23 things to do with your Card Catalog 1.0

24th Thing

2009-03-11T15:15:00.004-05:00

I have spent a grand total of zero time posting to this blog (and almost as much to the blog for work) because of all the other web 2.0 things i've been doing - particularly IMing and setting up widgets and such at our library.

I have taught a few classes in how to set up a blogger blog and truthfully, I don't see much reason for me to do it on a regular basis. My vanity may be huge, but I'm not a bit sharer online. I have too much to do that doesn't involve blogging.

That said, I do try to keep up at least once a week reading other librarian blogs with the Google Reader. I love the Google Reader and it's a great tool for keeping current, although I just scan all the blogs I follow, and don't find myself reading in depth unless a certain headline grabs me.

I don't comment on other blogs (largely because I read them through RSS which doesn't always give access to the comments (or I don't see it)). Double parenthesis, how quaint.

I went for a more "out there" avatar which is really apropos of nothing.

And all breathe in... and breathe out.. post 23

2008-04-10T10:38:00.006-05:00

I am so pleased to have finished this in time to start my taxes. Kidding - taxes done months ago. I didn't think I would learn nearly as much as I did. And I didn't think I would have to start keeping a spread sheet with all of my different username and passwords. My thanks to all the people in Minnesota that made this program possible. It really is possible to do it in the time allotted, however, some of us may have put it off so long that we're rushing to finish.

There is so much out there on the web, I think the hardest thing to do sometimes is sort through all of the information to find the things that are actually of use to us. This program showed us lots of tools (some compelling, some less so).

And then there's part of me that is exhausted and wondering how many things there will be on a stick once web 3.0 comes around. But that's at least another few weeks away, I'm sure.

Getting down to post 22

2008-04-10T10:38:00.005-05:00

I have enjoyed going through this program and I think for me the RSS feeds are the most helpful thing of all the web 2.0 things we covered. A lot of the other things are more eye candy and they don't interest me very much. I will vow to add more interesting sites to my Google Reader (which I continue to love), but as for blogging, it's hard enough for me to find time to keep up with the Reference Blog at my library let alone add more to this one. I do like being familiar with some of the more prolific/enlighted librarian bloggers (Michael Stephens, Jenny Levine. et al,) and seeing them at conferences. I'm teaching a class about blogging later this week, and am looking forward to sharing this blog (and a smattering of the other things I've learned) with them.

I hope to go back and try some of the challenges after this part is done.

Post number 21

2008-04-09T11:27:00.004-05:00

I thought I would like Gather. I don't know if it was the unimposing layout or maybe just seeing Current DJ Bill DeVille within seconds of getting to the page. I signed up for an account quickly, but then decided that I'd rather not reveal so much about myself online. Maybe I listen to MPR too much and am still paranoid. Also, it seems largely like a waste of my time. I get really uncomfortable with some of these online personna things. It feels like I'm trying to make "fake" friends. If I had moved to a new area, I would probably look more into social sites like this to try and connect with new people in my new environs. Anything that MPR is invested in is probably okay by me, but I don't have the time to be online socially (regular social committments are enough for me, thank you)

I do like WebJunction and have used it for taking online classes, but not so much the social aspect of it. I do search the boards from time to time if I'm looking for information on a library topic, but have not had a lot of luck.

The Ning site was interesting, but kind of infuriating when the pages loaded really slowly and never seemed to display the pertinent part of the web page leaving you to scroll either up or down to find the place you were looking for. Also, I'm not still not a big fan of the background that doesn't move when you scroll down.

I looked at Flixster, and it seemed like more trouble than it was worth. I think I prefer reading blogs and websites to interacting with other people on the web.

About the only quasi-social networks that I use with any frequency are library list-servs. They can be a great resouce for checking out library issues with other librarians in almost real time. It also amuses me to see which issues are highly commented on and which just die a slow death with no one replying to them.

Facebook and MySpace number 20

2008-04-08T15:31:00.005-05:00

I don't get the whole social network thing. I suppose that's good. I have heard about how when libraries set up their own pages, most of their friends tend to be other libraries and authors. I didn't realize that we had MySpace banned on our internet until I tried to log on at work. Unless you had a very active teen program or serve a college-aged population, I just don't see why we would want to be on either MySpace or Facebook. I didn't find either Denver or Hennepin's page overly impressive.

