Some updates

Bloglines has a new beta interface, which I think is much nicer than the old hideous interface. And it doesn't mark all the posts as read as soon as you click on the feed to read it! Maybe they got the hint that that was a bad idea from my blog! :-) Not all the old features, like the email subscriptions and tell a friend, are in there yet, but it's much simpler to use. More like Google Reader. Which is, for now, my favorite.

Charlotte-Mecklenburg has continued their program of web 2.0 learning tools. I've subscribed to their blog feed for the program, and I think I'll try out the tools they mention, if I haven't already. Such as Thing 24: Zamzar. Free online file conversion, with a link to the result emailed to you. That's brilliant. Maybe we can finally have a good solution to the battle between Microsoft Word and Microsoft Works. I have to admit, I need and use Word so exclusively that I've never used Works, but it's a battle to try to open Works files here in the library so that patrons can work on the files they've brought in, which then dooms them to working in the library on their new Word files. Of course, the solution to that is probably Google Docs or Zoho, but in a pinch Zamzar will probably be a good thing. Let's not forget that it will convert many kinds of files to PDF, which is a fairly universal format, so if you need a quick PDF, you don't need to shell out megabucks for Adobe Acrobat and you don't even have to install a program on your computer. And when I was converting tons of scanned TIFFs to JPEGs for the Flat Tops Blog, because TypePad won't accept TIFFs in its photo galleries, I could have used this service and had them all emailed to the blog. I do wish it would convert Publisher files, though--Publisher is really kind of a crappy program, but I use it all the time because the templates are okay and it came with Office--I run into problems all the time sending Publisher files to other people because they have different versions or don't have it at all.

Week 9, Thing 23: Maryland Libraries Learning 2.0

What a whirlwind it's been! Some favorites from this program: Meez. I think of Meez as online paper dolls with extra pizzazz. So fun that I had to make two. :-) Also, Zoho Creator. I am completely tickled by the ease of creating web forms and databases. I'm glad I tried out Rollyo some more and discovered its limitations (boy, did that make me cranky). The future of libraries: I still think the future of libraries is bright and exciting, and I'm always glad of the chance to ponder how we'll get to that future.

I would love to do a program like this again. Only I'd, er, like to find out about more stuff that I'm not already doing, not that I didn't learn about some great web 2.0 stuff. :-) I'd like to see more people comment on blogs--there's time yet in the program, but it seems to me that it's one of the real rewards of this kind of program, getting to see what other people are doing in their learning journey and chatting with them about it.

I know it's been a bit of a slog for a lot of people who are not so technologically inclined as me, but I think folks have had an opportunity to have a bit of fun too--learning isn't all fun all the time, but gaining some of these skills is very valuable in our jobs and can be a way to open the mind to new possibilities in library service.

Week 9, Thing 22: Digital audiobooks

I am just dying for an MP3 player. I may have to break down and get one, even though I am a bad businessperson and have not landed an editing job with a new client (it's been my incentive to do that for oh, a couple years now). I would probably be more excited about Overdrive audiobooks if I had one. I've downloaded and installed the software--Joanna and I did a demonstration program for St. Mary's staff a couple of years ago when the Maryland libraries joined together to provide the service--and it's pretty easy to use and fairly easy to transfer materials to an MP3 player (not an iPod, of course). I do love the convenience of downloadable materials--for the audio and video, you need high-speed Internet access (and as the technology planning consultant we met with this week pointed out, the need for a computer with broadband access at home makes our downloadable stuff available only to reasonably wealthy people), but if you have broadband, it's pretty quick to download these large files. I like the convenience of the downloadable video too, but the unfortunate limitation of the digital collection is that hugely popular titles do not come out as digital audio, video, or ebook.

What I really love are ebooks. I download ebooks from Overdrive whenever I can (I've read pretty much anything I'd be interested in that's in the MD library collection), but since the audiobooks are so much more popular than the ebooks, we don't add many new ebooks to the collection. I download them at home and transfer them to my PDA. I like reading books on my PDA because I can do it one-handed--don't need another hand to flip the page, the little button on the front does it--and I can read them in any kind of light, because it's backlit. As more portable devices become the norm, I think we'll see more of an interest in ebooks. We'll have to see how the Sony Reader perfoms--I'm a little skeptical, because ebook-only devices have done very poorly in the past, and the trend seems to be toward multiuse devices.

