Adios, 23 Things

I have been immersed in Library 2.0, social software in libraries, for the last 9 months or so. Since we conceived the idea of doing 23 Things and the TPZ3 was formed, and I registered for a library school course in Social Software in Libraries, it has been what I do at work and at home. I have learned a great deal about blogs, wikis, IM, VOIP, social networking, social bookmarking, even MUVEs (Multi-User Virtual Environments, e.g. Second Life). I learned that blogs can be useful as well as narcissistic, that wikis rule for coordinating on a project or even being a substitute collaborative web site of sorts; these sites are built by the users, and though you can erase everything by accident, you can't break a wiki because of the history feature. I learned that Google Docs& Spreadsheets are equally cool for collaborative work, that I won't be spending much time in Facebook or MySpace, that IMing is useful and we should be doing IM reference (but Twitter is aptly named), and that I've got to finish SJSU SLIS before I have to take courses in SecondLife. I have established blogs, scanned photos and put them up on Flickr and received many comments, had people comment on the house where I live from my personal Flickr site, taught people who outrank me in the library hierarchy what I had just recently learned, pissed off the archivist at the Museum of Art and History and a senior librarian here and possibly a webmaster, nagged people to post photos to the youth services blog, and felt pride when people have voluntarily and enthusiastically participated in projects I was allowed to do for both the SCPL and SJSU SLIS.

I think this is a great program even though I tend to agree with Walt Crawford about the hype of "Library 2.0" and the reality of Library 2.0. My fear is that management will cross off the successful completion of this program (and it has been a success), congratulate themselves and us, and go on as before. There is an election, a move to a new building and many other things happening very soon. I think there will be a push from below to adopt and adapt more of these new technologies for the library, and in many ways these free or low-priced services are the econo way to go.

However, issues of control play a big part in not jumping in with the hype. For instance, I am convinced that Flickr is nice for photos of recent library events and that historic photos should be on our site with consistent controlled subject headings, but the new site itself will be more interactive, more 2.0, and will have a comments section. Ann Young and Heidi are actually right, but the earthquake photos project sure was fun and I look forward to helping move the photos to the new site. The issue is control: what happens when you put all your stuff out there on a corporate site that could be bought or could fold tomorrow, or could put up the kind of advertising we might not want to have associated with the SCPL. If we have server space and a great IT staff, why not put it on our server. Nevertheless, for those libraries who have no IT staff, anyone can build a pbwiki or post a photo collection to Flickr; so these become the econo solution, but the cost is control. I bet that econo solution would make the folks in Jackson County, Oregon happy about now, though.

You think I'm rambling yet? I haven't even touched on copyright issues.

In the past 9 months, I have learned a lot, experienced much frustration and some sleep deprivation, and also had a lot of fun. I am relieved and a little sad that it is over, but is it really? Many blogs and wikis have been established that will continue the day after tomorrow. I don't think that the whole social software package will turn into a pumpkin in this system tomorrow night. In fact, each week someone here at the SCPL approaches me about setting up some sort of Web 2.0/Library 2.0 application for work or personal use. I think that all of this social software provides some useful tools to know about, and I am glad to see our system taking on the lifetime learning project begun by the shift that 2.0 is. It is an evolutionary change, but a profound and quick one, and we clearly are not dinosaurs.

Net Library and e-Audiobooks

I guess I'm just what my Dad calls "the 10% who never get the word." I never had an e-audio training. And I have never liked listening to books too much. I tried listening to Steve Buscemi read Motherless Brooklyn about six years ago while on a roadtrip, and I found myself losing interest and switching to music for the drive. I have enjoyed hearing some of the NPR radio personalities read stuff they have written with radio in mind (Ira Glass, Sarah Vowell, Sandra Tsing Loh, and especially anything by David Sedaris). I also like to hear some poets read from their own work. So when I found that SCPL's Net Library collection had no David Sedaris, I almost gave up. Then I thought to browse through the fiction collection, where I discovered a book recommended highly to me by several sources that I still have not read. I will not see the movie based on the book, either, since I can't imagine Richard Gere being a good casting decision. So I have downloaded Bee Season, read by Myla Goldberg, the author. I chose to download the CD quality version in anticipation of my 23 Things MP3 player reward. I can almost taste.. I mean hear... it. I started to listen to it with the headphones on the computer. I may not finish it in this form, but it might make me read the book. Who knows, with a little portable device and authors reading their own work, I might become a convert. Now if we could just get some David Sedaris....

Podcasts

One can subscribe to podcasts using many different aggregators, such as Google Reader or Bloglines, or one might use a podcatcher such as iTunes or Juice (formerly iPodder). Our class created a cool tools podcast as a group project, and Professor Faires shows many ways to subscribe to the podcast (which includes text and video), in the introduction to the project. I like iTunes, as I describe in this post from econolibrarian. I made a very bad podcast that week and a slightly less bad podcast about LiveMocha, Episode 8 here (though not marked as such), and also previously on this blog under the entry on LiveMocha. I suggest Audacity for making podcasts, and I suggest finding many screencasting projects and then making the screencasts within the 30-day trial period with Camtasia, before you have to pay $500. A library that was doing a lot of screencasts for information literacy or staff training might want to invest the $500, though, since you can see what a rank amateur did (Live Mocha entry or del.icio.us tutorial).

