Ashlee and Misty

Ashlee and Misty
Originally uploaded by peachy92

I Blogged from Flickr!

The top of the Mountain

I've gotten more out of Eleven Things than I expected I would. New experiences have given me new ideas (now I've got to do some follow through!) Always a good thing.

I understand why the social networking sites/technologies are popular and useful. Also I feel I've gotten some idea about their impact and role in libraries. I'm anxious to learn more at the GOLD/GALILEO meeting I'll be attending this Friday, the sessions are about Library 2.0. Ann, Melissa, Jewell, Nancy and I are confernece going, Nancy thought of creating a Wiki to help coordinate our trip planning for the confernece. Jewell put one up, it helped!

I liked the game-like, social, spoon-full-of-sugar format of this learning experience very much.

What will I carry on with? I think I'll want to keep up with Good Reads (too fun!) and Delicious (truely useful!) I hope I'll use wikis, image generators, widgits well. My Space is pretty static, so no effort to leave that up and see if any famous people want to be my friend.

I plan to put some Armstrong archives photos up in Flickr. Need to learn a bit more about Flickr, but I think might be a fun, on-going project. I'll post to this Blog about it.

I think I'll continue to post to this Blog about Library 2.0 ideas/projects, like what I learn from the conference. I'm not sure how often that will be; I don't know how much I'll have to say. I do like blogging, though, perhaps I'll start another or morph this Blog with a new topic.

My Space

I decided to join My Space instead of Facebook, 'cause I have a friend who is already on My Space and I find friends are important in this world of social networking. Looking at a few profiles, I find most folks have impossibly many and famous friends.

From reading an newpaper article on security issues with Facebook and MySpace, I discovered that these sites have groups. I didn't notcie groups on MySpace I think because I found the site overwhelming with ads and links and so hard to navigate and use. I didn't join the any of the disgusting groups mentioned in the article, but I easily found the Armstrong group and joined.

I put in a profile (I'm a pro at summing up my interests now), a photo and sent a message to my friend (that I could have sent via regular e-mail.)

I guess the point of this site is to meet new friends through your friend's friends.

Delicious

After downloading the tag button to my browser, I'm off and running adding websites to delicious. I'm thinking this will save time, especially if the tagging I'm doing helps and I can create a covenient organization for the sites, haven't done that part yet.

Useful both for remembering an odd site and for handyness: having a web-based list easily accessible, hopefully used instead of constanting searching the same names in google.

And, of course, it is fun and social, I liked checking out Jewell's site (I learned of it from her Blog.) That remindes me to cruise over to Jewell's and add the house hound's favorite that I saw she had a link to. A local government site that is a gem for looking at houses in Savannah: photos, location, price! It can also be used for stalking (ahem, keeping in touch...)

Dipping into Blog Ocean

Looked into Blogs of note and the first I chose, RickLibrarian, turned out a reader after my own heart. Through his blog I explored others, soon I was deep in book review blogs and books to be read.

Armstong's Flickr

I searched "Armstrong and Savannah" and found that there are many photos of the campus and student life at Armstrong, most of them put up by one student. It was exciting to me that a student had done a set of the school, here is the url:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/peachy92/sets/72057594137852274/

She also has sets for the Wesley Foundation and the ACM group on campus, see her complete sets

http://www.flickr.com/photos/peachy92/sets/

In the Wesley Foundation set I found a couple great pics of Ashlee and Misty. When I tried to save/and upload to this site I was not able to see the photo. Perhaps some protection in place there or incompatibility.

I left a comment for peachy that I'm interested in her work and encouraging it for other students.

I think my next step is to explore putting some of the fun photos from the archives on Flickr, than maybe using that as a draw.

Widgets and image generator

I looked through the short list of Web 2.0 awards and checked out the widgets, 'cause I didn't know what those were. The top rated site, YourMinis had the most widgets for download, but not much explaination for new users. The second rated, Springwidgets, had less widgets but a bit nicer layout, more info. It is from their blog that I found a definition:

A web widget is a portable chunk of code that can be installed and executed within any separate HTML-based web page by an end user without requiring additional compilation.

I don't understand "adition compilation, but since I don't have to do it, I guess that is alright! Widgets are gadgets that you can add to a desk top or website, the most useful I saw were calculators and clocks. From home, I might add a feed from my Netflicks account, that will put my queue on my desktop. That was the best widget I saw, in Springwidget. I didn't add any of the widgets for fear of introducing pop ups and such, since I didn't see anything that addressed this concern imediately on the site.

I used image generator to make a icon that said "New!" to put into a letter advertising our new services. I tried to find a ready made icon for this or a clip art and could not. It seemed it would be simple to steal one, but I ended up making on with image generator, see above. I also made a smiley face sign, 'cause they are soo cute.

