Crossing the finish line

And I'm finally done! Maybe that's not exactly the sentiment I'm intended to leave with, but it's an honest one. Overall, this series of excercises wasn't all bad, and there were definately some parts I enjoyed, but after a while it did get repetitive.

First, things I liked:
*I did finally learn what RSS was and if it would be useful for my own interests.
*I learned about how even parts of the web I despise (MySpace especially) could really be useful for libraries both from an employee standpoint and to better reach out to patrons.
*I got to make trading cards using my pictures from Dragon*Con.
*I found out that tagging can actually be useful - even though I was resistant at first.
*I learned about Google docs, and will definately recommend them even if I don't have any immediate uses for them myself.
*I found filk on last.fm.

Then, aspects I didn't care for as much:
*I really didn't like creating so many accounts that I probably won't use ever again. Maybe if there had just been some general library accounts already set up that I could just have added to it wouldn't have felt so frustrating.
*There seemed to be an odd balance of "fun" activities and applications I needed to learn. Yes, I enjoyed using the trading card maker, as well as a few other mashups, but I wasn't sure where those fit into the overall library connection. They appeared to be just thrown in a bit at random in order to assuage suspected boredom.
*Though I'm fairly confident with using the computer and convincing it to do what I want, I know that many others are not. This program had many aspects that were not at all intuitive to those less familiar with navigating certain types of sites and programs. I was glad to help a few people, and I know that that was something mentioned in the program's beginning, but the logistics of such helping sessions were difficult to arrange and were not supported by the four-month time limit. Perhaps if another similar program were put together, there would be more structure so that those for whom setting up an IM widget on their blogs was easy could work with those who had difficulty.

Now that I complete my last blog entry, I'm glad that I did this program and will take away more than I initially suspected. If another such series were offered, I would likely be happy to take part in it.

All A-twitter (or not)

At first glance, Twitter seems like an endless stream of commercials. And I'm not going to get into the creepy "your followers" thing. One of the only (possibly) useful differences between this and regular blogging seems to be the length of a 'post'. I don't know about anyone else, but if I want to limit my blog post to 140 words, I'll do just that - I don't need to create yet another account somewhere to do my limiting for me. This slight complaint is connected to one of the problems I've been having with all the 2.0 programs I'm learning about. It seems that there are a million sites out there doing a few things that are truly different. RSS readers, Meebo, and microblogging don't appear to me to really offer anything *new*, just different and more complicated ways to do what I'm already doing. I can see how something like Twitter may be useful if someone doesn't want to have a blog, but otherwise it just appears to be yet another account to create for the sake of creating another account. In the end, while I proudly consider myself a geek, I'm a geek that doesn't get into the latest tech fad because it exists - I actually need to have it do something necessary for me.

Cruising with Youtube

For this activity, I chose to spend some time looking around Youtube. Here's the video that interested me most on my little jaunt:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYaczoJMRhs

Yes, I'm a proud Whedonite. I remember attending one of the charity screenings of Serenity in Portland where they played this speech before the film, and the sense of being a part of something so important and so much bigger than myself was a wonderful feeling.

I liked parts of Youtube quite a bit. I could probably spend many unproductive hours looking at music videos made from songs and clips from various Whedon shows. Of those, I love a Firefly vid set to the song "I need a hero." Cool stuff indeed.

I can also actually envision this being a useful tool for libraries. I've already taken part in Sam's One Minute Critic series, and it was a lot of fun. I could also see libraries making videos of programs and activities to entice more people to attend. In addition, there could also be a series showing patrons how to use various library services or presenting them with the opportunities to make their own library-esque vids and have them shown on the library homepage.

Podcasting

This "activity" seemed less useful to me than many others on Web 2.0. Not because I dislike podcasting, but the activity itself didn't involve much of anything. Thankfully, I've already downloaded and listened to quite a few podcasts in the past - otherwise I probably still wouldn't really know what was going on with them.

While none of the library-related podcasts really caught my attention, I do think that 'casts are very useful and entertaining. For myself, I regularly listen to "The Signal" - a Firefly podcast - and two 'casts related to Dragon*Con. The first is just for fun, but the other two have also provided me with valuable information about going to such a large convention and how to make the most of my trip. While I enjoy a well put together website, there are many things that come across much better when listened to than when read. Music for instance, as well as interviews. Often, when reading an interview, the person loses much of their vivacity and uniqueness that are easily apparent in an audio or video podcast.

