Musings from the Back Porch

Exploration #9: What's Next and Looking Back

2009-07-21T12:09:00.000-07:00

Wow. I never thought I could get this far. Web 2.0 explorations were interesting, challenging and frustrating in various degrees. I started with setting up the blog, segued to Flickr, which was fun to look at, although I chose not to post. Goodreads was next. I've been interested to see who's been reading what--what's not to like about sharing book titles??!! When I get a chance, I post what I've read, usually in clusters!
I signed up for twitter, used it once, and have not kept up with it. Am I the only holdout on the planet?
I already belong to a wiki on Wetpaint. It is easy to use, and much, much simpler than countless back-and-forth emails about who's doing what when. Each time a member of the wiki makes a change, I get a message on my email that I can check to read or edit as I choose.
Delicious and Zoho have applications that would be highly usefulin specific situations, both for us as librarians or for patrons.
Web 2.0 is of itself a very powerful new tool. Lots can be done with it, and it has been useful to explore some of the ways it can work. The downside is that it can be an incredible time-suck just to try to keep up with postings, tweets, feeds, and all the other ways one can be connected by the web. Do it all and you could feel like a fly in the clutches of a hyperactive spider!

I think the trick is to choose the sites that work for you, and use them to do the jobs you wish them to, as you would any other tools. Otherwise the web will own you rather than you owning it, and instead of help you will get overload and clutter.
So many of the web award winners from 2007 were ones we explored, or have used in other contexts--I counted sixteen that I had heard of or used--but even given that, there were many more that were new to me. Surely since then other new sites have emerged, and some of the winners from '07 have bitten the dust. The Web--01 or 02--is a vastly morphing thing for which change is the only constant. I'm glad for the opportunity to play around with some of these changes.

Exploration 6 redux

2009-07-16T12:48:00.000-07:00

Wow!!! It actually got here. I guess I'm still learning about the blog page, because it arrived as a draft, which had to send to be posted. This makes sense, actually, but who knew. I did not edit the post, as it is a learning tool, and can therefore stand on its own ill-shod feet.

Exploration #6 ZOHO

2009-07-16T12:23:00.000-07:00

Ok, so I signed up for Zoho, and created a document and tried to send it to this blog. Since the directions for this exploration were written the entire format of Zoho has changed, so I was pretty much on my own to figure out how it worked. I did create a document that included a table and a bulleted list which I changed to an enumerated list. I could change font colors and background colors, but I could not find a place to choose new fonts. I exported a picture from Google images which would have shown up if it weren't copyright protected. I chose not to try another one. Time is valuable. As I said, I attempted to send the document here, but apparently failed, as it did not show up, even though the Zoho screen assured me that it had. One wonders where it went. This entire exercise was made vastly more difficult because the Zoho page overshot my screen so that I could not see or move anything on the far right side of the page.

I think there are useful applications for this; people who are not connected via network leaps to mind. I tried this because I thought patrons might be able to use this, but by the time they set up the account and messed around with the document our less computer-savvy patrons would have long gone ballistic. Our more computer savvy patrons would have known to bring a thumb drive.

Exploration 6, direction 1

2009-07-16T12:19:00.001-07:00

Elisegrowswings

July 16, 2009

We are all looking forward to the new Harry Potter movie that has just opened. Several of us plan to attend tomorrow evening. It will be a good warm up for us, as our branch will be hosting a Harry Potter event at the end of the month.

Cows	Horses	Chickens	Pigs
Cant find the	font list.	Getting irritated.	Directions so off!

wands
pointy hats
polyjuice potion
room of requirement

Cant find the stupid font menu!!! ZOho page does not fit on screen

Exploration #8: Del.icio.us

2009-07-14T10:28:00.000-07:00

I can't believe I'm knocking these things off my to-do list! After having read the articles and listened to the online workshop by Jason Griffey, I feel like I know alot more about del.icio.us than I did before. I think that there are some library applications, and some personal interest or research uses that could be helpful. Griffey's suggestion that one mark and tag every place they go that has an URL is really over-the-top, though. Has not the man ever heard of infomation overload? Or filtering out garbage?
One application that our system might find for del.icio.us, is to use it as a way to suggest possibilities for Recommended Sites. This way, staff and patrons could suggest sites that they have found useful, but the library could still vet them before they were added to Recommended Sites, or to another, more user-controlled link.

