Thing 23 - Final Thoughts

Sadly, the online survey is no longer active, I would have welcomed the opportunity to give feedback on the process.

I shared some of my overall thoughts about the 23 things program in my previous post, but here’s more. First, the array of things that fall under that web 2.0 umbrella is amazing. I’m now more aware of and knowledgeable about 2.0 phenomena than I was before doing the 23 things. Since librarians are necessarily generalists, it’s been a good addition to my overall knowledge base.

My favorites of the things were the ones that let me play with images and photos – not the most useful professionally perhaps, but definitely the most fun. I mentioned previously that I have already found Delicious helpful with some work projects. I really would like to look into creating a podcast.

And I would definitely be interested in a 23 more things program. I understand it’s coming. I’ll be looking forward to it. But, I imagine I’ll also kvetch about it. ;)

Thing 22 – What did I learn today?

Pardon my contrarian position here, but I cannot agree with the assertion in the first paragraph of Thing 22. Indeed, this enterprise did take a lot of time, a veritable boatload of time. And keeping up with what the writers of that paragraph admit is the fast changing landscape of web 2.0 does and will take time. Of course, incremental learning of anything once you’ve first learned about it takes less time, but there will be new developments – let’s not kid ourselves that a casual couple of minutes here and there will really suffice.

Regarding the second point “you know you can do it”. Well, it’s not rocket science. Given a reasonable amount of time and allowing for the fact that sometimes, you can’t do it because of technical restraints – of course we can do it, any reasonably intelligent person can do this stuff. It’s just often very time-consuming to do all the necessary trouble shooting to reach success.

OK, they have me on point three – some of this stuff is fun :) More to the professional point, some of this stuff is useful -- I've already found bookmarking at Delicious helpful. I suspect I won’t end up using everything I created an account for, but some may still prove valuable in ways I haven’t yet discovered. Flickr rekindled my interest in photography to the extent I ponied up the cash to buy a modest digital camera.

I cannot say I will commit to blogging about my ongoing web 2.0 efforts, I don’t really think the world needs more blogs, but I will make a systematic effort to stay up to date on further developments. My RSS feed reader is already primed with subscriptions to some of the mentioned websites.

Thing 21 – Other Social Networks

Gather.com. So… this is supposed to represent the social networking option of more intelligent discussion, the public radio crowd, as it were? Well, all things are relative, but the level of discussion on the few posts and comments I read failed to jump out as particularly articulate or perceptive. More’s the pity.

Gather includes an interesting bullet point on their homepage, “avoid the noise of other sites”. Amen. Many of the social sites do seem to me to be very noisy – by that I mean the ratio of valuable content to useless content is very low. As an example, in looking at what was ostensibly a books group at Gather, I found among the recent postings one about studying the kabbalah and another about the hanging gardens of Babylon. Umm... why? Noise to me. Same person, repeatedly writing off-topic posts, and no one commenting seemed to notice this. Weird. Even worse, it seems that the agents and publicists have taken over the book group space at Gather. One publicist, (who also reviews the books that she represents and admits she seldom rates anything lower than a five on a five point system – that’s chutzpah) had recently posted on several of the book groups and at least one of these posts was totally off topic for the group. Don’t these marketing types understand they are killing the goose that laid the golden egg when they contaminate the content with their blurbs?

To sum up - Gather.com was a real disappointment. I hoped it might actually be a useful social networking site, but in the time I spent, I couldn’t find anything compelling on it.

Goodreads – this I had seen before because patrons of our library had mentioned it in a survey as one of the websites they visited frequently. Maybe because it has a very narrow focus, this site looks like it really might be a fun site to join if you were interested in books and reading.

I read “Building a Social Networking Environment at the Library” by Steve Campion, of Pierce County (WA) Library. Very rah-rah. But at least he had some specific modest proposals linked to present library activities.