I looked at the MySpace page for Denver and immediately recoiled seeing sponsored links on a "library" website. Then I was irritated by the music that started playing (not because it was bad, but because it was playing 0ver the music I was already listening to on my computer). Everyting about it just smacks of bad web design (from the sound to the moving objects to the "floating" over the static background), but then again, I digress.

Where I think it could be useful is drawing teens/young adults to your website proper (and perhaps to your actual library, too!). I went to the teen page link for Denver and they had an AWESOME teen page. If you could get teens to visit your page through MySpace, I think it's worth it. It would be a good place to host embedded links for youtube (that sometimes do look a little bit cruddy on a "proper" website.

Unless you have the time and inclination to put new, good and appealing content on a regular basis, I don't know that a MySpace or Facebook page for a library would do well.

Podcasting number 19

2008-04-08T15:31:00.004-05:00

I love podcasting, but find that I don't have nearly the time that I want to listen to all the things I would like to. I regularly download "This American Life" and other MPR programs, sometimes to horde them for when I have to take long plane trips and fill my MP3 player with things I actually want to listen to. I do have internet speed issues, so I do have to plan ahead to download something at home - I haven't gotten into it enough to get any kind of podcatcher software on my PC to do it automatically yet.

We have started dipping our feet into the podcast waters. I recorded a few speakers during this year's Rochester Reads with Audacity software on my laptop and put them up on our RR website audio page. I'm still trying to get a decent recording in a live environment given the equipment and experience that I have to work with.

I actually liked the interface of podcast.net, but podcast alley had so much more personality that I think I would go there first. Yahoo, as usual, needs a whole lot more work to make it aesthetically appealing.

You Tube and Video number 18

2008-04-08T15:30:00.004-05:00

I am grateful that we have a faster internet connection at work than at home. I just love this loving tribute to our current president by one Mr. Stephen Colbert in 2006. Too bad it's long enough they have to break it into parts. Funny stuff, even if many of the guests clearly do not get it.

I also love youtube for making tv clips of some of my favorite bands accessible. This priceless Replacements clip is great, and if it wasn't for sharing sites like youtube, it would be trapped on someone's dusty VHS tape never to be seen by the masses.

What I don't like about youtube is that anyone can put anything up on the site, permission or not. I was myself a victim of a rather lame video that is posted on youtube (I didn't realize the brilliant little "punk'd" rejects were taping me. You can see it here:

We have a youtube channel at my library (that we add to when we're not busy stopping patrons from singing). We posted the winners of a teen video contest and have links to a Somali "introduction to the library" video we were involved in producing. We hope to put some tutorial videos for some of our databases soon (once they're produced).

ELM things Number 17

2008-04-08T15:30:00.003-05:00

I'm glad that other people posted their troubles on this one - I also tried using my library's link for the InfoTrac Student edition, and the "student style" interface does not have the RSS option. Even once I logged in through the "adult style" interface, I could not get either Google Reader or my desktop RSS Bandit feed reader to recoginze the RSS feed that the database generated. I was also unable to access any of the minitex videos from both work and from home.

It was easy to set up a folder for the EBSCO database and get the webpage going. This could be a good opportunity for instructors to set up pathfinders, although it might preclude them from actually finding articles themselves. The examples tab provided some nice examples of how this could be used to get students going on an assignment. Because we're a public library, I can't see us setting these up for our patrons, but it's an interesting tool. We use EBSCO a lot here at RPL.

The Proquest exercise went a little better, the interface was a little easier to follow for this assignment. The emailing went smoothly.

I do like the NetLibrary books for their searchability (especially for researchers), but I do dread it when they come up on a catalog search for a patron. The setting up of yet another account name password, etc., for access outside the library is really an accessibilty issue for their product. However, it is a good way to have some higher level "specialized" volumes that we would never otherwise purchase available. The notes feature is kind of nice, but I don't know if anyone would actually using it unless they were accessing a book for a class on a regular basis.

We use the EBSCO and Proquest emailing capabilities fairly often with students to get multiple articles (and ever-valuable citiations!) Netlibrary has its uses despite the barriers to access.

