Context and Continuity

The PLCMC Learning 2.0 experience has been good. I think I caught some of the first glimps of it in the excitement of Computers in Libraries earlier this year in Washington D.C.

I hope Learning 2.0 does not stop with the completion of the 23 Things. I would like to see one new discovery activity every week on an on-going basis, at least for the next 6 months or so. Sure, other incentives would be nice, but it could be something like a chance at a few extra hours of vacation, or some free rentals. A little goes a long way in enticing people to do something as interesting as Learning 2.0.

However, I have been challenged thinking about how some of the Web 2.0 technologies could be made meaningful or relevant to library patrons, unless they specifically asked staff, "How do I get an RSS aggregator?" or "How do I set up a blog?" The patrons who want these services probably have the tech-savvy to go get them.

For me, I really liked the concept of tagging, and the websites that tagged concept like Flickr, YouTube, and Library Thing made a lot of sense to me. On the other hand, I am not a devoted reader of blogs, yet, but who knows what the future will hold.

netLibrary

netLibrary is not a new resourse to me. The Bizlink team has incorporated netLibrary Business titles into that website for several years now. Incorporating links into audio business content was a natural thing to do as soon as that collection became available.

I have always believed that netLibrary did a wonderful job at supplementing PLCMC's collection, and I hope we continue to add content, not only relying on NCLive, but with our own resources as well.

While you know I claim to be a visual learner, learning from audio content is completely valid. I have been trying to learn my patriarchial line's mother tongue, Croatian, all my life. I have tapes at home, but all I picked up over the years was a few phrases. The netLibrary collection includes a Pimsleur Language Program on Croatian that I would like to try.

I am still not completely clear on how to acquire a license so that I can put this content on my MP3 player, once I get it, but I will just ask the experts here at PLCMC at that time.

Audio vs. Video podcasts

I am a very visual learner. I know others have learning styles where they can just read or listen. So as I was trying to get my mind around podcasts, I tried to sample the content in both audio and video podcasts.

Just the idea of presenting information as a series, rather than stand-alone incidents like in YouTube, seems fundamentally like it would be more useful in a library setting for information dissemination. Obviously tagging any of this media makes it more accessible, but I believe that designing content in a series would be ideal.

Adding podcasts into my Bloglines account was very easy, so I can now be made aware of new content is these series. Even links to preview podcast content were listed beautifully there.

However, launching some content was problematic. I do not seem to have a Quicktime viewer on my library workroom PC. Thankfully, I could view the most current podcast on CaliYoga.com, as it was embedded into the website page. However, I was disappointed that I could not launch preview podcasts, since they were in Quicktime *.m4v format.

Also, I noticed that some podcast directories were better than others. Yahoo Podcasts was by far superior to Podcastalley and Podcast.net in terms of the interface and the detailed information provided about each podcast. It's no trivial matter to me whether a podcast is 2 minutes long vs. a half hour, and depending on my search, I want to know that at first glance, without having to click deeper into my search results.

MeebO@PLCMC?

We have a fledgling project for intergrating chat as a reference service at PLCMC, so I took advantage of this Learning 2.0 exercise to look at meebo




So now my question is, can we embed this code on the PLCMC website?

YouTube: An Addiction Just Waiting to Happen

Everyone wants to be entertained. I spent an hour and a half at home this morning mindlessly cruising YouTube.

I really like YouTube. I feel about it now like I felt about surfing websites about 7-8 years ago. For instance, I can entertain myself for hours watching videos of other people's corgis. I have 3.



Can I imagine a practice library use? Sure. I think short instructional videos of homegrown content would be easy to incorporate on PLCMC's website.

For instance, I co-host a bi-monthly Stitch-In at Main Library. Here's a simple demostration of knitting.




I tried to blog straight from YouTube, and for some technical reason that did not really work out for me. It would probably work better for me at home.

This is a test to explore Writely.

This is a test to explore Writely.

This is a test to explore Writely.

This is a test to explore Writely.

This is a test to explore Writely.

Writely does not support Linking from Images yet!

(Aren't these guys cute?!)

Writely for blogging.

I was a little more comfortable exploring Google's Writely, since I already teach a class on "Getting More Out of Google" AKA "Google Yourself Silly." I thought that learning Writely might be more relevant for me. (Also, I am feeling overloaded and overwhelmed with having to create so many new accounts online lately.)

So I just "blogged" my Writely document. I am going to finish this post and see how that blogged entry turned out. If it's nice, I think using Writely to blog may be a better alternative that this Blogger interface. It always seems like I am on the verge of loosing my work typing in Blogger!

...OK, the main problem with using Writely for blogging, at least at first blush, is that it messes up my Blogger Template. I may try to figure this out, or I just may leave the Writely post up temporarily.

Wikis vs. Message Boards

While the old school librarian in me bristles at content being propagated online that is not authorative, I have found Wikipedia to be a great source to at least get me started for subjects I know nothing about.