Google Docs & Spreadsheets

This is a great resource for libraries who are too concerned with network security to offer patrons MS Word on the library's public internet computers for fear of viruses arriving on the patron's discs or flash drives. Google has a reasonable facsimile of Word and a reasonable facsimile of Excel, that can even be saved as Word docs or Excel spreadsheets. The patron then saves the document to their account with the service. They can open it from any computer by logging in. They can share the document with others who may be readers or collaborators, or they can publish it to the internet with its own url.

I have posted a few Word documents here on this blog as links by converting them to Google docs (and then tweaking the formatting a bit) and publishing them to the web so that they work as links. We used a Google doc to collaborate for the old TPZ.

My favorite use of this service, however, has been as a tool for the Discount School Supply orders I do for the Wild Rumpus. I have a wiki page where the rumpus members can discuss supplies (what's the best kind of tacky glue sticks? etc.), but when they are ready to place the order they go to the Google spreadsheet, where I have the format and formulas set up, and then they enter their order. Of course, the collaborative nature of the public spreadsheet is such that one staffer may see what someone else is ordering and think "hmm, I could use those for a craft, too," and then place her order. They might think "what on Earth do you do with that?" and post said question to the wiki page. So I saw the blog, the wiki, and the Google Docs & Spreadsheets complementing each other from the time Janis proposed the blog. I am glad that the staff has picked up on these so well. They truly like all of these tools and are using them daily, unprompted.

Google Docs & Spreadsheets also present an economical alternative to those who do not wish to pay Microsoft for their MS Office suite. Now that's jammin' econo!

YouTube

I have not checked out any of the other sites, but YouTube is a classic social software site. You can get email at YouTube, make "friends," chat via IM, and share videos. It is like the flickr of videos. I do not have a video camera on my cell phone so my only contribution was both a school assignment and a learning tool for 23 Things. Jessica and I made a little screencast tutorial for del.icio.us, that was supposed to be part 1 of 3, but we never made the next two. She has the scripts, though, which she wrote. Here's our YouTube link . You can also see the movie, embedded in this blog, or on the 23Things hints from the Staff Day 23 Things wiki. I also embedded a video a classmate put on his blog for class on to my blog; this is the best use of PowerPoint I've seen yet. I also embedded a YouTube video at the beginning of class (thanks to Jessica for showing me the vid for the first time; I had it embedded on my school blog before Staff Day). I was hoping to start a provocative discussion in the comments, but I think we were all too busy to fully engage.

I learned about YouTube about two years ago from a friend who was amazed at all the rare (many of them bootleg, of course) concert tracks and videos from bands we both liked. I loved the amazing variety of things you could watch and did see this site and the user-supplied content as a revolutionary change in "the tube," where people are active participants rather than only passive viewers (though many people will still be viewers only). I thought this before I ever heard of Web 2.0 or Library 2.0, though I never thought I would be making screencasts and embedding videos in blogs.

Facebook

Another award-winning site, one for social networking, is Facebook. Here was my two cents worth from the econolibrarian blog and the text below, since the site may not be hosted on the server in a few days as they need to clear out old work clogging up server space before the start of the new semester.

I have many issues with Faceook. It certainly does not help that when I signed up for the 246 group, there were hardly any of us there. I could only search for my classmates in the community of the university, San Jose State, and in the community of Santa Cruz, where I said that I lived. So several of the people in this class were invisible to me until they posted something to the Blackboard group and then I was able to ask them to be my “friend.”

While I was waiting for someone else to join the 246 group, I read the Wikipedia entry on Facebook, and it raised some concerns, about Facebook’s lack of insuring privacy, that they do sell their users’ data (why do you think your account is free?), that Facebook has allowed for spying on students by university officials (who have .edu accounts), and that, like all other public online communities, employers and law enforcement have used someone’s Facebook page against them.

I liked communicating on Ning better than on Facebook, but then on Ning I had more than 3 people with whom to communicate. FaceBook provided thumbnail photos of many people I could invite to be my friend, based on the fact that they had a Facebook page and either a.)lived in Santa Cruz, or b.)attended or were alumni of San Jose State. These groups were large and fairly random.

FaceBook would be a good way to communicate for undergraduates (this was mostly who I was seeing) who all come in and get university email accounts and meet someone face-to-face, and then they hook up on Facebook with someone they have physically met, and then the network of that person’s virtual friends expands the first person’s social circle, etc.