Although I was lukewarm to Mr. Campion’s article at WebJunction, I think WebJunction itself is a really good idea. It’s my impression that librarians like to share experiences and ideas with their colleagues and help one another learn new things – WebJunction looks like a good platform for that. But the discussion part of this website is not very robust and I didn’t see a lot of evidence of social networking. On the other hand, there does look to be a lot of other good information on it, and maybe the “social” part of this will grow.

Thing 20 – MySpace & Facebook

I took a look at the MySpace pages of Hennepin County Library and Denver Public Library with my teenage niece. I thought I might as well get feedback from the target audience of these pages. I asked,“I’d like to get your opinion if these pages – would you use these pages? Would you look at them?" She said yes, she thought she might – though her reaction was definitely not “Wow, that is so cool!” She preferred the appearance of Hennepin’s page because of its ‘neon’ colors. On the other hand, she immediately noticed and commented on the song offering at Denver’s page. (She hates the song but her male cousin loves it.) Also, she thought the embedded ‘virtual shelf’ from Shelfari on Denver’s page looked ‘cool’. She, like me, is very visually oriented. (Oh, look! It’s colorful and shiny!).

I wondered, though, if kids like my niece would be likely to discover these sites. She has a profile on Facebook, not MySpace and therefore doesn’t go to MySpace. So it seems that you’d want a profile at both sites if you were a library that had decided these virtual venues were important outreach channels.

I also had her show me her Facebook profile. I got to see how she, other family members and her school friends had ‘friended’ one another – she was impressed with how fast her cousin had posted a photograph from Christmas Eve and so typed a quick note of praise. She showed me the profile of my eldest nephew and his family. In the past, she has mentioned how Facebook is useful in coordinating schoolwork group project stuff, because you don’t have to keep exchanging e-mails. What struck me about how my niece uses Facebook is that for her (and I suspect a lot of others) these social network sites reinforce her already existing social relationships. I didn’t get the impression she was using it to discover people she didn’t already know – which is interesting because that particular use of Facebook is the focus of one of the recommended readings on this Thing.

“7 things you should know about Facebook” was a persuasion piece directed at higher ed faculty and staff. It aims to educate them about social networks and their use by students. It presented the scenario of a student, Angela, using Facebook to enhance her study abroad experience by communicating with people who had a connection to the country she would be visiting. This seemed to me a carefully selected (or constructed) example of a best-case-scenario use of social networking in an educational setting. On the other hand, just because this example may not be representative, doesn’t mean it never happens this way :).

All in all, Facebook and MySpace could be an interesting way to enhance your already existing social network or expand it by discovering other people with similar interests. I can see using similar types of tools for professional or personal interests and networking, but I’m skeptical about how effectively an institution can use a tool like this, one designed for real people not corporate entities. A library profile here might tend to devolve into a marketing effort that no one wants to bother looking at. It’s one thing to see if my best friend or my cousin has added something to their profile – it might even be a picture of me! It’s quite another thing if a library touts an author’s new book or their most recent program. And how much do I care if a library has ‘friended’ another library or a subgroup of ALA? It has nowhere near the same emotional resonance.

Thing 19 - Podcasts

I’ve been downloading and listening to podcasts for a while now. I bought my MP3 player specifically to be able to time-shift some of my radio listening by downloading podcasts of specific radio programs. WNYC’s "Radio Lab" episodes are favorites.

The podcast directories were new to me though. They looked helpful to someone who needs or wants to discover some particular kind of audio content, but I didn’t explore them in great detail. I’m not sure I want to discover more to listen to, read and process. Yikes!

As for library use of this technology, it’s a good fit for libraries. Some libraries are podcasting storytime programming. It expands your service of storytime into the virtual world, adding value for those parents who might not be able to get their kids to the library for a storytime. The Denver Public Library has a number of story podcasts on their website. The biggest obstacle to doing this would be resolving intellectual property issues – the Denver Public Library web site indicates that they have negotiated permissions with publishers (mostly Candlewick Press) or used stories in the public domain.

