Thing 23: Libraries 2.0

When I first started library school people talked about Web 2.0 and Libraries 2.0 like these were things that every living breathing person knew about.  In a way, I think everyone is aware of these technologies, but doesn’t know that they are called Web 2.0.  Someone asked me when I first started how much Web 2.0 stuff I had done and I said “Nothing!”  Well, that couldn’t be further from the truth I just assumed that if I had no idea what they were referrring to, I couldn’t possibly have been using the technology. 

Now that I know what web 2.0 refers to and I know that I’ve been using a lot of the cool applications and sites for years, I can answer that question a little better.  I certainly have done a lot with it, but there’s always more I can do.  As far as librarians using Web 2.0, we’ve had a lot of class discussions about how we really want to be on the band wagon, but that our profession sometimes takes so long to make big changes. 

That’s why the Michael Steven’s article on Web 2.0 spoke to me in what it said librarians should be in order to be successful integraters of 2.0 technology.  We need to be good yet fast decision makers that spot trends.  If we see a trend and don’t decide to act on a new technology, we’ll be too late, but if we act on every trend, we’ll spend too much on things that aren’t necessarily useful.  That’s a fine balance to strike.  I also think there is a tendency toward techno-lust among librarians that should be controlled.  We want all the coolest pieces of technology, but don’t necessarily consider how useful they will be to our job and the patrons. 

I think that the the thing we need to work on now is interactivity and having patrons add content.  Chip Nilges of OCLC calls this “collecting user intelligence.”  How cool would it be to have patrons post their own book reviews and rate the books they return.  Integrating Amazon like features seems to be the way to go.  We’ve had lots of discussions in my classes about privacy issues in tracking patron preferences and coming up with recommended items.  It seems like a lot of patrons would really enjoy this feature and we’d have to come up with some way to preserve privacy and expand reader’s advisory using 2.0 technology.

Thing 22: Podcasts

I’m not a podcast junkie, but I do love NPR.  So most of the podcasts I’ve listened to are NPR podcasts of my favorite shows (This American Life takes the top spot).  I have also listened to some podcasts done by LISnews and I’ve enjoyed them.  I wasn’t overly impressed with any of the sites here.  Podscope, podcast alley, and get a podcast seemed okay, but I guess I liked podcast.com best because the search results I got seemed the most relevant to what I was actually looking for.  They also had good subject breakdowns which always makes me happy!  They had some great book oriented podcasts up and I enjoyed how they displayed content.  I get the New York Times book review RSS feed, but it might be nice to listen to some podcasts.   I also found some interviews with authors there that seemed intriguing.

Thing 21: Video Sites

I’ve experienced enough horrible and hilarious youtube videos over the years to feel like I know what’s up there.  I did check out metacafe and liveleak since they were new to me.  I’ve also used google video before.  I’m not a video junkie.  I have lots of friends that love youtube and other video sites, and lots of the teens love youtube.  I am not one of those people, but I do enjoy seeing some of the videos that they discover.  I also witnessed a teen watching a pretty traumatic video recently and that puts me off of the internet videos.  I was most disturbed by liveleak which seems to specialize in police video.  That reminds me a recent experience eating out where an arrest took place directly outside my window and people gathered around our table to get a better look as the man was tazered and passed out.  I’m not sure what the fascination is with things like this, but I’m not interested in these types of videos. 

I do really enjoy being able to watch music videos and fun videos on youtube.  I have some favorites, I must admit, but it’s generally not my scene.  It seems like a great thing to get teens involved in filming and posting their own short films.  I can only hope that David’s program at University Heights will pick up!

Thing 20: Widgets

There are some people that have silly widgets, some people that have inspirational widgets, some people that have really useful widgets.  I am none of these.  On my iGoogle page I have these gadgets: email, time and date, weather, movies in my zip code, New York Times Top news stories, one made by my husband for me, one made by me for my husband, and that’s it.  I used to put fun gadgets up, but they never kept my attention (examples include those little fake fish swimming in a pond, and a daily puzzle). 

Most of the widgets I saw at yourminis were thigns I had seen before.  I was not particularly impressed or excited by any of them, though the radio widgets might have been interesting.  I did find a prank widget on the election found here that I thought amusing.

Thing 19: Web 2.0 Awards

So here’s a problem I run into all the time.  I love food, cooking and eating.  I’m also have intolerances (very different from allergies) to most “normal” foods.  See, I can eat them sometimes and I’m fine.  Other times I eat them and I’m miserable.  I won’t go into agonizing detail about what I can and can’t eat.  Suffice ti to say, it’s hard to go out to eat, though I love it, and it’s doubly hard to go eat at someone elses house.  So, what does this have to do with the web 2.0 awards?  A lot!  Especially when I find a great site like recipekey.com. 

This site allows you to put in the ingredients you have and then finds recipes that you can make.  This is helpful when you have limited ingredients, but it’s also helpful for people like me who find delicious sounding recipes and have to modify them (which I’ve gotten pretty good at).    They have some interesting ingredients, but I don’t think they’ve really figured out yet that special diet people (especially someone like me that has multiple special diet needs) are the people they should be catering to.  They don’t seem to have a lot of ingredients I use listed and maybe one day they will, but it will still be a useful tool until then.

