IT'S OVER!
It feel as if we just barely started doing this and already we're moving beyond it. Yeah, if we had another program like this on a topic I was even vaguely interested in I would defintely want to participate. It's educational and it can be nice to break up the work day with something outside of your usual duties.
I feel strongly that there are things I've been reticent to explore on my own (more from my considerable entropy regarding certain things and fear that they were a waste of time than anything else) that I benefitted from learning about during these exercises.
I really liked finding the "...in Plain English" series of vidoes and have subscribe to his youtube videocasts so I'm looking forward to more of those. Del.icio.us should keep me up to date on webcomics and dooce's cute pics of Chuck. There were lots of fun and useful activities, and even the ones I wasn't particularly interested in I am glad that I know more about, such as ZoHo and Bloglines.
The things I think will be stickiest for me (i.e. that I am most likely to stick with) are the idea of collaborative wikis built by librarians/library associates, the concept of blogging (which I had sort of taken up again anyway), and the overarching notion of Library 2.0, a place we build *with* the patrons rather than for the patrons. It just makes sense. Who knows what patrons want and need? Patrons.
Saturday, June 28, 2008
I'm so over OverDrive
Considering that I taught a class on how to use OverDrive and got an ERA for doing it, I'm going to give myself a pass on learning to do this again. :)
Oh, screw it. I can't come up with a witty title...
...about Podcasting. Although I did find a podcast I'm super excited about! The Poetry Foundation has a podcast of poets reading their poetry and discussing them. Hopefully Matthew is reading this because this might be good for his Poetry Discussion Group at Wellington.
I added it to bloglines, because the exercise said to, but honestly bloglines is not for me. I will be adding it to my iTunes at home though.
I added it to bloglines, because the exercise said to, but honestly bloglines is not for me. I will be adding it to my iTunes at home though.
The Tube of You
This is one of my favorite all time YouTube vidoes. I love music covers.
I also love poetry. There are tons of excellent poems you can hear on YouTube, which could make a really cool library program. There is a fantastic series of videos created by JWTNY. Check this one out.
Other videos that might be fun to have on our library site include clips of programs as publicity. Also I can see having small edutainment videos such as, How to videos related to recent programs (for people that couldn't make it to the program), and videos of librarians reading stories (for people that couldn't make it to storytime).
I also love poetry. There are tons of excellent poems you can hear on YouTube, which could make a really cool library program. There is a fantastic series of videos created by JWTNY. Check this one out.
Other videos that might be fun to have on our library site include clips of programs as publicity. Also I can see having small edutainment videos such as, How to videos related to recent programs (for people that couldn't make it to the program), and videos of librarians reading stories (for people that couldn't make it to storytime).
Friday, June 27, 2008
The Web 2.0 Winnowing
So I was researching a potential program I want to do on Science Projects and Graphing and came across an excellent site that makes it fairly easy for anyone to make a graph (it's much easier than Excel, but still requires a minimal understanding of how graphs work).
I was multitasking to see whether the last few of the 23 Things had been published while also looking for data to test the graphing software with. I decided it might be fun to graph participation in the 23 Things activities over the course of the nine weeks, using the numbers from the now updated 23 Things Progress Reports.
Below is the graph. We don't have any data (at least that a cursory exam could find) for Weeks 1 and 2 and Week 5 is absent because it was a Play week, so no data was collected. I did expect a downtrend just based on anecdotal evidence here at the branch, but I didn't expect the great purge. We've lost almost 3/4 of the participants! The steady downtrend makes me wonder whether it was something about the program itself, the way it was administered, or the difficulty of trying to squeeze this in to our daily schedules that lead to the decline. The big drop that occured presumably during week 5 also begs the question, What the heck happened there? Again from anecdotal evidence I am hearing that it was a combination of those factors along with simple information overload. People with next to no computer knowledge were overwhelmed by the number of things they felt expected to learn in such a short period of time.