The Denver Library's podcasts seem to be set up like Minnesota Public Radio’s archived audio files, that is, clicking on ‘download’ opens the file in your browser to play on your PC, but does not allow transfer to an MP3 player. But you can download podcast subscription software and use it to subscribe to the podcasts and have them automatically downloaded each time the podcast page is updated. Juice (formerly iPodder) is one such software.

I downloaded Juice to see how this works. I subscribed to the Denver Public Library’s story podcasts and to MPR’s program on grammar and usage “Grammar Grater”. We’ll see if it gets updates as promised, but it worked fine after subscribing to pick out a particular podcast from the list, download it to my PC and synch it to my MP3 player. Sweet.

I wish I had time to experiment with creating a podcast – but that will have to wait.

Thing 18 - YouTube & other online video

Here's the video I'm posting from YouTube.

Come on... how could it be any other?




I've actually looked at Google Video more than YouTube, but the kinds of video you find seems similar on both services. I was interested during the presidential campaign to see what a lot of political video was on these sites, this is a fascinating new channel for information distribution (even if a lot of the content is copied from traditional media sources).

Thing 17 - ELM Productvity Tools

Some of the enhancements to the various databases available via ELM could be helpful in research. Features that allow you to mark and save specific research finds (articles, transcripts, etc.) and to create a folder of your research including a record of the specific search strategy – these are valuable time savers. Some could be improved, though, especially the ‘create a web page’ feature, which seems to be the most web 2.0-ish of these offerings with its potential to more easily share your research results.

The RSS problems were addressed at the 23 things mother blog, but still – an RSS feature that is largely dysfunctional with web-based RSS readers does not impress. I tried to set up several feeds over a two day span and never found a time when the EBSCO or ProQuest servers were at enough leisure to allow this to happen. Yes, one could set it up in your own browser – but isn’t a focus of web 2.0 that these resources are available to you regardless of the particular computer you may be on?

EBSCO’s ‘my account’ – oh goody – yet another username and password.

EBSCO’s ‘create a webpage’ offering is more robust than ProQuest’s. It gives you more flexibility in how the page looks, where things are placed, what can be included, etc. This also means the learning curve for figuring it out was a bit higher. But EBSCO’s webpage feature is not quite ready for prime time. I can create a page and download that file my computer, but when I view that webpage in my browser and try to click on the links to get to the articles, EBSCO can’t authenticate me for login. Apparently, unless I login to EBSCO’s ‘my folder’ feature via the ELM portal or via a subscribing library’s website to get to my webpage – the article links take me to a general login screen that does not recognize my user name and password. That being the case, what’s the point of downloading the webpage to somewhere other than the EBSCO interface? It becomes for all intents and purposes a static list instead of active links. There’s an interesting twist to this – if I go to my library’s website and sign in to EBSCO, and then click on links from my webpage of saved EBSCO research results (which is open in another tab of my browser) the links do go to the articles. After that, if I have cookies enabled on my browser, EBSCO continues to recognize that I have come in via my library’s website and the links go to the article in the EBSCO database. However, if I log into an EBSCO database via the ELM proxy, then this does not work – when I click on an article Iink on my created webpage I am sent to the generic login screen asking for User ID and password and EBSCO cannot authenticate me through that login screen.

Another detail – I could not figure out how to get the abstracts on this webpage from my results list. The 23 things instructions indicated that it could be done but I could only get the brief citation to show up on the webpage – huh.

ProQuest’s “save research” feature and “create web page” feature are easier to use than EBSCO’s but also more limited. And it wasn’t immediately clear (at least not to me) that to save it you used your browser’s “file” “save page as” function to save the webpage after clicking on download – which just created the web page in your browser window.

