Every Dog Has Its Day

Well, that's it. Learning 2.0 over and out.
It's been lots of fun. I have a whole suite of new passwords and expanded my vocabulary. I've learnt some skills that I can actually use and apply.
It's really been the most interesting learning experience for as long as I can remember. Inspiring, informative, educational and entertaining.
It's also been great to have been part of a blogging community.
So long, and thanks for reading.

Mashup using cover art from one of the fab library career romances highlighted here:
http://loveliestlib.wordpress.com/category/career-romance/

Is the writing on the wall?

OK, after getting quite enthused about a lot of the Web 2.0 applications we've looked at, I'm going to be brave and admit to being a Facebook / Myspace sceptic. Sure, I have nothing against libraries and cultural institutions setting up camp on social networking sites - though I have a niggling worry that to native facebookers it might look as cool as parents taking to the floor at a school disco.
It’s great if libraries and museums can make it work for them. The BL example looked good.
It's just that it's not for me.
When a colleague with cutting edge tendencies invited me to be her friend on Facebook a little while ago, I just couldn't get past the registration hurdle. Facebook seemed to want a lot of information and I do like my cyber privacy. So I retreated and apologetically offered the pale substitute of real-life friendship instead.
Ironically, in eschewing "social networking", it seems I might not be alone. A recent article from the UK Guardian charted what they termed "facebook fatigue" noting that a number of the social networking sites had witnessed a drop in participation with security concerns as one of the reasons.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/feb/22/facebook.facebook
I left Facebook before even joining - how cutting edge is that? I am an early unadopter!

I guess this new development raises issues regarding the safety of the investment for the institutions like libraries who have staked territory on these sites. Will we follow those fleeing Facebook to their next destination? Which is…..?

I liked the way Tom Hodgkinson summed it up in another Guardian article:


"For my own part, I am going to retreat from the whole thing, remain as unplugged as possible, and spend the time I save by not going on Facebook doing something useful, such as reading books. Why would I want to waste my time on Facebook when I still haven't read Keats' Endymion? And when there are seeds to be sown in my own back yard? I don't want to retreat from nature, I want to reconnect with it. Damn air-conditioning! And if I want to connect with the people around me, I will revert to an old piece of technology. It's free, it's easy and it delivers a uniquely individual experience in sharing information: it's called talking."

Tom Hodgkinson, "With Friends Like These", The Guardian January 14, 2008, for the whole article see:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/jan/14/facebook

And, as for Second Life - I’ll think about it when the ironing basket is empty in my First.

"In the past you were what you owned, now you are what you share"

I thought the above quote from Charles Leadbeater a pertinent one for discussing collaborative tools.

It's from a little animation on YouTube to promote his book We Think. More on the book here:
http://www.wethinkthebook.net/home.aspx




While you watch the video, I'll play with Google Docs, Slideshare and Zoho and report back.

I'm back.
Google docs rocks? Well, I think it might! That little gmail password opens quite a few doors, doesn't it?
The applications for online collaboration tools for us are obvious and many.
No more (or fewer) version control and conversion problems. I'm converted.
I believe that sharing and collaborating is more than technological - it's behavioural - but with some of these emerging free technologies, it looks like where's there's a will to collaborate and work together, there'll also be a way!

Bloggie Rescue

Have been doing a bit of catching up reading our blogs (and the public library ones) and have decided how clever we all are!

However this thought was followed by the worry - but what will become of us.....
Yes, I'm talking digital preservation. Web 2.0 Warming.
Can you imagine:
Rare or Underdone long gone
Pea Green Boat capsized
Library Wars lost and
Euphemus ephemera
Unthinkable.

However, I'm buoyed up by a quick visit to the PANDORA site and the contributors' selection policies - one par in particular: (My bold)

5.10. Organisational and Personal Web Sites Web sites of individuals and organisations will not generally be collected unless they are of sufficient state significance or if they provide information of cultural or research value unavailable elsewhere or if they are of exceptional quality or particular interest.

Well now, that puts my mind to rest. Everyone, back to some significant and enduring blogging.....

Two peas

Ah, the Macquarie Dictionary Word of the Year 2007:

"pod slurping noun the downloading of large quantities of data to an MP3 player or memory stick from a computer."
From: http://www.usyd.edu.au/news/84.html?newsstoryid=2140

Have only just this year got my own very groovy little ipod shuffle and my first iTunes account. A birthday present belying middle age. So have been enjoying my $1.69 forays into downloading.
Haven't really experimented much with podcasting elsewhere. Have had a quick look at the Library of Congress webcasts and British Library podcasts. Of all the Web 2.0 technologies, I think this one's got fabulous potential for our industry. Client education / entertainment / infotainment / staff training / talks / events / exhibition guides etc. Cheap and easy to produce and the offerings are more likely to withstand the test of time. Hey, no fashion disasters to embarrass us later and no makeover necessary!

