Thing #23

I've done it: completed the 23 Things!--a little late, but because of my vacation I was really busy the week leading up to the 15th. But it was a great exercise and I'm glad to have taken the journey.

If someone asked me to think of somthing we could do right now with web 2.0, I would recommend a class on Technorati and del.icio.us. I think these are great tools for people to find out a ton of information about anything they're interested in and offer a good way to keep track of websites they stumble upon. Maybe an introduction to Library Thing and other sites for organizing and sharing information about books. All of these offer people an easy way to begin using real web 2.0 capabilties that could lead to NCL developing a web 2.0 constituency: facebook friends, followers on Twitter, or even a Second Life community.

Second Life

At first I thought I would not be very interested in Second Life, and I think that's still true for me personally. I took the tutorial the Univ of Md put together for creating an account, an avatar, going through the basic moves, and so on, because the link to the tutorial in Learning 2.0 required signing into a You Tube account. I still wasn't interested for myself, but this nine-minute tutorial ended with showing students how to show their power point presentations in Second Life. How cool! Escriber Island--where this takes place--is a place in SL that is used for teaching and a lot of schools use it.

In checking out a few of the library links, I found that the Cleveland Public Library--motto: The Peoples' University--has established three islands (which is property you can design and own in SL), the latest showcasing their collection of chess sets, where you can play life-size chess with your avatar. They also have concerts and other events your avatar can attend and participate in on their islands. I did tag and bookmark their site in our NCL2 account in del.icio.us. For the feint of heart, you can just click here.

It's all fun, but unless you can build a constituency in SL, it's probably time not very well spent by your IT people. I can see how teachers can use it to engage their students in a skill building activity they would perhaps not do with such gusto in real life. A little more difficult for libraries. Many a mini-survey to see how many SL'ers are out there in our community? Probably more than we think. (Thing #22)

Facebook and LinkedIn

Yea! I have a facebook and linkedin account. The former I created after attending Laurie's class, the latter some time earlier. I find that I visit facebook more often than linked in. It's fun: the people I'm connected to are people who are part of my current life, although I've been cautious about looking for people beyond the ones I already know. Whereas linked in seems better for finding colleagues and creating professional relationships. (Thing #21) Now on to Second Life and I've done the 23 Things!

Award WInners

I was pleased to see that I was familiar with most of the award winners--and even the runnes up--on the SEOmoz.org website. Some I use, many I learned about discovering the 23 Things. The one I chose to visit was lulu, an on-demand book publishing site. There are easy-to-follow instructions to create your book, a sales site, and forums for sharing experiences with other self-made book publishers. I took a look at the photo books. It's easy to use photos you have uploaded to flickr and facebook, so once you've dived into web 2.0, you can use your online resources for a wide range of applications. I imagine that's a key characteristic of web 2.0: it's not just sharing among individuals, but with other websites for endless customization of content. (Thing #20)

Library 2.0 and Web 2.0

I read the contributions to OCLC's Next Space newsletter and thought they were thought-provoking pieces. I'm a fan of Michael Stephens especially. I attended a seminar at Darien Library where he was a presenter along with Jon Blyberg some years ago and admired his zeal about the future of librarianship. In this article he aptly organizes how the library profession should approach assigning value to and, subsequently, implementing these new tools. In some respects, I think necessity will be the mother of invention.

I was also intrigued by John Riemer's comments on metadata, a complex subject, but one I think is necessary to pursue to better integrate all information sources that can be searched online. (Thing #14)

Google Docs

I created a presentation in Google Docs about the poem, Theme for English B, by Langston Hughes. There are many things I like about it. Perhaps it will speak to you as well. As for Google Docs, the interface is user friendly and publishing the docs to a blog is easy to do. I've also sent an email to my library address to try the share feature. (Thing #19)

Del.icio.us

I watched the delicious video and found it very interesting. Many times I have found websites I wanted to share with collegues and have always just sent the link in an email. It works, but when the email is deleted the link is gone. Given that we're planning on developing a new web site, it could be helpful for us to share good web site"finds" with each other and, in the notes field that pops up when you create a bookmark, explain what you like about that site. Installing the bookmarklets on your browser tool bar make the bookmarking and annotating much easier than sharing this type of information in a wiki. When you log into our learning 2.0 delicious account you can see that I added a bookmark to a blog about libraries and twitter. The RSS feed is also a good feature of the site. (Thing #17)

Technorati

Well, the tutorial video would not load after following the link from learning Web 2.0, so I went to technorati.com and searched "tutorials." There are a lot of tutorials that, or course, are not about the ins and outs of Technorati. But I found some about sewing and crafts which were a lot of fun. I passed this idea for a key chain onto the NC Sewing Group. I think it will be a nice item in their next sale.