Exploration #7--Wikis

2009-06-10T07:27:00.000-07:00

Wikis can be really useful for a number of applications. I belong to one that co-ordinates meal providers for a local homeless shelter. It does indeed make planning simpler; moreover, this wiki notifies me by email every time there has been a new posting or other alteration on the site.

The Library Conference Wiki would certainly be of use to participants before and during the conference, especially those new to conferencing or those unfamiliar with the DC area. Once the conference was over, the wiki would be considerably less useful in some respects, but could also be a networking source for participants, or a way to recoup or get further information about the conference.

The Best Practices Wiki was fun to look at, and a potential source of great information and additional opinion. I found myself surfing from one topic to another, and had to pull myself back to this assignment. I will definitely put that site on my favorites list!

I find the Materials Management wiki a useful and up-to-date way to access the Collection Development Manual. It is a real improvement over the old paper one that took such time and effort to update.

More on Exploration #5

2009-06-10T06:38:00.000-07:00

I have been using GoodReads for some time, and went back to Library Thing to see how they compared. Library Thing is a little slower to post, but it is much easier to add tags to the books--you can do it right when you enter the book, and I have not found it to be that easy in GoodReads. My colleagues showed me GoodReads, and at the time, the view of the book covers was much better there than in Library Thing. When I went back into Library Thing today, I found it easy to get a screen that showed the cover art for the books I had posted. I like to use these online book discussion/lists mostly as a memory prod for books that I might like to recommend to patrons, and a tickler to check and see if a favorite author has written something new. I have set up GoodReads to let me see what friends are reading, which can be a lot of fun, as well as a source for good new titles!

Tracking Titles

2008-11-25T07:37:00.000-08:00

Our information staff is using GoodReads as a way of widening the field of books that one can use as reader advisory. Not only do you have access to your own reading (it was really great, my patron will love it; now if I can only remember the title...or the author), you will have online input from others as well--even if they are not at the desk! Another staffer and I have set up a Library Thing account for a particular program that we are doing in January, so that we are not duplicating our efforts as we prepare.

Update on 2.0

2008-11-25T07:18:00.000-08:00

Setting up my blog was very easy to do; taking the time to use it is another story entirely. I took a hiatus from working on Web 2.0 as some other things had a higher priority, but now I'm back. I set up a Twitter account, and have actually used it. I'm thinking that one would have to have it up all the time or at least access it frequently, otherwise what's the point. It may be one of those things that grows on you with use.

I have also set up a GoodReads account, which I really like. It is slightly easier to use than Library Thing (where I had previously stored what I have read). There are some things on the site that I still want to work out, including the networking piece, but it is coming along.

Flickr

2008-07-29T12:59:00.000-07:00

I planned to spend a short time browsing Flickr...and ended up, two-and-a half hours later, wondering where the time had gone. Some of the photos are artistically stunning...others not so much, but are still interesting. Others, I'm not so sure about. Do I really want pictures of my kid's birthday party in such a public forum??

Patrons may be able to search Flickr, particularly the Smithsonian site, to find historical photos and download ones without copyright restrictions. Some people will be able to identify people, places in otherwise inscrutable photos--I can hear it now; "Isn't that Aunt Louise, when she went to...".

Sharing photos of book displays, programming realia, or other sharable things may be beneficial to librarians looking for ideas. One out-of-the-box possibility: photo and post an object/painting, etc. that a patron is trying to identify, when other search avenues have dried up, and count on someone to know something about it!

Meeting Web 2.0

2008-07-17T12:34:00.000-07:00

What a novel way to introduce Web 2.0! I can see how it could have an impact on how we "do library", and interact with patrons. It will be interesting to see down the road what we have found that works, and what will have fallen by the wayside.