A New Place for Filk

Now this is cool. I love to listen to music, but my genre (filk) isn't exactly anything I'll likely be hearing on the radio anytime soon. I pretty much just have to go to conventions and stock up in the dealers' room - buying cds I've never heard, but have faith they'll be good. I'm often quite satisfied, but there have been times I regretted my purchases. Here, though, are places where I can listen - for free - to stuff before I buy. And they even have more than a few filk artists.

So far, Last.fm is my favorite music site. I like how intuitive it is with tags and tabs dividing up all sorts of juicy information. Not only music, I also found videos of one of my favorite performers (Heather Alexander) and links to many other filkers. Even ones I've never heard of!

Excuse me while I grin in geeker joy. I can't wait to explore this site further.

As far as connecting this with libraries, I know I love to listen to music while I read and it would be cool to have suggested songs to go with certain books - like making our own soundtracks. For instance instead of a page about a performer, you could have one for a book or character and list songs different people connect to it.

Docs: not just from Microsoft anymore

I gotta admit it: This is kinda cool.

Now I feel like I have a new toy - though I'm not sure what to do with it.

As a writer and someone who deals with multiple drafts of the same document, I admit it would be nice to have a central location that would store drafts without me having to wonder which version I'm looking at. What I'm less sure of, however, is if I like the idea of my "stuff" being somewhere in the ether instead of the relative safety of my own harddrive.

I also don't currently have anyone I want to collaborate with - but my lack of any kind of social life is not the issue here. In theory, google docs would definately make collaborations easier. As the 100+ back emails in each of my multiple accounts will tell you: I easily get bogged down in piles of emails bearing attachments and quickly lose count of what I've read, what I want to do with it, and finding the energy to care. I may have to spend some more time playing..er..learning about google docs.

Spiffy

TV Reviews

Guess all that book learning was good for something after all.

Aside from discovering the erudite nature of this journal, I also opted to play around a bit. After a few rounds of 'wordshoot' I managed to get myself on the high score list. Granted, it was for the "easy" level, but hey, a high score is a high score darn it. That's a game I might be returning to - likely when I should be doing something productive. Yahoo Answers was also an interesting venture as I found questions on just about any topic I could conceive of - including more than a few that I could answer with some level of confidence. Much fun, indeed.

Wiki Wiki Everywhere

Wikis are a technology that I'm vaguely familiar with - at least what they are in general. I understood that anyone can contribute to a wiki, though I didn't understand quite how that worked. After reading some of the articles and playing around a bit, I think I get it a little better. The possibilities of wikis seems pretty impressive: by enabling anyone to modify pages, you open your site up to an unlimited supply of collective intelligence. Wiki sites also become very welcoming and an inviting place to share ideas and expertise.

The downside, of course, is that anyone can modify the pages. Anyone including people who think they know about a topic but in reality know nothing and spammers or hackers who delight in making every visit to the website a nightmare. I've visited wikis several times - especially wikipedia - and have been pretty impressed with what I've seen. Unfortunately, I also have to continually take anything on such pages with a grain of salt. Information I find on Wikipedia is fine if all I'm looking for is surface value, but if I ever need to be sure of something, I may start at Wikipedia, but feel that I must verify anything I find from a source whose validity is less suspect. I still remember a fellow student in one of my classes who used Wikipedia as his main source for his presentation and was appalled to discover that not only were there many uncorroborated opinions, but blatently wrong facts as well.

One answer to this problem that I see is used in some of the other Wikis I've visited. Instead of allowing anyone to post, you must somehow prove that you know about a subject before you are cleared to edit a page. Either that, or having learned moderators who observe new content and keep innacurate information out.

LibraryThing: Animal, Vegitable, or Mineral

Here's the URL for my profile on LibraryThing.

http://www.librarything.com/profile/honor_harrington

I chose LibraryThing over Goodreads mainly because I already have a Goodreads account and was curious to see how the two sites differed. One of the main differences that I see is that LibraryThing charges users if they want to list more than a certain number of books on their account. Maybe I'm just cheap, but this idea doesn't appeal to me at all and doesn't really promote the Library feel. I do, however, like the fact that you can get recommendations based on what books are on your list.

I also like, in theory, the ability to find other users who like the same books as you do and start conversations. I love to discuss and critique novels, though normally I like to do so with people I'm already comfortable with. Starting conversations with random strangers is still not high on my list - which is probably why I've been so reticent about so many of the parts of this 2.0 project.

Still..if you really want to talk to people about something, books make better subjects than most, and these sites just might encourage people to read more.

