#23 Reflection

I am pleased that as of August 12 I've come to the end of "North Texas 23: A roundup of Web 2.0 technology" I wasn't sure I would finish. I started, took a long gap, then bounced around out of order (not a thing I like to do) finishing the various Things.

I have been reading over my blog posts to refresh my memory. My favorite (ala the Sound of Music) Things were raindrops on roses...Oops. I mean my favorite 23Things included Library Thing and Image Generators (for personal use). For potential Library use and promotion, Podcasts (even though the quality was horrible in many) and YouTube (again, quality was sketchy) but still a huge potential there. The things I really didn't like (bordering on hatred) were Twitter and Instant Messaging. Flickr mashups caused the most teeth grinding. I'm not sure what I was doing wrong but I had trouble with this.

Overall, learning the lingo for the 23 Things was the most helpful. I had heard of many of the 23 Things just in passing (and used a few prior to starting) But several were a mystery. Now I at least have a germ of an idea of what they actually mean and their purpose and I am pleased with that aspect.

Thanks to the NT 23 Thing leadership team who put this together. It was a superb idea and I appreciate the time, thought and effort that was expended on expanding our collective knowledge.

#22 Developing your own 23 Things for your Library

I believe a handful of people from my Library participated (or at least started) the Library 23 Things. However, we didn't really discuss it. I am not sure how many people completed all the Things. I do know our "techie" guru at the Library did complete the program.

I know I finally had to start skipping around due to my reluctance to join Facebook. I went to all of the other Things and finally did Thing 8, 9, 10 and 11 just in the last three days. And I will complete all 23 Things today. Just one more to go!!

I felt constrained having to do it all at home because my Library locks down a majority of the tasks in the 23 Things list. It was difficult to find time to devote to it.

I absolutely agree that it is important to learn new technologies in order to understand what our patrons are using and what is important in their online world. Perhaps our Library staff as a group could pick a handful of the most important (as decided as a group) 23 Things and work on learning those more in-depth.

#11 Instant Messaging

I do not do instant messaging. I do not know anyone who does instant messaging. I don't have the contact to even send anyone an instant message. I did follow the link to my browser-based yahoo messenger, logged in and then realized who would I IM? And, after reading a co-workers blog about IM I am really wary of using it due to virus concerns.

My Library does not allow any form of IM by staffers or from our public access Internet computers.

I did find the list of IM abbreviations extremely amusing and interesting.

http://www.webopedia.com/quick_ref/textmessageabbreviations.asp

I think if I were instant messaging I would have to be constantly consulting a list like this just to see what they could possibly mean. Instead of saving time I would have to consult the IM to English Dictionary (kind of like a Spanish-English Dictionary) to even start to get a handle on this new language.

I despair for all those English teachers out there. Do kids even know how to spell anymore after living in the world of IM so long? How lazy can you get?

Merry Christmas is even reduced to MC. Well, it is imaginative. But disheartening at the same time. I do see these same IM abbreviations in a lot of blogs and in email so the webopedia.com site will actually help me translate these and will be of use in the future.

#10 Ning

Did I just watch 12 minutes of video of yorkshire terriers "sweeping" a floor and various other small dog antics on the "I Love My Yorkie" social network on Ning?? Yes. I. Did. Why? It's a mystery. But totally worth my time.

Some of my other various searches of a less frivolous nature seemed to only yield advertisement-type results of people wanting to sell me things -- houses, etc.

I did find a puzzle swap network that might help me give away some jigsaw puzzles I want to donate -- except that I don't want any in return! I didn't want to trash them so now I have hopefully found a group of people who have a real interest in them. So, that has been helpful. I wouldn't have thought to try something like ning to locate a source to donate these puzzles.

I stumbled upon a review while viewing the ALA ning-related site. I somehow missed this title in Booklist: Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America by Barbara Ehrenreich. Well, I'm intrigued.

#9 More Facebook

I have spent way too much time searching for names from high school etc. who I may or may not remember.

As an aside, I am surprised that so many ads appear on the side of the page. It is distracting. But I digress which is easy to do on Facebook.

I joined some groups including Save Ohio Libraries (why not? every library needs saving) It is forward thinking on the SOL part to be getting the message out through so many media outlets including the all important social networking sites. I also joined TLA and Breast Cancer Awareness Month.

I became a fan of several Facebook pages. What is the difference between joining groups and becoming a fan of something on Facebook? I still don't really know.

I'm curious about the stories of HR professionals who search for applicants Facebook pages, see "incriminating photos" or tasteless posts etc. and thus doom the applicants' chances of ever getting hired. How does this happen? From my very limited understanding, the hiring professional would need to get permission (by the applicant "accepting" them as a friend) before they could even view the profile. So, how do they even see it?

