Saturday, December 19, 2009
Thoughts on Purchasing Magazines and Books
I woke up this morning thinking about ownership versus access, with regard to magazines and books, both in my personal collection and in libraries. If this is of interest to you, read this post on my other blog. Cheers!
Thing 31: What is the Future of Libraries and Librarians?
I watched the presentation on New Librarianship by R. David Lankes.
Mr. Lankes made so many good points, I can't possibly address them all. I took three and a half pages of notes while I listened, and I can barely decide what to focus on.
He turns the conversation away from the future of libraries to the future of librarians, reminding us that it is the people, not the buildings or the resources, that make libraries and librarianship valuable to society. He suggests that we do not discover the future; we create it.
I really liked his rock illustration. "The geologist did not discover the knowledge in the rock. They brought the knowledge to the rock. . . . Knowledge is dynamic, it's living, it's human, it's how we understand stuff . . . we can not put knowledge on a stack." He went on to talk about how when one reads a book, one has a conversation, not with the book, nor with the author, but with the self.
That really gave me a lightbulb moment. I've thought of librarians as collectors and curators of knowledge, who provide access to information so people can learn independently. (Collection development, acquisitions, and cataloging.) And I've thought of librarians as guides who lead people to knowledge, who teach them to find and use information, if they are unable to do so on their own. (Reference and public services.) The underlying assumption is that knowledge is a thing--intangible, but still a thing--that people can get. But knowledge isn't in the books or the databases. Knowledge is in the minds of living people.
Lankes said, "The mission of librarians is to improve society through facilitating knowledge creation in their communities." That is a mighty tall order, but it's nobler than simply providing access to resources and directions on how to use them. I will try to keep that in the back of my mind, always, as I progress through life. How does my work improve society? How can I make my work improve society?
What does it mean to improve society? Society is made up of people, so improving society is improving people. What does that mean? I feel that my mind has been improved by listening to Mr. Lankes' presentation. So he has improved me, and thus improved society. So if I improve the knowledge of one person through a conversation (face to face or through my writing or catalog records), then I will have improved society. (That is in itself a major mind-shift for me--the idea that catalog records are not directional signs but conversations between librarians and users. Thinking of it that way really highlights just how bad our catalogs suck, even in the best libraries.)
It goes both ways. In the process of improving society, librarians must in turn be improved by society. Librarians are a part of society, after all. We are part of the community. (Forgive me for including myself in the "we" even though I'm not technically a librarian. But I do believe paraprofessionals practice librarianship, too.)
Lankes stressed that we need a deeper sense of why we do what we do. It's fine to know what you do and how you do it, but it's just as important to know why. This reminds me of the quote by Martha Watson, "I really like to know the reasons for what I do!" (This quote is used as the signature of John G. Marr, a frequent poster on the Autocat discussion list, so I see it often.) It's true. If you don't know why you're doing something, then you can't see if there is a better way to do it. And I've long considered process improvement an integral part of my job, so I'm often asking why things are done a particular way.
I am also reminded of an anecdote my friend Rev. Michael Burgess told in a sermon years ago. A woman always cut off the ends of the ham and laid them along the sides of the roasting pan. One day, someone asked her why. She didn't know, but her mother had always done it that way, and she'd picked up the habit. So she went and asked her mother. Her mother said she didn't know either, but grandma always did it that way. So they went and asked grandma, who said that she had such a small roasting pan in those days that a whole ham was too long. The only way to make it fit was to cut off the ends and squeeze them in along the sides. Two generations after her continued the practice, even though their pans were big enough for the uncut ham.
I’m sure libraries are full of cut-off ends of hams. What do we keep doing out of tradition, that is no longer really necessary because our tools have changed so much?
The future of librarianship is wonderful, so long as we choose the path and take each step with conscious awareness.
Mr. Lankes made so many good points, I can't possibly address them all. I took three and a half pages of notes while I listened, and I can barely decide what to focus on.
He turns the conversation away from the future of libraries to the future of librarians, reminding us that it is the people, not the buildings or the resources, that make libraries and librarianship valuable to society. He suggests that we do not discover the future; we create it.
I really liked his rock illustration. "The geologist did not discover the knowledge in the rock. They brought the knowledge to the rock. . . . Knowledge is dynamic, it's living, it's human, it's how we understand stuff . . . we can not put knowledge on a stack." He went on to talk about how when one reads a book, one has a conversation, not with the book, nor with the author, but with the self.
That really gave me a lightbulb moment. I've thought of librarians as collectors and curators of knowledge, who provide access to information so people can learn independently. (Collection development, acquisitions, and cataloging.) And I've thought of librarians as guides who lead people to knowledge, who teach them to find and use information, if they are unable to do so on their own. (Reference and public services.) The underlying assumption is that knowledge is a thing--intangible, but still a thing--that people can get. But knowledge isn't in the books or the databases. Knowledge is in the minds of living people.
Lankes said, "The mission of librarians is to improve society through facilitating knowledge creation in their communities." That is a mighty tall order, but it's nobler than simply providing access to resources and directions on how to use them. I will try to keep that in the back of my mind, always, as I progress through life. How does my work improve society? How can I make my work improve society?
What does it mean to improve society? Society is made up of people, so improving society is improving people. What does that mean? I feel that my mind has been improved by listening to Mr. Lankes' presentation. So he has improved me, and thus improved society. So if I improve the knowledge of one person through a conversation (face to face or through my writing or catalog records), then I will have improved society. (That is in itself a major mind-shift for me--the idea that catalog records are not directional signs but conversations between librarians and users. Thinking of it that way really highlights just how bad our catalogs suck, even in the best libraries.)
It goes both ways. In the process of improving society, librarians must in turn be improved by society. Librarians are a part of society, after all. We are part of the community. (Forgive me for including myself in the "we" even though I'm not technically a librarian. But I do believe paraprofessionals practice librarianship, too.)
Lankes stressed that we need a deeper sense of why we do what we do. It's fine to know what you do and how you do it, but it's just as important to know why. This reminds me of the quote by Martha Watson, "I really like to know the reasons for what I do!" (This quote is used as the signature of John G. Marr, a frequent poster on the Autocat discussion list, so I see it often.) It's true. If you don't know why you're doing something, then you can't see if there is a better way to do it. And I've long considered process improvement an integral part of my job, so I'm often asking why things are done a particular way.
I am also reminded of an anecdote my friend Rev. Michael Burgess told in a sermon years ago. A woman always cut off the ends of the ham and laid them along the sides of the roasting pan. One day, someone asked her why. She didn't know, but her mother had always done it that way, and she'd picked up the habit. So she went and asked her mother. Her mother said she didn't know either, but grandma always did it that way. So they went and asked grandma, who said that she had such a small roasting pan in those days that a whole ham was too long. The only way to make it fit was to cut off the ends and squeeze them in along the sides. Two generations after her continued the practice, even though their pans were big enough for the uncut ham.
I’m sure libraries are full of cut-off ends of hams. What do we keep doing out of tradition, that is no longer really necessary because our tools have changed so much?
The future of librarianship is wonderful, so long as we choose the path and take each step with conscious awareness.
Thursday, November 19, 2009
The Webbies: 1000 Awesome Things
We're up to Thing #30, a lovely round number. And for this, we get to pick anything off the Webby list, anything that strikes our fancy?
I started with the idea of picking something practical, maybe something from the art section that might be of value to the KANEKO-UNO Library. But my internet connection is too slow to get any of those art sites to load properly. I had particularly high hopes for the Color Chart, and what I saw of it was beautiful. I'd love to explore it sometime when I have access to a higher speed connection. But I had to abandon it for now in favor of something a little more friendly to low-end DSL.
While there's a lot of potentially valuable stuff for libraries, I found myself drawn to the 1000 Awesome Things blog. I don’t necessarily see a strong library application for it, but I like it. Everyone needs a break from the nastiness and misery and meanness that permeates our world. This blog is like an antidote. It's upbeat and uplifting (without being saccharine or glurgy), reminding us to take joy in the simple pleasures life has to offer, like sleeping in our own bed after an exhausting trip or finding something you lost so long ago you gave up on it. I had my own experience with the latter this summer, when I found a turquoise and silver ring I'd lost over a year earlier. It was under the seat of my old car, which I was cleaning out to sell. I wore the ring every day until I lost it again last month. But I'm not worried. If it's meant to be, it'll find its way back to me.
The posts on 1000 Awesome Things are kind of rambling, rather like the above paragraph. They remind me of The Tick's monologues, and starting about halfway through the third post, every word I read, my mind heard spoken in Patrick Warburton's voice. Go on, pick any post, and imagine Patrick Warburton standing by the bus stop coffee vending machine and telling you these things. Bonus points if you imagine him in a blue superhero suit with emotive antennae.
And that just makes me smile. I think that's the whole point of the blog. To cheer you up no matter what kind of day you're having. And who doesn't need that?
I started with the idea of picking something practical, maybe something from the art section that might be of value to the KANEKO-UNO Library. But my internet connection is too slow to get any of those art sites to load properly. I had particularly high hopes for the Color Chart, and what I saw of it was beautiful. I'd love to explore it sometime when I have access to a higher speed connection. But I had to abandon it for now in favor of something a little more friendly to low-end DSL.
While there's a lot of potentially valuable stuff for libraries, I found myself drawn to the 1000 Awesome Things blog. I don’t necessarily see a strong library application for it, but I like it. Everyone needs a break from the nastiness and misery and meanness that permeates our world. This blog is like an antidote. It's upbeat and uplifting (without being saccharine or glurgy), reminding us to take joy in the simple pleasures life has to offer, like sleeping in our own bed after an exhausting trip or finding something you lost so long ago you gave up on it. I had my own experience with the latter this summer, when I found a turquoise and silver ring I'd lost over a year earlier. It was under the seat of my old car, which I was cleaning out to sell. I wore the ring every day until I lost it again last month. But I'm not worried. If it's meant to be, it'll find its way back to me.
The posts on 1000 Awesome Things are kind of rambling, rather like the above paragraph. They remind me of The Tick's monologues, and starting about halfway through the third post, every word I read, my mind heard spoken in Patrick Warburton's voice. Go on, pick any post, and imagine Patrick Warburton standing by the bus stop coffee vending machine and telling you these things. Bonus points if you imagine him in a blue superhero suit with emotive antennae.
And that just makes me smile. I think that's the whole point of the blog. To cheer you up no matter what kind of day you're having. And who doesn't need that?
Saturday, November 14, 2009
FTC Disclosure
Since now the Federal Trade Commission requires all bloggers to disclose whether they received any payment or perks of any kind for reviewing products, this is my disclosure/disclaimer to apply to all of my previous reviews on this blog. It also applies to all of my future posts related to the Nebraska Learns 2.0 program.
None of the web services explored during the Nebraska Learns 2.0 exercises provided any compensation to the participants in the program. None provided me with something complementary for the explicit purpose of reviewing it. The only people who asked me to blog about these services are the Nebraska Library Commission staff members who select and moderate the exercises. I am under no obligation to complete the exercises. My opinions about the services are my honest impressions based on my experiences using them.
I would be eligible for continuing education credits for completing these exercises, but my library does not require them, so I have not filled out any of the forms necessary to receive them. My only benefits from blogging about these services have been knowledge and experience.
Early in the Nebraska Learns 2.0 program, during the original 23 Things, I had permission from my supervisor to do the exercises on work time, if other duties permitted, because this was considered professional development. These days, I do these exercises at home, on my own time, not because permission was revoked but because we are simply far too busy at work to spare any time for this. I expect to continue to do the exercises on my own time for as long as I continue to participate in the program.
I work for the Criss Library at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. My opinions here are my own and do not necessarily represent the opinions of my employer.
For that matter, no one asked me to write this disclosure. But I'm not entirely clear about how the FTC expects bloggers to comply with their exceedingly confusing rules, so I figured, better safe than sorry.
None of the web services explored during the Nebraska Learns 2.0 exercises provided any compensation to the participants in the program. None provided me with something complementary for the explicit purpose of reviewing it. The only people who asked me to blog about these services are the Nebraska Library Commission staff members who select and moderate the exercises. I am under no obligation to complete the exercises. My opinions about the services are my honest impressions based on my experiences using them.
I would be eligible for continuing education credits for completing these exercises, but my library does not require them, so I have not filled out any of the forms necessary to receive them. My only benefits from blogging about these services have been knowledge and experience.
Early in the Nebraska Learns 2.0 program, during the original 23 Things, I had permission from my supervisor to do the exercises on work time, if other duties permitted, because this was considered professional development. These days, I do these exercises at home, on my own time, not because permission was revoked but because we are simply far too busy at work to spare any time for this. I expect to continue to do the exercises on my own time for as long as I continue to participate in the program.
I work for the Criss Library at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. My opinions here are my own and do not necessarily represent the opinions of my employer.
For that matter, no one asked me to write this disclosure. But I'm not entirely clear about how the FTC expects bloggers to comply with their exceedingly confusing rules, so I figured, better safe than sorry.
Sunday, November 1, 2009
Visual Bookshelf
Oops, I kinda let Thing #29: Book-Based Social Networks slip by me. I did sign up for Visual Bookshelf on Facebook, but so far I've only added five books (and they were from the same series, so they really should only count as one). I just never had time to really get into it this month, and I had trouble working up enthusiasm because this thing seemed like a combination of two things I'd already done, LibraryThing and Facebook.
I might go back later and try to fill out my Visual Bookshelf. I'm more likely to use it than LibraryThing, because it's integrated into Facebook, so it's in a place I already go instead of another site I have to remember to visit. But since October is over, I'm afraid I flubbed this lesson.
I might go back later and try to fill out my Visual Bookshelf. I'm more likely to use it than LibraryThing, because it's integrated into Facebook, so it's in a place I already go instead of another site I have to remember to visit. But since October is over, I'm afraid I flubbed this lesson.
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Nebraska Library Camp II
I had a great time at Nebraska Library Camp II today. If you've never been to an unconference before, the idea is that you gather with no pre-planned topics. Then you talk about what you'd like to talk about, and then you break into smaller groups based on those topics.
Why? Well, whenever we get together for a conference, the greatest exchange of ideas usually seems to be between sessions, in those hallway and lunchtime discussions where you talk about what your library is doing and hear about what everyone else's libraries are doing. The unconference tries to take that kind of passionate exchange into a slightly more structured setting. I think it worked out pretty well.
I participated in three breakout sessions: the future of cataloging, the future of ILL, and Google Books. If you're interested, you can read my notes on the Nebraska Library Camp II wiki. Remember, these notes are not my ideas, just a record of what the group as a whole discussed. I wish I had so many good ideas myself.
Looking forward to the NLA/NEMA Fall Conference tomorrow and Friday. Should be awesome!
