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):

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.