Final Thoughts

I'd like to start with a success story. A week or two after the Google Labs exercise, I was helping a woman who updates her church website. The pastor sends her a Word document and she was instructed to add it to the site as a PDF file. I said that we don't have software here for that but that I just learned a way to do that for free via Google, and she was delighted (wrote down the 24 steps) that I could help her. Me too.

So already these exercises have helped (I've also fielded a few MySpace questions) in our customer service. On the whole I've been really impressed with this project and with the information we have learned. I don't know whether to be excited about the direction our culture is going, or horrified. A serious lot of time and effort is being spent by a heck of a lot of people on computer/internet-related activities. I guess I'd have to say that it's maybe like art, or sports for that matter. Some people really like it, and find it very gratifying, and others think it's a waste of time.

Overall, I didn't have much trouble learning the various tools. I found that with some tinkering I could usually figure it out. I do believe strongly that Librarians and other Library workers should continue to learn on the job, so I was really pleased to take part in this project. I think people who work in libraries tend to like to learn, so we are perfect for this sort of thing.

Favorite exercises: Google Labs (especially the documents) and this blog - I like to write.

Surprises: the extent and variety of online applications, goofy inventions, amazing technological advances (mapping, etc.), and the amount of time people spend on all this stuff.

Biggest surprise: that email is too slow and is not cool

Didn't need too much help but yes, it was there when I needed it. Thanks for that.

Improvements: maybe have the option of 2-3 people working in teams? As long as everyone does the exercises, it might make it more fun. Maybe some sort of competition or "final project" - something fun.

Similar trainings? Yes.

Do it again? Yes.

Something else to cover: our biggest tech problem here is the multitude of stuff that people want to connect up to our computers. Video cams, cameras, 21 different MP3 players, etc. I would like to learn some basics about connecting peripherals to our system and what can and cannot be done. Do's and Don'ts of music downloading.

That's it - thanks a bunch.

Podcasts

EUREKA - finally, what I've been looking for these past many years. A podcast from Sirsi/Dynix. I can now go on vacation with peace of mind and a warm heart.

Moreover (I just miss using this word) - moreover, I found a couple interesting library podcasts. My favorite was linked off podcastalley, called "Secret Library Workers Union". I thought it would be labor-related but it's just a bunch of really wacky, poetic clips: Abominable Librarian; Please Leave; Typing - Eyes Closed, Mouth Open are the funniest. The clips evoke the wierdness of library life.

http://podcastalley.com/podcast_details.php?pod_id=45694

I noticed the King County Law Library has a podcast, but the podcast I thought was most useful for our setting was a Teen podcasting program at Hennepin County. We could do something like that. I also liked the Reference Speakers Series, but I wouldn't expect it to be too successful unless we could get some big names to present. A "speakers series" could be used as a training tool, but I think it would be better to have video along with audio for something like this.

Video (YouTube)

What I really wish we could do was take video of some of the kids here and email the video to their parents. What else could we do? Book talks maybe? How about some bibliographic instruction (that'll get 5 stars for sure)? I think it would be interesting to have a short video montage of what all the branches look like. Or a time-lapse video clip of the entrance - it would be fun to see all the traffic coming into and going out of the branch. Hey, I know - a live cam of the stacks when we are closed! We could call it Dewey-Cam, and it would be just like the bald eagle cam, only better.

Anyway, I poked around a bit on YouTube and mostly did searching on the Help Desk spoof idea. I recently saw a video clip of the Medieval Helpdesk and really liked it (I'll embed the link below). I noticed it was tagged "middelage" which made me wonder if I could pull it up searching on the correct spelling. I could, but only because they used the term "middle ages" in the description. So I tried searching on other spoof help desk clips and found a Star Wars Help Desk clip. It's a great idea, but the people acting in the clip were rather horrible.



I liked the dominoes clip a lot too.

Google Labs

I don't entirely get how the trends search works because of the results I got (I did read their "about google labs" blurb).

The first search I did was to compare "library, britney spears, impeach". "library" came out higher than b. spears, which doesn't make sense at all. The spears search did spike a few times in late 2006 and again in early 2007 - when was that hair episode?? A couple months ago, right? So maybe that correlates.

The other search I did was "iraq, wmd, fish" and fish came out a lot higher than the other two terms. The only part that makes sense was the iraq spike in late 2003 (invasion) and the listing for Baghdad, where "iraq" was monstrously high in comparison to searches on "fish".

I also looked at Google Mars, which was awesome. Say you don't remember whether to turn right at the big crater, or left. Just scroll around and see for yourself. I thought it was really great how they linked named geographical areas to the map. Looking for the Tholus Summit? There it is. And you can see where the two rovers are still roving. But I typed in "Bob's Latte Emporium" and nothing came up, which is an obvious glitch.

