#23

What is there left to say?

I hope that I will feel the desire to update this blog now and again in the future. I'd rather not let it just sit around and dry up, but I suppose time will tell. It's hard to know if I will have any worthy insights into the relationship between the web and the library until I am actually a working professional (a part time library job doesn't quite count, I don't think).

The considerable breadth of topics covered over all of the "things" and the fact that the source from which these assignments were culled is already growing a bit stale demonstrates just how quickly the profession is moving. I am definitely not advocating a need to scramble and upend the way everything is done. Instead...patient vigilance and the willingness to change. The willingness to improve by abandoning the old and / or extraneous, the willingness to be unsure of one's self because of, you know, trying something new. And the willingness to share, both for the benefit of one's co-workers and for the profession at large. That's what I'd be advocating.

I think that does it for now.

You've been a wonderful audience, tip your waitress, etc...

#15

Hitting reverse a little before wrapping things up...

Hmm nope. Not keen on Rollyo at all. At least as far as personal use goes, I would never spend time finding the right specialized search engine and then trying to use that. I don't know if other people are a lot more willing to search and play around with tangentially related resources, but I usually have a pretty good time of typing what I'm looking for into Google, and it comes up without too much effort or it doesn't (this is with regards to personal use, mind you). This to me seems like just another tool that tries to dance around getting a task done in some clever way. I admire that it's trying to give users control of their search resources but...I don't need it.

However, this isn't to say that Rollyo is useless. I can see how you might use it to build specialized engines for patrons to utilize, and build a hub of not only links but entire search engines (both ones the library compiled and ones they found on Rollyo already set for use). I do wonder if patrons would even be interested in this kind of resource or if they'd just proceed directly to Google because they are used to the results that it provides and their degree of good enough-ness. And with so many user-generated engines, how do you determine which ones are good and have a thoughtfully curated bunch of resources? Rollyo has possibilities for use in the library, certainly, but not without some hitches.

#22

One of the best ways I can think of to keep up with trends is to follow blogs or join mailing lists that deal with your specific area of librarianship (along with a few general interest ones as well). I don't think one can be expected to be always scouring for the latest trends and developments, but if a blog or mailing list makes getting news related to your field a part of your routine then it's not so much of a chore. I think it is important to also not overstuff yourself with input. If you get your information from every last resource available then nothing will stand out and you'll hardly be able to read for information, you'll only be able to skim in order to keep up. Knowing your limits and where the reach of your knowledge and expertise ends is something I'm not sure people consider too often.

I think it's also the responsibility of library administration to make sure their staff is getting periodic professional development related to web trends and tools. This could either be in the form of periodic required development during the work day, or making sure staff is aware of seminars, webinars, and classes that could be of use. Also, encouraging dialogue between staff members might be a good idea as well.

How to best keep up with all these changes is probably going to change as well. I don't think people who have been working in the profession for 15, 20+ years could have fully predicted the changes they've had to ride out and what they would have to do to keep abreast, but it seems like they've managed. As with so many other parts of doing a librarian's work, the ability and willingness to adapt will allow one to keep up with what needs to be kept up with.

I know I fully intend to keep up with things in whatever sort of position I land in. I would feel like I wasn't really completely doing my job if I was lax about it.

#21

The RPC, along with the teacher's guide materials, seems like not just a great set of resources to use when thinking about how to guide the structure of student research, but also a great way to guide time management. By setting non-official deadlines, the RPC (and the Assignment Calculator) would help to keep a student on track with the amount of work they should be doing while also providing a structure to assemble the work by. It could be conceived of as a lot of "hand-holding," I think, in the sense that the student doesn't need to struggle with creating a research model for themselves, but for so many students, the work just has to be done and these tools make for one less thing to worry about and devote attention to. The same goes for the additional teacher's guide items: more nudges, which means possibly less thought devoted to the process.

Now, this isn't to say I wouldn't use these kinds of tools on projects of my own. Now that I know they exist, I just might in the future. And you might be able to use it for library projects: for planning an important presentation to the board, or maybe timing out a complex grant proposal.

I think these are just good tools to have on hand even if you aren't doing any instruction and a student wants to know how to conduct this or that part of their research or how to put this or that kind of a presentation together.

#20

Books are still circulating quite regularly where I work, and I can't imagine that changing anytime soon. At this point it's still a matter of convenience and cost (or lack therof) for patrons. If every patron could have an ebook reader of some kind, and be able to download everything they need from the library, then they would do it. Wouldn't you? I would.
Obviously, the infrastructure (legal and otherwise) is not in place to do this yet, not to mention that ebook readers are still prohibitively expensive for a number of people (although, as with all technology, things are slowly leveling off). Will the library of the future just have shelves full of ebooks pre-loaded with entire collections? Not until they become durable enough to handle public abuse for years and / or be mended whenever the need arises.