Technicalities and Technorati

Maybe I'm just being dense, but I don't quite see how technorati is so much different from all the other blog searches available. It does seem to go to more lengths to organize the blogosphere into easily digestible chunks, but how useful is that, really? I guess if I were to base the value of a blog on how popular it was, technorati could be helpful. But what goes into determining if a blog is popular or not? I'm assuming it has to do with how many people visit the blog and possibly give it some kind of rating. But how do I know that their visiting a blog or their rating of it provides an accurate portrayal of how usefull a blog is? As has been mentioned several times throughout this web 2.0 program, anyone can create a blog and say pretty much anything they want. Though I know absolutely nothing about the topics, I could create a blog espousing various and sundry theories about quantum mechanics or the best way to rid your backyard of moles, and if I made my blog interesting and/or attractive enough, I could theoretically attract many visitors and become quite popular. That still doesn't mean, however, that I have any clue about what I'm writing.

Instead of monitoring a blog's popularity, I would be more interested in a blog search that attempted to organize blogs based on their usefullness and accuracy. Assuming such a thing is possible, of course.

Persp.ecti.ves O.n Del.icio.us Book.mar.king

Finally something in this web 2.0 that I can find imminently useful with nary a reservation (i.e. I may not complain in this entry). The idea of del.icio.us seems really cool to me. I know there have been lots of times when I wanted to access a site that I'd bookmarked on my home laptop from a different computer and couldn't manage to dredge up a clue what the url was. In the past, I tried to find it with Google, but even when that worked, it generally took longer than I wanted to devote to the task. This technology reminds me of Meebo in the idea that it enables you to access "stuff" - be they IM friends lists or bookmarks - from any Internet-connected computer. Since, however, I use bookmarks much more than IM, del.icio.us is far more useful.

If I could only remember where the periods go without looking it up.

Of course there is another aspect to del.icio.us. That whole "social" thing. As someone who tends to research rather esoteric subjects, I can see how it would be very handy to be able to enter a tag and see other sites that had been thus labled. It might also be useful when trying to answer a reference question. Instead of trying to slog through a bunch of useless search-engine-generated websites to find a couple good ones, you could use the tags from del.icio.us to zero in on (supposedly) proven pages. Even if not all tags were useful, they would definately provide a better place to start.

Random River of Ramblings

Words will follow, oh yes they will, but first:


See my brainscanner results


Now where was I? Ah: I've covered the 'random' part, now for the 'ramblings'.

I must admit, some of these mashups are fun for a bit of good ol' time wasting. My favorite was the R2D2 translator, but I couldn't get it to post on my blog. Nothing like R2 bleeping "All your base are belong to us." But I'll just have to leave it to everyone's imaginations.

I'm still not sure where these fit in with the whole idea of being useful in a library context. Though with R2, anything's possible. I guess it's good to be knowledgable that this kind of technology exists if patrons ask about it, but aside from fits and giggles, I don't really see a lot of use for personalized fortune cookie messages.

Then again, maybe the library could put together its own themed generators, thus creating an entirely new paradigm of time-wastage and taking over the world through individualized book titles and dewey decimal classifications.

Civilization may never be the same.



And now to leave you with something completely different:

Social Networking Take 1

I actally have a LiveJournal account-albeit one I hardly use-but I do occaisionally read a few of my friends' pages. Friends as in people I actually know in person, but that's another issue. In the past, I have been very critical of onling communities, especially MySpace as it seemed like high school (which I hated with fiery gut-wrenching passion) on the Internet. Drama included. The articles attached to this module, however, did make me rethink some of my prejudices. And don't you just hate when that happens? For instance, I never would have thought to use a MySpace page to show off library-related youtube videos and/or podcasts. This would seem to provide many opportunities to engage patrons and allow them to become more a part of their local library.

One question I have though, and this applies to many of these web 2.0 programs, is how do we know *which* social networking community to be a part of? As mentioned in one of the articles, the first major site was Friendster, then there's also LiveJournal, Greatest Journal, MySpace, Facebook, and likely many many others. And it seems as if the answer to "which one is in and hot?" is continually changing. So do we just chose the one that is most popular this minute, make multiple accounts on many sites, or choose another tactic entirely? While having a fun, engaging, and interactive presence on the Web would be a great thing for the library, I wonder the actual implementation of these new ideas.

Meebo and Me

Okay, I now have my own Meebo account from which I can access my AIM, Yahoo, and MSN IM lists. Except it only recognized my Yahoo ID. Not sure why. Oh well, ain't technology grand?