Netlibrary – the specific eBook example we were supposed to search for didn’t seem to be there, anymore, so I chose a different one to complete the exercise. It was interesting to see that the ‘notes’ feature is paired with the ‘favorites’ list. I had used the favorites list before (for eAudiobooks) but had forgotten about it. For those people who are using the eBooks for research, this notes feature is a nice enhancement. Obviously, you can’t use paper sticky notes on an eBook, so digital sticky notes are here.

Thing 16 - Student 2.0 Tools

The University of Minnesota Assignment Calculator struck me as a very helpful tool for students. Not only does it lay out a schedule for the various steps in writing a paper, but provides really useful links to explain each step or offer suggestions on research sources and strategies. Nice tool. I can see this as a useful link to put on a public library website for students.

The Research Project Calculator was somewhat less impressive, it seemed very wordy and there were a lot of bullet points crammed into the 5 steps. Still, it offers helpful structure and suggestions to high school students working on research projects. I really liked that the final step was evaluating how you had done on your project and making it a learning opportunity for how to improve your next project. Including information about how to create a slide presentation or video to communicate the research results is a nice feature of this tool.

These tools serve their specific education purpose well, but I can’t see them working to help manage a library project, for example. On the other hand, I’d love to find a similar tool that was more suited to the library world.

Thing 15 - Online Games and Libraries

Libraries and gaming. I just don’t get it. What is the connection? What is the purpose? Libraries are supposed to become community centers where we offer bowling leagues, Monopoly® tournaments, and WOW marathons? How does that fit into the mission of literacy and provision of information resources, including the various artistic expressions of the culture – books, music, and film?

Seems to me if we can afford the computer resources and bandwidth to have patrons using our resources for the gaming activity of their choice along with all the other online activities patrons want that pretty much covers the issue. And if we can’t afford those resources? Well, then we have to consider how to address that limitation. I’m not saying we should block gaming on our computers (unless it eats up so much bandwidth that it functionally kills everyone else's access to e-mail, info websites, employment searches, etc. - I'm just saying...)

I viewed the videos about Second Life from the Ohio University and the tour of Info Island Second Life Libraries. It looks like there may be potential in a virtual venue like Second Life to provide a virtual learning space, but the rhetoric used in the Ohio U video was pretty high-flown, I suspect the rhetoric outstrips reality at this point. One of the comments on the video at YouTube had it right – atact88 said “It’s a marketing medium, not replacing the classroom”.

And the Second Life Info Island concept was puzzling – I want to use a virtual computer as an avatar in a virtual world to search EBSCO databases or Amazon.com? Ummm… why wouldn’t I just search EBSCO or Amazon on a real computer?

Finally, and this is just a personal note, the graphics and animation in Second Life give me the creeps. Like claymation. It’s so artificial and stilted and limited – especially the avatars’ movement. The thing is, I kind of like unsophisticated graphics, like those in Roller Coaster Tycoon – but unlike Tycoon, which isn’t trying to be realistic, Second Life is and falls so short of the mark. Creepy. IMO.

Thing 14 - LibraryThing

I'm liking LibraryThing. Maybe it's because I 'get' this sharing site - I want to catalog & tag my books because that has value to me, and then I share that information with others because it can be mutually beneficial.

The site's basic features are really easy to use -- I input a few of my books into my LT library. I really like the option of viewing your library as the bookcovers instead of a list. Even better, it seems to have some fairly high-powered features for input and editing. For example, you can do a global edit on a tag, or select a set of books from your library and add a tag to or remove a tag from all of them at once . Also, you can add books by importing files and synch your LibraryThing collection with a master list you keep elsewhere. But the absolutely coolest thing was the barcode scanner they sell -- CueCat -- with which you can more speedily import your book info by scanning in the ISBN. Sweet. I am seriously considering putting this on my Christmas list.

I understand LibraryThing is also offering its tag content on a subscription basis to libraries who add it to their OPAC data. I'd be really interested to see any good data on how useful this additional content is for library users. Professor John Riedl at the U of M and colleagues have done some research on community tagging. I guess the upshot is that tagging can be very useful -- as long as it is of sufficiently high quality -- which is not inevitable.