Photos are so vital to Facebook and I am NOT a "take my picture" kind of person so Facebook visuals do not hold that kind of appeal for me. I generally put dots over my face in all photos (When I am not gently ripping the camera out of the hands of the photographer, of course). So, the Facebook obsession with photos just makes it that much more unappealing.

And the potential rejection factor is high. If you ask to be someone's friend and never hear back? Why would anyone find that fun?

Finally, where do the "suggestions for friends" come from? They are suggestions of people I have never heard of in my life.

I do think libraries should have a Facebook page, however. Just to be in the arena, get in the game etc. If that is where people are -- libraries should be there too.

#8 Facebook

This is the one that I have delayed, put off, procrastinated over. Wait while I go get a thesaurus to add more adjectives. I just did not want to do this.

I did create a facebook account. I am very ambivalent about this. I skipped over it originally and went on to other things for a reason. I don't think I understand how to make your profile more private. And how do you restrict who can, or cannot see items on your facebook account? I did go in and make sure my birthday was not public knowledge. I mean, identity theft is an epidemic these days. Does anyone think about that? My library's IT department does block facebook for employees. And no arguments or gentle persuasion will change their minds on this. And that actually doesn't matter because I am doing all of the 23 Things from my home computer.

I do think a facebook page for my Library would be a grand idea. Of course, we couldn't ever see what was on it due to the aforementioned blocking for employees. It is not blocked on our patron computers.

#7 RSS Feeds

Well this was easy since I already had my google reader set up. I added unshelved for my daily dose of levity. I already had a Star-Telegram RSS feed and a few others set up. Hopefully, this will save time. As the little Common Craft video advises: watch out, they can be addictive. I mean you can't add everything. When will I find time to sleep? I also liked the analogy of Netflix vs. the video store. With Netflix the video store comes to you. Same thing with the RSS feeds. Netflix way wins every time.

#5 Image Generators

Here is my first image generator attempt. And it works. This is going MUCH more smoothly than the Flickr mashups did and I am relieved. I had several options of how to post this. I'm not sure sometimes which option to pick. For instance, in image chef, after creating the image I clicked on the orange blogger icon and it asked for my blogger user name and password. I didn't feel comfortable with that (and it didn't seem like it would save time) so I just tried another cut and paste of the coding which worked the first time this go 'round.


Another try

#4 Flickr mashups

Here is my, oh, what seems like 50th try with this. It should be so simple. I tried the spell with Flickr. I dutifully put my word in and voila it came out fine on the page. However, when I copied and pasted the code into this ye olde blog I kept getting error messages that the html coding was off somehow. I tried much shorter spellings, ending up with only my initials but to no avail. I finally tried one more time and finally it went through without any html error messages. Still have no idea why it would not work when I cut and paste it the other numerous times. I absolutely was copying and pasting the code correctly from the box 'o code on the Flickr spell page. Why the 10th time worked and none of the others -- who knows? I did not enjoy this thing at all.

I tried some of the other mashup sites but could not figure out how to import the images. I really could have used some guidance on this. I am doing this from my home computer so it is not a case of a work computer blocking anything. I just can't get the others to work.

#21 Podcasts

I listened to several podcasts. I think this is a great idea. I found the Medline plus podcasts very informative and just the right length. Some of the podcasts were puzzling. I can't figure out why some were on the websites. They didn't seem of interest to most. One was an almost 30 minute commentary from a person who was leaving the community taped at a farewell party. It was not library related at all and seemed an odd choice to be featured on that library website.

I noticed a significant number were podcasts that simply read children's books. The quality was sketchy on the three different library websites I listened to. I wonder if they track how many people listen. I'm not sure young kids would be able to listen that long with nothing but a picture of the front of the book to view.

I think this is a idea worth pursuing. But like many things at my Library, I just don't know how much we can do to the web page. It is very tied to the city's web page and we have have almost 0 flexibility and control over it. It does seem to be of of the simpler items we could incorporate and I will try to find out more.

#20 YouTube

I have previously watched hundreds of things on YouTube. I can see it as a useful tool for libraries. I didn't know that user submissions had to be 10 minutes or less. So, I learned something new!

I watched several bookcart drill team entries. The video was fairly terrible on all. One (an Austin Library group) did use my new favorite song -- "I want to be a librarian". When I went to the song's official video it was well worth the viewing. I cannot recommend it highly enough. It is by "Haunted Love"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ne_WXP7lUWM

I noticed that several library-related YouTube videos have very low hits and 0 comments in many cases. Maybe it was just the ones I tried. But it does make me wonder how successful this is if few are viewing what you are putting out there in YouTube Libraryland.

