I am now a Pandora addict. I pay for XM radio and this is better. I've created a Steeleye Span channel with the greatest classic British folk rock, a Dr. John channel for the blues, Mandy Patinkin, John Pizzarelli, Johnny Mercer, Mel Torme , Ella Fitzgerald and other stations for American high standards, a Broadway station featuring Barbara Cook and Audra McDonald among others, a Antonio Carlos Jobim station for Brazilian influenced jazz and a Phil Ochs station I'm teaching not to play me Dylan! Right now, I'm listening to the great George Shearing playing with John Pizzarelli singing a Harry Warren tune. oops, now it is Stan Getz & Joao Gilberto playing a samba, hey shouldn't that be on the Jobim station and not the Pizzarelli station? Is Pandora cross pollinating my channels?
I noticed esnips on the Web 2.0 awards list. I used that several years ago and just forgot about it. It saves material from the web and not just the address like del.icio.us. Sites that disappear are less of a problem with esnips. I think I need to try it again and see if it is easier to use this time.
I'm having fun with Picnik, too. That photo editing tool that converts photos into what looks like a pencil sketch is something I could really use for creating cards and other items. Some of the other editing choices are fairly silly.
Etsy is a site I visit often. I think if I plan ahead for once, several Christmas presents will be bought here. I'm not crafty but I've recommended it to friends that are crafters.
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
Thing #18
Almost two years ago, frustrated that I couldn't read a Word document at home (I have WordPerfect on my home computer and don't get me started on why it is superior to Word), I discovered Google docs. Problem solved. I also use Google docs as a backup to critical documents that I can access anywhere. I find that much more useful that saving to the OCL server.
I didn't do much document sharing until this web challenge. I can't image how the committee could have functioned without Google docs. We do all the participation tracking on a Google docs spreadsheet. HR gave us a spreadsheet with all the OCL employee names that we imported to Google docs, then columns for all the Things were added. Now as we track the blog posts, (through Google Reader) , the committee members initial things that have been done by each player in the spreadsheet. I'm in awe of how much work some committee members have put into tracking especially when so many posts aren't labeled as to what thing they're for. Sometimes this is hard to figure out. (Is that a scanned image for thing 7 or a Flickr picture for thing 5 or a digital picture the player took for thing 6? AAARRGH!)
I'm looking forward to trying Zoho but I'm not in any hurry. Google apps have everything I need right now but I can see some projects coming where I'm going to check Zoho for useful apps. Zoho meeting sounds great.
I didn't do much document sharing until this web challenge. I can't image how the committee could have functioned without Google docs. We do all the participation tracking on a Google docs spreadsheet. HR gave us a spreadsheet with all the OCL employee names that we imported to Google docs, then columns for all the Things were added. Now as we track the blog posts, (through Google Reader) , the committee members initial things that have been done by each player in the spreadsheet. I'm in awe of how much work some committee members have put into tracking especially when so many posts aren't labeled as to what thing they're for. Sometimes this is hard to figure out. (Is that a scanned image for thing 7 or a Flickr picture for thing 5 or a digital picture the player took for thing 6? AAARRGH!)
I'm looking forward to trying Zoho but I'm not in any hurry. Google apps have everything I need right now but I can see some projects coming where I'm going to check Zoho for useful apps. Zoho meeting sounds great.
Sunday, May 11, 2008
Thing #17
Jill set up the pbwiki for oclwebthings for Thing #17 and then I played with it to make it work with the discovery exercise that Sally and I edited. Every couple of days, I revisit the sandbox and marvel at what is happening. I thought people would play a bit with the fonts and colors but its been an explosion of colors and interactivity with one person commenting on a favorite food or book and other people responding. I'm leaving the creativity alone but if you do post your "favorite place to be" under "favorite candy", I'm moving it to the right heading. That is how wikis work.
I wish more people posted their favorite computer tips but I have plans for our own OCL Reference best practices wiki so there will be plenty of chances later. For one of my favorite shortcut hints, check out tinyurl.com. You'll never have to struggle to write down a very long web address for a customer again or even worst try to do it over the phone (tilde, what? its that squiggly thing to the left of the number one, you have to hold down the shift key, help!).