Thing 13 - Online Productivity Tools

I chose iGoogle for my uber homepage. Why? Mostly because I already had other accounts at Google, and frankly, isn't that the point of consolidating / centralizing all your web stuff? The customization features at iGoogle seemed pretty good. I moved a few things around and added a list feature Listy. Personalized "start" pages like this might be useful, but as with others of these web tools, it will take time playing with it to see how useful. The good news is that iGoogle seems flexible enough so that you could change it as you discover how it could be better set up to meet your needs.

It strikes me that this whole 'store your computer stuff on the web' trend is most useful for those in situations where they need to access things from various computers, and where the information they store there is more recreational than critical and does not need to be particularly secure. Of course, more and more of us do use various computers to do our work and social tasks.

About these list features. I don't know about you, but many of my lists have to travel with me into the store. I tend to use little slips of paper, so having to print out a whole sheet for 3-4 grocery items does not seem to be progress. On the other hand, if I was a cell phone user, I could send the list to my phone thus eliminating the need for paper -- but adding cell phone fees to my life. If it isn't one thing, it's another.

I have used shared electronic calendars in other contexts and they can be very useful in work settings. I took a look at Google's calendar feature - visually very nice, easy to use. I'm not sure I have a need for it in my personal life - but I can see that those with a more complex set of people and variables to coordinate might find it really handy.

Thing 12 - Diggit, etc

I took a spin around the social media sites Mixx, Digg, Newsvine and Redditt. Yes, of course, I see the theme. Editors, bad, wisdom of the crowd, good. Well, maybe.

Still, for all their aversion to editors, the top stories on these sites were often stories from the mainstream media. To be fair, they also feature blog and website content that might not be found at 'traditional' news sites. And I suppose that a story that was not prominently featured on traditional news sites might get more exposure here. The 23 things prompt seemed to indicate the value of these social media sites for librarians is that we need to scan them to be "one jump ahead of library users trying to find behind the headlines information" and "see what people are interested in". [Frankly, I don't know what they mean by 'behind the headlines information'. Rumor? Primary sources on which articles are based? What?]

Sure, being aware of the news that may influence queries from our users is good. Still, I think that an aggregator like Google news offers a better alternative if what you want to do is scan for news that is current and 'hot'. I can see, though, that for that more 'alternatively-sourced material' Mixx, Digg, et.al. would give you a quick picture of the blogosphere buzz.

I realize the unique aspect of these sites, as opposed to a Google News kind of custom aggregator, is that you can share with others what you found cool or interesting or important. For my personal news needs, I don't find this feature compelling, but obviously it appeals to many people.

O.K. I found an article to share at The guardian.uk. I clicked on their "share" link which offered options of sharing to Digg, Redditt, and Newsvine. However, I found that each of these sites required you to register before you could share an article. As I couldn't foresee ever using such an account, I opted not to have my e-mail floating around in the database of yet another website. I tried another article from USA Today, ditto above experience with Mixx, but I did notice a nice feature of Newsvine -- even while it was prompting me to login or create an account, it let me know that the article I wanted to share was already on Newsvine. Nice feature.

Finally, a couple of things I observed make me wonder how good these sites are at providing what they promise. When I checked on the Mixx site, they had in their "Community" area highlighting "new groups", several groups with the words "cheap viagra" in their names. Obviously, someone is trying to use this venue as yet another garbage marketing outlet. So, to stay valuable to their users these sites need to minimize noise from what amounts to spamming.

More disturbing to me was the discovery at Newsvine that if you create a column there "90% of all ad revenue generated from your column will go straight to you". Ad revenue? Generated how? Wouldn't people craft their columns to maximize ad revenue? Perhaps I don't fully understand their mechanism around ad revenue, but despite the high-flown language about 'no editors', or in Newsvine' s case, "editorial judgement (sic) is in the hands of the community", I'd rather have an editor deciding on content, than have it determined by how much ad revenue it brings in. Yes, traditional news outlets' revenue comes mostly from advertising, but at least there is some effort to have a wall between editorial and ad sales. Besides, don't these social media sites' mission statements imply that they are somehow better than the traditional model?

