The best things...

Personal use:
The best 2.0 tool I've got now is GoodReads. I have so little time to read but hope, as the kids get older to catch up so I love having a spot that I can quickly and easily add titles that I would surely forget between now and the rosy, future time full of reading. And that I can include who recommended them it fantastic. I have a terrible memory for names of anything so I really need this tool!

I tried MySpace and didn't like. Will try FaceBook later -- have been hearing good things but I still don't think it is my thing.

Micro-blogging just might work for me -- not so interested in displaying my life but like to share cool stuff. Will try to find time to try it for real.

Professional use:
GoogleDocs for collaboration.
Wikis for staff information.
GoodReads for RA.
Blogs, we use already :)
del.i.cious

Library-level use:
Meebo for reference.
Wikis for library website.
Blogs/RSS for website.
GoodReads for new books and staff recommendations.
Video posting for intro to the new libraries.

Tweeting on Twitter and Tumbling

Twitter
When Twitter first arrived, when...? last year sometime, I was pretty disgusted with the whole thing but that just shows how little imagination I have. When I recently found the Portland Police's twitter account, I was facinated! It is a mix of official-type annoucements and personal comments. I don't know how official the account is -- is it run by or sanctioned by the Bureau? Some of the comments that seem to coming from officers are a tad less professional than one might expect if it was an official vehicle of communication but maybe the Bureau is cooler than I think (maybe not). The number of follower is not huge but I was impressed considering it is a police force.

I haven't found that many libraries are using it and those that do seem to be academic (makes sence considering the demographic). I think we could maintain an account, meaning I think we would have enough to tweet about regularly but I don't think we'd have enough followers to justify the effort. In the future, if this microblogging thing sticks around and grows sufficiently, I think it would be a reasonable thing for the library to participate in.

Of course, Twitter would have to be more reliable than it is now -- today I have to reload the page at least once for every click I make. Is this normal? It was the same last year when I was checking it out but maybe that's just my luck.

Tumblr
Love the Tumblr Documentary!!

tumblr. - The Documentary from DaveAOK on Vimeo.

I could see myself using this until I watched the documentary, sigh. Geeks. But funny, those geeks.

Actually, if it can be embedded in the website, this might be a great thing for a library.

Genealogy is everywhere!

Who knew so many genealogists where into making videos? I found both good and not so good videos on genealogy on all of the video sites listed for Discover2.0. Sure, some of them are actually marketing schemes trying to lure in the little old ladies just trying to do their family histories but that's how we judge whether or not the site is creepy, right? You Are TV takes the creepy prize for the volume of marketing schemes masquerading as ligit genealogy videos, just in case you were wondering.

There are actually some really good genealogy videos out there including the series on the Allen County Library Genealogy Center, produced by the Allen County Library. These are videos that I would highly recommend viewing before heading there to do reserach. You get an intro to the collection and services as well as a chance to become familar with the layout of the library. It would save a visitor valuable time to know ahead of time what to expect and be somewhat familiar with the surroundings upon arrival and reduce the chance that some wonderful resource be missed.

I can see legitimate uses for the library beyond our current OneMinuteCritic (which is great). This would be a great tool for us to use as the new libraries open. One video an introduction to the new library and another on the building process for each new branch. Better start now!

Podcasts: Audio time suckers

I am sounding negative, I know, but it's me, not them. I can get sucked into audio but there is a time commitment for each podcast. I can't scan the thing, check the last sentence to decide if I want to spend that time (and how much anyway?) on it. I do listen to some podcasts semi-regularly but they are mostly radio shows that I have to miss when they are broadcast and that I know I will want to hear. I listen on my computer, over speakers, so it is like listening to the radio -- I don't like headphone and earbuds and I can get things done without being roped to the computer or feeling cut off from my surroundings by headphones.

I know my daughter would enjoy storytime-type podcasts -- she loves listening to kids books in audio -- but they would need to be high quality audio and the random casts from libraries that I listened to where low in the department. Maybe that's the thing that made me feel most where not worth my time, the low quality sound. I am used to listening to podcasts of professional radio shows (This American Life, Fresh Air, etc) and these had such a cheesy, made in the basement feel that I wasn't intereted. Hmm, maybe I am an audio-snob.

