Marie's Biblioblog

Librarian Love

2011-08-20T15:25:00.000-04:00

Soon I'll launch into my Master's program at the University of Maryland. As a full-time student in the Information and Diverse Populations Cohort of the College of Information Studies, I'll have the opportunity to mentor at the knee of an experienced librarian. And here is my mentor, Johnnie Love. With a name like that, how can I not be optimistic?

Thing 19: Last thing!

2007-08-23T14:33:00.000-04:00

So I'm really pleased at how many of the award winners' sites that I already recognize! I already use Craigslist, Zillow, Technorati, google docs, google maps, Flikr, Rollyo, facebook, youtube, and pbwiki (most thanks to this 23 things program!). So this time I tried out Yelp, a city directory service where you can read and post reviews of local businesses. Frederick doesn't have much on there. It looks like the listings are there, perhaps taken from the phone book, but there aren't enough reviews to be really useful yet. So I logged on and tried to review my dentist, and I kept getting an error message! So I guess I'll have to try again later and hope the link glitch has cleared. But I am excited about web tools that allow us to see the "softer side" of a place; the facts and stats are easy to come by, but the personal feel of a place is hard to derive without talking to folks who are in the know.

So that's it for my 23 things--how very exciting. (And how very much the tip of the I-ceberg!)
Ciao!

Things I've learned:

2007-08-18T14:30:00.001-04:00

1. Google and yahoo are behemoth

2. I finally feel like I'm conversant with the possibilities of Web 2.0

3. I'm excited that many of my colleagues are now familiar with these technologies, too. Now when someone puts a Rollyo search engine for legal research on the desktop, we'll know what the heck is going on. (Boy, I hope some of us do actually start applying these things at work!)

4. Sometimes knowing how much IS out there and possible, I get frustrated when I CAN'T find what I'm looking for! Hasn't anyone already pulled together all relevant links and research on locating the best graveyards in the Rhone Valley in France (complete with data on number of coniferous trees, plot sizes, vistas, the quality of upkeep, character of grave markers, etc)? Shouldn't our every quirky curiosity be able to be satisfied on the Internet?!? Ah, maybe someday...

5. Still not really clear on what widgets are and how to use them. (Guess that'll be my lifelong learning homework assignment...)

6. I will never, ever keep up with all my log-ins and passwords

Thing 22: E audiobooks

2007-08-18T13:55:00.000-04:00

I didn't know Gutenberg had audio titles! Very excellent to know. I'd much rather listen to Beowulf than read it (I think so anyway...) I'd like to see more plays there, though. The list is pretty skimpy right now. But since audiobooks aren't loaned through ILL, it's nice to discover another resource (because I'm pretty sure that all the Overdrive and NetLibrary books are already listed in Sirsi, right?) later amendment: obviously NetLibrary books AREN'T in Sirsi. When I do a general search for "ebook" I only bring up 649 items, and the first dozen are all from Overdrive, so I'm deducing that only Overdrive's books show up in Sirsi so far. So I did a search for the book I'm reading, Sons and Lovers, and found it in NetLibrary. Now I remember why I haven't ever tried doing the download: I have the lowest DSL, not cable, so to download this book so that I could put in on my MP3 player, it would take me HOURS! Then I'd have to transfer it to my player, and that might well take hours, too. If the book were through Overdrive, I could do a chapter at a time, but in NetLibrary, I'd have to do it all--too much!

I did the Ebooks training last year, and I recommend E-audiobooks all the time because books on CD are very popular at my branch! The fact that they don't have to be returned is a plus, too. I think patrons love being able to access this resource from home and transact it all without having to come in or worry about overdue fines. I'd be curious to hear from Teresa Vorce how popular these ebooks/audiobooks are.

Thing 21: Podcasts

2007-08-18T13:35:00.001-04:00

I see, so you can have a podcast reader, just like your blog reader? Or you can just have it sent to your email. Or just click on it wherever it is embedded (which is what we've been doing with 23 things). I listen to podcasts of Garrison Keillor's "Writer's Almanac" all the time. In fact, I love getting up early, before the children have stirred, and sipping my coffee while listening to the poem of the day. A good way to start off!