What is really fun is that later in Thing #18, everyone just had to add their name to the shared document in Google docs. There was no requirement to do it in color or play with the fonts but almost everyone did that anyway. Has the web challenge released a dormant font playing instinct? If you really want to play with fonts, try www.dafont.com for some amazing ones.
I wish more people posted their favorite computer tips but I have plans for our own OCL Reference best practices wiki so there will be plenty of chances later. For one of my favorite shortcut hints, check out tinyurl.com. You'll never have to struggle to write down a very long web address for a customer again or even worst try to do it over the phone (tilde, what? its that squiggly thing to the left of the number one, you have to hold down the shift key, help!).
What is really fun is that later in Thing #18, everyone just had to add their name to the shared document in Google docs. There was no requirement to do it in color or play with the fonts but almost everyone did that anyway. Has the web challenge released a dormant font playing instinct? If you really want to play with fonts, try www.dafont.com for some amazing ones.
Thing #16
I feel a certain amount of ownership about Thing #16 and #17 because I worked on the editing of both things with another member of the OCL Web Challenge committee. It was a great learning experience to edit and update the great material from the original version of the wiki things from Helene Blowers's 23 things at PCLMC. We replaced the original podcast with the great Youtube video from Common Craft. I learned how to embed that video for Thing #16. I was amazingly proud of myself for figuring that out on my own.
I started the Wikipedia article about OCL with the history article from an 1992 community profile, updated from the 2002 community profile. After convincing Wikipedia that I wasn't plagerizing and OCL gave permission to copy the history section from the OCL website, I started to work on the rest. It was surprising to me how quickly strangers stepped in to fix things, to "wikify" correctly as I learned to follow Wikipedia style. Strangers also added the great pictures of the interior of TR branch. There was a little vandalism but that was quickly fixed.
I have to admit, I was taken aback by one person's comment in a blog that the article was badly written but I choose to believe they meant the old stuff I didn't write! Thank you to the person who thought the article was well written. Now if I can only get some paragraphs written by the Diversity Committee, and a paragraph about Teen Services done by the Teen librarians. I've been asking!
I can't use Wikipedia anymore without checking the history and discussion tabs. They provide important clues about the quality of the article. If the article isn't getting attention from editors or if the discussion is very heated, you need to consider the article even more carefully than usual.
Anybody want to help with the Wikipedia article I'm writing about John Bailey Lloyd? It is still in my sandbox so unless someless beats me to it, you won't find it yet on Wikipedia. I think he deserves an article, don't you?
I started the Wikipedia article about OCL with the history article from an 1992 community profile, updated from the 2002 community profile. After convincing Wikipedia that I wasn't plagerizing and OCL gave permission to copy the history section from the OCL website, I started to work on the rest. It was surprising to me how quickly strangers stepped in to fix things, to "wikify" correctly as I learned to follow Wikipedia style. Strangers also added the great pictures of the interior of TR branch. There was a little vandalism but that was quickly fixed.
I have to admit, I was taken aback by one person's comment in a blog that the article was badly written but I choose to believe they meant the old stuff I didn't write! Thank you to the person who thought the article was well written. Now if I can only get some paragraphs written by the Diversity Committee, and a paragraph about Teen Services done by the Teen librarians. I've been asking!
I can't use Wikipedia anymore without checking the history and discussion tabs. They provide important clues about the quality of the article. If the article isn't getting attention from editors or if the discussion is very heated, you need to consider the article even more carefully than usual.
Anybody want to help with the Wikipedia article I'm writing about John Bailey Lloyd? It is still in my sandbox so unless someless beats me to it, you won't find it yet on Wikipedia. I think he deserves an article, don't you?
Saturday, May 10, 2008
Thing #15
I've been reading about Library 2.0 and Learning 2.0 for nearly two years or more. I'm finding it impossible to distill even a fraction of the discussion down either internally or in a blog post. Both my initial support of bringing Learning 2.0 and the 23 things to OCL and the great satisfaction I'm enjoying as the first OCL 23 things project draws to the end, reinforce my stong opinion that Library 2.0 offers a great deal for the conceptual planning of the future of public libraries.
