Thing #23: Am I finally done? What am I going to do now?

Looks like I've reached the end of the road for 23 Things. Overall, this is a good program. It exposes librarians to a wide range of resources that we may or may not have explored. Some of the things we did-- YouTube and Wikis- weren't necessarily new to me, but the exercises exposed me to new features and ideas. Other things-- Del.ic.ious and Technorati-- I'd never heard of before. I think of the 23 things as kind of an information menu for librarians-- we had the opportunity to sample everything on the menu and we now get to choose which of these things we will continue to use in our careers. I'm happy to say that most of them I will try to integrate into my customer service in some way.

For someone of my technical skill level (which I consider to be about average) this is a good program. I don't know how some of my techno-phobic colleagues would rate this exercise, but for me it offered enough of a challenge without being overwhelming. Certainly I would be interested in doing another program like this one. I found it great to be able to do everything on my own time and at my own pace rather than trying to cram it all in in a day-long workshop.

Thanks! It was fun....

Thing #22: Project Gutenberg

I took a look at Project Gutenberg which I think is a really good source for audio and e-books, not to mention that you can download some sheet music there as well. Mostly they seem to have "classics", but also a number of other intriguing titles such as "Manual of Surgery." You can download audio books for free some of which feature human voice and others that feature a computer generated voice. This virtual library allows anyone access to a number of important texts. I have had many a procrastinating teenager asking for certain classic titles that are completely checked out of my branch (summer reading-- everyone of course waits until the last minute) and since finding this site I realized I can recommend that they find some of their titles on Project Gutenberg without having to get on a holds list. Another great benefit is for patrons who wish to find foreign language material-- Gutenberg offers books in a number of languages that are not represented in my library's foreign language collection-- Afrikaans or Polish or Russian for example. As I've mentioned often, I love these free online collections. I think they are a hugely important part of the future of libraries and discovering Project Gutenberg was a big plus for me.

Thing #21: Podcasts

It's pretty cool what some libraries are doing with Podcasts. I see the Denver Public Library has story times available for download as does the Westerville, OH Public Library. Other places are putting up book talks and book discussions for users to hear. Still others are geared toward library professionals and address a multitude of topics from "Academic Libraries in Second Life" to "sustaining rural libraries". I like the outreach ability of podcasts. Folks who aren't able to make it to story times can listen with their child at home... maybe not as fun as going to the library to see the story time, but I still think it's important to have these programs available to people. And this is what I really like about Library 2.0: people being able to access a wide array of information in various formats (in this case, a Podcast). Maybe there's a topic you are interested in and there was a program relating to that topic in some library half-way across the country that was posted for the public to hear on the Internet. You get to benefit from that program even though it was presented nowhere near your local public library. The barrier of geography drops away and resources from the Denver Public Library and the Anchorage, Alaska public library are now within reach. How long until podcasts include visuals too... I guess that's kind of what YouTube is for, but I do see exciting possibilities for libraries in recording and archiving videos of programs for people to watch.

Thing #20: YouTube

I have explored YouTube in the past and find it to be a fairly fun site. It's great if you are like me and looking for videos of musicians playing live or teaching lessons. I use it mainly for that purpose and for the occasional dose of comedy. It's interesting to see YouTube getting involved in the upcoming presidential elections by airing videos made by the candidates. It's also interesting to see the candidates getting involved in other social networking sites, but that's for another post. I like the creativity people display on YouTube. For example:



I like to watch the stop-frame animation and wonder how folks have the time to make those videos! I've also discovered some interesting projects in the making by some young amateur filmmakers:



It's also good for finding a laugh:

Thing 19: Explore a site from the Web 2.0 Awards: Pandora

I took a look at the very long list of Web 2.0 winners and some of the music sites naturally caught my eye. Pandora is an excellent music site that allows you to basically create a number of "radio stations" based on your own preferences. You simply type in an artist or song title and Pandora will return you with a radio station based on that song or artist. You can then tell it if you like or dislike a particular song it has chosen and it will adjust the station accordingly.

I think of this as being like "listeners' advisory." It allows you to type in something you like and in return Pandora exposes you to other artists you might also like. Pandora and other Internet radio stations have been in a battle with record companies over royalty payments and internet radio is in jeopardy of going under which I think is unfortunate. To me music and the arts are just as important as books and reading and so this site is great at exposing users to new artists and genres of music. It's incredibly easy to use and I've used it to create radio stations to listen to during dinner or when hosting a get-together.

Thing #18: Online Productivity Tools

I definitely like Google Docs. For a time our library system did not have word processing software available to the public in all branches. In order to use word processing software, a patron would have to drive from my branch which did not offer the service to one of 4 locations in the county that did offer it. Believe me I saw many a discontented patron when they learned they needed to go to another location to type a document. Then along comes Writely, now Google Docs. Suddenly I could get patrons signed up on Google Docs and have them typing, saving, and printing at our word processing software-less branch in a matter of minutes.

