Summary: wow!

This was a very useful project. I learned a lot. I felt that I gained only a superficial understanding of the things we learned about, mostly because of the time constraints, but taking the first few steps are vitally important in making them less threatening and exposing myself to their usefulness and appeal. I thought all the subjects covered were interesting and useful. I would definitely take another course like this in the future.

I found that I needed to spend more than 1 1/2 hours each week to complete the exercises. Maybe the project should be spread over a longer time period.

Some of the instructions were cryptic. Adding a sentence or two might have helped. For example, the overview on podcasts did not emphasize that they are non-visual (or can they be?)

Overdrive audiobooks and Sirsi?

Whatever exercise we are doing, I always learn something useful. For instance, for this exercise I learned that Overdrive's collection includes language learning audiobooks. My overall impression of Overdrive is that their interface is well-designed and user friendly, such as marking titles that are permitted to be burned to CD and offering categories like newly arrived or recently returned.

Unfortunately, they don't seem to use Library of Congress subject headings, relying on keywords. They limit the search field "subject" to less than 50 subjects. This probably means we won't be able to add our audiobook collection to Sirsi -- or, if we actually can add them to our catalog, that when you do a subject search, audiobooks will not be included in the hit list. Things get ever more complicated.

Podcasted

I listened to an interview with David Sedaris which was sponsored and podcasted (can it be used as a verb?) by the Kankakee Public Library. (How does such an obscure sounding place get such a high-powered speaker?) Then using Podcast Alley I found an interesting subscription podcast called "The Unnamed Path," which promotes New Age spiritualism.

It was interesting that the Sedaris podcast did not require a podcast receiver. But, to listen to one of the 55 or so lectures on the Unnamed Path, I had to first download a receiver (I chose Juice) and then download the particular lecture I wanted to hear. So some podcasts are by subscription, and others are just parts of websites to be clicked on. I added the Unnamed Path to my bloglines account. Some of the 10 feeds from them turned out to be new podcasts, and some were just news and information and were not podcasts. As is typical of the Internet, nothing is neat and tidy and easily categorizable. Everything is mixed together and the whole is greater than the parts.

YouTube and slam poetry

There's quite a bit of slam poetry on YouTube. YouTube is a perfect medium for slam poetry -- performances just waiting to be filmed for their in-your-face attitude, the visuals, and the appreciative responses of the audiences. One I saw today is "Liking Me" by Sonya Renee, a runner up in the nationals. It's about having safe sex in a hip-hop culture that frowns upon it.

Some interesting features: YouTube allows you to save favorite videos in folders, which is convenient. The comment area is always interesting. The quality varies a lot -- but hey not everything has to be perfect to be appreciated.

Since sound is such an integral part to movies, we wouldn't want to put a video on the library's homepage. But I can imagine the library might create videos to be seen on YouTube, such as videos of our programs or special promotions. I don't think this is a very effective promotional avenue because YouTube reaches a national audience and is not limited to the local community. On the other hand, our video for the summer reading program has been viewed 409 times as of today -- not a bad number, considering. But I still think it would function better as a video archive.

Web 2.0 tools: www.revolutionhealth.com and its ambitious scope

This website was started by AOL founder Steve Case. I like it's thoughtfully worded, pro-activist mission statement. It talks about interceding in areas of American life that are dysfunctional, that are in "need of a better way." I am beginning to see that people use Web 2.0 to empower themselves, to fix things, and to make a difference.

This website incorporates Web 1.0 aspects as well -- things like information about medical conditions and drugs, or advice about buying health insurance. The Web 2.0 aspects are interwoven into the website. For instance you can search through a database of dentists (Web 1.0), and some of the records have comments posted by patients (Web 2.0). Other Web 2.0 features are: blogs about health conditions that you can search, or comment on, or add your own; a place to post your personal story of illness to share with others and where you can seek the support of others who have gone through the same recovery; and you can start your own health portfolio (which I did not try, since it required registration.)