So, I've been kind of negative, but let me say, it was pretty fun to follow link after link of stories that caught my eye. But the comments feature... not very valuable. The ratio of useful back and forth to ill-informed or mean-spirited rants was too low to spend the time reading them. It seems to me that these sites might be most useful to someone who had a particular narrow interest that they shared with a group at the site and together, the crowd could unearth information each might not discover on his or her own.

Thing 11 - Social bookmarking @ del.icio.us

I resurrected a moribund del.icio.us account from a previous web 2.0 learning endeavor and actually added a few bookmarks. Having my bookmarks available at any computer seems like it could be very convenient, but I'd have to see how it actually played out in real life. I'm still trying to get a handle on how useful it would be for collaborative work. As with a lot of these tools, the application in an education setting seems obvious (the podcast tutorial on del.icio.us mentions reading lists and syllabi) but discovering a useful library application proves more challenging.

I like the additional information available about a site through seeing how many others have linked to it and how they have tagged it. It would be interesting to "mine" the site to see what others thought was valuable enough to bookmark on a topic of interest to me. Helene Blowers in the podcast refers to the 'magic middle'. The idea is that when other people look at stuff and bookmark it, the good stuff is what gets bookmarked most often. This provides filtering by authority -- it helps pull out the useful information from the vast sea that is all web content. To the extent that a tool like del.icio.us can achieve that end, i.e. assisting me to find the 'good stuff', it would be very valuable.

I also downloaded the bookmarklet from del.icio.us to my browser. I can only hope it is helpful and not annoying. It's kind of hard to tell before you use the feature over time. We'll see. I noted that there are uninstall instruction in the help section at del.icio.us. :)

Back to library applications of this tool. I took a quick look at the Maui Community College Library's bookmarks on del.icio.us. and tried to find out how they were using this tool. I found the link to their del.icio.us bookmarks buried on the library's website under "About Us" under a subcategory "Our Current Interests". It's hard to assess this. Obviously it's not being presented as a real tool for students or faculty. Is it just a collection of bookmarks that the librarians find interesting? So, it's out there, but what is it's use?

Thing 10 - Wikis

23 Things wiki on PBwiki

Had fun adding to the 23 things wiki. (Hint - look for the Holstein.) The PBwiki interface was easy to use, the toolbar options in the editing / composing screen were straightforward and offered a pretty good range of tools. It was simple to create a table, import an image, or create a link to another URL or wikipage. As I am not fluent in html, this was critical to using the wiki efficiently. Creating a new page was also easy. I liked the template option idea, although the particular templates available might not be very useful in a library setting. They seemed geared more to schoolwork, more for either the student or the educator. But it also looked like you could develop template of your own that might more closely fit a library milieu. Or maybe others in the PBwiki community have developed templates one could use.

I read "Using Wikis to Create Online Communities" by Meredith Farkas. She makes some valid points about the possible uses for wikis in libraries. But the whole idea of making the library’s website the online hub of the community -- I'm skeptical. It just seems to be another of those let's be all things to all people endeavors. Mission creep. Why is this a role the library should take on? Does it make sense? Is the library website the best place for local restaurant reviews? Aren't other places doing that better already? I just dunno.

I looked at some of the example of libraries using this for staff information, policies and so on. I think that kind of use makes a whole lot of sense. Our own library is experimenting with some similar uses.

Luv that Lee LeFever and his videos. He's got another winner with his "Wikis in plain English".

I set up a quick wiki on PBwiki, I'm already using it to coordinate Christmas gift buying with my family. I really can see the benefits of this kind of tool for a lot of collaborative efforts. I discovered that PBWiki also had some more useful templates available at the page level. These make it easier to set up a specific-purpose page, e.g. project tracker, document repository, team member list and others.

