Ohrstrom Blog

Lisa Laughy September 30th, 2008

Lisa Laughy - Archives Assistant

The September 12th issue of Science, recently out on the shelf in Ohrstrom Library’s periodical room, features a cover article about the combination of new tech and old books.  Five researchers have tested the effectiveness of the CAPTCHA web security measure to pick up the slack in OCR book digitization. If you regularly browse the web, you have encountered a CAPTCHA – asking you to decipher a difficult to read section of text and type the letters into a box.  Now researchers are finding a way to re-purpose your small efforts into something rather useful.   Science describes the project:

“Millions of books written before the computer era are being digitized for preservation. Because the ink has faded, optical character recognition software cannot decipher many words. Through a repurposing of an existing online security technology called CAPTCHA, these words are being manually transcribed by millions of Web users.”

Here is the abstract from the published paper:

“CAPTCHAs (Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart) are widespread security measures on the World Wide Web that prevent automated programs from abusing online services. They do so by asking humans to perform a task that computers cannot yet perform, such as deciphering distorted characters. Our research explored whether such human effort can be channeled into a useful purpose: helping to digitize old printed material by asking users to decipher scanned words from books that computerized optical character recognition failed to recognize. We showed that this method can transcribe text with a word accuracy exceeding 99%, matching the guarantee of professional human transcribers. Our apparatus is deployed in more than 40,000 Web sites and has transcribed over 440 million words.”

The article estimates that over 100 million CAPTCHAs are typed a day, amounting to hundreds of thousands of human hours.  Taping into that resource to accomplish such a useful task as the digital preservation of old books is a fascinating prospect.  Come into Ohrstrom Library’s periodical room and read the full text of the article in the September 12th issue of Science, starting on page 1465.

Tags: books, CAPTCHA, digitization, OCR, Periodical Picks, Periodicals, reCAPTCHA, Science, Science Magazine

• Periodicals , Technology
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Deb Baker September 29th, 2008

Deb Baker – Interim Reference Librarian

The internet is full of valuable information — and useless junk. How to discern the difference? If you’ve attended library instruction classes at Ohrstrom you’ve probably learned tips for evaluating web pages.  For a quick reminder (courtesy of the Olin and Uris Libraries at Cornell University) you can visit (and bookmark) this page.

For times when a librarian isn’t close at hand there are two websites that are particularly helpful at pointing you in the right direction.  On the Ohrstrom website under “Other Resources” on the Catalog tab, you can find links to the Internet Public Library and Librarians’ Internet Index.  Both offer a collection of links to librarian tested websites covering nearly every subject.

The Internet Public Library website includes collections of links chosen especially for teens and kids, as well as a wide variety of reference tools. These include a list of census and demographic data sites, and subject selections such as a collection of literary criticism sites. IPL’s pathfinders, created to aid both online and library research, are well designed and thorough.

The Librarians’ Internet Index website adds dozens of new sites every week, and you can learn what’s been added by subscribing to “New This Week” by email or RSS.  It has 20,000 websites listed in 14 categories and 300 subcategories. Both IPL and LII offer basic and advanced search options as well as online search tutorials.

Save these useful links, or refer back to the Ohrstrom Blog’s collection of “Research” links in the sidebar.

HELFUL FOR: Life, the Universe, and Everything; classes in all areas of the SPS curriculum

FUN FOR: library nuts, bookworms, curious types, everyone with an interest in anything

Tags: librarian, Life the Universe and Everything, reference, Web Resources, websites

• Research , Web Resources
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Lisa Laughy September 26th, 2008

Lisa Laughy - Archives Assistant

Our third RSS feed related post this week is about using your feed reader to keep track of search results from the ProQuest database.  It is very simple to set up a RSS feed for your searches and then receive automatic updates whenever new items are added to the search results.  Here’s how it is done:

Once you have narrowed down your search in ProQuest, scroll to the bottom of the search list and locate the little RSS icon (see the image below).

Click on the “Create RSS Feed” link and a window will pop up with your customized feed address.  Click on the feed address located in the yellow box in the new window (shown below).

This will open up a browser window that takes you to the feed address.   You can now either select your feed reader from the drop-down list at the top of the page (I am using Bloglines – see picture below), or copy and paste the feed address from your browser’s navigation bar into your feed reader and follow the steps to subscribe.

Now that you have subscribed to your search feed in ProQuest, you can keep track of updates to your custom search without having to go back to the ProQuest website.  It will save you time and ensure that you have the most current periodical resources for your research topic.

Tags: Bloglines, Databases, feed readers, Feeds, Periodicals, Proquest, RSS, searches, Web Resources

• Databases , Library Tech , Research , Web Resources
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Lisa Laughy September 24th, 2008

Lisa Laughy - Archives Assistant

Oxford English Dictionary Online is a subscription service available to students, faculty and staff through the Ohstrom Library website.  You can use this service to check meanings of words, find the first recorded use of a word, or for inspiration in solving word puzzles, among other things.  One of the services they now offer is the Word of the Day RSS feed.  Now that you have read the earlier post introducing feed readers, you are ready to add OED to your daily feed.

The Word of the Day feed address is: http://www.oed.com/rss.xml Cut and paste the address into your feed reader, or click on the link to add it through your browser.

You can read more about the feed service HERE including ways to add Word of the Day to your Google and Yahoo homepages.

Tags: OED, Oxford English Dictionary, RSS, Word of the Day

• Databases , Library Tech , Web Resources
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Deb Baker September 23rd, 2008

Deb Baker – Interim Reference Librarian

Shakespeare’s Language: A Glossary of Unfamiliar Words in His Plays and Poems by Eugene F. Shewmaker, Facts On File, 2008.

Find it in Ohrstrom at: Ref. 822.3 zSh59

Shewmaker’s second edition opens with a preface, summarizing the study of Shakespearean manuscripts and lexicography. Consult the introduction for a brief overview of the bard’s contributions to English, or use the glossary for definitions and references to the lines in Shakespeare’s plays or poems where each word appears.

HELPFUL FOR: Humanities III, Humanities V, Shakespeare

FUN FOR: thespians, wordsmiths, drama queens/kings

Tags: English Language, Humanities III, Humanities V, New Reference Book, Shakespeare

• Humanities , Research
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