SCPL 23 Things - Technorati Ticker

This widget keeps you updated on the top tags people are searching on technorati at a particular moment. This is what preoccupies us in 2007.


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SCPL 23 Things - Social Networking Sites

A couple of days ago, my daughter left her MySpace page behind for the cleaner more direct pages of Facebook. After setting up her account, she happened upon my sister's Facebook page and made contact with her. Who knew? Naturally, she let me know so I made a Facebook page (I had successfully avoided the MySpace temptation) and now all three of us have another--I must admit easier--connection. I'm on the west coast, my daughter is in NYC, and my sister is in Florida. We've linked our Flickr accounts to our Facebook pages and are busy adding various applications. I opted for Calvin and Hobbes quotes while my daughter went for an application that lets her list the cities in the world she has visited.

Tonight I found the blog of a friend who is travelling in South East Asia for an extended period of time. I happily determined that he was not on the plane that recently crashed in Thailand. He's telling us astonishing things about himself as he sits in Thai wireless cafes---things I can't imagine him telling us if he were here in Santa Cruz.

My experience with social networking so far has been with people I already have a relationship with--friends and relatives--and I think our connections have broadened because of them. I don't have any solely internet friends but I'm tempted sometimes to connect with other printmakers out there---I haven't done it because I'm already overloaded with inspiration and feedback from printmakers I see once a week.

Here's an interesting article about social networking among people who only know each other online. Lots to think about.

http://www.thenewatlantis.com/archive/17/rosen.htm

Tags, Search Engines, Rollyo, Visual Maps

I've just discovered searchcrystal.com. This tool allows you to search several search engines at once, compare results, save results and email them if you wish. Results can be displayed in a visual map whether you search the web, tags, blogs or images. You can also get your results in a mashup.

I did a search on public art and it was perfect for what I wanted. I got documents, images, and blogs. I saved the search---"crystalized" it--and now I can explore the results whenever I have time.

I would be much more likely to use my tags to search with this tool than I would to spend time on Rollyo. I have a rollyo account but I'm not sure I would use it except for a very specific ongoing search topic because it takes a lot of time to do it right.

SCPL 23 Things - del.icio.us

I have had a del.icio.us account for a few months. Today I explored printmaking topics and bookmarked several useful ones. Then I explored public art topics--this is a great interest of mine. I looked for subway art and found great examples like this one: Subway Life located at http://subway-life.com. I think a lot about cave paintings of prehistoric people and subway art---but that's another discussion. One of things I like about del.icio.us is that you can display your tags in a tag cloud--watching that cloud develop and change is as informative as the sites I visit.

SCPL 23 Things - RSS feeds

One of the blogs I monitor is Steve Abram's Stephen's Lighthouse. He just recently listed a blog that I have added to my Bloglines account: Jane's E-Learning Pick of the Day. This list was interesting to me because it seems to focus on tools rather than just toys--although they are fun, too. Among the tools I want to try is DeliGoo--it is supposed to be a way of creating your own search engine combining del.icio.us and google. I'm going to create a few more tags in del.icio.us and give it a try.

SCPL 23 Things - Flickr

I have established a Flickr account for wildrumpus and have uploaded Festival of the Book and Family Place photos. Photos may be viewed at www.flickr.com/photos/librarywildrumpus. It has been a very handy way to share photos quickly. Ann Young has been able to grab photos from this account for the website.

There are other applications that can use photos stored in Flickr. Today I made a 30 second video using animoto retrieving photos from the Flickr account. You can view the video below.

I have also used Flickr to create a librarian trading card--posted on the blog--it took longer to do than the video.

I think there will be many library uses but it is important to remember to get photo releases when taking photos of library events. This is something we automatically do now at Family Place and Read to Me events.

Family Place 2007

Santa Cruz Public Libraries

Noah and His Inner Cat

String Spin and Snowflakes

This is absolutely useless and I absolutely love it.

http://www.zefrank.com/string_spinv2/menu.html


And the snowflakes....this is also fun

http://www.zefrank.com/snowflake/

Tools and Toys

I started the California 23 Things after taking the InfoPeople eBranch class so I have continued the blog I started then. Since that time I have taken a 2.0 class in applications to children's services and have played my way through the list of 23 things.