Wiki Waka

A Maori (of New Zealand) watercraft is called a waka.

My journey among the wikis leads me to believe that their purpose is more serious than the name suggests (same with wakas among Maori.) I think their best potential is illustrated in the Commoncraft video linked from Learning at Lane. Wikis are an improvement over e-mail when a group needs to craft plans, policy, manuals or do some of the inital work on a collaborative document.

For a reference librarian, that leads to the Wikipedia black hole. An encyclopedia is a collaboratively written document that requires a lot of editing, but I bridle at calling a Wikipedia an encyclopedia.

Decisions made when an invidudal, or group collaboratively, writes an article are necessary fixed in time, until the process is revisited. The wiki alows endless revisions by whoever notices a need for one, and so has the advantage of currency. However I think this more open and open-ended process has some pitfalls. The wikipedia article we read on Library 2.0 was informative, workmanly but I felt is missed the mark in really summing up all sides of this new, unformed and somewhat controverisal issue. It did not present an educated guess at future directions. I felt the article held back more than an invidual author would in addressing Library 2.0.

I hope that we won't confuse Wikipedia's role with that of reference works where authority, authorship, carefully considered and balanced writing are important. I really doubt that everyone's endless input is equivalent to an author's craft.

Perhaps more sophisicated users of wikis know how to get around the "everyone's opinion becomes no opinion" problem via discussion (in chatrooms? listservs? bulletin boards? oh, no!) and consensus before posting. But if you limit the enless edit, is it still a wiki?

Not to say that an online, free encyclopedia is not a good idea. The New Georgia Encylcopedia is an excellant example of one, the main difference being these articles are written by an invited author, often an expert on the topic.

I think the idea of using wikis for the subject guides is excellant, both to help hook students by giving them a chance to add sources and to make them easier to update. While S.G.'s require a lot of editing, knowledge and experience, they do not call for the kind of writing found in an encyclopedia article. In my opinion, use of the Wikis would improve these documents, certainly worth a look.

Similarly, I'd like to try using a wiki to craft a policy or planning document and see how this tool would help. However, I don't want to throw face-to-face discussion out with the long meetings, multiple photocopies and penciled in revisions. Humans evolved a lot more slowly than technology!

Blogs, wikis and even flicker all address the need for people without web design knowledge (like me!) to make websites (like this.) Employing many hands/minds in adding useful content to the web is a good thing, usually.

I created a Wiki for my Paris and Provence group, no one in the group has posted anything yet!

You'll notice I did not link to Wikipedia, that was intentional.

Library Thing

I'm still loyal to Good Reads, but I joined Library Thing to check it out. I liked
the feed to the Blog, so I set that up. It dawns on me that Good Reads is about what you are reading and Library Thing is about books that you own, a personal library cataloged both for practical reasons and to appreciate the collection. I collect books, a bit. Most of the books I buy I turn over to libraries/book sales or give to friends. My intention for Library Thing was just to put my current read and keep that up in order to have a list of books read, but that is really what Good
Reads is for. Maybe I'll catalog my home bookshelves on Library Thing, someday.
In addition to introsprective catalogs Library Thing has all the groups and
discussions to live up to the social networking angle.

Library 2.0, what's it all about?

After reading the different perspectives on Library 2.0 in the OCLC Newsletter, the Wikipedia entry and some of it's blogography entries, I can see that some people take this stuff fairly seriously and write thoughtfully about the topic. The Blogs I've surfed to then skimmed through can be informative and the response-comments useful. Library 2.0 does go beyond Good Reads (so-long, high school fun!). I might start to argue in my mind with some of of the views expressed, but I sort of give up as not worth the effort. I guess I'm getting a bit past impassioned discussions about the shape of the future ( so-long college fun!)

The quote/idea/definition that most resonanted with me, also gave me an idea (which I immediate thought, duh? Why didn't I think of that before?) I'm lifting only the first line from the quote because I'm less and less in agreement as she elaborate and mentions specfics, but here is Sarah Horton as quoted in Blyber's "11 reasons why Library 2.0 exists and matters" (Blyberg.net, accessed July 19th, 2007)

Library 2.0 simply means making your library’s space (virtual and physical) more interactive, collaborative, and driven by community needs.

Yes, this would be helpful. Partly these ideas are already in process under other flags (outreach, education, accountability), but I agree that the website projects I've seen so far, especially such as Flickr, provide any and all with a space and some easy-to-use tools in order to share stuff they've created and so create something new, that is true collaboration.

