The 23rd Thing!

Well, I didn’t think it possible, but here I am at the end of the course! This has been an amazing experience, and I’m so glad we were able to do this. Many of the things we learned were somewhat familiar to me, but I can’t say that I was really savvy about any of them. I’ve learned a lot and found some things that have already become indispensible to me (Zoho Writer, Bloglines). I know I will need to keep practicing to become proficient with these tools and will definitely need to keep exploring and stay open-minded about new technologies that come along.

I would love to see us repeat/expand this course so that all staff could participate at whatever level they want. From my own experience, I think that our estimate of 30 minutes per week was too short. Most of these lessons required more time than that for me, primarily because I get interrupted so often and then have to try to recapture my focus. I might also suggest slowing down the course so that we have time to play with and thoroughly absorb each tool before moving on to the next.

But overall – Hooray for ACLibrary for supporting this idea and thanks to the Foundation for underwriting it!

e Audiobooks

Unfortunately, I neglected to set up my Netlibrary account from the library and now am faced with limited access to the database! I’ve been able to explore the electronic books, but will have to upgrade my account before I can see the downloadable audiobooks. I’m really looking forward to having that capability available to me. I’m always torn on weekends – wanting to read and wanting to sew, clean house, and cuddle my critters. Downloadable audiobooks will be the perfect solution for me and allow me to multi-task my way through the weekend!

Podcasts

I have frequently listened to podcasts through Yahoo and NPR. I use iTunes for music downloads, but have not tried it yet for non-music broadcasts. I subscribed to a daily 3-minute election update podcast from NPR, which is a quick and easy way to keep up with happenings in the world of national politics. Podcasts as a useful tool for training, also. It gives a way to expose folks to information or techniques even when we may not have the staff or money to send them to an on-ground class.

YouTube

You Tube is one of my favorite Web 2.0 sites, and I use it often. It is not only immensely entertaining (c’mon – you know it is!), but could have great value as a library instructional and marketing tool. There are a great many very amateur library videos on YouTube, but done right (that is to say, more professionally) this videos could be popular and useful tools for advertising library programs and services or even just keeping us in the public consciousness.

Here’s one of my favorite YouTube videos: Gorilla Librarian.

One Sentence

I spent some time looking through the list of Web 2.0 Award winners. Wow! Some of these I use frequently (Yelp, Yahoo, Google Maps, Craigslist, Zillow), some I have been learning to love through this course (Technorati, LibraryThing, Flikr, Del.icio.us). There are some on this list that I haven’t fully explored yet, but seem quite useful (Google Docs, Omnidrive, Listdump). But for this exercise, I decided to spend time playing in the sandbox with a just-for-fun tool: One Sentence.

I am a fan of all forms of short writing. I think it’s a great exercise to try and distill a story down to the bare essentials. Haiku is a wonderful example of this, but even with less structure than that, a writer can evoke a whole story with just a few words. Smith Magazine publishes Six Word Memoirs which are great.

One Sentence gives a little more leeway than that. You can use as many words or syllables as you need to tell your story, as long as it is no more than one sentence long. I created one, which should appear on the site soon.

I am not sure there are a lot of practical uses for this in a library environment, but it is a great thing to know about and recommend for creative writing students and teachers and anyone else interested in literature and writing.

Zoho Writer

I have been playing around with Zoho Writer, which is a web-based word-processing program. It’s pretty nifty and will do a lot of things, including walk you through making a live link. I wrote a blog book review and tried to publish it directly to my blog here, but kept getting a message that the post had failed, with no explanation of why. That seems a little user-unfriendly. I could not find any help on the site that would assist in solving the problem. So: good and useful tool, yes; perfect, no. Below is what I wrote and tried to publish: 

My mother-in-law’s favorite book was The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Laurence Sterne. She read this book at least once per year and enjoyed it more each time. For years she tried to get me to read it and for years I resisted. I’m not sure why I resisted, since I love Jane Austen and Anthony Trollope. But resist I did.