Online Student Tools - Thing 16

2008-04-08T15:27:00.004-05:00

Where was this tool when we started doing 23 things? Kidding, of course. Funny, the assignment calculator in some ways seems like the kind of tool that those people who don't really need it are most likely to gravitate towards.

I like that there are a lot of links for outside help such as an online tutor or the chance to make an appointment (although I was a bit concerned that the U of M calculator gave links to the UNC for setting up appointments - that's a long commute). I love all the homework help links about paper writing and found it interesting that these are largely outside links and not connected with the original program. It seemed like a smart way to organize a lot of electronic resources relating to studying/research in one area. Lots of students that we get at Rochester Public have very little clue about how to research a paper or how much time to allot for it. These kinds of tools could at least give them something to think about even if they don't follow it to the letter.

I actually liked the handouts and thought they did a pretty good job of giving some step-by-step guidance for students. Personally, I'm not big on the "idea" generating sorts of worksheets, but I know they work for some people.

As a public librarian, I think they might have limited usefulness because we aren't there for students at the beginning of a project (unlike, at least potentially, a school library). We often see the kids the night before a project is due and the timeline is quite small at that point (especially because the kids who were on the ball and/or had easier access to our library have already checked out all of the good books). I could see it working best in a school media center or academic library.

Thing number 15 - Games/Pirates/2nd Life

2008-04-03T14:26:00.004-05:00

Did the Second Life video remind anyone else of the then "cutting edge" music video for Dire Straits "Money For Nothing" in the 1980's (with far better music although not nearly as much skating). Am I being prejudiced when I say I'm glad to be living in a world where I don't see Giant Checkerboards on a daily basis? Also, Second life Dude(?), spend some quality time IN the library!

After checking out the Second Life video, I did opt for the Pirate games and found them slightly amusing. Like another librarian I work with said, I guess I prefer "blow 'em up" games, but mostly I need to delete or keep them off my computer so I won't waste a whole mess of time doing them.

I was impressed on Second Life by the number of schools/libraries that had gone ahead and set up shop there. I think it could be a great virtual tool, especially for college level students. I don't see that it would be a great resource for us here at the public library since most of the classes that we offer are for generalist beginners (most people who come to our classes would never be able to set up Second Life without lots of help).

Part of me wishes that I didn't think so poorly of video games in general (although I don't think a lot of adults who don't have school age children realized how HUGE and industry video gaming is in the world these days). I do like the social aspect of some of these games, but, at least anecdotally, the few people I know who play games like this don't spend a whole lot of time socializing with other people and that seems a bit problematic to me. (Hey, it's a blog, I'm supposed to rant.)

Library Thing 14

2008-04-03T14:11:00.002-05:00

I can see how people would get a little obsessed about library thing - it's quick and easy to sign up for and use (although it the search function was not overly quick when I put the books in, don't know if that's my connection or just the way it goes). I do like the tags used here and it seems little more tangible (although similar to) delicious. Maybe because it sticks with books.

The only book on my list that got more than a thousand hits was the fiction book (perhaps that's more popular than the non-fiction books I tend to favor).

I could definitely see using something like this to point out certain parts of our collection online (i.e. topics, readalikes, etc.,) It was really easy to add the Library Thing code to my blog to pull those books into the sidebar of this blog.

Like many of these sites, I think I would need more time to really explore them in depth and get something tangible out of them.

Thing number 13 - Super "useful" tools

2008-04-01T18:35:00.006-05:00

When I first saw iGoogle pages, I thought, this looks great. Let's get my home page set up like that. But in practice, the speed of my internet connection just isn't up to running multiple apps in the same screen at one time. It takes forever to load, and I find in practice, that I hardly use any of them. I kind of like the news headlines, but in practice, I prefer my feed reader or looking at the actual pages of the news resources. Although the background I chose (the city one) is pretty cool that the sunrise and sunset changes as the sun changes in real time.

Widgets/gadgets are kind of cool, but if you have more than a few, they don't speed things up. I think that cool often means more than practical on the web.

PageFlakes sure makes it easy to set up the page. If you're inclined to do such a thing, it's nice that the pages are portable and that you don't have to download any apps to use them. I do love the slick interface of PageFlakes.

