Cathy the Librarian

Jeff just purchased http://cathythelibrarian.com/ for me. Now I have to figure out what to do with it. I would like to try and keep my “blog blog” separate from my “professional blog” with my resume on it, although I try not to put anything too damaging here… well except for the poetry. Still it might be nice to have everything together… although I guess everything is together here. ARRGH. The Internet is a time consuming place.

I just found out that I was mentioned at one of the director’s meetings… due to my incessant fiddling with the Internet. The directors were talking about taking the virtual reference desk down, and some people were saying that they still use it… anyway, somehow my name was mentioned because I use del.icio.us for the library.

It sounds like the reference desk is doomed, so I’m going to try and get as much of the stuff onto a del.icio.us account as I can… although upon looking at some of the stuff, I don’t think I’ll even bother. Some of the sites are people’s personal musings. I took Digital Libraries at Buffalo. We created a site for teachers. Many of the sites on the virtual reference desk would not make it. You don’t want to send people to sites of questionable origin. Granted you may not have created it or anything, but just as we (as librarians) try to buy the best quality books that we can, we should also hold the same standards for our websites.

1. Don’t link to websites that haven’t been updated in forever.
2. Don’t link to websites that are more ads than content.
3. Don’t link to websites that don’t leave an “about this site” section. You want to know if you can trust the information.
4. Look carefully at the url. While not always the case, there are some webhosting sites that you KNOW aren’t going to be used by professionals.
5. Look at the url again. Make sure that you link to the main page of the site and not a section of the url that’s five or six layers in. If upon looking at the homepage, its something completely different, you should think twice about adding it. Its also wise to do this in case there may be… objectionable material on the rest of the site.
6. DO remember to post somewhere that you cannot be held accountable for the information on the sites you are linking to. You’ll notice most schools, government websites do this to save their skins.
7. Do check up ocassionally to make sure that the links are still live. This can be mind numbing, but its important maintenance, just like cleaning your fish tank.

I really like using del.icio.us. They let you download buttons so that as you are surfing the web, if you find something you like, you can just click a button, add some tags and voila! You have added a new link! Plus you can see other people who have linked to the same sites you have and steal their links.

So anyway, what was I saying? Oh yeah. I’m trying to go through the links as fast as I can before they take it down, so that I can add them to my del.icio.us account… although there is a site that archives websites, so you can check things out even if the site is gone. What is it?… Ah yes, the Internet Archive. And they have archived the library website! Yippee! Oh dear. I’m a nerd… good night!

This entry was posted on Saturday, October 14th, 2006 at 3:04 am and is filed under The Internet(s). You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.