Thing 18: Online Productivity tools

I’ve been using iGoogle and Google calendars for quite sometime now.  I use iGoogle all the time, but I’ve fallen out of the habit of using the calendar.  My husband and I have such ever changing work schedules, and it seems that updating an online calendar and a paper calendar is too much for us both.  I also don’t have a fancy cell phone and I’m not constantly online, so that limits the usefulness of many calendars and online productivity helpers.  For example, any list I made would require me to print it out for it to be useful since the bulk of the things I make lists for are things like groceries shopping or basic household tasks.  It seems like it could be useful to me if I had a desk job (same with the calendars), but I don’t and I need to take my calendar with me.  It’s just too much hassle trying to put things into so many different calendars.  I’m lucky if I have my own work schedule and my husband’s work schedule both in my planner on a given week. 

I liked the idea of all of these cool tools like Stikkit.  I would use stikkit all the time if I had constant access to the internet via a phone.  I also liked the mystickies idea of putting post-it notes on a webpage and when you come back to that page, that note is there.  While they aren’t listed in the things to help students with productivity, I think that Vista (webCT, blackboard) and Moodle are tools that increase productivity since they have built in calendars and to do lists and communication options.  I think these sites can be helpful, but I’ve also had a couple of problems with them over the years. 

And the Pdf converters are great, too!  I have one of these on my computer at home, but this makes helping patrons with documents much easier!

Thing 17: Delicious

I’ve lost bookmarks several times due to computer malfunction.  This was in many ways a travesty in my life because I love my bookmarks.  I’ve recently reformatted my laptop and was happy about the reformat, but I’ve yet to put my bookmarks back where they belong.  Delicious has seemed like a great idea to me for quite some time.  I like searching their bookmarks and tags, but I’ve never actually set up an account.  Partly because I know I don’t have time for it now and partly because I already had my bookmarks organized in just the right way.  Now, that I don’t have my bookmarks organized perfectly on my laptop, it seems like a perfect time to switch over. 

I learned about delicious, but I didn’t learn the answer to the question that’s been nagging at my mind the most.  Why is it Del.icio.us?  Why not just Delicious?  Wikipedia notes that Joshua Schachter, the creator of Delicious, said “I’d registered the domain when .us opened the registry, and a quick test showed me the six letter suffixes that let me generate the most words. In early discussions, a friend referred to finding good links as ‘eating cherries’ and the metaphor stuck, I guess.”  It also notes that they no longer use the dots due to a hack.

Things 16: Social Networking sites

I’ve been on facebook since very near the beginning, May 2004.  I was on facebook when it was only open to a few colleges.  It’s growth has been staggering.  With it’s growth has come ridiculous applications and people spending too much time on things that don’t matter, such as the ridiculous One million against the New Facebook initiative.  I’m constantly flabbergasted by the things people spend their time on, but in my opinion, there are lots of good things about facebook.  I’m certainly guilty of wasting time on some inane functions of facebook, but I try to keep it down to general keeping in touch with people that matter to me on some level.  That’s what is great about Facebook, so many people are on it that it’s easy to get an update or message someone you’ve been out of touch with whenever the urge strikes.  I took the opportunity for this blog to familiarize myself with the “new facebook” since I hadn’t gotten the chance to do that yet.  I think it’s fine.  Everyone rebels when they change something in a major way and this is no exception.

I’ve consistently, purposefully avoided other social networking sites.  MySpace seems to have an ugly format and since I already have facebook and a blog, I don’t feel the need to do MySpace as well.  I think the music functions are cool and I do visit up and coming artists there to get samples of their music, but I’m generally not interested in having another online presence.

Thing 15: Explore social media sites

While I’ve stuck with my google reader and sharing news articles with my friends there, I’ve been interested in branching out.  This seems like the way I would do it and I enjoyed looking through these different sites to see what they had to offer.  Digg and StumbleUpon appealed to me most due to the way they were set up.  Of the two, I really liked the fact that StumbleUpon had an Arts section and the things in that section there were different from what I’d find in normal “arts” sections.  It was fun browsing this area, the music area and the fun area.  That made me think that StumbleUpon might be something I would join in the future.  I didn’t like the others because of the categories they broke things down into (or lack of categories) or because the top stories and pictures weren’t things that interested me.  

Now I just need to convince my friends to join StumbleUpon and I’ll be all set!

Thing 14: Google Maps, My Maps

I think this is a great application and I’ve used it several times.  Right now, I’m relatively new to the area I’m living in and have several friends that are also new to the area.  The my maps feature would be a really fun way to share cool stores, restaurants, and parks that we’ve found.  When we first moved in a friend gave us a map they had printed out with similar information on it, but it would be great to keep updating it for each other as we discover things.  It seems like it would just be fun to share your favorite things. 

Being a new employee, I remember that we got a handout with some of the cool Cleveland Heights hangouts on it.  It would be fun to create a map like this to go with that or substitute for it. 

As far as library applications, the underground railroad map Amy helped create for the Hudson Library seemed really cool.  Historical things seem like an obvious application.  It might be cool to create a map for new residents to see where all of our branches are and also highlight some cool things in the community.  I also really like scavenger hunts and an ongoing scavenger hunt program might be really fun.