the Semantic Web

The 'semantic web' is a term used to describe data that can be made sense of and actually analysed by machines, on a global scale. If standardised data is created that computers can interpret, the theory is, that complex questions would be able
to be answered by computers, rather than just retrieving data based on keywords, as happens now. The semantic web is seen as the next evolution of the Web and referred to by some as Web 3.0.

In some applications I'm sure this would be useful, but rue the day that we rely on computers to 'answer' all our questions ( maybe many already do with Google!) Making meaning is such a subjective thing, with so many variants coming into play, so the data would have to be complex indeed. Standardising the data to enable this to happen would inevitably cut out subtleties of meaning wouldn't it? I will watch these new developments with interest to see where this journey leads.

There's an interesting article by Richard Adhikari Revisiting Semantic Web's Pros and Cons that you may like to have a look at. It's also where I got the nifty little graphic from that heads this post.

Voyage RSS

I've explored Voyage RSS & again I do not really like the presentation. I'm beginning to feel that there are generational factors coming into play here! Zooming around on Voyage makes me feel a bit disorientated. Give me good old hierarchical Google Reader any time.

I have added a couple of blogs of interest to me to the RSS feed, along with an Australian news site.

Kartoo +

I've had a look at Kartoo & done a few searches. It does not greatly appeal to me. I find it visually unappealing, with its quirky cartoon characters & although I can see the value of clustering results, I don't find the graphics used here easy to look at. The print is quite small too. I guess younger kids might find it attractive.

I'm quite used to the linear format of Google & for the time being I'm quite happy to continue using it. I also quite enjoy making tangential connections myself from what I find, rather than having a search engine always serving me up its recommended connections.

I've explored a few other Web 2.0 search engines. flickrstorm is great for getting photos on a particular subject directly from flickr & you can save them in a 'tray if you wish. Vdoogle searches multiple video sites & it's good to find things from sites other than the ubiquitous youtube.

Whonu which is described as having the nearest to a semantic web searching capacity is pretty remarkable in that it returns results for an asked question based on that query, rather than just the keywords, where most search engines still operate only on keywords. I'd been talking with a colleague about chocolate & slavery, so asked the question "why use slaves for producing chocolate?" & some very pertinent & useful sites were returned. I was impressed! Roll on semantic web!

+ 5 Things - VuFind

I had a look at the VuFind live demo today & there were some features I liked.
* emailing & texting titles
* saving favourites
* the Narrow Search column suggesting other options
* limiting your search to books only with illustrations
* the different formats all shown in one search

I did enjoy searching the National Library catalogue, as they've used VuFind really effectively & obviously done quite a bit of customizing too. When you arrive at the initial screen it's just clear, clean looking & easy to use.


Having recently been to the Central desert & Lake Eyre I decided to look for material on Lake Eyre. The search found so many interesting things including historical pictures, journal articles, books, links to activist websites, when the Arabunna people were in conflict with Western Mining over land & water rights & much more..... a real cross section & treasure trove of information in many forms.
Given that VuFind is open source & customizable it could be really useful to use in conjunction with a new OPAC.

photo:The Australian String Quartet on Lake Hart, a small lake in the Lake Eyre Basin

World's 'oldest blogger' makes final post

Olive Riley
1899 - 2008

The Australian woman renowned as the world's oldest blogger has made her final post, aged 108. Olive Riley, of Woy Woy on NSW's central coast, died in a nursing home on Saturday morning. Read more
I discovered Olive's blog last year when we were doing 23 Things & she was quite
delightful. Straight talking, with a great memory of things past and a wonderful zest for life, quite remarkable at 107! She even has a few clips on YouTube

You may like to check out her blog The Life of Riley or listen to a podcast, from life Matters on ABC RN of Olive talking about her life growing up in Broken Hill

Have a look at some of these a mixed bunch!
I just stumbled upon this link, so thought I'd share it

+ 5 Things - LinkedIn

I've just explored LinkedIn and joined up. www.linkedin.com/in/mthorney
Have completed my profile & invited a few colleagues to be listed in my 'Connections'. Have written a summary statement too, which felt a bit like writing a job application!

Christa @ Prahran wins the laptop!

Great to hear that Christa has won the laptop in the 23 Things draw. Cleve rang to let us know and Christa was delighted, but still in a state of disbelief! Really good to have someone who works
hard on 'the frontline' win the prize!

Used my two movie passes!

Saw The diving bell & the butterfly (Le Scaphandre et le papillon ) directed by Julian Schnabel and based on the book by Jean-Dominique Bauby. I found it both moving and confronting. Having read the book I was fascinated to see how it could possibly be made into a film, but I think Schnabel has done a remarkable job.
The story is about Bauby, age forty-three, editor-in-chief of the world-famous fashion magazine, Elle, who was living the "good life" to the extreme when he became the victim of a devastating cerebro-vascular accident that left him in a state of total paralysis, incapable of any verbal communication, in what is known in the medical community as "locked-in syndrome." His mental faculties totally intact as he laid motionless in his bed at the Marine Hospital of Berck-sur-Mer in northern France, Bauby learned to communicate with the outside world using his left eyelid, the only part of his body over which he still had any control. During the next fourteen months, using a communication code developed by his therapist and his publisher's assistant, who transcribed this code, Bauby was able to compose, letter by letter, a lyrical and heartbreaking memoir of his life struggle.

"....a movie about deprivation becomes a celebration of the richness of experience, and a remarkably rich experience in its own right. In his memoir Bauby performed a heroic feat of alchemy, turning horror into wisdom and Schnabel, following his example and paying tribute to his accomplishment, has turned pity into joy."
The New York Times (A.O. Scott) For more reviews


Also saw Juno recently. A comedy-drama with Ellen Page starring as a sharp-tongued teenager confronting an unplanned pregnancy. It's an uplifting film with lots of quick, sharp teenage dialogue, that's very amusing. Diablo Cody recently won an Oscar for Best Writing, Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen for this movie. Ellen Page is a remarkable young actor at just 21. Has anyone seen Hard Candy the independent psychological thriller she starred in, in 2005?

