Facebook

Well, I finally did it. I set up a Facebook page. I've been putting it off because it feels vaguely creepy to be trespassing in my children's online territory. I told them that I wouldn't be offended if they didn't accept my friend request...

Anyway, I'm having fun exploring my friends' pages. There are some people on Facebook that I never expected to find here. I can see that it would be easy to waste many hours this way!

Beyond 23

I have a cute little red MP3 player! I love the way it looks; I've been less than delighted at its functioning so far.

I charged it up as instructed, then I had to reset it (using a pin, in the little reset hole) before I could even get it to turn on. When I was trying to get the player to start up, I went to the Coby website, and the pdf manual online had significant differences from the paper manual that came with the player, which didn't exactly clarify things!

Windows XP (on both computers I've used) recognizes the player and allows me to transfer files, but then there is no trace of it in the task bar, so I can't "eject" or "safely remove" it via the operating system before physically disconnecting it. I wonder whether anyone else has had this problem?

Anyway, I now have some music and an eAudiobook on my player, so I'm off to enter the Grand Prize drawing!

CCLS 23 Things #23: Is this really the end?

I'm going to go ahead and write this post before completing the previous exercise, to make sure I finish by the January 16 deadline.

I am sure that this project is not the end for me, because I have been fascinated by online resources since my early journeys on the text-based "information highway," and I will continue to try to keep on top of new developments. I doubt I'll ever become a fan of, say, Twitter, or podcasts, because they just don't seem to fit in with the way I think or the way I learn. On the other hand, I can see great potential in some other online resources, e.g., wikis and virtual computers.

Some of the resources we explored were really fun but potentially toxic time-wasters. YouTube could occupy me for hours, and I could likewise waste all kinds of time with image generators. I'm not convinced it would be time well-spent. I think I should go read a book instead...

Some of the social networking activities seem to represent a generational divide. It would seem all wrong for someone my age to have a MySpace or Livejournal. I also feel that there's something inauthentic about a library trying to establish an institutional presence in one of these communities. A young librarian, acting as an individual (though in a professional capacity) would be another matter. I can see that kind of connection working to raise the library's profile among teens.

I'm still on the fence with regard to Facebook. I don't want to feel as though I'm spying on my kids by trying to hang out in their online circles.

With a new library director at Tredyffrin, all of us have been asked to think about how our job duties fit with our personal strengths, and how those duties might evolve to create a better fit. I would love to include more technology-related responsibilities in my work, and the "23 Things" project just might provide some of the knowledge and inspiration I need to set off on this path.

CCLS 23 Things #22: E-Audiobooks

I had forgotten that you have to install the Overdrive Media Console in order to download. I definitely don't want this on my home computer, so will wait until I have time at work...

Update: Wednesday, January 14
I've successfully downloaded an audiobook onto my PC at work, and listened to the first chapter. The process of installing the software went smoothly and quickly. The process of choosing a title to download was not so simple.

I decided to try a children's book, and searched for a few of my favorite authors: Gordon Korman, Donna Jo Napoli, Jordan Sonnenblick. Nothing.

Eventually I chose one of Lemony Snicket's Series of Unfortunate Events, The Ersatz Elevator, because I had heard that the reader, Tim Curry, was fantastic. It's true, but I still don't like being read to.

I discovered that the Overdrive media player allows you to speed up or slow down the playback of the file. That makes for some really weird effects. I felt really anxious and unsettled listening to the speeded-up playback. It was difficult to understand, too. Even for informational text, I can't imagine using this option.

But the good news is, I've completed all the projects! So, mission accomplished!

CCLS 23 Things #21: Podcasts

I can't imagine I'll ever be a fan of podcasts, because I'm not a good listener. I hate being read to, and given the choice of listening to an audio file or reading a transcript, I'll take the transcript any day.

I think what bothers me the most is that I have no control over the timing. I can't "skim" an audio file or skip over parts of it.