Now, I am a huge fan of books as a physical object, but I think unless something about the presentation or formatting is particularly unique (think Mark Danielewski, or the 21 x 16 inch Kramers Ergot 7), the book is just a text vessel. It's just a matter of time before we figure out what the superior vessel is: paper or a screen.

I really enjoyed this piece from earlier this year about how good design will keep books relevant by taking advantage of their physicality, and allowing the iPad to take advantage of it's digital-ness.

This "thing" was a little thick and I didn't really want to wade through all of the different sites listed. I'll try to rip through some of it at least.

-Who on earth would want to read whole books (and by the looks of it, only public domain books) on their regular, tiny-screened phone?

-If you begin looking at / for reader's advisory sites, you will never stop. I tend to prefer sites that have actual lists rather than clever ways to try and lead the user to new books. Just give me some recommendations and send me on my way, don't make me jump through hoops for it! To look up books in a series I use Fantastic Fiction and it works quite nicely.

-I admire the motivation behind that LibriVox thing but I wonder how (or if) they vet the volunteer readers? Without some kind of screening / quality control you could end up with some really terrible audio versions of some books.

-I came across a book swap called Yours Mine Ours not too long ago, which I like because it is focused on art and design books, but I don't like it because the layout is kind of sterile and uninviting. A bit too...arty. Figures.

#19

I think that the motivation behind "specialty" social networks is noble, but I think to a large extent it's just another example of web developers not often thinking through what exactly they are creating and just ending up with services that are redundant, poorly designed, and choked with advertisements.

I have visited last.fm a few times but never seen the necessity to join (I don't really get why I would want to share my music play counts with other folks, or what that would do...).

I wonder how many people still utilize the lowly forum / message board, and if that is considered a primal form of "social networking." I suppose Ning allows you to create a forum section on your site, but I'm talking about sites that are only a forum. (The forums on Ning sites seem pretty poorly organized anyway)
There was a forum that some acquaintances made just for their general group of friends, and that was a lot of fun (it doesn't exist any more, unfortunately). There is a forum I frequent that centers around the sort of music I enjoy, but there are sub-forums on that site to talk about other stuff that is non-music related, but of course it is with that same group of like-minded folks. I don't know, I feel like all of these different social networks (which can really be created by anybody with only a modicum of effort) are trying to pull people in by dazzling with sight and sound and screaming "This is a way to meet people who like the thing you do!" and all the while ignoring (or at least making secondary) actual dialogue and interaction with other people. It's not like I am engaging in life-altering conversations of incredible depth at the forums I browse, but I think it's more fulfilling than these sites where it just ends up being a way to share statistics.

Like robots. Social robots. "I'll show you my data if you show me yours, let's calculate our compatibility."

#18

I've had Facebook and MySpace accounts for quite a while. I recall being decidedly skeptical of the utility / necessity of both when they were first becoming popular during my undergrad years, but I signed up for accounts anyway.

Using MySpace always felt like a bit of a chore, and I rarely visit my own MySpace page anymore (maybe once every few months?). No matter how many redesigns they have attempted the interface at MySpace has always been so clunky. Also, spam via MySpace was pretty irritating (spam messages being left on your page or spam friend requests). The main reason I ever started using MySpace (and the only reason I visit any of its pages at all anymore) is because of the ability to hear songs that are posted by musicians I like. It's still good for that, even though the MySpace music player has never been ideal either.

I was really happy right away with how Facebook put me back in touch with high school friends that I either had not spoken with for a few years, or it just made it easier to keep up with good friends that happened to be at different schools. The exclusivity of it (how it was just for college students) was sort of neat. Clearly now Facebook has become a behemoth, but, for me, it still does a good job of serving that original purpose of creating a common ground by which to communicate and share with friends. Now, though, it is a common ground for communicating with family, artists, musicians, and, for better or worse, corporate entities of all kinds. In my mind it has succeeded because it does what MySpace tries to do but in a cleaner, more accessible way. Sure, you can't deck out your Facebook page with goofy decorations and backgrounds that make it chug along at a snail's pace, but, with that customization aspect lacking, Facebook is a far sleeker and easier to use. Everything feels more integrated in Facebook whereas MySpace feels very piecemeal.

