10/04/2007
Xperimentarium - Exciting new library redesign by children
10/03/2007
Anagrams for Sudoku
10/02/2007
Thing 23 - Summary
This is the last post for these discovery exercises, but definitely not the last time I will use the skills obtained. I've been happy to discover that even I can do these things that are increasingly part of Web 2.0. I've always been one to want to learn new things, and this was a natural extension of my inherent curiosity.
My favorite, in terms of sheer fun, was creating an avatar on Meez. I was surprized to see how much time I would willinging spend on exercises that captured my imagination. If a similar offering was presented in the future, I'd certainly be inclined to try it.
Succinctly, my learning experience was: fun, profound, enlivening, and unexpected - even when I got frustrated.
Thanks for offering the opportunity to us be stay relevant to our customers and to enrich ourselves!
Thing 22 - Overdrive, Project Gutenberg
The major advantage I find with Overdrive is that you can find a title, download it and sync it to your mp3 player. In some cases you can burn the mp3 file to a CD, essentially letting you keep a title forever, something you can't do with a library's talking CD. Realistically, most folks aren't so into their talking books they want to keep them, but this feature allows them to play the title in their car CD if they can't play their mp3 player through the car stereo system. Me - I use a FM transmitter with my mp3 player when I take long trips if I want to listen to those mp3 (or .wav) files on the car stereo.
The major disadvantages are twofold. One, the list of titles is small and usually not filled with truly available recent releases. A search of Overdrive's "What's New" section reveals more Adobe eBooks than Overdrive audio books, and there wasn't a single audio book available for immediate download, only for placing a hold on one. Those items available for download were not remotely new books. So it's good if you're in the mood for an older title you've missed. Also, the list of authors is necessarily limited (I'm being kind using the word "limited"), which is not the fault of Overdrive itself, but reflects which publishers and authors are available to them in these formats, based on their deals with these sources. Customers, frankly, could care less about these details, only whether or not a title they'd like is available. My 10 title searches yielded 0 (as in zero) titles owned - if I weren't a librarian, I would have concluded by the 3rd or 4th search that Overdrive had nothing to offer me and would have written them off as of no use for my needs. Hopefully the range and number of titles will increase with time. I couldn't find a single title I wanted to download this time through.
Secondly, the requirements in terms of technical skills on the end user are high. Overdrive makes you download and install additional software to get the audio book (or video) you want. Introducing another layer to the process that the customer must go through can and will deter customers from using this service. And I'm not even considering that you then have to be skilled enough to sync your choice through Windows Media Player onto your mp3 player. Granted, after doing it 2-3 times you get familiar enough to stop sweating the details, but a greater transparency to the process (or rather invisibility of the process) would, I suspect, greatly increase the use of this and other downloading systems. Which would you be more likely to do - spend 20-30 minutes figuring out how to install additional software, then obtain, download and sync one audio book (think of the first time you did it), or just go to the library and pick up 3 talking CD's in 10 minutes?
I believe these services will grow over time, that they are in their infancy and experiencing the usual growing pains of any new technology. They will get larger lists of titles and downloading them to your mp3 player will get easier. My suggestion: make it possible to plug your mp3 player into the computer, select your audio book, answer a few questions about your computer and mp3 player, then have the website automate the rest of the process. Plug, Download, Sync, Go!
Project Gutenberg, long predating Google's attempt to digitize the world's books, is the repository for literature that's out of copyright protection. What this means in practice is that, given current copyright law, you'll not see anything written after the 1920's that's available. If you need a copy of Dicken's A Christmas Carol, however, it's right there and yours for the reading or even printing. I've always had a soft spot in my heart for this project, limited though it may be as to what it can actually offer.
10/01/2007
Thing 21 - Podcasts
All three shows a ton of available episodes. Yahoo's offering gives the option to listen immediately or download, as well as offering the feed for your aggregator. The other two seemed content to offer the feeds first. In any case, the simple availability of these audio (and in some cases video) feeds opens up the same possibilities as "books on demand" offers for out-of-print books. You don't have to miss information from sources like radio because they're kept as audio files and are searchable. That's why I chose "Wait, Wait...", because I never seem to be near my radio at 11 am on Saturdays to catch the broadcast live, but I can always go back to my computer and relive the fun. It's now got a spot on my Bloglines feeds.
Thing 20 - YouTube
For my post, I thought a little frivolity was in order, so below you can enjoy a video entitled, "Crazy Cats". Enjoy!
Thing 19 - Web 2.0 Awards
Of all the applications and sites, 2 stand out for me as incredibly useful, so much so that I couldn't choose one. So we have co-winners: Google Docs and Bloglines.
