Monday, September 29, 2008
Library 20.0 (OK, maybe not yet, but we're getting there)
Great articles. Excellent summation of how all of this (email, facebook, tagging, del.icio.us, wikis, etc.) has evolved with newer ideas being built upon, yet encorporating the old. I liked the description of libraries being "conversations" and "dynamic", "knowledge spas". And that no matter what the future brings, what we have done in the past and what we are doing now will part of it. From my own perspective, it's been interesting to participate in these changes. On the one hand, the internet hasn't been around all that long yet I can't imagine life without it. The changes in technology, to me, are just part of the natural progression of society. I'm curious to see how our profession changes.
Easy to set up an account but apparently my friends aren't into this since I couldn't find any of them. (Reinforced by their comments "Twitter? What's Twitter") It was fun searching around though. I found several other knitting addicts who had links to other fiber fiends. Just what I need...another enabling tool. All sarcasm aside though, I can definitely see adding this to our libarian tool kit, especially for all those titles/authors/factoids that are found right after the patron disappears out the door.
Thursday, September 25, 2008
Tagging
I think tagging is one of those natural, "oh duh" common sense things that makes everything we do, online at least, so much easier. It's also one of those things that has so much potential that it's sometimes frustrating when it's not being used.
I also think it's another one of those tools that we libraries need to start exploiting more fully.
I don't have a del.icio.us account yet, although I've been meaning to set one up. (Maybe after the bamboo is back in the ground?...) I can certainly see the value in it, having more than one email account and several computers that I regularly use. I am frequently guilty of bringing up something I recently found/read/experienced on line that I want to share with whomever I'm talking to. It would be so much easier to share with a del.icio.us account than having to redo a search and send a link via email...
I also think it's another one of those tools that we libraries need to start exploiting more fully.
I don't have a del.icio.us account yet, although I've been meaning to set one up. (Maybe after the bamboo is back in the ground?...) I can certainly see the value in it, having more than one email account and several computers that I regularly use. I am frequently guilty of bringing up something I recently found/read/experienced on line that I want to share with whomever I'm talking to. It would be so much easier to share with a del.icio.us account than having to redo a search and send a link via email...
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
Review
Since I'm one of those people who need to think about things for a while before I can make a well-formed statement, I'm not sure that I've actually coherently expressed what I've learned so far. Ergo, a review of Things.
Regarding #'s 1 & 2, learning and lifelong learning. I think this whole concept of ELL is a fantastic idea. Lifelong learning is what we library people are all about. While not everyone may be enthusiastic about all the web toys available, or want to use them, we need to be at least passingly aware of them (IMHO). Ideally, we'd all be thinking about how we could exploit these things to our advantage. Learning something new can sometimes be scary, intimidating and difficult, especially if it's something 12 year olds are really good at and we're just trying it out even though it's been around for a while. But that's o.k. (Did anyone else see the article in the newspaper about adults learning to ride a bike for the first time?) What I like about this 23 thing idea is that it grants permission (while making it relatively easy) to play with learning. So far I've been having a blast. In terms of life long learning habits, the hardest thing for me is self-confidence. I'm not the most confident of learners. I always feel like I'm surrounded by people with brains waaayyy bigger than mine, who are much more able to absorb and utilize information. They're also really good at sharing their experiences in complete, grammatically correct sentences. I definitely have a hard time with recognizing my abilities as a student. On the other hand, I've always been insatiably curious and usually willing to try new things. I love ferreting out information, figuring out how to do something or just plain old jumping in. Although I do draw the line at bungey jumping and sky diving. I probably won't ever climb Mount Everest either.
Re #'s 3&4. Setting up the blog was a little nervewracking. I'm still not comfortable with forking over a whole boatload of personal info to a website I've only just been introduced to. But then I remind myself that They (whoever They are) probably know exactly what I had for lunch. So relax and take a deep breath. Then, since I'm such a visual person, I wanted it to look exactly like I imagined it, immediately, without having to go through the painstaking steps of figuring it out. Fortunately there are plenty of supportive folks around here and nothing is cast in stone. And then there was the issue of focus. Interesting blogs have a focus. My introverted, self-confidence lacking self wasn't too sure that anyone else would find endless prattle about sheep, wool, yarn and herbs at all interesting. There's always books, but lots of other people are writing much more interesting book comentary. So topic focus is out the window and randomness is the name of the game. Choosing which blog program was fairly easy - it had to be intuitive and able to link to lots of other stuff easily. After playing around a bit and getting pretty frustrated with Wordpress (although I liked it's clean lines) Blogger was much easier for me to use. So far I've really liked it. It's easy to add widgets, upload photos, YouTube video, and Flickr photos. Easy to edit and find what I'm looking for.
#5 & 6, RSS feeds. This is a pretty nifty tool and I'm glad I was forced (so to speak) to revisit it. I really like the one-stop-shop aspect and being able to keep with all the blogs, databases, or sites that are constantly updated.