This site is very cool: Johnson County Library podcasts its Writer's Place Poetry Reading Series What a good way to get extra bang for your programming buck, and generate buzz for the next series! Every Thursday night, they have poets come read, then record the podcast and post on their website

Interestingly enough, though, you can't just click on old episodes; you must subscribe. I haven't tried doing that yet, but I need to try it out.

p.s. I attended a program on blogging and podcasting at MLA so I already have my feet wet on this topic

Thing 20: YouTube

2007-08-18T13:21:00.000-04:00

I've known about YouTube for awhile--my husband loves the political satire and humor (esp. Will Farrell). In fact, one of Farrell's most popular clips "The Landlord" stars his agent's 2-year-old daughter as a drunken, abusive landlord. It is probably borderline child abuse to make a toddler talk that way, but it is *very funny*, esp. to this mom who hears everything parroted out of her son's mouth these days. Anyhow, when I searched for the video today, I came across tons of spin-offs posted by people who made mashups of the video. So now there is a proliferation of fan-fiction type stories using Pearl and Will's heads on cartoon bodies!

Okay, but back to work--applications for the library? Sure, why not? I think we should have Vcasts on our website--how about booktalks from our patrons? How about snippets of our programming? What about ads for upcoming events?

Thing 18: Online docs

2007-08-18T12:43:00.000-04:00

I was looking for something like this not too long ago as a way to group edit a doc. I ended up using Word and posting it on the R drive, but this would have been a way for group members to access it from any computer--home or work. And the way it keeps track of edits looks interesting, too. I've only used Word's track edits once, so I'm not saavy enough to know which is better. And it's a little tough to judge how Google docs will work since I don't know if anyone that I shared the doc with is likely to play with it at all. (And if they do, will Google docs send the revision to that bizarre email address they assigned to me?) The assignment should have been to send the doc to someone else in 23 things and have them edit it so we could see what happens. I may never know...

Thing 17: Got sand in my shoes...

2007-08-11T15:43:00.000-04:00

So very cool that you can set up a wiki with a specific template: class syllabus, team project, etc. We talked about setting up a wiki for a team I'm on; in the end we did a Yahoo Group, but a wiki might have been more helpful with some aspects. I'll have to try in out in the future...

Thing 16: Wicked Wikis

2007-08-11T14:55:00.000-04:00

I got very excited reading the article on creating community with wikis. Wouldn't it be great to have the library webpage function as a community page with restaurant and mechanic reviews, etc? And I'll be interested to see if OCLC adding wiki to its catalog can make it more Amazonian.

Our intranet helps us do some things wikis are so good for, such as group discussions, but it has some serious flaws.

I like the idea of being able to document share...

Thing 14: Technorati

2007-08-11T14:29:00.000-04:00

I think I now understand where the authority rating comes from: it's from how many times the blog is linked to by other sites. I think I remember Chris Anderson at MLA talking about this a bit. He blogged about his upcoming book for two years--essentially writing it on-line. When the book came out, he asked his blog subscribers for reviews. He got 740 reviews on the 800 free copies he sent out; these linked to Amazon and drove sales of his book. So the power of a blog is in how many times it's linked to.

Thing 12: Rollyo

2007-08-11T14:02:00.000-04:00

This tool has some great reference applications! At LATI we had units on a variety of subjects--medical, legal, etc.--and we got recommended websites along with that training. Unfortunately, it's too easy to bury those notes so that it's hard to unearth them when you finally get asked that legal question where you can make use of them! We could create rollyos on the various subjects and have them on the ref desk.

I notice some overlap here with Del.icio.us. I'm using Delicious this way: I tag my favorite sites so that I can type in "poetry" and find all of them. As a result, it was really simple and quick to build a Rollyo search engine on poetry. But then again, from Delicious I would have to replicate the same search in a number of sites to have the same result that Rollyo can give me in one search. So while I'd be duplicating a bit during the set-up phase, I'd actually use them differently. Great tool!

p.s. As more quality content moves to the deep web and has to be purchased in the form of databases, wouldn't it be nice to be able to include our databases in a single search, instead of going though each individually?