I'm not aware of many libraries actively trying to reach their user base via MySpace anymore. It's much easier to do this on Facebook now, and I do think it's a great way to show patrons "Look at this thing we just did yesterday / right now!" and to keep them updated on upcoming events, new arrivals, etc. It could also be a good way to solicit feedback (although folks might not be comfortable with the fact that their comments wouldn't be anonymous on Facebook). And when / if Facebook falls out of favor with the general public, librarians will just migrate along with everyone else.

#17

Podcasts are one of my favorite internet things, and I still feel like sort of a nerd when I tell someone about something I heard from a podcast and they'll say "Podcast? What's that?" It definitely hasn't reached the saturation point that so many other kinds of internet technology has, or at least it doesn't seem that way.

I listen to a lot of podcasts, such as:

• Comedy Death Ray (comedians goofing around and doing characters)
  
• The Sound of Young America and Jordan, Jesse, Go! (interviews with comedians, authors, and musicians, and more goofing around and digressive conversation)
  
• Filmspotting (thoughtful reviews of both newly released movies and older selections)
  
• Radiolab (great stories about science and how it relates to actual people)

...and many others.

I don't agree with the NEFLIN definition of a podcast as being "non-musical" because there are plenty of podcasts around (Resident Advisor, FACT Magazine, and Digitalis just to name a few) that consist of just music mixes. Kind of a weirdly boneheaded thing to claim...

The fact that many podcasts can be subscribed to through iTunes makes it really easy to keep track of everything. Also, for me, iTunes beats all of those different directories. The recommendations for similar podcasts are fairly on point, and browsing is quite easy. Some of those directories (at least from the NEFLIN blog) have pretty terrible design, so it's a chore to go through them.

I'm not going to rush to make my own podcast (it's hard enough to convince myself that the world needs me posting in my blog). I feel like if a podcast is worth listening to and if it is going to reach a wider audience it has to have a pretty high standard of production quality, the content has to be consistently engaging, and it should be released on a fairly regular schedule. I'm fairly certain I would fail to deliver on all three fronts.

It really seems that only libraries in large metropolitan areas have regular podcasts (or, as far as I can tell, the only ones worth checking out), due in part to the frequency of well-known authors visiting and appearing on the podcasts. I'm not sure how useful it would be for small local libraries to try and put a podcast together, or a specialty library on a campus, because I'm not sure if the audience would be there and I don't know how much there would be to talk about that couldn't be communicated via other avenues.

#16

Following the schedule given, we bypass thing #15 for now, with the intention of returning to it later.

For now, YouTube.

Finding a video "worth adding to your blog" is a pretty subjective task. I could try and choose something relevant to libraries and reference. Or, I could post this:



So, clearly, YouTube is good for a lot of silliness (it took a lot of willpower to not just post a bunch of Japanese gum commercials and weird David Shrigley cartoons). And a lot of it is junk. As a result of it's sheer volume, though, there is a lot of useful material to be found. Tutorial videos that people upload are great, and I've used some to help me through the HTML part of the Technology Gateway. I watched another so I could have a visual walkthrough of how to hand-bind a sketchbook. And I think when it comes to the junk, you don't have to deal with it / watch it if you don't want to, and I think a lot of it the general public never sees because it is titled or tagged in such an obscure way that only friends or family of the individual that posted the video ever see it. YouTube is sort of a triumph of the whole "tagging" movement in that sense.

For one of the more creative, charming, and pretty uses of YouTube (that I've seen so far at least), I highly suggest checking out In Bb (In B flat).

I think YouTube provides a lot of options for library usage. It could work for advertising and promotion, tutorials could be uploaded to a library channel, as could walkthroughs of how different features unique to a particular library function, librarians could upload their own videos of book reviews or discussions (for reader's advisory), and so on. There really are quite a lot of options, it all just depends on how much in the way of time and resources a library wishes to devote to it.

YouTube is great, but I see more and more professional-level, original, creative video content hosted by Vimeo all the time. They seem to take a very deliberate curatorial standpoint there, and it makes their content stand out from the relative jungle of YouTube.

Finally, I won't post it here, but here is a link to a video I uploaded / made of a scene from the movie Dark Star.

#14

I've tried using iGoogle in the past and didn't really enjoy it. I don't know if I just need to play with it more or what. I like being able to focus on one thing at a time I guess. My RSS feed is busy enough as it is, I don't want my email and the weather and whatever else vying for my attention all at once. Maybe I just need to adjust things a bit more, I don't know.