More on Technorati to follow.

Later...The tag search for Learnig 2.0 resulted in a list of posts about Learning 2.0. Along with similar search results, the keyword search also suggested checking out their Technology Channel, which tells you "what's percolating in [the technology] blogs now." In the Blog Directory there was a listing for Web 2.0. When you click the link you get the thumbnails and links to a whole host of blogs covering Web 2.0 topics. (I didn't notice a search box on the Blogs Directory page.) (Thing #18)

Here is the Technorati tag for this post: newcanaanlibrary

Wikis

I viewed the wiki slide shows and look around on the ROC wiki. There's a lot to integrate about contributing to a wiki in a meaningful way and I wonder how universally it would be used in an organization. Alice set one up for us to contribute to the strategic plan and most of us made a contribution, but I wonder if we couldn't have shared the information just as effectively via email. It seems to me that it would be an interesting experiment to take our email away and make us use a different way to communicate with one another. Which would be the first web 2.0 to be adopted. I really don't know. (Thing #15)

I added my blog to the favorite blogs page and created an indivual page on the Library 2.0 wiki. http://newcanaanl2.pbworks.com/FrontPage (Thing # 16)

Library Thing

I spent some time on Library Thing and was immediately attracted to the idea of cataloging my books, if for no other reason than it gives you a good idea of how many you have! So I catalogued my quilting books using their ISBN numbers. I put the widget on my blog, which was fun. I have many more quilt books than quilts, but that's okay. I also realized that since working in a library, I buy many fewer books. I think NCL should create "libraries" of books discussed by our Authors on Stage. I'll have to take a look around the site to see what they would link to, etc. Maybe the authors could be listed in the NCL profile, as favorites, which would take you out to their websites. (Thing #13,)

Twitter

I took a look around Twitter, but decided not to create an account. It's something I wouldn't use at this time. Once again in the company of NPR, I learned that with a login you can submit answers to the show's closing "what if" question. You can also see what thousands of other people submit.

You can also search for topics there -- book reviews, for example -- and almost immediately I found the publisher's web site for Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters, the follow up to Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. One conclusion: the people who tweet are younger, so you can use the site to see what's new and hot in maintream popular culture. (Thing #12)

YouTube

I love YouTube. There's a video for every taste. They're fun and easy to find and play. I've embedded two in my blog that you might enjoy. Ruth Harrison is one of my favorite bits from the "Prairie Home Companion." Carl & Ray apparently are characters in Blockbuster commercials, but here they are trying to use a mouse.

As far as library use goes, I think we should make flip videos of staff promoting programs, such as Summer Reading program events, our Annual Meeting, or upcoming author visits. Where they exist, we could link to or embed YouTube videos of some of our authors. For example, here is a trailer for Stephen L. Carter's new book, "New England White." He'll be at the library later this month. (Thing #11)

From "Prairie Home Companion:" Ruth Harrison, Reference Librarian

YouTube Video - "How to Use a Mouse"

Podcasts

Today I worked on the podcast things as I was listening to "Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me" on NPR, so I decided to start looking for podcats there. I've always thought there website was easy to naviagte, as is finding the information you're searching for. They have a geat page that organizes their many podcasts by subject. You can also create custom podcasts by searching the library by keyword. They've developed a an advanced keyword search query API that searches over 250,000 broadcast segments you can incorporate into a custom podcast.

But so many are readily available to sign up for through an RSS feed, that I chose these two: NPR: Books Podcast that has NPR book reviews, news and author interviews --"for people who love to read" from the best of Morning Edition, All Things Considered and other NPR programs. It updates on Mondays and Thursdays and runs for about 20 minutes.