A recent visit to the ABC site reveals a plethora of pod (and vod) choice. You will never miss anything on the wireless again. (Well as long as you get in fairly soon after you missed it.) Their set up is nice and easy to use. Listen now or later.
Sadly the one thing that really took my fancy - Garrison Keillor's News from Lake Wobegon wasn't theirs to podcast - and led me on a merry chase to try to and hear "the latest news and views from the little town where "all the women are strong, all the men are good looking, and all the children are above average." "
Obviously the folk there are pretty IT savvy too, as I was a bit lost when told to paste the URL into my podcasting client.
Sure, there were links to iTunes and how to download from there, but my "client" if that's what it is, was at home.
I followed another link to audible.com where it was just was just 95c (US) to listen, but I didn't have the small change and wasn't feeling strong enough for another batch of passwords.
Back home to Radio National and the choices are many and blissfully free. And, hey, if I get the head movements right, no one on the bus will suspect I'm listening to Background Briefing.
And on a different but related topic you might be interested to know that the Macquarie Dictionary 2007 People's Choice Award went to…
"password fatigue noun a level of frustration reached by having too many different passwords to remember, resulting in an inability to remember even those most commonly used."

Q&A

What to make of Yahoo Answers. Well, it's more the questions that are fascinating....
I think it's enterprising of the slam-the-boards librarians to do what they're doing. A nice bit of marketing, but judging by the questions, somehow I don't think they'll convert all the question askers. I thought of giving it a go myself, but where to start?
Some examples:

• How can i get my eyeshadow to look blended and fade to another color?
• What should I wear to Jack Johnson concert?
• Is it important that molecules have different sizes?
• What is there to consider before deciding to become a mother?
• Do you feel that many of us waste time wanting what we do not have or do not need? Do you face this problem?

Or this one which made me suffer reference guilt:

• Do you feel lonely when no one answers your question?

Hard to walk away from, but I'm walking away!

Delicious?

Well I finally got on to tagging. A few quirks to it. I worked out the hard way that it won't take two word tags, as my cloud looked like a dog's breakfast (now that would be delicious).
I guess that rules out attaching LCSH headings!! Once over that hurdle the process of tagging sites was easy. However adding it the blog was not easy at all. Where is the widget??? Where is the chiclet??? I didn't know what a widget was last week and now I feel like dashing off a letter of complaint pointing out my right to be provided with one. Library Thing was a breeze. I won't tell you how many times I tried to get that little cloud to cooperate. The fonts were wrong / it wasn't visible at all / it was too big / it was wrapping around. Even now (look over to the right) there are annoying underlinings that I can't get rid of and are ruining the whole feng shui of my blog.

I certainly think the idea of having portable favourites is very handy. However, I'm not so sure about the the "social networking" aspects. I'm not that interested in knowing what other people's bookmarks are - their books yes - their bookmarks, not so much so.
Also if I look at other people's tags will that always be useful - what I mean by one tag, won't be what you mean by it - control without a controlled vocabulary?

OK, it's about browsing and discovery and I need to loosen up. As the light and breezy Delicious Help information advises:
If you don't get it right away, that's OK -- you don't have to. Tagging is pretty intuitive and can take some practice to fully understand. Try it and experiment a bit! There are no wrong tags.
Now that attitude wouldn't get you a Distinction in Bibliographic Organisation 101.

A portrait of the artist as a young dog

This 15 minutes of fame took just a bit longer than 15 minutes to achieve
Made with the Big Huge Labs Warholiser

I don't know much about art...

But I know I don't like soup

(made with the Big Huge Labs mosaic tool)

You make everything groovy.....

With apologies to the Troggs. I think I love Library Thing.
It's the first Web 2.0 application that I've been tempted to invest quite a bit of my own time in. (OK so maybe I watched slightly more Youtube videos than strictly required).
I can't explain it, but it's inordinately fascinating to be able to look at pictures of your books. Hyperreality - as once read, I don't pay that much attention to them on the shelves. But there they are with their real covers cheerfully looking at me from my pc, randomly rearranging themselves.
And how bizarre to find that other people have 20 / 50 / 60 of my titles. Who are they? I thought I was special. (Mind you, some of these people have a serious book problem.) Spookily, some are also librarians.
I know I'm not completely smitten as I haven't been tempted (yet) to make pictures of myself from my books. You are what you read?
http://www.davidlouisedelman.com/technology/you-are-what-you-read/
Are there other possible applications? Fridge Thing, where you can download pics of your groceries from online supermarkets and compare with other people's holdings? You could have a little widget on your blog that allows you to open the fridge door and peer in. If this idea catches on you read it here first.

Whither the wiki.....

Have been moseying around the wikis. The ubiquitous Wikipedia for one.
As an exercise I had another look at the West Wing page. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_West_Wing
(Picked something I'd know about!) Loved the way the TV series comes up first with a see also to the actual West Wing.
It's a bronze star winning page - really well put together - and a great example of communal brain power that a wiki can muster (editors hail from Belfast to Tasmania)
But, it's not all smooth sailing, just click the Discussion tab to see some of the erudite argy-bargy going on:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:The_West_Wing

Regarding quality, clicked a few entries elsewhere on Wikipedia and loved the warnings:
This article or section may be slanted towards recent events. Please try to keep recent events in historical perspective. (Good advice!)
See the full list: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Template_messages/Disputes
Loved: The quality of this article or section may be compromised by "peacock terms".
And: Discussions on this page may escalate into heated debate. Please try to keep a cool head when commenting here.

