Delicious April 21, 2009

Should I begin this post by saying that I hate Del.icio.us because I can never remember where the periods go?  The word folksonomy bothers me too, but that’s just because it sounds like an uncomfortable medical procedure (I’d like to keep my folk right where it is, thank you).  Put these two together and you have why my “exploration” paused after wikis.

If you’ve read any of my other posts (not that I would expect you to), you’ll have realized that while I’m quite familiar with most of these web 2.0 gizmos, I’m pretty skeptical of them.  Same goes for delicious and tagging stuff.  I see why they’re useful, and I did like the San Mateo dewey categorization of websites.  It would be nice to have our system recommended sites on delicious (no . in there, sorry, can’t do it), as it would make them much easier to find and use and eliminate some of the cross-postings.  The interface would need some work before we could do that though, since you have to be familiar with web navigation in order to make it work.  I’ll be interested to see how these things evolve into their next iterations…

Wikis January 2, 2009

Like RSS feeds, I feel very “Meh” about wikis.  I see how they can be useful in the world, but I’m less thrilled about their potential for the public library.  They are a handy way to post information for the staff (like the mat man wiki), but that doesn’t really take advantage of the contributive nature of wikis (it’s not like I’m doing that much editing of the collection development manual).  By their very nature, to be truly a community spot, wikis require community buy-in and contribution.  I have a hard time imagining the public adding to and cleaning up library-created subject guides, or putting community information on the library wiki.  Like most of this web 2.0 stuff, I think wikis will find their place in our future world, but it may not be as central as many of the current proponents envision.

zoho trial December 23, 2008

Laura Gottlieb
December 23, 2008

To do before Christmas

• Wrap presents
• Make cookies
• Finish work
• Play with Nathan

I will now insert a table:

Sent Christmas Cards	Bought Presents	Made Adam’s present
Did not have to go to store to buy presents	Working on web 2.0	Made Nathan’s presents for family
Still very cold here	Isn’t this a nice table?	I prefer ones you can eat off of.

Now I get it!

When I started this whole Web 2.0 thing, I was most skeptical of the more highly hyped 2.0 features–Facebook and Twitter.  Why would I care who was going to lunch or what was happening at another desk?  I had no interest in updating another spot or checking in on people.  If I needed to know something, that person should tell me.  I just didn’t get why these things were so popular beyond college kids who had nothing better to do all day.

And now that I’ve completely solidified my prematurely old-coot status, I can say that I tried twitter and facebook and must admit that I like them.  It’s fun to chat with people at other branches.  I’m getting to know folks that I’ve never spoken to except to ask them to check on a book for a patron.  It’s nice to hear what’s going on at other places beyond the official memos.  Even though we all work for the same place, we tend to operate as 15 seperate “companies”, and already I feel more like a whole team.

Facebook too has been a lot of fun.  I’ve found many of my old high school and college friends, people I’d lost touch with years ago but kind of wish I hadn’t.  Even though I still had most of their e-mail addresses, I’d hesitated sending that “Hi, sorry I dropped off the face of the earth, how are you?” message.  But I can send a friend request (though I did have to screw up courage for that), and then post a short hi on their wall.  Maybe we’ll reconnect, or maybe I can just drop in on their page occasionally to see how they’re doing.  I can really see why it’s so popular.  My generation tends to spread out all over the place, we don’t stay within the same hometown, so it’s really tough to stay connected in even the superficial sense.  Social networking (and man I hate that term) tools give us a way to keep in touch when we don’t have the time to send personal notes.  It may represent the death of etiquette, but the connections are still nice.

Online Libraries December 22, 2008

I tried out Library Thing and Good Reads, and I wasn’t really a fan of either.  Or rather, I liked parts of both of them, but neither of them seemed to work for me.  I liked the ease of adding titles in Good Reads, and I liked that it had a non-flash widget that I could put in my wordpress blog (though I don’t like that it’s all one line).  In Library Thing, I liked being able to tag books, which would make it much more useful for Readers Advisory and provide a handy way to search and sort the many, many titles we have jumbled in our heads.  I also liked the full cataloging it provided (I am a librarian, after all)  However, adding new titles was very clunky and it seemed to take awhile for each one to load.  I think that Good Reads would be a handy way to track what I’ve read for my own personal enjoyment, and Library Thing would be a good tool for readers advisory, but neither really works for me.  Wish there was a way to combine what I like of both, so I guess I’ll keep my eyes out for new versions now that I can see the possibilities.