Jessamyn West points out that there are iPod-friendly free public domain audiobooks available at Librivox, serialized science fiction at Podiobooks, and free poetry readings at Classic Poetry Aloud (although I like to read poetry aloud for myself, thank you). And of course at Project Gutenberg. It's been a while since I looked at Project Gutenburg--good to know that they are branching out. Great resource.

Week 9, Thing 21: Podcasting

That's my favorite Ask A Ninja video on the Maryland Libraries Learning 2.0 23 Things site! I showed it at staff day while doing a presentation for the St. Mary's County staff on web 2.0 technologies. "A factory that produces apple pie for whales." "Every week consistent content coming at you like KIAAHH, like KIAAHH!" Yeah, I'm a big geek. :-)

I'm not so into the podcast, myself--I don't have an MP3 player (very much want one, promised myself one when I get a job from a new editing client), and for me, it would take too much time to listen to them without having an MP3 player to listen to podcasts when having downtime driving, grocery shopping, cooking, etc. I don't even have time to watch television, so podcasts are something I'd have to add in while doing something else.

I'm impressed with the number of results from Yahoo! Podcast. It seemed like I got better results from Podcast Alley, though, more focused on actual libraries (search: "library"), even though not as many results. I don't like the interface of Podcast.net--too cluttered, and not enough results. I subscribed to NPR: Books from Yahoo! and Library Geeks from Podcast Alley. I might give them a try for a while.

As much as I myself am not into podcasting, I think it would be terrific for libraries. (I'm not into social networking like MySpace or Facebook either, because I am basically an introvert...but I can see their amazing potential!) Some libraries, such as the Orange County Library and the Denver Library, have podcasts--I particularly like the Denver Library's storytime podcast. How awesome would it be to have a story arrive in your RSS inbox every week? Although I think a videocast, for storytime, would be even better, because the librarian could engage the child in the pictures and do some dialogic reading. Not only would the library be encouraging and teaching early literacy skills in the library, but also online, reaching people who have a computer but aren't able to come to storytime. An events podcast, like Orange County's, could be fun too. Lots of possibilities with this technology, and with free tools like Audacity, the price is right too.

I tried quite a few times to record a short podcast on Odeo, but to no avail, it simply refused to save what I had recorded. Ah, well.

Week 9, Thing 20: YouTube

Video sharing is really, really easy with YouTube. You can embed videos in your website, comment on videos, use the social tools available to share videos with friends, and create custom RSS feeds for things you want to watch from a particular search or video uploader (I used to have a feed for videos tagged "dressage," but I had to give it up because there was no way I could watch all those videos!).

I really love this series of library videos, which show the bridging of the traditional divide between librarians and IT professionals:









The first Infotubey Awards were given at the 2007 Computers in Libraries conference. The winners made some amazing videos for library promotion--just think of the possibilities!

YouTube has really become a cultural phenomenon. Yeah, there's a lot of crappy stuff there, but there are also amazing gems like these library videos.

Week 8, Thing 19: Web 2.0 awards

I've tried probably the majority of the web 2.0 awards winners. Web 2.0 is just that fun. Some faves:

Zillow--how can you not like knowing what the retail price is on your and your neighbors' homes? Mesmerizing.

Craigslist--the best part is being able to create custom RSS feeds for your searches. Okay, so I haven't bought anything from a Craigslist listing yet, but I've seen all kinds of cool merchandise. Alas, there is no section of Craigslist for Southern Maryland, probably why I haven't bought anything that's in my RSS feed listings--too far to drive to D.C. or Baltimore areas.

Meebo--great product, I have several patrons who use it because we don't have IM software installed on our machines (who wants to deal with the viruses and spyware?). All your regular options for your favorite IM vendor are there.

