The future is now

I am really not aware of any tools or sites that should be considered for this type of program. As they become available and known, I hope someone (not to mention names, but I know we  can count on Garrett!) will be on top of it and pass it on.

What I think would be of use to all of us is to actually use the tools we have just learned about– start a wiki for a work group (or family or bookclub or whatever!)   I am hoping to write a blog on my next trip, and upload some digital pictures from my flickr account.

For Staff Development Day, Marsha and I are leading a discussion group on restaurants and recipes.  In the past, maybe we would have considered making a recipe book, or a printed list of local restaurants.  Now, I’m thinking we should tag restaurants or recipes and put them on deli.cio.us, or start a library wiki, or ….

Hopefully, we all have learned a new mind-set and will start to use these tools and keep up with new ones as they appear.   In that way, we will definitely be part of the Library of the Future– whatever form that takes!

The missing post– something to do w/ MP3 Player

Well, after checking through drafts, edits, etc., I still can’t figure out what happened to lose an entire post….in any case, I’ll try to reconstruct my thoughts.

I have used Califa to download e-books to my computer in the past, but can’t wait to download audiobooks to take to the gym, while working in the yard, etc. I particularly like looking at the recently returned books– just like our patrons do! I am also glad that there are some books (mostly classics) that are always available.

I enjoyed reading The Libraryman’s Blog– especially the post/responses about
Facebook for Library Professionals.

Thoughts on Sunnyvale Library Learning 2.0

Well, just about there; didn’t think it would happen! I got what I thought was a late start, but I am very glad that I went through this program. I think it was a great exercise, and way to learn about many of the tools, social networking sites, etc. that are out in cyberspace. Even though there should have been plenty of time to work on this (if I had kept up right from the beginning), I did feel like I was just rushing through some of it instead of taking time to really “play”. (At one point I felt like I was just signing up for various services, and had to start keeping a notebook of my usernames/passwords– which I should probably do for everything in my life!) However, my feeling is that just becoming familiar w/ some of the sites, terms, etc. has made me a more proficient internet user; some of that has already translated into helping patrons with reference questions as well.

I really want to thank Garrett for all that he has done to help with this program. His enthusiasm and encouragement were always welcome; I liked his comments on the blog entries as well! I’m sure I would have gotten stuck many times if he hadn’t been sitting right near me to get me through the rough spots.

This type of self-paced program has been easy to follow, and there definitely was enough time to finish, if you had at least a few “productive” weeks and spent enough time catching up. In the future, if we didn’t want to embark on this ambitious of a program, I think we could present some new sites/ideas/features at a general staff meeting.

The actual workings/ instructions of the program were generally very good and easy to follow. I did find it disconcerting to start at the bottom of the blog, and work up the page; it was kind of counter-intuitive for me, even though I understand that is how blogs work. I think w/ a “curriculum” it could have started at Lesson 1, and moved down. Also, I understand that for the committee members it was easier to get an email than to just look at people’s blogs, but that step somehow was the one I kept forgetting to do.

Thanks to the committee for putting this together– I think that those of us who participated definitely learned a lot. It was a good cooperative experience as we would definitely help each other (when Garrett wasn’t around!) and learning through showing another person definitely cemented some of it into my brain. Just the act of keeping a blog was useful in itself; adding links, pictures, videos and seeing how easy it is to do these things is extremely useful to SDWT already as we work on our own PassItOn blog.

You Tube: not for those who have busy lives!

I have looked at YouTube clips before, and have been sent emails with clips to look at, but I’ve actually never spent time at WORK looking for my favorite little video. There are so many out there!! I decided to look up the TV Show The Office, since I hardly ever watch it, and I had just seen the new Steve Carrell movie over the weekend. Here is the clip:

I can’t believe how easy it is to upload a video. In fact, I wanted to move it around on the blog, and that was super-simple too.

Obviously, looking at YouTube was not library related, but I could certainly see how small videos would be useful. We could make podcasts  about using our print system, placing a hold, using Link+, etc. (Just think of anything you explain more than 5 times/day!) We could have explanations for various databases, publicity for upcoming events, and little biographies of librarians with their favorite books. So many uses; so little time!

