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.