Also, on Google Docs you can access your documents anywhere there is Internet access. No lugging around discs or flash drives! I also like that you have the option of saving files as html, pdf, word, and other formats. I'm not sure if Google Docs does absolutely everything that Word does, but I've not had trouble composing and formatting with Google Docs.

Thing #17: Maryland Libraries Sandbox

So I've been playing around and exploring the Maryland Libraries Sandbox Wiki. I added my blog to the "favorite blogs" page a few days ago under a heading with Prince George's County listed with a couple other counties, but today my blog showed up under the Harford County heading and there was no Prince George's County heading... Curious... But I simply created the Prince George's heading and then pasted my blog below that heading. Those of you who are in the Prince George's 23 Things program and have added your blog to "favorite blogs" on the Wiki may want to check to see where it is now, because everything seems to have been moved around a bit.

I also contributed a book to the What I'm Reading Now section of the Wiki. There are some interesting parts of the Wiki, but it definitely does resemble a playground-- a mish mash of stuff for people to read and post with only a little bit of organization. But that's alright since the idea is for us to "play" with this Wiki and explore exactly how they work. It's interesting to read others' perspectives on various things like where they like to vacation.

Thing #16: Wikis

Wikis are one piece of Library 2.0 that I have used before. I recently completed Maryland's LATI program where we got to play around with the LATI Wiki every now and again. Wikis are neat tools mostly because anyone can contribute. I especially love Wikipedia because it is such a huge database of information and anyone can contribute. The result is an encyclopedia that is vastly larger than say the Worldbook Encyclopedia sitting on our reference shelves. Not only that, it also includes information on topics that a traditional print encyclopedia does not have. It provides references and links to other related sites. I know a lot of folks argue that Wikipedia isn't totally reliable or factual due to the content being completely user contributed. I think, however, that for the most part Wikipedia is factual. Contributors who are "experts" in their fields scour, edit, and correct Wikipedia entries so that they are factual. Certainly there are errors, but you will also find errors in print encyclopedias.

Wikis can be useful to libraries in a number of ways. First, behind the scenes, Wikis make it incredibly easy for staff to collaborate on projects. Ideas can be posted any time of the day, and in fact library staff could collaborate across county, state, and country borders on various project by using a wiki. Ideas can be expanded upon and other users can edit the existing work, adding their 2 cents. Wikis could also be employed for use with the public-- they can be used as a community message board, a book discussion forum, or just a place to connect with others in the community. I can't say this enough: I love the "anyone can do it" aspect of wikis-- no one owns or controls the content of the site and everyone has the opportunity to contribute. I liked the Princeton Library's Book Lover's Wiki where users post book reviews. The library has also linked it up with local business to offer raffle prizes for contributors. They use the Wiki as a tie-in and enhancement of their summer reading program. Yes there are thousands of sites where folks can submit and publish their book reviews, but this particular wiki caters to their library users and gives them a way to connect with one another.

Thing #15: Read and Comment on a few perspectives on Library 2.0

In terms of what Dr. Wendy Schultz says in her article (you can find it here), I look forward to a day when library 4.0 serves us coffee and single malt and comfortable chairs. Her view is sort of like this: The public library in the future will be an intellectual oasis, but we will need experienced techno-savvy librarians to guide customers on how to use all the emerging technology. Rick Anderson also describes a future where customers will expect access to all sorts of digital collections and journals, and the physical collections in libraries will be little or none. I for one whole-heartedly and enthusiastically support the digitization of collections. I would love to be able to walk into any library and have access to collections from all over the world. I dream of a future where there is little or no barrier between the individual and the information they need. If I want to view a collection of photographs that physically resides in another country, I will simply log on to their website and have instant access to them. As always, easier said than done. There will always be the technology barrier. Unfortunately many people do not possess the computer skills necessary to navigate much of the information that is available digitally. Further, many librarians don't have skills necessary to navigate the digital realm. Because of this I don't see our physical collections being replaced by digital in the near future. Also, every website, database, and digital collection is different and it takes a certain amount of tech-confidence to dive into these places and explore without becoming frustrated. I think a certain amount of uniformity or standarization needs to be put in place for Library 2.0 to be fully successful. Most folks will not have the patience to learn the ins and outs of every website or digital tool, but if every tool operates more or less in the same manner I think people will be more likely to use them with confidence. The big picture these folks describe is good if a little utopian. I do believe librarians have a responsiblity to explore these resources which is one of the reasons I am involved in the 23 things program. I'm not confident that our physical collections are going to diminish much in the near future, but certainly the number of digital resources we will need to understand are only going to increase.