I tried subscribing to one site that I found, using the URL given in PodcastAlley, but got an error message "No feeds were found. Please verify that the website publishes an RSS feed." This may be because the site isn't adding new content at this point.

I did find two sites that I thought would interest my son, Basscast
and Prog'opolis

CCLS 23 Things #20: YouTube

It's a no-brainer for me to choose a YouTube video for my blog. Here's one that has my son walking on stilts and playing bass guitar in a performance by OCircus (at Oberlin College). He wrote the music, too!



I also love being able to find old clips of famous (classical) musicians.


As for YouTube and the library, I would think that embedding video of, say, last year's summer reading club on the library website might be a good way to promote this year's program.

CCLS 23 Things #19: Social Networking Tools

Social networking sites can be amazing tools. I know my kids carry out a huge portion of their social lives on Facebook and Livejournal. I liked the little Common Craft videos explaining how social networking works.

I'm still not convinced that they're a good way for libraries to connect with patrons. I started by checking out a couple of the library MySpace pages linked from the best practices wiki. I clicked on one at random—Peabody Institute Library—and was told "Invalid Friend ID. This user has either cancelled their membership, or their account has been deleted." The second one I clicked on had such a weird color scheme and such tiny font that I literally couldn't read it. Not exactly an auspicious start.

The WCPL MySpace looks fantastic by comparison, attractive and well organized. The slide show of new books is a great feature. But I found it weird that almost all of the Friends comments are from authors plugging their own books. Do any actual library patrons visit the site??

As for Twitter, I personally can't imagine using it. I don't even like blogging, because I don't see why anyone should be interested in what I'm thinking. What I'm doing—hour to hour or minute to minute—is even more boring!

CCLS 23 Things #18: Discovering Web 2.0 tools

Maybe we're getting a little too "cutting edge" with this exercise...

After looking through the SEOmoz categories, I decided to explore the online desktops/operating systems. At my previous job I used a program called Citrix to access my employer's network from home, which meant I could sometimes telecommute. So I really like the idea of having a virtual desktop and online file storage, and I was all set to choose among the four winners in this category.

The link for the winner, zimdesk, displayed a page that says "zimdesk v2 will be available here soon." But right now there's nothing there.

At the second place site, G.ho.st, my computer displayed warnings that a script on the page might cause my PC to crash. I braved my way through part of the demo but decided against creating an account. I noticed that they use Zoho for their their online apps, and after having to adapt to both Word 2007 and Google docs, I really don't want to take time to learn another word processing program.

The third place winner, called Zoowy, returned a 404 error (this page cannot be found).

Fourth place went to a site called Glide, and I watched their demo video, but by then I had decided to wait a while before jumping in to these apparently untested waters.

CCLS 23 Things #17: Web-based Apps

I've been using Google docs for about a year now. I used to use my Yahoo online "briefcase" for documents that I wanted to share (or to work on from different computers), but when Yahoo decided to eliminate sharing of briefcase folders on free accounts, I defected to Google. (Don't ask me how anyone is supposed to make money providing online services if I'm never willing to pay for anything...)

Google docs has given me a lot of grief with documents that were originally created in MSWord. And putting a google doc back into Word (e.g. to format it for printing a presentable hard copy) is similarly problematic. The text gets transferred OK, but the formatting often gets scrambled. The internal links in my library circulation manual got lost entirely when I uploaded the file. It took me hours to reformat that document. I gather from the user forums that I'm not the only who has experienced these problems.

That said, online applications are great for documents that are basically just going to stay online. When my younger daughter went away to college with a new laptop last fall, I suggested that she take all her class notes in Google docs. Knowing her, I was sure she would never back up her files (she thinks her external hard drive is solely for storing Dr. Who episodes), and I had heard horror stories of students' laptops crashing (or being stolen) just before the final exam. But with Google docs, she can access her notes from any computer. No worries.

CCLS 23 Things #16: Playing around with PBWiki

If you're used to blogger software, there's no problem at all transferring to wiki software.