All this is time consuming and requires a level of commitment that I personally would be reluctant to make -- unless I had a very strong interest in a subject. As I moved around this site, I noticed a lot of empty spaces that nobody has taken advantage of, such as there were no comments added to the dentists I randomly selected in their database. Searching blogs for a medical condition relating to "retinal tears" brought up only the most general information readily available elsewhere. The promise of this website is yet to be realized. It strives to be all things to all people as regards health issues, as probably do other similar Web 2.0 websites. Web 2.0 may turn out to be very repetitive.

Zoho Writer and getting smarter

What good news! My computer at home doesn't have Word, so I desperately need this web-based word processing. I didn't know about it before today!

I went ahead and tried the sharing feature, which worked good. The website successfully emailed my document to my other email account within a short time. I was able to read the document. But, to be able to edit it, I would have to open a new account with Zoho Writer using my other email address (I am assuming.) So this collaboration capability works pretty well. It's similar to a private wiki.

Keeping straight all these capabilities of the various new technologies must be good brain exercise. These websites may be making us smarter, I'm afraid.

Pbwiki as a virtual ongoing staff meeting

This seems like it could be very useful to help a team to work together. You can brainstorm in the Comments area and come up with a final document that would be placed under the main tab. We're talking right now about doing this among our reference staff. For this type of in-house use, it's good that you can keep the wiki private and accessible by only certain people. Everyone should agree on a protocol for identifying who is saying what in the comments area because the sandbox at least doesn't automatically identify the contributors.

Wikis and making full use of them

The Bull Run Library wiki seemed more like a website promoting the library's programs and less like a collaboration open to all people. I didn't see any contributions by the public. It seemed very controlled, which at first seems contrary to the idea of wikis, but I suppose it shows you can use the technology to a fuller or lesser extent to match your intention. But, I wouldn't want to offer something new and exciting and then turn it into the same old thing you've already got going somewhere else.

A similar lack of collaboration is evident with the subject guides from St. Joseph's library. I clicked on the discussion tab for several of the guides and there were no discussions. That means that the original documents were never edited by anyone. If these guides exist as discrete finished entities, why not just put these guides on the library's website? I also noticed there is a restriction limiting editing to librarians.

Organizations are justified in making the technology suit their needs. But it does seem like these libraries are using this technology for the sake of being able to boast that they are using new technology more than for its actual advantages. Why use a collaborative content tool when there is no collaboration going on?

The spirituality of Library 2.0?

Patrons have traditionally been at the center of our concerns. The emphasis on patron participation and collaboration that Library 2.0 talks about is nothing new. In the recent past, most libraries promoted the idea of "excellent customer service" to make sure patrons were getting what they needed from us. The library's role was to learn from the patrons, rather than to dictate a series of choices for them to choose from. Whether we succeeded is questionable, because perhaps the tools weren't there to actually hear what the patrons needed. Now with Library 2.0 technology, can we hear better?

One of these articles mentions that patrons want everything -- magazines, blogs, podcasts, downloads, books. This reminds me of the New Age concept of universal abundance. The universe wants to provide for all needs. That is its function, or else why would it exist? By the mere fact of existence, the idea of limitation is shown to be false, according to this view. Is there a spiritual side to Web-and-library 2.0? I wonder if libraries will be able to break out of the mindset of skepticism, which had the benefit of enabling them to be inclusive and nonjudgmental. Doesn't Library 2.0 require libraries to be inclusive in a way that embraces a spiritual commitment that goes against some of the most revered library traditions?

Change and Technorati

A search in Technorati for blog links to our library website reveals that congratulations are in order to NCR for having created the Mousing Around tutorial. It's obvious the tutorial is being promoted and used around the country.

An interesting hit for the search "web 2.0" was one entitled USA 2.0. It says that change is afoot and the government had better pay attention to what people want. This caused me to realize that the term 2.0 is becoming synonymous with making your opinion count for something and thereby making a difference. That would be a major change! Up until now, some of us have felt powerless to change the world for the better.

Another interesting hit was how to make your website "look" like a 2.0 website. Our expectations are being raised in the sense that we now expect all our interactions to respect us as individuals.

Tags and del.icio.us

Using del.icio.us for research? Its one big advantage is that someone has tagged a website and given it subject headings. By contrast, search engines use automated searching. Search engines don't have real people to evaluate each website and to thoughtfully describe what it is about. The hits are sometimes just literal word matches, not the concepts behind the words. So the hits in del.icio.us could conceivably be more relevant and closer to what you are looking for.

