You have been told also that life is darkness, and in your weariness you echo what was said by the weary.

And I say that life is indeed darkness save when there is urge,

And all urge is blind save when there is knowledge,

And all knowledge is vain save when there is work,

And all work is empty save when there is love;

And when you work with love you bind yourself to yourself, and to one another, and to God.

And what is it to work with love?

It is to weave the cloth with threads drawn from your heart, even as if your beloved were to wear that cloth.

It is to build a house with affection, even as if your beloved were to dwell in that house.

It is to sow seeds with tenderness and reap the harvest with joy, even as if your beloved were to eat the fruit.

It is to charge all things you fashion with the breath of your own spirit,

And to know that the blessed dead are standing about you and watching.

It’s important to remember to go about working joyfully and with a sense of purpose. Sometimes my work challenges me in frustrating ways. Library patrons can try my patience several times a day, but I still must treat them how I would treat loved ones. Even when people are rude or express romantic interest at work, I have to brush it off and continue to serve. And when I’m building websites, I’m working solo and run into impediments that I have to research to make my way past. I continue to learn more and push on, trying to do right by the world. These reminders are everywhere and I stumbled on this one on a particularly stressful afternoon. The older I grow, the more I notice these serendipitous things happening at strangely appropriate times.

Also at TechConnections last week I listened to Ed Liddle talk about free tools to image machines. My personal nerdism does not cover this subject area so much, but I do have a limited understanding about running machines off an image. We do that at the library where I work. During his talk he mentioned that most computers manufactured today have much more power than they will ever need as a public workstation. This is important information when considering partitioning a hard drive, but something else about this statement caught my attention. I thought about all of the public terminals with so many gigs of hard drive and processor space going unused (not to mention the electricity at night). And thought about how slow some of the servers can get around here during a busy afternoon. I’m really curious what kind of solution these public terminals can provide. Knitting a system together could be a big pain and might take a huge initial resource investment, but could really save an institution a great deal of money in the long run. Perhaps someone has already developed a method for using this untapped resource. I’m interested to find out.

Combining social and algorithmic searching is one of the more brilliant moves on the part of search engines. Folks will start delving for information either by consulting a search engine or calling a friend with some level of expertise. The process is almost completely situational. However, according to the Pew Internet & American Life Project:

For help with a variety of common problems, more people turn to the internet than consult experts or family members to provide information and resources.

The variety of common problems is broad and the decision to tap into a social network versus consulting a search engine is subjective. However, some new projects are popping up that look promising. They give the social search a new, more efficient execution, or try to integrate social and algorithmic search. Google Profiles are one step Google is taking to make searching more human. I believe the most notable project at this time is Aardvark: (vark.com). Aardvark actually “lives” in your instant messaging program and seeks out the person who can best answer your question. This is no Yahoo Answers.

From their site:

Why use Aardvark?

A real conversation with a friend (or friend-of-friend) can provide much better information than a web page. After all, there’s much more knowledge and experience in people’s heads than there is written on web pages.

Aardvark routes questions within your social network, so the network is as big as you make it.

With more friends on Aardvark, you get faster and better responses. (You can connect Aardvark to your existing social network on Facebook, MySpace and other popular sites — you may have friends already using Aardvark.)

I like the idea that searching is moving in a more networked, human direction.

This has everything to do with libraries, and more importantly, the place of libraries in peoples’ lives. Reference question statistics continue to rise at PLCH irregardless of the rising number of home computers, and hence, search engine users. The library provides an added value to customers. Asking a library worker is a social search with the power of the algorithmic search behind it. I’m curious how libraries can use these new ways to find information within the institution. We’ve talked about using IM on the public desk to alert co-workers at their cubicles that we need help. What about using a service like Aardvark within the whole library system to better answer reference questions?

Read more:
Brynn Evans writes about the issue
Web Worker Daily reviews Aardvark
Google’s Profiles page
Pew Internet and American Life Project’s research on the topic