La Cosa Numero 14: Technorati

I have to say I didn't much care for Technorati-- I'm not sure that it would be of much use to me in my profession. My main problem with Technorati is the content-- browsing "where's the fire" section I see links the read like this: "Some HOT and nude Images from the last Paris Hilton sex tape," among some other choice titles. That's on the extreme end-- but there is also no shortage of "gossipy" blog talk about celebrities. I'm not sure how either of those things fit in to Library 2.0... help me out, of what use is it to us as librarians? Certainly there are lots of blogs and posts that could be of use to us, and it's nice that one can sign in and manage a list of favorites for blogs. But this also seems very similar to what we've already explored in Bloglines and Del.icio.us. Given my choice of the three, I'd go with Bloglines to manage the blogs and news I want. However, I'll give Technorati a lot of credit for having a variety of media covered-- they have links to videos on the site too with preview thumbnails which I do like.

I guess overall Technorati seems too heavy on fluff and pop culture for me to use extensively in my job, but I can imagine perusing the music and video sections in my free time at home.

Thing #13: Del.icio.us

So I spent some time navigating Del.icio.us today (strange web address by the way). I can see the potential for this site, but I'm not terribly excited by it at the moment. Maybe it is because it is so text based and I want to see thumbnail previews of the pages listed. I like the idea of people tagging sites so that I might find them more easily, but I don't imagine myself having the time to review and tag websites. I did sign up for an account and added a button to my browser so I could easily bookmark sites. Also, I guess this is handy because you can then access your personal bookmarks anywhere in the world-- so it is somewhat useful in that way. This site seems to be in its infancy but it is a good tool for finding certain sites-- because they are tagged you can get more relevant results. A Google search for readers' advisory might bring up a bunch of unrelated information, but searching for that on Delicious will get you results that are more focused. So I guess I'm on the fence about this one-- like a lot of sites we've explored this one seems not fully developed to me. I think "Library 2.0" has some growing to do, but I do see the potential for many of these tools. I'll continue to check back with Del.icio.us and add favorite sites with my bookmark button on Firefox-- some day when I'm stumped at the reference desk by an odd information request I'll try Delicious over Google and see what I get.

Library Thing

Not sure how random this thing is-- it always seems to pick the same books from my library. Anyway, this site is kind of an interesting tool for showing your reading interests and finding other books you might like.

Fun with Avatars

Here's my virtual self: (not much different from my real self)

Rollyo

So I signed up for Rollyo and made my very own search engine. Can you guess the topic for which I decided to create a custom search? Yes, that's right: Old-Time music-- I wanted to see how well this thing worked, and it's actually pretty good. I added 22 sites to search and I'm sure I think of more to add in the future. My biggest complaints are that there are too many ads in the middle of Rollyo (but I guess they do have to pay their bills) and there are only 10 or so results per page. Maybe there is a way to tweek the settings to display more results per page but I haven't found it yet. Also, I might suggest that they put a preview box for each result: like you move your mouse over the link and it brings up a thumbnail preview of the page you are about to view.

Okay, so maybe it's not terribly practical for librarians, but here is my custom old-time music search:

Select Search Engine...Old-Time Music SearcSearch The Web

Powered by Rollyo

Things 8 and 9: RSS feeds and Exploring Merlin

Okay, I have to say that I'm not terribly excited about RSS feeds and using Bloglines, etc. Perhaps it will grow on me, and I do see the advantages of compiling all the new information in one place where I can view at my leisure rather than going to each blog or news site individually. I didn't find the sites like Bloglines, Feedster, etc to be very intuitive. They weren't immediately easy to navigate or figure out which I see as a disadvantage. That said, this technology is fairly new so I expect the sites will improve and become more user-friendly in the future. I didn't like that some of the feeds I subscribed to through Bloglines were really old with no recent content... if a feed hadn't been updated since late 2006 what are the chances it's going to put out new content any time soon? Of course I know Bloglines has no control over the content of the feeds but maybe they could have some sort of "last updated" information. However, gripe as I might, it is very easy to unsubscribe to these dud feeds. Other times when I click on a feed or news story I want to read I get an annoying pop-up ad or something completely unrelated to what I thought I was clicking on. This drives me crazy.

I can see how this is great for keeping up with a bunch of different blogs in one place. Although I've known about blogs for years now, I admit that I do not read any one blog on a regular basis. Perhaps this exercise will change that.

I subscribed to MERLIN-- not a whole lot of action on their feed either. For the most part I like their set-up with library related blogs on the right hand side, although some of them just seem to be personal blogs by librarians with little or no real library-related content. Most, however, are good blogs with good info. The best part of the site I've found so far is the "learning links" section which will introduce the uninitiated to much of the techie stuff available to libraries and librarians. If you are intimidated by the mention of Wikis, Blogs, Podcasts, Avatars, and Social Networking, this is the place to go to find out what they are and what they can do for you.

