#14 A World of Wikis

An hour ago, I had no idea what wikis were or how to use them, but after reading some of the Discovery Resources and watching the video clip, Wikis in Plain English, I'm hooked. I can't believe how useful Wikis are, especially for planning projects. I wish I'd known about them last year when I was trying to plan an extended family trip to France! The idea of reducing the number of emails and trying to remember who's seen what information in order to complete a project, is very exciting. I can definitely see how students working on a group project will find Wikis helpful.
As always, there are downsides to this new technology. Some of the sites I visited had experienced vandalism problems so you had to create an account to log on to edit the contents which seemed a bit tedious (and no, I didn't sign up for anything this time!). I also thought that while Wikis would be great for patron book reviews, organizing a project amongst staff etc where you need ideas and thoughts to bounce around, at some point a collaborative effort can drag on. Still, I am going to have a go setting up my own Wiki, I just need something to organize first!

#13 Library 2.0

I read through the articles on Web 2.0 and Library 2.0 and I have to confess that before starting on my journey through the Playground, I would not have understood the concepts being discussed (I feel like I'm another Luddite too!). However, here I am at #13 and feel that I have made progress and learnt so much. I found the Wikipedia overview interesting, especially the comment that, "The active and empowered library user is a significant component of Library 2.0. With information and ideas flowing in both directions – from the library to the user and from the user to the library – library services have the ability to evolve and improve on a constant and rapid basis. The user is participant, co-creator, builder and consultant – whether the product is virtual or physical." I think the challenge will be to inform, educate and engage the users, including all the Luddites out there, so that they too are involved in the evolution of the library. You really do get a strong sense that Change is coming and libraries in five years or more will operate differently but are we preparing our patrons for it? Hmmm.....maybe we should add Flickr, setting a up a Blog, etc to the current computer training courses we offer?

Socializing 2.0

Well I took the plunge today and joined Facebook. Yet another password has been added to my my growing Playground Password list (I've tried to commit this to memory, but am failing badly hence the written list). I really debated whether I should join Facebook since it sounded like one more thing I would need to check and stay on top off. However, instead of being overwhelmed with faces I recognized, I found just one school friend that looked vaguely familiar in the photo. Oh well, we'll see if she responds.......and guess what? just received her email 2 secs. ago confirming I'm her friend. I'm a somebody!! We haven't connected in over 10 years so I think I'm going to be a bit busy uploading some photos and filling details on my profile. Facebook certainly makes email look soooo boring.

I took a quick look around MySpace which didn't inspire me too much (seemed a bit like a "find a date" site). I'm intrigued how social networking applications, like Facebook, would work within libraries. Our tech.-savvy patrons may jump at the chance to connect with other like-minded users to post comments or even book reviews, but there's probably a lot more patrons who still prefer the more old fashioned approach to networking, ie in person.

Technorati

I wasn't as thrilled with Technorati as I was with Del.icio.us and LibraryThing. I guess it's useful if you've got the time and patience to browse through tons of blogs, but not having an account with Technorati made the search process very clumsy. I was overwhelmed with the number of blogs and can't really see myself using it. That being said, I did come across one blog called Through the Looking Glass Book Review (link is below) which reviews children's books. It caught my eye because it featured an interview with Roland Smith (I just bought my daughter Elephant Run for Christmas and wanted some background info on the book).I added this blog to my Del.icio.us bookmarks and added it to my RSS feeds as well (just to see if I could remember how to do it!). Now I'm ready to move onto #12....halfway there!

http://lookingglassreview.blogspot.com/

#10 Del.icio.us

Finally moved on from LibraryThing! I could easily have spent more time there cataloguing books and reading reviews but Del.icio.us called.... I was very skeptical about Del.icio.us and even during the tutorials, I kept wondering how I would ever use it. I dutifully checked the NVDPL's bookmarks, found a website that looked interesting, checked to see who tagged it and found myself on a staff member's blog with even more interesting websites for me to check out. Having spent most of my life googling by subject, Del.icio.us gave me links to sites that were specific to what I was looking for. Now I'm completely hooked! I opened an account and had a great time setting up my favourite websites which I can access from home as well...what a time saver.

Lovin' LibraryThing

Here are a few of the books in my library. These are the ones I've actually read; I'm afraid to even start thinking about cataloguing the books sitting on my shelves that I have yet to read.

