Social Tagging

Tagging in Delicious intrigues me. But I have more questions than formed thoughts about it. Could it replace collections of links on library web pages? What happens when the tagged site goes dead? Would our users find the sites easier through Delcious or our web site? Would other people's tags be specific enough for our users? Or for us to find good sites? "Music" just doesn't cut it as a tag in the music library.

I'm in the process of a manual check of our links, so I'm concerned about links to dead sites cluttering up the site. The question of dead links is probably my biggest concern for Delicious.

There's a part of me that would like to transfer our links to something like Delicious. Or duplicate them. Would it be time worth spent?

Flittering with Twitter

In starting this exercise, I made the mistake of using an e-mail address in which I don't keep any contacts, so initially finding friends was somewhat difficult. Although it was easy to type a short message in the box, other aspects were not quite so easy.

When I was out of the country over Thanksgiving, I did hear about people using Twitter for citizen journalism in the Mumbai crisis. And to provide info as to their safety.

What am I doing? I'm sitting at a reference desk on a quiet afternoon, working with this 2.0 application. It could be used for reference or targeting quick messages to library customers, including PR. But first the library needs some friends.

Library Thing

Library Thing was very easy to use, especially adding books that have ISBNs. I added books I personally own to my library, but I can see more use in having a library that keeps track of the library books one has read, or wants to read. If one is doing book talks, writing the reviews and rating the books, then gathering them by the tags one has added, could really help with preparation for the book talk. Library Thing does have potential as a library tool.

Technology -- a few thoughts

In thinking about technology, I decided to go back to the dictionary sitting on my office shelves. Webster's 9th Collegiate Dictionary defines technology as:

• technical language
• applied science
• a scientific method of achieving a practical purpose
• the totality of means employed to provide objects necessary for human sustenance and comfort

In looking at the definition, I see technology as a means to an end.

That goes along with the post-modern values described in yesterday's Urban Libraries Council audio-conference, Foresight 2020 -- that the emphasis is not on the technology itself, but rather if it enhances life. There's a disenchantment with science and technology during postmodernization, as the emphasis goes beyond the material to the existential.

I was traveling over the Thanksgiving holiday, and I did see citizen journalism come of age with the coverage of the terriorist attacks in Mumbai. People were able to make contact with their friends and loved ones using Facebook, and they were able to provide information through their cell phone cameras. Twittering offered comfort and on the spot information. But what if the terriorists had also been twittering -- would that not have put even more people in danger?

I want to use technology that will help me do what I need to do, better and more efficiently. I'm willing to try things, but they have to meet the test before I'll really adopt them. And as a post-modernite, I have more important things to do with my life than to spend my personal time wired/wireless/connected via the ether. At work, it's another matter, as I must meet the traditionalists and moderns in whatever space they inhabit.

Give me functionality, sustainability, appropriateness and simplicity in my technology.

Finding RSS Feeds

I've tried several ways of finding RSS feeds. For my purposes, the easiest way, or maybe the best way for my purposes, was looking for the RSS icon on places I'd found otherwise that I knew I'd want to follow. Most of my computer viewing is one time specific purpose use, so the RSS feed would really be of limited use. But for those few places I want to follow and see the updates or new posts, RSS could save time.

As for the RSS search tools, I got mostly false hits from Technorati. The Google Blog Search gave me the best results of all the search tools and was easy to use.

I think that RSS feeds can work in the library setting as verifying that sites one uses regularly are being maintained and updated.

Fun with RSS

RSS has the potential to be a time saver, if one is following particular web pages or blogs. My real question is, do I really need to know every time a change is made on a specific site? Would my account become littered with hundreds of unread posts?

I'm getting confused with the gobs of user names and passwords I have to have for all these technological things. Google Reader is nice because it can be accessed from my google account -- one user name and password for the reader and the blog access and all sorts of other stuff from that one account page. I'm much more likely to actually look at the feeds from there than a stand-alone reader which we used in the Thing #6 exercise.

If libraries are keeping up their web pages with frequent new content, the RSS feeds could be a help to customers. If the pages don't change, the RSS feeds (or lack of activity) becomes more evident for the customer subscribed to the feeds.

IM

Even though I had IM accounts years ago, I never used them -- mostly because I really didn't feel the need to be online at the very same time as someone I was e-mailing. I like e-mail for the personal convenience and the ability to do things in my time continuum rather than someone elses.

I IM'd Susan and we had a very nice brief conversation using Google Talk for the Week 3 thing. I didn't have to wait very long for an initial reply, which really suprised me since I was trying this over the noon hour.

Would I IM? I don't know. I'd need to feel that what I had to communicate needed an immediate response, but the person I was trying to communicate with would also have to be online at the same time I was. I'd probably wonder if my communication was important enough to demand that immediate attention. Could it be broken into short enough bits to make IM efficient for the communication?

It could be used for reference questions, and is in many libraries. I see three drawbacks. One, that the service would only be available during the hours that a library was staffed, while an e-mail reference question can be sent at the customer's convenience, even if the library isn't open. Two, someone would need to staff the computer(s) that the IM was on, and the staff might feel tied to that desk in order not to miss a message. And three, with limited staff there could be conflicts between helping the customer in front of you and the one trying to get through with IM and the one trying to get through on the phone.

The positive aspects of IM for reference include the ability to clarify a question with the customer, to answer a remotely asked question in close to real time, and the ability to provide written information rather speaking the information while the customer writes it down (as in telephone reference).

Masses of people use IM. Will I? I really don't know.

NLA Conference and 2.0

Last week I attended the annual conference of the Nebraska Library Association. Many of the presentations were very Library 2.0, including the keynote session by Annette Lamb. But what really grabbed me was an early Friday morning session on creating archival finding aids. The presenter's advice: create it from the point of view of the user. Now that's very 2.0 customer centered service even though it's very low tech at the moment. I attended a session on LibraryThing next, and what stood out to me was that the institution's cataloging policy did not allow customer-needed non-LCSH terminology (that is, local subject headings), so their way to get those terms was to use LibraryThing. Or, one could just use local subject headings, keywords in a searchable abstract field, or other keyword searchable fields in a cataloging record to provide access using terms the customers need and want to use. Then I attended another archives session on one of the open-source archival management tools I'm currently considering for use in my library. There were many excellent sessions during the conference and I certainly continued my lifelong learning through my attendance at NLA.

Lifelong Learning

Having just watched the 7 1/2 Habits of Highly Successful Lifelong Learners, I'm not sure I agree that habit 1 should be "begin with the end in mind". I'm a very creative person, continually learning, but the learning journey is as important to me as reaching a specific learning goal. I like to get sidetracked and see where serendipity takes me, learning all along the way -- things I wouldn't have set out to learn. If I'm beginning with the end in mind, I'm working on solving a specific problem or overcoming a specific challenge; I may learn along the way, but learning is just one tool used to get to the end result.

The easiest of the habits for me are play, accepting responsibility for my own learning, and teaching or mentoring others. And I do have confidence in myself as a competent, effective learner despite my learning digressions. I'm sure I will digress over these next several weeks of the Nebraska Learns 2.0 experience.

First Blog Post

Wow. I can't believe how easy it was to set up this blog. I've just started working on Nebraska's Library 2.0 challenge. And this was the first step. What's an old music librarian like me doing with this? Trying to learn a new song or two.