RSS Feeds November 12, 2008

Meh.  That’s kind of how I feel about feeds and feed readers.  In my real life, I read quite a few blogs, mainly of the mommy/family type, but I’ve never really liked using a reader.  I keep the sites bookmarked, and it’s part of my morning (or evening) routine, get a cup of coffee and click on each one to see what’s happening.  I don’t like using a feed reader because you lose all of the blog design, they all look the same.  I know it’s kind of silly, but after reading these blogs for years (some of them), I feel like I know these people, and I like to visit them.  I like to go to each site, see the design, see the pictures.  Going to a blogger’s site is like dropping by for a cup of coffee, whereas using a reader is kind of like e-mail, I guess, you lose some of the personality.

That said, I can see how a feed reader could be useful for other applications, especially keeping up with news or events.  It would be a lot easier to have the news stories you’re interested in sent to you and be able to read them all in one place rather than clicking around to NYTimes, Washington Post, CNN, LJ, etc.  I do like the way other libraries are using feeds to update on new books and library happenings.  It would be nice to have a feed that listed events for each branch so that folks could get that information directly.  At a PTA event last night I asked if or how people found out about library happenings and the most frequent response was “if it doesn’t come home from school or into my e-mail, I don’t know about it.”  An RSS feed wouldn’t hit the e-mail, but it would be a step closer at least.

Photo Time!! October 29, 2008

I am supposed to post photos to my blog, to prove that I am all knowledgeable about this web 2.0 stuff (yeah right).  So anyway, here are some pics of my recent world travels (click to bigify):

The Blue Lagoon, Iceland

Guilfoss Waterfall, Iceland

A View across the Petrusse River, Luxembourg City

Luxembourg City

Duh!

Gargoyles on Notre Dame

It was a great trip, but I missed my little guy an awful lot.

Flickr June 30, 2008

What do I think of Flickr?  Well, I think it’s a fun way to share photos, one of the many ways to share them that exist.  Photo albums, blogs, snapfish and the like, flickr is a user-friendly new take on those.  I really did enjoy looking through the LOC color photos of the 1930s, but you can see those on the LOC prints & photographs site.  I guess the real value is in the sharing aspect of flickr.  It makes images like those much more accessible to the general public (as does much of the internet).  The drawback to that is, of course, that your photos are accessible to the general public.  I know of more than a few instances where an individual’s photos posted to flickr were used by media companies without notification, attribution, or payment.  Blogger Tracey Gaughran-Perez of sweetney.com saw a photo of her pug, Truman, appear on the Fox football broadcast read more here, and blogger Jim from sweet juniper found his photo of his daughter on Babble’s website backstory here.  All of these images were copyrighted, and both companies blamed an intern who “made a mistake”.  Tagging in Flickr makes it very easy for people to find images, both people you would want to find your photo and people you wouldn’t.  Not that I’m trying to be all doom and gloom here (after all, I post my son’s photos to my personal website), but it’s something to keep in mind.

So, how could a library use Flickr?  The most obvious is to post photos of library events, perhaps as part of a publicity blog.  We have a programming blog, but the reasons that blog isn’t open to the public are the same reasons that a library Flickr account would be difficult.  The LoC’s photo posting to get more info and tags is an innovative use, and a good one for a photo sharing site.  They’ll have to sort through the tags, of course, and I’m curious to see if they get any new data on the photos or if they tend to be “gee whiz” sorts of comments.

Look Mom! Another Blog! June 26, 2008

Well, here I am, all participating in web 2.0 and stuff.  How very exciting.  Actually, I’m being somewhat pushed into it, since I have to create a blog for work.  Apparently the powers that be think it’s important for librarians to know how to do this.  Yes, I do see the point, but I’m not sure how much I have to say on the subject.  Well, if all else fails, I’ll just talk about chickens.

So, why wordpress instead of blogger?  Well, all the cool kids are doing it.  No, really, I just don’t like the way blogger pages look.  I should probably have taken the easy route and gone with what everyone else is using for this project, but I had to be different.

Why Shshhing Exercises for a title?  While I was working on my MLS (that’s Masters of Library Science for the one or two non-librarians that might read this) (and yes, it takes a Masters degree).  Anyway, while I was working on my MLS, my husband joked that what I really needed to practice was my shshhing technique.  After just about every class he asked if we had done our shshhing exercises.  It seemed an appropriate title, and I’ll leave it at that.