#8 Online Image Generators

Had tons of fun with online generators. I found this very funny site that creates Windows error messages, so I had a go making my own (http://atom.smasher.org/error/). Unfortunately, I spent more time trying to load the image onto this blog and as you can see, it didn't work too well. You'll need a microscope to read the writing.... this is what it says if you are curious:

Fatal Error
You are making too many silly mistakes. Windows requires a new user. Select one of the following options and vacate your chair:

Go home and read a good book
Send a Systems Request (in grey, can't select this option)
Sign up for a NVDPL computer training session

The actual image looks funnier........oh well, it's a start.

More on RSS Feeds

To finish off #7, I added a couple of RSS feeds to Google Reader. I tried to use Technorati to find some interesting blogs but found their site confusing. In the end, I used Google Reader's search feature and added librarian.net. which had an interesting post on the issue of privacy and technology in libraries, called "ruminating about privacy" by jessamyn. Here's an excerpt:

Patron 1 wants to make sure no one ever knows what they are reading. Tells the OPAC to not keep his reading list. Knows his PIN. Wants to make sure the public access PCs don’t retain records of the sites he’s visited. Is a bit horrified that the library data we do keep isn’t in some way encrypted or otherwise protected.

Patron 2 wants to know every book she has ever checked out. Wants the library to leave the name of the book she has on hold on her answering machine. Wants her friend to be able to pick the book up for her at the library. Doesn’t remember her PIN and finds it vaguely annoying that she needs more than her library card number to use the OPAC.

A privacy solution that works for Patron 1 becomes a usability impediment to Patron 2. While libraries have the responsibility to keep both patrons’ data safe, they also have the responsibility to be usable and accomodating to both patrons. Technology, in my opinion, can address these issues but librarians have to a) embrace it b) request it from their vendors c) be willing to tolerate the learning curve that comes with any new technology.

I'm sure this sounds vaguely familiar. Given time constraints and the fact that I'm taking baby steps to reach all 24 Things, I'll leave this issue to one side and quickly move onto Play Stations....this sounds like more fun!

Thing #6

Another month goes by and I've finally found some time to play in the playground. I set up a Google Reader account several weeks ago with a few RSS feeds. When I accessed it today, I was overwhelmed with 1000+ feeds from the Telegraph. Oh my! I can barely keep up with email let alone feeds. However, I did enjoy an article from LibraryThing RSS feed, entitled "The First Ever Catalog Flash Mob" about 20 cataloguers who descended on a church in Massachusetts to catalogue a collection of 1200 or so books....sounds like an interesting thing to do on the weekend! I also added the Lithe Librarian: Adventures of an Auxiliary blog to my feeds. This is one RSS feed I'd probably check regularly because the book reviews are great. On the whole, I enjoyed learning about RSS feeds (I'm one of those uninformed people who hadn't heard of them before) but it isn't something that I could see myself accessing regularly. There's only so much information I can absorb in a day.

After a long absence.....I'm back!

Well it's been several months since my last blog, so long in fact that I needed to refresh my memory and try and remember what my password was to log in. I also needed a refresher on Flickr (I vaguely remember looking at it back in August) and found to my pleasant surprise that I'd already done item #4 (yay me!).
I did spend a bit of time exploring Flickr mashups like Trip Planner by Yahoo! Travel. I really liked this website and can see myself using it to plan future trips. I love the itinerary ideas and checking out other peoples photos, and the added bonus, if my pictures are terrible (which is sometimes the case; I really should sign up for the digital photography session!), I can "borrow" some of theirs.

Had lots of fun playing around with flickr and came across this photo which I couldn't resist posting to my blog (couldn't seem to upload image from website but saved it to My Pictures and got it into my blog that way). Known sometimes as a bit of a "neat freak", I am sitting here itching to reorganize those shelves!

3rd Thingy

I have battled with the NVDPL staff blog and after much frustration, I finally succeeded. Although the help notes were excellent, I could not seem to link up to a file in Shared Notes. After three attempts (and a strong urge to beat my head against the screen), I did it! Next day, I headed into battle once again to try and post a link to a website. This time it only took me 5 mins. Maybe I can adapt to this HTML code after all.

Second Post

This sleepy fishing port becomes a hive of activity around 5pm when the fishing boats return with their "catch of the day". I loved the oysters - so tasty and so cheap! Just pan fry them in butter and lots of garlic. Absolutely delicious!

I really hope this second post works. I've had all kinds of error messages flash on my screen. Thanks to Lisa M and Christy who helped me upload the photo by telling me to delete any spaces in the file name. If this works, I'll try tinkering with the blog layout.

My First Post

The hardest part was sitting down at the computer trying to feel creative! I'm used to jotting down ideas and thoughts in a diary, so this is a whole new experience expressing myself in a text box. I do hope this post works. What a confidence boost this will be as I go on to tackle more of the "23 Things".