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).

The Wonderful and Frightening World of Wikis

Until this past Summer, my experience with wikis had been limited to using Wikipedia. Since then I have edited Wikipedia more than once. I have helped with this wiki and been a co-founder and administrator for the Technology Petting Zoo wiki, and I have created and administer a wiki for the Wild Rumpus, the System Youth Services, which, mainly because of the strong support from Janis O'Driscoll, it is well used. I also established a wiki using MediaWiki (don't ask, there is nothing in it), and one on Wet Paint for the corkball players (virtually unused). I muse about the differences between the complicated wikis hosted on a server, such as MediaWiki (designed by the folks who created and administer Wikipedia, mainly for Wikipedia, it is a very rich, but very complicated thing) and web-based simple services such as Wet Paint and PBWiki on my blog post at econolibrarian.

I learned many hard lessons, as we all have. Wikis can be a way to organize disparate strains of information that a group can use to fill a collaborative purpose. For example, wikis can be used to plan events such as Staff Day, or to organize a meeting, such as some of the Family Place page on the Wild Rumpus page. Wikis can be used as a substitute for a web page, where everyone can write, without needing to first learn something as complex as HTML and CSS.

Part of the problem with wikis is that anyone can change anything, once they have been invited to the wiki and given the wiki-wide password. This is problematic with Wikipedia, and can be illustrated by the screencast about the history of the entry on the "heavy metal umlaut." We discovered that two wiki members cannot edit the same wiki page at the same time while working on the Technology Petting Zoo wiki; later the same day, somehow, two of us got in at the same time and all the changes either one of us made had been erased! That was when we discovered the history feature. Each time a change is made and saved the wiki program saves a snapshot of the whole wiki at that moment. Training/Staff Development had a very interesting first weekend of 23 Things for just that reason. I got to help them track down and fix some of the changes later in the week, but I understand I missed the most fun! After the problems of the first week, Janis did not want to use a wiki for Wild Rumpus; I had to make an argument in favor of the wiki, and she was persuaded. Fortunately, it has worked very well, almost seamlessly, perhaps because, due to 23 Things, all involved know their way around wikis now.

A bit of perspective: Library 2.0 vs. "Library 2.0"

I am not taking this question lightly. I have read Meredith Farkas' Social Software in Libraries for a course I just took by that same name, an excellent course at SJSU SLIS, from Professor Debbie Faires, whose hard work and enthusiasm have even impressed Meredith Farkas, who will teach the same course next semester at SJSU SLIS. Through this course and my work on the Technology Petting Zoo and the whole 23 Things program, I have played the role of an early adapter (well, actually more like a harried early-middle adapter) and a cheerleader for "Library 2.0." I have been impressed by people's enthusiasm in embracing the possibilities, but I have also been impressed by very thoughtful concerns about not forgetting what libraries already do well, and not neglecting those who are not using all of these new tools. I cringe every time I hear the word "customer" in connection with libraries. What are we selling them, exactly? Aren't we a free public service? I do like the ability of using these services to reach more people for less money, since libraries will never have the level of funding that we who work for them would like. That is why my Wordpress blog for the social software course at SLIS is called econolibrarian .

Walt Crawford has summed up some of the leading figures on the issue by discussing some of the blog posts from the leading library social software bloggers and I have quoted the last two pages of his article, below. I find that he provides some wisdom about adopting these new technologies and about changes that have already been made and things the library already does well. The post below is available as a pdf file and as a cached html file. It comes from a printed journal called Cites and Insights, which is also the name of Walt Crawford's blog, which is a good library and technology blog subscription to receive in one's RSS reader. This article occupied pages 1-32 of the Midwinter Edition of 2006 (Cites and Insights: Crawford at large, 6:2, 1-32).

"
The title of this PERSPECTIVE and issue makes a distinction I regard as useful but that isn’t integrated into the ongoing discussion:

Library 2.0

Library 2.0 encompasses a range of new and not-so-
new software methodologies (social software, interactivity, APIs, modular software…) that can and will be useful for many libraries in providing new services and making existing services available in new and interesting ways. Library 2.0 also encompasses a set of concepts
about library service, most of them not particularly new. Those methodologies, applications and concepts will continue change within libraries.
Some changes will improve a library’s standing in the community. Some may bring in new audiences. Some may make libraries even more important as centers of the culture and history of their cities and academic institutions, involved in recording and creating that culture and history. Some will go unused and if tracked properly may be abandoned. Some of those
changes may be viewed as disruptive. Some just won’t be feasible for some libraries.
With luck, skill, and patience, those new services and ongoing changes will continue to make libraries more interesting, more relevant, and better supported.
I’m all in favor of that Library 2.0.