I followed each of the suggestion links for further reading about Library 2.0 in Thing #15 and made many del.icio.us tags after reading. One point that seems to come from one of my own unexpressed thoughts was about user education in Away from Icebergs. "We need to focus our efforts not on teaching research skills but on eliminating the barriers that exist between patrons and the information they need, so they can spend as little time as possible wrestling with lousy search interfaces and as much time as possible actually reading and learning. Obviously, we’ll help and educate patrons when we can, and when they want us to, and the more we can integrate our services with local curricula, the better. But if our services can’t be used without training, then it’s the services that need to be fixed—not our patrons. "
For now, I'll keep it simple with Sarah Houghton's Library 2.0 definition quoted in 11 reasons why Library 2.0 exists and matters, it is "interactive, collaborative, and driven by community needs."
I followed each of the suggestion links for further reading about Library 2.0 in Thing #15 and made many del.icio.us tags after reading. One point that seems to come from one of my own unexpressed thoughts was about user education in Away from Icebergs. "We need to focus our efforts not on teaching research skills but on eliminating the barriers that exist between patrons and the information they need, so they can spend as little time as possible wrestling with lousy search interfaces and as much time as possible actually reading and learning. Obviously, we’ll help and educate patrons when we can, and when they want us to, and the more we can integrate our services with local curricula, the better. But if our services can’t be used without training, then it’s the services that need to be fixed—not our patrons. "
For now, I'll keep it simple with Sarah Houghton's Library 2.0 definition quoted in 11 reasons why Library 2.0 exists and matters, it is "interactive, collaborative, and driven by community needs."
Thing #14
I dutifully searched "Learning 2.0" in Technorati and found a post from Helene Blowers asking libraries that have done the 23 Things Challenge to share the number of participants and the completion rate. A library planning to do the 23 things this fall is wondering how many prizes to order. So I tagged the post in my del.icio.us account and added a tickler in my Outlook to email her with the OCL numbers after Staff Development Day. Then I added Ms. Blowers's blog to my Bloglines account. Technorati to del.icio.us to Bloglines....How's that for a Web 2.0 triple play?
Finding that post was a lovely bit of luck but when I started searching blogs for "Learning 2.0", I was by turns overwhelmed by the amount of content and underwhelmed by some of the writing. I was taught that good reading is hard writing and many of the blogs are full of easy writing. I probably will drop by boingboing.net now and then.
I'm not going to claim my blog. I've made it so Google can't search my blog already. I don't think my thoughts are well written enough to inflict them on a wide audience. Maybe with more practice...
Finding that post was a lovely bit of luck but when I started searching blogs for "Learning 2.0", I was by turns overwhelmed by the amount of content and underwhelmed by some of the writing. I was taught that good reading is hard writing and many of the blogs are full of easy writing. I probably will drop by boingboing.net now and then.
I'm not going to claim my blog. I've made it so Google can't search my blog already. I don't think my thoughts are well written enough to inflict them on a wide audience. Maybe with more practice...
Friday, May 9, 2008
Thing #13
I created a Del.icio.us account. It only has a few links so far while I have hundreds on links on my favorites even if you don't count the TR Information Department links. I was distracted a bit by Del.icio.us's web address. It is a domain hack which I used to think was a fun trick but now I tend to think of as annoying.
Anyway, I think that some users are always going to be more comfortable with the organizational structure of folders and others are going to be more comfortable with the visual cues presented by tag clouds. So I think I'll be using both for a long time.
I admit it is fun to see how many other people have tagged a particular webpage. I was surprised that some of the first few I tagged that I was the first to do so. Not many people interested in having a .pdf family tree of the Windsors updated to include Viscount Severn, I suppose.
Googling or any fulltext searching has its limitations and tags bring in the combined human (albeit inconsistent) element that addresses the overall subject of a page.