Thing 11: LibraryThing

2007-08-04T12:22:00.000-04:00

I'm trying to make a widget show up here so you can search my library. Now this is a fun thing for me--way more fun than creating an avatar.

Hmm, this doesn't seem to be working...

Well, I got a chicklet over there ---> but I don't know how to do a widget (to be quite honest, not really sure what a widget IS!)

Thing 10: online image generator

2007-08-04T11:43:00.000-04:00

Thing 9: Library related blogs to track

2007-08-04T10:42:00.000-04:00

So far, I've put in James' blog for 23 things, along with blogs from Merlin, ALA's Public Programs Office, and the LOC's poetry events.

Feedster frustrated me because it kept telling me to create a widget, but I just wanted to see the results of my search.

Technorati: I'm curious about how "authority" gets established, and I was amused when I saw what I thought to be an irreverent "WTF" section. It stands for "Where's the fire" (hot sites), but I read it, in my confused state, as a much more edgy WtF?!@

I know that we are slowly organizing all web content with our tags, but it still is a challenge to search well for these things! I tried in vain to find some good library adult programming sites, and I brought up so much junk! I would have thought that ALA's PPO feed would come up, but it certainly wasn't in the early results! Maybe the best way to find appropriate links is to go to established blogs on the topic and see what they recommend--follow their breadcrumbs.

Thing 8: newsreader

2007-08-04T10:34:00.000-04:00

I actually chose to set up a Google newsreader on the recommendation of a presenter at MLA's annual conference. He found Google's was easier to manage because the old posts stay there in case you want to reference them, whereas on Bloglines the old ones "drop off." So even if you haven't read them yet, if you log on to your Bloglines reader, you might end up having entries marked as read and dropped in the cyber corbeille. Maybe if I get a chance I'll set up one in Bloglines, too, so I can compare.

Library 2.0

2007-07-20T21:53:00.000-04:00

Just a year and a half ago, I never would have referred to Wikipedia as a resource--how can something that can be edited by everyone be accurate? Only professors and professionals should be deemed trustworthy, right? Amazing how my mind has been changing. Now, I think Wikipedia is a great starting point for a quick intro on a topic. No, I wouldn't let a student of mine cite it as a source in lieu of peer reviewed journals, but I do recognize its value.

In "The Machine is Us/ing Us" video*, one part reads: "Digital text [and hyper text and the web] is no longer just linking info. The web [and web 2.0] is linking people...people sharing, trading, and collaborating." Sounds just like libraries--we no longer just match information needs, we are now "about innovation, about people, and about community building" (source: Wikipedia on Library 2.0). Yup.

And a lot of those 2.0 concepts aren't so new for libraries, but the technology part is where the libraries need to buck up: Amazon can suggest other books you might want; Google is a forgiving searching tool. Our catalogs stink by comparison (and how can we not compare?!) I'm glad to read that WorldCat will be letting people tag, create and share lists, etc, because people expect that now. I hope it will also help correct yer wierd speling, too (did you mean your weird spelling?)

And as for organizing information, it is wild to think that we, the people, are deciding how to organize the web using our tags and links. In libraries, of course, Dewey (or LOC) set the parameters, and librarians have to shelve according to them. A book has a single, designated spot and cannot be found in multiple places. But e-content can be tagged a variety of ways. So you can get to it so many different ways, and theoretically everyone can read the same material at the same time. I wouldn't mind being able to "tag" a bit differently for LOC subject words: who the heck calls it "cookery" anymore? It takes a dusty librarian to remember the correct terms to search with!)

*(just as an aside, the music on the video was so skanky that my spouse asked "Are you watching porn in there?!")