Why? Well, whenever we get together for a conference, the greatest exchange of ideas usually seems to be between sessions, in those hallway and lunchtime discussions where you talk about what your library is doing and hear about what everyone else's libraries are doing. The unconference tries to take that kind of passionate exchange into a slightly more structured setting. I think it worked out pretty well.
I participated in three breakout sessions: the future of cataloging, the future of ILL, and Google Books. If you're interested, you can read my notes on the Nebraska Library Camp II wiki. Remember, these notes are not my ideas, just a record of what the group as a whole discussed. I wish I had so many good ideas myself.
Looking forward to the NLA/NEMA Fall Conference tomorrow and Friday. Should be awesome!
Monday, September 28, 2009
Google Reader
Well, I've been dissatisfied with the instability of Bloglines for a while now, so the switch to Google Reader seemed like the perfect thing for me. I'm glad this lesson came along to give me the nudge to quit procrastinating.
Likes:
Items are not marked as read until you actually scroll down to view them. This is especially wonderful when my browser hangs up and I have to relaunch. With Bloglines, every time that happened, any items which had loaded, but which I had not yet actually looked at, were lost forever. With Google Reader, they're still there waiting for me. This alone guarantees that I will stick with Google Reader and leave Bloglines behind.
I love the hotkeys, especially j and k. It's nice to have an alternative to scrolling.
I like the presence of links to open articles in a new tab. (Just after the title--look for the two arrows in a little circle, resembling a fast forward button.) That saves me the trouble of right-clicking and selecting "open in new tab" every time I want to look at the comments for a post.
Dislikes:
Google Reader loads very slowly, even on DSL. It's not as bad as Google Maps, which is almost unusable on my home connection, but it's still a little troublesome at times.
In Bloglines, I could order the feeds within a folder, and I could get all new items from site A, then all new items from site B, etc. So I could have a gradual and carefully planned transition from serious to silly, or vice versa. In Google Reader, it's always newest item first, so clicking on one of my folders gives me a mess like D, B, A, C, C, A, A, B, D, A. That drives me nuts. I'm going to have to create a lot of new folders and reorganize everything so that blogs of dissimilar tone don't get all mixed together.
Overall, though, the pros outweigh the cons. A good feed reader has become an absolutely indispensable tool in my day-to-day life, both at work and at home, and there's a lot to like with Google Reader.
Likes:
Items are not marked as read until you actually scroll down to view them. This is especially wonderful when my browser hangs up and I have to relaunch. With Bloglines, every time that happened, any items which had loaded, but which I had not yet actually looked at, were lost forever. With Google Reader, they're still there waiting for me. This alone guarantees that I will stick with Google Reader and leave Bloglines behind.
I love the hotkeys, especially j and k. It's nice to have an alternative to scrolling.
I like the presence of links to open articles in a new tab. (Just after the title--look for the two arrows in a little circle, resembling a fast forward button.) That saves me the trouble of right-clicking and selecting "open in new tab" every time I want to look at the comments for a post.
Dislikes:
Google Reader loads very slowly, even on DSL. It's not as bad as Google Maps, which is almost unusable on my home connection, but it's still a little troublesome at times.
In Bloglines, I could order the feeds within a folder, and I could get all new items from site A, then all new items from site B, etc. So I could have a gradual and carefully planned transition from serious to silly, or vice versa. In Google Reader, it's always newest item first, so clicking on one of my folders gives me a mess like D, B, A, C, C, A, A, B, D, A. That drives me nuts. I'm going to have to create a lot of new folders and reorganize everything so that blogs of dissimilar tone don't get all mixed together.
Overall, though, the pros outweigh the cons. A good feed reader has become an absolutely indispensable tool in my day-to-day life, both at work and at home, and there's a lot to like with Google Reader.
Sunday, August 30, 2009
Ugh. I’ve been dreading Thing #27: Facebook, Networking and You.
Over the last couple of years, an increasing number of friends and family members (coworkers, not so much) have asked me to join Facebook. I’ve been avoiding it because, frankly, it never appealed to me. I'm afraid it will be just another thing that I will have to remember to check periodically, and that I will end up neglecting, like my blogs, Twitter, and four of my five email accounts.
But now it’s an assignment. Now I have to do it.
I chose Facebook over the other options because it seems to be most popular (and thus, to have the greatest market penetration), and more people I personally know are already members. Also, my library is on Facebook, so it just seems like it will be the most useful all around.
I somehow became a fan of Criss Library's page without actually doing anything. As soon as I finished creating my profile, I looked at my library's page, and I was already there listed as a fan. So weird! I also made myself a fan of the Kaneko-UNO Library, and I joined the groups for the Nebraska Library Association and Nebraska Library Leadership Institute Alumni. I put out several friend requests, including the four Nebraska Learns 2.0 leaders. Michael Sauers responded instantly, before I even finished searching the next friend's name.
One thing that really amazed me was how many people I know on Facebook. So many friends I haven't seen or interacted with in months or years, many family members, coworkers, and professional contacts. Is there Facebook etiquette? If I send a friend request to one colleague but not another, is that considered a snub to the one who didn't get a request? I sent some friend requests before I figured out how to join a network, then canceled them (they had not yet been accepted) after I joined the UNO network. Is that considered a snub? I hope not. These are folks I like working with. I genuinely lost sleep over this, and then I apologized to them in person the next day.
Also, I had trouble figuring out how to join a network. Finding useful help files on Facebook seems to be impossible. I had better luck searching Google for help. In general, Facebook's interface seems to clunky, cluttered, and unintuitive.
I'm also underwhelmed by their categorizing of their applications. "Sports Bets" and "What Kind of Tractor Are You?" are listed under Business? Really? "Send Cute Animals" is under Education? Really? It makes it hard for me to take Facebook seriously as a potential business tool. The personal, silly stuff overwhelms the serious, business stuff very quickly. I guess if I really wanted to use a social networking account for work, I would probably not use Facebook. I haven't looked at LinkedIn yet, but it at least has the reputation of being professionally-oriented.
With Bloglines and Delicious, I created two separate accounts for each, so I could keep my personal feeds and bookmarks separate from my professional ones. But I use those services so intensively, this division works effectively. However, with Facebook, there's really no way to keep them separate. So work and personal get all mixed up, which makes me feel a little uncomfortable. Okay, it makes me feel a lot uncomfortable. I couldn't even bring myself to log into Facebook at work to finish this exercise. For me, Facebook will be for home use only.
I think the biggest problem with Facebook is that it is trying to be everything to everyone. It is this enormous, sprawling, messy blob. It kind of sucks me in and makes me want to run away at the same time. I can see how it could become an enormous time-waster. ("Social not-working," as one of my coworkers described it.)
I think the most useful aspect of Facebook is its enormous user base, which lets you treat it kind of like a giant non-regional phone book. Also, the status updates seem very much like Twitter, except with Twitter you're tweeting predominantly to strangers and anyone in the world can read it, and with Facebook you're "tweeting" at people you actually know. Depending on your goal, either is legitimate, but personally I think I will find Facebook more satisfying than Twitter.
I do find some of the privacy concerns about Facebook rather alarming, and I'm not talking about what people might see in an indiscreet user's profile. The ACLU is presently going after Facebook because many of the quiz apps not only allow the quiz's developer access to a user's personal info, even if their profile is supposedly private, but they often allow the developer access to all the user's friends' personal data. That's pretty scary stuff.
I plan to actually keep using Facebook (though I'll probably avoid the quizzes), because it has allowed me to get back in touch with some friends that I'd lost contact with. But I plan to only use it at home for personal stuff, so if you're one of my Nebraska library contacts and you want to unfriend me because you're successfully using Facebook for purely professional reasons, I won't be offended, and I will still be thrilled to see you at NLA or any other library event.
Over the last couple of years, an increasing number of friends and family members (coworkers, not so much) have asked me to join Facebook. I’ve been avoiding it because, frankly, it never appealed to me. I'm afraid it will be just another thing that I will have to remember to check periodically, and that I will end up neglecting, like my blogs, Twitter, and four of my five email accounts.
But now it’s an assignment. Now I have to do it.
I chose Facebook over the other options because it seems to be most popular (and thus, to have the greatest market penetration), and more people I personally know are already members. Also, my library is on Facebook, so it just seems like it will be the most useful all around.
I somehow became a fan of Criss Library's page without actually doing anything. As soon as I finished creating my profile, I looked at my library's page, and I was already there listed as a fan. So weird! I also made myself a fan of the Kaneko-UNO Library, and I joined the groups for the Nebraska Library Association and Nebraska Library Leadership Institute Alumni. I put out several friend requests, including the four Nebraska Learns 2.0 leaders. Michael Sauers responded instantly, before I even finished searching the next friend's name.
One thing that really amazed me was how many people I know on Facebook. So many friends I haven't seen or interacted with in months or years, many family members, coworkers, and professional contacts. Is there Facebook etiquette? If I send a friend request to one colleague but not another, is that considered a snub to the one who didn't get a request? I sent some friend requests before I figured out how to join a network, then canceled them (they had not yet been accepted) after I joined the UNO network. Is that considered a snub? I hope not. These are folks I like working with. I genuinely lost sleep over this, and then I apologized to them in person the next day.
Also, I had trouble figuring out how to join a network. Finding useful help files on Facebook seems to be impossible. I had better luck searching Google for help. In general, Facebook's interface seems to clunky, cluttered, and unintuitive.
I'm also underwhelmed by their categorizing of their applications. "Sports Bets" and "What Kind of Tractor Are You?" are listed under Business? Really? "Send Cute Animals" is under Education? Really? It makes it hard for me to take Facebook seriously as a potential business tool. The personal, silly stuff overwhelms the serious, business stuff very quickly. I guess if I really wanted to use a social networking account for work, I would probably not use Facebook. I haven't looked at LinkedIn yet, but it at least has the reputation of being professionally-oriented.
With Bloglines and Delicious, I created two separate accounts for each, so I could keep my personal feeds and bookmarks separate from my professional ones. But I use those services so intensively, this division works effectively. However, with Facebook, there's really no way to keep them separate. So work and personal get all mixed up, which makes me feel a little uncomfortable. Okay, it makes me feel a lot uncomfortable. I couldn't even bring myself to log into Facebook at work to finish this exercise. For me, Facebook will be for home use only.
I think the biggest problem with Facebook is that it is trying to be everything to everyone. It is this enormous, sprawling, messy blob. It kind of sucks me in and makes me want to run away at the same time. I can see how it could become an enormous time-waster. ("Social not-working," as one of my coworkers described it.)
I think the most useful aspect of Facebook is its enormous user base, which lets you treat it kind of like a giant non-regional phone book. Also, the status updates seem very much like Twitter, except with Twitter you're tweeting predominantly to strangers and anyone in the world can read it, and with Facebook you're "tweeting" at people you actually know. Depending on your goal, either is legitimate, but personally I think I will find Facebook more satisfying than Twitter.
I do find some of the privacy concerns about Facebook rather alarming, and I'm not talking about what people might see in an indiscreet user's profile. The ACLU is presently going after Facebook because many of the quiz apps not only allow the quiz's developer access to a user's personal info, even if their profile is supposedly private, but they often allow the developer access to all the user's friends' personal data. That's pretty scary stuff.
I plan to actually keep using Facebook (though I'll probably avoid the quizzes), because it has allowed me to get back in touch with some friends that I'd lost contact with. But I plan to only use it at home for personal stuff, so if you're one of my Nebraska library contacts and you want to unfriend me because you're successfully using Facebook for purely professional reasons, I won't be offended, and I will still be thrilled to see you at NLA or any other library event.
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
WorldCat.org
I’ve been a fan of WorldCat.org pretty much since OCLC unveiled it. I’ve had a WorldCat.org search box in the side bar since I first set up this blog, and on my other blog since November 2006. When I do book reviews on my personal blog, I typically provide links to WorldCat instead of Amazon. Way back when, I even added a review to the WorldCat record for one of my favorite books, Kamikaze Girls. And I routinely use it to look up any book I'm interested in reading, to figure out if any of the libraries in Omaha have it.
Of course, it had been so long since I actually logged into my WorldCat.org account that I couldn’t remember either my account name or my password. Oops. Well, once I got that straightened out, I got logged in and tried the new stuff from this lesson, Thing #26: Getting Social with WorldCat.org.
I’d never bothered creating a profile before. So I had a little fun getting one set up. (My username is akroeger, if you care to look me up.) I added the Criss Library and the Omaha Public Library as favorites. Then I added a review to another of my favorite books, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay.
I haven’t created any lists yet, but I definitely see the utility. I especially like that you can export your list to CSV, which should be compatible with RefWorks. We can export citations to RefWorks from our catalog, but it’s a bear to do. Perhaps WorldCat would offer an easier way for someone to compile the bibliography for their research paper. They could create one CSV file with not only the books from our catalog, but also any books they had to get through interlibrary loan. That’s a nice plus.
I kind of like being able to create links for search results. Check out my subject search for medieval bestiaries. If you’re interested in this topic, Ann Payne’s Medieval Beasts is a great book to start with. So sad there’s no cover image for it. Even sadder that my library seems to no longer have it. I know we used to, because I read it here before I bought it.
My library already uses WorldCat.org. We have a WorldCat search box on our home page, neatly integrated into our Find box. Right now, as I type this, our catalog is offline for a software upgrade. During this catalog outage, we are using WorldCat.org to search our holdings, obtain call numbers, etc.
Both professionally and personally, I rely on WorldCat.org a lot.
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Google Maps
It took me forever to get around to doing the actual exercises for Thing #25: See the world and be seen using Google Maps, because I use Google Maps all the time anyway. I like the ability to switch between map view and satellite view, because map view makes a cleaner printout, while satellite view makes it easier for me to make a mental map of landmarks to guide me. When street view is available, that's better still. After looking at the satellite and street views, I know what the building looks like, which side of the road it's on, and what's around it, so even a place I've never visited before looks familiar.
I'll admit I've never really used terrain view, but this is Nebraska, and most of the places I go are relatively flat, so it hasn't seemed as useful. Now, when I called up the terrain view around Mount Fuji, Japan, there was something worth looking at.
The traffic view was new to me. I guess I just never noticed it before. It could be useful in helping to find the main streets in a strange city. I had also never explored the "more" options before. While there are lots of photos downtown, there are none in my neighborhood. There is one photo of a statue pinned to the wrong part of the city. (I know, because I recognize the statue, and the marker is about 20 blocks away from the actual location.) However, that does not seem to be editable data, so the error will have to stand. The Wikipedia flags are pretty cool. There's an article for a church about a block and a half from my home. It was kind of fun seeing what other historic buildings are around my neighborhood.
"Explore this area" was also new to me, and enabled me to watch a video of a police chase through my city three years ago. Seems like Google Maps is littered with fun and interesting Easter eggs.