“Library 2.0”

“Library 2.0” is hype, a bandwagon, a confrontation, a negative assertion about existing libraries, their viability, their relevance, and their lack of changes, and—astonishingly—an apparent claim that two months of discussion by a two or three dozen bloggers makes a
Movement that is so important that every library, no matter how small, must be discussing it right now, and that every library association should be focusing its next conference on the Movement. I’m skeptical about “Library 2.0”—and I think it’s a disservice to the ideas in Library 2.0. I don’t believe that it adds value to the concepts and tools.
As a blogger, I’m impressed. Without the mutual reinforcement and bandwagon-building of the biblioblogosphere, there’s no way a small group of people at a November 2005 conference could be making this much noise this quickly. Noise does not a movement make, however, and certainly doesn’t justify a call for everyone to abandon everything else
to focus on Library 2.0 or “Library 2.0.” (Should every vendor be preparing position papers? Certainly not in January 2006; some of them must have better things to do—such as, for example, enabling open read-only access for knowledgeable librarians.)
We don’t need a name or a bandwagon to discuss, demonstrate and build real-world uses of the new tools, techniques, and philosophies. Most of the philosophies aren’t new. The claim that they are is part of a generational disconnect or deliberate confrontation with older librarians. Similarly, the assertion that libraries haven’t changed for a very long time is an outright dismissal of the hard work that generations of librarians have carried out and continued to carry
out. I find it unfortunate at best, offensive at worst.
Some uses of “Library 2.0” are offensive. Some are confrontational. Sorry, guys, but “the old guard” isn’t going away any time soon—and those old patrons who mostly want buildings full of books aren’t going away any time soon either. They are, not incidentally, the people who vote for library bonds and tax overrides—and there’s reason to believe that a substantial portion of the public wants libraries full of books even if they don’t themselves use those libraries very often. Some of those patrons will love some of the new services that come under the Library 2.0 rubric, as long as they don’t detract from the successful old services and collections. Some simply won’t use them; that’s OK, as long as the new services don’t displace or weaken successful existing services.
Maybe there’s a need for more conversations about what libraries can and should do and be. If you accept that it’s not possible to be the primary current information source for the whole community and that you can’t do everything for everybody, you can start to focus on where new resources should be used, within the context of today’s community, tomorrow’s needs, and those not well served by other community services. I don’t believe those conversations are specific
to Library 2.0 or “Library 2.0.”

Take a deep breath

My own suggestions for librarians and other library people reading this and thinking about Library 2.0:
Relax. Take a deep breath. If you’re an ALA Midwinter person, enjoy San Antonio. As you’re touring exhibits and participating in discussion and interest groups, pay attention to
new service possibilities that rely on “Web 2.0” tools—and think about how such tools might be used to create your own new services.
When you get back and have a few minutes free, take a look at Ann Arbor District Library, St. Joseph County Public Library, Metropolitan Library System (Illinois), Kansas City Public Library, and some of the many other innovative public and academic libraries. See if what they’re doing makes sense in your environment—or if they bring other possibilities to mind.
You’ll hear about these and other ideas at your state conference and during ALA Annual; I can pretty well bet on that.
Some of the tools and concepts can be used with little or no monetary investment and expertise. Some of them won’t work out for you; some will.
If you’re not already doing so, read some of the blogs and articles by librarians who are doing these things—some mentioned here, some not.
Don’t worry about doing it all—you can’t.
Do keep an open mind to ideas and tools that started outside the library field—if you haven’t
already been doing so. Consider the benefits of change, but don’t assume
that all change is inherently good.
Do all this, and you’ll probably build better libraries and enjoy your work more in the process.
Finally, don’t worry too much about “Library 2.0”: it’s just a name.

The name does matter

I’m biased. I care about semantics, and would think that every librarian should have a respect for language. I believe names do matter. I’m a touch over thirty. I’ve been involved in change throughout my five-decade career, and I resent being told that no change has occurred. I’m not a revolutionary and I believe that “evolution” has worked remarkably well.
For me, “Library 2.0” is a rallying cry that carries too much baggage. I don’t believe the term adds value to the concepts and tools—and I believe it’s possible that “Library 2.0” gets in the way of Library 2.0. You may disagree."

Technorati

Technorati offers a search tool that searches any blog that has been registered with Technorati. I have registered my blog, but have not gained any authority yet. I think I will go back to Technorati and explore how blogs gain "authority." I proved, in the post below and the sidebar, that I have a blog on Technorati, but when I search for myself I do not find myself. Sounds like an existential crisis. I am guessing that I either did some little thing wrong or that it takes some time for a person or computer to add newly registered blogs to the search. I did, however, find blogs of some other people I know, using some of the tags I assigned to my blog, such as "Library 2.0" and "23 Things."