Thing 9 - Collaboration

Hmmm. Google Docs shared editing feature. I'm not impressed based on my experience with the sample document in this exercise. Here's my story.

I have a Google account, I asked for the permission necessary to edit the document via email as instructed at the 23 things blog. I got an e-mail that indicated that I have permission to edit this shared document. I clicked on the link, went to the doc, clicked on the "edit this page" link and got a message that I don't have permission to edit the document. (I summarize, this circle was reiterated with variations several times, but with the same results.)

If people who were actually trying to co-edit a document ran into this many obstacles, they would just call and set up a meeting at a coffee shop and bring their laptops and yellow legal pads. Maybe the whole setup for 23 things added another layer of complication, but this is NOT straightforward.

I see the value of this kind of tool, but based on the evidence of this experience, not this particular tool.

So, based on what I was able to see of the shared editing of this obscure little document on Google docs -- here are my thoughts. It sure resulted in a mess. I realize this exercise is not really like a true shared authoring situation would be, still... what a mess. Strikes me that the hard part of shared editing is negotiating with the other editors about the content. I couldn't see how this tool allowed for a history of the revisions to the document. Nor did there seem to be the facility to put notes to your collaborators (independent of the doc text) explaining why you were making an edit/addition, etc. Of course, I may be all wet with these observations, since I couldn't get access to the edit function. ;)

A presentation to share - please view!
Anyway, I created a slide presentation on Google Docs. It was pretty straightforward. This tool is limited, though. There were several simple tasks it could not do. For example, when a photo I imported needed to be rotated 90 degrees to orient the correct way, this presentation tool couldn't do that. I found a solution by manipulating the image in other software on my pc, re-saving it and uploading it again. Also, if you want to layer a shape with, for example, text, you can no longer manipulate the shape in any way once you've sent it to the back layer. It is also difficult to place graphics consistently in the same relative place from slide to slide because there isn't a ruler or grid to help you position things. So, if you had a bare bones kind of presentation to do, this could work well. Anything more sophisticated might not be possible.

Thing 8 - Sharing

I was a little tired of uploading photos and messing with graphics, so I choose create a database via lazybase. I created a list of good books I've read kinda recently. Below is the list embedded in this blog post. To share it with others I could give them the public URL to the read-only version of the database.

Initially, I thought I'd be able to create a version where I could create a form and have people input information to add to the database from my blogspace. (You know, some link that said, e.g. "tell me about a good book you've read lately". I must have misunderstood lazybase's capabilities though, because I can't seem to find any way to do this. If it could do this, it would have been an interesting way to mess around with the concept of user-generated content for sharing info, but alas...

Thing 7 - Communication

E-mail.
Great tool, but often hard to manage. I liked some of Merlin Mann's e-mail productivity tips. Especially his reminder that e-mail (for the vast majority of us) should not be a real-time communication channel. If you need to contact someone NOW, pick up the phone, or use IM. Then batch process the e-mail. Also, loved his suggestion to just fire back a reply the first time you touch the message if it can be done in under 2 minutes. Why deal with the message twice? These are suggestions I can put in place at once, though I never have been obsessive about constantly checking my e-mail.

The e-mail program we use at work has some productivity features available. You can organize messages into folders, create rules for semi-automatically processing messages as they come in, etc. As far as I can tell I think our tech folks control the spam filtering feature of the software. At least, I can't see any settings available to me.

Instant Messaging
We instituted IM at our libraries several months ago. We're using it mostly for the ref staff to contact one another it's an alternative to the phone for some simple transaction style communication. It works well for that, offering an opportunity to slightly time-shift these reference interactions. I'm also seeing people use it for those quick, real-time communications between staff that e-mail doesn't do so well -- things like quick questions to a colleague, technical problem status updates, etc. A beneficial side-effect of using IM is that it helps colleagues bond a bit more. In systems with multiple branches, sometimes it's easy to loose touch with your co-workers at different locations. IM offers a quick, casual way to touch base. In those small branches with just one lonely librarian at the helm, it's a reminder that they're not alone. :)

Text Messaging
RU 4 real? No cell, no opp.