My husband talks about finding obscure, yet interesting facts in Wikipedia about his favorite childhood cartoons, comics, toys, and shows. I know a huge amount of content is there that I may have trouble finding fast in traditional print resources.

And of course the better Wikipedia articles include some bibliographic citations.

Someone cited my websites on using a lucet in the external links part of that record.

I have even set up my own Wikipedia account and added content, both editing an entry and adding further content.

For collaboration, I can see Wikis as a good tool to manage a knowledge database. If I was going to make a Wiki, the topic would be on knitting patterns. It seems like almost all knitting patterns published today have errors. I would like to be able to search for a particular pattern, and see reviews of the pattern and corrections to known errors.

I know of a message board on Knitters Review that should fulfill my desire to find out about pattern errors and corrections. I have been trying to compare and contrast its Message Board with the Wiki model, and I think I probably prefer the Wiki model for its clarity and ease of use.

Technorati vs. Bloglines

Technorati and Bloglines seem to me to be very similar products. Technorati's Favorites feature probably makes Bloglines redundant. If you don't care about how your personal blog sits in relationship to other blogs, the Bloglines aggregator is probably adequate. Also, I think a blog has to be "claimed" by a user in Technorati to take full advantage of Technorati's searching and tagging features.

So I "claimed" my blog from my 2002 India trip in Technorati, because I feel that the content there is in better shape than the content I am creating here in the PLCMC Learning 2.0 experiment. I felt tagging that blog with "Yoga" and "Meditation," as well as other tags to specific places I traveled, was more meaningful to me.

Technorati's three search features are pretty effective:
1) "in blog posts" is like keyword searching in full text content. The broadest search.
2) "in tags" is like Subject Heading searching in databases. The most useful search.
3) "in blog directory" is like choosing a topical database. The most narrow/specific search.

There seems to be so many aspects in Technorati that I have trouble getting my mind completely around what it can and cannot do. Maybe once I get caught up on Learning 2.0, I can go back to Technorati.

Useful Library Blogs

I am just trying to catch up with my Learning 2.0 exercises...

I have had a Bloglines account for several months now, so I already understand that blog aggregators are useful.

Howver, as far as being a regular blog reader, I am just not there yet. At least five years ago, blogs were online vanity presses, where people I knew IRL (in real life) exposed themselves more than they should have.

So while I have begun to get my mind around some blogs which are useful information tools, I don't read them habitually.

I realize that team blogs with many participants posting have the potential to be useful, but at this point I don't think all members of teams have the "blog" mindset. Even recently an in-house blog was left languishing because the team members were simply used to hitting "Reply-All" in their email. In this case, blogs keep a record of conversations better than emails, in my opinion, and might be better than email. Yet, how this is an improvement on groups is not clear to me.

My boss, Martin House uses his House Notes blog as a communication devise with MLIS staff. So for my part, his is my favorite library blog, since its usefulness is clear to me.

Library 2.0 Perspectives: How about "the Long Tail"?

I read many of the OCLC NextSpace online articles shortly after I attended the "Computers in Libraries" conference in Washington D.C. last March, so re-reading these perspectives was just a refresher for me. I was already aware of Rick Anderson's and Wendy Schultz's work. I heard Dr. Schultz speak at that conferece.

The one article I read recently that I agreed with strongly had to do with "harnessing the long-tail". For instance, Netflix and Amazon have captured "the Long Tail" by providing access to specialized titles, other than just bestsellers. The proportion of consumers who want specialized individual titles is greater than the proportion of those that want a limited pool of bestsellers.

With respect to the Web, "harnessing the 'long tail' refers to the content on the seemingly infinite number of small sites that make up the web vs. so-called 'important' sites.

I think Google Books 'harnesses the long tail' by providing keyword searchable full text to many great books. Granted, just a content sample is typically provided, and interlibrary loan might come into play to actually see the entire book, but my awareness of what books are even available that might interest me has grown exponentially.

Now, here at Main, I call our Nonfiction collection "the Long Tail." While I agree that our print collection's content should be accurate, and the condition of our collection needs to remain good, I baulk at the idea that books should be weeded because they do not circulate enough.

I understand the need to innovate and rethink library services, but I hope no one throws out the baby with the bathwater!

Getting off the ground with Del.ici.ous

I started picking up speed...I am also getting better at changing my Blogger template, because I've tried to take more of a "what's the worse that can happen" attitude to my Learning 2.0 blog.

I have been thinking about why I am having trouble getting my mind around Del.ici.ous. I understand its social networking and tagging features, but because I have not had my own desktop at work (about 15 staff members share roughly 4 PCs), I got out of the habit of using personal bookmarks. Instead I rely on websites like PLCMC's Online Resources and Bizlink for my starting off point to accessing information. I also tend to email websites to myself, and bookmark them at home.

Am I recreating the wheel each time I search, instead of bookmarking? In an information universe where the only certainty is change, and information self-life tends to be very short, I think not. On the other hand, though, I am intrigued by the possibility of using Del.ici.ous as an alternative information gathering/sharing tool.