Thing #16: student 2.0 tools

We have very well-developed course-integrated instruction at our library. Although my work supports the teaching I'm not directly involved with it. I won't even venture a guess as to whether or not these tools would be beneficial in addition to what the students are already supplied. The best I can do is to try to remember that they exist so that, should the appropriate time arise, I can mention them.

I don't see any use for these tools for projects that I work on either on my own or with other library staff. They seem to be specifically geared to students completing research papers and other assignments. I suppose the next time I need to prepare a presentation they could come in handy.

Thing #15: online games and libraries

When I saw the title of this Thing my first thought was "Online games? Surely this Thing is for not for academic libraries." But then I saw that ACRL is one of the sponsors for this year's ALA Techsource Gaming, Learning, and Libraries Symposium. So I took a closer look and saw that the program includes sessions on how to incorporate online gaming into information literacy programs, including at the college level. Perhaps MMORPGs could play a role in college library instruction after all. Maybe online games could be part of freshman orientation. Could St. Olaf have it's own virtual presence in Second Life, with reference and other services?

I find the social aspect of Second Life a bit baffling. If you're a social type, why not go out and be with real people? If you're less social, more of a private person, wouldn't socializing online be just as repellent as in the real world? I suppose for extroverts it might be a way to meet people with similar interests when it's hard to find them in real life. Maybe SL is a good way for people from different cultures and countries to educate each other. Maybe ... World Peace at last?!?

I admit to being intrigued by Second Life, however, now that I've looked at it. I'd like to "go there" at least once just to explore what it's all about. Information Island is something I would like to explore, at least to understand better what the reading referred to, for example the "theater that seats 50," college classes one can attend, virtual whiteboards, and virtual computers available at the virtual library. I'm having a hard time imagining what all that would be like.

So far my private nature is preventing me from signing up, though. Is there an invisibility option in Second Life? If so, and I don't have to talk to anyone, maybe I'll try it!

I found Puzzle Pirates about as unappealing as I found 2nd Life intriguing. I'm turned off by the pirate theme, the graphics, the terminology, and the apparent complexity. Sure, I like puzzles, but this seems too ... geeky. Not that I'm not geeky myself, but there's good geeky and bad geeky! So anyhow, although I took a look, I didn't get far, and I hope I'm never involved in creating some kind of library program using this particular MMOPRG (love that acronym, btw).

Thing # 14: Library Thing

Once again, here we have a site where regular people are cataloging in their own time, for fun, while at the same time cataloging as a profession continues to be viewed as tedious work!

I enjoyed looking at Library Thing but I don't see making personal use of the tool. I don't really get why people want to share their book collections with the world. And anyway, I like to borrow from the library so I don't own most of the books I read. It also makes me a bit uncomfortable to share my reading list so publicly.

I'm intrigued, though, by the possibilities of collaboration of libraries with Library Thing. The LT documentation has sprinklings of library friendly language, for example, the tour touts the use of "library-quality data" in the LT database. LC metadata is supported along with Amazon's. If you judge the web 2.0 world by looking at the LT site, libraries appear to still be very much in the information game!

I also like the fact that LT is non-commercial. I subscribed to the Thingology Blog and am intrigued by the recent release of book covers for use in OPACs as well as the Open Shelves Classification project. Not having read much about the latter, I haven't formed an opinion about it yet. But the book covers interest me because there's both no cost (unlike commerical services like Syndetic Solutions) and no requirement for a link back to the site (unlike Amazon). Our library has so far rejected the display of book covers because of these limitations.

The idea of using LT for new book lists is interesting. Our Systems Librarian generates new materials lists once/month, but along with books these include videos, sound recordings, and music scores. I haven't investigated LT enough to know if books typically added to academic libraries are commonly found there. I wonder if generating new book lists from LT might work better for public libraries than for academic.

I would love to be able to go into Library Thing and see, for each book, whether or not any of my local libraries hold a copy. Or at least a "search your local library for this title" button. What a great way that would be to promote the use of libraries!

As a cataloger I could say lots about the quality of the metadata, the search mechanism, and the search results. I don't think any of it is as marvelous as LT advertises and I don't get why they tout the interface as superior to the library OPAC. (Please don't misunderstand; I'm not a fan of the typical OPAC either!)

Although it feels a bit invasive, I've included a widget on my blog's sidebar showing what I'm currently reading. I had trouble getting the widget working the way I wanted and I'm not thrilled with the result. And - yikes - there's also a link to my LT page that lists some books I've read over the years.

