Impress Your Professor: We Are All Lab Rats

First of all, I wanted to apologize to everyone for the tardiness of this submission. Due to confusion on my part, I did not know it was my turn to write the weekly “Impress Your Professor” piece. For some reason, I thought my turn was in December. So please forgive me if, despite my belated publication, I fail to impress any of you.

This week, I decided to read Characterizing Web Users’ Online Information Behavior. It appears in the November 2007 issue of the “Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology.” Now, I will be the first to admit that this article was not the most entertaining read. However, it is an extremely useful article for those of us who haven’t realized just how scientific information science can get.

The authors of this article are particularly interested in one thing: Is it possible to characterize individuals and their underlying motivations for seeking information on the basis of their activity on the web? Can you tell if someone is an experienced web user or if someone is just browsing or searching just by looking at the web pages they visited and seeing how long they spent on each of those pages? These guys seem to think so.

The authors gathered the clickstreams of 2,022 users and broke down the data primarily on the basis of three dimensions: number of categories of websites explored (width); number of sites visited per category (length); and number of pages downloaded per site (depth). They then analyzed the data to see if they could find any discernable relationships. They did.

The three dimensions are positively correlated. The more categories of websites a person visits, the greater the number of websites within a category they will visit, and the greater the number of pages within a website they will visit. Did you get that? It’s not supposed to be poetic. It’s supposed to be scientific.

The dimensions are negatively associated with the tendency to use search engines. Roughly speaking whenever we use search engine sites, the set of websites we look at tends to be less diverse, the number of websites for any particular category we look at tends to decrease, and the number of pages we look at for any particular website we visit also tends to decrease. The theory seems to be that when we use search engines we have a better idea of what we’re looking for. Once we find our answer, we tend to not look any further. When we’re browsing we’re more likely to explore a little deeper.

The study also seems to suggest that people who use the web more frequently (i.e. those who “consume more information”) are more likely to explore more website categories, navigate more sites within a category, view more pages within a website, not use search engines, and spend less time viewing each page. Experienced users, it seems, know how to glean information more quickly from web pages and don’t depend as much on Google or Yahoo! to find websites. Just so you know: I used Google to navigate my way to this website. Now, is that because I’m an inexperienced web user or because I happened to be searching? I guess I’ll have to analyze my clickstream.

Finally by comparing overlapping usage between different individuals, it was possible to identify a set of “core” websites (i.e. popular websites) and a set of “peripheral” websites (i.e. unpopular websites). It seems that typically the majority of people visiting these “peripheral” websites are browsing rather than searching the web. The periphery tends to attract users whose web usage has greater scope and greater depth (typically heavy web users).

If you’re curious why anyone would be interested in this sort of thing, other than librarians, consider that there’s a lot of money to be made in the online advertising business. Internet advertising earned $15.2 billion in the first 9 months of 2007. Based on the research from this article, you could conclude that banner ads are generally better for reaching heavy web users than light web users.

Why don’t we have banner ads on this web site?

YouTube Tuesday

Turn the Page
See a brief clip on the British Library's digitization project.



More Ninja Librarians?
Of course!

Presentations Posted!

Thanks to everyone who came to our event this past week-you all made it very successful and I love meeting people from around school! As requested, and also for those of you who couldn't make it, here are the presentations in .pdf. Enjoy!

Youngok Choi, "Searching for Books and Images in OPAC: Effects of LCSH, TOC and Subject Domains"

Ken Fleischman, "Digital Libraries and Human Values: Human-Computer Interaction Meets Social Informatics."

Paul Jaeger, "Social Capital and Information Science Research (SIGS IFP, SI, CRIT, HFIS)"

Christina K. Pikas, "Personal Information Management Strategies and Tactics used by Senior Engineers"

Nancy Roderer, "Introduction: I am an Information Professional"

Impress your Professor: I am an Information Professional!

