Librarians of the future (or is it now current?)

Sometime between 1995 and 1998 (I can't remember when), I went with my parents to a public meeting about a new main library. At that time, I thought it was a waste to have a huge main library as a majority of the city lives nowhere near downtown. While there are now more people living in downtown, the focus, in my opinion, should be to improve the branch libraries that will benefit many more people. All these years later, I still believe the same thing; spending millions of dollars on something that most people won't use is a waste. How about increasing the hours that the branch libraries are open instead of a main library? Oh and the new main library still isn't built; projected completion is 2011.

In any case, that's not what this entry is about. Way back then, I told my parents that I thought the librarians of the future would be professional web surfers. While anyone can search for information, a professional is needed to:

• Use appropriate keywords to quickly find relevant information.
• Ascertain which results are from reputable sources (someone's post on a forum is unlikely to be considered as an appropriate source for facts).
• Distill the potentially large number of search results into a usable form.

In some cases traditional librarians are still needed, such as the case for children's librarians, but research librarians seem like they should deal with completely electronics resources as that is the most efficient way to find information (if you know where to look).

Knowledgebase Overload

In my effort to have my ReceiptWallet users get faster answers to questions, I have developed an extensive knowledge base of articles. While I've done my best to write easy to understand articles, the hardest part is getting people to find the articles. I know my knowledge base, so I know what keywords to enter to get results. Yesterday my mom had a problem with printing a receipt from Amazon to ReceiptWallet, so I pointed my dad to "droplet" and then directly to the article about droplets. My dad read the article and easily fixed the problem. Would my parents (or other users) been able to find the article? That depends on what keywords they entered in the search. I've been searching for answers for years on the Internet (I still haven't found what I'm looking for probably because I'm not sure what I'm looking for :-)), so I have a good idea on what words to use in searching.

Is there a better way to help people search in knowledge bases? I'm not sure the knowledge base software makes a difference. I have about 60 articles in my database covering a wide range of topics. They are categorized, but finding an answer could take time and many people don't want to spend the time to search for an answer; I can't blame them.

Any ideas on how to improve self help resources for ReceiptWallet?

Palm OS isn't dead (yet)!

Yesterday we had lunch at the Bondi Bar and Kitchen. The restaurant (the restaurant part is a bit of an afterthought; I'd consider it more of a club). I noticed that the waitresses were carrying Palm OS devices, possibly Zire 72 devices. The silk screenscreend buttons were clearly visible and it appeared to have a mag stripe reader underneath it. I'm not sure if they had 802.11 connections or they used IR to transmit the orders, but it was interesting. However, the waitress seemed to spend a lot of time using the stylus to enter the order. I don't know if this is the most efficient way to enter orders.

I'm kind of surprised that someone decided to use Palm OS for a vertical application these days; the availability of non-Treo devices is kind of questionable and the number of developers still writing Palm OS applications is dwindling rapidly.

Poorly designed book

I read to our son every night and recently, my wife pulled out a book called Five Shiny Stars. One day she told me it played music (there was a tag on the front of the book indicating it did), but I never heard it. So lately I've thought it was broken, so I banged the book against my head and magically it started playing "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star". Last night as I was putting Aiden to bed and reading the book, the son started playing when I turned to the last page (like it is supposed to do) without me banging my head against it. What was different about last night? It was still light outside when we put him to sleep and the sun was sneaking past the curtains. I looked closer at the book and show that there was a photo cell which triggers the song to start. This has to be the stupidest way to trigger music on a book that talks about going to sleep! Normally people read books about going to sleep when it is dark. I would have expected there to be a pressure type trigger to turn on the song.