Assignment Part 1. The state capitol building is at 1445 K St. 68509. It looks pretty cool in satellite view. You can see the Golden Sower, even if you can't make out any details. Even at maximum zoom, the cars are tiny. However, just a guess, but it looks as though on the day the picture was taken, there was a white car parked illegally on H Street, just in front of the capitol entrance on that side. I can't guess why; there were plenty of open parking spaces mere yards away.
The street view of the Eiffel Tower, Paris, France, was pretty cool. I love that you can shift the camera angle upward to see the tower. The random street in Japan was fun. Love the Hello Kitty billboard. Because I wanted to see if other areas were as well defined, I checked out a street view over in Akihabara, Tokyo, and found it to be likewise clear and detailed, although not as entertaining, because I ended up looking at the underside of an overpass. But much of Japan is not rendered in great detail. When I tried to look at the town of Nemuro, I couldn't even get a decent, clear satellite view. It would not be very helpful if I were traveling there.
Regarding the kangaroos in Australia (which were cool to look at), how did the lesson planners find this place? Searching "kangaroos in Australia" didn't lead me to the same location.
By the way, since this lesson mentioned the satellite view of Carhenge, did you notice that there's a street view from the nearby highway? You can see a nice, if a little blurry, landscape view of Carhenge that way, too. It's also fun to back off from Carhenge a little to look at the crop circles. No, not the "unexplained mystery" kind, but the center-pivot irrigation patterns, our polka-dotted Nebraska landscape.
Assignment Part 2. Our library comes up with a basic name search, without needing the city, state, or university info. That's nice. The marker for the Criss Library pointed to the middle of a parking lot south of the UNO bell tower. However, I could not edit the map to move the marker to the actual library, because the listing had been claimed by someone else. Oh well. At least it's reasonably close. If someone gets to that parking lot, they can see the library easily. And one of my coworkers put a second marker directly on the library building, so that also helps.
All the other information on our marker is complete and correct. Looks good!
Assignment Part 3.
I was unable to do anything with regards to my library's listing, as it had already been claimed, but whoever did all the work did it well and was fairly thorough. We already have a Google Map embedded on our library website.
I did not try creating a customized map, because I have nothing to map at the moment. But if the Paraprofessional Section is able to continue broadcasting its spring meetings to remote sites in the future, it might be useful to create a map of all the confirmed meeting sites across Nebraska. I may think of other uses as need arises.
I use Google Maps more than other mapping services primarily because of ease of use and familiarity. I have never had a mapping failure from it yet. However, other mapping services also have satellite views, and when I look at the satellite view of my apartment complex in MapQuest, the image is considerably newer than the view in Google Maps. Google Maps shows a garage that was torn town years ago, and some half-completed roof construction. The MapQuest image shows the completed roof as well as the parking lot that replaced the garage. Likewise, when I check on the Midwest Crossing construction site, Google Maps shows the old buildings that no longer exist, while MapQuest shows an early stage of the construction. (What's really funny is that the Google Maps street view is considerably newer than either site's satellite view, although still far from current.) So while Google Maps has more bells and whistles, it may not always be the best mapping service if you are looking at an area that may have undergone some recent construction.
I'll admit I've never really used terrain view, but this is Nebraska, and most of the places I go are relatively flat, so it hasn't seemed as useful. Now, when I called up the terrain view around Mount Fuji, Japan, there was something worth looking at.
The traffic view was new to me. I guess I just never noticed it before. It could be useful in helping to find the main streets in a strange city. I had also never explored the "more" options before. While there are lots of photos downtown, there are none in my neighborhood. There is one photo of a statue pinned to the wrong part of the city. (I know, because I recognize the statue, and the marker is about 20 blocks away from the actual location.) However, that does not seem to be editable data, so the error will have to stand. The Wikipedia flags are pretty cool. There's an article for a church about a block and a half from my home. It was kind of fun seeing what other historic buildings are around my neighborhood.
"Explore this area" was also new to me, and enabled me to watch a video of a police chase through my city three years ago. Seems like Google Maps is littered with fun and interesting Easter eggs.
Assignment Part 1. The state capitol building is at 1445 K St. 68509. It looks pretty cool in satellite view. You can see the Golden Sower, even if you can't make out any details. Even at maximum zoom, the cars are tiny. However, just a guess, but it looks as though on the day the picture was taken, there was a white car parked illegally on H Street, just in front of the capitol entrance on that side. I can't guess why; there were plenty of open parking spaces mere yards away.
The street view of the Eiffel Tower, Paris, France, was pretty cool. I love that you can shift the camera angle upward to see the tower. The random street in Japan was fun. Love the Hello Kitty billboard. Because I wanted to see if other areas were as well defined, I checked out a street view over in Akihabara, Tokyo, and found it to be likewise clear and detailed, although not as entertaining, because I ended up looking at the underside of an overpass. But much of Japan is not rendered in great detail. When I tried to look at the town of Nemuro, I couldn't even get a decent, clear satellite view. It would not be very helpful if I were traveling there.
Regarding the kangaroos in Australia (which were cool to look at), how did the lesson planners find this place? Searching "kangaroos in Australia" didn't lead me to the same location.
By the way, since this lesson mentioned the satellite view of Carhenge, did you notice that there's a street view from the nearby highway? You can see a nice, if a little blurry, landscape view of Carhenge that way, too. It's also fun to back off from Carhenge a little to look at the crop circles. No, not the "unexplained mystery" kind, but the center-pivot irrigation patterns, our polka-dotted Nebraska landscape.
Assignment Part 2. Our library comes up with a basic name search, without needing the city, state, or university info. That's nice. The marker for the Criss Library pointed to the middle of a parking lot south of the UNO bell tower. However, I could not edit the map to move the marker to the actual library, because the listing had been claimed by someone else. Oh well. At least it's reasonably close. If someone gets to that parking lot, they can see the library easily. And one of my coworkers put a second marker directly on the library building, so that also helps.
All the other information on our marker is complete and correct. Looks good!
Assignment Part 3.
I was unable to do anything with regards to my library's listing, as it had already been claimed, but whoever did all the work did it well and was fairly thorough. We already have a Google Map embedded on our library website.
I did not try creating a customized map, because I have nothing to map at the moment. But if the Paraprofessional Section is able to continue broadcasting its spring meetings to remote sites in the future, it might be useful to create a map of all the confirmed meeting sites across Nebraska. I may think of other uses as need arises.
I use Google Maps more than other mapping services primarily because of ease of use and familiarity. I have never had a mapping failure from it yet. However, other mapping services also have satellite views, and when I look at the satellite view of my apartment complex in MapQuest, the image is considerably newer than the view in Google Maps. Google Maps shows a garage that was torn town years ago, and some half-completed roof construction. The MapQuest image shows the completed roof as well as the parking lot that replaced the garage. Likewise, when I check on the Midwest Crossing construction site, Google Maps shows the old buildings that no longer exist, while MapQuest shows an early stage of the construction. (What's really funny is that the Google Maps street view is considerably newer than either site's satellite view, although still far from current.) So while Google Maps has more bells and whistles, it may not always be the best mapping service if you are looking at an area that may have undergone some recent construction.
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Twitter Search and Google Alerts
For Thing #24: Feed Your (Library’s) Ego, I started with Twitter Search and searched "Criss Library." Most of the tweets were actually from the library or the university, but there was one from a student saying our women's restroom contains "the most flattering mirror in the world." Who knew? They all seem like rather ordinary mirrors to me.
I subscribed to the feed for that query. Over the course of the next several days, watching the Twitter Search feed for mentions of my library made me start to like Twitter a little.
Then I went over to Google Alerts and set up a comprehensive search for "Criss Library" to be performed once a day. (Including the quotation marks turned out to be important, as proximity does not seem to be weighted in Google searches. Without the quotation marks, the top hits included multiple articles which happened to include the words "criss-crossing" and "library," not particularly near one another.)
Before I could finish setting up Google Alerts, however, Google went down. (5/14/2009, shortly before 10:15 am CST.) Boom. I couldn't load Google, Blogger, Bloglines, or any other site associated with Google, including sites that had nothing more than a Google ad on them. But I could get non-Google sites to load. I searched Yahoo news for "Google," but I only got links to Google sites and services, no actual news about Google being down. So I went over to Twitter Search and searched Google. I immediately saw a passel of tweets about Google acting funky, taking a dive, etc. The hash tag #googlefail was already beginning to show up. Refreshing the page every few seconds provided more information, in many languages.
My respect for Twitter jumped enormously. It turned out to be the only useful news source on the Google outage. Even if I have nothing to tweet, I can envision myself using Twitter Search often from now on, whenever things go "weird." (Watch, now that I've said that, Twitter will be the next thing to go down.)
Google was back up in a few minutes, but still, it was truly astonishing how many things were inaccessible during that brief outage.
After Google was operating again, I went back and changed my Google Alert to a feed and added it to my Bloglines subscriptions.
Then as long as I was in Bloglines, I decided to try the Bloglines Citation Search. I did it exactly as described in the exercise, and I got NO citations for the Criss Library website.
To ensure that I wasn't just doing something wrong, I tried a citation search for UNO's website. That brought in quite a few hits.
So now I know, no one is citing our site. How sad.
Interestingly, however, when I did a citation search for my library's catalog (a different URL than our website), I actually got one hit. Woo-hoo! Unfortunately, it was from one of my own blog posts, which had a link to a catalog record.
One thing I learned, though, is that the citation search does not include the open web. If it did, the Wikipedia entry for my library would have come up, because it contains a link to my library's website.
I did subscribe to the feeds for the searches for my library's website and catalog, however, just in case anyone ever decides to cite us.
I didn't bother trying out Flickr Comments, because I have no photos uploaded to Flickr. However, on a whim, I went to Flickr and searched "Criss Library," and I was rewarded with a lot of nice photos of my library. I decided to see if there was any way I could subscribe to a feed of that search. After exploring a bit, I determined that it was not possible. From various posts on the Flickr forums, it seems like quite a few people would like to have feeds of search results. I wonder if in the future, Flickr will decide to add that feature. That would be very useful. (Note that feeds based on tags are possible. However, I didn't find that useful because the photos of my library were not tagged consistently).
After reading the description of FairShare, I decided to give it a pass for now. If no one is citing my library's website, then it's unlikely that anyone is reposting the content from any of our RSS feeds. Even if they are, since the feeds are mostly lists of new library materials for various collections, I don't think we'd care if anyone passed that info along. However, FairShare sounds like a cool service, and I might explore it later when I have more time.
Now, part 2 of this assignment. "Respond to at least one of the results you found. Wait a few days to see if they respond back." This is the hard part for me. I enjoy using technology, but I am not by nature a social person. I like to read discussions, not participate in them.
Darn these exercises, forcing me to overcome my fears.
Well, the most recent thing to come though the Twitter Search feed was from heatha_bee, who had "Library-envy" for our single-service desk and Kaneko sculpture. That made me smile. Of course, I had no idea what to say back to her. Eventually, I responded, "You envy our single-service desk and Kaneko? What library are you at? I'm a cataloger at Criss Library." That's excruciatingly lame, I know, but it's the best I could come up with.
Not long after, she responded that she was the head of ILL at UNMC, and had been at my library for a meeting. I responded with something even more lame than my first tweet, and I never heard back from her, presumably because she left for Alaska. I know if I went on an exciting trip, I wouldn't be tweeting about anything remotely work related, so I can't blame her.
In other news, just this morning, Google Alerts alerted me to a post on the California Oregon blog, which reposted the text of the Wikipedia article for the Dr. C.C. and Mabel L. Criss Library. Looking over other posts on that blog, I can find no pattern whatsoever. I can discern neither theme nor purpose for the blog. The only common thread is that all of the content seems to be reposted from other sources. I can't tell who is creating this blog, nor who the intended audience might be. And so I can't figure out the reason for their interest in the Criss Library, nor why they would simply reproduce a Wikipedia article with no context or comments. The about page for the California Oregon blog is just a spiel about Wordpress. It is very weird. The sheer randomness of the reposted entries and the lack of original content makes me suspect it may be run by a process rather than a person, but I can't tell for sure. It seems harmless, but also useless.
Anyway, out of this exercise, I plan to keep following the feeds for Twitter Search and Google Alerts related to "Criss Library." If I see anyone ranting or questioning something about my library, I will have an opportunity to open a conversation or refer something to one of my colleagues. Maybe this could help us to solve problems we may not be aware of. That's not necessarily what I think of as "marketing," but it is public relations.
I subscribed to the feed for that query. Over the course of the next several days, watching the Twitter Search feed for mentions of my library made me start to like Twitter a little.
Then I went over to Google Alerts and set up a comprehensive search for "Criss Library" to be performed once a day. (Including the quotation marks turned out to be important, as proximity does not seem to be weighted in Google searches. Without the quotation marks, the top hits included multiple articles which happened to include the words "criss-crossing" and "library," not particularly near one another.)
Before I could finish setting up Google Alerts, however, Google went down. (5/14/2009, shortly before 10:15 am CST.) Boom. I couldn't load Google, Blogger, Bloglines, or any other site associated with Google, including sites that had nothing more than a Google ad on them. But I could get non-Google sites to load. I searched Yahoo news for "Google," but I only got links to Google sites and services, no actual news about Google being down. So I went over to Twitter Search and searched Google. I immediately saw a passel of tweets about Google acting funky, taking a dive, etc. The hash tag #googlefail was already beginning to show up. Refreshing the page every few seconds provided more information, in many languages.
My respect for Twitter jumped enormously. It turned out to be the only useful news source on the Google outage. Even if I have nothing to tweet, I can envision myself using Twitter Search often from now on, whenever things go "weird." (Watch, now that I've said that, Twitter will be the next thing to go down.)
Google was back up in a few minutes, but still, it was truly astonishing how many things were inaccessible during that brief outage.
After Google was operating again, I went back and changed my Google Alert to a feed and added it to my Bloglines subscriptions.
Then as long as I was in Bloglines, I decided to try the Bloglines Citation Search. I did it exactly as described in the exercise, and I got NO citations for the Criss Library website.
To ensure that I wasn't just doing something wrong, I tried a citation search for UNO's website. That brought in quite a few hits.
So now I know, no one is citing our site. How sad.
Interestingly, however, when I did a citation search for my library's catalog (a different URL than our website), I actually got one hit. Woo-hoo! Unfortunately, it was from one of my own blog posts, which had a link to a catalog record.
One thing I learned, though, is that the citation search does not include the open web. If it did, the Wikipedia entry for my library would have come up, because it contains a link to my library's website.
I did subscribe to the feeds for the searches for my library's website and catalog, however, just in case anyone ever decides to cite us.