I don't know if I have something personally against Yahoo, but I just can't stand their layouts. Not a big fan of their email or other services either.

We used a Google calendar this year on our Rochester Reads website and while it was pretty easy to set up, it did have some drawbacks, though. The "event balloon" was limited to the inside of the calendar's borders, and often this would cut off information. I know people that use Google Calendar for work and other multi-user scheduling, but I wasn't overly impressed. However, it is nice that once you're in the Cult of Google, it is nice to be able to remember a single password and log in to all of their different services (and don't think they're not counting on that!) I have to admit that in general, I do get tired of making up names and password that I then have to keep track of all the time.

Still not a fan of Yahoo when it comes to calendars - I think it may be the advertising (and sometimes really obnoxious advertising). Not a fan of their design, either.

Scrybe was sort of annoying that it didn't allow you to just go on and sign up for the beta (similar to Gmail when it started).

Again, it nice to be able to access these from any computer and to be able to share them with lots of people. However, I still like the work/email calendar better (and prefer not to have one at home - the fridge works just fine for my wife and I, thank you very much).

Didn't care for the ta-da interface - it looked too much like those ads that let you know you've won a Playstation 3 or something. Overall, one word: over - freaking - kill. I can email myself a list without signing up with a service to do so. Also, a paper list I can actually keep in my pocket and cross off items without paying for a PDA/iPhone/etc., and wireless service.

At least Remember the Milk has a charming interface (although I didn't win a Playstation 3 there, either). It had a few more bells and whistles that were apparent immediately, and I could see how it might be good as an alternative to a calendar for repetitive tasks/trips to the store.

I have to admit I suffer a little bit of information overload and get even grumpier when I see all these tools that I have little to no use for. Backpack does look pretty cool, but I just don't see using it.

If I was at a library that didn't have as wonderful an IT department as we do here at RPL, I could see using some of these tools as substitutes for the things we host ourselves now. Ditto for progams like the PDF converters, although I have an extention on my Word program (from the Adobe motherlode itself) that does it for me. The ones I looked for before we had this program left watermarks on your converted file until you bought the full program.

Thing number 12

2008-04-01T17:46:00.003-05:00

These are interesting tools, but I worry a little about them. When you sign up for something like Reddit, you're basically limiting news stories to the things that you have liked in the past. While this may be okay for some (say, people who have a certain hobby), it's not so great for people who want a balanced view of the news or politics. Reading things that you don't agree with is kind of sort of important. I realize they are tools, just like any others, but if that's all you use, this is not a good thing. And as librarians, we know that popularity doesn't always equal good quality (although it doesn't guarantee bad quality, either - say, the Beatles).

You could also get a lot of junk that other people had to like first (or worse yet from groups that may want to "push" their otherwise dull blog with their group of equally dull friends).

I liked NewsVine's layout better than the others and it seemed a little more polished in its delivery of information. I didn't like their two-click process for getting to the article (although I understand it presents that many more ads for me to watch). Perhaps that goes away once you register. It's interesting that they have an option for publishing your own column - and scary.

Digg,Mixx, and Reddit have a more no-frills kind of delivery (kind a cross between Delicious and Google news). Not very visually appealing. Anecdotally, it seems like Digg has the largest number of people voting on a given story. The comments and customized views also remind me Google News and the Netscape browser homepage (although not quite as ugly as that).

Stumble Upon was visually better than the other ones, but I still don't see using it unless I just want to kill some time semi-randomly on the web. I would almost always go to a site with information I know is good and interesting (and there are too many of those already).

I could see these being fun to set up, but I don't like the lack of authoritative sources. While ranty blogs can be amusing, I don't think I want to set up amusing as a criteria for our library website.

I don't see myself using these tools.

Thing number 11 Tagging and Del.icio.us

2008-03-25T10:20:00.001-05:00

Once upon a time, I had a delicious account (notice I'm not using the pretentious "." demarcation in the word). I thought it was kind of neat at the time, but I never seemed to have use for my bookmarks away from my home or work computers. After listening to the podcast (it really got me excited about delicious!), and trying a few things out, the tagging really seems like it could be a helpful alternative for finding websites chosen by real humans rather than by logarithms (and geeks to boot - which can be very helpful when you're looking for techie information).

