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.
Monday, September 28, 2009
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!
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