The world is my oyster

Zowie, this is just grand. And just in time too. My "old" computer at home crashed a few months ago, and although I can still use the internet (after going through the various scary error messages warning me of imminent disaster), all my other applications refuse to open.

So I've been using my wife's Mac, which involves a bit of scheduling and "oops, here ya go honey, I was just getting off now anyway" - and plus, the mouse really stinks and the keyboard is a bit squishy, and darn it all if everything is a bit different. But I like that it's not a PC, just for the sheer audacity of trying to struggle through life without a Microsoft product.

Anyhoo, so this solves my problem of racing over to the phone to call my wife's cell phone to get her off her computer for a few minutes when I need to open a quick word doc (I don't really do that). This also solves the even bigger, and more annoying problem, of having to open an Excel doc every 3 months or so. I refuse to buy the darn software for 4 uses/year. Of course I could just go to the library, like those poor pathetic mortals tromping in every day, shoulders curled with desperation and fatigue.

So back to the options. I imported a doc into both programs. I found, once again, a preference for Google. Again, familiarity - but also the buttons did what I wanted them to do. For example, if you want to save a doc as a pdf, you click File-Save As PDF in Google. This makes sense. In Zoho, you have to click Export. This does not make sense, especially as they have a Save As button right there at the beginning of the line.

I thought Zoho presented more options. The digisign is a great idea, and I haven't seen that Google has something similar. The emotion buttons are cute but not all that useful. I got the impression that Zoho is designed for more academic settings (postcripts/superscripts) or maybe for more professional settings, and Google is designed more for the lay person.

My overall opinion is that this is not only great for me but that it's a very practical tool that we could introduce to patrons.

I decided to post with this image as a counter-argument to Mr. Anderson's University of Nevada perspective. While I appreciate his forward-thinking take, I would argue that technology is on a balancing post, fulcrum in the middle. His "users" are probably all pretty highly educated and media-saavy folk. I don't think his librarians on staff get too many "I've never used a computer before but I just need to type up a quick resume...." questions. So my argument would be that we need to preserve the boat while we grab the paddle, lest we find ourselves up a creek with just a paddle (in fairness, he makes a pretty balanced argument at the end of his article). So going back to the balancing idea, as users are more and more 2.0-oriented, it makes sense to shift more and more resources into that arena. But we must also preserve the library as a fundamental institution as well. There are plenty of areas where people can go to experience Web 2.0. Many people still come in to the library to experience a library. My guess is that as time goes by, more and more people will be expressing an interest in a 2.0 direction. So I would begin modestly in with various 2.0 experiments across the system, and perhaps more aggressively make changes only in branches or areas where patrons express the most interest. As the balance shifts, we can shift our services more and more, but never at the expense of the library as a library.

A co-worker was vacationing in France a few years ago and ventured into a public library there. She asked for DVD's (non), and then music CD's (non), and then something else... The response was "Madam, this is a library!"

I wouldn't argue to get rid of DVD's or CD's, but the point is that we need to remain a library while we gradually add 2.0 services. Try some out - if they are useful, keep them. If not, try something else. I think adding a tagging feature (that doesn't override our cataloging system) is a great idea, for example.

I was glad to see someone warning against "technolust" - seems like a good idea. And I also appreciated the futurist who reminded us that Web 2.0 is just a baby step in the Web trail. The Chip Nilges piece was interesting as a primer on OCLC's newest projects but I didn't see too much in there that would apply to the public library setting. Maybe it's just 'big vision' stuff that went over my head, though.

Custom Search Engines

For the first assignment, I tried searching on "conduct" on both sites, and found that Google's brought back more varied results (Sno-Isle didn't show up in the results of Rollyo even after 5 screens). I liked Google better, though, not so much because of the results but simply because it was familiar. They both pulled up plenty of hits from KCLS and SPL. Neither search engines brought up a code of conduct for Sno-Isle, but the reason became apparent when I went to their website and noticed that their policy is termed "disruptive behavior".

For the second assignment, I tried setting up a Rollyo account and created a search engine for "Climate" - climate change info. I put in a few websites and tried a search. It worked fine and reminds me of that good old search engine Dogpile, or MetaSearch, or some of those others that collate results.

It also reminds me of our woe-begotten search tool (can't remember the name) that finally went the way of the dodo, the one that searched EVERYTHING, from the homepage, and brought back that horiffic long list of EVERYTHING.

Fun

From the generator blog, I chose the superhero generator - boy is that annoying.

