more with del.icio.us

Being able to add notes to entries in del.icio.us can be helpful-- especially if your whole circ staff or reference department uses the same account as a list of organized links. This is also helpful if one is not familiar with the link but would "just right" during a reference interview. Also, if you have an extensive list of links, it would be easy to forget the nuances of some of the links when looking to match a question with a link when choosing between a couple.

I do like that you can rename tags in del.icio.us easily. Much easier than LibraryThing the last time I tried to add consistancy to my catalog. LT may have made it easier than it was, I do not know. And I only have a modest collection-- under 1000 titles.

Some of the other features available for del.icio.us would be useful, though I do not use them currently. The rss feeds would be especially good for keeping up on certain topics. This would be really useful for business libraries. Or if you find a really good set of bookmarks off of another library's list.

I have bundled a couple of my tags together the first time in semester one, but it does not display until I click on "bundle tags." Right now I am not too concerned, as I only have about 33 entries, which is all on one page, if I change the display settings at the bottom of the page.

My library has the del.icio.us software blocked from our circ computers, so that I can not add links if I log into my account, as it requires downloading software onto each circ computer. Though, with the new director we have, we may be able to get this changed. I think all we have to do is have SCLS to add something to each computer. I would love to be able to use del.icio.us at the desk. So that each computer had the same links on them.

Low-tech, or Who needs lights?

Yesterday was just another day in libraryland... until the thunder struck somewhere nearby. Then we were in the dark! No lights, no computers, no phones. The emergency lights came on in some places for only a couple of minutes. We had just let out storytime. People were trying to check out and we were shelving holds. Time to get out the flashlight. We had a few sheets of paper already gridded out for library card numbers and item barcodes. It was at least 20 minutes before the power was restored. And half the day before the phones were back online. Our staff did take it with ease though. We have a pretty level headed group of librarians. We had patrons asking if they could still check out materials. I said, "Yes, we can. We'll just do it the old way, before computers." The only thing we did not have was the cards in the back or front of the books.

Dirty Jobs: Librarian

There is nothing worse to come into the library as germs. We are bombarded with germs everyday. The books, CD's, DVD's and everything else that circulates are full of germs, not to mention the fine money we take in. We can not even come close to disinfecting it all. Sick children and adults alike come into the library or at least handle the library materials, coughing and sneezing on the items before turning them back in. And they do not try to clean off the items before returning them... not that we ask them to.

Why do I bring up this topic? I am one of three people on staff from one afternoon that was out sick from the stomach flu. At least two of us were out for two or more days. I would be out for three if today was not my day off.

What can the staff do? Almost nothing, as germs are invisible to the human eye. We can only wash our hands often and periodically wipe down the check out counters and try to clean the covers of books and A/V.

Curiosity and Project Play Year-in-Review

I am both curious and passive. That means that sometimes I have to be dragged, kicking and screaming into trying new things. I was afraid at the beginning of PP when the first assignment was to create a blog of our own that we would use to comment and try out web 2.0 technologies. When I discovered how easy it was to use many of these tools, I lost the fear.

As stated in the 11-12 week assignment post, not everything will be useful to all libraries and all people or situations. Evaluation of each need will determine what steps are taken to solve a question posed by a patron, fellow staff person, or new need in the library environment. The six steps are a great reminder of this. Mashups definitely are examples of curiosity and creativity to fill needs people have encountered, trying to make life easier. Blogs, bloglines, survey monkey, Gabcast, Flickr (for events pictures), Librarything, del.icio.us and tags are definitely things that I can use in my library in what I do on a regular basis. I recommend Librarything to patrons, as I have used it for several years. I would like to see myself using web 2.0 technology to have a social community book review/what-I-am-reading-now site.

My curiosity will keep me interested in keeping up with new technology, and my passiveness will probably keep me from trying any new technologies until I find a need that the new technologies can fill in my personal life. Thank goodness for newsfeeds (rss). My library life... I do not know. I am certainly more outgoing with people when living in my library environment.

Mashups

I added Verona Public Library to the Mapbuilder sandbox. That was pretty cool. Easy to do too.

I liked the idea of mapdango's where you can type in a city and see the weather, see a list of events in the area, music playing, flickr images, and wikipedia info about the different sites to see... all color and number coded on a google map. I did not see any source information except that the site says that it is not affiliated with flickr, Wikipedia, Weatherbug, Eventful, Gruvr, or any other third party. It was a Mashups award winner. I can see its usefulness in a reference interview regarding events or music. All you have to do is type in a city and state to find the info that you are looking for.