I was multitasking to see whether the last few of the 23 Things had been published while also looking for data to test the graphing software with. I decided it might be fun to graph participation in the 23 Things activities over the course of the nine weeks, using the numbers from the now updated 23 Things Progress Reports.
Below is the graph. We don't have any data (at least that a cursory exam could find) for Weeks 1 and 2 and Week 5 is absent because it was a Play week, so no data was collected. I did expect a downtrend just based on anecdotal evidence here at the branch, but I didn't expect the great purge. We've lost almost 3/4 of the participants! The steady downtrend makes me wonder whether it was something about the program itself, the way it was administered, or the difficulty of trying to squeeze this in to our daily schedules that lead to the decline. The big drop that occured presumably during week 5 also begs the question, What the heck happened there? Again from anecdotal evidence I am hearing that it was a combination of those factors along with simple information overload. People with next to no computer knowledge were overwhelmed by the number of things they felt expected to learn in such a short period of time.
Monday, June 23, 2008
Currently Reading: Goblin Quest, Goblin Hero, and Goblin War
Just a quick note about Jig. Jig is an accidentally brave little (okay runtish) goblin who over the course of his three books so far has had to deal with dragons, necromancers, pixies (multiple times!), and multiple gods! This is a smart, funny fantasy series that still feels fresh three books in. Highly recommended for snarky teens, adults, and fantasy aficionados throughout the kingdom.
Goblin Quest, by Jim C. Hines
Goblin Hero, by Jim C. Hines
Goblin War, by Jim C. Hines
Goblin Quest, by Jim C. Hines
Goblin Hero, by Jim C. Hines
Goblin War, by Jim C. Hines
Thursday, June 19, 2008
Web 2.0 Award winners
This was a fun list to look through. Two special favorites are imcooked and guess-the-google.
Guess the Google is a game built on a google image aggregator. It presents a montage of google image results and asks you to guess what the search term was that led to them. It's a good brain exercise if nothing else and highlights some of the fun "unintended" results of Web 2.0 technology and its evolution.
Im cooked is a subject specific content collection of user made cooking shows! This is so great for someone like me who sometimes doesn't quite "get" the instructions in a recipe and could benefit from seeing exactly what poaching an egg looks like. In addition to simple cooking processes like these there are lots of entire recipes demonstrated, in cooking show style, with youtube-ish production values. It's fun to poke around in if you're a foodie.
Sara also had a super cool idea while doing her 23 things assignment this week. She suggested the library have a contest to make a song and a video promoting the library to appear on our myspace page! I love it. I suggested she pitch it to Nicole, who seems to really be looking for people's feedback and ideas on how to improve things.
Guess the Google is a game built on a google image aggregator. It presents a montage of google image results and asks you to guess what the search term was that led to them. It's a good brain exercise if nothing else and highlights some of the fun "unintended" results of Web 2.0 technology and its evolution.
Im cooked is a subject specific content collection of user made cooking shows! This is so great for someone like me who sometimes doesn't quite "get" the instructions in a recipe and could benefit from seeing exactly what poaching an egg looks like. In addition to simple cooking processes like these there are lots of entire recipes demonstrated, in cooking show style, with youtube-ish production values. It's fun to poke around in if you're a foodie.
Sara also had a super cool idea while doing her 23 things assignment this week. She suggested the library have a contest to make a song and a video promoting the library to appear on our myspace page! I love it. I suggested she pitch it to Nicole, who seems to really be looking for people's feedback and ideas on how to improve things.
Welcome to Zoho
So this is my zoho doc. It's cool to have access to a pretty full featured word processor even if you don't have one installed. It seems like an extension of the democratizing ideals behind Web 2.0.
Thursday, June 12, 2008
Wiki Qwiki
Another great Lee LeFever video (I recommend the Social Media in Plain English video as a complement to this entire 23things exercise) and an interesting look at a thorny topic: Wikis.