For an interesting insight into how it works check out the Wikipedia entry in Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia
(and yes, they deal with the issue of whether Wikipedia should have an entry on itself!)
Look at the discussion page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikipedia
for some spirited wikipedians locking horns (personally, I like editorial disagreement better with West Wing quotes!)

Wikis bring to mind the HG Wells quote that no human urge is stronger than the urge to change someone else's copy...
How well wikis could work for libraries would turn, I think, on issues of whether a wiki is fit for the intended purpose, the level of control/moderation and whether it's designed for internal (library staff) or external (community) participation. Think it would be a good application for manuals / training / newsletter style communication. But trickier for community participation? The Ben Franklin one looked good - but the visitor comments section didn't seem to be enabled. I liked the Library Success Wiki, but it seemed to have had some vandalism probs.
A recent SMH article
http://www.smh.com.au/news/perspectives/facebook-up-to-it/2008/02/26/1203788290835.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap1
(thanks to a public library blogger for sharing it) looked at the uptake of web 2.0 tools by industry and government and noted
"Among strongly tied co-workers, a wiki can function as a kind of online whiteboard."
So I guess that's the key - where there's already collaboration and a common purpose - a wiki is going to leverage that - otherwise it's just track changes gone berserk.

Bad dog!

Apologies for the break in transmission. Normal programming has now been resumed.
Finding that 15 minutes a day has proved too tricky lately.
So, while I belatedly tackle wikis, you can watch this cute trailer. The movie's Australasian premier is scheduled for the ALIA Dreaming 08 Conference in September.
Back soon.




"I was destined for libraries!"
"You're looking for yourself in the library"

"Have you a real love of books and learning? Do you like people and do people like you?"

Then this is the job for you:



"Serious scholars may use its excellent facilities and wonderful collection of more than 5 million books and manuscripts." Does that sound spookily familiar?

OK, I admit, I have fast forwarded to videos, but I promise to go back to wikis soon.

Fetch!

As mentioned earlier, RSS has some great applications for libraries. One of my favourites is the ability to set up feeds for journal contents alerts and also searches from journal databases. I love the little orange icon!! I subscribe to a range of feeds from journals of interest from EBSCO databases. We already subscribe to these databases and RSS reader software is free - so, for a low investment (awareness raising and training) we can deliver real value to our clients. And, it's leveraging the investment we've already made on our database subscriptions. I wonder how many libraries are educating their clients on how to use RSS feeds and journal databases to create tailored alerts to content that they can't get for free on the web.
When we guide clients through a database search, do we mention that they can set up an automated regular search and view the results through their reader?

The second application that I like is the ability to subscribe to new titles information from library catalogues. Even though I'm not a client of theirs, I subscribe to new titles from a few university library catalogues on subjects of interest. Clients can set up their own subject profile and new title information is delivered automatically to their reader. Again, I doubt this would entail a great deal of effort for the library once it was set up. And in the case of a deposit library - like us - this would be really valuable for our researchers.

RSS Feeds from the 17th century

I'm a convert to RSS feeds - love them - and have had a bloglines account for a little while now. I think there's some great opportunities there for us and will blog later about some library applications.
For this course I had a look at my subscriptions and will be adding and subtracting some feeds.
In doing so, I found this gem:
You can get a daily - or monthly summary - of Samuel Pepys diary via RSS. http://www.pepysdiary.com/
From the latest entry I've received from this week in 1664/65, a quote that reminds us that there's nothing new under the sun:

"Up and to my office where all the morning, putting papers to rights which now grow upon my hands..."

And so to work.

I'm keeping my day job....

Some timely - and lucrative ;) ? - news for those of us new to blogging:
http://www.librarian.net/stax/2231/wired-and-pay-per-post-and-librarians-and-you/
BTW: I posted this one pro-bono!

First Forays into Flickr

What did Stephen Fry say about user generated content - there's some great street theatre, but also some maddies with banners. Well Flickr is that.
Thank goodness my companion human (still using the avatar) doesn't have a Flickr account (or a digital camera). I think one more password to remember would push her over the edge. .. .
But from a spectator perspective, I'll admit it's addictive. Am I missing the part of the brain that would make you want to share all of your photos (however bad/embarrassing - or particularly if they're bad/embarrassing) with everyone else in the world???
Here are of couple of pics I liked:
Sometimes the photo says it all:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/4mul8/487823631/
Sometimes the caption:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/lencurrie/251952671/
& what about the tags - "cataloging by the crowd" as the following writer calls it
http://www.slideshare.net/ethomsen/playing-tag-cataloging-by-the-crowd/
you wouldn't get woof as a subject heading in LCSH - but it makes browsing a lot more fun.

On another note, this is just my second post and it's live TV - here's a tip - don't type control P (I meant to hit V) - it actually posts your post!!! Grrr.

New Tricks

Assisted by my companion human, I am learning all the web 2.0 tricks I can. http://www.cartoonbank.com/product_details.asp?sid=38926