I didn't bother trying out Flickr Comments, because I have no photos uploaded to Flickr. However, on a whim, I went to Flickr and searched "Criss Library," and I was rewarded with a lot of nice photos of my library. I decided to see if there was any way I could subscribe to a feed of that search. After exploring a bit, I determined that it was not possible. From various posts on the Flickr forums, it seems like quite a few people would like to have feeds of search results. I wonder if in the future, Flickr will decide to add that feature. That would be very useful. (Note that feeds based on tags are possible. However, I didn't find that useful because the photos of my library were not tagged consistently).
After reading the description of FairShare, I decided to give it a pass for now. If no one is citing my library's website, then it's unlikely that anyone is reposting the content from any of our RSS feeds. Even if they are, since the feeds are mostly lists of new library materials for various collections, I don't think we'd care if anyone passed that info along. However, FairShare sounds like a cool service, and I might explore it later when I have more time.
Now, part 2 of this assignment. "Respond to at least one of the results you found. Wait a few days to see if they respond back." This is the hard part for me. I enjoy using technology, but I am not by nature a social person. I like to read discussions, not participate in them.
Darn these exercises, forcing me to overcome my fears.
Well, the most recent thing to come though the Twitter Search feed was from heatha_bee, who had "Library-envy" for our single-service desk and Kaneko sculpture. That made me smile. Of course, I had no idea what to say back to her. Eventually, I responded, "You envy our single-service desk and Kaneko? What library are you at? I'm a cataloger at Criss Library." That's excruciatingly lame, I know, but it's the best I could come up with.
Not long after, she responded that she was the head of ILL at UNMC, and had been at my library for a meeting. I responded with something even more lame than my first tweet, and I never heard back from her, presumably because she left for Alaska. I know if I went on an exciting trip, I wouldn't be tweeting about anything remotely work related, so I can't blame her.
In other news, just this morning, Google Alerts alerted me to a post on the California Oregon blog, which reposted the text of the Wikipedia article for the Dr. C.C. and Mabel L. Criss Library. Looking over other posts on that blog, I can find no pattern whatsoever. I can discern neither theme nor purpose for the blog. The only common thread is that all of the content seems to be reposted from other sources. I can't tell who is creating this blog, nor who the intended audience might be. And so I can't figure out the reason for their interest in the Criss Library, nor why they would simply reproduce a Wikipedia article with no context or comments. The about page for the California Oregon blog is just a spiel about Wordpress. It is very weird. The sheer randomness of the reposted entries and the lack of original content makes me suspect it may be run by a process rather than a person, but I can't tell for sure. It seems harmless, but also useless.
Anyway, out of this exercise, I plan to keep following the feeds for Twitter Search and Google Alerts related to "Criss Library." If I see anyone ranting or questioning something about my library, I will have an opportunity to open a conversation or refer something to one of my colleagues. Maybe this could help us to solve problems we may not be aware of. That's not necessarily what I think of as "marketing," but it is public relations.
Friday, May 1, 2009
The 23 Things Revisited
Nebraska Learns 2.0 is starting up again. Hooray!
Before I get into the new exercises, I'd like to take a moment to review the original 23 Things and how they have or have not become part of my life.
Thing #1: Discovery has never been so much fun! And it remains fun. I always enjoy learning about new things.
Thing #2: Lifelong Learning. Ditto Thing #1.
Thing #3: Grab yourself a blog in 3 steps. I love blogging. I'm just not very good about posting on any kind of regular basis. But I think it's a fantastic tool, and I enjoy it.
As vice-chair of the NLA Paraprofessional Section, one of my duties is to gather topics for fall conference. As an experiment, I used a blog for this. (Blogs are easy and fast, and it required virtually no effort on my part to set it up.) It worked, but not as effectively as I would have liked. I feel as though I used a hammer to drive a screw. A wiki might have been a better choice. So, much as I love blogs, I have discovered that they are not necessarily the best platform for collaborative communication.
Thing #4: Register your blog and join the party. I think I will reuse this same blog for the new round of Nebraska Learns 2.0, rather than starting fresh. Although I will probably have to change the name to something other than "Anj's 23 Things," since I don't even know how many lessons the new program will contain.
Thing #5: Instant Messaging. Other than using Meebo on the public service desk, I don't really IM. It's not my preferred mode of communication, but it's handy to have around.
Thing #6: Make life "really simple" with RSS & a newsreader. This one really has changed my life. I would never want to go back to checking all those blogs and sites manually. I have some specific technical issues with Bloglines, but Google Reader gave me some fits when I tried it out, too. But even though the readers all have flaws, they are still incredibly useful. I have two accounts, one for work and one for home. (I don't want to be reading comics at work, nor do I particularly want to be reading about the latest OCLC initiatives at home.) This is a technology that has become as fully integrated into my life as email and telephones. (And significantly more integrated than my cell phone.)
Thing #7: Finding Feeds. I've ditched a lot of the feeds I picked up during the original exercise, and I have discovered several more. My collection of feeds is organic, changing as my needs and interests change. That's one of the wonderful things about this technology.
Thing #8: Discover Flickr, Thing #9: More Flickr Fun, and Thing #10: Play around with Image Generators. Much as I loved Flickr and image generators during the original exercises, I honestly have not gone back to them. They're good services and it's nice to know they're there if I need them, but I don't have much use for them at this time.
Thing #11: Blog about Technology. I totally stand by everything in my original essay.
Thing #12: A thing about LibraryThing. As with Flickr, I liked LibraryThing when I tried it, and have not gone back to it since. I'm glad it's there, and I am a fan of Tim Spalding as the self-appointed watchdog against OCLC. I think LibraryThing is changing the library world and will continue to do so. So even though it hasn't become an integral part of my personal life, it is an integral player in my professional life.
Thing #13: What are you doing? I tried. I really did. I just can't bring myself to give a tweet about Twitter. It doesn't fill any needs in my life.
This doesn't mean I don't see Twitter's impact on society, though. Twitter is even better than blogging for spreading information quickly. Witness the Amazonfail wildfire. Twitterers are already a force to be reckoned with. What the future holds, who knows?
Thing #14: Tagging & social bookmarking in Delicious. Delicious has become an indispensable part of my life. As with RSS readers, I set up two accounts, one for work and one for home. If I happen to stumble across a website or blog post in one place that I want to send to the other, I use the for: tags to send it to my other mailbox. In this way, I can access my home and work bookmarks from anywhere, send selected bookmarks back and forth between them easily, yet still keep my professional and personal bookmarks largely separate. It works well for me. I did not blindly port all of my browser bookmarks into Delicious, though. I took the time to open each link so I could better tag and describe it. This also allowed me to discard dead or no-longer-relevant links. With the exception of the few daily-use bookmarks I keep on the browser's toolbar for one-click access, I have deleted all of my static bookmarks. Delicious is just that much easier to use and maintain.
Thing #15: Presentations go social. SlideShare is another one I've never gone back to, but I still think it's quite useful.
Thing #16: On Library 2.0 & Web 2.0. I still agree with my thoughts on this one, as well.
Thing #17: So what’s in a wiki? and Thing #18: Playing around with PBwiki. Not much new on this one for me. I still use Wikipedia almost daily, although I edit very infrequently. I use a Confluence wiki at work, and I edit procedures, code lists, and other core departmental documents as needed. I haven't really gone back to PBwiki in particular, but I haven't had a need for a new wiki. Wikis occupy a basically stable position in my life right now.
Thing #19 : Apps, They're not just for desktops any more. I haven't created many files in Google Documents, but boy-oh-boy am I ever grateful for the ability to view Microsoft PowerPoint presentations at home on my Mac, where I do not have PowerPoint installed. So I've found it to be a very handy utility.
Thing #20: Discovering Web 2.0 tools. I looked at several different web 2.0 tools back then, and I haven't revisited a single one of them.
Thing #21: You too can YouTube. I watch a lot of videos on YouTube. A couple weeks ago, I even created my own YouTube account and uploaded a video. (A brief video capture from the Spore computer game I've recently become addicted to.) So this is another service that has found a stable niche in my life.
Thing #22: Podcasts. I have never found a particularly stable or routine use for podcasts. I still sometimes listen to the NET Radio news podcasts while I fix breakfast, but that's about it. Perhaps someday I'll get into it, but for now, it's enough to simply be aware of the technology.
Thing #23: Is this really the end? Or just the beginning? Obviously, it's not the end. Thing #24 was posted today, and I hope to participate in this new round of Nebraska Learns 2.0 for as long as it runs. I expect I will have a similar experience--finding a few services I don't like, many I do like but have no immediate use for, and one or two that will become essential tools in my life.
Onward!
Before I get into the new exercises, I'd like to take a moment to review the original 23 Things and how they have or have not become part of my life.
Thing #1: Discovery has never been so much fun! And it remains fun. I always enjoy learning about new things.
Thing #2: Lifelong Learning. Ditto Thing #1.
Thing #3: Grab yourself a blog in 3 steps. I love blogging. I'm just not very good about posting on any kind of regular basis. But I think it's a fantastic tool, and I enjoy it.
As vice-chair of the NLA Paraprofessional Section, one of my duties is to gather topics for fall conference. As an experiment, I used a blog for this. (Blogs are easy and fast, and it required virtually no effort on my part to set it up.) It worked, but not as effectively as I would have liked. I feel as though I used a hammer to drive a screw. A wiki might have been a better choice. So, much as I love blogs, I have discovered that they are not necessarily the best platform for collaborative communication.
Thing #4: Register your blog and join the party. I think I will reuse this same blog for the new round of Nebraska Learns 2.0, rather than starting fresh. Although I will probably have to change the name to something other than "Anj's 23 Things," since I don't even know how many lessons the new program will contain.
Thing #5: Instant Messaging. Other than using Meebo on the public service desk, I don't really IM. It's not my preferred mode of communication, but it's handy to have around.
Thing #6: Make life "really simple" with RSS & a newsreader. This one really has changed my life. I would never want to go back to checking all those blogs and sites manually. I have some specific technical issues with Bloglines, but Google Reader gave me some fits when I tried it out, too. But even though the readers all have flaws, they are still incredibly useful. I have two accounts, one for work and one for home. (I don't want to be reading comics at work, nor do I particularly want to be reading about the latest OCLC initiatives at home.) This is a technology that has become as fully integrated into my life as email and telephones. (And significantly more integrated than my cell phone.)
Thing #7: Finding Feeds. I've ditched a lot of the feeds I picked up during the original exercise, and I have discovered several more. My collection of feeds is organic, changing as my needs and interests change. That's one of the wonderful things about this technology.
Thing #8: Discover Flickr, Thing #9: More Flickr Fun, and Thing #10: Play around with Image Generators. Much as I loved Flickr and image generators during the original exercises, I honestly have not gone back to them. They're good services and it's nice to know they're there if I need them, but I don't have much use for them at this time.
Thing #11: Blog about Technology. I totally stand by everything in my original essay.
Thing #12: A thing about LibraryThing. As with Flickr, I liked LibraryThing when I tried it, and have not gone back to it since. I'm glad it's there, and I am a fan of Tim Spalding as the self-appointed watchdog against OCLC. I think LibraryThing is changing the library world and will continue to do so. So even though it hasn't become an integral part of my personal life, it is an integral player in my professional life.
Thing #13: What are you doing? I tried. I really did. I just can't bring myself to give a tweet about Twitter. It doesn't fill any needs in my life.
This doesn't mean I don't see Twitter's impact on society, though. Twitter is even better than blogging for spreading information quickly. Witness the Amazonfail wildfire. Twitterers are already a force to be reckoned with. What the future holds, who knows?
Thing #14: Tagging & social bookmarking in Delicious. Delicious has become an indispensable part of my life. As with RSS readers, I set up two accounts, one for work and one for home. If I happen to stumble across a website or blog post in one place that I want to send to the other, I use the for: tags to send it to my other mailbox. In this way, I can access my home and work bookmarks from anywhere, send selected bookmarks back and forth between them easily, yet still keep my professional and personal bookmarks largely separate. It works well for me. I did not blindly port all of my browser bookmarks into Delicious, though. I took the time to open each link so I could better tag and describe it. This also allowed me to discard dead or no-longer-relevant links. With the exception of the few daily-use bookmarks I keep on the browser's toolbar for one-click access, I have deleted all of my static bookmarks. Delicious is just that much easier to use and maintain.
Thing #15: Presentations go social. SlideShare is another one I've never gone back to, but I still think it's quite useful.
Thing #16: On Library 2.0 & Web 2.0. I still agree with my thoughts on this one, as well.
Thing #17: So what’s in a wiki? and Thing #18: Playing around with PBwiki. Not much new on this one for me. I still use Wikipedia almost daily, although I edit very infrequently. I use a Confluence wiki at work, and I edit procedures, code lists, and other core departmental documents as needed. I haven't really gone back to PBwiki in particular, but I haven't had a need for a new wiki. Wikis occupy a basically stable position in my life right now.
Thing #19 : Apps, They're not just for desktops any more. I haven't created many files in Google Documents, but boy-oh-boy am I ever grateful for the ability to view Microsoft PowerPoint presentations at home on my Mac, where I do not have PowerPoint installed. So I've found it to be a very handy utility.
Thing #20: Discovering Web 2.0 tools. I looked at several different web 2.0 tools back then, and I haven't revisited a single one of them.
Thing #21: You too can YouTube. I watch a lot of videos on YouTube. A couple weeks ago, I even created my own YouTube account and uploaded a video. (A brief video capture from the Spore computer game I've recently become addicted to.) So this is another service that has found a stable niche in my life.
Thing #22: Podcasts. I have never found a particularly stable or routine use for podcasts. I still sometimes listen to the NET Radio news podcasts while I fix breakfast, but that's about it. Perhaps someday I'll get into it, but for now, it's enough to simply be aware of the technology.
Thing #23: Is this really the end? Or just the beginning? Obviously, it's not the end. Thing #24 was posted today, and I hope to participate in this new round of Nebraska Learns 2.0 for as long as it runs. I expect I will have a similar experience--finding a few services I don't like, many I do like but have no immediate use for, and one or two that will become essential tools in my life.
Onward!
Sunday, January 25, 2009
Thing #23: Game Over! Continue?
Gooooooooooooooooooal! I made it to the end!
Thing #23: Is this really the end? Or just the beginning?
Yeah, of course it's not really the end. It may be the end of this particular set of exercises. It may or may not be the end of my posts on this particular blog. However, it's definitely not the end of my learning and growth. That will continue for as long as I live.
* What were your favorite discoveries or exercises on this learning journey?
Google Documents is at the top of the list. Even if I can't access it at home (*cough* Firefox 1.0 *cough*), I'm finding it incredibly useful. It's replaced the flash drive in my pocket for documents I need to work on both in my cubicle and at the service desk.
I'm also liking YouTube quite a lot. Sure, there's a lot of junk, but there's also plenty of useful, informative content. Plus, if not for YouTube, I would never have gotten to see President Obama's inauguration and the various associated speeches and ceremonies. I am so glad this service exists.