Wikipedia is the bane of many teachers and librarians, but so many people use it, because honestly for somethings we are willing to trade veracity for convenience in the same way that we trade security for convenience when we have the computer remember our passwords or set our PIN numbers to 1234. If the information doesn't matter *that* much to you, getting it from a wiki is not a big deal. From what I find when researching things for myself, if I have an easily navigable vetted source for the information I'll turn to it, but if I have no idea where to even begin looking and it's not a matter of life or death I'll trust Wikipedia. It's like having a really smart friend that is overwhelmingly right, but makes mistakes occasionally. Having an incorrect understanding of the origin of pizza won't affect my life in any measurable way, and if I realize that it might, such as if I decided to become a pasta historian, then I know enough to know that I need a better source.
Wikipedia is the duct tape of knowledge... it's good enough for right now.
I can really see wiki functionality shining in areas such as the OPAC where patrons could review and rate materials and add tags that catalogers with limited time and mountains of items pending processing might miss. The OCLC open OPAC which was linked from one of the wiki articles this week did a good job of highlighting this.
I should also mention I played with our own Wiki, which is a collection of employee favorites. It would be neat to set up a staff Wiki to share best practices and coordinate more inter-branch publicity maybe.
That's all for now, I'm working on this at work for a change and the reference desk needs me. :)
Also I got an employee recognition award today. Go me!
Wikipedia is the bane of many teachers and librarians, but so many people use it, because honestly for somethings we are willing to trade veracity for convenience in the same way that we trade security for convenience when we have the computer remember our passwords or set our PIN numbers to 1234. If the information doesn't matter *that* much to you, getting it from a wiki is not a big deal. From what I find when researching things for myself, if I have an easily navigable vetted source for the information I'll turn to it, but if I have no idea where to even begin looking and it's not a matter of life or death I'll trust Wikipedia. It's like having a really smart friend that is overwhelmingly right, but makes mistakes occasionally. Having an incorrect understanding of the origin of pizza won't affect my life in any measurable way, and if I realize that it might, such as if I decided to become a pasta historian, then I know enough to know that I need a better source.
Wikipedia is the duct tape of knowledge... it's good enough for right now.
I can really see wiki functionality shining in areas such as the OPAC where patrons could review and rate materials and add tags that catalogers with limited time and mountains of items pending processing might miss. The OCLC open OPAC which was linked from one of the wiki articles this week did a good job of highlighting this.
I should also mention I played with our own Wiki, which is a collection of employee favorites. It would be neat to set up a staff Wiki to share best practices and coordinate more inter-branch publicity maybe.
That's all for now, I'm working on this at work for a change and the reference desk needs me. :)
Also I got an employee recognition award today. Go me!
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
Magically Del.icio.us and the Technocrati Library 2.0
The best thing about this entire weeks exercise from my point of view was the discovery of Del.icio.us and the ...in Plain English series of webcasts on youtube.
Delicious lets me keep track of all the websites and especially blog and webcomics that I mean to read regularly, but never seem to remember to. I created my own delicious page (linked earlier) after adding a few links to the PBCLS Delicious site. (I can't believe no one had added Unshelved yet!)
I looked through Technocrati, and the idea seems to be that it is a highly specialized search engine that indexes blogs and social media and is driven through tag searching rather than more traditional keyword searches. It'll be a good tool to have at my disposal if I ever need to search blogs, but as a library student I'm a bit of a stickler for good sourcing and finding out what Joe Schmoe thinks about something seems of limited usefulness to me. I guess if I wanted to keep up on the buzz surrouding an event and get the unvarnished "man on the street" opinion it would be a good source for it.