I use Google Calendar all the time. It's really nice being able to color-code different kinds of events and set reminders, and the interface is nice and straightforward. Even though my Mac has iCal, I can get to my Google Calendar from anywhere. Similarly, my Mac has a built in sticky notes widget, but I just use the "tasks" tab in my Google account to list reminders from time to time. I don't use a "list" like this to jot down anything particularly important, just a little note about something to check into when I get a chance. I generally lead a pretty post-it free / reminder-free life otherwise, I'm not sure how exactly I get by without staring at a list of reminders every day.

I think all of the different productivity applications offered under the Google umbrella is one of the best examples I can think of that demonstrate how digital work, digital lives, are moving to the cloud. There's no need to store a lot of different kinds of information at home when it's easier to just throw it out onto the web. It's why Google Docs has been my go-to for group projects / collaboration: each individual can work on things when they choose without having to be in a central location, and you can chat with collaborators if they're working on the same document at the same time.
All of this integration means you have to trust a corporation enough to handle all of these aspects of your life, of course. That's where things get sticky I guess. Clearly, Google has me pretty well sold: I use them for my email, RSS reader, calendar, notes, blogging, really everything except my homepage. I guess they've got me, but it really is nice to know I have all of those tools in one place.

I think these kinds of tools are best for personal tasks rather than library tasks (with the exception being Google Docs for small group work). At the workplace it's a little different: it makes sense to have a paper calendar hanging up that doesn't require you to log in to look at it. It makes sense to have some post-it notes handy. Both personally and professionally a tool is only useful when it solves a problem. I'm not going to go out of my way to find tools that, while possibly neat or clever, solve a problem that I don't really have in the first place.

#13

LibraryThing and GoodReads are great sites and I like the idea / motivation behind them.


I think using these sites would be an excellent way for users at a library to find out what other people in their community are reading (by creating a group for that community and sharing within that group). I just wonder if there would be a lot of people who wouldn't be interested in sharing, either because they want to keep their reading habits private or because they don't really care about other people's recomendations and comments. And of course it's a great way for those who frequent the library to get recommendations from outside of their community as well.


I think the fact that LibraryThing has a mobile component is great, and I think LibraryThing for Libraries having an infrastructure in place to put catalogs on mobile platforms is even better. Using these services would be an easy way for libraries to make that jump to the realm of mobile content.

I also like the idea behind LibraryThing Local. It's a nice way to have a central location where you can look up literary events the same way that you might look up information about upcoming concerts or movies in a city paper (or, as I prefer, on the Onion A.V. Club website). It's not of much use unless every library indexed actually posts their events, and for me there are no events listed in or around Janesville, even though I know there are different talks and book club events going on all the time.

I went ahead and made a LibraryThing account (which is here). It took hardly any time to set up (you don't even need to give your email address), and adding books to your collection is very easy and very fast. My books aren't terribly popular, and they don't have much in the way of reviews. Right away this is reminding me of Amazon (at least in the way of recommendations, and it figures that a lot of the LibraryThing catalog is just linked from Amazon). None of the recommendations are really surprising me. I don't know how much I'll use this in the future, but I definitely think there is plenty that libraries can do (and already have done) with LibraryThing.

#12

I had been vaguely aware of the existence of wikis prior to this prompt, but had not really ever considered utilizing one myself. For collaborative work in classes I have only ever used Google Docs, and it has certainly done the job just fine. It seems like wikis are a perfectly acceptable way to do the same kind of collaborative work, though, and I very well might utilize one in the near future.

I like how some people decide to make their own mini-Wikipedias that are specific to an area of interest (for example, this wiki about a cartoon I like). It makes it possible for people to create an authoritative collection of information similar to Wikipedia, just about something very specific.
I don't think I'm too crazy about the SJPCL subject guides, because it seems to serve a lot of the same purposes that a regular library homepage ought to. I do suppose it would be easier for any of the staff to jump in and edit the wiki instead of waiting for a webmaster to do what you want (if you were not familiar with HTML / XML / etc). It also seems that similar subject lists could be found elsewhere, but the wiki provides the chance to tailor such lists to the library's specific community and their actual holdings / resources.

The Library Success wiki is practically a database for library solutions, and I think it's a great resource for library employees to both refer to when they need a boost and add too when they have a stroke of genius. It's well organized (I like how everything is nicely nested / compartmentalized) and to the point. I think this is a great demonstration of a wiki being used to its fullest potential.

The ACPL staff wiki is also an effective way to sort of save notes / tips / reminders for staff without sending a bunch of emails or collecting a bunch of bookmarks in a browser or delicious. I wonder if many library staffs would consider building such a resource to be worth the time? Because it would take some time to build a wiki up to a point where it's actually of use to more than just a very small number of people.