Thing #13: online productivity tools

1) Customized home page. On that wacky day back in July one of the many things I discovered was iGoogle. I've used it ever since as my home page on my home computer. I like it, but I've since deleted a large number of my original gadgets. I use it mostly for my home email account, Google Reader, and weather. Today I added a gadget for Remember the Milk (see no. 3 below). I don't know if I'll implement iGoogle at work because the potential for distraction seems huge. (Note irony of this Thing's title: "online productivity tools.")

2) Online calendar. This is timely as our institution is currently migrating to Google Calendar. This is the 3rd online calendar we've used in three or four years! Our last calendar, Meeting Maker, was a source of frustration for some people. For those who schedule a lot of meetings it's a godsend to be able to view everyone's schedule at once, but I think some staff would prefer not to have to keep their schedule updated online. Others continued to struggle in learning to use it. In addition, unless one keeps both a print and online calendar - and many are doing that - it's difficult to schedule meetings from a meeting room (well, unless you have one of those palm pilot thingies or whatever they're called). When we started using Meeting Maker I decided I wasn't going to take the time to keep both a print and online calendar for work. For the most part I've gotten used to and have liked using an online calendar.

Once again, though, to have success with these web 2.0 tools in the workplace I think it's important to not only have training but to also have continuing support and some hand-holding for those who are not comfortable learning new technologies. It can be difficult for some to take on all these new tools while at the same time trying to keep up with their regular workflow.

BTW the implementation of Google Calendar at our college is actually part of a larger migration to GAE or "Google Apps for Education" which includes gmail, Google calendar and some other tools that I guess we'll be learning about later.

3) To do lists. I took a look at the list making tools and chose Remember the Milk because the site claims it works with Google Calendar. I put a few things on the list but it remains to be seen whether, like the rest of the 23 Things, this is just a fun new toy or something that I'll keep using. I do keep a lot of lists on paper at both work and home but I have varying success in using them. I think in part just the action of writing something down helps me remember to do it.

4) I took a look at Backpack but felt like further investigation threatened to overwhelm what I've already learned in this Thing! I think I'll stick to the Google tools for now.

Thing #12: do you Digg?

I don't know, I don't know ... I'm feeling overwhelmed by all the recent tools I've learned about in the 23 Things which, though each different, have overlapping functions. Oh, I can subscribe to blogs! Oh, de.li.c.i...o....us! Oh, Digg! For this Thing I didn't get too excited looking at Digg, Mixx, and Newsvine. Maybe it's possible with some or all of these sites, but I didn't notice any way that my ratings would influence the type of content that would be displayed to me. I've been using Netflix for a few years, and though it took some time and a lot of ratings, my account is now personalized enough that I am easily finding lots of good movies that I likely would never have watched otherwise. As much as I like the democratic nature of these social media sites, perusing what's rated as "popular" doesn't make me want to look at these sites any more than a regular news site. I'm not particularly interested in reading the "American Idol" of news stories! Maybe I just didn't explore the sites enough. But Reddit does claim to shape content around one's ratings - like Netflix - so out of curiosity I signed up for an account.

I'm wondering if keeping track of what's rated as popular on these sites could impact collection development, for public libraries at least. I'm not sure it should be at the top of the "to do" list though.

I read an article on slate.com about a new model of electric car and "shared" it on reddit. I was feeling timid about doing this so I was glad to see that someone else had already submitted the same article. I did give the article a "thumbs up" rating though!

Oh, one other thing I noticed both for this Thing and Thing 11 was the ability to keep track of what friends are bookmarking (del.icio.us et al.) or what news stories they're reading/recommending (Digg et al.) As we web 2.0 types are fond of saying: "omg!" Why in the world would anyone want to do that?

Thing #11: tagging and del.icio.us

This has been the most thought-provoking Thing so far. My first provoked thought: why is it written as "del.icio.us" everywhere I see it, while the site itself and url simply read "delicious"?

The tagging concept gets more and more interesting to me. Tagging as an alternative to folders ... the whole concept of "folders" has long been embedded in our lives in so many ways; to keep things organized one separates them into different categories. If you have lots of things, you can have sub-categories and sub-sub-categories. This applies to everything from a file cabinet to LCSH to the grocery store to my bedroom dresser. (Well, maybe not my dresser). Tagging takes conventional organizational approaches using categories and hierarchies and turns it on it's head. Obviously this approach can only be applied in the online world. (If only I could tag things physically maybe I could find all those missing socks!)

With tagging I also like the potential for faceted searching. Newer versions of online catalogs use LCSH and other record elements to accomplish this, but LCSH, with it's hierarchical structure, wasn't designed to be used this way.

The obvious downside to tagging is the lack of standards and controlled vocabulary leading to inconsistency in application. But the concept in itself doesn't seem to preclude standards. It's with social bookmarking that we add other layers to the tagging approach where the usefulness of informal folksonomies becomes apparent. I'm still trying to wrap my brain around all the other advantages and disadvantages. One additional advantage, as I read in one of the linked articles, is that tagging the same resource by many people can lead an information seeker in directions he or she may not have thought of.