The idea that I got is simply to make an Armstrong group on Flickr where students, fac, staff alumni can share their Armstrong photos, in order to strengthen the Armstrong community (and its photo collection.) Could Flickr replace the College Yearbook? Maybe not entirely but since the yearbooks are already gone, anything is a worth a try. I wonder what you all think of this idea? I might develop it a bit in a seperate post.

In addition, Horton's quote suggests that "traditional" web-based library tools, such as OPACs or bibliographic database could beneift from addition of social networking's ideas. More chances to "talk back" as in posting a comment; to share what you are doing, such as blogging. What if students posted their bibliographies on the web for all the world to see? Would they take more time creating them? They already share them in order to avoid doing the research....I'm not sure exactly what effect this would have but blogging make me more aware of my reader...even if I don't have one!

I do have some issues with writing from this medium. One is that I couldn't find, or couldn't be bothered to find the original source for the quote above, not unusual maybe but not an improvement on traditional sources!

OMG! I'm addicted to Good Reads

Now that I've made friends (I have 7!) I'm really liking Good Reads. I like seeing what my friends list and recommend, and that reminds me of other books I've read and when I list them my list grows and now I'm sort of proud of myslef. I have read (at least!) 69 books. I like catagorizing them (surprise, surprise!) I can see how the social aspect draws you in and then the solitary/internal aspect (listing books or writing a log entry) becomes rewarding also.

One caveat: browsing the Good Reads reviews caused a bit of a spoiler for my current read.

Good Reads is a bit slow to load and kind of cluncky to navigate. I'd not want to use it to idenitfy books by subject, but it seems to have a pretty good database of titles. I wonder if they cross reference for different editions of the same title.

Good Reads

Cool, I'd like to know what books I've read and when, I don't usually like to keep lists like this, maybe this will inspire me!

I felt kind of friendless on good reads. I'm more interested seeing what other people are reading. The only fellow Lane Library learners I could find were Jewell and Beth M. And I started a group, hoping that would be a way to make friends/see people's lists.


When I logged in just now I saw a friend from Church on the main page, she has hundreds of books listed and 15 friends, some of which I know too! I was too embarrassed by my slim, lopsided booklist to approach her as a friend.

Good Reads is a bit like high school.

Oh, here's a like to my to be read shelf

http://www.goodreads.com/review/list/

Malaprop

I really see my typos in these posts. Some of them seem a bit Freudian and/or Mrs. Malapropish. Sometimes I think it is the wordprocessing software filling in another word, but I think it might be my brain misfiring. I notice that I wrote Imagine Generator in the last post instead of image generator, that was a mistake but I left it. Last night I watched a film with a scene in which there was a discussion of whether a man's death was accidental or suicide, it ends with the question, Isn't everything an accident really, anyway?

Imagine Generator

Was so-so impressed with image generator. Some of the links had directions for newbies, others did not, so it took me a bit of browsing to get the routine. Not hard once I figured out the 3 to 4 steps involved.

I did recognize where you all got some of the images on your Blogs. Is this where The Laminator got her barcode? That was cool! I'm more impressed with the results then the resource with this one.

Now that I see the image I generated, I see it looks good online. A clever person could use this to enhance websites, I think. They might need some time to browse Imagine Generator's many lists!

Flickr

Photo of one of Avignon's best restaurants (I didn't eat there or take this photo.) The view from the outside tables is the Baroque facade of St. Pierre's

I joined Flickr to post my meager collection of photos from a recent trip to Paris and Provence. I also set up a group for our trip in hopes the others who took more and better photos would post some of them to share.

Flickr was, overall, easy join/post photos. I'm glad that I did not need to give them my personal or work e-mail address, though I did need to generate a e-mail at Yahoo! But that went fairly fast and signing onto Flickr, even creating a group is not many steps. I did NOT use Flickr's invite option for other members of the travel group, since I thought they might resent the solicitation. Rather I sent an e-mail from my home account with links to Flickr.

Another member of the trip put up her photos up on Flickr also (she had used if before) and joined the group, but she has not figured out the step to add her photos to the group collection, yet.

So, here are links to my photos, Mary Ellen's photos and our Group:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/9669010@N02/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/9702002@N05/

http://www.flickr.com/groups/396413@N20/

This task helped me understand how the groups of photos (Dog's noses, Librarian's Desks, and a group of photos of Provence that numbers in the thousands of shots) arise and grow in Flickr. I imagine people find the groups while surfing and think, "I've got a photo of that!" Or, "I've got that and will take a phots of it!" Then they ask to join the group and then add their photo or simply add the tag. At Flickr the collections manage to be both idiosyncratic and collective; the work of many.

