#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.