Anyway...the idea of Instant Messaging as a part of reference seems like a great idea (in general) to me. I think IM would make librarians appear more approachable and more easily accessible for many computer-savvy users. Like all Internet communications, though, I also see some potential risks. For instance, anytime you communicate with someone via words on a screen, much can be lost between the sender and receiver. Emoticons and similar additions can help, but they can never replace nuances conveyed through physical and/or vocal interaction.

Then there are the abbreviations. *violent twitch*

I don't care if language is fluid and IM abbreviations are the wave of the future; if someone types to me "How R U?" they might as well get comfy, because I don't respond to people who can't take the time (or lack the intelligence) to communicate with me using whole words. That might make me "old school" or a stuck-up snob. Fine. Doesn't change anything.

That said (or typed), I still look forward to the day when libraries can offer IM as a reference option. The more people the library can connect with, the more likely patrons will make use of our needed services and the more relevent we become to a changing society.

Hungry for Feeds

I'm basically of the opinion that if I want something, I'll search for it myself. This is one of the many reasons why I hate telemarketers, televangelists, and bestseller book lists. I know what I like, and generally don't care what others want to foist upon me. Hence, any page that wastes lots of space trying to sell me on the latest political or celebrity blog will do a pretty good job of turning me away. It should be no surprise, then, that my favorite of the feed searches was the Google Blog Search. It gave me exactly what I wanted: an empty space for me to enter what I was looking for. No muss, no fuss. Syndic8 was also very useful, and had even more of the blogs that I was interested in than Google.

My first choice for finding feeds will probably always be just subscribing to sites I've found on my own, but even I will admit that discovering over 100 entries when I typed "Firefly" in the Syndic8 search gave me a little geek thrill.

As far as using RSS in libraries, I believe it would be a great tool for librarians since so many patrons want only the most up to date information. I'm not so sure patrons would be interested in, or get much use from, library RSS feeds for themselves, however. In my (limited) experience, patrons want their information handed to them and are not so overly fond if they have to do any actual work themselves. *insert snark* That's what librarians are for, isn't it?

$.02 on RSS

Hmm...my opinions about RSS. I'm sure I have some. Oh, yes.

RSS - some good, some...not.

I can see how they can be useful: having so many sites linked to just one would make it easier to get quick updates. Though, since you still have to click on individual feeds, as long as one has a fast computer and good Internet connection, I'm not sure how much time is really saved. If sites are loaded with annoying advertising and uneccessary graphics, this would definately be a good way to avoid that, but that's not so much a problem with the pages I generally visit. One of the things I particularly didn't like, though, was that while the feed shows you the most recent posts made to an individual blog or site, it doesn't show the number of comments, or provide a direct link to them, on the entry itself. To see those, you would have to go further - which would be the same if you just visited the site in question in the first place instead of logging into an RSS feeder.

For most, comments on entries may not be very important. For a blog I visit most, however, (whedonesque) it's one of the main reasons I visit the site.

In general - because it feels like I'm pretty disorganized in my thoughts here -I could see myself using RSS for news and general blogs, but for sites that I'm really interested in, I'll likely just visit the pages. It may take a few seconds more, but getting exactly what I want - in the format I want it in - is worth the extra time to me.

A Trading Card of My Very Own

I chose (obviously) the Flickr Trading Card maker. This was a cool mashup - once I figured out how to get it to accept my picture. I never played Magic: The Gathering, but I knew lots of people who did, and this seems very similar to the Magic cards I remember overflowing the table at Hannah Hall at Clark. This also seems like a fun way to foist my Dragon*Con pictures on even more people.

I Found Serenity on Flickr

This image is of the starship Serenity from Joss Whedon's science-fiction/western television show Firefly. This is one of the best pictures I've seen online of the ship. It's so clear that it's easy to imagine the vessel really up in space. Now I might have to reset my home computer's desktop.

Anyone who doesn't recognize the Serenity needs to find the series on DVD.

2 Opinions on 7 1/2 Habits

The easiest for me of the 7 1/2 habits to lifelong learning would be Habit 2 – Accept responsibility for your own learning. In school, I was one of those really annoying students who sat in the front row, did all the assignments a week early, and hung out with the teacher during lunch. Throughout college, I also kept a detailed organizer with every due date and made daily work schedules in order to make sure everything got done early. Yeah, I was a big hit with my fellow classmates.

The habit that is likely the hardest for me is Habit 3 – View problems as challenges. I tend to view problems as just that: problems. Not that I turn away from them, but they are what they are and renaming them just seems to be a waste of time. Problems, when they arise, need to be dealt with head on. Which is probably one of the reasons *why* I'm so uber-organized when it comes to learning - so that when problems pop up, I will have the time, energy, and resources to handle them.