Final Post

Well, I'm done with the 23 things. I can't say I learned a whole lot aside from growing comfortable with RSS feeds, which I had a pathological aversion to in the past.
The staff more or less split in my building in their reaction to the 23 things. It more or less came down to those who were already comfortable with technology, and thus were engaged, and those that weren't, who to this day haven't gotten much farther than getting their blog set up.
I have to say that the Blog exercise was a hit. Everybody was just thrilled about the blog thing, what they could do, and what others did with theirs. Interest in the 23 things tapered off after that, and became more of a chore than a fun learning exercise.
To this end I think those in power could have tried to sell the program better, and to get the staff more excited about it. There were many, and will continue to be many, who just aren't interested in technology, belong to an older generation, or are just not motivated, and this (argueably sizable,) portion of the staff will very skeptical of supposed benefits from these 23 things.
This is not to say that the 23 things were in vain. Nay! They were/are a noble effort, and one that I applaud. Progress is progress, right? Furthermore, I'm not sure how I would get said group interested in this sort of thing in the first place. But, the problem is there none the less.
I hope that this exercise has given the powers that be more interest in useing these tools in our workplace. I daresay we're slightly behind the curve as far as libraries go and Web 2.0. This was a step towards that goal, and I hope it is achieved one day.

Overdrive

This is an interesting little feature we have. It's interesting to see the format of their catalog is similar to ours, so naturally I assumed it was a subset of our catalog and one could find this downloadable content in our catalog.
But, one would be wrong. It's a shame. I wish our catalog could interface with more content that we offer, like the netlibrary, for instance. I do know we have a whole bunch of reference books that are available in the catalog, which is a step, but I wish that the catalog could be the one-stop-shop for "do we have access to this book/material/something that isn't an article."
But, it was interesting to see it again, (as I'd briefly explored it when it was first introduced,) and to see how the collection has grown.

Podcasts

I actually already subscribe to several podcasts, all from NPR. I've yet to find one that seemed worth listening to, as others just seemed to be a Web 2.0 equivalent of talk radio, which I'm not particularly interested in.
But, I did enjoy this Podcast Ally website, and will peruse some podcasts that caught my eye when I get home.
Also, I don't like Bloglines, and I don't use it anymore. I do enjoy the google reader, however, but I'm not sure that that will support podcasts. So, I'll use the program that came with my mp3 player on my home PC.

YouTube

I'm fairly familiar with YouTube, although I certainly don't use it every day or even every week. I did once watch a documentary from the BBC about that crazy Fred Phelps family and the Westborough Baptist Church completely on YouTube. I'll have to look for more documentaires sometime.
But, the video I'm going to share with you today is a favorite of mine, and was a bit of a cult-hit.
Shoes!

SEOmoz's Web 2.0 Awards and Online Productivity.

This week, (even though I'm a few weeks behind,) we learned about online productivity tools like GoogleDocs and various websites featured on this SEOmoz Web 2.0 Awards list. We were told to go to this Zoho writer thingie, but I wasn't a fan of it. I'm not sure why we were sent there when Google has a perfectly good application available. Perhaps it didn't work well on the network or something. But, then again, the Zoho thing crashed on me a couple times as well.
I suppose it will remain a mystery. Didn't learn anything new there, but it was interesting enough.
The second part of this week's activities did make me think a little! We were told to go to this Web 2.0 Awards website, but the site was down. Most people would have given up, but I thought that since this is such an active website, google surely has a copy backed up! So, I searched for it on google, and found the cached copy, which worked well enough. They had a whole list of all sorts of categories, but the only one that caught my eye was an online desktop. Not really knowing what that was, I figured I'd explore that. Turns out it's a fancy virtual desktop. The browser window opens up to a full screen and simulates the look and feel of a desktop. One can type things, do a spreadsheet, play games, message, and email all within this web application. I did try to browse within the browser, (getting a little complicated here,) but the filter kicked in and said it was an anonymizer. I disabled it for a little while, but it still didn't work well. Alas. It was in alpha, to it's defense.
But, another website I came across, not on the list I think, was this website called drop.io . One can upload documents, call into the server and leave mp3 messages, and all sorts of file storing/sharing/sending things, all without making an account! The best thing of all, however, is that one may fax something anywhere in the US for FREE!
So go check it out. drop.io

Wikis

So this week we learned about Wikis. I've often used Wikipedia as a starting point in researching something I know absolutely nothing about, but I've never really thought of them as a resource for anything else. I see now that I was wrong!
The website that I found most interesting was the best practices Wiki. It's interesting to see what these people like and recommend versus what my experience has been in the three systems I've worked in, at least to my knowledge. Right now I'm looking at the article regarding OPACs, which seem to interest me.
I suppose the event wikis are also of value, if only because it's probably easier to set them up with the wiki template than coding a brand new website each time, plus we have the added benefit of a familiar user interface.
Adding something to the PBCLS wiki wasn't particularly exciting. I added a link to my blog here, no big deal there.