I like the blogging libraries wiki too. All in all I think wikis can make for an effective sharing tool, but you need to take the time to think about how you're going to structure it, and have a definite purpose in mind.

When it comes to limiting student use of Wikipedia, I can understand the impulse to do so. I also think that, after showing students better ways to accrue their information, and they still chose to gather their information only from Wikipedia, it might be instructive for them to actually fail, to have it demonstrated that "This is not sufficient." Perhaps it isn't fair to set students up for failure in such a way, but it's a thought. I think the standard way of thinking at this point is that Wikipedia is a good place to start, but it isn't where you should end, and I subscribe to that idea.

#11

Previous to this prompt I have never used any social media sites to share or acquire any sort of news stories, and I don't intend to in the future. Aside from NewsVine, which seems to largely deal with, you know, actual news, other social media sites seem to largely deal with curiosities and amusements. Which is fine, but it's not news.

One thing that these sites seem to trumpet is the interactivity of it all, and the ability to comment and rate things. That's all well and good, but it takes almost no time at all for people to display their pettiness, just their utter smallness when they begin a virtual slugfest over contentious issues. NewsVine is largely news, but most of the "news" appears to be provided by partisan sources (on both sides), which makes it highly editorialized news. A viewpoint is built right into the links to many of the articles on Reddit. People distract themselves from concentrating on actual issues and actual news by either patting each other on the back for agreeing viewpoints or tearing each other apart. It's nonsense, it's a cavalcade of virtual chest-poking, it's a race to get past the news and get down to proving "insightfulness" (or displaying a loose grasp on grammar / the English language). It's the same way when people comment on articles for my hometown's local paper, the Janesville Gazette. Just a lot of people coming up with different ways to say "See, I told you so!" or "You're an idiot!" And I just realized oh my God I AM ACTING LIKE THEM RIGHT NOW NOOOOOOOOOOO.

...

I guess you can always just ignore the comments. And I guess I have difficulty understanding the impulse to try and share news stories / blog posts with nobody and then make comments on these stories and posts to a universe that doesn't know who you are.

Getting onto sort of a tangent, this is the same reason why it's hard to take reviews at Yelp or UrbanSpoon seriously: some of the people on those sites hate everything (or love everything). There is no requirement to actually be critical and fully explain your ratings, and that's not useful to me.

I would be extremely hesitant to utilize any of these sites in a library setting. I suppose you could set it up so that patrons could vote posts from your library blog up on various sites, but what good does that do you outside of your immediate user group? It would be foolish to recommend any of these sites as a decent place to get news. Even CNN.com is hardly any better than many of these sites.

Personally, I stick to BBC News and NPR for actual news because it seems to be provided with the least inflection. It can be dry and dull for sure but it's much easier to digest.

#10

For this post I started by going back and tagging / labeling all of my previous posts. So there's that.

I had been considering signing up for delicious for a while, so I decided that this would be a good excuse to go ahead and try it. So now that I'm signed up and have my bookmarks imported in I am not really liking this at all. I am beginning to feel my oldness I think. I don't think I'll be able to stand by delicious at all, at least as far as personal use goes. Maybe it's just something in the air today, but trying to navigate through the layout on delicious is not fun at all but rather stressful. Maybe I am anti-social but I'm not interested in having another way for people to share webpages with me. Facebook does that well enough, and so does Google Reader. By and large I can find enough information about what I'm interested in on my own, thankyouverymuch. Essentially, it's too many steps and too much noise to navigate through to find what I actually want.

I think I am in agreement with Jenna that my browser's bookmarks work just fine, that I like having a sort of tiered folder structure (similar to how I navigate my computer's harddrive). I feel as thought I have a much easier time of keeping things streamlined in browser bookmarks. Everything that I want / need to check regularly comes up in and can be searched in my Reader; I don't have any serious separation anxiety when using a machine that does not have my own bookmarks. And the bookmarks in my browser can be searched as well, independent of tags.

However, I can fully see the advantages of using delicious to share bookmarks in a library setting (or other work settings for that matter). The library I work at has an account (albeit a rather sleepy one with regards to actual activity going on), and I can imagine delicious would be a great way to exchange webpages between establishments and share new and trending ideas. Setting up multiple accounts is not a bad idea for sharing bookmarks that might be of interest to different groups of users (I think Jenna mentioned College Library having it's own account, presumably other libraries on campus might have their own accounts. Or in a public library, different accounts could be established for different branches or departments).