Web 2.0: The best of the best

I chose to check out Web 2.0 nominees, and chose to look at “books”. I was glad to see Library Thing listed, as well as biblio.com, which I have used to look for out-of-print books. All of those people out there who are looking to self-publish might really like lulu, so I am glad I saw that as well.

From there, I just continued down the page to business, where I saw a site that would have helped me (had I known about it) for the past few months, shopify.com where you can organize your shopping. From there, down to City Guides, where one of my favorite sites, Yelp, was listed. I tend to check out Yelp for restaurants, etc. whenever someone suggests a new place.

I could see continuing down the list for quite a while…. but that will have to wait until I finish these 27 things and can just spend time browsing away. These sites can be addictive!!

Google Labs

It is interesting to look at Google Labs, and see which of the “graduates” we use a lot: e.g. Google Scholar, NewsAlerts, and even Google Maps came from the lab. Also, some of the new features that we have learned about during this Learning 2.0 exercise (e.g. Google Documents) are also from the lab.

Even though I don’t want to start a web page at the moment, I checked out Google’s tool: Google Page Creator, and found that it would be quite easy for someone to use it to set up a web page. I also played around with the map feature that allows you to set up maps and keep various sites as default places that you always want to start from.

Google is truly amazing!

Google Docs

What a great idea!! After seeing how to do it, I especially enjoyed reading the “testimonials” at the end of how people are using it. Some great ideas of how to make it even more useful. I definitely see the use of this one for groups- like you say, even better than the J drive!

So many times I have emailed things to myself, just so that I don’t lose them… this is a much better way to save links, info, etc. in a way that can be sorted, filed, etc. I definitely will use this tool!

RSS Feeds

I’ve been doing RSS feeds for a while. I’ve been enjoying getting Librarian’s Guide to the Internet, NYTimes, and even Dilbert. Of course, my favorite is PASS IT ON, the adult services blog.

(I just realized that I had saved this as a draft, but never “published” it).

Google can organize your surfing/

I haven’t used all the Google tools as much as I thought I would, but I think that this custom searching tool can be quite helpful. I can definitely see using it for planning travel, when I continually go back and forth to the same sites. I also have been doing a lot of online shopping recently, and I could see grouping my favorite sites/stores together. (I’ll do that when I’m done with this “homework”.) For this exercise, I just wanted to try looking at Library 2.0 sites, so here is my Google link

http://www.google.com/coop/cse?cx=011001260382988253415%3Avp7_oc7dk8i

In keeping with the subject at hand, namely Library 2.0, I found the articles that were mentioned quite interesting. I especially resonated with the first article “Away from the “icebergs”. Having just been weeding a lot of fiction, I am always worried about discarding classic authors who just aren’t popular anymore. With Link+, I began to hesitate less about letting go of some of these classics; now after reading this article, I think I will just go for it! There is no reason to keep a book that hasn’t circulated in years “just in case”. A very freeing concept!!

Another article “Into a new world of librarianship” discusses users accessing, consuming and creating content. This dovetails nicely with the discussion we just had at our last SDWT meeting regarding LibraryThing for Libraries– in which users will be able to add tags to books, thus creating their own content. I think this is definitely the way to go. Having helped patrons for years with cookbooks, I still can’t get past our subject designation of “cookery”– now who uses that term except librarians??

The article on better bibliographic services intrigued me in regard to packaging and pushing metadata. It makes perfect sense to me that in this day and age there should be as much collaboration as possible.

I enjoyed seeing where Wendy Schultz thinks we are going in Library 3.0. I’m not sure I have enough time in my week to do my real life, and here are people spending more than 40 hours / week in Second Life. At this point I can’t imagine Second Life being as compelling as that, but time will tell, and I certainly don’t want to be left behind!

Wikis

Having used wikis (most obviously Wikipedia, which I really like!) I never really thought about starting one and now I can really see how useful they would be.  I thought the booklovers wiki from Princeton was particularly good; I could definitely see us starting one similar to that, with staff suggestions as one of the options.  I could also see SDWT using a wiki to keep track of policies, procedures, etc. which would allow us to  easily search (and I don’t mean thumbing through the Red Book!)