Week 6:Thing 13: Del.icio.us

2007-07-09T21:21:00.000-04:00

How wonderful to discover that my earlier wanderings I completed thing 13. Del.icio.us is fab.u.lous! I'm in the process of moving all my personal bookmarks over and adding more work-related ones to this site. I think of all the trainings I go to where I learn of very reputable websites to go to on certain subjects, but then if I don't use them right away, I forget. And when that one patron comes looking for good info on the web, I find myself rummaging through my brain (or my folders on my desk) to locate that perfect site I'd heard about. Del.icio.us is the perfect solution to that. And it seems to me that in training, new librarians should be shown this resource so that we can easily record and retrieve all that good web info we get. It's like creating our own personalized Librarians Internet Index search tool.

Mashup Roundup

2007-07-08T22:21:00.000-04:00

Explored the mashups tonight: Trading cards, okay. Flickr mapping one, okay. But I did come across one that won a mashup award (found the link through Wikipedia page): Plaxo 3.0. Now this sounds useful! It is a sync-ing (sp?) tool that unites all your calendars and contacts from Outlook, Google, Yahoo, etc. so that if you change something in one service, it's changed in all of them. It also allows you to keep up with all your contacts' info as they post to their blogs or upload photos; you get an update, sort of like a feed reader that lets you know when your contacts have uploaded something new.

Honestly, though, I'm not that savvy yet and don't have any other services other than hotmail and outlook. Funny side note, though, about my tech-savvy family. My sister (26) told me that my brother (36) does have a facebook page--and on it he lists his age as 29!

ALA inspiration

2007-07-01T16:32:00.000-04:00

ALA is such a mind rush! I came back with all kinds of new ideas, most of them about merchandising and programming. I've posted some new links here that feature what some other libraries are doing in terms of merchandising--they're essentially looking like B & N, but the books are free!

Adding internet cafes is something that's hot out there right now. And our patrons agree, according to the Customer Service Team's research recently. As one ALA presenter said, "We don't know WHERE patrons are reading our books once they leave our building--the kitchen table, the bathroom... It's okay to let patrons eat and drink in the library. We aren't protecting the crown jewels, here! "

Thing 5: uploading to Flikr

2007-06-14T16:05:00.001-04:00

Wow, was this fun! Maybe I do know how to play if I allow myself the time to do it (somehow it seems okay if it's a class mandate!) Anyhow, I took a digital photo, had a co-worker show me how to upload it, then got on Flikr, created an account and uploaded a few. My mind is racing about how we can use this in-house. I already found some Flikr photos of book displays and made a link on this blog; now I have created my own account where I can post photos of the displays that I do so that other branches can see and share ideas/materials. Perhaps we could all share an account and subscribe to the feed so we could regularly see what displays are being created at other branches. One enterprising co-worker already suggested setting up rotating display boxes so that when one branch works hard on a display it can be easily shipped around and shared. This may be a good way to get that rolling...now if only we could get everyone to USE this cool technology...!

The best part about this exercise

2007-06-14T13:46:00.000-04:00

It is so interesting to look at my co-worker's blogs! Everything from the template chosen to the information given about oneself is really revealing about how we see ourselves. Sydney's nutshell description of herself is a great intro; George wrote a poem; Derek is sneaking around responding to Kathy's first post, a question about whether she'll ever read "this thing" again. All your personalities are shining through, and it's really fun to witness.

When I taught freshman comp students, I required them to supplement class discussions with on-line discussions, and it was remarkable how the kid in the back row who wouldn't say boo could go on and on if she could express herself without a classroom full of people looking at her.

I look forward to getting to know all of you better through this process!

7 1/2 Habits

2007-06-07T20:30:00.000-04:00

Play!

My children are great at this; my husband is great at this. I am not so great at it. Hand me the new camcorder and I'm dismayed by all the buttons. I have to ask my husband to post our digital photos on-line, download music, burn videos from our camcorder. I am too perfectionistic, too afraid to break it or alter it irrevocably and negatively.

So of the 7 1/2 habits of life long learners, I am weakest in the 1/2.

Ironically, I am confident of myself as a competent, effective learner--give me the manual, show me how in a class. But heavens alive! Don't make me play around to figure it out!