WebFeat coordinated searching

Things are hopping in Hartford, CT, my hometown. Thousands of hits on our library databases, some obscure, some important, but all have the potential to be fascinating to a native-born. I noticed that Reference USA only returned 2 hits, when there should be thousands of listings. I'll have to look at that closer. In the near future, this exercise reminds me to try this resource to answer patron questions and compare it to Google's results.

LibraryThing.com

My LibraryThing.com library is: www.librarything.com/catalog/unrequitedlibrarian

This website works great for cataloging and reviewing books. I am impressed by other users' insights into books as revealed by their reviews. But actually, most users don't write reviews. My account has been active for over 1 year, and I have not received any comments on my reviews. So either my reviews don't inspire people to react to them, or people aren't initiating much contact on this website and are just using it for cataloging.

Image Generator: "Need is my tactic"

This quote from a Robert Pinsky poem is so true that it needs to be broadcast to the world. If you read the whole poem (Samurai's Song), you realize you have everything you need within you if you make the conscious effort to discover the infinite possibilities within yourself.

Anyway, this Image Generator exercise is fun for a minute. I wouldn't want to spend too much time using these gimmicky and superfluous (as in, get a life!) tools.

The RSS Experience

I noticed that after you open your feeds, they disappear. That's convenient, so you are only seeing new things, and you don't have to spend time managing each item. Perhaps there's a way to save ones you want to keep -- I'll have to look into that. Its ease of use and speed adds to its appeal. I don't feel I have time for adding new routines, but this one seems like it may be worth the time if I carefully restrict my feeds.

It seems that Bloglines was originally intended to connect you to your friends' blogs, hence the name. It's interesting that this use isn't being talked up as much anymore. Instead, it is being touted for subscribing to RSS Feeds from various websites and organizations.

But it seems passive -- just receiving information. It's not a true 2.0 experience where you would create content for others to see, unless you count publishing your Bloglines site, but that just seems like not the point.

What I want to do with technology

My vision for technology is to be able to totally control whatever technology I'm using. To be able to place a picture in a word document wherever I want. To keep it sharp while enlarging it. To zoom in or out as desired, to crop, to rotate to my heart's content. To have the intuitive insight that unlocks the potential of each technology no matter how poorly designed and difficult it is. To be able to accomplish my tasks efficiently and calmly. In the end, I hope (and fear) that technology might be able to break down the personal isolation that we each experience within ourselves, and finally connect with the outside world in a direct and immediate way as if it were inside us and was us.

Adding a picture from Flickr

copyright free dover graphics
Originally uploaded by k hurst

A chandelier or a visual representation of connectedness?

A tricky thing. I wonder how many ways there are to add a picture from Flickr. It wasn't as though you could just copy/paste. The Help screen in Blogger didn't help because it only covered two situations (pictures from your computer or if you knew the URL). But Flickr has a button that says "Blog this" so I tried that, which then made me get permission from Google to copy the picture. So does that override the copyright issues, if there are any? Anyway, the picture appeared on my blog but in a location that was not very attractive. I realized that since this is public and people may see what you did, you can't be too sloppy. This is just practice, but people are looking! So I selected a different template and it looked better -- all by itself, luckily!

How blogging can be used in libraries

1. Staff updates at each branch. Every morning can begin with a staff update on what's going on that day at the branch.
2. A suggestion box from the public. Downside: library staff would need to respond to every comment.
3. Book discussion groups. Someone could post her feelings about a book, and others could post their reactions to what she posted or add their own thoughts.

Post #1

If I understand something already, I don't take much note of it. This is the case with the 7 1/2 lessons. It all seemed so obvious. I do pay attention to information that propels me forward toward my personal goals. I focus on that information until I have somehow internalized it. When it becomes a part of me, it automatically begins to guide my actions. At that point, I stop focusing on it and begin to forget it, knowing that it will continue to inform me at a subconscious level. Such is the case with the 7 1/2 steps, so remembering them becomes the challenge.