Feedburner--cool to see how many people are subscribed to your blog, traffic on your blog, etc. Very easy. Of course, I only have 2 people subscribed to my blog. There were seven subscribed yesterday! That bad, huh? :-)

Pandora--I listen to Pandora sometimes when I edit--I can't listen to anything that I know the words to, because those words get mixed up with the words on the screen. I think it does a pretty good job of picking music that I like.

Picnik--easy photo editing tools, no program to download. You can get pretty good results with it.

Personalized Google--I start here every day. I have modules for Gmail, Google Reader, custom searches, Google Maps, Google Bookmarks, LOLcats, Amazon search hack, and lots more. Loooovvve it.

Some new stuff I tried:

Etsy--a friend of mine is wild about Etsy, and I can see why. It's like going to the hugest craft fair ever without having to either sweat or freeze. Really fun and beautiful handmade things for sale here.

BeGreenNow--a simple calculator for finding out your carbon footprint (the damage you're doing to the earth, basically) and tips for reducing your carbon footprint. You can also purchase carbon offsets--pay the company to do green things on your behalf, such as buying renewable energy, funding reforestation, and supporting technology that helps offset carbon credits. To completely offset my household's carbon usage, I'd have to pay about $20 a month. I'm very seriously considering it--I'm a pretty green person, drive a very efficient car, use fluorescent lightbulbs and other energy-reducing devices, recycle, compost, etc., but it's very difficult to completely offset one's carbon use and this company's efforts may make a serious difference in the fight against global warming (think this summer's drought was just seasonal variation? Think again....)

Biblio--I'm not sure why Biblio won anything. They have fewer books than AbeBooks. It's great that their costs for sellers are lower than other places, but I don't really see anything special about this site, it's just a place with books for sale, and there are lots of those sites out there.

Yelp--was okay, but not a lot of reviews on there yet, at least not in our area. Might have to write a few myself. Would be very useful while traveling, so you can find out what the good restaurants, places to stay, etc., are.

All in all, there are wonderful web 2.0 tools out there. Internet tools are becoming much better integrated, tons of mashups, and as developers see the kind of use that people have for the Internet, they are designing tools that fit the user, rather than the other way around.

Week 8, Thing 18: online office tools

Google Office has improved a lot since I last used it. The spreadsheets are much more sophisticated now, with many more functions. I tend to make large Excel files with a bunch of worksheets and a lot of hyperlinks that need to update as totals update, and Google Spreadsheets now has this function! Love the freezing rows, too. Here's my Google spreadsheet: http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=phsMokIEfqvQLatATqhaQLA

I'm not nearly so enthused about Google Docs. I'm a power Word user and I use track changes extensively while editing, use a lot of find and replace with wildcards, and do tons of formatting. But if Google Docs can dream up a better system than Word's endnotes and footnotes, I'd be all for it (no endnotes or footnotes now). And they do have keyboard shortcuts, which I depend on--I can be soooo much faster if I don't have to take my fingers off the keyboard. The sharing features are very cool--RSS feed for changes, email, invite collaborators, create an event with collaborators in Google Calendar (one of the few Google features I don't use--I have to use Outlook for my calendar because it synchronizes with my PDA). And as you can see, I published a document directly to my blog (below). But the export functions are also very nice. They're good tools for a lot of projects.

Hey, this is web 2.0: the Internet is your computer. :-)

Zoho: the word processor style is nicer than Google Docs. (I feel so disloyal! I love you for everything else, Google!) It's more familiar (i.e., looks more like word. :-) It's nice that the HTML tools are right up front--especially layers. I like using layers, especially after building my latest website in Dreamweaver. The template library isn't as big as Micro$oft, but it is also FREE and is just a cool feature. Ooh, you can email docs into your Zoho account. Neato! And again, great sharing and exporting tools. No RSS though.

Zoho Sheet is okay. I don't think it's as easy to use as Google Spreadsheet, but carrying over the basic layout from the word processor is efficient and helps you use the whole suite.

Zoho Show--enhh. Yawn. Without cool templates, it's very, very dull. The good thing would be that you can import PowerPoint files and then export them as HTML or make them publicly available or embed them in a website. But to actually create workable presentations would be mighty difficult.