Now this is Cool Stuff

PG Wodehouse read out loud. Boomtown Rats streaming. Must remember to get to the desk. :)

I did judge the streaming music sites by their "cover", I'll admit it. I used to use Pandora, years ago when they first appeared and so I don't have a great opinion of them -- I'm sure they've changed, just not willing to give them my time. I was initially turned off by the look-and-feel of IMEEM and then not impressed by my search results. My choice, at this point, is last.fm -- I'll give them a try for a while, see if they stand up to my high standards ;)

The Internet Archive is just getting better and more useful as it ages (don't most archives?). The speeches are particularly important for us librarians to remember.

I tried Mango Languages months ago when it was mentioned on Infodoodads and in Beta. I loved it but now it's Alpha (?) and they want money, quite a bit of it so I don't think I'll be using it.

The Absolute Sound Effects Archive is a great alternative to sound effects on CD, glad to see it and I think my kids will love it.

CDs aren't dead, yet...

I (heart) GoogleDocs

Now here's a Web2.0 app that is close to my heart! I have been using it for several months and it is so nice to be able to work on my documents where and whenever I want! I use it at home and at work at multiple desks from multiple computers and never have to worry about versions, saving, etc. I haven't used it much for collaberation but know other who use it regularly to defeat limitations of time and space with much success! I think this is a tool we could use in our department if we all make a good-faith effort -- say, in creating and maintaining support docs for the branches that will be doing patron instruction in the near future.

Cool stuff, not.

Wow. This Discover2.0 thing can really kick a girl when she is down. I'm already feeling like an old, fuddy-duddy (and only a fuddy-duddy would use that term, right) and then I look at the "cool stuff" and am bored, or worse, annoyed by all of it! I don't have the time or inclination to play games on the computer (I was a very young thing when Pong came out and haven't ever found a electronic game I liked) and I find Yahoo Answers so incredibly annoying it was all I could do to not yell at the screen "Get a life!" or something appropriately old-fogy-ish. Really, is that the place for meaning of life questions? Sandwiched between solicitations for porn? Ugh. Blek. I give up.

On the other hand GoodReads is turning out to be not only fun about actually helpful!
:)

Wiki, Wiki World

I hope I'm not disqualified because I maintain the Fugitive Facts wiki here at work. Clearly, I see the value of wikis in the library since I created one. The FFwiki is not as collaborative as I would like it to be but it began as a paper file so much of what we need was added at the beginning. It seems that most people give me the information to add or let me know when something needs to be added rather than doing it themselves (that's fine, it works).

I love St Joseph County's subject guides and am trying to not feel insecure because their's looks like a "real" wiki and the FFwiki doesn't. There are no rules for look and feel right? Ours does the job. Enough about my insecurities. I wonder if we did a public wiki if we (the librarians) would have the staying power to keep it going, we seem to be a project-with-an-end-type group. Alas, it seems we will not have the opportunity to try because we are doomed to wait (and wait and wait) for Sirsi's Rooms and then struggle to keep those up. Hmmm, sounding negative now. We've been waiting for rooms for years now and we could have had a wiki up and running easily by now. Ah, well.

We could certainly use something like OpenWorldCat's reviews, would help our Reader's Advisory as would GoodReads, see Allen County PL.

Technorati sucks...

Technorati, you are what the Internet was in its infancy -- the great time-sucker! Back in the day, before the graphical World Wide Web, I used a 14.4 bit modem to dial into my university's servers and spend hours lumbering through the Usenet world, amazed by who was there and what they were talking about (geek, sure, voyeristic, must have been). Then came the Web and Mosaic and I spent way too much time slowly surf the 'net. As the WWW has "matured" and search engines improved, the time spent actually surfing has been reduced dramatically (okay, maybe I also had other things to do with my time by then) so I was startled to find I had spent, well, way too much time surfing Technorati from blog to blog, headline to headline. It's a real killer -- even if you go to the business section, you still get the "rising" entertainment headlines at the bottom and who can resist "Burger King Saved Robert Downey, Jr's Life" (no wait! that was on in the business section! ack!).

I like it, a little too much. I can see using it to find blogs that might be useful to patrons -- to find books to add to my GoodReads account :) Now, I think I've spent more than enough time on this particular piece of our Web2.0 training...

The pressure to read

I'll admit it, I joined GoodReads a few months ago when I was it was mentioned by a writer I enjoy. I really joined just so I could be her "friend" and see what she reads. I entered a few things (her books, of course) and then promptly forgot about the whole thing. So, when I got to this point in Web2.0, I really looked around my GoodReads account and have been surprisingly pleased with what I found.