I don't think I would recommend using delicious for serious and / or scholarly research, though. It would be really difficult to establish credibility / legitimacy of many sources. Just because it has a tag on it that might be relevant to something you were after doesn't mean you should cite that webpage. Is there anyone that has really considered using delicious to conduct scholarly research? If so, that is a crazy thing.

Casual, relatively inconsequential everyday life research, though, sure, go nuts.

#9

For my slideshow I decided to follow Jenna's lead and a.) use Blogger's integrated slideshow tool / Picasa and b.) make my slideshow consist of selected pictures from my own trip to Japan.

It's still possible to share this slideshow / photo album through Picasa (direct links to posting on Buzz, Blogger, and Twitter, code to embed the album or slideshow into a post, the ability to add an album to your RSS feed). So in the case of Blogger, where there is a slideshow option already integrated, there's no significant need to use a different external tool, as perfectly functional as they may be.

In my opinion, the fewer steps you have to take outside of a particular interface to fill your needs, the better. If Blogger can fill many of your needs as far as different tools are concerned, why not use what they offer?

If we're talking about sharing full-fledged presentations and not just casual photo collections, then you would want to utilize some sort of screencasting application like Jing, CaptureFox or Screenr (among many other options). That's a whole other ball game, though.

These sort of photo sharing tools could definitely help to spruce up a library blog, and it would be a great way to make photos from recent events visible right in a post, as opposed to providing a link to a Flickr gallery (one extra step, I know, but still...).

#8

So I used AIM for years, basically from the time our family got an internet connection sometime in the late 90's, all the way through college. In 2007 I got a Gmail account, and after having a chat function integrated with my email, my AIM usage tapered off pretty quickly. Chat through Gmail and the occasional chat through Facebook are all I use for instant messaging now.
I do like the idea of IM aggregator services, but have never used one. All the people I ever needed to chat with were always on AIM for many years, and then most of the people I wanted to chat with migrated to Gchat or Facebook.
I know using instant messaging of various kinds has become more popular at libraries over the past few years, especially in academic libraries, and I'm all for it. I have never used any kind of service myself but I know there are people who use it regularly. I'm not so sure about instant messenger integration with reference in public libraries though. I actually hope to find out more about this during my practicum.

Email is of course pretty essential to how any workplace functions. There are plenty of library mailing lists to keep patrons up to date on events and new arrivals, and as an employee it's a great way to drop a little note about something that needs to be done or some point of interest without creating a mass of post-its.

I think using texting as a way to provide reference service is just a bit out of reach right now, unless there were some sort of computer-based client by which you could receive and answer text messages. In that case it'd be totally fine, it would be like a non-commercial version of ChaCha or KGB. Personally, I do send text messages, but not constantly by any stretch, so I think I would sooner call the library than text (if that were an option).

I used a web conferencing service last spring for my internet tools & trends class. Using Adobe Connect individuals gave presentations about various web tools and how a library might utilize them. This involved both speaking and screen-sharing a PowerPoint presentation. The rest of the group could comment in a chatbox on the side while the presentations were happening (only one person could speak to the whole group at a time). It was a new experience for me and though it was sort of awkward it went relatively well. I think as the technology continues to improve and streamline and video chat and screencasting / sharing become more common this would be a great way to provide reference service or technology / internet instruction in both one-on-one and group situations.

#7

Wouldn't he be an asset to your deck?

So I guess I need to re-evaluate (or at least give a closer evaluation to) the potential of these mashup / generator things.

I think one of the main reasons I kick back so hard against this stuff is that a lot of these tools seem to be things you could find in basic photo editing software. However, perhaps not every staff computer at a library would be equipped with such software, so having creative tools and generators available online could be a useful and immediate solution to various problems.

Some of these tools could conceivably be handy for promotion of events (using the movie poster tool to make a flier for a movie event, the magazine cover tool to make a flier for a back-issue sale). Using badge maker to create themed name tags might be a way to add some flair to staff members hosting a particular event. The trading card thing could be a good way to get the word out about gaming events at the library (for youth and adults). A comic page generator to make a flier promoting "graphic novel month" at a library. Lots or promotional / publicity options, for sure.

One annoying thing with a lot of these image generators / photo editors is that the completed project often is stuck with a watermark of some kind, leaving some obnoxious text in one corner. Quite gaudy. Navigation on a lot of these sites is sort of a pain too. A lot of ads to deal with, really weird / awkward layout, sometimes both. To me these sort of tools would honestly feel a bit more legit and worth investigating if they were made available in as simple and intuitive a way as Flickr.