I'm aware of the discussions going on about allowing patrons to tag records for titles in the library catalog. I don't know what the answer is, but I do think librarians should at least consider the idea. I personally would love to do some "professional tagging" (is that an oxymoron?) simply because LCSH makes me want to gag. At minimum, we should allow patrons to tag resources on their own library page - "my library" or whatever - to keep track of resources of interest to them.

I'm excited about using del.icio.us. I had heard of it but had no idea it offered so much. I also spent some time looking at citeulike for organizing online academic papers. It's seems relatively new and undeveloped but I see great potential and I plan to use it.

I have so much to say on this topic and could continue writing. But time is running out on the 23 Things, and I want my prize! So I will move on.

Thing #10: Wikis

Our library has a wiki for our staff documentation. It's creation is still in progress as staff members move documents from elsewhere onto the site. We catalogers are gradually moving our cataloging manual onto the wiki. This is a great improvement as our print version is in a sad state and well out of date. Our recent documents are on a shared drive but cumbersome to access. And if we put them on a typical web page the bulk of the work would be done by our web person. So the wiki has been a good thing.

I enjoyed looking at various other wikis for this exercise. I see great potential for the wiki world to enable knowledgeable folks whom we might not otherwise hear from to supply information in a centralized location. However, I wonder how to publicize subject-specific wikis when there's so much other information out there. Take the Minnewiki from MPR as an example: what great potential this site has to be one of top "places to go" for information on Minnesota music! But judging from my brief exploration, this site is limited in it's development so far. Musicians and other experts might take an interest in contributing if both a) they knew about it and b) they saw it as a hub where information-seekers would go. In turn, information-seekers might go there if both a) they knew about it and b) the site was comprehensive enough to make it worth their while. If my reasoning is right then we've got one of those circular things going on here. In the meantime a Google search is probably not going to take you to Minnewiki on the first results page because of the way Google's relevancy ranking works. (OK, I just checked on Google, and I was right, but like always I got a Wikipedia page near the top of the list. Which makes me wonder: maybe the Minnewiki folks should instead put their efforts into this page rather than creating a new wiki.)

I'm not sure what to do about this, but I assure you that when I rule the world I'll make it a top priority.

Back to libraries ... a wiki makes sense when the use of multiple creators/editors results in the best content. While I love some of the subject guide wikis I looked at, at our library we have individual liaison librarians who create course and subject guides and - I think - each upload them to our web site. I'm not sure how a wiki could improve on this. Perhaps creating a wiki page would be easier for someone new to creating online content? But as a tech services person I'm not much involved so I'll shut up about that before I get myself into trouble!

Finally, when introducing the concept of a wiki I think it's important to both explain the rationale and provide training. Library staff have a lot coming at them; this has the potential to seem like just another wacky new thing that they're told they should do without understanding why. Staff participation in the decision to create a wiki is in keeping with the democratic nature of the wiki concept.

Edit: I forgot to report that I did do step 3 and added to the 23 things wiki.

Thing #9: Online Collaboration Tools

I decided to start blogging while waiting for the sample document to load on Zoho. Maybe it's because I'm working from home, but I've found that the Zoho site loads too slowly to be practical. (I had tried it for one of the previous Things too.)

The Google editor was frustrating. I couldn't make multiple changes to a font before typing. For example, if I changed the size from 8 pt to 12pt, then changed to italics, the size reverted back to 8pt. I was able to make multiple changes to the font by typing first, then highlighting my text and editing with new font size, color, etc. But this didn't go very smoothly either.

A committee I served on awhile back used a web document tool for our minutes, but it never caught on after that. One problem is that as we try new methods to view, edit, and store documents, staff tend to fall behind on what it is we're using now. Just when people figure out how to access and use one, it seems we're on to something else.

OK, the Zoho document has finally loaded, after at least 5 minutes of waiting!

I'm back. I had to sign up for Zoho, and now I'm waiting for another page to load.

Um ... er ... ok, here's another thought. Google seems to be getting into everything these days. Will they soon be able to do my dishes, laundry, and other house chores?

I'm giving up on Zoho. I don't think the slowness is just an issue for today because I've tried getting into this site multiple times on at least 2 other days. So I'll publish this post, and if the document loads in Zoho and I'm able to do anything with it, I'll report back.

Thing #8 again

The biggest lesson for me from Thing 8 is that there is sooo much out there to facilitate creativity. But too much for me to absorb now. I'll be relying on the 23 Things page after I complete the program for the links to all these resources.

I love the "flicks" and I'm still going to create one when I get some good photos. For now, on to Thing 9!