Soon I will be putting up my condo up for sale again. To see my competiton, I tried to look up real estate mashups. I also thought it would be cool to look at crime in my area. I tried many real estate search mashups for my zip code and found that they were not very helpful. It is easier to go to realtor.com to find the information I wanted. I tried the mashups to see if I could find one with info on crime rate by neighborhood and see if one was connected to real-estate and did not find one that was useful. I looked for a mashup that stated that there was information on crime included; so far I found one that claimed to. Fizber.com had census data, and other info by city, but nothing was broken down by neighborhood, only city. Other sites did not include the crime info, but were simply property search sites that had less information than a realtor's website.

I learned that for some searches mashups will be useful, and other times a straight website will work better.

YouTube

YouTube is fun. It is entertaining. I especially liked the YouTube video "Tour the Harper College Library" listed on Project Play and in my own search, the video "The L-Team" which is a take on the A-Team. Of course, who can forget the "Conan the Librarian" clip from UHF?

Videos on YouTube are either very good or very very bad... but they are homemade videos made by regular people and not necessarily professional actors. My spouse recently got an account for YouTube. I will keep to my current 5 email addresses, so if I want to use the account, I will use his. I think that for fun, librarians can have fun watching librarian related clips on YouTube, and it can be used for all ages by libraries for promoting services or teaching, or even giving a tour of the library.

I do like the idea of having contests for library patrons and using YouTube as the format. All ages are using it. YouTube is a fun way to teach something simple, if you want something a little more fun to watch than a screencast, if you already have a way to record the picture and sound, such as with a camera, phone, or camcorder.

screencasts

Screencasts, video and audio recordings of what is on the computer screen that are shot in real-time, could be helpful in demonstrating new databases available to the public on the library's website, wiki, or blog. Audio is optional, depending on what content is being shown.

The reference or circulation department could do a screencast of how to use LinkCat or any database for patrons to use. A different database could be screencast each month. Other options for the SCLS users could be how to place holds, check the availability of a book at the library, reserve a computer online, and more. Also, how to set up a free email account could be shown too. The Children's department could demo Ebscohost, Searchasaurus, and ERIC databases too.

If permission was given by the instructor, the library could even record a class on how to use excel or word or other computer classes, a powerpoint presentation or other class and keep it online or on the blog or wiki, though these might be really long screencasts.

I thought about suggesting book talks on screencasts, but that is more like a video option, not a screencast.

Podcasts and Libraries

Wow. I thought that it would be hard to set up a podcast before I listened to today's podcast. I thought that I would need special equipment, like a mike for the computer and software. All I used was my phone! I was simple. (thanks for the second email, PP2). It was so easy to use gabcast to record the short 'cast, locate it by the time, listen to it, rename it and even paste it to my blog.

There are a lot of things librarians can use this technology for. I can see it being used to promote upcoming events, like a booktalk for a program, so to speak. Also, podcasts can be used for booktalks; book, music, and movie reviews (by staff, teens, or even other adult patrons); recordings of programs; storytimes (assuming books are past copyright); speakers; and training and meetings for staff. Teens would like it for an alternate place to get their voice on the computer 'casting to the world.

For our library, I could see it being utilized for the teen area and for past programs- if our broken microphone was ever replaced or fixed! A program would have to be taped before it could be submitted over to gabcast. I would like it used for promotion of upcoming events too.

web 2.0 so far

I am a social person inside the library but by nature passive outside the library. One thing I don't like about all of the technology so far with web 2.0 is that you have to be logged in to everything and have multiple emails. There has to be an easier way. I do like how LibraryThing and maybe one other application covered did not require an email address as a login.

To Facebook or to not Facebook (or MySpace)

If you are trying to reach more teens, MySpace, done right, may be the way to go. It would be an online way to reach out to teens- who are constantly plugged in and online.

For Adults and for Childrens programming, a good website may be the way to go. It depends on the individual library's needs. If your adult community is a highly technical group, then you may want to add Facebook. It depends how much time you want to devote to keeping up the blog, wiki, website and social networking pages current and fresh looking. Although the technology out there is supposed to keep us in the now and cutting edge, it takes staff time and money to keep up-to-date.

This one is hardest for me to see how it works without actually having an account. I can understand that it could be good for keeping up professional contacts up, though there are other ways to do that as well. The video on this week's assignment page reminded me of six-degrees of Kevin Bacon. Social networking could help you contact someone you want to meet without having to ask personally everyone you know if they know person "X". I do like the idea around social networking, and the online world makes it easier on us passive folks. Unless you are one to crave person to person contact.

MySpace and Facebook

I like what Denver Public Library has done on MySpace. It is easy to see with the white background, but not boring with the sqiggly design behind the boxes of text. I think that the design would be interesting to teens. The box for reviews on music and movies (and books in last place) would be utilized by teens here on the MySpace more so than on a blog or Library website. Go where the teens go. It also has the catalog search screen right there (though I almost did not find it as it was not labeled as the library catalog... probably better that way) :-)

I like that LaCrosse has pictures of teens on their MySpace account, as they are the user group trying to be reached. It is good that they list the types of events and activities that their library hosts. The bulk of their information like Denver is to click on their blog link. Denver's is more comprehensive, and it shows in the number of comments. Though, Denver has a much larger population too.