* How has this program assisted or affected your lifelong learning goals?
Even though my supervisor gave me permission to do these exercises at work, I discovered that I really didn't have time. There is simply too much work to do at work, and I couldn't shoehorn these exercises in. Once I started doing the majority of them at home, I developed the homework mentality. (Yes, even though this wasn't technically a class, I actually referred to each of the things as "homework.") It's gotten me thinking about going back to school and getting an MLS. I don't know for certain that I'm ready to make that leap yet, but I feel much closer to it than ever before.
* Were there any take-aways or unexpected outcomes from this program that surprised you?
I'm not sure I'd call this unexpected, but I've had to face my essentially asocial online behavior. I love cool web 2.0 toys and tools I can play with on my own, but I'm not big into interacting with others. I love Delicious, and I tag all of my bookmarks for my own use, but I never think to look at other people's bookmarks. I love Google Documents for making my documents more portable, but I haven't shared any of them with anyone else. That's just part and parcel with my introverted nature. I need to be more conscious of the social part of the social web.
* What could we do differently to improve upon this program’s format or concept?
Not sure. I thought it was pretty well organized and most of the things seemed to flow fairly naturally into one another.
* If we offered another discovery program like this in the future, would you again choose to participate?
You bet! This was great!
Thing #23: Is this really the end? Or just the beginning?
Yeah, of course it's not really the end. It may be the end of this particular set of exercises. It may or may not be the end of my posts on this particular blog. However, it's definitely not the end of my learning and growth. That will continue for as long as I live.
* What were your favorite discoveries or exercises on this learning journey?
Google Documents is at the top of the list. Even if I can't access it at home (*cough* Firefox 1.0 *cough*), I'm finding it incredibly useful. It's replaced the flash drive in my pocket for documents I need to work on both in my cubicle and at the service desk.
I'm also liking YouTube quite a lot. Sure, there's a lot of junk, but there's also plenty of useful, informative content. Plus, if not for YouTube, I would never have gotten to see President Obama's inauguration and the various associated speeches and ceremonies. I am so glad this service exists.
* How has this program assisted or affected your lifelong learning goals?
Even though my supervisor gave me permission to do these exercises at work, I discovered that I really didn't have time. There is simply too much work to do at work, and I couldn't shoehorn these exercises in. Once I started doing the majority of them at home, I developed the homework mentality. (Yes, even though this wasn't technically a class, I actually referred to each of the things as "homework.") It's gotten me thinking about going back to school and getting an MLS. I don't know for certain that I'm ready to make that leap yet, but I feel much closer to it than ever before.
* Were there any take-aways or unexpected outcomes from this program that surprised you?
I'm not sure I'd call this unexpected, but I've had to face my essentially asocial online behavior. I love cool web 2.0 toys and tools I can play with on my own, but I'm not big into interacting with others. I love Delicious, and I tag all of my bookmarks for my own use, but I never think to look at other people's bookmarks. I love Google Documents for making my documents more portable, but I haven't shared any of them with anyone else. That's just part and parcel with my introverted nature. I need to be more conscious of the social part of the social web.
* What could we do differently to improve upon this program’s format or concept?
Not sure. I thought it was pretty well organized and most of the things seemed to flow fairly naturally into one another.
* If we offered another discovery program like this in the future, would you again choose to participate?
You bet! This was great!
Thing #13 Revisited: I'm Just Not That Into Twitter
Well, I've given it two full weeks now, and I'm still not twitterpated with Twitter. Following only ten people, I receive so many tweets that every time I visit Twitter I have to go back multiple pages to see what I missed. I wish I could set it to show me the most recent tweet from everyone I'm following, so the people who tweet a lot don't crowd out the people who tweet only once a day or so. I honestly don't know how hard-core users who follow hundreds or thousands of people keep up with any of the threads. And I don't tweet much myself, because my life is just not that interesting. I dislike Twitter less than I imagined, but I just can't seem to really get into it.
Thing #22: Podcasts
Thing #22: Podcasts is one of the things I was dreading when I started this program, but by the time I reached it, I was enthusiastic. I'd had so many good experiences during Nebraska Learns 2.0 exercises that I was hyped and ready to go.
Unfortunately, my enthusiasm died quickly. Searching for podcasts was much less fun than searching for YouTube videos or blogs to follow. After more than two hours sifting through several different podcast directories, I still hadn't found anything to keep my interest. I'd listened to the beginnings of several podcasts on a variety of subjects, but hadn't made it to the end of any of them. They all bored me to tears. If they couldn't hook me within the first few minutes, I moved on. Don't waste my time.
I realize that, for me, the main problem with podcasts is that they're just like radio programs. When I listen to the radio, the instant I hear a DJ talking, I change stations until I hit one that's playing music. I can't stand talk radio.
Rather than sifting endlessly through directories of stuff trying to find one gemstone in an endless beach of common sand, I decided to check out blogs and comics I was already following to see if they had podcasts. That way, I stood a better chance of finding something to my liking. But even the podcast by the creators of one of my favorite webcomics bored me. It was still just like a radio show, with more random, tedious banter than interesting content. While the podcast was playing, I found myself reading unrelated blogs, just to keep myself from leaving the computer altogether.
I finally found some decent, non-chattering podcasts from NET. These were informative and enjoyable. Finally, I'd found podcasts produced by people who valued the listener's time! Not one word was wasted. Even so, I'd still rather read news than listen to it.
I added a couple of the NET podcasts to my Bloglines account--News & Features from NET Radio (audio) and Arts in Nebraska from NET Television (video). I'll follow them for a while to see if they grow on me, but right now I'm suspecting that I'll eventually drop them in favor of blogs and text-based news. The video podcast will probably be the first to go, because the .mp4 files take too long to download, even with DSL. YouTube is much faster.
For Library-related podcasts, I really enjoyed Uncontrolled Vocabulary. It was nice to hear the voices of people I follow in the blogosphere, like Michael Sauers and Tim Spalding. The podcast was focused, organized, and informative. However, I'm not sure I heard much info there that I hadn't also read on various blogs and mailing lists.
I'm not saying I dislike the concept of podcasts. Many people do prefer to get their input through audio-visual channels rather than reading. Podcasts are undoubtedly valued and valuable tools for many people, and I completely understand that. However, I just don't think they're for me.
Unfortunately, my enthusiasm died quickly. Searching for podcasts was much less fun than searching for YouTube videos or blogs to follow. After more than two hours sifting through several different podcast directories, I still hadn't found anything to keep my interest. I'd listened to the beginnings of several podcasts on a variety of subjects, but hadn't made it to the end of any of them. They all bored me to tears. If they couldn't hook me within the first few minutes, I moved on. Don't waste my time.
I realize that, for me, the main problem with podcasts is that they're just like radio programs. When I listen to the radio, the instant I hear a DJ talking, I change stations until I hit one that's playing music. I can't stand talk radio.
Rather than sifting endlessly through directories of stuff trying to find one gemstone in an endless beach of common sand, I decided to check out blogs and comics I was already following to see if they had podcasts. That way, I stood a better chance of finding something to my liking. But even the podcast by the creators of one of my favorite webcomics bored me. It was still just like a radio show, with more random, tedious banter than interesting content. While the podcast was playing, I found myself reading unrelated blogs, just to keep myself from leaving the computer altogether.
I finally found some decent, non-chattering podcasts from NET. These were informative and enjoyable. Finally, I'd found podcasts produced by people who valued the listener's time! Not one word was wasted. Even so, I'd still rather read news than listen to it.
I added a couple of the NET podcasts to my Bloglines account--News & Features from NET Radio (audio) and Arts in Nebraska from NET Television (video). I'll follow them for a while to see if they grow on me, but right now I'm suspecting that I'll eventually drop them in favor of blogs and text-based news. The video podcast will probably be the first to go, because the .mp4 files take too long to download, even with DSL. YouTube is much faster.
For Library-related podcasts, I really enjoyed Uncontrolled Vocabulary. It was nice to hear the voices of people I follow in the blogosphere, like Michael Sauers and Tim Spalding. The podcast was focused, organized, and informative. However, I'm not sure I heard much info there that I hadn't also read on various blogs and mailing lists.
I'm not saying I dislike the concept of podcasts. Many people do prefer to get their input through audio-visual channels rather than reading. Podcasts are undoubtedly valued and valuable tools for many people, and I completely understand that. However, I just don't think they're for me.
Thing #21: YouTube
When I first started the 23 Things, I was dreading this exercise, Thing #21: You too can YouTube. At that time, I had a dial up connection at home and no sound at work, so I was originally going to have to do this assignment "elsewhere," probably the library's public machines.
Well, things change. A little over a month ago, I managed to upgrade my home connection to the lowest grade of DSL. Suddenly, watching videos at home was not so unattractive. I still have to wait a few minutes for a video to load (on average, about twice the total run-time of the video), but that's not unreasonable, at least not compared to having to wait four or five hours to load a five minute video with a dialup connection. Maybe for some people, any load time is a deal-breaker. For me, it depends on how badly I want to see something.
Since getting DSL, I have wasted a lot of time on YouTube--the good, the bad, and the stupid. YouTube, like the open web, like the shelves of a grocery store, and even like the library, is filled with an immense variety of things. Saying you like or dislike YouTube is like saying you like or dislike a particular library. Some of the stuff on YouTube bores me. Some of it offends me. Some of it informs me. And some of it is just plain fun. The same can be said of any library. YouTube is like an online video library with no collection development policy.
I did not know how to imbed a video in a blog post before this exercise. It's fun learning new things about tools you already use.
Throughout Nebraska Learns 2.0, we have watched quite a few episodes of Common Craft, explaining everything from wikis to Twitter. Looking at other Common Craft episodes, I see that they cover much more than web 2.0 tools. There are episodes available to explain everything from money management to compact fluorescent light bulbs.
And so I present an episode of the Common Craft show that we didn't watch for these exercises: Zombies in Plain English. (Content warning: fake blood and implied violence.) Hide your brain and fire up your sense of humor.
Well, things change. A little over a month ago, I managed to upgrade my home connection to the lowest grade of DSL. Suddenly, watching videos at home was not so unattractive. I still have to wait a few minutes for a video to load (on average, about twice the total run-time of the video), but that's not unreasonable, at least not compared to having to wait four or five hours to load a five minute video with a dialup connection. Maybe for some people, any load time is a deal-breaker. For me, it depends on how badly I want to see something.
Since getting DSL, I have wasted a lot of time on YouTube--the good, the bad, and the stupid. YouTube, like the open web, like the shelves of a grocery store, and even like the library, is filled with an immense variety of things. Saying you like or dislike YouTube is like saying you like or dislike a particular library. Some of the stuff on YouTube bores me. Some of it offends me. Some of it informs me. And some of it is just plain fun. The same can be said of any library. YouTube is like an online video library with no collection development policy.
I did not know how to imbed a video in a blog post before this exercise. It's fun learning new things about tools you already use.
Throughout Nebraska Learns 2.0, we have watched quite a few episodes of Common Craft, explaining everything from wikis to Twitter. Looking at other Common Craft episodes, I see that they cover much more than web 2.0 tools. There are episodes available to explain everything from money management to compact fluorescent light bulbs.
And so I present an episode of the Common Craft show that we didn't watch for these exercises: Zombies in Plain English. (Content warning: fake blood and implied violence.) Hide your brain and fire up your sense of humor.
Nebraska Learns 2.0: My Favorite Posts
Reflecting on last night's post, I realized I ought to have listed all of my favorite Nebraska Learns 2.0 blog posts, if only for my own future reference. Some blogs merited more than one post in my list, because sometimes people say good things on a lot of subjects.
For Thing #11 (on technology):
For Thing #13 (Twitter):
For Thing #15 (SlideShare):
For Thing #16 (on Web 2.0 and Library 2.0):
For Thing #19 (web-based productivity software):
For Thing #21 (YouTube):
Addendum 1/26/2008 -- All of these have now been added to the Nebraska Learns 2.0 Favorite Posts wiki page.
For Thing #11 (on technology):
Clywdshire offers a some cautionary advice on technology and cites several interesting articles and books.
Rayma's Genealogy Blog talked about using Facebook to help identify unclaimed bodies. This blew me away. What an amazing and brilliant use of a technology for something that its creators probably never envisioned. This is technology at its best--generating creative and unexpected solutions to problems.
Susan's experiments in Library Land makes some fantastic points about the fleeting and migratory nature of social technology, the proliferation of IDs and passwords, and inconsistent corporate IT policies.
Upward & Onward may be getting in touch with her inner Luddite, but she makes an eerie point with her example of the emotionless texters in the crowd at a football game.
For Thing #13 (Twitter):
Learning As I Go cited an excellent article, "Is Twitter TOO good?" by Kathy Sierra, in addition to making some good points of her (?) own.
Upward & Onward cited another excellent article, "Twitter Nation: Nobody cares what you're doing," by Helen Popkin. And I love the use of Mr. Hyde Tweety.
For Thing #15 (SlideShare):
Clwydshire posted a beautiful slideshow of paper art.
For Thing #16 (on Web 2.0 and Library 2.0):
The Antiquarian Librarian reminds us not to get lost in the technology, but to stay focused on having meaningful interactions with people. Social networking sites are just another means to that end, and are in addition to, not in replacement of, face-to-face interactions both inside and outside the library. He talks about the library's role not only in preserving culture but in creating it.
Books and More synthesized one short, sweet, salient point from all the articles: the idea that we can not hope to teach all of our users how to use our systems, so we must change our systems to make them so intuitive our users don't need help.
Prairie Prose wrote, "I need to recreate my role in a world that thinks 'it's all on the internet,' but doesn't know how to find and evaluate what is there." Teaching how to evaluate sources, and building tools that help users do it themselves, seems to be a growing part of librarianship.
Susan's experiments in Library Land lifted up key points from several of the readings.
TheCorey may be right about "web 2.0" and "library 2.0" having devolved into meaningless terms that get slapped on various lousy projects to make them seem more trendy.
Upward & Onward leads with a cartoon that I think nearly everyone can identify with, then makes the excellent point that while we're considering what the library will be in the future, we must also consider what it will not be.
For Thing #19 (web-based productivity software):
Learning As I Go explored Google Documents in great detail. I was glad to learn about the ease of including special characters, which I had not discovered on my own. (For some reason, I was unable to post comments on this blog.)
For Thing #21 (YouTube):
In spite of his well-thought qualms about the bandwidth issue of YouTube, The Troglodyte Librarian provided some excellent examples of how his library is using it well for summer reading promos and might use it in the future for tutorials.
Addendum 1/26/2008 -- All of these have now been added to the Nebraska Learns 2.0 Favorite Posts wiki page.
