Wikis

I read and printed many, many pages about wikis. I am pleasantly surprised by how much I like the concept and the results. I haven't seen enough yet to see one that has gone terribly wrong, but I'm sure it can happen.
I loved the St. Joseph County Public Library Subject Guides. I had already checked it out earlier in the session before I saw that it was an "assignment." I happened to go to Pets, then to Cat Fanciers, and in no time I was reading about and looking at pictures of two breeds that interest me -- Somalis & Turkish Angoras. It was impressive to me that all that information was right there, so easily found. The wiki aspect is less obvious, but I see where a librarian has recommended a new book with an annotation. There are also links to local pet activities and to the pet magazines owned by the library with the holdings. It is all very user friendly. I also looked at the library blog entries on gaming, which should appeal to teens. There were photos of their own teens who had participated in gaming tournaments.
Princeton Public Library's Book Lovers Wiki was neat. It was done specifically for a summer reading event for adults in 2006. Maybe we could do something similar for the Adult Winter Reading Program? People wrote reviews of books they read.
Library 2.0 in 15 Minutes a Day (hah!) seemed like a good way to present the material. It's not at all cumbersome.
I understand now why people have been talking about starting wikis here at HCPL, such as for updating the branch managers' handbooks or having one for our branch. As always, time is the main concern.
I've printed out a lot of the articles on wikis, and I will read them tonight.

Addendum on 10/1/07. I read the 30 or so pages I printed on wikis. Now it's time to try something.

Web 2.0 Perspectives

First of all, the YouTube video The Machine Is Us/ing Us by Professor Michael Wesch is fantastic. I found it to be very creative and also informative.

I read all the articles in the list. Some were too technical for me, especially the one by the OCLC Vice President. My favorite was "Web 2.0: Where will it take libraries?" (probably because Michael Stephens is a librarian). I liked his description of "user-centered libraries." They allow the users to help determine services, materials, and technologies. The librarian doesn't create policies and procedures that impede users' access to the library. Users are involved in decisions and have input. The librarian communicates with users online and connects with them. The library doesn't buy new technologies for their own sake. Technology has to meet the needs of users in a new and improved way. The Librarian 2.0 makes good, but fast decisions. (Then there was more technical info that I didn't understand in the section on the librarian being a trendspotter.) "The Librarian 2.0 understands that the future of libraries will be guided by how users access, consume and create content." And he closes with this: "Librarian 2.0 also listens to staff and users when planning, tells the stories of successes and failures, learns from both, celebrates those successes, allows staff time to play and learn, and never stops dreaming about the best library services." I have quoted and paraphrased liberally, but that was the best way for me to convey the content. I think HCPL does a lot of what he suggests already, but we can always continue to grow and change. Giving users and staff input is always a good thing.

Technorati

I've been to Technorati's home page and looked at some of the entries. New ones pop up every few seconds on their list. It reminds me of what I wanted to name my blog, but I didn't because it's the name of a book we own at the library. The title is It's All Too Much. I feel that way about all of this. Technorati is obviously a useful tool to zero in on subjects among other things. I read the long explanation of how they have worked to improve their service in many ways. I am trying to watch their video, but I don't seem to have enough memory or something. I heard a few words and then nothing, yet it seems to continue playing. Volume isn't the problem, because I do have it set high enough. I did a few searches in the meantime on Technorati, but the attempt to watch the Technorati video on itself has resulted in it never opening. And I can't close it. I'll have to shut down and start over.

My search of "Learning 2.0" led me to the most recent posting by Helen Bowers herself on her blog. http://www.librarybytes.com/2007/09/license-to-play.html She thinks there have been about 200 versions of Learning 2.0 launched. Her blog also includes Learning 2.1, which I looked through. It looks like fun. I tagged her blog to put on my del.icio.us favorites. I feel clever, oh so clever!

Many of the other entries on the list seem to be blog entries by other librarians participating in Learning 2.0. I won't be looking at those, and I refuse to claim my blog to have it officially listed on Technorati. No need to further clutter up the web any more than necessary. It's already "all too much."

I checked out the Popular heading on Technorati and went to the most "favorited" site, www.boingboing.net. It is very interesting. There was mention of books entitled "Uglies" & "Pretties," among others. When I clicked on that it sent me to Amazon.com and reviews of this series of teen books, the Uglies Trilogy by Scott Westerfield. Our system owns them, and I'm going to check out Joppa's copy of the talking book. By the way, when I went to BoingBoing, the filter stopped me due to nudity, but I imagine it's strictly of an artistic nature. So ultimately, I'm impressed by Technorati and consider it a useful site. I also tagged BoingBoing to look at again.

Del.icio.us

I went to Del.icio.us. I registered and added the two buttons. I tagged two things, including the list of 23 things, which has been tagged by quite a few others. Tagging in this way is easy. I think I'll use this new toy. I couldn't watch the video, because it was disabled on 7/24. I guess that's my punishment for being so late getting to this. I read two of the other "articles" highlighted, or at least most of them. They tend to go on and on and on.

When I went to look at my two tags on Del.icio.us I found that the 20 Top Magazine Covers was actually listed as four separate tags, so I bundled them under "magazinecovers."

Rollyo

I went to Rollyo. I created two searchrolls -- one on shopping (I ordered some tea from Harney and Sons while I was at it) and one on reference sources. I created the Rollyo link and put it on my blog. But when I went to Rollyo using that link, it said that user hadn't created any searchrolls. However the two of them are listed on my "dashboard." Confusing. Rollyo is not something I plan to use again, or at least I don't think so at the moment.