It was kind of interesting to read the comments of other people about particular sites (when there were comments) and it was interesting to see the "tag cloud" of tags that were given to a particular site. I have seen OPACs that allowed their patrons to tag items and think it's kind of interesting, but I'm not sure it's ready for libraries yet.

I don't know how much tagging I would actually do myself, but I'm just fine living off the fat of other people's tagging (a horrible, honest admission). Delicious seems a lot more practical and useful than many of the tools we've looked at, especially for me as a reference librarian. I think I will try it on desk this afternoon and see what kind or results I get, especially for trickier searches that the search engines have difficulties with.

Getting back to Thing Number 9

2008-03-25T09:29:00.000-05:00

I have used Google Docs before, and it does make it pretty convenient once you subscribed to the Cult of Google to share things (especially since Google buys everything else - hello, Blogger). I have (fortunately) never had to collaborate on a document with people before (as this kind of collaboration would probably drive me a bit nuts).

Google seemed easier to use. What was not obvious to me, was that once you had permission to work on Zoho, you also had to sign up for an account in order to make edits. It worked just fine after I got it set up. Zoho was definitely a bit funkier than Google, but some days I have to admit that I do not feel the need to improve my interplanetary funksmanship.

I did enjoy changing the Declaration of Independence and think that if the Founding Fathers had used a computer to draft it, we would never be aware of all the changes they made before the actual document was done (okay if they used something like "strike out" we might, but I never saw any of the Founding Fathers (except maybe Ben Franklin) as being the technical sort.

D'Oh, Stupid Blogger losing half of my last entry!

2008-03-13T19:20:00.000-05:00

Okay, Blogger, you DON'T save all my drafts automatically.

The last entry was beautiful, flowing prose that is now lost to eternity because I believed you, Blogger. I didn't save it as I was typing because that was supposed to be automatic. Oh, it's automatic like Viking's kicker Gary Andersen until it really mattered in the 1998 NFC Championship game.

Oh, the agony. I might start returning calls from Wordpress.

Skipping over to thing number 10

2008-03-13T18:59:00.000-05:00

While I'm waiting for permission to edit the Declaration of Independence - that's a sentence I never thought I would type - I have moved onto wikis. Last year, we converted our intranet into a wiki and this has largely been a good thing. Before the wiki, only those staff who had software for web editing had access to change things. Now any staff member can do it (with a little training) and no software on their computer. It's a great time saver to have an intranet on the wiki so we can put information in a place that is accessible for everyone on every computer.

I've used the Library Success wiki before (although I've never posted to it) and think it's a great resource.

*****The section below was re-typed because Blogger tricked me into believing it actually saved things as I went - see rant at next entry*******

The nice variety of wikis on the 23 Things list shows that they cna be quite attractive, easy to use or just plain ugly (I'm looking your direction Book Lovers Wiki).

Wikis do vary a bit in how friendly their coding is - I think that PBWiki does much better than MediaWiki in that category.

One thing we learned (and are still learning) is that it does take a concerted effort to get materials organized on a wiki (although it is roughly one million times easier than it was when we had just random HTML pages thrown up for our intranet!) When I looked at "groups" on Minnewiki and saw that they didn't put all the alphabet on the first page (which means scrolling randomly through pages to get to the end of the alphabet), I thought, hey, there's a better way to organize this wiki. Fortunately, though, it has a search box which is a saving grace.

The number of the thing 8, part two

2008-03-13T18:58:00.000-05:00

Okay, better. Not medicated, but better. Web 2.0 things (or 1.0 or anything point anything) are better when useful. A little bit of cool is okay, but don't waste my time.

Thing of the number of 8 part one

2008-03-05T15:12:00.000-06:00

Now this is the worst thing ever. No, I mean ever. Hey, dig that vertizontaled picture! I have to say PictureTrail.com kind of made me mad enough to put together this artistic abomination below. I'm okay with signing up for an account with my junk email address, but then to put me right into an ad screen without a "no, thanks" tab in sight. To the novice internet person it might not be clear that you don't need to fill in the blanks for an advertiser to have an account. I know that sites need to make money, but there's a polite way to do so and an obnoxious way to do so. I'm just waiting for the spam to proliferate into my junk email that I gave them.