I also enjoyed an open access occupational film about the library profession shot in 1947. The purpose, sayeth the film, is bringing people and books together. Today, I suppose it is bringing people and computers together.

I also don't know how people actually post something on YouTube. Is is fairly simple to do?

#6 Blog Readers

Well, I pretty much enjoy all things google so I'm sure this will prove to be helpful as well. I can see the advantage of all the sites in one place. This will personally save some time. Or waste it as I am constantly distracted by new things to the sites I have subscribed to from this time forward. I can't see this as much of a boon to my library but I will probably find it useful in my spare time.

#19 Google docs

I can see the advantages of google docs. I have never used it before. The ability to upload, edit from anywhere, store files securely and share changes in real time would be helpful. However, I never really work collaboratively on any documents. If this was an activity I engage in frequently I would find google docs helpful. It is certainly very easy to use. It is clear, clean and uncluttered.

I'm not sure of the advantages of using google docs to publish a web page. I do see how group presentations would be facilitated by utilizing google docs. Like everything else, the google bloggers really show how to increase the value of this free service.

#18 Wikis

I created my wiki but I did have a few problems. I didn't realize that the sub-page titles could not be identical to any others that had been named. So when I tried "interests" it just kept taking me back to the home page instead allowing me to enter text. Once I changed it to reading interests it finally accepted the new page. However, the hierarchy didn't seem to work. I added 3 subpages but they don't all display correctly. It only shows two. If you click reading interests then you see all three. So I am not sure what went wrong with my posting.

Some of the Wikipedia entries are much better than others. I do use Wikipedia, of course, but I don't know how much I would trust it as a sole source.

#17 Libworm

I loved this Library-oriented RSS feed search engine. When I searched for my Library, alas, I came up with nada, nothing, bupkis, zilch. That is really too bad.

I searched for several other items and found many interesting stories, comments, blogs etc. I searched for Netflix and libraries and came up with some helpful and thought-provoking information. Some compared the "netflix model" and library model as well as articles about libraries who have used Netflix as their default DVD provider.

I also found a link to Libraryman writing about the upcoming closing of Seattle Public for a week. I thought libraryman's blog had a great idea about how to help people see the impact of the closing and reminding the public of the Library ROI for the community

#12 Twitter

I first heard about twitter a couple of years ago at a TLA conference in Dallas. I remember the speaker was covering several different 2.0 areas and mentioned twitter. His take on it was that he really didn't see the use in it. The last time I heard of twitter was reading about some celeb's latest 140 character mindless missive.

Of course since that long ago TLA conference Twitter has exploded in popularity. I just don't understand why. It is the perfect example of our self-centered naval-gazing population. I don't care if someone is enjoying a ham sandwich at 3 p.m. on a Tuesday. Truly, I do not care.

However, through the trending Twitter topics I did find out that Angela's Ashes author Frank McCourt died today. So, I got some very sad news through it. I enjoyed his books very much. I read Angela's Ashes when I was sick with the flu. It helped somehow. At least I wasn't in Limerick I thought at the time.

But back to Twitter. Although I think it is mostly ridiculous, I did subscribe to the Newsweek tweets which then linked to a short piece by Ben Bradlee remembering Walter Cronkite. I did enjoy that.

#15 Digg

How did I ever live without Digg? Oh yeah. Quite easily.
Sarcasm aside, this is an exceedingly fun way to waste significant amounts of time. Here I go viewing the current top entry "Zombie costume" as well as "Man sues dentist after he dropped tools down throat TWICE." Of course it is the "twice" that really makes the story. Who could resist reading the story after that compelling headline??

And this certainly beats CNN if you are looking for the offbeat. The comments on various articles seem to be readable and thoughtful at times which is refreshing.

I can't see any application at all for my Library. But I am glad to have been introduced to Digg and I will be returning to it frequently much to my annoyance. I had really hoped to get back to my book (remember books?) Disquiet, please! More Humor Writing from the New Yorker. But the book will just have to wait because I just spotted "Top 10 Anti-Microsoft Quotes" Here are two: Difference between a virus and windows? Viruses rarely fail and Computers are like air conditioners, they stop working when you open windows.

Oh Digg where have you been all my life?

#14 Delicious

This is so helpful. I set up a quick account and it is so easy to have a button to just tag it as the mood strikes when I find a helpful site. But the ability to access it from anywhere is fan.tast.ic.
http://delicious.com/drgooch

I really enjoyed the common craft video on social bookmarking. Simple and to the point.