Saturday, January 24, 2009
Nebraska Learns 2.0: The Community
No "Thing" this time. I spent the whole evening looking at the blogs of all the Nebraska Learns 2.0 participants.
Yeah. All of them. Four and a half hours on a Saturday night. I can't promise that I read every single post on each blog, but I did visit every blog, and I did read at least a couple posts from each participant. For the handful I'd already been following via RSS, I re-read my favorite posts.
It's sad, but not surprising, how many folks made it only through the first couple of things, then dropped out. I was almost one of those, with my month-long lapse. I'm really glad I decided to pick it up again and run with it. I am determined to finish by the deadline.
It was definitely worth the time to visit all the participants' blogs, and not just because of all the pretty Flickr pictures or the fun YouTube videos. I really enjoyed reading everyone's comments on Things 11 and 16. A lot of folks wrote deep, thoughtful essays about technology and Library 2.0. I plan to add my favorites to the Nebraska Learns 2.0 wiki later, when I'm at a computer with a browser that's compatible with PBwiki.
Well, it's way past my bedtime, so I think I'm going to call it quits for tonight.
Yeah. All of them. Four and a half hours on a Saturday night. I can't promise that I read every single post on each blog, but I did visit every blog, and I did read at least a couple posts from each participant. For the handful I'd already been following via RSS, I re-read my favorite posts.
It's sad, but not surprising, how many folks made it only through the first couple of things, then dropped out. I was almost one of those, with my month-long lapse. I'm really glad I decided to pick it up again and run with it. I am determined to finish by the deadline.
It was definitely worth the time to visit all the participants' blogs, and not just because of all the pretty Flickr pictures or the fun YouTube videos. I really enjoyed reading everyone's comments on Things 11 and 16. A lot of folks wrote deep, thoughtful essays about technology and Library 2.0. I plan to add my favorites to the Nebraska Learns 2.0 wiki later, when I'm at a computer with a browser that's compatible with PBwiki.
Well, it's way past my bedtime, so I think I'm going to call it quits for tonight.
Friday, January 23, 2009
Thing #20: Web 2.0 Award Winners
Thing #20: Discovering Web 2.0 tools is a bit on the overwhelming side. There's just so incredibly much to choose from. Having a list of award winners to narrow it down helps, certainly. These resources have all been vetted. They probably wouldn't be on this list if they weren't good, stable, and reliable.
Biblio.com is a service to allow you to search independent bookstores for out-of-print works. Not so much "web 2.0" to my mind (no integral social component), but very useful. I found facsimiles of Topsell's History of Four-Footed Beasts, which made me drool and wish I had huge buckets of money laying around. I'll definitely be keeping this site in my Delicious file.
Lulu, on the other hand, is "web 2.0" to the hilt, and it looks very promising for self-publishing a wide variety of content. If someone wanted to create a memoir or photo album to distribute to family members and friends, this is a much nicer alternative to photocopying it and putting it in a three-ring binder. If one wanted to publish a little comic book for their friends, but also try to sell a few copies on the side without going to a huge amount of trouble, this could be the way to go. I like what Lauren Parker said about their goal being "to have 1 million users that sell 10 books instead of 10 authors that sell 1 million books."
Live Mocha helps people learning foreign languages find native speakers to practice with. This is pretty darned awesome. I might use it myself, but I will definitely keep it in mind if I have patrons at the desk who want help finding a language partner.
Upcoming Events & Things to Do would probably be good for me to check regularly, because I never know what cool things are happening around town until they're over and someone is telling me what an awesome event I missed. I also like that this site is smart enough to look at my IP address and automatically supply events for Omaha, rather than forcing me to input my location. Going, on the other hand, defaulted to Chicago, the nearest city that they consider "major." Sorry, but I don't consider an event that requires shelling out big bucks for air fare and hotel fees to be "nearby." I'll stick with Upcoming, since they give me actual relevant local content. I wish it included smaller cities, though. I'd love to see what events are coming up in Schuyler or Columbus, but the closest I could find on Upcoming was Norfolk. Still, that's not too bad.
From a library service standpoint, all of the genealogy sites on the list (My Heritage, Geni, and Amiglia) could be useful. I didn't sign up for any of them at this time, but I might later if I get serious about converting the family tree from that stack of photocopies in my file drawer. But any or all of these would be great to show a patron coming to the desk with a genealogy question.
I guess my favorite thing I encountered in this exercise was the SEOmoz Awards list itself. It's a good overview of the types of stuff out there, and I can refer back to it later when I have a particular need for a particular type of tool.
Biblio.com is a service to allow you to search independent bookstores for out-of-print works. Not so much "web 2.0" to my mind (no integral social component), but very useful. I found facsimiles of Topsell's History of Four-Footed Beasts, which made me drool and wish I had huge buckets of money laying around. I'll definitely be keeping this site in my Delicious file.
Lulu, on the other hand, is "web 2.0" to the hilt, and it looks very promising for self-publishing a wide variety of content. If someone wanted to create a memoir or photo album to distribute to family members and friends, this is a much nicer alternative to photocopying it and putting it in a three-ring binder. If one wanted to publish a little comic book for their friends, but also try to sell a few copies on the side without going to a huge amount of trouble, this could be the way to go. I like what Lauren Parker said about their goal being "to have 1 million users that sell 10 books instead of 10 authors that sell 1 million books."
Live Mocha helps people learning foreign languages find native speakers to practice with. This is pretty darned awesome. I might use it myself, but I will definitely keep it in mind if I have patrons at the desk who want help finding a language partner.
Upcoming Events & Things to Do would probably be good for me to check regularly, because I never know what cool things are happening around town until they're over and someone is telling me what an awesome event I missed. I also like that this site is smart enough to look at my IP address and automatically supply events for Omaha, rather than forcing me to input my location. Going, on the other hand, defaulted to Chicago, the nearest city that they consider "major." Sorry, but I don't consider an event that requires shelling out big bucks for air fare and hotel fees to be "nearby." I'll stick with Upcoming, since they give me actual relevant local content. I wish it included smaller cities, though. I'd love to see what events are coming up in Schuyler or Columbus, but the closest I could find on Upcoming was Norfolk. Still, that's not too bad.
From a library service standpoint, all of the genealogy sites on the list (My Heritage, Geni, and Amiglia) could be useful. I didn't sign up for any of them at this time, but I might later if I get serious about converting the family tree from that stack of photocopies in my file drawer. But any or all of these would be great to show a patron coming to the desk with a genealogy question.
I guess my favorite thing I encountered in this exercise was the SEOmoz Awards list itself. It's a good overview of the types of stuff out there, and I can refer back to it later when I have a particular need for a particular type of tool.
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Thing #19: Google Documents
Thing #19: Apps, They're not just for desktops any more. Alas, another neat thing I can't use at home. My browser won't support it.
I love the idea of Google Documents, especially for those days when I forget my flash drive. In fact, I composed this post in Google Docs. And it's a great thing to show library patrons who need to work on their documents both at home and the library. The utility of this web-based document creation, editing, and storage is blazingly obvious. Of all the things we've seen in Nebraska Learns 2.0, I believe that this is the one that has the greatest potential to be useful to the widest spectrum of people. Flickr isn't for everyone. Neither is Twitter. Some people might not have a use for RSS (although that's harder for me to imagine), but everyone who uses a computer creates, uses, and shares documents of some type. And beyond its utility, the interface is intuitive and friendly. This app is pure gold, and I'm mighty grateful to you Nebraska Learns 2.0 folks for introducing me to it.
I have to disagree with the idea that web-based productivity software will be the death of Microsoft Office and other software products. First of all, at least at present, the web apps lack a lot of the functionality of the full software versions. I found the Google Documents slideshow function to be primitive, and it failed to import slides from an existing .ppt slideshow. I didn't do much with the Google Documents spreadsheet function, because I'm not a big Excel user, but it looked fairly basic to my untrained eye. But even with documents, which seems to be the nicest function, it's lacking a lot of the capabilities of Microsoft Word. For example, I imported one of my Word files (a template for printing DVD case inserts), and the formatting was blown all to heck. So you might not be able to put the final touches on a document that needs to look a certain way for printing.
Also, there's a security issue. Are Google Documents really private? Are you sure? Are you absolutely sure Google's robots aren't scanning the files? Are you absolutely sure they never, ever will? There will always be a handful of paranoid people (like me) who want to keep our most important files on our hard drives, which gives us at least the illusion of having control over them.
Lastly, there is the question of whether Google will really store your documents indefinitely. While Google as a whole seems to big to fail, they are not immune to the need to reorganize and kill off projects. While it's vanishingly unlikely that Google would ax Documents without giving people a chance to rescue or transfer their files, the possibility exists in theory.
Don't get me wrong. I love Google Docs, and I can tell I will be using it regularly and referring many others to it. For documents I need to share, or that I want to access from multiple computers, or which I intend to eventually put out on the open web anyway, it is fantastic and full of win. I think this is my favorite new tool I've picked up from these exercises.
I love the idea of Google Documents, especially for those days when I forget my flash drive. In fact, I composed this post in Google Docs. And it's a great thing to show library patrons who need to work on their documents both at home and the library. The utility of this web-based document creation, editing, and storage is blazingly obvious. Of all the things we've seen in Nebraska Learns 2.0, I believe that this is the one that has the greatest potential to be useful to the widest spectrum of people. Flickr isn't for everyone. Neither is Twitter. Some people might not have a use for RSS (although that's harder for me to imagine), but everyone who uses a computer creates, uses, and shares documents of some type. And beyond its utility, the interface is intuitive and friendly. This app is pure gold, and I'm mighty grateful to you Nebraska Learns 2.0 folks for introducing me to it.
I have to disagree with the idea that web-based productivity software will be the death of Microsoft Office and other software products. First of all, at least at present, the web apps lack a lot of the functionality of the full software versions. I found the Google Documents slideshow function to be primitive, and it failed to import slides from an existing .ppt slideshow. I didn't do much with the Google Documents spreadsheet function, because I'm not a big Excel user, but it looked fairly basic to my untrained eye. But even with documents, which seems to be the nicest function, it's lacking a lot of the capabilities of Microsoft Word. For example, I imported one of my Word files (a template for printing DVD case inserts), and the formatting was blown all to heck. So you might not be able to put the final touches on a document that needs to look a certain way for printing.
Also, there's a security issue. Are Google Documents really private? Are you sure? Are you absolutely sure Google's robots aren't scanning the files? Are you absolutely sure they never, ever will? There will always be a handful of paranoid people (like me) who want to keep our most important files on our hard drives, which gives us at least the illusion of having control over them.
Lastly, there is the question of whether Google will really store your documents indefinitely. While Google as a whole seems to big to fail, they are not immune to the need to reorganize and kill off projects. While it's vanishingly unlikely that Google would ax Documents without giving people a chance to rescue or transfer their files, the possibility exists in theory.
Don't get me wrong. I love Google Docs, and I can tell I will be using it regularly and referring many others to it. For documents I need to share, or that I want to access from multiple computers, or which I intend to eventually put out on the open web anyway, it is fantastic and full of win. I think this is my favorite new tool I've picked up from these exercises.
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Thing #18: PBwiki
Somehow it seems cosmically wrong to be working on Thing #18: Playing around with PBwiki on the auspicious day of President Obama's inauguration. Nothing can compare to the power of that event, but I must work on these things whenever I have the opportunity. The deadline is near for Nebraska Learns 2.0, and I need to keep moving.
After looking at the discovery resources for PBwiki, I was very excited. It looked so very easy compared to Wikipedia and the Confluence wiki software we use at my library. I was thrilled by the promise of simplicity, a wiki easily accessible to all.
And then I clicked on edit, and discovered that PBwiki is completely incompatible with my computer (or at least my browser) at home. After numerous retries and reloads, I eventually got something other than a blank page. But the page I got was filled with strange code and odd blocks of color--definitely not a friendly display. So I gave up. (Side note: This was rather a surprise. I have no trouble editing Wikipedia articles from home, and I did not expect PBwiki to have higher browser requirements than Wikipedia.)
Now I'm at the library, using a decent computer. I went to PBwiki and clicked edit, and I got exactly what I should have: a simple, user-friendly, editable page. I edited a couple of pages on the Nebraska Learns 2.0 wiki, and it was easy and intuitive in a way I would never have expected from my previous experience with other wiki software. By hiding the markup code behind a rich text editor, they really made their wiki friendly and nonthreatening.
PBwiki would be great for a public wiki that a library wanted to share with its patrons. It would also make a very nice internal staff wiki. It's very nice. If I ever need to set up a wiki in the future, I would seriously consider using PBwiki as the platform.
After looking at the discovery resources for PBwiki, I was very excited. It looked so very easy compared to Wikipedia and the Confluence wiki software we use at my library. I was thrilled by the promise of simplicity, a wiki easily accessible to all.
And then I clicked on edit, and discovered that PBwiki is completely incompatible with my computer (or at least my browser) at home. After numerous retries and reloads, I eventually got something other than a blank page. But the page I got was filled with strange code and odd blocks of color--definitely not a friendly display. So I gave up. (Side note: This was rather a surprise. I have no trouble editing Wikipedia articles from home, and I did not expect PBwiki to have higher browser requirements than Wikipedia.)
Now I'm at the library, using a decent computer. I went to PBwiki and clicked edit, and I got exactly what I should have: a simple, user-friendly, editable page. I edited a couple of pages on the Nebraska Learns 2.0 wiki, and it was easy and intuitive in a way I would never have expected from my previous experience with other wiki software. By hiding the markup code behind a rich text editor, they really made their wiki friendly and nonthreatening.
PBwiki would be great for a public wiki that a library wanted to share with its patrons. It would also make a very nice internal staff wiki. It's very nice. If I ever need to set up a wiki in the future, I would seriously consider using PBwiki as the platform.
Thursday, January 15, 2009
Thing #17: Wikis Ahoy!
Because I have experience with a couple of different wikis, I didn't expect to learn much from Thing #17: So what's in a wiki? To my delight, I was wrong. The Book Lovers Wiki didn't fit my mental model of what a wiki "looks" like. Also, on Library Success: A Best Practices Wiki I noticed the "Random Page" link on the left sidebar. It turns out that this also exists in Wikipedia; I just never noticed it because there is so much other stuff in Wikipedia's left sidebar that my eyes just gloss over it all. But the Random Page link is fun! It's wiki roulette! I believe I've just found my next source of entertainment.
One of the core tenets of wiki wisdom is that "anyone can edit" a wiki. While that may be true, I submit that wiki markup can be intimidating. I've edited in two different wikis: Wikipedia and the Confluence wiki we use at work. Their markup languages are completely different. Not only is neither one like html, neither one is like the other. This lack of standardization means that there is a learning curve not just for wikis, but for each wiki platform. Sure, if you just want to type in a line of text, it's no problem, but if you want to add a link or make a table, you have to learn the markup.