The other is the Nancy Pearl Book Reviews Podcast from member station KUOW. Here is their description of the podcast: Nancy Pearl is a librarian with a love of books so strong it has been officially classified as lust. No matter the mood, moment or reason, she can recommend the perfect literary companion. Author of two books, Book Lust and More Book Lust, Nancy joins us every Monday on Sound Focus to share the most recent books to tickle her fancy. From thrillers to memoirs, international fiction to overlooked authors and even young adult novels, she plays matchmaker for the bibliophile in all of us.

Here is the link to NPR's podcast page: http://www.npr.org/rss/podcast/podcast_directory.php

(Thing #10)

NetLibrary

I created an account at NetLibrary and found that it took some time to update my computer to be able to download audio books. I imagine that some people might find this step of some concern becuase of an aversion to downloading software from the Internet, and it takes some time. But having done that, the interface for downloading the audio books was easy to use.

I went back to NetLibrary using the link on the library's website and logged in. The page that loaded didn't look like it was specific to New Canaan Library, so I searched a title to see what resulted. The book I was looking for was not in our library's collection. I clicked the "help" tab and at that point I saw our building logo and the links to My Account. Went back to the homepage and those links were gone. I thought that was odd, so I will try to find out if there's another way to log in to see "My Account" right away. (Thing #9)

Flickr

I took a look around at some of the API's that are available for doing fun things with photos and I created some trading cards of Coulmbia U rowing highlights, mostly becuse that is what I have the most pictures of. You can view the cards here. I can see that if you take a lot of photos and want to be creative with them, there are many opportunities to do so. (Thing #7)

The Net Generation

I was reading an article in the March 2009 issue of American Libraries (Joseph Janes, "Make Way for the Net Generation") that discussed Don Tapscott's book, Growing Up Digital, and learned that people age 11-30 spend 25% less time watching television than their parents and 8 - 33 hours/week online. That translates into a full time job for some. According to the article, the NYT summarized Tapscott's eight norms for this group as follows: 1) they prize freedom; 2) they want to customize things; 3) they enjoy collaboration; 4) they scrutinize everything; 5) they insist on integrity in organizations; 6) they want to have fun even at school or work; 7) the speed of technology is normal; 8) they regard constant innovation as a fact of life.

As a profession we talk about and attempt to incorporate these norms into the way we work with each other and with the constituencies we serve - and some we have. That's a good thing because it means that when libraries are staffed mainly with members of the net generation, these norms, will in fact, be the norm. What comes next, I wonder. (Thing #8)

Back to the Beginning

Despite the fact that the "23 things" are described with ordinal numbers, I have found that the way down the web 2.0 road is not very linear. After surfing around the web for a while visiting Flickr groups and blogs, I decided to take the checklist approach to Learning Web 2.0. I have completed things 1 - 5 and in the midst of completing the Flickr activities. I set up an account and uploaded one picture-it looks a little familiar, no? I Have two contacts and joined a public group. As a librarian, I've enjoyed the discussions around "tags" from the information retrieval perspective. From the very general--wedding is in the largest type--to the almost nonesensical used by people to retrieve only their own images -- like the guy who posts a daily photo of the necktie he's wearing. (Thing #6)

RSS Feeds

So I'm trying to stay organized and on top of Learning Web 2.0. What I've learned is that you have to make time in your day to spend all this time on the Internet. Do you think that when it was invented people thought there wouldn't be time to watch television? It caught on. I'm beginning to realize the different mind set life on the Interent requires. I think I'm more at home in a book. It's a better virtual reality.
But...I did set up my bloglines account and made it public, and I also track some blogs, like ours related to the 23 things and one quilt blog, through google's feed reader. The link to my google reader is at the bottom of my blog homepage. My laptop is being repaired at the moment, but when have it back I will probably use it in the evenings to check on my RSS feeds.
My goal will be to pare down the list to the best of what I'm interested in and be somewhat conscientious about reading them on a regular basis. (Things#4 and #5.)

Begin at the Beginning

Looking forward to traveling down the Web 2.0 highway.