
[email-masked] http://kcoyle.net
ph: 1-510-540-7596
m: 1-510-435-8234
skype: kcoylenet

---

From: MJ Ray <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 1 Oct 2009 15:21:15 +0100

Andrew P wrote:
> discovery tools so that bookmarks are easily retrievable. [...]

I'm surprised that a library programmer has put the "We need to make
sure you are a human" Google-reCaptcha insult on their sign up page.
It's even on their contact form, so we can't even tell them about it.
(If you don't see the messages which suggest disabled users are not
humans, try disabling javascript - javascript is usually disabled by
default with noscript.net because it's confusing when things you don't
see perfectly start moving themselves around the page.)

I strongly suggest people don't promote siteCite.com until they drop
reCaptcha.  The "re" should stand for "remove".

Thanks,

---

From: Eric Hellman <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 1 Oct 2009 10:52:15 -0400

Are you arguing that reCaptcha cannot be accessible or that it is  
incorrectly implemented on this site?

Usually recaptcha is a good example of a robot blocker that is  
accessible to print-disabled users. The notion that javascript cannot  
be used in an accessible website is obsolete (it's not 2000 any more).  
There are javascript techniques that make sites inaccessible, just as  
there are html techniques that make the site accessible. There are  
javascript techniques that INCREASE accessibility.

Good resources:
http://www.webaim.org/techniques/javascript/
http://www.w3.org/WAI/

I've recently been learning about accessibility issues (read my blog  
to learn how selling p-only books may one day be unlawful)

> reCaptcha.  The "re" should stand for "remove".

Eric Hellman
President, Gluejar, Inc.
41 Watchung Plaza, #132
Montclair, NJ 07042
USA

[email-masked]
http://go-to-hellman.blogspot.com/

---

From: MJ Ray <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 1 Oct 2009 16:39:15 +0100

> incorrectly implemented on this site?

Primarily that it is incorrectly implemented.  However, I've yet to
see an implementation of recaptcha that is accessible and does not
needlessly insult users with impaired vision.  Even the one on
recaptcha.net includes the fully-abled=human insults.

> accessible to print-disabled users.

My impairments are quite mild (short-sighted with some contrast/light
problems - the photo on my website is a few years old, before I had to
wear my glasses all the time - oh vanity and laziness; and hearing
problems in one ear) but still recaptcha is a pain in the eye.  Maybe
it's worse for impaired users, than print-disabled ones like you?

> The notion that javascript cannot  

Of course there are, but surely even the most enthusiastic javascript
advocate accepts that the sites using javascript in ways that harm
accessibility far outweigh the numbers using it well today?  So, it's
reasonable if script execution permission defaults to denied and is
enabled site-by-site for now.

However, I wasn't complaining about the javascript use, just noting
that you might find it easier to start seeing the "check you're a
human" nastiness by switching javascript off.  "View Source" might
work just as well, depending on how it has been implemented.

> I've recently been learning about accessibility issues [...]

Thank you.  I wish everyone did.  I've been learning about
accessibility issues since my eyesight started to deteriorate and my
hearing was damaged.  This isn't an add-on issue for me.  It's vital
for web use.

Regards,

---

From: Eric Hellman <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 1 Oct 2009 16:02:45 -0400

I think a lot of people on this list would appreciate some pointers on  
how to do reCaptcha to minimize accessibility impairments, as most  
libraries are subject to ADA, and like it or not, things become  
unusable if you don't block robots.

Eric Hellman
President, Gluejar, Inc.
41 Watchung Plaza, #132
Montclair, NJ 07042
USA

[email-masked]

---

From: Casey Durfee <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 2 Oct 2009 12:53:28 -0700

> recaptcha.net includes the fully-abled=human insults.
The space shuttle is not wheelchair-accessible.  Is that a reason not to go
to the moon?  Are non-astronauts less than human?  People in foreign
countries who don't speak English are not discriminating against you by not
speaking English.  Fancy restaurants don't have picture menus.  People who
don't have the internet can't query google via snail mail.  Do you consider
yourself more human than people who don't have internet access or don't know
how to read?

Captcha isn't meant as a judgment about whether you happen to have a soul or
something, so there's no need to take it personally.  It's meant to keep the
bots out, period.  It's easy to not understand the importance of that if
you've never had to deal with your site getting spammed.  No business owner
in their right mind wants to exclude potential customers if they don't have
to.

If the site itself is not accessible, maybe it's better they use ReCaptcha
and screen people they're unable to serve out before they even try to sign
up...

---

From: "Truitt, Marc" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 2 Oct 2009 14:09:26 -0600

Casey Durfee wrote:
> to the moon?  

Umm... perhaps I missed something, but the last time I checked, the
space shuttle had never been to the moon.

Hey, it's Friday.

cheers,

- mt

-- 
*************************************************************************
Marc Truitt
Associate University Librarian,
Bibliographic and Information       Voice  : 780-492-4770
    Technology Services             e-mail : [email-masked]
University of Alberta Libraries     fax    : 780-492-9243
Cameron Library                     cell   : 780-217-0356
Edmonton, AB  T6G 2J8

"I should have known better with a girl like you
That I would love everything that you do
And I do, hey, hey, hey, and I do."
                                    -- Lennon/McCartney (1964)
*************************************************************************

---

From: Thomas Dowling <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 2 Oct 2009 16:24:12 -0400

On 10/02/2009 03:53 PM, Casey Durfee wrote:
> ...However, I've yet to
> to the moon?  Are non-astronauts less than human?