Our Confluence wiki has the option to edit pages in rich text, which does make it much more accessible, even if the rich text editor is a little on the buggy side. Everyone at work is encouraged to use the wiki. In fact, it's almost required. We use it for news, policies, procedures, meeting minutes, projects, discussions, and more. Even so, there are a few people who won't edit the wiki unless specifically told to. And there remains the perception that it is difficult, and some of my colleagues routinely come to me for help whenever they need to edit a page. I'm always glad to help. It's one of my official duties as a SpaceRanger, which is what "wiki power users" are called in my library, but also, I enjoy it. It's fun and interesting. And I always work directly in wiki markup rather than rich text, because I feel like I have better control over what the page will look like.
My library's wiki is strictly staff-only. It's not available to the public, and anonymous edits are not allowed. From Using Wikis to Create Online Communities, I do like the idea of using a wiki as a subject guide, especially if truly anyone could edit. The subject specialist librarian could moderate/shepherd it, to keep it accurate.
As for using a wiki to edit catalog entries, I think that might have to wait until OCLC comes around and makes WorldCat truly open. If all catalogers could edit all bib records, regardless of the encoding level, the bibs would become better. And while the general public should probably not be able to edit the MARC data or the authority-controlled fields, I think it would be great to let users add notes and summaries to records, not just tags and reviews. If a "vandal" were to add false or highly biased information, I'm sure the next cataloger to see it would take care of it. Or perhaps a passionate user might beat the catalogers to it.
One of the things people seem to fear about Wikipedia and other wikis is the threat not only of outright vandalism but of bias and unverified information being added to articles. Having read Wikipedia's content criteria in depth, I can say that such shenanigans are not tolerated on that site. The core Wikipedians are hypervigilant of any such abuses, and any malicious edits tend to be discovered and reversed very quickly. I don't mean "days" quickly, I mean "minutes" quickly. Yes, it is possible that you might see an article before it gets fixed. If you see something that just doesn't seem right, the simple solutions are to a) look at the history pages, and b) check back later to see the next version.
In Wikis in Plain English, when they showed the example of a user starting a page that said, "Pups are cute!" followed by someone changing it to, "Pups are messy!" I burst out laughing and thought, "And now the edit war begins."
Looking at a wiki's history pages can be very enlightening. Edit wars can be educational, if librarians and teachers use them as examples. Oftentimes, you can see both sides of a hotly-debated topic bared in a way you'd never observe from reading static articles.
But the most important thing to remember about wikis is that they are tools. Fabulous and awesome tools, and incredibly useful, but still tools. As Kate Sheehan said, "It’s easy to become enamored of social networking sites and Web 2.0 toys to the point where they seem like a panacea for everything that’s wrong with your library or your job. Slap a wiki on it and call me in the morning." In the end, it's not about the wiki; it's about the people.
One of the core tenets of wiki wisdom is that "anyone can edit" a wiki. While that may be true, I submit that wiki markup can be intimidating. I've edited in two different wikis: Wikipedia and the Confluence wiki we use at work. Their markup languages are completely different. Not only is neither one like html, neither one is like the other. This lack of standardization means that there is a learning curve not just for wikis, but for each wiki platform. Sure, if you just want to type in a line of text, it's no problem, but if you want to add a link or make a table, you have to learn the markup.
Our Confluence wiki has the option to edit pages in rich text, which does make it much more accessible, even if the rich text editor is a little on the buggy side. Everyone at work is encouraged to use the wiki. In fact, it's almost required. We use it for news, policies, procedures, meeting minutes, projects, discussions, and more. Even so, there are a few people who won't edit the wiki unless specifically told to. And there remains the perception that it is difficult, and some of my colleagues routinely come to me for help whenever they need to edit a page. I'm always glad to help. It's one of my official duties as a SpaceRanger, which is what "wiki power users" are called in my library, but also, I enjoy it. It's fun and interesting. And I always work directly in wiki markup rather than rich text, because I feel like I have better control over what the page will look like.
My library's wiki is strictly staff-only. It's not available to the public, and anonymous edits are not allowed. From Using Wikis to Create Online Communities, I do like the idea of using a wiki as a subject guide, especially if truly anyone could edit. The subject specialist librarian could moderate/shepherd it, to keep it accurate.
As for using a wiki to edit catalog entries, I think that might have to wait until OCLC comes around and makes WorldCat truly open. If all catalogers could edit all bib records, regardless of the encoding level, the bibs would become better. And while the general public should probably not be able to edit the MARC data or the authority-controlled fields, I think it would be great to let users add notes and summaries to records, not just tags and reviews. If a "vandal" were to add false or highly biased information, I'm sure the next cataloger to see it would take care of it. Or perhaps a passionate user might beat the catalogers to it.
One of the things people seem to fear about Wikipedia and other wikis is the threat not only of outright vandalism but of bias and unverified information being added to articles. Having read Wikipedia's content criteria in depth, I can say that such shenanigans are not tolerated on that site. The core Wikipedians are hypervigilant of any such abuses, and any malicious edits tend to be discovered and reversed very quickly. I don't mean "days" quickly, I mean "minutes" quickly. Yes, it is possible that you might see an article before it gets fixed. If you see something that just doesn't seem right, the simple solutions are to a) look at the history pages, and b) check back later to see the next version.
In Wikis in Plain English, when they showed the example of a user starting a page that said, "Pups are cute!" followed by someone changing it to, "Pups are messy!" I burst out laughing and thought, "And now the edit war begins."
Looking at a wiki's history pages can be very enlightening. Edit wars can be educational, if librarians and teachers use them as examples. Oftentimes, you can see both sides of a hotly-debated topic bared in a way you'd never observe from reading static articles.
But the most important thing to remember about wikis is that they are tools. Fabulous and awesome tools, and incredibly useful, but still tools. As Kate Sheehan said, "It’s easy to become enamored of social networking sites and Web 2.0 toys to the point where they seem like a panacea for everything that’s wrong with your library or your job. Slap a wiki on it and call me in the morning." In the end, it's not about the wiki; it's about the people.
Thing #16: Library 2.0
I read all the articles on the list for Thing #16: On Library 2.0 & Web 2.0. (They were short, anyway.) While I particularly enjoyed Away from the "icebergs" and Library 2.0 Debased, the one which really resonated with me most was To a temporary place in time by Dr. Wendy Schultz.
Dr. Schultz leads with, "The ongoing Library 2.0 debate frames library renewal within the current trends transforming our information infrastructure. But those trends themselves will evolve, even mutate, under pressure from emerging change." In other words, we won't suddenly "reach" Library 2.0 and then be done. Library 2.0 isn't even a fixed point on a line leading to the future, but rather a broad band that overlaps with everything that came before and everything that will come after. In fact, we shouldn't even be thinking of 2.0 as the future anymore, but the present. It's time to start moving toward 3.0.
I love her continuum. I love the Library 3.0 vision of people collecting librarians rather than books. Her portrait of Library 4.0 is even more beautiful: ". . . libraries as mind gyms; libraries as idea labs; libraries as art salons. But let’s be clear: Library 4.0 will not replace Libraries 1.0 through 3.0; it will absorb them." The past will not be discarded, but integrated. Her vision of the future is a best-case scenario, and we could easily miss it by lagging behind or charging off in a wrong direction. However, having a vision of the destination in mind will guide our path. And by the time Library 4.0 is becoming the norm, we could be talking about Library 5.0. More likely, we'll have long since thrown away those silly numbers, and we'll be talking about metamorphoses in new terms that may or may not exist yet.
At the end of her article, she comes around to, Library 4.0 as "a retreat, a sanctuary, a pampered experience with information . . . comfortable chairs, quiet, good light, coffee and single malt." This echoes an idea I'm fond of, the library as Third Space--the place you choose to spend your time when you are not at home or at work. Library 2.0 is about being wherever our users are, meeting them in the virtual spaces. And that supports, rather than supplants, the tradition of welcoming our users to join us where we are. Some people come (physically) to the library to use our virtual space and our technology (i.e., to take advantage of our free Wi-Fi and our awesome equipment), and some people come to the library to decompress and have a brief respite from the omnipresent technology that saturates their lives. And both kinds of users--and everyone in between--are welcome. The library should be a social destination.
Dr. Schultz leads with, "The ongoing Library 2.0 debate frames library renewal within the current trends transforming our information infrastructure. But those trends themselves will evolve, even mutate, under pressure from emerging change." In other words, we won't suddenly "reach" Library 2.0 and then be done. Library 2.0 isn't even a fixed point on a line leading to the future, but rather a broad band that overlaps with everything that came before and everything that will come after. In fact, we shouldn't even be thinking of 2.0 as the future anymore, but the present. It's time to start moving toward 3.0.
I love her continuum. I love the Library 3.0 vision of people collecting librarians rather than books. Her portrait of Library 4.0 is even more beautiful: ". . . libraries as mind gyms; libraries as idea labs; libraries as art salons. But let’s be clear: Library 4.0 will not replace Libraries 1.0 through 3.0; it will absorb them." The past will not be discarded, but integrated. Her vision of the future is a best-case scenario, and we could easily miss it by lagging behind or charging off in a wrong direction. However, having a vision of the destination in mind will guide our path. And by the time Library 4.0 is becoming the norm, we could be talking about Library 5.0. More likely, we'll have long since thrown away those silly numbers, and we'll be talking about metamorphoses in new terms that may or may not exist yet.
At the end of her article, she comes around to, Library 4.0 as "a retreat, a sanctuary, a pampered experience with information . . . comfortable chairs, quiet, good light, coffee and single malt." This echoes an idea I'm fond of, the library as Third Space--the place you choose to spend your time when you are not at home or at work. Library 2.0 is about being wherever our users are, meeting them in the virtual spaces. And that supports, rather than supplants, the tradition of welcoming our users to join us where we are. Some people come (physically) to the library to use our virtual space and our technology (i.e., to take advantage of our free Wi-Fi and our awesome equipment), and some people come to the library to decompress and have a brief respite from the omnipresent technology that saturates their lives. And both kinds of users--and everyone in between--are welcome. The library should be a social destination.
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
Thing #15: SlideShare
And with Thing #15: Presentations go social, it's time for SlideShare. The value of this thing is also quite obvious. I need no convincing.
If nothing else, seeing a lineup of slideshows on this site convinced me of the need to make more interesting title slides. Mine are boring, plain text on a white background. Looked great projected onto an uneven cinderblock wall. Not so great on the web.
I'm sorry that I have no audio track to sync with my slides. If I had known about SlideShare before I did my presentations, I would have probably gone to the effort of borrowing equipment that would have let me record one of my rehearsals, so I could add it.
My user name on SlideShare is akroeger, and I uploaded two presentations from last year. I really love how the notes I attached to each slide display below the presentation. That way, the lack of audio isn't a big deal, as the full text of my presentation is fully accessible without any special action on the viewer's part. I am not so thrilled, however, with the way paragraph breaks are stripped and bullets become garbled in the slide notes, turning a neat, orderly display into a massive, unreadable brick of text. But that's a relatively minor quibble.
I do have one not-so-minor quibble. I revised my slideshows to fix the notes so they'd display better. When I replaced the slideshows, however, SlideShare still displayed and played the old versions with the garbled notes. Even renaming the files before replacing them didn't work. (Yes, I did refresh the page.) I had to entirely delete the original presentations, then upload them anew. They're the way I want them now, but it shouldn't have been that much trouble.
Below is a presentation I did at last year's TSRT Spring Meeting. You'll have to go to SlideShare directly to see the notes.
If nothing else, seeing a lineup of slideshows on this site convinced me of the need to make more interesting title slides. Mine are boring, plain text on a white background. Looked great projected onto an uneven cinderblock wall. Not so great on the web.
I'm sorry that I have no audio track to sync with my slides. If I had known about SlideShare before I did my presentations, I would have probably gone to the effort of borrowing equipment that would have let me record one of my rehearsals, so I could add it.
My user name on SlideShare is akroeger, and I uploaded two presentations from last year. I really love how the notes I attached to each slide display below the presentation. That way, the lack of audio isn't a big deal, as the full text of my presentation is fully accessible without any special action on the viewer's part. I am not so thrilled, however, with the way paragraph breaks are stripped and bullets become garbled in the slide notes, turning a neat, orderly display into a massive, unreadable brick of text. But that's a relatively minor quibble.
I do have one not-so-minor quibble. I revised my slideshows to fix the notes so they'd display better. When I replaced the slideshows, however, SlideShare still displayed and played the old versions with the garbled notes. Even renaming the files before replacing them didn't work. (Yes, I did refresh the page.) I had to entirely delete the original presentations, then upload them anew. They're the way I want them now, but it shouldn't have been that much trouble.
Below is a presentation I did at last year's TSRT Spring Meeting. You'll have to go to SlideShare directly to see the notes.
What Business Are Libraries In?
Stepping away from the 23 Things for a moment, I want to point you to a really interesting post on Designing Better Libraries: "People Don’t Go To Libraries For Information . . . They Go There Because . . ."
After talking a bit about companies that failed because they misunderstood what business they were really in, they come around to libraries. "[L]ibraries think they are in the information business but they are really in the education or learning business."
Food for thought.
After talking a bit about companies that failed because they misunderstood what business they were really in, they come around to libraries. "[L]ibraries think they are in the information business but they are really in the education or learning business."
Food for thought.
Monday, January 12, 2009
Thing #14: Mmm, Delicious
Thing #14: Tagging & social bookmarking in Delicious. Woo! An easy one! I've already been on Delicious for a couple of months, and I love it! I loved it from the get-go, because it's usefulness is so blazingly obvious. I haven't gotten much into the social aspects of it yet, but I really love being able to annotate each bookmark. Further, even though I was always meticulous about keeping my bookmarks well organized into folders and subfolders, tagging them is superior in every way--easier to maintain, easier to search. Also, it's nice to be able to access my bookmarks when I'm away from home.
My Delicious user name is LunaMurphy. Keep in mind that I use Delicious strictly my personal bookmarks, so you won't see a lot of library-related entries. At work, we have a social bookmarking widget integrated into our staff wiki, so if I want to share bookmarks with my coworkers, I do it there. That wiki and those bookmarks are not publicly available, so I can't show you. It would be nice to share those more widely, though.
I love what the Holdridge Area Public Library has done with their tag cloud. That is an awesome way to share bookmarks with patrons. I imagine their subject specialists select which websites to add. It probably requires, if not a formal collection development policy, at least a similar ethos to selecting physical materials for the collection. What a great way to help patrons find the best stuff on the web without casting into the wide sea of Google.
My Delicious user name is LunaMurphy. Keep in mind that I use Delicious strictly my personal bookmarks, so you won't see a lot of library-related entries. At work, we have a social bookmarking widget integrated into our staff wiki, so if I want to share bookmarks with my coworkers, I do it there. That wiki and those bookmarks are not publicly available, so I can't show you. It would be nice to share those more widely, though.