#6

Here I go being all sour again but the above describes how I feel about mashups and the like (at least the ones regarding photo sharing / Flickr).

I really don't find any genuine utility in almost all of these things. Being able to spell out stuff from Flickr photos is fun, it's cute, fine. But is it really useful? I don't know, maybe for someone else but not for me. And all of those applications on the Big Huge Labs site? It says it right there: they're toys. The application that turns an image into a blog header might be a time saver, I'll admit. And it is not as though this Big Huge Labs list is the end-all be-all home of mashups, but in general I think mashups are good for a bit of time killin' but not much more than that.

I couldn't properly say how a library could use some of these mashups. I do suppose it might be fun for younger kids in a school media center to play around with some of these, but I don't think a public library or certainly an academic library could get much mileage out of, you know, LOLcat generator. If someone has some great ideas and I am just not thinking hard enough about this, please, share!

Again, sorry if I sound like a jerk. Just not a fan of this stuff.

#5

This image is an example of why I like Flickr. Aside from being a mind-bogglingly massive collection of all kinds of photography, it's also an enormous collection of drawings, paintings and art of just about any kind. What you see above is comic artist Tom Gauld's contribution to a sketchbook devoted to David Bowie (you can find the rest (and should find the rest) here).

Flickr is a great way for individuals working in any kind of visual medium to maintain a kind of virtual portfolio. You can even subscribe to photostreams using RSS (I do). In my mind this works as a fully acceptable replacement for a blog or website for some artists I like, and I can see work they've finished just a day or two earlier.

Searching though Flickr can be in turns frustrating and delightful. Frustrating when you have to slog through literally thousands of images, concocting ways to refine your search in order to track down an image you want, delightful when you come upon a load of images you didn't even know you wanted. I've found images of not just artists' works but of artists-in-action that I didn't even know were available. I do suppose the question of permission comes up when taking photos of others' work, but Flickr offers a variety of Creative Commons licenses that users can apply to their photos.

I think it's very advantageous for galleries, museums, rare book collections and various archives to add photos of their holdings to Flickr. By reaching the wide audience that Flickr has, they have the chance to receive input about a work's metadata that they may not have gained otherwise. Yale's Beinecke Library openly encourages this sort of participation (http://www.flickr.com/photos/beinecke_library).

For sharing photos of my own I actually stick to Facebook. It is certainly not because of a lack of love for Flickr. Rather it is because a.) I see no point in publicly sharing pictures of myself or friends on Flickr and b.) any of my own drawings I'm uploading directly to Blogger for posting on my blog anyway. Perhaps starting my own Flickr might be a way to get my drawings seen by more people. I might want to get a better scanner first...

I think Flickr would be a great way to publicize events for a library, in the sense that you can record / take photos at an event, add them to Flickr, and have a link to recent photos on a the library's web site. It seems like this would be a great way to generate interest in library events. Or, as I said earlier, a library with some kind of specialty collection could post images of this unique collection to Flickr so that those items could reach a wider user base.

#4

I've been using Google Reader for well over a year now, and I don't know how anyone keeps up with the internet (that's right, the entire internet) without it, or without something like it.

It's such a great way to keep up with everything I find interesting, divide it into categories, save posts I like for later (if I can't read the entire post right then and there), etc. When it comes to having a really personalized homepage, that's sort of what Reader is to me. It's all the news / information that matters to me because, well, I chose the sources.

One of the aspects I like the most about it is the ability to share posts with others. My wife and I will share posts back and forth just about every day from the different blogs we follow. She'll share recipes with me that she thinks we might want to try, I'll share goofy pictures or a blog post about a band I think she'll like. I also get to share with other friends who choose to follow my shared items, although it is sometimes discouraging that often it is only my wife and I sharing back and forth and making comments. I wonder if the user base on Google Reader is not as strong as I imagine it is (or should be)? Or maybe my other friends just don't check in on their reader as much, and just share with each other on Tumblr? I still share links on Facebook, but it's easier / more instant with Reader.

Another thing I like is the Explore feature. When using Explore, Reader throws random recent posts at you from blogs that are somehow related to ones you already subscribe to (sort of like Amazon's "Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought," but with, you know, blogs). I have stumbled across some good posts and actually subscribed to some blogs as a result of poking around using Explore. This is an example of what I mean from the previous post about coming across news sources / blogs of interest "organically."

I think Google Buzz has been a way that they tried to integrate Reader with a more deliberately social function, but it was really awkward. I disabled Buzz on my account the same day I tried it.