There are many more "things" listed in library 2.1. Many of the things are toys and some could really be good library tools. It is essential that library staff grapple with the way information access, storage, and retrieval are changing because social networking underlies 2.0. All over the globe people want to participate in organizing the information that is important to them and they want to share their perspectives on that information. As libraries have provided books and meeting rooms and programs as forums for information sharing so now they offer eforums--blogs, wikis, deep links on websites--libraries are changing and they are remaining the same.

Teaching 2.0

As with most things, it is easiest to teach someone one of the new 2.0 technologies when that person has immediate use for the tool. For that reason, showing people how to set up blogs or how to set up a flickr account have been the most frequent questions. There's just a couple of tricks for each of these---with blogs people have to remember what permissions they want to give their contributors, for instance--and with flickr it is important to think about tags--and people are off and running in minutes. Then you stand back and watch people make use of the tools in their own ways.

The darn thing about blogs is making time to check them for updates--you have find ways to put them on your radar screen whether it is an individual blog or checking your bloglines account.

Live Oak Branch Library

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Podcasts

What can youth services do with podcasts? Record storytimes, programs, how-to videos, or we could turn teens loose and give them a platform....will people watch and/or listen? I don't know. It seems as though a video or audio ought not to exceed five minutes and it should keep moving. Video production values need to consider the small size of the screen most people will be using. Will require staff time and production expertise for usable library podcasts but only needs to be a forum if the community is doing the podcasts and the library is "just" the host. I'm not completely convinced about this yet unless it gets easier and downloads don't take forever. As with many 2.0 innovations---more bandwidth needed.

YouTube

This is still one of my favorite videos on YouTube.

Online Productivity

At our libraries, in youth services, we direct library users to OpenOffice (www.openoffice.org) which includes writer (word processing), calc (spreadsheet), impress (powerpoint), and Draw. Students have not had problems using these programs for homework assignments. There is a tutorial available.

For graphs, we recommend the National Center for Education Statistics (http://nces.ed.gov)Kids Zone site. When you get to the home page, click on Kids Zone on the top toolbar. When you get to the Kids Zone Page, click on the Graphs icon at the top of the page. Tutorial available.

Our related project is being sure that in our hardware upgrade, we have USB ports available for flash drives. Some workstations have ports available on the CPU and others have them available on the monitors.

Wikis

You should direct people to pb wiki. I have a wiki there playing with vocabulary words. It is called In Other Words and is located at http://inotherwords.pbwiki.com. Lots of new features to explore. There is just not enough time!!!!!

Our library hopes to use wikis in our redesign for new book lists and reviews, discussions/tips/techniques for online gaming, input on local events.

I added an entry on the 23 things wiki about the "big picture"--it IS a bit like sitting in the front row of a tiny movie theatre.

Rollyo

I found this site to be very useful. I am using rollyo to search printmaking sites that I like to check. I haven't finished constructing my first searchroll but I already love it. This tool could be very useful for our library web redesign--particularly for local topics and interests. Once again--you have to think about what you are doing--get those neurons firing!

Perpsectives on Web 2.0 and the Future of Libraries

The two definitions of Web 2.0 that made the most sense to me are:

1. Web 2.0: "a social phenomenon embracing an approach to generating and distributing Web content itself, characterized by open communication, decentralization of authority, freedom to share and re-use, and "the market as a conversation"

This is the point that Stephen Abram makes frequently, too: "Life is social, learning is social, community and neighborhoods are social, research is social, and libraries and schools have to be social, too."

I see this collaborative spirit everywhere--in family life, in spiritual life, in art. Even the global economy is bringing some of us kicking and screaming into this way living in the world. But I also agree with Walt Crawford when he says that Library 2.0 is evolutionary not revolutionary. I do not share Mr. Crawford's pessimism but he is right that 2.0 really means new tools to increase the ways we can share information.