Postcard Show @ Linden Gallery, St Kilda

Off to the opening of the Linden Postcard show tomorrow. I've entered two paintings in this year. It's an open exhibition and anyone can register to enter,the work can be in any media, but it must not be larger than 30cm x 30cm. Consequently it's a huge show, literally thousands of works will be exhibited & all are for sale, so if you want to see a real diversity of artwork and maybe find yourself a bargain, visit Linden Gallery in 26 Acland Street, St Kilda from tomorrow. Linden Gallery

2008 POSTCARD SHOW 2 February - 9 March
The exhibition has become a prominent event in the Australian cultural calendar and attracts thousands of visitors. The Postcard Show continues to increase in size each year. The 2007 Show featured nearly 2,600 artworks by 1,000 artists and was visited by over 11,000 people. The Postcard Show is now in its 16th year and is one of the only open entry award exhibitions left in Australia.


Linden is a Victorian mansion built around 1870. The building was designed by architect Alfred Kurstein and the original garden designed by botanist, William Guilfoyle. Linden was classified by the National Trust in 1958.
Family Home - Linden was built for Moritz Michaelis, a successful Jewish merchant who was born in Germany and came to Melbourne with his wife Rahel in 1853.
Guest House - In 1962, Linden was sold to Theodore and Alice Veenendaals and operated as a guest house throughout the seventies and into the eighties.
Arts Centre - The City of St Kilda purchased Linden in 1984, restored it and opened it in 1986 as a Community Arts Centre. The front ground floor was opened as a contemporary art gallery in 1986. The art studio opened soon after and in 1991 the top floor was renovated for use as artist studios, offices and rehearsal room.

........and now I close the final curtain, or do I?

Well I've reached the end of 23 things. It's been a great learning curve and some of it has been fun. Creating my own blog I've really enjoyed, I've discovered that I'm not interested in My Space, Second Life or Facebook, but it's been good to check them out, use them a bit and then make an informed decision based on that experience. I like the autonomy of my own blog, rather than the more formulaic approach of Facebook etc.

Del.icio.us, Google reader & my iGoogle page are all useful and I really like the portability of these tools, being accessible from any PC you happen to login to. I think I'll get more into Flickr maybe take out a sub, so I can store more photos easily online, as currently my storage of digital photos is a bit chaotic!

In terms of work it's been a really useful way to get first hand experience of tools and ways of interacting, that are increasingly so familiar and so used by many of the students we deal with. Being given the opportunity and time to explore these as part of our working day has been a big plus. I am going to explore the possibilities of using a blog as a liaison tool with one of the Departments I liaise with and see how it works.

Personally, it's been really interesting to find out about similar interests that I share with other staff and maybe this would never have been revealed if we hadn't been blogging. Will I continue to blog, at this stage I'm not sure..... I am thinking about setting up a blog to keep in touch with my large extended family in France & Wales, as it would be a great way to share life events & pics with them and they only need to look at it if they really want to.

I would like to keep blogging with staff and I like Tony's idea of a staff blog, as he says: "Maybe a shared blog where anyone can post anything that might be of interest and people can comment if they want to? It would be a shame if it all just stopped now that 23 Things has officially ended."

Library 2.0

Opening up new ways of communicating with our users and making access to all we offer, as seamless as possible,certainly seems a good goal. Potentially, using the tools & technologies of Library 2.0/Web 2.0 this should be achievable. For us the implementation of a new Library system will hopefully offer many options for doing things differently, but we will need to think laterally & outside the square, being vigilant not to fall into outmoded librarianesque mindsets. The idea of user input is exciting, but also a bit scary in terms of loss of control....see that librarianesque mindset at work!

Certainly having done 23 things I've become aware of the possibilities of sharing ideas, social networking, and the interactivity made possible by using some of the amazing range of tools on offer. This new way of operating in the world is being taken up speedily and with gusto. As people use and experience this way of being in their lives, then increasingly there will be the expectation for all aspects of life to offer up similar pathways and interactivity.

Challenging times ahead....I do wonder how libraries will be operating, say in a decades time. 10 years ago I had no inkling that we would be in the working environment that we operate in today and now change is even swifter, so we shall see....

New logo for the ABC!

The ABC "squiggle" was instituted as the then Australian Broadcasting Commission's corporate logo in 1965 after graphic designer Bill Kennard won a staff competition. He was paid pound stg. 25 for the design.

The squiggle synonymous with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation - technically a "lissajous curve", based on two parametric equations describing a form of harmonic motion - will soon bebumped from view by new logos for the renamed ABC1, ABC2 and ABC3.

ABC TV - still doggedly known to older Australians as Channel Two - will become ABC1 and the broadcaster's looping "squiggle" logo will be taken off air after more than four decades in favour of a younger and fresher brand.
Read more

Podcasts

Delighted to hear that the Margaret Throsby interviews broadcast each morning at 10am on Classic FM are now going to be available as podcasts. Listened to a repeat interview with Michael Leunig the other morning in which he talked about what he believes is a vast realm of his joys, including his pleasures in leading a civic and practical life as tree planter, gardener, winemaker, volunteer firefighter, builder and fixer of things. Great to know I can download it & other favorite interviews now when I want to.
If you're a Leunig fan listen here

You'll find interviews with Suzanne Vega, Billy Bragg & Ben Elton there as well, to mention just a few.

Have also listened to some podcasts from the Radio National programs All in the mind & The Philosophers Zone. What would I do without the ABC!