I love what the Holdridge Area Public Library has done with their tag cloud. That is an awesome way to share bookmarks with patrons. I imagine their subject specialists select which websites to add. It probably requires, if not a formal collection development policy, at least a similar ethos to selecting physical materials for the collection. What a great way to help patrons find the best stuff on the web without casting into the wide sea of Google.
Sunday, January 11, 2009
Thing #13: Twitter
All right, I've made it to the dreaded Thing #13: What are you doing?
One of the reasons I signed on to Nebraska Learns 2.0 was to force myself to explore certain social technologies that I have been deliberately avoiding. Twitter is one of those things.
I've known about Twitter for a while. I understand it, but it just never appealed to me. I definitely see the value of Twitter for libraries and businesses. Libraries can send out Tweets like, "Closed on Monday for the holiday," or "We now have Kindles available for checkout!" Businesses can send out, "Big sale on Tuesday. 20% off all linens," or "Nintendo Wii back in stock!" That totally makes sense to me.
For personal use, though, I have never seen the appeal. My life simply isn't that interesting. I don't see why anyone would care what I'm doing. Big things, I can post on my blog. But come on, look at the average length of posts in both of my blogs. Do you think I'm capable of saying anything to my satisfaction in 140 characters or less? Ha! Also, I like my privacy. I don't necessarily want people to know what I'm doing all the time. Thirdly, if I actually AM doing something interesting, the last thing I want to do is stop, go to a computer or get out my cell phone, and type a sentence or two.
I found myself nodding in agreement with most of what Kathy Sierra said in the Creating Passionate Users post "Is Twitter TOO good?" (which I heard about from Learning As I Go). Especially noteworthy is the Twitter Curve graph.
When I searched Twitter for things of potential interest, I found unomaha and decided to follow their Tweets so I can keep up with campus events. Otherwise, I saw a few interesting events happening around Omaha, mixed in with a series of Tweets that told a tale of a jilted lover worthy of a soap opera. I also found that a lot of other people are playing the same video game I am. (Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, if you must know.)
So, to answer the three questions about Thing #13:
1. Did you like micro-blogging?
So far, no. But I'm willing to give it some time to see if I catch the bug.
2. How could libraries use Twitter?
It can be another venue for news and announcements, supplementing rather than replacing existing venues. Really, it's good to send out announcements in as many formats as possible, so patrons can receive them however they prefer. Twitter could also be good for notification of interesting new books, media, and collections; receiving and responding to reference questions; and promoting new services and events.
3. How could you use Twitter?
The 140 character limit might be good for me, as it forces me to carefully consider every word that goes into a sentence. Given my natural tendency toward prolixity, some practice in succinct wordsmithing could be helpful.
I'll keep Tweeting for a few days and report back if my opinions change. My Twitter user name is LunaMurphy, if you want to look in on me.
One of the reasons I signed on to Nebraska Learns 2.0 was to force myself to explore certain social technologies that I have been deliberately avoiding. Twitter is one of those things.
I've known about Twitter for a while. I understand it, but it just never appealed to me. I definitely see the value of Twitter for libraries and businesses. Libraries can send out Tweets like, "Closed on Monday for the holiday," or "We now have Kindles available for checkout!" Businesses can send out, "Big sale on Tuesday. 20% off all linens," or "Nintendo Wii back in stock!" That totally makes sense to me.
For personal use, though, I have never seen the appeal. My life simply isn't that interesting. I don't see why anyone would care what I'm doing. Big things, I can post on my blog. But come on, look at the average length of posts in both of my blogs. Do you think I'm capable of saying anything to my satisfaction in 140 characters or less? Ha! Also, I like my privacy. I don't necessarily want people to know what I'm doing all the time. Thirdly, if I actually AM doing something interesting, the last thing I want to do is stop, go to a computer or get out my cell phone, and type a sentence or two.
I found myself nodding in agreement with most of what Kathy Sierra said in the Creating Passionate Users post "Is Twitter TOO good?" (which I heard about from Learning As I Go). Especially noteworthy is the Twitter Curve graph.
When I searched Twitter for things of potential interest, I found unomaha and decided to follow their Tweets so I can keep up with campus events. Otherwise, I saw a few interesting events happening around Omaha, mixed in with a series of Tweets that told a tale of a jilted lover worthy of a soap opera. I also found that a lot of other people are playing the same video game I am. (Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, if you must know.)
So, to answer the three questions about Thing #13:
1. Did you like micro-blogging?
So far, no. But I'm willing to give it some time to see if I catch the bug.
2. How could libraries use Twitter?
It can be another venue for news and announcements, supplementing rather than replacing existing venues. Really, it's good to send out announcements in as many formats as possible, so patrons can receive them however they prefer. Twitter could also be good for notification of interesting new books, media, and collections; receiving and responding to reference questions; and promoting new services and events.
3. How could you use Twitter?
The 140 character limit might be good for me, as it forces me to carefully consider every word that goes into a sentence. Given my natural tendency toward prolixity, some practice in succinct wordsmithing could be helpful.
I'll keep Tweeting for a few days and report back if my opinions change. My Twitter user name is LunaMurphy, if you want to look in on me.
Saturday, January 10, 2009
Thing#12
Moving along at a nice clip, though still far from caught up, I've reached Thing #12: A thing about LibraryThing.
Of course, it's impossible to work in a library and not know about LibraryThing. It is one of the hot topics in libraries right now. My library, the Criss Library at UNO, uses the tags from LibraryThing for Libraries in our catalog. Look at the title Freakonomics to see an example. (Scroll down to the bottom of the record for the tags.)
I haven't started a LibraryThing account before now because I didn't really see the need for it in my personal life. It may seem surprising that as much as I love cataloging, I haven't cataloged my home library. But I do have my collections divided by subject, and I have no trouble finding anything whenever I want it. So my system works for me. Besides, LibraryThing has a fee if you want to catalog more than 200 books, and I'd go way over that.
But this exercise got me to thinking that LibraryThing can be used for many things. So I decided to use it to keep track of books I've borrowed from friends or libraries--things I've read and enjoyed enough that I might want to look it up again sometime, but which I do not actually own. I am not going to record books I disliked and wouldn't read again or books I loved so very much that I immediately ran out and bought my own copy so I'd always have it on hand (after all, those are on my shelves for me to see anytime). And, unfortunately, I'm not going to include the many, many books I really liked but have forgotten the titles of. Those are just gone forever. But with LibraryThing, maybe I can keep that problem from happening again.
And maybe later I may use it to keep track of books I'm interested in checking out later, instead of that five-page Word document I've got them all listed in.
I really only intended to add about ten books today, but once you start, it's hard to stop! I ended up adding thirty. My username is LunaMurphy, if you'd like to see my list.
I wasn't as happy with searching in LibraryThing. I searched for The Story of the Stone, an exact title, and it came back with Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone as the first hit, and the book I was looking for nowhere on the first five pages. It wouldn't do an exact phrase search with quotation marks, either. I went over to Amazon and found it on the first page (even though it still wasn't the first entry). Then I went back to LibraryThing with the author's name and found it more easily. For several of my books, I had to go to my library's catalog or to Amazon to get enough information to find it in LibraryThing.
I do, however, like that there is something resembling authority control on the tags. I tagged my books "do not own," and when connecting to other users, that tag is rendered "unowned." The LibraryThing tag info for "unowned" says, "Includes: unowned, @unowned, DoNotOwn, Don'tOwn, Don’tOwn, _NOT.OWNED, do no own, do not have, do not own, don't own, dont have, dont own, not owned, not-own, not-owned, notowned." Nice way to round up similar tags without forcing people to use a controlled vocabulary.
A side observation: LibraryThing is not afraid to try things that are helpful to readers but harmful to bookstores, things you'll never see from Amazon. Check out LibraryThing's Unsuggester. It's the antithesis of the typical "If you liked X, you might also like Y" recommendation system. Unsuggester offers the equally useful counter, "If you liked X, you'll probably hate Z." What better way to say, "That book sucked," than by saving other readers the pain of suffering through it?
Of course, it's impossible to work in a library and not know about LibraryThing. It is one of the hot topics in libraries right now. My library, the Criss Library at UNO, uses the tags from LibraryThing for Libraries in our catalog. Look at the title Freakonomics to see an example. (Scroll down to the bottom of the record for the tags.)
I haven't started a LibraryThing account before now because I didn't really see the need for it in my personal life. It may seem surprising that as much as I love cataloging, I haven't cataloged my home library. But I do have my collections divided by subject, and I have no trouble finding anything whenever I want it. So my system works for me. Besides, LibraryThing has a fee if you want to catalog more than 200 books, and I'd go way over that.
But this exercise got me to thinking that LibraryThing can be used for many things. So I decided to use it to keep track of books I've borrowed from friends or libraries--things I've read and enjoyed enough that I might want to look it up again sometime, but which I do not actually own. I am not going to record books I disliked and wouldn't read again or books I loved so very much that I immediately ran out and bought my own copy so I'd always have it on hand (after all, those are on my shelves for me to see anytime). And, unfortunately, I'm not going to include the many, many books I really liked but have forgotten the titles of. Those are just gone forever. But with LibraryThing, maybe I can keep that problem from happening again.
And maybe later I may use it to keep track of books I'm interested in checking out later, instead of that five-page Word document I've got them all listed in.
I really only intended to add about ten books today, but once you start, it's hard to stop! I ended up adding thirty. My username is LunaMurphy, if you'd like to see my list.
I wasn't as happy with searching in LibraryThing. I searched for The Story of the Stone, an exact title, and it came back with Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone as the first hit, and the book I was looking for nowhere on the first five pages. It wouldn't do an exact phrase search with quotation marks, either. I went over to Amazon and found it on the first page (even though it still wasn't the first entry). Then I went back to LibraryThing with the author's name and found it more easily. For several of my books, I had to go to my library's catalog or to Amazon to get enough information to find it in LibraryThing.
I do, however, like that there is something resembling authority control on the tags. I tagged my books "do not own," and when connecting to other users, that tag is rendered "unowned." The LibraryThing tag info for "unowned" says, "Includes: unowned, @unowned, DoNotOwn, Don'tOwn, Don’tOwn, _NOT.OWNED, do no own, do not have, do not own, don't own, dont have, dont own, not owned, not-own, not-owned, notowned." Nice way to round up similar tags without forcing people to use a controlled vocabulary.
A side observation: LibraryThing is not afraid to try things that are helpful to readers but harmful to bookstores, things you'll never see from Amazon. Check out LibraryThing's Unsuggester. It's the antithesis of the typical "If you liked X, you might also like Y" recommendation system. Unsuggester offers the equally useful counter, "If you liked X, you'll probably hate Z." What better way to say, "That book sucked," than by saving other readers the pain of suffering through it?
Thing #11 1/2
Nebraska Learns 2.0 used a Voki to deliver the instructions for Thing #11. A lot of participants responded using Vokis of their own. I wanted to make one, too, but I had trouble, even with my shiny new DSL connection. Whenever I tried to change the face shape or hair color or whatever, it would take what seemed like an unreasonably long time to load. Then, when I changed her shirt, her hair disappeared and after five minutes had not come back. The little spinning wheel just kept spinning, so I knew the program had just stalled out. I don't think this is Voki's fault. I think if I had a better computer with an up-to-date browser and all the latest plug-ins, it would have worked fine. I will probably revisit Voki when I replace my computer, but that's months away, if not a year or more.
So this is something to remember about technology. We still live in a world divided by haves and have-nots. The have-nots are further divided into choose-to-have-nots and unable-to-have-nots. Those who choose to have not usually have looked at a given technology and decided they are not interested. They are content. Those who are unable to have it, however, often want it and feel deeply hampered by their inability to get it (which is almost always related to money). And they are deeply hampered, if their economic situation prevents them from doing basic things, like posting their resume online from home.
And this is something libraries have to remember, too. Absolutely, we need to continue our efforts to keep up with the technologies used by our most saavy patrons, the ones who have computers at home that make the best computers in our libraries look substandard. But we have to remember not to leave behind the have-nots who come to us because we provide access to technology and equipment they could only dream of having at home. A good friend of mine called me the other day to tell me how amazing the public library's computers are, and how blown away she was by their speed and all the things she could do with them. Now I'm sure the librarians there feel their computers are old, outdated, and due for replacing, but this friend is using a ten-year-old machine with Windows 95, a dial-up modem, decrepit CRT monitor that turns everything green, and a browser that can't scroll to the right if a page is too wide, much less render Flash animation. So to her, the library's facilities are godly. I have other friends who don't have internet access at all from their homes, and still others who don't have computers. Not that they don't want them; they just can't afford them.
It's a balancing act for libraries, but it truly is imperative that we keep ourselves primed to serve those at both ends of the continuum. To be relevant to the haves, we need not only to understand the tech they're using, but to be able to offer them some level of service beyond what they can get from their friends. It's not enough to be there; we have to be useful while we're there. But at the same time, we have to remember that we are the lifeline of the have-nots, especially in this economy. It's a wide stance, but we really need to stand on both sides of the fence.
So this is something to remember about technology. We still live in a world divided by haves and have-nots. The have-nots are further divided into choose-to-have-nots and unable-to-have-nots. Those who choose to have not usually have looked at a given technology and decided they are not interested. They are content. Those who are unable to have it, however, often want it and feel deeply hampered by their inability to get it (which is almost always related to money). And they are deeply hampered, if their economic situation prevents them from doing basic things, like posting their resume online from home.
And this is something libraries have to remember, too. Absolutely, we need to continue our efforts to keep up with the technologies used by our most saavy patrons, the ones who have computers at home that make the best computers in our libraries look substandard. But we have to remember not to leave behind the have-nots who come to us because we provide access to technology and equipment they could only dream of having at home. A good friend of mine called me the other day to tell me how amazing the public library's computers are, and how blown away she was by their speed and all the things she could do with them. Now I'm sure the librarians there feel their computers are old, outdated, and due for replacing, but this friend is using a ten-year-old machine with Windows 95, a dial-up modem, decrepit CRT monitor that turns everything green, and a browser that can't scroll to the right if a page is too wide, much less render Flash animation. So to her, the library's facilities are godly. I have other friends who don't have internet access at all from their homes, and still others who don't have computers. Not that they don't want them; they just can't afford them.
It's a balancing act for libraries, but it truly is imperative that we keep ourselves primed to serve those at both ends of the continuum. To be relevant to the haves, we need not only to understand the tech they're using, but to be able to offer them some level of service beyond what they can get from their friends. It's not enough to be there; we have to be useful while we're there. But at the same time, we have to remember that we are the lifeline of the have-nots, especially in this economy. It's a wide stance, but we really need to stand on both sides of the fence.
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