I've seen links to Flickr from organization's website, as a way to display their photos. It could be useful for displaying digital photos from the library's special collections. Flickr limits the size of each photo uploaded for free accounts, but I think there is no limit to number of photos. Also, it seems that photos uploaded are considered fair game for others to use, even edit, so that would be a consideration. Though I did see copyright restrictions on some of the photos.

Best of all Flickr is easy to browse and search, adding tags, or descriptors for the photo, is very easy.

This is the most useful site on the list for reference questions, so far, I think. Finding a good copyright-free photo is a fairly common request. From my searching (for example looking for keyword Savannah) there were plenty of well-done photographs to choose from; don't know whether the resolution would be high enough for publication.

Open in a New window?

Is it possible to set links to open in a new window this Blog?

More on Feeds

Cool!

While linking to bloglines from my blog, I discovered that you can put feeds directly on your blog page (it is one of the options in ad a page element) so I did that with my top three feeds.

My Feeder Frenzy

After watching the PALNET video on Internet feeds, I explored Bloglines to set up a web-based feed for myself and to look at popular feeds.

It was fun to review the 200 most popular feeds, from those I chose: The Shifted Librarian, Savannah weather, several news services, two moview review feeds and the NYT Book Review.

I also set up a feed from Librarian Avengers. Not among the 200 most popular, but one that Page T. shwed me months ago. I recalled the author's humor, her librarian's desk and lots of cat photos (the latter two on her companion Flickr site.) Looking at current posts, L.A. still seems to be worth feeding from. Clicking on the RSS icon easily added it to my Blogline feed.

However, I don't know that I will go to a website in order to check the outpourings of other websites. Time will tell if I go to Bloglines, I'll link to it on my Blog as a reminder.

One feed that I'm exposed to without much choice is the news put up on my Internet provider's site. I see when I login to the web version of my home e-mail account. On the login screen they flash current "news" with pictures, which I usually notice. Being pretty much NPR monogamous this news feed is how I found out about the Richard Gere and Ballywood star's kissing scandal.

I'd like to have the Internet feed/feeds presented where I will see them while going about daily tasks. I suppose this is accomplished by the client program described in the video, or incorportaing feeds into web browers.

I'd like to be able to create a feed in the window of my blog (or other website.) I'll bet this is possible.

I also need is a source that circumvents my Internet service provdier. I'd like to chuck Comcast for good!

This task reminds me of the Internet Scout project each Friday though it was designed for current awarness. I'd never read it if I didn't get the e-mail, so I guess it feeds me.

Before I begin

Before I do anything, I research it. Especially since I missed the initial session about Library 2.0 project while I was on holiday in France, I wanted to read a bit about it. I remembered a colleague had e-mailed an article about it, but I had deleted that from my mail. I googled with no luck (info overload.) Finally tried Omnifile and found an article about Helene Blowers (ironically also available free on the web) that included a link to her Blog and from there I found her libary's version of the Library 2.0. I have barely browsed these and a few other articles on this idea for teaching/learning about these technologies.



The idea of learning by doing sure fits well with exploring social networking technology. I also like the idea expressed in this quote from Robin Hastings "We "ate our own dog food" and used the same technical platform to create the program we were asking our staff members to use to learn about Web 2.0 technologies." ("The Journey to Library 2.0." Libary Journal. April 15th 2007, paragraph 7. Accessed from H.W. Wilson's Omnifile)



Then I asked a colleague to fill me in and found the missing link Lane Library 2.0 , I'm on my way!

Blog scare!

Working the reference desk today I decided to login and "work" on my blog (I've tried on 2-3 templates before finding the right one, not excessive, I think!)

I had a scare when I logged in and found that my blog was not there! I could still see it using the link, but could not login and edit. I resolved the problem by reading the help screens a bit and learning that I might have entered the wrong login/password (thought I don't see how I did that. It might have been related to my following those directions about creating a Google account. As far as I know, I don't have a Google account.) Anyway, after sending myself a few e-mails with my correct username and password and reseting the latter twice. I can now successfully login and change what I did yesterday.

I did get pretty frustrated by this, since I did NOT want to start from scratch, I almost gave up!

So, it looks like Google owns Blogger now. I notice that Yahoo! owns Flickr and one needs to create a Yahoo! e-mail in order to use Flickr. Hmmmm.... But I'm getting ahead of my task list.

Second thoughts

I keep wanting to go back and edit my first post! Now I know why I don't keep a diary, too self conscious! I've added a picture and profile and tried to customize the blog a bit, wish I could tweat the background color, green, but not that green, rather this green. Hmmm... guess I'll post some links next.

I'm blogging

Here's my blog! I have played around with blogs before; I created one at home after being really impressed with the Library's blog. I 'll link to it after I've worked on it a bit! Don't want you all to see my dusty blog!