Following the advice in the exercises, I did try to search under blog posts, blogs, and tags, and each search gets a very different first screen and a very different number of entries. However, searching for blog posts, tags, and videos all brought up a video of Helene Blowers on the first page, and searching blogs generated her blogs on the first page.

I think this tool has some use, though other search engines find blogs. As blogs become more ubiquitous, and as someone might want to search only blogs for some term or terms, Technorati would be a good choice. I suspect that it has a limited utility,but a growing utility.

Release the Spiders

That is what it says on the button used to claim one's blog on Technorati by means of a post. I pasted my Technorati Profile in to this post, and now spiders can crawl Technorati to find my blog. So now I will leave this post and return to Technorati. More Technorati later. This button allows others to put my blog in their "favorites."

And here is the link that shows that I have added my blog in Technorati to my favorites. I have also added a widget that links to my blog and to my profile in the right-hand column, the sidebar, just below my blogroll.

Rollyo

I just rolled out my own search engine for Library 2.0. The idea of Rollyo is to create a new search engine based around a single topic or interest or set of interests. This would limit your search results to only these sites. This might be a useful tool for libraries, since they could then limit searches to sites that they deem reputable. The problem comes from the time required to make these search engines and then share them with other staff so that they can find only authoritative sites on given topics. I suspect that many will still use Google and filter through the advertisements and inaccurate sites using their prior knowledge and professional expertise. Could this be a way to assemble a group of sites that are useful and accurate but not subscribable via RSS? As more sites add RSS subscribability, there are fewer of these sites every day. Would this be a complement or a substitute for RSS? It would be useful if one could subscribe to a Rollyo search the way one can subscribe to a search for materials on a given subject using Aquabrowser and a library catalog; I was disappointed to note the lack of the little orange RSS or Atom or XML buttons anywhere in Rollyo. I can see some use for Rollyo in its current format, but I think I may not visit my search engine for a while.

del.icio.us

I love del.icio.us. I have been using it since I heard of it in preparing for the 23 Things Technology Petting Zoo. I love the way you can import the little bookmarklets for "post to del.icio.us" and "my del.icio.us" right in your toolbar and click on them when you find a new bookmark. I also like the way that del.icio.us gets into your right-click menu once you have put the bookmarklets on to a computer or opened your del.icio.us account on a new computer. Try right-clicking on any web page once you have installed the buttons. The right-click feature is not available on mag.nolia or furl. I did a comparison of del.icio.us, ma.gnolia, and furl for the class in library school. Though furl might work better for tagging and sharing serious sites among the scholarly community, and ma.gnolia might have a more appealing visual design, both only offer tags made by those in groups within their sites/services that you have joined, while del.icio.us offers you suggested tags and suggested other sites from the entire del.idio.us community without joining anything except for del.icio.us itself. Del.icio.us also offers groups, it has the right-click option (the other two services have the bookmarklets, too), and it has the largest community of users. I like del.icio.us best, even though their "tag cloud" is just a deeper shade of pink for greater use of a tag or site.
I made this screencast with Jessica Goodman, using Camtasia, for a course I took called Social Software in Libraries for SJSU SLIS library school. We also put this in the 23Things hints page of the wiki. This was to be the first of three parts, but we never made the next two. The Common Craft video on the same wiki page is a better overview, but below you see ours, since this was partially my own work.

If you choose to use any of these social bookmarking services, you may find yourself ignoring your old one-computer-based bookmarks menu in favor of the social bookmarks that travel with you. I know I go first to del.icio.us and only then think of the dropdown bookmarks feature that came with the browser.

Fun with Online Image Generators

There is an online image generating service called Image Chef.One of its features is the ability to make signs. Sarah Harbison introduced us to image chef when she made this sign: I made my own avatar, of "Doc Willis, the baseball-playing librarian."There is even a Bob Dylan image generator. Thanks to Jessica Goodman for both the avatar-generating site, Meez, and the Bob Dylan Image Generator.

Library Thing

I can't remember all the details of some of the limited range of features I found in using Library Thing or the frustrations about what it is not, but I do remember from trying to help some people in Discovery Sessions that you cannot edit some things once you have posted them, and need to email the team that runs LibraryThing and ask them to make the changes, which is not very "Library 2.0." I also remember that I was assigned, way back in September, to "catalog" at least 7 of my "personal library" books to LibraryThing. I got carried away and catalogued 12 iof them. It was a lot of fun looking up the edition and seeing if they had the cover in their database or not, and deciding what tags to choose, and seeing the reviews and ratings of others who owned a copy or had read the books. This is a great service/toy for readers and obsessive organizers and folks who like to share book knowledge. It could be better, and I'm sure it will get better. Here is my library of 12 books and here is my profile.