Zoho Notebook, Zoho's answer to MS OneNote, is really pretty cool, cool enough that I installed the Firefox plugin to play with it some more. For some reason, the images I inserted by URL didn't work, but video worked fine, and there's way cool stuff you can add to your notebook, like RSS feeds, audio, and other files, and you can publish the page online or to your blog and share it with friends.

My Zoho Notebook:


Zoho Wiki, Planner, Chat, and Meeting look like great integrated products, but I'm not so much interested in them. But Zoho Creator, a database program, is definitely something I'm going to look more into. You can create web forms with it and I think it might be an easy way to create an online patron request form. Maybe.

Let's see if the form I made works--try it out! It should email the results of the form to me, so I'm going to try it out myself after I post.


Okay, I officially love Zoho Creator. That was a ten-minute form, tops. :-) Zoho might get my vote for office-type applications, even though I still think Google Spreadsheets is the better Excel knockoff. This kind of FREE software is great for sharing documents between colleagues, for our patrons to be able to save their stuff without having to bring a disk or drive, and heck, for building web forms. I'm really excited about the web forms. I've never bothered learning to do them before, but this is soooo easy. All these options!!

Update: MY FORM WORKED! Thank you, Zoho!

Zoho--Book Club 2007

Second Monday of the month, except for October (third week due to
Columbus Day) and November (third week due to Veterans Day)

January 8th Marley and Me by John Grogan
February 12th The Memory Keeper's Daughter by Kim Edwards
March 12th River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt's Darkest
Journey by Candice Millard
April 9th The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffeneggar
May 14th The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields
June 11th The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder,
Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary by Simon
Winchester
July 9th The Piano Tuner by Daniel Mason
August 13th Water for Elephants: A Novel by Sara Gruen
September 10th A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
October 15th Widow's War by Sally Gunning
November 19th Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War by
Nathaniel Philbrick
December 10th Digging to America by Anne Tyler

Google Docs

Second Monday of the month, except for October (third week due to
Columbus Day) and November (third week due to Veterans Day)

January 8th Marley and Me by John Grogan
February 12th The Memory Keeper's Daughter by Kim Edwards
March 12th River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt's Darkest
Journey by Candice Millard
April 9th The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
May 14th The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields
June 11th The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder,
Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary by Simon
Winchester
July 9th The Piano Tuner by Daniel Mason
August 13th Water for Elephants: A Novel by Sara Gruen
September 10th A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
October 15th Widow's War by Sally Gunning
November 19th Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War by
Nathaniel Philbrick
December 10th Digging to America by Anne Tyler

Week 7, Thing 17: Sandbox wiki

One thing already I don't like about this wiki (and it may be all PB wikis): You have to enable Javascript every time you view the page. The Javascript enabler is at the bottom of the page. So you think that there' s nothing on the page, when in fact there is disabled Javascript. How irritating. I put my Librarything catalog on Amy's Librarything but nothing shows on the page if it's on a computer that hasn't had Javascript enabled on that page yet.

The function for "save page as PDF" is great--doesn't work on my Javascript, but the formatting is beautiful, with the little sandwich at the top and the wiki name and page name. The "build a portfolio" function is very cool. Say you were working on a long project or series of projects--you could select the wiki pages that pertain to a report and put them together in a slideshow, PDF, or Word file. Then you could share the files or the URL of the slideshow. I picked some wiki pages that had some reference to 23 things in the title. You can add this particular wiki to Digg or del.icio.us, you can get an RSS feed for changes that are made to the wiki, and you can share the URL or full access to editing the wiki. Even though I don't like the Javascript disfunctionality, the tools available with this wiki software are well in line with other web 2.0 tools--lots of social networking, changeability of formats, easy enough for anyone to do. Excellent tool.

Week 7, Thing 17: Wikis

Wikis can be really useful as an online guide to something. For libraries, it could be computer procedures, customer service procedures, policies, links for continuing education, almost anything. I like the idea of subject guides in a wiki, except that the beauty of digital information is that it doesn't have to put things into rigid categorization (Everything is Miscellaneous is a great book for librarians to read! Really fascinating.). The booklovers site is a great wiki, one that patrons could participate in as well as librarians, contributing reviews and other book content to a local site (though a book review blog intended to be used by librarians and patrons alike I started a couple of years ago didn't work very well at my library). Generally anything that could be in its own small encyclopedia could work very well in a wiki, and the genius of it is open participation--many minds are smarter than one.

