Week 9, Thing 23!

I've really enjoyed doing 23 Things. Many of the things we explored are things that I was somewhat familiar with, but the discovery exercises helped me explore them a little deeper than I had in the past, so I still learned some things. My favorite week was probably the week we played with Flickr. I had used it so see shared photos with friends and family, but I hadn't ever played with the mashups. I really enjoyed that. I'd definitely be interested in doing another program like this!

Week 9, Thing 22

We don't have subscriptions to either of the subscription services, so I had to explore Project Gutenberg. It contains a lot of esoteric stuff, and lots of classics. I'm a Jane Austin fan, so I downloaded Emma. It was very easy to navigate the site and find things, so that's definitely in its favor. It has a lot of computer read audiobooks, which, frankly, I find a little creepy.

Week 9, Thing 21

I found a podcast to subscribe to, but I didn't like the search interfaces on the sites. It was hard to find results that were relevant to what I was looking for. I've subscribed to podcasts through itunes before, and that seemed easier. Podcasts can be very cool, though.

Week 9, Thing 20

I enjoy YouTube. I watch clips of concerts, episodes of television shows, music videos, old commercials from when I was a kid, and web based shows, like Chad Vader here. This just makes me laugh, and shows that there are so many creative people out there who utilize these sites to show the world what they can do. They don't need tons of money to produce it either. By the way, there are seven more episodes if you liked this one.

Week 8, Thing 19

I checked out Pandora. I've tried tons of internet radio in the past, but I really liked this one. You put in an artist you like, and it creates a station of music that's similar. Last.fm does the same thing, but I like this one much better. For one thing, it starts off with one by the artist that you put in, which is nice. I also liked that it tells you what about the music made it be include in the list. For example, when I put in Dave Matthews, it said it would look for songs with similar acoustic qualities, tonal qualities, etc. It found very relevant music. As far as library application, I don't really see a use for it, but it's fun!

Week 8, Thing 18

I really liked the revisions feature on Google Docs. I imagine that could come in really handy. I also really liked the share feature. It makes proofreading really easy if you can just share it with someone that way. I can definitely see why this could be really popular. I didn't like the fact that the fonts were so limited, though. I think that's something they really need to work on.

Week 7, Thing 17

I had so much fun playing in the sandbox! I added my blog to the favorite blogs page, then created my own favorites page, featuring some of my favorite not-too-famous musicians. I added links to their websites and MySpace pages, plus I uploaded my favorite song from each to my web hosting site and linked to the songs, so you can listen to them for yourself! It was a blast.

Week 7, Thing 16

In my last post, I talked about interactive book reviews and patron created booklists. What a great idea for a wiki! The Book Lover's wiki was great. I loved looking at the reviews. Wouldn't it be great to have a wiki where our patrons could collaborated on reviews for materials in our collections? It's an idea that lends itself so well to the format!

Week 6, Thing 15

So I just watched the YouTube video about Web 2.0 (located here) and wow. Just wow. Totally mag. Compelling, informative, beautifully done.

I read several of the articles in the discovery resources, and it struck me how much potential there is for making the library a truly interactive place. In The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova (It's about Dracula, but that's beside the point, and I didn't care for it, though many apparently did.) you can see the steps one had to go through to do research only 60 years ago. The students literally has to ask the librarian for what he needed, then have it brought to him, then give it back to be put away when he was finished. Now, anyone who has an internet connection has the world's information at their fingertips. It's a mind blowing concept. The modern library, of course, isn't so proprietary of its materials as the research libraries of former times; our patrons are free to browse the stacks, taking what they wish off the shelves themselves (though we still like to put it back ourselves), but we're still stuck with some of those antiquated mentalities.

We need to keep these musty tomes. What if someone needs them?
Chances are, they probably won't. If they haven't been checked out since 1986, what are the odds someone will need them tomorrow, or even 50 tomorrows from now? The information is probably on the web somewhere. We're pack rats. Just look at some of our offices and cubicles. We lean toward the pack rat in our collections as well. We'll weed straight fiction when it doesn't circ, so why are we so stingy when it comes to weeding nonfic? If anything, that's where we should be weeding! The information in our nonfic is all over the web. Focus on establishing good online resources for patron, then teach them how to use it. Most of our patrons prefer to do research online anyway.

The online catalog is just an e-version of the old card catalog.
Why, when it could be so much more? Our patrons can look up a book, see where it is, see if it's checked out, and even put a hold on it. Why shouldn't they be able to submit a review of it? Make comments about it? Dialogue with other patrons about it right there on the item's page? Tag it? We should make our catalogs into places where people come not only to find a book they know they want, but to discover which books they want after that. I love Amazon's "Customers who searched for...also expressed interest in" feature. Customer driven book lists and recommendations not only will help our patrons find new things, but cost us virtually nothing. Once the technology is in place, it basically runs itself.

Don't get me wrong. There's still a place for the brick and mortar library, the paper and ink book, and the flesh and blood librarian. The key is finding our place in this virtual world, and learning how to not only provide services for our patrons, but to collaborate with them to make the library a more enriched and accessible place.