But to my surprise, it does somehow feel different to contribute to a page created by many users. It's more "communal" in every sense of the word, good and bad.

I added my blog, then added a favorite restaurant.

CCLS 23 Things #15: So what’s in a wiki?

I have never created or participated in a wiki, but I had looked at a few of these before, e.g., "Library Success: A best practices wiki" and the "SJCPL Subject Guides," when reading other articles or books about online resources for libraries.

The wikis that I really liked, and that seemed perfectly suited to the format, were the community-based sites, such as RocWiki and the Ann Arbor wiki. These seem to replicate the way we find out about community resources in the "real" world, by asking friends and neighbors.

As far as library applications for a wiki, I have been thinking of using one for our circulation manual. We already have the circ manual and the reference manual online, so they are easily accessible and searchable. But the wiki would enable each department to add and edit, customizing for their own procedures.

CCLS 23 Things #14: Library 2.0

After several years of reading about Library 2.0, I no longer think it's all that revolutionary. Shouldn't any organization that is providing a public service be responsive to its patrons? As far as having patrons "create content" in the library OPAC, I'm not sure whether this is a practical way to involve patrons. I can't see Innovative ever getting as good as Amazon, in terms of a flexible search engine, ratings by users, comments by users, etc. So rather than compete with Amazon, maybe our OPAC should link to it. I'll bet most librarians have Amazon bookmarked on their browsers anyway, and use it on a daily basis, as a research tool instead of (or as well as) a vendor. On second thought, public libraries probably can't link to commercial sites, so maybe a site like Librarything or Shelfari would provide similar advantages.

I read a few of the resources linked to wikipedia. Is your OPAC fun? (a manifesto of sorts) is a nice "wish list" of some practical and some impractical suggestions. It reminded me of Dr. Seuss's comment "If you never did, you should. These things are fun, and fun is good" (One fish, two fish).

Library 2.0 and the Problem of Hate Speech raised an issue that never would have occurred to me. Maybe it's a realistic fear, but then again maybe it's more paranoia. Some librarians (and other people as well, but librarians seem especially cautious by nature) seem to go around looking for reasons not to make changes, especially changes that might challenge their hold on their pathetic little fiefdoms. My inclination would be to just have a strategy in mind to deal with the problem if it should happen to arise (e.g. moderating comments posted to the library website or OPAC), but otherwise don't even worry about it.

CCLS 23 Things #13: Technorati

To me, the blogosphere seems like cable TV -- all those choices and still (almost) no content. The time you need to invest in exploration just doesn't seem worth the return. And from my limited exploration, I don't think Technorati would help very much with this problem.

I'm interested in music, so I clicked the music link in the Technorati Blog Directory. The first page of results included blogs focused on the gay male lifestyle, celebrity gossip, and electronic gadgets, none of which interests me. Presumably all these blogs include music in their list of topics somehwere?

I tried the suggested search on library 2.0 and found the results similarly frustrating. Apparently the default is a full text search, and none of the results on the first page was even related directly to libraries. Changing the search to target tags produced results that were at least a little more relevant.

I checked out the top 100 most Popular Tags, and found that library was not among them. I guess that shouldn't be a surprise! Sort of keeps our work in perspective...

This is not to say that I never read blogs. I receive a daily email digest from ArtsJournal that includes a number of blogs. I'm OK with a choice among several targeted blogs like this -- I'm not OK with pages and pages of mostly irrelevant search results.

CCLS 23 Things #12: social bookmarking

I created a delicious account and imported my Firefox bookmarks. I was amazed to find that there were 520 of them. I know that many are now broken links, but I'll never find the time to check them all. It would be great if delicious had a utility that would take care of this task, and alert the user when links are no longer valid.

Since I am accustomed to having my bookmarks organized into folders, the delicious tagging system seems like a step backwards. But if I got used to tagging each bookmark, I can see that it would be useful.

It's interesting to see bookmarks tagged by other users with a given tag. I found several good Russian-English dictionaries that I was not aware of by using the Explore function under Tags.