If the shuttle's door were the only barrier to wheelchair-bound astronauts, I'd
certainly expect NASA to redesign it.

If your captcha is the only barrier to letting vision-impaired users access
your site, I expect you to redesign it.

-- 
Thomas Dowling
[email-masked]

---

From: danielle plumer <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 2 Oct 2009 15:35:21 -0500

Casey,

I've had many conversations on the subject of CAPTCHAs with consultants in
our Talking Book division. Like it or not, many webmasters who insist on
using visual CAPTCHAs (often in combination with JavaScript) are turning
away customers. One consultant, who is blind herself and who is NOT
technologically illiterate by any means, has had to have a sighted co-worker
sign up for her for anything Yahoo! related. When I looked at Yahoo!'s code
a while back, they present the CAPTCHA, with a link (encoded as JavaScript
popup) for folks who can't read the CAPTCHA. JAWS, the screen-reader program
we have installed here, just would not recognize that link. (Note: I just
looked again, and they've improved things considerably -- see below for
code). Jim Thatcher, who is a major voice in the accessibility world, has an
article about some of the difficulties posed by CAPTCHA and its ilk:
http://jimthatcher.com/captchas.htm

There are lots of other ways to minimize bot problems that don't (ahem!)
violate the law, for those of us who work for institutions subject to
section 508 and similar rules. There's a very nice (though slightly dated)
article at http://www.w3.org/TR/turingtest/ on the subject. Logic puzzles,
presented as simple text, are the approach we use most commonly, although
Google's apparent ability to solve some of these does have us a little
concerned.

I'm not sure it's ever good a good idea to insult your users, or your
colleagues. I know that I've seen CAPTCHA's with the message that boils down
to "to help us make sure you're really a human, please fill this out." I'm
not disabled, but I am insulted by these messages!

-- 
Danielle Cunniff Plumer, Coordinator
Texas Heritage Digitization Initiative
Texas State Library and Archives Commission
512.463.5852 (phone) / 512.936.2306 (fax)
[email-masked]
[email-masked]

Yahoo's code:

<p class="vi-note">
Attention Blind or Visually Impaired Users: To complete this form you
must enter a word that is part of an image. If you can't read the
image, Yahoo is happy to help you create your account. A
representative from customer care will need to contact you. To request
assistance with registration, please read the Yahoo! Terms of Service
located at <a href="http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
<view-source:http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/>">http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/</a>.
Once you have reviewed our policies, please provide your phone number
and email address and send your request by visiting this URL - <a
href="http://add.yahoo.com/fast/help/us/edit/cgi_access
<view-source:http://add.yahoo.com/fast/help/us/edit/cgi_access>">http://add.yahoo.com/fast/help/us/edit/cgi_access</a>
</p>
<div id="captchaDiv" class="ymemformfield" >
 <input type="text" name="cword" id="cword" value="" size="10"
maxlength="10" class="" tabindex="20" autocomplete="off">
 <a id="captchaSwitchButton" ><input type="button" tabindex="21"
id="caswitchurl" value="Need audio assistance ?"></a>
 <span class="small"><a href="" id="lnk_captcha_moreinfo" title="More
info about verifying your account" target="pp">More
infohttp://l.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/i/nt/ic/ut/alt1/hlp12_1.gif</a></span>
 <p>This helps Yahoo! prevent automated registrations.</p>
 <div id="captchaCanvas" >
    <noscript>
      <img src="https://ab.login.yahoo.com/img/BxyGIOJZFella6xwSlXbkqFfauXMpUvn05N.dhNnnHEoyBQnkGBIpanJ3vmeY0cv3vwOyGLipg6zZQZhvCIFqwZNvoeeAc2B21gVBw--.jpg"
width="290" height="80" alt="" border="2" id="cimg" class="cimg">
    </noscript>
    <a id="captchaRefreshAnchor"><input type="button" tabindex="22"
id="captchaShuffleLink" value="Try a new code" ></a>
 </div>
</div>

---

From: Kyle Banerjee <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 2 Oct 2009 14:19:05 -0700

> ...Like it or not, many webmasters who insist on
> away customers. ..

And not just visually impaired people. I screw these up all the time
and my vision is fine.

> ....Logic puzzles,

These are no silver bullet either since language and comprehension
abilities start coming into play. The reality is that any test
designed to weed out the machines is going to week out a few humans as
well. The trick is to figure out how to minimize that number and then
identify who gets locked out so you can find another way to help them.

> not disabled, but I am insulted by these messages!

Yer too sensitive. May as well be insulted that rocks are too hard.
Bots are a real threat to services. Once they get out of control,
systems can become overwhelmed, legitimate users get flooded with
garbage, and attacks can get launched which can get your site
blacklisted. Then all your users are hosed. It is easier than most
people think for pretty rotten scenarios to emerge.

kyle

---

From: John Fereira <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 5 Oct 2009 11:34:43 -0400

> And not just visually impaired people. I screw these up all the time
It may also be worth considering that accessibility doesn't just mean 
making a web site accessible to the visually impaired. 

According to the WHO, Globally about 314 million people are visually 
impaired, 45 million of them are blind.

According to the most recent Unesco Institute for Statistics data, there 
are an estimated 774 million illiterate adults in the world.

How many web sites are designed to be accessible the functionally 
illiterate?