Library Thing

I explored Library Thing. I took the tour. I created an account. I added 6 books with tags to my library. And I've just wasted about an hour of time trying to create a link between Library Thing and my blog. Karen Dull helped me (by doing it). I was trying to find a way to put the link in this post, but she showed me that it goes on the side of my blog and not in the post. She was also able to put my avatar there. Yeah!!

Generating Images - Not Easy - Not Impossible

As you can see by my previous posts, I am attempting to generate images and am having sporadic success. Try as I might, I could not import my avatar. I will try again tomorrow with help from Karen Dull.

I went to The Generator Blog and explored a few of the tons of sites. I created my blues name - "Steel Eye" Nelly Nicholas. I went to Easystreet - Make Your Own Street Sign and made one, which I successfully downloaded to my blog. While I was at it, I downloaded a picture of my adorable great nephew Danny. But I wasn't able to put it all together with text and in a great format. I'll seek help tomorrow for that. For now, I have No Time to Generate and must move on.

First I went to Kitten Images but I ended up with a link to the page rather than an image of a kitten. Maybe I'll try that again.

I did try it again -- unsuccessfully. I also successfully, I thought, downloaded my avatar. It shows up fine in preview, but when I try to publish, it won't publish. Maybe that problem can be solved next time.

Top Rated Kitten Pictures

Top Rated Kitten Pictures

Online Image Generator

#9 Addendum

Today I went used some other search tools to access library-related blogs. I read some posts from Stephen's Lighthouse by Stephen Abram, Sirsi/Dynix's Vice President of Innovation and then went to lunch and did a few other things. By the time I came back, the mentions of his posts in the list using the Bloglines.com search tool were already back to page 6 on the list. Now there were many new postings. One that caught my eye was "Is There a Future for Libraries," which lead to this blog full of insight about libraries. The name seems to be Mentat and the writer is Lori Bowen Ayre. http://www.galecia.com/weblog/mt/archives/000271.php
It would take hours just to look at just these two blogs and forever to look at everything by everyone. Who has the time? Is this information/opinion overload? For me, it is, no matter how worthwhile much of it is.

Merlin, Second Life, & an Avatar

I went to MERLIN, read a bit about PLA (still in the early stages at this point), looked at the calendar of training around the state. I watched the Intro to Second Life and a few other short YouTube vidoes on Second Life, including How to Live a Second Life. I got caught up in trying to create an Avatar, which I did on Yahoo, but then I found I could only use it on Yahoo, which was disappointing, since I wanted to put it on my blog. I went to Feedster and learned that John Travolta has two dances of the top 100, including his dance with Princess Diana at the White House as number 1. Feedster didn't really give much in the way of library news or library blogs. It's too easy to spend much time on other things like Second Life and Avatars. Now I still have to find library-related blogs (tomorrow).

RSS Feeds

Today I watched two videos and learned about RSS feeds. I also signed up on Bloglines and subscribed to three different "Feeds." One was About Cats. Another was NYT Arts, and the third was NYT Movie Reviews. I looked through the articles from the first two feeds and read one from each. I wasn't interested in keeping those, and I deleted those feeds. The New York Times Movie Reviews was more to my liking. I read an article on the new movie Sean Penn wrote and directed, Into the Wild, and I read a review of the movie when I went back to Bloglines to re-check the feed for articles from further back.
As someone not really into surfing the web and reading blogs, etc., I have no interest in delving into RSS feeds beyond this at this time. If I can occasionally check for movie reviews in the New York Times, that will be enough use for me.

How Angie's List Helped with My Renovations

I think this is a good, although frustrating, learning experience for me, because I am being introduced to many new forms of communicating. My computer use has been much more limited. Obviously I use it at work a lot, but my personal use has been more limited to purchasing items from websites, often Amazon.com, but some others as well. It has been great for buying wedding presents from registries and for buying tea leaves that I can't get around here. Most recently, I signed up for and used Angie's List. For any who may not know, Angie's List is a resource to help members locate home improvement professionals in many different fields. They can be limited to your locale. The entries are made by other members. I found an excellent plumber (Cobra Plumbing in Abingdon) recommended there, and I had granite countertops installed by a local dealer, JPS Marble & Tile, that I never would have found otherwise, even though it's right in Forest Hill. Other people I ended up going with were recommended through word of mouth. The painter I'm using now was recommended by the plumber, for example. And the flooring person I chose was used by a neighbor. Oh well, I'm off the subject and back onto the topic of renovations, which has thoroughly occupied me for the past three months.
As a reality programming junkie, I have also occasionally dabbled in on-line discussion groups when I was especially interested in who I thought should win. It's fun to read what others have to say about the people on the shows, although I never contributed myself. I was lurking on the sidelines.
Ultimately though, it is amazing to see how much time people must devote to life on the web. To see what people have done in Flickr mashups alone is astounding. Maybe some of these people don't need much sleep?

Fisherkid & sunset ("Turkey scenery" from Flickr Postcards)

Flickr Fun

I'm back after a long break of renovating my condo, which is still underway, but the deadline for Library 2.0 is fast approaching.

I returned to Flickr and started investigating Third Party Apps. I tried Flicker Postcard Browser & found it amazing! I just entered search tag of Greece, and photographs came up in a grid. Once I saw that many of them were photographs of tourists that didn't interest me, I added to my tag the word "scenery." I chose to do "Turkey scenery" and was rewarded with photos of gorgeous sites in Turkey. I recommend Flickr Postcard Browser.

The first two Third Party Apps I tried didn't work. One was no longer there, and another just came up with a colored screen. Another implied it would crash my system. FlickRandom seemed to be just random photos, nothing special.

I spent at least an hour trying to download a picture from Flickr, with help from three staff members who have done it. It's been two or three months since they did it, and we couldn't get it to work.

Mashups are next.