Class assignment: play around on LibraryThing and Amazon...

Yeah, that's really the assignment. This is pretty amazing. The class is organizing and providing access to information. I'm quite wary, being a Googler from way back, and having done all my legal research for the last 20 years on either the open Web or on Westlaw. So, full text is my mantra. But I'm taking this class and I'm going to figure out what the deal is with catalog records, Dublin Core, xml, metadata generally, etc. etc. So, with the intro to xml readings, we are instructed to check out LibraryThing and Amazon as two different approaches to recommender systems. LibraryThing is just so much fun, it's hard to relate it to xml and metadata. I can't get below the surface of just being amazed at all the cool information I get back for having entered 31 titles into my "library" with a couple of tags on each one. Too easy. So, I just want to read and read and read now. Of course, I have to read, tons of stuff. So this is working out really, really well!