Good Library Blogs

You can find some good library blogs I like to the right in the Blogroll. Many of these are some of the bigger names in the field of libraries and technology. I learned about LiveMocha from the Library 2.1 blog, which is a continuation of 23Things, begun by Helene Blowers at PLCMC, but now open to posting by others. Her own blog is Library Bytes. Meredith Farkas, who wrote Social Software in Libraries, writes "Information Wants to Be Free." Stephen Abrams, of SirsiDynix, writes Stephen's Lighthouse. David Lee King is another important figure who blogs often, and his blog is just his name. Many of us know of Sarah Houghton-Jan, the LibrarianInBlack. I enjoy the sometimes-snarky tone of Annoyed Librarian and Librarian Avengers, as well as the independent-minded (and somewhat curmudgeonly?) perspective of Walt Crawford (Walt At Large). Other leading figures who have blogs are Jessamyn West (librarian.net -- putting the rarin in librarian since 1999), who provides a thoughtful, progressive blog which is also one of the oldest continuous library blogs, and Karen Schneider, founder of Librarians Index to the Internet (LII). Karen Schneider's blog is called Free Range Librarian.
I like that there is a blog about circulation issues, Circ and Serve, that is a multi-author blog on which I have already commented (I don't know what it would take to become an author). The Common Craft blog has a good deal of podcast and vidcast and embedded YouTube content, which you might expect from the people (it seems to be mostly Lee LeFever) who make the Common Craft videos (RSS in Plain English, Wikis in Plain English, Zombies in Plain English, etc.). Many of these blogs touch on other topics and areas of interest; for instance, Karen Schneider's blog is about writing as well as librarianship and technology, and features some of her own creative nonfiction writing and links to more of the same. Joel Rane, author of Scream at the Librarian, has a blog called The California Libre Screed which is a personal blog that is all over the place, but includes a bit about librarianship and libraries since he is a public librarian.
Obviously there is a huge number and variety and breadth of library blogs out there; I like these, and would like to hear about a few other good ones, though not too many -- please -- it can be difficult to keep up with it all!

Bloglines and Google Reader

I had already set up a feed reader or feed aggregator using Google Reader, which I like for several reasons. First of all, my Firefox homepage at home is my iGoogle home page, from which I immediately see the most recent posts in my reader. This is why I chose Google Reader first. It seems that there are strong opinions both ways about whether Google Reader or Bloglines is better. I have set up an account with Blogger as well. I like the "List view" that I see on the right-hand side of the page in Google Reader which provides some headline-type posts, whereas the right-hand side in Bloglines is blank until I choose something to read. It was fairly easy to import my Google Reader blogroll into Bloglines. So I now have both a Bloglines account and a Google Reader account, and, after 23Things is over, I will get rid of one of them. Right now I am leaning towards keeping Google Reader, and it is really the ease of use that I see it every time I log into the iGoogle page.

LiveMocha is a new Social Software Way to Learn Languages

Live Mocha is a new way to learn foreign languages. This service was launched this past September and is still free because it is still in Beta testing. I have already suggested this resource to the Spanish-language practice group here at the library, and I have consulted the community of Spanish-speakers to help make signs for the SCPL. This is a great resource and fun as well. Below are a couple of posts I made to a "Cool Tools" blog, looking at cool new social software tools for a course called "Social Software in Libraries," taught by Prof. Debbie Faires at SJSU library school. Our group project is now available as one big RSS-subscribable podcast at
http://feeds.feedburner.com/CoolToolsForLibrary20.
Here are the posts I made for the project:

I tried Livemocha, which is a new social way to learn languages.
The CEO, Shirish Nadkarni, explains in the launch video how the best electronic language tools are still on CDROM, early 1990s technology.
Livemocha is in beta, so it is still free.
You can sign up for a course, have your work evaluated by native speakers, chat with native speakers or with a group of people all learning the same language,
you can speak and hear if you have a microphone and headset, and you can even communicate via video if you have a webcam.
When they started there were 6 core languages, but this has already expanded to 27.
As our communities become more linguistically diverse and as the world becomes more integrated, I think that Livemocha will be a great tool for library staff to learn other languages and also as something to recommend to the public. Clicking on the logo at the top of this post or the link at the end of this sentence should get the podcast.

Here is the text. Victor for Cool Tools, signing off.

This is Victor again. This tool has so many features that I would need several screencasts to suggest the full range.
There are messages, friends, IMs, face-to-face interviews with webcams, real live audio conversations with native speakers in several languages.
Once again, my efforts do not do justice to this cool new social way to learn languages.


Once again, clicking the link should get the screencast.