#7, 8, & 9. Flickr. There's some amazing stuff out there, including the gorgeous bug pictures I uploaded on the blog. What a fantastic way to share. I created an account and although I'm not that fluent with a digital camera, I was able to upload some photos I took. Supposedly I can use bluetooth to upload photos from my phone, but so far I haven't had any success. I'm determined to figure it out however. Just need a little time....Like Blogger, I found Flickr to be very intuitive to use. I spent a ridiculous amount of time playing around with my photos, changing the color saturation, brightness, cropping etc. And it's easy to post photos to the blog.
As far as Flickr apps are concerned, there were way too many out there - my brain started to glaze over as I was scrolling through the list. While I can't see making use of 99.9% of them at the moment, it's good to know they're out there, just in case. You never know what kind of wild, creative, hair you're going to get at 2:00am. Anyway, I played around with Flickr Color Pickr, which was cool. I liked the randomness of this and my first thought was that it would be a great tool for artists/designers etc. to inspire exploration of color juxtaposition or texture. Or even to just interpret the random photos that get pulled up. It's something I definitely want to go back and play with when I have more time.
Flickr Spelling. Since my dad is an expert in fonts, type design etc. I kind-of grew up in a font-aware household. Anybody else out there have serious conversations about the type on a cereal box while they were eating a bowl of that cereal? Play with "press type"? Loads of fun... Really! Which is why I had a great time with Flickr Spelling . It didn't always work, sometimes it left blank spots for letters. The design possibilities are very alluring.
YouTube (and relatives) is one of those things I could inadvertantly spend an entire day with. I've definitely whiled away whole chunks of time puttering around with this. I've found all kinds of things, including Yoga instruction, knitting techniques, sheep shearing, deaf comedians, satire... Uploading the video was easy...once I found the right code box. The possibilities for libraries are fantastic. It's probably already been done, but what about easy to understand tutorials (a la common craft) on using the catalog, finding books by call number, etc?
#10, 11, 12. If I had my druthers, all of my friends, young and old, would live near enough by that I could hang out with them on a regular basis. Unfortunately they don't, but most of them have Facebook accounts! Needless to say, I now have one too. I got to play around with my new photo uploading skills, figured out how to use the isight camera on my laptop, went to Meez.com and created an avatar, and asked a bunch of friends if they wanted to play. It was a little weird finding my Dad on Facebook....like I said, friends young and old. What I find most valuable is the socialness of it. In our fast paced community it's hard to maintain friendships, or just be social. So I'm liking it, a lot. Yesterday I learned how to ichat while logged in. Whee! I think it's kind of interesting that an institution or a department would have a facebook presence. I think of facebook as being a more individual thing rather than a group thing. If there was a way to merge some of the social aspects of facebook with blogs...that would be the ideal. Another one of those 'probably already been done'.
Re: Library Thing & Libraries using social tools. I found Library thing to be the most user friendly and useful of the several book related social sites. It was easy to add the widget, easy to add titles, easy to tag titles. Clearly people like to share their literary opinions, otherwise sites like Amazon would have dropped those social tools in a heartbeat. The concept would be a great addition to any library catalog. Ann Arbors site is fantastic. That's what a library catalog should be like. Easy to navigate, a great way to see what others are into, easy to keep track of personal information needs/requests/information history. Wow! Obviously they have a budget and tech staff to maintain this, but what an inspiration. If we could only embrace some of the social tools, the crucial bit would be to keep them easy to use and easy to find on the website. If done well, I think this is definitely something our comunity would embrace.
Regarding #'s 1 & 2, learning and lifelong learning. I think this whole concept of ELL is a fantastic idea. Lifelong learning is what we library people are all about. While not everyone may be enthusiastic about all the web toys available, or want to use them, we need to be at least passingly aware of them (IMHO). Ideally, we'd all be thinking about how we could exploit these things to our advantage. Learning something new can sometimes be scary, intimidating and difficult, especially if it's something 12 year olds are really good at and we're just trying it out even though it's been around for a while. But that's o.k. (Did anyone else see the article in the newspaper about adults learning to ride a bike for the first time?) What I like about this 23 thing idea is that it grants permission (while making it relatively easy) to play with learning. So far I've been having a blast. In terms of life long learning habits, the hardest thing for me is self-confidence. I'm not the most confident of learners. I always feel like I'm surrounded by people with brains waaayyy bigger than mine, who are much more able to absorb and utilize information. They're also really good at sharing their experiences in complete, grammatically correct sentences. I definitely have a hard time with recognizing my abilities as a student. On the other hand, I've always been insatiably curious and usually willing to try new things. I love ferreting out information, figuring out how to do something or just plain old jumping in. Although I do draw the line at bungey jumping and sky diving. I probably won't ever climb Mount Everest either.