The Charlotte Mecklenburg County Library Loft is another like Denver. I think it speaks more to teens than LaCrosse does. It may be more publicized too, who knows? They have a meebo on the page, upcoming events, a calendar, etc. It is in bright neon colors.

Two of the sites had music that could be played on the site. Teens would like that. I think that teens are the hardest group of users or non-users to reach. Okay, you create the site; how do you spread the word to the teens that the MySpace library site is out there?

I don't see a need for me to use it for personal use. For our library, I think our teen librarian would love to use it for the teens. I do like some of the options the libraries above have used the MySpace, though in the comments area I saw a lot of new books listed as a comment in some of the pages viewed. I would put books in a separate area. There did not seem to be much said in the comments area of substance. Am I way off base there?

As I do not have a Facebook account, I did not check those out except for the screen shots. The screen shots did seem to be a little easier to read, more for adults. If I were to use one over the other for personal use, I would use Facebook. If our library used either social networking tools, we would probably use Facebook for the adults and Childrens programming and MySpace for the teens.

Tag Cloud ? Need help

I want to make a tag cloud and did not quite get the result I was looking for. Any suggestions on how to make it look like the one I have in LibraryThing and what PP2 homepage looks like?

RemembertheMilk and Jott

I have owned a Palm pilot for over a year or two and use it sparingly (I started forgetting birthdays, minor appointments and get-togethers) and my husband thought we should both have them (I was his excuse to buy one for him). I rarely use it for tasks and appointments, though I am starting to use it more now, as life is starting to get more hectic. I am more of a on-paper list-maker. I do like it as a perpetual birthday calendar.

Thus said, I personally probably will use Remember the Milk and Jott zero times for personal or in the library. I have other ingrained ways to make lists that work for me that are low-tech. I can see a potential use for libraries communicating as a group needing to work on a big project, such as building a new library, or for other projects or meetings between branch libraries, or other project groups. Our library is 1.5 years old in our current building and we are not part of a branch. I am used to Outlook's task bar, not that the library uses outlook for email. But I do for home use.

I also would not use my phone to set up a task for my to-do lists. I like to write them down or if I have no paper, use my palm pilot. I am not enough of a worker-in-transit to want to transmit things to a to-do list via phone. The idea behind jott and remember the milk is cool and I can see applications in a group, kind of like the wikis are good for group work. It just doesn't suit my needs. It is a good organizational tool for those needing an online list.

Google Docs

This definitely has a place for collaboration for school and work projects. And if you travel a lot and would rather not depend on a flash drive, all your work would be available online on your URL.

I do have a couple of concerns though. What if GoogleDocs crashes when you need to access it? What about security? One time I was going to access and update books on my LibraryThing account, and it was down for at least three days straight. Data was not lost, but I was not able to access my account.

I do like how it is extremely portable and the collaboration would have been easier in grad school for all those projects.

changed template

Now my meebo can be seen in full. I will see how I like this template choice. I also changed my picture and deleted my poll from last semester.

Meebo

Okay. I added a meebo widget to my blog. I like my template except for the fact that it is narrow. The widget gets cut off on my sidebar. I may try picking out a different template and see if I like it better. We will see. I am trying to add my MSN messenger to the meebo, but I am automatically logged in on that so I don't remember my password. Not a problem so much since I rarely IM.

IM

I have to say that I rarely use IM. I only use IM during my spouse's infrequent business trips. All we need is a laptop at one end and the regular computer at the home end. It helps keep the long distance charges down.

At the library, I notice mostly teens IMing each other, while sitting next to each other. Since they are sitting next to each other, I find this a waste of time, as other people may need to use the computer for homework or other. I do realize that these students are valid users, but as I am more interested in person-to-person contact rather than computer-to-computer chat. I would also rather see them working on homework or even playing games online, or finding a quiet space somewhere to chat in person. That said, I do realize that when I IM with my spouse, we talk a lot more than we do at home. Some of it is nonsense, some personal, some gossip. Maybe the teens feel more secure in IM than chatting aloud, or maybe they are chatting to a group. It is still private, so I do not ask. Overall, IM still may bring them to the library. Hope against all hopes, maybe they will do more than use the computer and maybe check out a book, DVD or CD.

For help in the library, I do like David Lee King's idea to use of IM for invalid searches on their catalog. I think it would be easier asking for help by having them call from home or come up to the desk if the patron was in the library than via online. If this becomes popular, I also am unsure how the library would keep up with demand. Someone would have to be available by a computer off desk, so that the person waiting on the other end does not see "online" and wait and wait and wait. I am interested in the feedback on how that is working for his library.