I'll write a bit more when I'm not so cheesed off.

7 being the number of the thing

2008-03-04T08:40:00.000-06:00

EMAIL

Learning more about the functionality of our email program has made my life easier. For example, when our IT department showed me how to put incoming mail from various listservs into folders it allows me to scan the individually and confidently delete things en masse when I'm too busy to read listservs.

Despite the fact that email is considered yesterday's news by many 2.0 (and soon-to-be 3.0 adopters), it is still a very vital and useful technology for work and home for me.

INSTANT MESSAGING

I haven't quite made up my mind about IM yet. On first blush it always seemed to be a way to make a two minute phone conversation into about twenty minutes of typing. But I'm warming up to it.

We do IM reference at my library. We don't get that many (about once a day average), but that will likely change soon. We are hoping to get the Meebo widget on our homepage in the next few months. One of the limitations of IM as we have it currently set up, is that patrons have to have an existing IM account to use it. Setting up an IM account is a real barrier for our 1.0 (or less) patrons. Once we have the Meebo widget (or someone else's widget if that's better - we're hoping that Trillian's Astra provides one since we use it already for our IMing) we expect that people who don't even really know what IMing is will use it - perhaps even in within the library if we can get it to work on our OPACs.

One of the hardest issues that we've dealt with when IMing is dealing with patrons in the library at the same time as covering IM from the desk. If we're busy, we can be away from the desk for ten minutes or more and no one is there to pick up the IM. We get so few IMs that it would probably be worse if we logged off and logged on when we got pulled away from the desk (the risk of forgetting to log back on outweighs our occasional tardiness responding.

I do hate getting IMs when I'm talking with a patron, and still feel kind of rude responding to the IM (at least enough to let the IMer know that we're busy and we'll get to them as soon as we can).

However, not everything has been negative about IM. One of my early fears was that our IMing patrons would be using so many insufferably cute abbreviations that I would spend more time looking them up than I would answering any reference questions turned out to be completely unfounded. It has never, ever been an issue. Either our kids (and I do think it's mostly kids who use ours for homework questions) aren't cutting edge hip, or they just think that we aren't going to get them if they start using abbreviations (and we won't be their BFF).

It is gratifying to chat with someone in the morning and see them later in the afternoon to pick up the materials they requested.

We've had very few people messing with us and I love the fact that you can push out URLs and other text to them (get on your knees and bless 'copy and paste').

TEXT MESSAGING

Text messaging, I'm still a little skeptical about. As a typically long-winded librarian, I find the limitations of the character count to be quite daunting. In this 2.0 age, sending URLs (in an easily usable form) and not being able to explain in the details needed is a bit of a barrier. Although, I suppose that patrons would be aware of that and not ask us for articles or anything that long (especially with the outrageous phone charges for text messaging). I suspect this technology will go away as people start going towards iPhones and other phones that have internet capabilities built in.

The thing being the number of 6

2008-03-04T08:00:00.001-06:00

Okay, after being 'cranky librarian' for the last couple of posts, the image generators are pretty cool and...wait for it... could actually be useful at the library. As someone who does web work for the library, finding and/or creating images is always a concern. And free is a good price.

I might use a few of these on the homepage if I am looking for a new idea.

Warholian thing number 5

2008-03-04T07:29:00.001-06:00

I think that if Andy Warhol was alive, he would say that everything on web 2.0 would be famous for about 15 seconds (or perhaps even milliseconds, but we've got to save something for web 3.0).

I never thought I would see the day that you could take a digital photo and turn it into a "warhol" for free. I also never thought that I would own a computer that takes five minutes to turn on and five minutes to turn off. And so it goes.

I'm still relatively unimpressed by a lot of these things which seem to be more like passing fads than anything of real interest. Kind of like that YouTube video that is "in" for a week or so and then quickly forgotten. The trading card things is cute (I made one for myself and my wife, but am not posting them here as to keep them more rare and valuable for eBay later this year), but I don't see it really fitting in with our library. Probably my uptight sticky-beak nature.

I still don't see the great appeal of many of these things.