I'm glad to say that the Toms River Information favorites are being converted to a Del.icio.us account. It will be happily shared with the rest of the staff when it is a little farther along. It will be useful to see what other branches have in their links. I've already heard of several working on making their own branch del.icio.us accounts.
Anyway, I think that some users are always going to be more comfortable with the organizational structure of folders and others are going to be more comfortable with the visual cues presented by tag clouds. So I think I'll be using both for a long time.
I admit it is fun to see how many other people have tagged a particular webpage. I was surprised that some of the first few I tagged that I was the first to do so. Not many people interested in having a .pdf family tree of the Windsors updated to include Viscount Severn, I suppose.
Googling or any fulltext searching has its limitations and tags bring in the combined human (albeit inconsistent) element that addresses the overall subject of a page.
I'm glad to say that the Toms River Information favorites are being converted to a Del.icio.us account. It will be happily shared with the rest of the staff when it is a little farther along. It will be useful to see what other branches have in their links. I've already heard of several working on making their own branch del.icio.us accounts.
Tuesday, May 6, 2008
Thing #12
NetLibrary
I have a love/hate relationship with NetLibrary. I like it better than I used to since it easier to navigate now but I wish our subscription (State paid for) included downloadable audiobooks and more titles we picked out. There is only a tiny bit of money spent on new titles every year and I'd like to get many more.
I do find it useful for those very specific business titles that probably won't circulate much but are just the thing for a particular customer. I really like some of the older out of copyright titles that I used to read mostly on Project Gutenberg's site. I don't know if anyone else in OCL is a big Gene Stratton-Porter fan but if you want to go beyond Freckles and Girl of the Limberlost, NetLibrary has many titles.
I wrote the optional advanced exercises that deal with Project Gutenberg and Bartleby.com. They are two sites I use at work and for my own enjoyment. I really like that Project Gutenberg takes such care in converting the texts with so many checks and doublechecks for accuracy. I also like that the texts are in plain text ASCII so they are compatible with just about everything. That's planning for legacy formats! I'd like to volunteer for Project Gutenberg some day as one of their proofreaders. What they are doing is such important support for scholarship.
WorldCat
I like to play on WorldCat. I use it all the time when I'm working on the reference desk but sometimes it is just fun to see who owns a book. I'm writing a recommendation now about keeping our collection linked on WorldCat. That costs money but except for that, I don't see a downside. As a full participant in WorldCat, our collection is Google-able and that is going to bring us users we not reaching the old ways. A clearer explanation of the advantages of our participation in WorldCat than I'm giving can be found here on the OCLC website.
Have you found the links for FirstSearch within WorldCat and the extra information FirstSearch gives including the link directly to that title's record in our IPAC?
I have a love/hate relationship with NetLibrary. I like it better than I used to since it easier to navigate now but I wish our subscription (State paid for) included downloadable audiobooks and more titles we picked out. There is only a tiny bit of money spent on new titles every year and I'd like to get many more.
I do find it useful for those very specific business titles that probably won't circulate much but are just the thing for a particular customer. I really like some of the older out of copyright titles that I used to read mostly on Project Gutenberg's site. I don't know if anyone else in OCL is a big Gene Stratton-Porter fan but if you want to go beyond Freckles and Girl of the Limberlost, NetLibrary has many titles.
I wrote the optional advanced exercises that deal with Project Gutenberg and Bartleby.com. They are two sites I use at work and for my own enjoyment. I really like that Project Gutenberg takes such care in converting the texts with so many checks and doublechecks for accuracy. I also like that the texts are in plain text ASCII so they are compatible with just about everything. That's planning for legacy formats! I'd like to volunteer for Project Gutenberg some day as one of their proofreaders. What they are doing is such important support for scholarship.
WorldCat
I like to play on WorldCat. I use it all the time when I'm working on the reference desk but sometimes it is just fun to see who owns a book. I'm writing a recommendation now about keeping our collection linked on WorldCat. That costs money but except for that, I don't see a downside. As a full participant in WorldCat, our collection is Google-able and that is going to bring us users we not reaching the old ways. A clearer explanation of the advantages of our participation in WorldCat than I'm giving can be found here on the OCLC website.