Web Conferencing
Minitex Session. Sadly, I have to report that my first experience with Minitex's webinars was very underwhelming. After registering and receiving a confirmation of the session, it turned out I never got a second e-mail I was supposed to receive that had the URL and other information in it necessary to actually get into the webinar (offered via Microsoft Office Live Meeting). So. . . much time wasted.
My rule of thumb for these webinars would be:

• The first time you attempt a webinar, you'll probably want to register for a session you don't really care if you miss (and one that has no fee).
  
• Then you'll want to either download the LiveMeeting software or check on technology requirements for accessing the web-based version of Live Meeting.
  
• Then make sure you have the right 800 number to call to get connected to the audio.
  
• Then double check that you've received the URL and entry code you'll need for the meeting (webinar) session.
  

If all that goes smoothly the first time you try this -- you lead a charmed life. :) If not, use the first time to do all the troubleshooting and see if the second session you attempt actually works out.

Update - tried to attend a web conference on web design offered via Webjunction today 10/7/08. Sadly, the network connection at my branch library was down. Aargh, Qwest!. I seemed to be cursed when it comes to web conferencing.

Thing 6a - just cuz

I just had to try for an animated image. Sweet. And yet, a moving image like the one below gets real annoying real fast.


ImageChef.com Poetry Blender

Thing 6 - image generators

Oh, yeah. These could get to be time wasters -- but in a fun way. I can see how you could quickly create some pretty polished graphics for the library using these tools. Presentations, yep. Websites, signs, um hmm.




I think it would be wise to skim through and experiment with some of these and create a small set of stuff that works well or you could be lost tracking down possibly cool stuff for days.


Image Chef seems to create pretty good-looking things, and I like the way it has categories of like things for you to browse through.

But speaking of graphics, I hope I'm not the only one very frustrated with the difficulties of placing graphics in this blog. There seem to be very limited ways to place them on the page. Also, the cut-and-paste-code images seem to behave differently than the uploaded ones. No doubt if I knew more about html coding I could mess with it, but I thought that was partly what these blogging tools were all about, that one didn't need to write html. Sigh.

Thing 5 - My friend Flickr (mashups)

Well, the concept of mashups has a lot of potential, but given the limitations of this exercise, I didn't see any of the Flickr mashups that had anything much beyond novelty interest for a library. And the only thing that really seemed even workable for the purposes of this exercise was the spelling one. (Though that was really cool.)

The mashups I've seen in a library or archive context that make much more sense have to do with mashing up images from a special collection (say pictures of historic barns) with map information. Take a look at Barns of Winnebago County at the Oshkosh Public Library.

Or again, if you are going to have a library Flickr account and post images from library events you could do a mosaic wall sort of thing, but this seems kind of on the edges as far as core library services and innovation around this Web 2.0 idea.

An impressive but nonlibrary mash up is Follow the Oil Money. This website creates a visual relationship map of the contribution network between politicians and oil companies that donate to their campaigns. The data comes from sources including the Sunlight Labs API, the Democracy In Action API, the Federal Election Commission (FEC), Center for Responsive Politics, and GovTrack.us. I'd like to see some of the library world's larger players doing beefy stuff like this. Librarian trading cards -- not so much. Though perhaps those have their place.

Update 10/7/08. Once again, I have to moderate my previous comments. I've had a look at the librarian trading cards created for the librarians at Carleton College. I have to say, I found them very amusing. But then, I'm an old fogey librarian, not a college kid. I'd like to know if they are effective in getting more students or faculty to contact the librarians (I assume that was the idea?).