About a year ago, I finally gave in a tried to read about Mr. Shandy. I say tried, because I have picked it up 5 or 6 times over the past year and not managed to finish it yet. It’s  not that I don’t enjoy the book – I find it hugely entertaining and clever. But I just get so lost in the minutiae that I lose track of the plot, if indeed there is one. My mother-in-law said that was what she loved most about the book – that it was unashamedly unlike anything she had ever read (and she read more than anyone I have ever known). In desperation, I watched the movie version , thinking I could get a leg up on the story and then go back to it and everything would be perfectly clear. Not so. The movie was one of those plot-within-a-plot things where the modern-day actor’s life mirrors the life of the character he is playing. It is described as “an impossible portrayal of a book that is impossible to read.” Which I think pretty much sums it up! Still, I liked the movie enough that I am determined to go back to the book and make it all the way through this time. I may still not understand it, but I am beginning to think that’s not the point. After all, who understands life? Isn’t it enough that we enjoy it, keep plugging away, and hope to make it through to the end?  

PB Wiki

This is a great wiki, with lots of help and easy to understand tutorials. I added my blog to the Favorite Blogs list for now, and am planning to try creating my own wiki page to discuss/share info about one of my interests. It will either be sewing/crafts or food/cooking. Since this is a community effort, are there any votes for one topic over the other?

Wikis

I love the concept of wikis – people collaboratively creating web content for all to use. Some have criticized wikis as contributing to the dumbing down of society, but I think it’s just the opposite. Sure, you have to be careful of what is sometimes presented as factual, and sure, there are a few folks out there who deliberately contribute false or unreliable information. But the important point to me is that folks are actively engaged in creating and using content. It’s not just passive acceptance of what “experts” feed us. To me, this captures the whole concept of Web 2.0 and the ways it is contributing to our global society. Folks are much more connected and active than even just a few years ago. We don’t just watch TV or read the newspaper; we watch and read, but then we have conversations about our ideas and opinions; we ask questions, seek and give advice, post reviews and rants.

I’m excited about the possibilities wikis offer for libraries. The most obvious is allowing customers to post book reviews on our websites and link to other books that readers may like. Collaborative subject guides and community resource guides are other really vibrant uses of wikis. I’m now on a search for library wiki applications and creating my own list of best practices to copy and a few less-than-successful applications that I would prefer to ignore!

Library 2.0

I have read a variety of articles and postings lately on the whole concept of Library 2.0 and how it is changing and advancing the way we provide library services to our customers. While many of the inherent concepts of 2.0 (responsiveness, customer-centered services) are things that libraries have always modeled, the ways those concepts are implemented is what is changing. And I think that is a good thing. Rick Anderson’s belief that we need to get away from the “just in case” model of collections and the “come to us” model of services is exactly right. Public libraries, in particular, cannot afford to think of themselves as archives. With the possible exception of local history collections, our materials need to be up-to-date, fresh, and ever-changing. We have so many tools at our fingertips now that obviate the need for us to hold every possible book or resource that our customers might need – there’s a huge, wide world of interconnected and interactive web resources out there, plus the ability to network and share from one library to another. We can have fewer items on our shelves than we did 20 years ago, but still be so much richer and better able to serve our customers! And the “come to us” model of service is completely unworkable in today’s world. We need to get out from behind our desks and also out of our buildings and take our services to where folks are. That might mean using PDAs or other hand-held devices to assist customers in the stacks (their point of need) or providing catalog computers in the stacks or Skype phones that allow customers to speak to a librarian in his/her office, IM and text messaging, classes and programs offered at non-library venues, book vending machines or CD/DVD download jukeboxes in transit centers or shopping areas, etc., etc. Some of these we are already doing, but we can’t afford to rest on our laurels. The world keeps changing, and we have to change with it. That doesn’t mean adopt technolust as a way of life. It means stay current with new technologies and ideas and always ask ourselves “How could this help our customers?”

Technorati

Technorati is like a search engine for blogs. It’s very information-dense, and I will need to spend a fair amount of time with it to reach any degree of comfort. I tried searching several subjects and phrases in a variety of different ways (blog posts vs. blog directories, for instance). There is overlap among the results, but also differences. I found that a personal blog I have is partially indexed here, but none of the more recent postings are included. I’ve been trying to claim my blog, but the process keeps failing for some reason. Will keep trying…