I think that for academic librarians, an account would allow them to see what the students were thinking about. I suppose there were a few academic libraries grandfathered in with an institutional page and profile, before Facebook disallowed these and only allowed personal profiles. These libraries are able to advertise their services to a user group which will have many needs met by the institution. Individual librarians can still provide similar services on this social network provider.

In short, my reactions are probably more negative because I had hoped to like it better than MySpace, and so far I don’t, because I read the Wikipedia entry and thought about their concerns and thought of several others (my paranoid, police-state mind running amok, perhaps), and also because only a few of us had slisweb Squirrel mail accounts, and so the Ning community was so much larger and livelier than the 246 group on Facebook, but this goes back to the policies of Facebook, where you are initially only a part of the network at the institution (university, company, or high school) where you sign up– it’s like getting onto the intranet at an institution where only a tiny bit of that intranet concerns you, and you were hoping to access the internet.

Synchronous Online Communication

This post from October 10 on my school blog summarizes my experiences that week using Meebo and Skype, with some mentions of how libraries might use both of these tools, instant messaging and voice-over internet protocols (VOIP). I think that using IM should have been part of 23 Things, even though it has been around a while (so have blogs, though). We really should be doing IM. I used to hate IM until using Meebo to put the TPZ together while working in 3 different buildings. I had a great experience using IM chat to tech Norton/Symantec tech support recently.
Here is the original post:

I have used Meebo before and I really like Meebo. I had added my cohorts from the work project of creating the Technology Petting Zoo for Santa Cruz Public Library’s Staff Day. The TPZ3 often communicated by Meebo, since we work in three different buildings. We would just keep a Meebo widget open, if only to tell somebody “I’m going into the “library examples” page of the TPZ wiki to edit; I’ll let you know when I’m done.” We also divvied up work this way. We had a few scheduled Meebo meetings. I had no problem adding them to my buddies list, though on this Saturday, Sunday, and Monday I had difficulty adding my group members for 246. We all had this trouble; it was mentioned in the Saturday Elluminate session, on the wiki, and in our Skype teleconference. On Tuesday, I was able to easily add buddies again, so I think it was a brief glitch on Meebo’s end. I did not do much with Meebo this week, but I IMed with Sonia for a while on Skype, which is a perfectly adequate IM tool. I typed a little bit longer than she did, because once we moved to both try our first Skype VOIP “phone call” I accidentally muted myself on the Logitech headset (I knew this was a possibility, yet it was the last place I tried when troubleshooting; I can be such an idiot sometimes). Three of us communicated with three of Group 1 for a brief time; six people teleconferencing did not work so well; the sound was choppy, then started breaking up towards complete unintelligibility. Three to maybe four people communicating by voice is surprisingly clear, about the same quality as telephone– a stable land line sort of telephone quality.

Sarah Houghton-Jan and Aaron Schmidt, in the SirsiDynix webcast, provided some good examples of libraries using IM to do reference for teens. Once the teens make the library their IM “buddies,” the library becomes part of their life. They also provided other users who IM, such as grandparents who learn IM to talk to their grandkids. Meebo has the abililty to work with the other larger commercial web-based IM providers, and the embedded Meebo widget allows anyone who is on line and has found the library page with the widget the ability to IM with library staff. She maintains in her April 25, 2007 post, that IT staff feel, with reason, that IM provides more challenges to network security than email, but she provides some best practices and some articles and arguments to use when discussing your need to have IM with your IT staff. I must say that the more recent (2003) article she cited about the problems, the one by Neil Hindocha, made me very wary about stuff that is a little over my head. It was mentioned in the Saturday Elluminate session that many people do not understand how to use IM (will a real person type back? what is that thing? if you’re online, why aren’t you responding instantly (it’s called “instant’? If you’re not online, can I leave a message?). I think providing IM is just another way of reaching our users where they live. It should not replace other options, but the Meebo widget is free, staff can learn how to set up Meebo to make it less vulnerable, and IT can spend what money and time are necessary to plug the IM security holes to make this economical option possible . Not everyone will use it; it’s just another tool .

I searched through the Librarian in Black blog to last October, and found the entry about the Future of Libraries II conference at the San Francisco Public Library main branch last October because I had remembered that some library reported using hand-held PDAs for roaming reference in the stacks and using Skype on headsets to perform roaming telephone reference. They had reported that none of that had worked well. They reported that the Skype VOIP did not work well at all because of the one-way-simultaneous voice limitation and the background noise. The hand-helds did not work because they were always scrolling around on the small screens. This is the only report I have of a library using Skype, but I think from trying it that Skype could really be useful for those patrons who have already downloaded Skype and feel comfortable using it. The combination of VOIP and IM would make Skype, when it is working properly, more accessible for blind people who also have a screen reader or people who are just low vision but not quite blind. I have yet to try to Skype some library across the world (several on the best practices were in Australia, a place I have always wanted to visit; maybe I can Skype VOIP Australia, say g’day and ask something about Australia).