Have you found the links for FirstSearch within WorldCat and the extra information FirstSearch gives including the link directly to that title's record in our IPAC?
Saturday, May 3, 2008
Thing #11
I was one of the co-editor/revisers of Thing #11 for the Web Challenge as a member of the committee. I am also a big Librarything fan with a paid membership and own one of the hand held barcode scanners they sell to make adding books easier. The scanner looks like a female lion, a cat scanner, get it? well, don't blame me, it wasn't my joke.
I like to add books that I mean to read and tag them "read later." I also tag books "gift ideas."
What I really use librarything for most often is for Tagmashing. I've found book titles for my collection of literary and popular culture cookbooks (Little House on the Prairie Cookbook, Are you Hungry Tonight, an Elvis Presley cookbook, the Nero Wolfe Cookbook, several different Jane Austen cookbooks, Mary Poppins cookbook, Red Wall cookbook and a truly awful Shrek cookbook are some of my collection).
I've found books over and over again for customers who remembered things about books that Library of Congress subject headings just don't cover. The tags Librarything users create are messy, unorganized, use inconsistent tenses and plurals but somehow with so many tags, you have a really good chance of finding books with the smallest hints from customers. "Mystery, New Jersey" is a tagmash that helped me out just the other day.
Here is the link to my first account on Librarything. I forgot the password and had to start over when I bought a paid membership. It has 19 books.
I like to add books that I mean to read and tag them "read later." I also tag books "gift ideas."
What I really use librarything for most often is for Tagmashing. I've found book titles for my collection of literary and popular culture cookbooks (Little House on the Prairie Cookbook, Are you Hungry Tonight, an Elvis Presley cookbook, the Nero Wolfe Cookbook, several different Jane Austen cookbooks, Mary Poppins cookbook, Red Wall cookbook and a truly awful Shrek cookbook are some of my collection).
I've found books over and over again for customers who remembered things about books that Library of Congress subject headings just don't cover. The tags Librarything users create are messy, unorganized, use inconsistent tenses and plurals but somehow with so many tags, you have a really good chance of finding books with the smallest hints from customers. "Mystery, New Jersey" is a tagmash that helped me out just the other day.
Here is the link to my first account on Librarything. I forgot the password and had to start over when I bought a paid membership. It has 19 books.
Thing #10
Technology Blogging
I love new gadgets and playing with technology but I also enjoy stepping back and looking at the unintended impacts caused by changing technologies.
On issue that fascinates me is the issue of legacy formats in digital preservation. Have you tried to open any file you saved on a disc 5 years or more ago on a different computer than you have now and created with a different version of the software you have or created with different software all together? Not easy, is it? Did you even get it open? That is a legacy format problem.
This is a basic article explaining the problem from the BBC: Warning of Data Ticking Time Bomb
This problem has affected me. I have some great stuff locked on discs created with an old version of Microsoft Works that I still hope some day to get out. Now that is not as important as NASA and other government agencies not being able to read data on old paper tapes or those large computer tape decks but think about what it means for all digital information.
There is some great work being done with software than emulates (or pretends) to be the old software and hardware so the data can be unlocked and migrated to a new format. Still with every format change the chance that material will be lost is very real. There is a lot of information stored on CD-ROMs that might never get converted just like there are movies on VHS, that haven't made it to DVD and might not get to Blu-Ray. For more than almost anyone wants to know about the legacy conversion problems with government information on CD-Roms, try :Government Information in Legacy Formats: Scaling a Pilot Project to Enable Long-Term Access.
Here at OCL, we have started an archive project on our own history. It is very early days yet. The old paperscrapbooks are getting into proper archival boxes, etc. We're going to have to deal with the digital legacy formats of our history sooner or later. We have some slides but even if the slide projector still worked, how useful is that? We going to have to get a slide scanner attachment and hope .jpeg files will be useful for a very long time.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
I've often thought that if books were a new technology they'd get more respect as a format.