Thing 7: Talk about Technology

I always seem to be one of the last to get up to date with technology. I still do not own a cell phone nor do I have plans to get one soon. It's not that I don't like technology, I just don't always see the need to have the "latest and greatest." It took me years to finally purchase a DVD player. The rise of the Mp3 was pretty fascinating to me simply because I never thought it would catch on. Now with the invention of high-capacity Mp3 players, I-tunes, and websites like MySpace (where one can post Mp3s of their own music)it is now the dominant form of music. The idea of buying songs individually seemed ludicrous to me-- all until my wife and I were moving from the West coast to the East coast and she bought an I-pod to bring along on the drive so that we wouldn't run out of good music to listen to along the way. Now I am an Mp3 convert, and I even occasionally buy songs from Itunes. I like having access to my entire music collection on one small device. As a musician I often need to reference music from my collection to learn new material and with an Mp3 player I don't have to sort through a large book of CD's any more or change CD's constantly when comparing one player's style to another's.

I then learned that I could convert many of my own field recordings to Mp3 and then catalog them and download to an Mp3 player. Some old-time musicians like myself often travel around with a recording MiniDisc player-- antiquated technology by today's standards-- and record other musicians to learn one of their tunes in the future or to learn their style of playing. I plug the minidisc into my computer and record the music in Mp3 format. I'm still looking for an Mp3 player with a mic input that will allow me to record directly to it. Some people I know have managed to create a modestly priced home recording studio and have done self-produced albums, but that is getting off-topic.

I guess my point is that new technologies have benefits for even the most cynical folks (like myself) who don't always immediately embrace the latest and greatest gadgets. I think about how my parents used to tell me when I was a child that they grew up without television. At the time that blew my mind. In the future I imagine telling my children (don't actually have any yet)that I grew up without the invention known as the Internet and seeing their eyes grow wide with surprise and disbelief.

Thing Number 6: Flikr Toys

Lots of cool stuff out there for Flickr. I just tried this slide show thing to display photos from my Flickr account.


Created with Paul's flickrSLiDR.

Thing Numero Cinco: Fun with Flikr

I definitely love Flikr... what a great place to find photos of almost anything. I have used this site before, and in fact I just used it extensively for pictures that I needed for my LATI project. I love that they have the "creative commons" license option where folks upload images that can be used or modified for non-commercial purposes. As librarians this is a great tool for us to find just the right image for displays and programs.

Secondly, this is an amazing site just because of the sheer number of wonderful photos. It allows us to see the incredible creativity of photographers and graphic designers, amateur and professional.

This exercise inspired me to create a free account and upload a few photos from my personal collection (the one above is one of my own). I didn't go so far as to bring my camera to work and take photos. I have since found a few long-lost friends on Flikr and it's great to see their lives through their photographs.

Things 3 and 4: Set Up My Own Blog and Registering

Easy as pie and a fun learning experience!

Thing 2: Lifelong Learning

Probably the most difficult habit for me is teaching/mentoring others-- not because I don't love to impart knowledge unto others, but I'm just not sure it's one of my strong points. I am envious of my colleagues who put together wonderful programs and teach classes at the library. I find I learn things easily, but effectively passing that knowledge along is not as easy for me.

Perhaps the easiest habit for me is seeing problems as challenges. I guess this is because of my thirst for learning. I feel almost any problem can be turned into a learning experience. And if there is a problem I have to overcome it-- simple as that. If I don't deal with a problem effectively or just ignore it, it ends up haunting me much longer than if I had just dealt with it in the first place. Of course I'm not perfect and as I write this I'm thinking of a list of problems needing attention. In learning repetition is very important. In fact if I didn't repeat things a thousand times I wouldn't be able to do them effectively. My wife will tell you I become obsessed with things (games, instruments, gardening, and so on) and I view these "obsessions" as problems I need to overcome. My latest obsession: disc golf-- I simply must learn how to play better and I will do that through watching, reading, and most importantly, doing (over and over again).

Thing Number 1: What's This all About?

As my grade school teachers always said, better late than never!

So I finally signed up for the Maryland 23 Things program albeit a few weeks late. I am excited to delve into these new technologies. I am excited to see more and more resources available to us through the Internet. I'm a huge fan of digital collections and dream of a day when we'll be able to access almost any resource right from our computers. From the title of the Blog you may have guessed I am a fiddler-- I play traditional Appalachian fiddle and banjo (aka Old-Time Music) and I use this great digital resource all the time to learn about the music:

The Digital Library of Appalachia


From here I have access to photographs, manuscripts, field recordings and more. Anyway, the point is, I am looking forward to seeing more libraries and institutions putting their collections online like this. I like that this program is helping to make us aware of technologies out there that our customers are using.

That's all for now!