Library 2.0

This 23 things concept has not been received well by many staff members. Some have given up entirely, some are woefully behind, and some are just plain lost. When I first heard that administration was starting this, I was rather excited. The staff could use the skills which are being taught in an effort to become a more "2.0" place. I wish more of them could read, and also understand, the concepts discussed in the articles presented this week. I've been attempting to justify why we should be learning these things by simply saying that the skills are useful unto themselves, while knowing myself that these skills are essential to a more "2.0" library experience.
But, change is slow, and I hope our system catches up someday.
As you might have guessed, I read those articles, and it is stuff like this that makes me excited about librarianship. I'm not particularly thrilled about learning about legacy librarianship skills, like recalling which particular book will answer a type of question, but more how to handle future scenarios like those discussed in these articles. How to provide service better, how to shape our metadata, how to anticipate future needs, how to focus the collection. These are all interesting and though provoking questions that I look forward to answering, (given the opportunity,) in my soon to be illustrious career.
One could go on and on about the Library 2.0 concept and what it means to them, but the specific idea that I particularly like is the idea of a collection that thrusts itself into the daily habits of the populace. I'm thinking small collections in retail situations, much like a Starbucks has an outpost in a Super-Target, why not have a small in-demand collection next door? Bring the library to the populace, instead of making them come to us, as one article discussed. I hope to see this concept in place sooner or later, I know some systems already have experimented with it.
Other than Library 2.0, this week we discussed Del.icio.us, which is a useful site if one bookmarks scads of pages. I don't. What might be useful is if the library system created one for staff, or even patron, usage, instead of maintaining a static html sytle list, (not even Xhtml, please!)
Also discussed was Technorati. I'd heard of it before, but was never particularly interested since I had thought one had to somehow "prove" oneself to a particular audience to gain Technorati status. I thought it was some sort of pseudo-club. Seems I'm wrong! I suppose it's good for people really into blogging. Again, I'm not.
Good week, if only for those articles. I wish all the articles on Web/Library 2.0 were as succinct.

Play Week

So this week we're playing with a few things, an image generator, Librarything, and Webfeat.
I tried an image generator, but I wasn't impressed. I'm not particularly creative, but I thought I'd try to Wharhol-ize an image. It didn't come out to great. But I was exposed to some, and I suppose that was the idea.
I do already use Librarything on my own. I love it! I even got a tee-shirt from their booth when I went to PLA in March. I'd like it here, but I'm not quite that open yet. Great service though. I did also see that they have this service whereby libraries can link their catalog to Librarythings and get the tags that Librarything users have added to books in their catalog. How neat! I'd suggest it, but I doubt anyone would listen.
In my internship I've used webfeat a few times. It's similar to a service I use for FSU to find articles across their databases. Quite neat.
And that's my post for the week.

RSS and Bloglines

I have to say I'm not really interested in RSS feeds. I never really understood the need for them, and felt it easier to go to various websites to get their content directly. My feeling is that I get more from going to the source so I can view the context the original content was in than by pulling the raw text from all these sources to see it in one place. I mean, who knows, perhaps there will be an article or some other content situated nearby that I might be interested that isn't in the feed itself.
Anyway! I made the bloglines account in an attempt to give them another chance, but I dont' really like it either. I listed a variety of feeds, but only half of them seem to be currently active. I ended up getting a few feeds from the New York Times as well as from the Palm Beach Post. In theory, this would be a good way to keep up with the news. Alas, whenever I click on my feed, in the right hand pane all the stories come up at once and are then considered read by Bloglines. I don't like that, and if I want to keep them, I have to click on each one individually to keep them new. Too much work!
So, I still don't like RSS. But, that's ok.

Blog post with Flickr

In the stacks
Originally uploaded by larsonj23things

So I've never done this Flickr thing before. I'm really not all that interested in taking pictures, to be quite honest. This seems like a nice picture. I'm taking mine with my phone, and Flickr has a neat feature whereby I can send to photos directly to my Flickr account by simply emailing it to this specific email address. Pretty neat!
I've wandered around the library and I've taken a few random photos. I did that because I read that Flickr requires one to have at least five public photos.

I'm not really sure how much this impacts libraries beyond publicity, but then again I'm not sure how much beyond publicity blogs themselves could do. It all ties back to that, it seems.

Anti Prom

Last night we had a program for the teenagers. It was supposed to be an Anti-Prom, although if someone had asked me to organize it I wouldn't have really known what to do. What is anti-prom food? I would have said the antithesis of prom would have been to just stay home. I'm too literal for things like that.
As it turns out, I didn't have to organize it, so it turned out well. We played guitar hero, DDR, watched "10 Things I Hate About You," and had pictures taken in front of randomly painted backdrops, which included a happy cow, a graveyard, and aliens. Seems anti-establishment enough. We didn't have as many kids as we would have hoped for, but those that did attend seemed to have a great time. I practiced my guitar hero skills, and everyone had a good time.

Staff Reaction

Here at GB we're having a grand old time with these 23 things. As a member of the millenial generation, (I think,) most of these tasks are second nature to me. As such, it's amazing seeing the rest of the staff tackle these tasks. I've been asked for help numerous times, and it's a joy to see the reaction from the staff at what could best be described as the "new toy" look.
My supervisor, in particular, has taken like a fish to water with her blog. She's trying to chronicle incidents of vandalism in our public men's room, which particularly bothers her.

Blogging in libraries.

I've come across many examples of blogging by libraries, and I'm hoping that through these exercises we'll have some provided on behalf of the library system. My old library system has a publicity blog, as well as a blog kept by the library director. I believe that these two types of library blogs are the most common, as I haven't seen many others, except for a lone librarian posting rants, but those are of a more personal nature.

7.5 Habits

I feel that they are fairly self-explanatory. I don't anticipate any problems, but it will be interesting to mentor and guide some of the other staff members.