So my superhero identity is:

Name: Sergeant Flame

Secret Identity: Andy the librarian

Special Power: Magnetic Gaze

Transportation: Turbo Motorcycle

Weapon: Quantum Bolt

Costume: Spandex Leotard

Sidekick: Hermione

Nemesis: Ming the Ugly

Tragic Flaw: Clumsiness

Favorite Food: French Toast

The french toast is pretty accurate.

I tried the Simpsons one but couldn't get it to copy or download.

Wiki

I looked through most of the Wiki suggested links and it seemed as though a lot of the library wikis were pretty new, but I liked what I saw. I think we could harbor more good will from the community by opening up wiki pages.

I particularly like the idea of allowing patron comments on books, or maybe having some sort of ranking. A patron could rate a book on a scale from 1-10 and the software could average out scores, providing readers an overall idea of how popular the book seems to be. Over time it would be great to see a link that pulled up the "top 100" ranked books (films, etc.) , or something similar.

I also like the idea of collaborative reading lists, readers advisory, etc. It seems like we could do a lot in that area. I'm trying to figure out how we might use a Wiki to help with behavior issues and kids - maybe some sort of public forum via wiki pages?

Like the other issues discussed in this project, it would take some dedicated staff time to monitor a KCLS wiki to deal with vandalism/abuse/etc.

LibraryThing

I guess it shouldn't be too surprising that I found this to be a lot of fun. Books, book-fiends, book-fanatics, and book-wacky stuff. What's not to like? I was surprised at how seriously I felt I should consider the 5 books to catalog. Not like it really matters, but I wanted to pick a really good list of 5. I had a great time pondering tags for the books.

My library: http://www.librarything.com/catalog.php?view=awickens

I think this is the first topic that I'd be likely to return to on my own time. I don't really think I'd use it to catalog my books, though I can see how that would be useful and fun. But the site really provides a great portal to the community of readers and book lovers. I spent a while browsing through the various groups, and am considering joining the Librarians Who LibraryThing group, which I noticed is one of the more active groups.

I also found it to be a good reference tool. While exploring, I happened upon a good list of humorous books - something that's always a bit tricky to find (so subjective).

But I'm left with the same criticism - how do you find the time to do all this stuff???? I guess it's really a matter of how much time you want to spend on a computer. After a day at work, and after getting through my personal email at home, I just don't think I'll want to sit down with a nice cup of cocoa and browse LibraryThing. My rant for the day.

ps. the image is of an old family book that we've read for generations (2 or 3)

de.licio.us

My first lesson learned was that it's reeeeeaaaallly easy to get sucked into surfing from just about any of the tags on the 27Things site. My ramblings took me to a Guinness Brownies recipe and some climate change links. Curiously, the recipe didn't have "guinness" as a tag.

So that leads to my second lesson, which is that catalogers make really great taggers. The rest of us probably stink at it, which is not to say that de.licio.us isn't a highly useful site. But when I think about our catalog being opened up to patron tags, I have to wonder. It would be great to have a tagged version of the catalog, but I have a hard time seeing them integrated into one system. Not only does there need to be some sort of subject control, there also has to be some sort of control to prevent profanity from infiltrating the system.

I wonder how de.licio.us prevents profanity, or maybe it doesn't. I tried searching on a few words, and on 'porn' and came up with a baffling array of sites - some seemingly porn and some that were sort of academic-ish blogs about porn.

So if we had an open tagging of our catalog, how would we deal with this? Anyway, it seems like a great tool if you are spending a lot of time online.

Social Networking

I think the part that stood out for me most was that email is considered "old" and not very interesting to the social networking crowd. It doesn't surprise me that these things change all the time, but it does surprise me how quickly this happens. Also that MySpace is considered too popular for some youth.

This makes me think that libraries need not only to be a part of the social networking crowd, but that libraries need to have dedicated staff to keep on top of whatever wave is cresting. Fall behind and we've lost whatever interest we had.

I think there are plenty of opportunities to be creative and fresh as a library presence on these sites, but I think it takes a lot of time, and needs someone who does this sort of thing at home themselves, not just here and there on work time.

The Second Life networking site sounds pretty interesting, but also a time sink. I think it's the least useful (but probably most fun) setting for an institutional library presence.

I enjoyed the blog comments on some of the articles I read - the back of forth of pros and cons of libraries engaging in social networking. Sounds like a lot of people have already given it a lot of thought.

RSS Searching

I found this excercise to be the most confounding so far. I much prefer to look for the RSS icon on a website, or just paste in the url, rather than search for a feed. I found most of the search tools to be difficult in terms of understanding the results - couldn't tell what it was I was actually looking at. I guess I'm used to google, where the website is clearly listed, or a title is clearly shown.

Feedster results are ok, but I can't tell what sort of website the results come from, because no url is listed (is it a .com site, .org?, .edu?). Topix is similar - can't tell what I'm looking at. Syndic8 is the worst in terms of results - what do all those icons mean - exclamation points?? And if a result is 'pending approval', what does that mean?

