Meet…
17 July 2008
SLIS Student Daria Topousis Shares Web 2.0 Knowledge
New SLIS student Daria Topousis recently had an article published in the Eureka Times-Standard
that explains the concept of social tagging in language that is clear and easy for everyone to understand.
The article describes social tagging in this way: "A tag is a word or phrase that describes a piece of content such as a photograph, a web page or an online article…these tags are all displayed together in what is called a tag cloud, a jumble of words that describe the content. Words that appear more often, and which are thereby considered more relevant, show in a bigger font." Topousis points out that organizations such as NASA feature tag clouds on their home pages to provide a graphical representation about popular content. The article focuses on the fact that anybody can employ tagging to find and share online content.
Not long ago, Topousis herself did not know much about the topic of social tagging. Then she read an article about it in her Information Retrieval class and decided to write about it in the journal she was required to keep for the course. She found the subject so fascinating that she decided to expand on it for the Times-Standard piece.
Topousis is a member of the Redwood Technology Consortium, a non-profit group that provides information and education about technology issues. In this capacity, she writes several articles a year for the Times-Standard on topics such as mashups, personal digital assistants, Second Life, and the technology used by NASA to share its missions with the public.
The article about NASA’s use of technology is of special interest to Topousis. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) may seem like an odd place of employment for a librarian. But it has proven a perfect fit for Topousis, who has worked there for the past 12 years, telecommuting from her home in Northern California. Her time there is split between conducting oral histories for the archives, and working in the knowledge architecture department.
She leads JPL’s oral history team for the Library, Archives and Records section. The team works with the JPL oral historian and is responsible for interviewing people involved in major projects, developing an overall plan and maintaining existing recordings and transcripts. As a member of the knowledge architecture team, Topousis helped create the NASA Engineering Network, a suite of tools that includes a multi-repository search, communities of practice and vetted Lessons Learned within a single portal.
Topousis loves the combination of responsibilities and tasks involved in both aspects of her job. She has already found that the courses she is taking at SLIS are proving beneficial. "I’m learning things that are really helping me in my job."
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