Complete forward and reverse compatibility: you can read books published hundreds of years ago. No worries about incompatible file formats for a specific reading device.
Ease of reproduction.
Low cost.
No batteries required or wireless Internet access.
You can write your own marginalia.
Lending them and not getting them back is less painful than losing a Kindle. (doesn't mean I don't want a Kindle, I do, I do, I do!)
Used book stores.
A book with an inscription can be a treasure for a very long time. I have books my grandmother inscribed to my mother when Mom was 10.
They can prop up an uneven table.
You can cut out the center and hide things inside. (I did this to the extra copy of Black Beauty my great aunt gave me when I was 9. I even lined the hole with white felt.)
Altered books make great art including a candy dish.
I love new gadgets and playing with technology but I also enjoy stepping back and looking at the unintended impacts caused by changing technologies.
On issue that fascinates me is the issue of legacy formats in digital preservation. Have you tried to open any file you saved on a disc 5 years or more ago on a different computer than you have now and created with a different version of the software you have or created with different software all together? Not easy, is it? Did you even get it open? That is a legacy format problem.
This is a basic article explaining the problem from the BBC: Warning of Data Ticking Time Bomb
This problem has affected me. I have some great stuff locked on discs created with an old version of Microsoft Works that I still hope some day to get out. Now that is not as important as NASA and other government agencies not being able to read data on old paper tapes or those large computer tape decks but think about what it means for all digital information.
There is some great work being done with software than emulates (or pretends) to be the old software and hardware so the data can be unlocked and migrated to a new format. Still with every format change the chance that material will be lost is very real. There is a lot of information stored on CD-ROMs that might never get converted just like there are movies on VHS, that haven't made it to DVD and might not get to Blu-Ray. For more than almost anyone wants to know about the legacy conversion problems with government information on CD-Roms, try :Government Information in Legacy Formats: Scaling a Pilot Project to Enable Long-Term Access.
Here at OCL, we have started an archive project on our own history. It is very early days yet. The old paperscrapbooks are getting into proper archival boxes, etc. We're going to have to deal with the digital legacy formats of our history sooner or later. We have some slides but even if the slide projector still worked, how useful is that? We going to have to get a slide scanner attachment and hope .jpeg files will be useful for a very long time.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
I've often thought that if books were a new technology they'd get more respect as a format.
Complete forward and reverse compatibility: you can read books published hundreds of years ago. No worries about incompatible file formats for a specific reading device.
Ease of reproduction.
Low cost.
No batteries required or wireless Internet access.
You can write your own marginalia.
Lending them and not getting them back is less painful than losing a Kindle. (doesn't mean I don't want a Kindle, I do, I do, I do!)
Used book stores.
A book with an inscription can be a treasure for a very long time. I have books my grandmother inscribed to my mother when Mom was 10.
They can prop up an uneven table.
You can cut out the center and hide things inside. (I did this to the extra copy of Black Beauty my great aunt gave me when I was 9. I even lined the hole with white felt.)
Altered books make great art including a candy dish.
Thing #9
As I wrote in my last post, I signed up for some of the feeds that Bloglines listed as popular and arranged in categories. I found Popgadget that way which so far is very interesting about personal technologies. I tried Topix and the Bloglines search function for several of my interests with little success. On the other hand, I happily subscribed to several RSS feeds from the NY Times and another site or two that I already visit (Hi, Unshelved!). So I might browse the feeds listed in Bloglines Top 1000 once in awhile but I think I'll subscribe to feeds that I find during my regular online time rather than searching them out. Or I'll just read the one's Jill has on her blogroll!
Thing #8 RSS
I like the idea of RSS feeds and I had a reader several years ago. RSS feeds sometimes remind me of the Netflix movies I have on my queue because they are movies I think I should watch and when they arrive they linger very long until I get around to watch them. I always find something interesting when I remember to check my Google Reader and I found a great post on Tom Lehrer in Google's blog of all places when I signed up for bloglines, but fitting checking an RSS Reader into my regular online habits isn't happening. I did like the suggested blogs offered by topic in Bloglines so I'm not giving up.
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