Monday, October 10, 2005

Open WorldCat Reviews (revised)

Revision added October 12. Ok, ok...sometimes I write/talk before I think/do (I am an ENTJ on the Myers-Briggs scale) and this was one of those times. As several of my esteemed colleagues informed me...I am flat out wrong about linking in the Open WorldCat reviews feature. Lorcan clarifies in the comments to his original post, linked below. Here's what he said:

Thom Hickey writes a little about how the review functionality is implemented with some links to background information about the underlying technology. Thom points to a review he has started in which there are several links. URL links are now supported. At first there was some concern about links to inappropriate sites. After feedback, it has been decided to allow links and see what happens. The guidelines will be amended to reflect this soon.

Thanks to everyone who corrected me.

Finally, Anonymous Commenter? I do know, generally, what "nudnick" means...and like the sound of the word added to the meaning to connote "annoying wind bags who know nothing."

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Original Post: Only so we don't look like complete know nudnicks, I refer you to Lorcan's post about the release of the terrific review feature in Open WorldCat (no bias here!).

S'wonderful, S'marvelous. Can I just say that it would be more marvelous if we could link from within the review? We bloggy types are habituated to the hot link inside and it feels like amputation to have to communicate in flat text. I've forgotten how to point people to things except to provide a link.

My stalwart OCLC Open Worldcat colleagues....it's all about context! Stand alone bib records--even those enhanced by reviews--are entombed little artifacts. When readers can show others that this book has connections to that book, and this web site and these seventeen journal articles and that one really flakey personal blog...then we're really exposing the value of metadata and exploiting in the best sense the value of WorldCat.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

also, I don't think nudnick means what you think it means

http://wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=nudnick

Lorcan Dempsey said...

Here is a review of On Beauty.