Thing number 4.0

2008-03-04T07:09:00.001-06:00

Rochester Public Library New Non-Fiction Wall
Originally uploaded by Mr. Show

The funny thing about 2.0 technologies like photo posting is that the people who I know that would enjoy them the most (out of town relatives) are the most resistant people to 2.0 technology (arguably they are not even web 1.0 savvy).

One of my frustrations with 2.0 (and the web in general) is the speed with which it moves. I teach some of the Senior Techies classes at my library and we used to use Yahoo Photos to show seniors image uploading. As many of you are aware, Yahoo Photos is no more (since Yahoo bought the more popular Flickr and discontinued the service). This is especially frustrating for people who are new to web technologies - they finally, finally understand how to use a program/service and then it packs up its ball and goes home. I realize that's the name of the game sometimes, but it doesn't encourage new people to get on board.

We do have a Flickr account at our library, but it has not been widely promoted yet. Personally, I am a bit leery of putting too much library effort into a service that we do not control. It's great to have someone else host bandwidth-hungry web items like photos and video, but if they disappear, so does your content.

Personally, I have no desire to post my photographs online. I have a Flickr account moved over from Yahoo Photos, but I only use it as an example when I'm teaching.

The fantastically 3rd Thing RSS

2008-01-30T14:05:00.000-06:00

I have a love/hate relationship with RSS feeds. I love them for the great library and non-library blogs, but I hate that sites like the NY Times don't have individual feeds for their columnists (they just lump them all together under "opinion").

I do love the Google Reader. It is nice to have a portable source of RSS feeds. When I first started using RSS, I installed software on my computer at work and home, but soon realized how difficult it was to manage things in more than one place.

RSS is installed on most blogs automatically, and I do post an RSS feed for our library's monthly newsletter.

That being said, I do sometimes prefer to open up lots of tabs at once and browse my favorite websites (which can be done very easily in the Firefox browser). With sites that have lots and lots of information, I do find that it is often quicker to scan the site rather than subscribe to a single (or worse yet, multiple) feeds.

Thingy number 2.0, the 2.0 thingy

2008-01-29T15:09:00.000-06:00

Well, the web technologies (and our understanding of them as librarians) is constantly growing, expanding (and in some cases imploding) all around us. If we're going to maintain our niche in the information world, we need to get more than our toes wet in the internet pool. Does that mean we need to master every technology? Yes, it does. No, of course, it doesn't. But if we're not at least aware of them, we're going to be the ones who are left behind.

Even if we gave up sleep, socializing (the non-digital kind), and eating (which will never happen), we still wouldn't have the time to do it. And we wouldn't have lives, which, in my opinion, is what keeps us sane in the information age. But we need to spend some time there.

So is there a point here? We do need to keep up with some of these technologies. Certain technologies (such as search engines, "librarian-approved" online resources, email, IM) can actually make our jobs easier. Yes, easier. Try living for a week without email and the web and see how it feels. Others, well, need to prove themselves a bit. We don't need to be the bleeding edge (and most of us don't have the resources to bleed there, anyway).

All of that being said, some of our patrons are NEVER going to move past even Web 1.0. Every day we see people who have never even been on the internet, and there are always going to be those sorts of patrons (at least in our public libraries) until the next great technological breakthrough that will make the internet look like a rotary dial phone. And then we'll have Web 1.0, 2.0, 3.0 and who knows how many other .0's.

The good thing about a blog is that you don't have to end with any sort of concrete point, just some random ramblings that will suddenly cut

Blogging: Thing number one on a stick

2008-01-23T13:55:00.000-06:00

I run/write the blog for our reference section (http://ripplesblog.blogspot.com/), so using blogger wasn't anything new. However, I had never made an avatar (on Yahoo or elsewhere), so that was new. I'm looking forward to learning some new things along with some of the web 2.0 technologies I'm already familiar with.

For fun, I did add some web links to the site, library and non-library related.

I have used Word Press before, but I actually prefer Blogger. It seems a lot easier to use and more flexible (even if it isn't nearly as cool as Word Press).

I recently put Google Analytics on our Reference Blog and am pretty impressed with how easy (and free - at least for now) it is. Very easy to install.