The delicious FAQs were unusually clear, well written and helpful which isn't always the case with FAQs. I also love it when a site can throw in unexpected humor (why did they cancel Veronica Mars). Yes! to more humor whenever possible in all things.

However, this is, again, another contribution to information overload. Why? Let's say I have found 15 excellent sites on a topic. Unless I am working on a Ph.D I don't need 100 sites for every topic I can think of. So, I see someone else has 15 different sites from the sites I found on my interest or topic. And yet another person has 30 more on the topic. And I go to explore them. Where does it end? Laundry never gets done, car never gets an oil change. I'm just spending eternity looking at yet another website.

#13 Tagging

Some advantages I see to tagging: informal usage, real-world language, customization. Disadvantages are, of course, no controlled vocabulary and really inefficient and misleading searching. I never thought about "spam tag". I had never heard that term. Usually assigning more subject heading to books is a good thing. You broaden the chance the book will be found in your catalog system. I never considered that users would apply an excessive number (or unrelated tags) just to attract more people to an item or image. I mean I would never assign a "chocolate" subject to a book on turnips just because I think more people would look at it that way. It is completely misleading. That's part of the open source disadvantage of the web. Without some kind of authority control you end up with wasted time and frustration on the part of the searcher. Let's say you are talking about carving. Well, wood carving, or how to carve a turkey or...Words can have so many different meanings that tagging, again, seems to be rather haphazard.

#16 Library Thing

Well, I got bogged down with Flickr so I decided to go in a non-linear fashion and select a random 23 Thing (specifically Library Thing) to complete.

This was a good way to jump start my N. Texas 2.0 participation again. As I suspected other life events got in the way of the time I could devote to this.

I had always planned to check out Library Thing and am happy to at least get past browsing and actually sign up and begin adding my personal Library a little at a time. It is a wonderful idea and service and well executed. I've added a few titles from my Library. The cataloger in me would like to spend hours really dissecting every title and writing long, effusive reviews. The time-short part of me wants to add a few details and move on.

I love this site. Interesting to see others who have my books.

It is telling to read about tags since the first sentence describing their use says "Tags are a simple way to categorize books according to how you think of them, not how some library official does" (emphasis is mine). I think that points to a key access problem/image with libraries. Cataloging isn't perfect -- I mean who thinks of "cookery" instead of "cooking", but still... why is "some library official" akin to "clueless bureaucrat?" I mean libraries aren't a terrible model to consider when organizing books.

I found the site a little chaotic and cluttered. I was not sure where to look first. I think too many things engaged my attention. I look forward to exploring in more depth in the future.

I love the Librarians Who Library Thing -- especially the funny requests from patrons.

#3 Flickr

I keep wanting to add an "e" between the k and r in "Flickr." It just seems wrong without it....
I've viewed images on Flickr before (a multi-set series of photos on the visually arresting (but probably a headache for staff) Seattle Library which were very interesting. The humorous captions (especially regarding the posted "rules of conduct" add a lot. (Example: The Seattle Public Library truly does welcome you, but for your own protection it is recommended that you do not visit unless accompanied by your attorney) Beware, there are 94 images in the set.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/39367824@N00/1734017443/in/set-72157602678127800

I didn't realize how many (billions??? Just like McDonald's burgers served) of images are represented.

If you love adorable little dogs (I know I do!) try this image.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/kgboxer/2705051039/

I assume that provides a link. How do I know if I am embedding it correctly so that you can link directly and not have to cut and paste into your web browser?

If I had a digital camera, I would try to upload images. But alas, I don't at this point.

#2 Library 2.0

Being a huge Dr. Seuss fan, I think about The Cat in the Hat and the two madcap creatures, Thing One and Thing Two, every time I hear about North Texas 23.
I admit I'm a little like the fish in that story trying to tell the kids "No! No! Those Things should not be in this house! Make them go!"
One of the Library 2.0 videos by Stephen Abram mentions making the Library relevant to what users want and need in daily lives. The patrons in my Library simply want to use a computer to FIND A JOB these days. All these Library 2.0 bells and whistles are fine but I wish librarians wouldn't rush toward the newest shiny thing in a futile attempt to be "cool"
We risk alienating our current Library supporters.

#1 First 23 Things

I got in just under the June 1 deadline. Procrastination is a terrible, terrible vice. I will definitely try to do something about it ... tomorrow.

I'm looking forward to learning new things... but worried about the time constraints. I am doing this from home and not work -- my work computer is very "locked down"