Google Docs is hands down the neatest app I've run across this year. It truly facilitates collaboration in a way that enables everyone to win. You don't need to own Brother Bill's bloatware to be able to work across the world on projects. All you need is an Internet capable computer. It handles the 3 most frequently used document types (Word, Excel, and PowerPoint), effortlessly shuffling them between multiple users, who can make and view changes. Simply a beautiful idea made real.
Bloglines, as a feed aggregator, is useful for it's time saving ability in gathering information in one spot. No more searching your 50 favorite sites to see if something's new - you can know in one site. It's easy to set up an account, and equally easy to add and delete feeds as necessary. You can keep especially interesting items from feeds new, so they're easy to return to. The interface is straightforward and a pleasure to use. I'm a big fan of easy, good, and very useful.
Libraries obviously can use Google Docs on projects of any sort - I did exactly that back in April to share Excel spreadsheet data between work and home. As for Bloglines, any library could create a list of its own blogs that were relevant to its users and make the list of feeds available to its customers, either internal or external.
9/29/2007
Thing 18 - Online Applications & Tools
Google Docs is tops in my book. Why? - you don't have to have Word or Excel or PowerPoint on your computer in order to share the documents! This allows you to work anywhere you have a computer that has Net access. On my main computer at home I eschew Brother Bill's Office suite, instead using OpenOffice for my office productivity needs. It's powerful, open source, plays well with Microsoft, and is completely free. This leads to some conflicts when I have to bring work home, as was true in the spring when I had to work on preparing data from some lengthy spreadsheets for a major project in a short amount of time. Google Docs to the rescue! I was able to load my docs, make the necessary new docs from them, and save the new docs back to Google. I could also email the documents to all the people who needed them, both for comments and for final review. This is one of my Top 5 web-based tools!
Thing 17 - Learning 2.0 Sandbox Wiki
Rant over! ;-)
Otherwise, a nice way to share and share some more (common theme emerging in Web 2.0). I remember that for the MLA conference in Ocean City this past May, they posted most of the handouts from the sessions to the conference wiki, which was very handy, as well as recording podcasts that were posted, too.
Thing 16 - Wikis
If you want a laugh, one wiki I visited had a link to a hilarious definition of a "librarian", authored (I think) by Stephen Colbert (of the Colbert Report). You can find it at the Uncyclopedia, at http://uncyclopedia.org/wiki/Librarian.
Thing 15 - Web 2.0, Library 2.0
I read 3 of the articles, but Rick Anderson's article, "Away from the 'icebergs' ", generated the greatest interest for me and evoked a lot of positive head nodding. I have long been a proponent of doing away with "just in case" collection models, even while the Web was just starting its ascendance to its current position. Such a model seemed wasteful of resources, both human and monetary, then, and even moreso now.
Pursuant to that, I think it is necessary for public libraries in particular to really get on the ball and pay attention to upgrading the technology skills of its librarians. As we all know, ours is an aging profession, and it is not always confortable to learn such daunting new tricks 20+ years into your career. However, without learning these tricks, we both miss the opportunity to gain relevance with a whole new set of users while also pushing our profession towards the (perceived) brink of obsolescence by those same users. If we don't "give 'em what they want", they'll go elsewhere - someone else will gladly build and offer the resources they want, to the cheers of a ready market.
I believe as Patrick Jones once said, that we, as librarians, haven't had a chance to properly mourn the passing of what used to be our profession as we knew and practiced it for so many years. Maybe because the demise was so rapid - literally in a decade - we didn't have any time to mourn, only keep plugging away with greater amounts of work. Whatever, the society we live in now holds the cards and can dictate to us what is wanted; that's the new paradigm, as we as librarians have to embrace the flow and learn how to paddle effectively. maybe that's why Rick has an oar with him in the article.
I also stumbled across a recent post by Helene Blowers, the woman who got this Library 23 Things idea started (came across the LibraryBytes blog) that is germain to this discussion. The link to the brief post is below if you'd care to read it.
Thing 14 - Technorati
I did "claim" my two blogs, and I put a Technorati button on both sites if you want to "favorite" either. They are tagged appropriately for each subject. Mistakenly, I didn't put in a tag labeled "mdlearn2", so I'll have to go back and fix that.
9/28/2007
Thing 13 - Del.icio.us
I ran some searches on things mundane and obscure, and I notice that for the obscure items, often very small communities exist, which narrows the usefulness of del.icio.us searching. For example, I searched for sites about a very recent software upgrade to a new piece of Adobe software for image editing (Lightroom v.1.2), which has been out for almost a month. There were very few sites, less than 20, addressing the software, and they were largely from Adobe. This meant that the site that had the greatest number of comments (over 200) was helpful, but many of the other sites had fewer than 10 comments, making it hard to get a sense of the community using the sites. By expanding the search to the previous version (1.1), several hundred sites were found with lots of comments that were useful. I think the potential in del.icio.us lies in its networking and social structure, especially in things less esoteric than my test pursuits.