I have added friends (people I actually know) by surfing friend lists and have found a few interesting books on other's pages to add to my to-read shelf. Unfortunately, I don't have time to read more than a magazine article or scan the odd issue of the Willamette Week so my read shelves are a tad thin. I also have no memory for things like titles and authors which is really why this is such a useful site for me (and other like me, I know they are out there though maybe not librarians). I used to try to keep up a reading journal but I would misplace it or forget about it. And when I try to use it, it was in aphabetical order! I would end up flipping through it to find something I had added years before. This web version is at home, at work, always right where I left it and because I can put any given title on multiple subject "shelves" I should be able to find that book I can't remember the name of at the moment.

And I like that I can search the existing shelves of other GoodReaders, but (here comes the librarian in me) I have the same problem that I always have with tagging, what did the others choose for a tag? In scanning the "Top Shelves" I find: childrens, young-adult, children, youngadult, childrensbooks, ya, kids, picture-books, childrens-books, children-s-books, teen, children-s, and picturesbooks. This makes finding all the picture books or books for children or for teens cumbersome at least. If I search for young_adult, I get a lovely list but there is nothing to suggest that I also try young-adult, youngadult, ya and teen as well. Just my issue with social-tagging, it's useful but has its problems.

Now if my kids would just get a little older, I might find some time to read the titles on my to-read shelf!

del.icio.us.ly easy

We've been using del.icio.us as a group in IS for quite some time now and I use it personally. I have to admit that although I do occasionally tag things for the IS account, I rarely use it and only then if I remember that I tagged site earlier -- I don't look to see if anyone else has added something that might be useful to what I am doing at the moment. "Doing at the moment" ... maybe that's it. I can see using it with co-workers if we had a singular mission (if we were a bunch of teachers or forensic scientists or environmentalists) and we were tagging things work-related, but we have an entire universe of topics that may come across our desks and the thought that the few of us might have tagged just the site I need to answer a particular question just doesn't occur to me. Also, the randomness of the tags always leaves me feeling that I might just be missing the right one -- what did they call it and how was it spelled?

I have found some good sites by surfing other users' tagged sites but found even single users are inconsistant in their tagging. Using children and kids for seemingly the same types of sites does not group the sites for the future -- one needs to remember what one used as a tag last time to make it useful. Merged words and underscores further muddy the puddle. It makes me yearn for some standards, some rules, some list of agreed upon tags ... oh, there I go, thinking like a librarian.

I am bored (or boring?)

So, I haven't found anything to love so far. I am bored by MySpace but maybe that's because I am boring -- I don't care to surf other people's sites and don't know many people with accounts and really, would rather email or call them if I want to contact them. Does that make me boring? Old? Of a previous generation? Or just busy? Not sure, maybe all. I do think it or something like it has potential for library use. I don't buy the arguement that kids don't like to see things like libraries on "their" turf. As the users age (that is, grow up) and new users find us already there, this will become an increasingly moot point and the expection will be that we (and everyone/thing is there). I helped a grandma find her military grandson's page that other day, so yay for this project!

Meebo might catch my fancy if I had friends who used it but we all have gmail accounts and chat there. I can see the value of using it in the library and teaching patrons to use it.

I have discarded Bloglines entirely and have gone back to my Pageflakes ways. Use it everyday.

I think it is valuable to be familiar with 2.0 trends and to have time to try them out. I'd like to see this be an ongoing program with, maybe, one new site/program/trend every month so once everyone has gone through this initial ramp-up.

MySpace is all about me -- me, Me ME!

As my brother-in-law said after accepting me as a MySpace friend: "Welcome to the (slightly embarrassing) world of Myspace." It seems so "contemplating your navel" and "Here's my navel, look, look!" and then "Oh, yeah? Here's MY navel! And the navels of all my "friends" as well!

Okay, that's overboard. It does seem like a good way to keep in touch with lots of people. I found my husband's far-flung cousins all reading each other's blogs and replying as if they were all in conversation with each other. I surfed from one cousin to the next through their friends lists which was nice because they all use psuedonyms and I won't have found them otherwise. I know this is how my brother-in-law keeps up with his friends all over the country.

So, the library has lots to say to lots of people. People who might want to be able to "converse" in a way. And the library showing off its navel may be just the thing to get a younger demographic
interested. Or maybe just being in their vision might be helpful.