I think librarians could use RSS to, of course, keep up with library blogs that are specific to whatever kind of librarianship they are involved in and be part of the conversation regarding trends, changes, news, etc. As far as using RSS to help patrons, I'm not sure how a library could use it beyond creating a blog / feed that their users could subscribe to where they could post news about new arrivals, events, and so on.

Here are a few favorites in my Reader:
-The Great Showdowns: Epic movie showdowns as illustrated by Scott Campbell (with the term "showdown" sometimes being applied very loosely, making the drawings even more funny).
-Rad Dudes: The name says it all. Also, rad kids and rad ladies.

#3

I hate to sound like a sourpuss but I don't think I am too keen on blog searching.

In general I don't turn to blogs for news, or do blog searches for information, but for the sake of being a good sport, I tried searching for some info about an artist I like named Barry McGee on Technorati, BlogPulse, and BlogCatalog.

Technorati only yielded 7 posts, all about a recent mural McGee did on Houston Street in New York City (which I had already read about thanks to a friend posting about it on Facebook). I thought it was strange that the results didn't go any further (perhaps has something to do with the "authority rating" of the posts?). It felt like I was being blocked somehow.

The results on BlogPulse went much deeper (965 results, some in foreign languages), but there was no easy way to dig back to the older posts. The recent posts (all made within the past few weeks) were all about the same mural in New York.

A search on BlogCatalog came up with posts about a joint gallery show between McGee and Clare Rojas back at the start of the summer, which I had not heard about and was glad to see some images. There were also some results about the mural. Some results were fully unrelated ("Inspirational Country Music Award Nominees"). Unlike BlogPulse or Technorati there were no dates listed with the results. The only way I could find out when the post was from was actually clicking on the link and reading the post, so that was a bit inconvenient.

I don't generally seek out new blogs or news via blogs using a blog search. I think it's awkward and inconvenient and at this point a normal search engine will direct you to just as many if not more blogs with relevant posts. I do suppose it's an effective way to search if you're only interested in the very latest posts about something you're interested in, or if you're doing a really broad search for blogs about "cooking" or "movies" or something. Even so, a regular search engine can do this!

I come across blogs more organically in general, via suggestions from friends or links that come up on blogs I already read. Once again, I'll talk more about my info-gathering habits more when I talk about RSS.

For actual "news" news, I stick with the BBC's website and the sites for local papers.

#2

I feel like "web 2.0" and "library 2.0" are already becoming outdated phrases / ideas. Or maybe overused. I'm just tired of hearing "2.0" attached to every damn thing.

The social interactivity that defines all things "2.0" has already become such a well-worn and fully-integrated aspect of how we experience the web. It's no longer a new thing to me and it's no longer a new thing to many libraries (most libraries? I hope it's most libraries). It's just part of how I operate when using the web, and it's part of how libraries reach their user base.

Tagging has the potential to really change cataloging and searching (to some extent already has, certainly in web-specific realms (Flickr, etc)).

Wikipedia, while by no means perfect, has shown that an information hub created and rigorously edited and critiqued by its own users can result in a resource as authoritative as its old-timey counterparts.

Creative Commons licenses appear to have greatly increased due in part to the free-sharing attitudes of the "2.0" web, changing the way media is produced and consumed.

In general I think libraries are in a great position to sort of harness the huge participatory aspects of the 2.0-iverse, to heed the input of the public but to temper it with expertise, research, a critical eye, and create a positive information feedback loop. Does that make sense?

I'll talk about RSS later...

I couldn't tell you what's next, or what to call the next thing. "3.0," "Semantic Web," "Skynet," whatever. It's important to try to be aware of what's coming around the bend, no question. How is HTML5 going to impact things? I hardly know what it is but it's coming. Mobile access is just going to increase. And so on. It is as silly to try and predict a sort of "information movement" as it is to label it as soon as its clearly shown itself and then shout about it as much as you can. Does having the label change how you integrate the technology into your life or work? I don't think it should, but maybe having the stability of an obvious umbrella term lets us know what our pushing-off point to the next thing is.

#1

Let's get crackin'.

I have one other blog, which I have had since 2007 (it's here), which I don't maintain as often as I should. I originally intended for it (and still wish it to be) a depository for sketches and blabbing about comics, but lately it has been a depository for screencaps from movies I like. Kind of like a Tumblr but not a Tumblr. I want to stop that. (I have mixed feelings about Tumblr...)

THIS blog, of course, will be dedicated to all things 635. Strictly business.

Okay, mostly business.