I have a friend who is very wise. She has a Masters degree in Social Work, but in the course of talking about grad school she gave me a new definition. She says that her degree is actually in people, and mine (as a MLS student) is not in Libraries but in Information.

This Wednesday at our event "Brining it All Back Home" with the Potomac Valley Chapter of ASIS&T we heard many presentations from the National Meeting. For me one of the most memorable was a talk by Nancy Roderer who is now the National President. Her presentation implored all of us to take the title of Information Professional with pride.

We live in an economy that is slowly being taken over by service and information professions. But the titles of Information Professionals are still looked at with a bit of mystery. Are we the IT guys, CIO's, knowledge managers, or librarians. Nancy Roderer stated that all of these people should consider themselves as information professionals. And we need to dialog with all the people involved in information professions and work together to promote our profession.

This will be one of the goals of Nancy Roderer's tenure as President of ASIS&T and we here at CUA - ASIS&T wish her luck and can't wait to see what happens!!

There is more information on the other presentations on the PVC website. These include presentations by our own Dr. Choi!

YouTube Tuesday

Caught In Your Web
Social networking online explained.



Defender of Books!
Ninjas make great librarians.

Register Now Before It's Too Late

Come and learn the latest in information science research!

Please join the Potomac Valley and Catholic University of America Chapters of ASIS&T for our next exciting program!

"Bringing it Home: Highlights from the ASIS&T National Meeting"

WHEN: Wednesday, November 7, 2007
Light supper and snacks provided 6pm, the program will run 6:15 - 8:30pm.

WHERE: May Gallery, John K. Mullen Library, Catholic University of America

Click HERE for registration and more information

See you on Nov 7th!

Impress Your Professor: There's No "I" in "Team"

Google is like The Blob out of one of those early horror movies. It just grows and grows and grows, consuming everything in its path. Soon, nothing will be safe from its evil clutches. The Google Blob will just continue to grow until it covers the planet in its amoeba like form.

Or at least that's what most people think. And, with Google's current efforts to scan every book known to man, that is what many librarian's think.

What does Google think about all this: Meh. They're ambivalent.

In this month's Bulletin of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, author Sawne D. Miksa breaks down the Googlization of the world (or at least how it impacts libraries) in her article "Them! Google’s Ambivalence toward Library and Information Science." She states that, "It is a bit extreme to paint librarians and Google locked in the same battle." When Google set out to create their Book Search, they were not seeking to put libraries and their caretakers out of business. In fact, Google does not even consider libraries their competition. Google states, "We consider our primary competitors to be Microsoft and Yahoo."

So why the disconnect? If Google is not trying to swallow up the job of libraries, why are librarians so afraid?

It looks like another case of popularity versus relevance when it comes to cataloging material. Librarians have typically relied on human judgment to create a top down hierarchy of classification for their materials. Google, on the other hand, churns everything through an algorithm that spits out which pages are most popular. Google's theory is that "a page is important if it is pointed to by other important pages."

Librarians fear that such a popularity contest is not the best method of information organization. Just because a page is popular does not mean that it is the best resource available.

So we've found the disconnect, now what are we going to do about it?

Google is not going to disappear anytime soon. Libraries are not going to disappear anytime soon. Instead of butting heads, the two groups should work together. Cooperation would be beneficial to both parties.

Google writes: "Much of the highest quality information in the world may be found in tens of millions of books tucked away in libraries and on publisher's shelves. These books can be tremendous assets - but only if people know that they exist."

As an example, I've been looking to get my hands on Paul Watson's Where War Lives. The university library does not have a copy, the WRLC consortium does not have a copy, my local library system does not have copy. But, I know where to find a book (at a library!) thanks to Google books. Google has worked with OCLC WorldCat to offer a "Find this Book in a Library" feature. Now I know that I just have to go through the Prince Georges' County Library system to get my greedy little hands on Watson's book.

Google is not "out to get us." Libraries should work with Google to make their materials more widely and easily accessible. And maybe, find a way to incorporate some good ole classification rules to the material while their at it.