Some library sites that have nice applications:

• One library MySpace site I particularly like is Alameda County Library. They even have a way to search their catalog from MySpace! Cool!

• The Brooklyn Public Library RIF site has a nice display of book cover which appears to be connected to its Frazy account.

• Pawtucket is using the calender feature.

• ALA uses their Interests section well, with changing their interests regularly and embedding images and video.

• Florida's AskALibrarian service embedded their chat box.

Meebo Mistake

So, I carefully followed the instructions for adding a meebo chat box to my blog but, alas, they were the wrong instructions. Holly clearly asks us to make widgets whereas I made a full-on room. The room is fun, the room is cool, the room has uses but I do think the simple widget would be easier for library use since each new user opens a new chat box and cannot see or participate in the other chats going on at the same time. And the logged conversations would be quite a problem :)

Am trying the Firefox extention by meebo to see how easy it might be to use in "real-life."

Meebo, Youbo, Weboo?

Meebo is an interesting option for the library's website. I love the widget that can sit on the website inviting use and that patrons can grab it and put it on another site (although this might bring messages from people who don't know that they are "asking a librarian"). My limited experimentation with meebo at other libraries was not encouraging since I found them offline or just plain unresponsive -- if we do this, we must have a person there to answer immediately if only with a "I'll be with you in a moment" or have it set to offline any time we are away. Offline is discouraging, of course, but there is a way to leave a message -- how do does the patron get the answer? Got me.

I didn't see any library meebo windows with anything happening and I'm still not clear whether the chats would be available to anyone who was looking at the site from another computer at the same time. Privacy seems a big issue even is private chatting is possible.

Is there any way to have canned responses at the ready with Meebo? Hmmm. Cut down on typos.

I use Google chat in my everyday life since most people I would chat with have gmail and my account sits open all day. The fact that messages are converted to email if the other person is not signed in is a handy feature. I won't be switching to meebo unless friends do it first and I'm dragged along.

FVRL RSS

RSS would be another way to promote the library's programs, new books, closures, etc. Many libraries have director's blogs, librarian blogs. Sam's oneminutecritic is an example of a project that would benefit from RSS "advertising" -- a marketing tool! dIScover, librarian picks, new books, topics, tools... we could keep a blog going for quite sometime if several librarians worked together.

Bloglines v. Pageflakes

I played with Bloglines for a few days to give it a good try and I have to say I prefer Pageflakes. Bloglines's email-inbox feel is not what I need -- more pressure to get through what's there. I like that Pageflakes simply provides a window on the blogs that I choose and the headlines just move along with or without me -- no (78) entries that I need to act upon. So, I'll stick with Pageflakes for my news, blogs, weather, calculator, etc.

Spell with Flickr, part 2

Yup, too long.

Spell with Flickr

so the problem appears to be this: my kid's names are too long.

Librarian Trading Card

My creation
Originally uploaded by pdxamy

Hmmm, I can see my cousins going crazy with this tool and actually trading the cards at the family reunion. Do I tell them or not?

For your amusement, the Trading Card Maker is here.

Aerial Howth

Howth
Originally uploaded by sanna82

My sister and dad and I cycled through Ireland in 1995. We cycled from the airport to our B&B in Howth and it might have something to do with arriving at our destination after a day of travel, sleep-deprived and starving as we were, but when my sister and I ate fish and chips while watching the sunset from the Howth pier, we felt such serenity and comfort it was like coming home.

The next day we ran into Barry Lacey who took us for an hours-long hike through the countryside, telling us the history of the area and showing us the secret Wishing Chair in the rhodedendron forest. An amazing welcome to Ireland.

Click on the photo to go to the flickr page and you will see a box around the airport (upper left) and around Howth (the peninsula).

My toolbox is full

Habit 5 (see 7 1/2 Habit of Highly Successful Lifelong Learners) I've got down. Really, that's why I'm a librarian. I know where to look, who to ask or I can find out. I am a plannner and researcher, a collector of information and tools. Sometimes though, once I've got what I need, I keep going in the gathering and don't get onto the rest of the project. Or once I've gathered all that I need, I stop altogether since the fun part is over. Not sure which Habit that corresponds to -- maybe there should be 8 1/2 Habits. Put "Follow Through" somewhere in there. The reward at the end of our little project here will get me through this one.