Re #'s 3&4. Setting up the blog was a little nervewracking. I'm still not comfortable with forking over a whole boatload of personal info to a website I've only just been introduced to. But then I remind myself that They (whoever They are) probably know exactly what I had for lunch. So relax and take a deep breath. Then, since I'm such a visual person, I wanted it to look exactly like I imagined it, immediately, without having to go through the painstaking steps of figuring it out. Fortunately there are plenty of supportive folks around here and nothing is cast in stone. And then there was the issue of focus. Interesting blogs have a focus. My introverted, self-confidence lacking self wasn't too sure that anyone else would find endless prattle about sheep, wool, yarn and herbs at all interesting. There's always books, but lots of other people are writing much more interesting book comentary. So topic focus is out the window and randomness is the name of the game. Choosing which blog program was fairly easy - it had to be intuitive and able to link to lots of other stuff easily. After playing around a bit and getting pretty frustrated with Wordpress (although I liked it's clean lines) Blogger was much easier for me to use. So far I've really liked it. It's easy to add widgets, upload photos, YouTube video, and Flickr photos. Easy to edit and find what I'm looking for.
#5 & 6, RSS feeds. This is a pretty nifty tool and I'm glad I was forced (so to speak) to revisit it. I really like the one-stop-shop aspect and being able to keep with all the blogs, databases, or sites that are constantly updated.
#7, 8, & 9. Flickr. There's some amazing stuff out there, including the gorgeous bug pictures I uploaded on the blog. What a fantastic way to share. I created an account and although I'm not that fluent with a digital camera, I was able to upload some photos I took. Supposedly I can use bluetooth to upload photos from my phone, but so far I haven't had any success. I'm determined to figure it out however. Just need a little time....Like Blogger, I found Flickr to be very intuitive to use. I spent a ridiculous amount of time playing around with my photos, changing the color saturation, brightness, cropping etc. And it's easy to post photos to the blog.
As far as Flickr apps are concerned, there were way too many out there - my brain started to glaze over as I was scrolling through the list. While I can't see making use of 99.9% of them at the moment, it's good to know they're out there, just in case. You never know what kind of wild, creative, hair you're going to get at 2:00am. Anyway, I played around with Flickr Color Pickr, which was cool. I liked the randomness of this and my first thought was that it would be a great tool for artists/designers etc. to inspire exploration of color juxtaposition or texture. Or even to just interpret the random photos that get pulled up. It's something I definitely want to go back and play with when I have more time.
Flickr Spelling. Since my dad is an expert in fonts, type design etc. I kind-of grew up in a font-aware household. Anybody else out there have serious conversations about the type on a cereal box while they were eating a bowl of that cereal? Play with "press type"? Loads of fun... Really! Which is why I had a great time with Flickr Spelling . It didn't always work, sometimes it left blank spots for letters. The design possibilities are very alluring.
YouTube (and relatives) is one of those things I could inadvertantly spend an entire day with. I've definitely whiled away whole chunks of time puttering around with this. I've found all kinds of things, including Yoga instruction, knitting techniques, sheep shearing, deaf comedians, satire... Uploading the video was easy...once I found the right code box. The possibilities for libraries are fantastic. It's probably already been done, but what about easy to understand tutorials (a la common craft) on using the catalog, finding books by call number, etc?
#10, 11, 12. If I had my druthers, all of my friends, young and old, would live near enough by that I could hang out with them on a regular basis. Unfortunately they don't, but most of them have Facebook accounts! Needless to say, I now have one too. I got to play around with my new photo uploading skills, figured out how to use the isight camera on my laptop, went to Meez.com and created an avatar, and asked a bunch of friends if they wanted to play. It was a little weird finding my Dad on Facebook....like I said, friends young and old. What I find most valuable is the socialness of it. In our fast paced community it's hard to maintain friendships, or just be social. So I'm liking it, a lot. Yesterday I learned how to ichat while logged in. Whee! I think it's kind of interesting that an institution or a department would have a facebook presence. I think of facebook as being a more individual thing rather than a group thing. If there was a way to merge some of the social aspects of facebook with blogs...that would be the ideal. Another one of those 'probably already been done'.
Re: Library Thing & Libraries using social tools. I found Library thing to be the most user friendly and useful of the several book related social sites. It was easy to add the widget, easy to add titles, easy to tag titles. Clearly people like to share their literary opinions, otherwise sites like Amazon would have dropped those social tools in a heartbeat. The concept would be a great addition to any library catalog. Ann Arbors site is fantastic. That's what a library catalog should be like. Easy to navigate, a great way to see what others are into, easy to keep track of personal information needs/requests/information history. Wow! Obviously they have a budget and tech staff to maintain this, but what an inspiration. If we could only embrace some of the social tools, the crucial bit would be to keep them easy to use and easy to find on the website. If done well, I think this is definitely something our comunity would embrace.
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