I thought the bloglines search was the best because they clearly show the url in the results. I used that to find a library feed. There were very few 'brick n morter' library feeds, but I finally found Hennepin County News.

I found "Library Link of the Day" using one of the other search tools.

My remaining question is - if you can copy and paste any url into bloglines to subscribe, why bother looking for a feed?? What's the difference between a "feed" icon and a url for the page you are on?

Unusual feeds? How about "Nude Hiking and Soaking in the Pacific Northwest" - I was particularly impressed with the nude snowshoeing blog. I'll spare you the photo...

RSS

Way back when, we created lists of websites, or created personal bookmark lists of sites we liked. This seems to be the next generation of "lists".

I really like the concept of collecting all this in one central place, where just new news is pushed our way. But I sort of miss going to the websites - you miss the pictures, I think. I also think you miss the serendipity factor of happening upon something unexpected. I did notice that you can view the names of all other subscribers, and when I tried clicking on one, I found their list of feeds (which was huge - now I know why some people spend endless hours on this.

I'm not too sure how this will help in my personal life, because I just have a few sites I monitor on a regular basis. For KCLS life - it would definitely be useful, in that we could subscribe to a particular feed for very specific issues. It seems like it would be particularly useful to have an RSS feed for library news going out to patrons.

Flickr Mashup

I tried a few of the mashups. The first was an image puzzle maker - you upload the image and then the program fractures the picture into random sections, scatters them, and allows you to drag the pieces back together to form a puzzle. I can't imagine enjoying this more than once, but there you have it.

The other one I tried was a random background image program. I had it pull random images from Flickr's Iceland group, and place it onto my computer monitor's background. Nice!!!

Here's an example (and I apologize to the creator of the image if he/she happens upon this - I'll be happy to take it down if you prefer it not to be used)

kentfront

kentfront
Originally uploaded by a.wickens.

I just discovered that my images will not be reviewed, and thus not found by others, until I post 5 or more images. So I'm adding one more image here.

Flickr2

I wanted to be able to post directly from Flickr onto my blog, but when I tried that it showed that my Google/Blog account hadn't yet been verified. I never received a verification email (maybe it went to junk mail) so I asked for them to resend it. Once I was verified, and allowed Flickr permissions, it all went fine.

I had thought originally that you somehow had to place the photos within the text of the posting, but now I see that the photos are independent postings themselves. I'll try attaching one of the photos here within the text of the posting too. Ahah, so you can do it either way. I think I like this way better, placing the image into the same posting with the text.

Bridge to nowhere

Bridge to nowhere
Originally uploaded by a.wickens.

Iceland geology

Iceland geology
Originally uploaded by a.wickens.

Iceland waterfall(s)

Iceland waterfall(s)
Originally uploaded by a.wickens.

Jokulsarlon Lagoon

Jokulsarlon Lagoon
Originally uploaded by a.wickens.

Flickr

OK, that seemed to go fine. I ended up putting up some Iceland photos. We spent a few weeks there last summer and it was a great trip. Some of the most spectacular hiking and scenery I've seen in a long while.

Well, technically, I'd have to say that Flickr is really easy to use. I was surprised to see that they have their own email system that you can sign up for. It's almost a one-stop shopping type of website.

The only problem I'm having now is trying to remember to sign in to my blog with my full email address, instead of just my ID name. And I can tell that if you do a lot of this sort of thing, and use different logins and passwords, you'd get very confused very quickly about which password goes to what login.

I guess that's it; I'll try to figure out how to add the photos on to this posting.

ahoy

I thought maybe I'd start out blogging in Olde English but it took too long to learn, plus it sounds a wee bit odd and tricksy, so I sticks with the reg'lar english

But I did have a bit of fun with the settings and templates. For example, in a move both bold and clever, I changed the blog title font to (gasp) italics. Or should that be 'italics (gasp)' ?

I'll let the reader decide. Anyway, I might just center my text in a future posting. But to the task at hand. I think this training is a grand idea. When I was first hired at KCLS, I had a pretty good technical background. Now, I'm about as clueless as my grandmother was when she called my number years ago and had her first encounter with an answering machine: "Andy....? Hello...... Andy??? ... This is grandma.....? Hello......? Oh, gosh...."

Being a card carrying member of Luddites of America, I haven't spent all that much time learning new technology features on my own. I could probably still wing it with html but anything newer than that, I'm pretty much toast.

Also, interestingly, a number of people have asked me to forward the Learning 2.0 emails to them so that they can tag along. My dad, for one - which is unbelievable. He's reaalllly Luddite, but wants to learn.

Gotta go - standing orders await.