The idea of Library 2.0 seems great, but I'm not sure whether our system is ready for it. We're doing the 23 things and we've got a new webmaster that seems to be making some strides (kudos on the incremental improvements of the homepage, though I would have probably taken it to formula and started fresh), but what I hear again and again from my peers is that at every level innovation is looked upon skeptically. From minor changes in shelving materials in the workroom to major rethinking of library policies, my friends in the system only seem to hear one word. "No." I think because the collaborative everyone's-ideas-matter nature of Library 2.0 is so counter to the way our system is run some retraining is going to be needed. We'll get to Library 2.0 eventually, we just need to get some Librarians 2.0 first.
Delicious lets me keep track of all the websites and especially blog and webcomics that I mean to read regularly, but never seem to remember to. I created my own delicious page (linked earlier) after adding a few links to the PBCLS Delicious site. (I can't believe no one had added Unshelved yet!)
I looked through Technocrati, and the idea seems to be that it is a highly specialized search engine that indexes blogs and social media and is driven through tag searching rather than more traditional keyword searches. It'll be a good tool to have at my disposal if I ever need to search blogs, but as a library student I'm a bit of a stickler for good sourcing and finding out what Joe Schmoe thinks about something seems of limited usefulness to me. I guess if I wanted to keep up on the buzz surrouding an event and get the unvarnished "man on the street" opinion it would be a good source for it.
The idea of Library 2.0 seems great, but I'm not sure whether our system is ready for it. We're doing the 23 things and we've got a new webmaster that seems to be making some strides (kudos on the incremental improvements of the homepage, though I would have probably taken it to formula and started fresh), but what I hear again and again from my peers is that at every level innovation is looked upon skeptically. From minor changes in shelving materials in the workroom to major rethinking of library policies, my friends in the system only seem to hear one word. "No." I think because the collaborative everyone's-ideas-matter nature of Library 2.0 is so counter to the way our system is run some retraining is going to be needed. We'll get to Library 2.0 eventually, we just need to get some Librarians 2.0 first.
Thursday, May 29, 2008
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
Ogrewhelmingly Good
Currently reading: The crude, but clever In the Company of Ogres by new fave A. Lee Martinez. Paul and I both loved Gil's All Fright Diner and this looks like it's measuring up to be a successful follow up. Though I must admit the lack of evil cheerleaders is a little saddening. :)
Never Dead Ned is a bookkeeper in the evil Legion and a good one (he hasn't been eaten by the Griffin yet), so he's logically dismayed when he's handed his papers. His promotion papers. He's been tasked by a demonic accountant with turning around the least performing unit in this monsters army. He's not afraid he's going to get killed by the orcs, ogres, and goblins running around. He's certain of it. The problem is, he knows no matter how horribly his life ends he'll come back. He always comes back. It's embarassing, and frankly Rarely Dead Ned doesn't really have the same ring to it.
If you like Terry Pratchett, especially the Discworld books featuring the Watch give this one a try. Never Dead Ned is no Vimes, but he's another hard working, martial man in a wacky fantasy universe. Listen up Tech Services, comedic supernatural police procedural is the new hot genre.
Never Dead Ned is a bookkeeper in the evil Legion and a good one (he hasn't been eaten by the Griffin yet), so he's logically dismayed when he's handed his papers. His promotion papers. He's been tasked by a demonic accountant with turning around the least performing unit in this monsters army. He's not afraid he's going to get killed by the orcs, ogres, and goblins running around. He's certain of it. The problem is, he knows no matter how horribly his life ends he'll come back. He always comes back. It's embarassing, and frankly Rarely Dead Ned doesn't really have the same ring to it.
If you like Terry Pratchett, especially the Discworld books featuring the Watch give this one a try. Never Dead Ned is no Vimes, but he's another hard working, martial man in a wacky fantasy universe. Listen up Tech Services, comedic supernatural police procedural is the new hot genre.
Bloglines
So as per my next exercise I sign up for bloglines. I haven't signed up for this many online services in this short a time period since... ever! I am sometimes a little skeptical of adopting every new online service. I like to keep abreast of what is out there, but I usually wait to sign up for things until there is a little more polish in place, unlike my friend Boz, who is a huge early adopter. He flicks, he tweets, he tumbls--he's the real things ladies and gentlemen.