Week 6, Thing 15: The future of libraries

I think that Wendy Schultz is right, that the library is way more than books. We are more than our inventory. We are a community. In particular, we are a local community, responsible to our own particular users. As we move along the steps of the experience economy (from commodities/goods [books], to services [answering reference questions], to experiences [warm glow of having a family storytime], to transformation [teaching computer skills to new users]), we need to give our patrons more opportunities to customize their library experience, because individualized service in a community atmosphere is the future. Transformation is when the patron feels like a new or better person from spending time and money in the library--a common transformation for library patrons may be that they feel more like scholars or advanced computer users, from what they learn from us. For our patrons to be transformed by their use of the library requires that they get a personalized experience--everyone's transformation is going to be different. Computers especially allow us to do this (which is the entire premise of Everything is Miscellaneous--I'm a few chapters in)--let's let folks suggest books for purchase online, tag our catalog with useful categories (for heaven's sake, let's get rid of the classification "cookery"!), comment on a library blog, get instant RSS alerts when we add particular things to our catalog.... At the eVisioning conference I hosted a panel discussion on "The Library as Place: Physical and Virtual." Since we had been talking about the user-customized experience in the rest of the conference, my group started talking about what the user-customized library building and library online presence might look like. In one new library, a room that had been designed for a coffee bar that never materialized was taken over by nursing mothers, who then had a place for their other children to play while nursing their babies in a more secluded spot. Wisely, the library let the users define how that space should be used, rather than kicking the moms out! Our patrons should be allowed to design new library buildings and retrofit old ones. They should have space on our website to contribute to the library online community. And they should be in on the design and use of online libraries in Second Life and other communities. The librarian's role is changing--we are becoming facilitators rather than gatekeepers, and it's a much nicer place to be, I believe.

The participation gap (the new digital divide), the transparency problem, and the ethics challenge are things that libraries will have to work with. The millennials, although they are digital natives, may be more comfortable with technology, but they still may not have access to the technologies and skills they will need to be successful participants in American culture. Growing up with lots of media, these young people may not realize how much the media influences them. They also may lack ethical training on web participation, because publishing tools are eliminating the traditional publication tracks where they would have learned ethics from colleagues. Again, like we've seen in Shift Happens, the millennial generation will need lifelong learning skills more than any other generation. And we're going to need better search and finding tools. Like Tim O'Reilly says, "Data is the next Intel inside": data powers the web. We need proper federated search for website databases; Rollyo isn't going to cut it.

I find it interesting that Michael Stephens points out that the 2.0 librarian will have to be a trendspotter. I think he's right. We're going to have to be on the cutting edge of technology and services, and in order to be fiscally responsible in the technology we adopt, we'll need to be able to identify the technologies that will be of the most use to our patrons for the most amount of time. We need to know demographics and social data and ask our patrons what kind of technology they would like to use at the library and why. Being flexible enough to keep up with the pace of technology and modern society will be more important than ever--keep trying new stuff, and if it works, great; if it doesn't, scrap it and find out why. Just like in the learning process, permission to fail will have to be part of the "perpetual beta" of library 2.0.

Stephen J. Dubner, one of the authors of Freakonomics, had an interesting blog post on libraries and the digital economy. He points out that libraries have had an effect on book publishing that publishers may not really like--yes, libraries buy lots of books, but they then lend them out for free. The idea of licensing agreements for books is interesting and the comments are also well worth reading. Libraries are going to have to think about economics in the digital era and how different publishing models are going to affect what libraries can own, use, and lend.

To wrap up, innovation is what library 2.0 needs. The library will have to compete, kind of like a business, for our patrons' time and energy. Just because our things are "free" (if you're paying taxes, the library isn't free!) doesn't mean that people will use them. The library will have to be more memorable, create a better experience, allow patrons to create their own individualized library environment and services. It's within our reach. Fortune favors the bold--we just have to jump in.