9/27/2007
Thing 12 - Rollyo
For looking for sites about any niche interest, Rollyo is a good way to go. It can be quite the time saver when a topic comes up, even in a reference situation on the desk. I can see myself using it for spur-of-the-moment topics that I need to get some sites for. Again, depending on your proclivity for getting intrigued by things great and small, this can be either a time saver or time eater.
9/26/2007
Thing 11 - LibraryThing
It's a tremendous way to discover new titles of interest, read reviews by others of books in your collection. I particularly like the fact that you can get suggestions for new titles based on feedback from other LibraryThing users (as long as you have a title that is owned by 75 or more members). This could be a great aid to book discussion groups as well as individually. I laugh decidedly harder when using the UnSuggester, which will give you a list of books (following the same criteria as above, 75 or more owing members) that you will hate based on the book you input. For instance, if you liked Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, the UnSuggester suggests you will definitely not like Sophie Kinsella's Confessions of a Shopaholic! This site is also really great for discovering like (or otherwise)-minded souls to discuss books with. A former trainer of mine in a seminar uses LibraryThing to catalogue her and her husband's rare and used book collection, which will become her retirement business.
You can visit my little list of titles at http://www.librarything.com/catalog/prakashsteve.
P.S. Yes, I added the Thingology and LibraryThing blogs to my blogroll. I'm hopeless!
Thing 10 - Online Image generators
Meez has a lot of options for image generation. You can pick everything from skin colr and hair styles through accessories and clothing and nail color. You also get to pick animations for your avatar and backgrounds to put them in. You can create a whole series of avatars under your log-in name. And when you get tired of your outfit, you can take clothes off, put them in your "closet", and get new threads. So my avatar won't freeze when it gets to be chilly, maybe I'll look for some appropriate footwear.
The Generator Blog is a dandy resource for an extensive list of all kinds of generators, both image and otherwise (for instance, you can find a German name generator on this site). I liked it so much I added it to my blogroll! I'm really digging a deeper hole for myself.
Thing 9 - MERLIN, Avatars, Feedster, Technorati, and the Whole Kitchen Sink
I found Feedster to be really effective at finding all kinds of feeds that interest me. I added a couple to my blogroll, so, as I said in the previous post, there's too much of interest for me to even try to look at it all. I like the fact that it's easy to search for podcasts, which I view regularly to keep up to speed with some of the exotic Photoshop how-tos. Technorati is also pretty good at finding the information you might want, but I'm a tad fonder of Feedster at this point.
As for the standard feed icons, I've noticed them on my Firefox and IE7 browsers. Maybe now I know what to do with them!
Thing 8 - RSS feeds, Bloglines
Newsreaders are excellent aggregators of information. The one thing they can never do is give you the time to take advantage of all the information that you can set them up to feed you. Granted, some feeds are probably temporary, done for a specific task or project, then no longer useful. Maybe it's just my problem of being intrigued by so many topics that are so easily gathered by RSS that gives me pause about using it. Simply put, it's too easy to get sucked into subscribing to a hundred different feeds of interest.
If you'd like to check my blogroll (before it gets too large), go to: www.bloglines.com/public/prakashsteve. It's a mix of library news, tech news, and photography news.
9/21/2007
Thing 6 - Mashups & Trading Cards
Here's the original photo the from which the trading card was made.
On to Thing 8!
9/19/2007
Things 5 & 7- Flickr Burning Man 2007, Tech Talk
The Sangaku Japanese Style Wooden PC Case Mod by Nicholas Falzone, featured as the finest Wooden PC Case Mod Ever.
The website these photos came from, http://www.ecogeek.org/content/view/62/1/, said of this rig: The most spectacular example of a complete wooden desktop setup we've come across was created by Russian master carpenters in Moscow. The case, monitor, mouse, and keyboard were all hand crafted. And they'll do one for you too but “To be honest we do not have the cheapest masters in Moscow,” so be ready for the a fairly high estimate.
I bet!!! I love the look of these, they remind me of TVs in the "old days".
9/18/2007
Things 1-4...Better Late Than Never!
I selected a design for this blog, registered it, put on a couple of items, including the time-wasting Sudoku with 5 levels of difficulty, and then stopped to take care of some health issues. So now's the time to catch up! Beware the big eyeball, which is actually a photograph of a section of a rock - it's been known to act like Mad Eye Moody's every now and then, and Halloween is fast approaching!