In any case, regarding RSS and bloglines I created a public blogroll, which I need to show Sara, I know she's going to love Pop Goes the Library. It seems like there are some interesting things to learn out there and RSS should make it much more manageable to attempt to keep up with all this bleeding edge information.
I usually try to manage this by creating a heavily weeded collection of links in my favorites (If I haven't loved it in a month it goes!). I'm interested to see what del.icio.us is about, as this seems like it would be really up my alley. I think that's coming up in a future week.
In any case, regarding RSS and bloglines I created a public blogroll, which I need to show Sara, I know she's going to love Pop Goes the Library. It seems like there are some interesting things to learn out there and RSS should make it much more manageable to attempt to keep up with all this bleeding edge information.
I usually try to manage this by creating a heavily weeded collection of links in my favorites (If I haven't loved it in a month it goes!). I'm interested to see what del.icio.us is about, as this seems like it would be really up my alley. I think that's coming up in a future week.
Saturday, May 17, 2008
Book Bit
So far Gothic!: Ten Original Dark Tales is good. Neil Gaiman's Forbidden Brides of the Faceless Slaves in the Nameless House of the Night of Dread Desire, which is contained within, is great.
Friday, May 16, 2008
Flickr, Retrievr and Unshelved
I played with Flickr some as one of my 23things and played with some Flickr gadgets that I hadn't known existed. Retrievr, even though it doesn't work *that* well, is such a cool idea and is an application that I've wished existed so I'm cutting it significant slack.
Basically you can draw a picture of something and Retrievr will try to find you a Flickr picture that looks like it. It's not super effective yet, but keep working on it, guys!
In book news I haven't quite finished Luna yet with the move and all but this looks like it's next on my read list. It reminds me of the wonderful Gil's All Fright Diner, which Terry still hasn't read for some reason.
Also, big ups to Wellington Steve (who sounds like a relative of Remington Steele) for showing the GB crew how to add a friends list to our blogs. I haven't created mine yet, but I'm looking forward to adding everyone's, especially the cooler people that I see only rarely like Donna and Steve.
Basically you can draw a picture of something and Retrievr will try to find you a Flickr picture that looks like it. It's not super effective yet, but keep working on it, guys!
In book news I haven't quite finished Luna yet with the move and all but this looks like it's next on my read list. It reminds me of the wonderful Gil's All Fright Diner, which Terry still hasn't read for some reason.
Also, big ups to Wellington Steve (who sounds like a relative of Remington Steele) for showing the GB crew how to add a friends list to our blogs. I haven't created mine yet, but I'm looking forward to adding everyone's, especially the cooler people that I see only rarely like Donna and Steve.
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
Saturday, May 10, 2008
Librablog
Library blogs would be a fun way of letting patrons know what we are working on (as far as upcoming features, new releases, exciting programs) though we wouldn't want to devolve into splogging (spam blogging, where the blog is merely adversiting).
It's an exciting time for technology and the library.
It's an exciting time for technology and the library.
Live and Learn
So this is my first post. Hi, Internet. Along with the 23 things I hope to post random notes of interest on whatever J or YA books I'm currently reading, such as favorite phrases, particularly good parts, and such.
As far as the 7 1/2 things go. I thought they were fine and would be okay ways of starting someone thinking about changing/improving their life, but I'm just not there. I don't need convincing. I already thought of myself as a "lifelong learner" in high school. I just knew I wanted to always be learning something new and discovering more about people and the world.
Currently reading: Luna, by Julie Ann Peters (The story of a "perfect" high school boy, who has dreamt all his life of being a girl. This is a bubbling stew of awkward and difficult moments. I'm glad I'm reading this and that I have it available to recommend for teens or parents that are interested in what it is like for transexual/transgendered people. I am also glad that I didn't have to go through this growing up.)
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