These new tools support our oldest core values. Michael C. Habib points out in his article, "On Democracy, Trust and Libraries" (2006) (http://mchabib.com)

"We always trusted that the majority of our writers strive to distinguish that which is good and true. Library 2.0 now requires us to maintain this trust in the majority. We must continue to trust that most readers are curious, intelligent and compassionate. The only difference is that the evidence of this will now be created and stored on our servers...In the meeting room or on our blogs, ...hate speech is in your face. However, I guarantee that if any such bigotry is posted to a political discussion hosted on our blogs, it will quickly be drowned out by the voices of more responsible patrons...This is what democracy is all about. This is what libraries have always been about. Web 2.o has just changed the dynamic of how intellectual inquiry and democracy operate. In this way Library 2.0 speaks to some of the best of traditional library values, and , in so doing, defends the library as a cornerstone of democracy in a networked world."

2. Web 2.0: "enhanced organization and categorization of content, emphasizing deep linking"
This, of course, is one of the most powerful new tools---and like it or not, it developed from the catalogers and classifiers of Library's ancient times. And I can't deny it---I find tag clouds fascinating and informative and the idea that access can be gained in countless different ways exactly right.

Technorati

Reading the overview of Technorati, I came across this description of dimensions of blogging in 2007:

"Blogs are powerful because they allow millions of people to easily publish and share their ideas, and millions more to read and respond. They engage the writer and reader in an open conversation, and are shifting the Internet paradigm as we know it.

On the World Live Web, bloggers frequently link to and comment on other blogs, creating the type of immediate connection one would have in a conversation. Technorati tracks these links, and thus the relative relevance of blogs, photos, videos etc. We rapidly index tens of thousands of updates every hour, and so we monitor these live communities and the conversations they foster.

The World Live Web is incredibly active, and according to Technorati data, there are over 175,000 new blogs (that’s just blogs) every day. Bloggers update their blogs regularly to the tune of over 1.6 million posts per day, or over 18 updates a second."

This alone emphasizes how important it is to tag content thoughtfully.

Del.icio.us

I followed up my tagging investigations on my del.icio.us account by adding and tagging more bookmarks---some on art and printmaking and others on 2.0---particularly some articles by Michael Habib. I noted that del.icio.us will soon have a 2.0 version and become delicious.com. The preview is limited to a small group of people but the little I saw indicates that it will be more powerful tool. Once again---sharing one's own organizing protocol.

LibraryThing

LibraryThing is something every librarian should look at and explore. Tags and tag clouds make sense to people---much more sense than Dewey or LC. The challenge of Web 2.0 is that people want to organize information in a way that makes sense to them--they do not look to a library to do it for them.

Tagging is an intellectual challenge--as anyone who has cataloged anything knows and tag clouds provide information and insight in a new and valuable way. This is a significant change that 2.0 makes possible and that libraries must incorporate in order to make sense to their communities. People want to create their own libraries and then share them with others.

While I don't feel an overriding need to catalog the books I read and enjoy, it is interesting to tag them and then look for patterns and ranges so I probably will keep my LibraryThing account for a while.

Image Generators

I escaped with my life! You can wile away hours---maybe days---with image generators. I played with the m and m. I worked with my initials in the Visual Poetry Generator at www.imagechef.com/ic/poem and you see the results. I had already made a librarian trading card on the flickr site. I'm going to go back and look at the watermark generator on the Generator Blog to use when I post images of my prints.

I can see producing items for special events at the Library. It is fun to know about these possibilities---but you absolutely must put a time limit on yourself.

Twitter

Twitter seems appropriately named somehow. I can see using it as a way to have a meeting among people not in the same place. I can also see using it to update people about an event. For instance, they just knocked down the building next to ours. Everyone wanted to see the last wall fall. I could have twittered the progress to colleagues as it was happening.

At the moment, it seems most appropriate for group work but I'm not sure what other functions the library could use it for---but I"ll keep thinking. Twitter has a wiki. I can check that. Mostly people use it to assure themselves that they are not the only ones in the world---and that's a comforting feeling.