#15 Library 2.0 and Web 2.0

I looked at the Discovery Resources a while ago and found them quite interesting but I've been putting off this blog post. I don't feel like I have much to add to discussions that hasn't already been said.
Here's a random thought that may or may not be relevant: one of the few amusing moments in the recent "The Librarians" premiere was the shot of the front door with the sign with all the modern jargon for what the place was and a blu-tacked notice underneath saying "Library". It seems like a bit of a metaphor for not getting so carried away with the latest and greatest that we forget to deliver what real people need and want to know.
Web 2.0 is a brilliant tool. It is changing the library world as we know it. But it is going to take some effort to sort out what's going to be of the most long term benefit. And it's going to need some top-level commitment and cooperation to get the best results for our users. We can introduce elements of what we learn at all sorts of basic levels but it still takes staff time and technology that we may not have.
It is impossible for me to keep my moral/political views out of this and I probably don't have to seeing it's my blog (and very few people will read it anyway!). Perhaps its just the election, global warming etc. etc. but I'm feeling very anxious about the huge divisions in our society and if Web 2.0 can't help deliver equity of access, empowerment to those most in need, global co-operation and understanding, then it ain't much use to us.

#14 Technorati

I had a look around Technorati but don't have much to say about it except phew!!! that's a lot of blogs to search. I'm certainly not ready to take the "claiming" step.
I've added a couple of green blogs to my deli. bookmarks (couldn't see the point of setting up Technorati favourites at this stage - just one more place to remember to go).
In my blog travels I discovered 24th November is "Buy Nothing Day". http://www.buynothingday.co.uk/I will try to observe this day and combine it with "Kick Howard Out Day". The two are not inherently incompatible: unless they have a fund-raising sausage sizzle at my local polling booth.

Are we lemmings?

Beware: rant follows

I'm getting a bit sick of humankind's obession with knowing what is the coolest, latest, most popular thing on the internet. Ok so tag clouds and "saved by x number of people x number of hours ago" and "most popular" listings may have a legitimate role to play but they also feed our inherent competiveness and/or conformity.

So what if millions of people have clicked on the You Tube video ad of the i-pod blender? Does that make it important? profound? vital? Am I a lesser being for not having gone there - or worse, gone there too late, when it's old news?

Jeez, get a life people! So what if you miss something? Or, heaven forbid, visit a site that only 2 other people have tagged. Popular doesn't necessarily = good.

Excuse me now while I go change out of my hair-shirt.

(Actually the i-pod blender could be kind of funny)

#13 del.icio.us

This time it all came together in a fairly textbook fashion. After creating my own del.icio.us account I explored some sites tagged as "storytelling", followed the thread to someone elses's bookmarks and stumbled across the "K12 Online Conference 2007: playing with boundaries" which is running right now. http://www.k12onlineconference.org/

It is "a conference by educators for educators around the world interested in integrating emerging technologies into classroom practice. A goal of the conference is to help educators make sense of and meet the needs of a continually changing learning landscape." I found it interesting to look at teachers' perspectives on Web 2.0: they have a lot in common with us librarians (particularly the C&YS brand). I found the "Attendr" mash-up tool they use to map conference participants and their knowledge of one another interesting.
I'm wondering if there is or could be a library equivalent of the on-line conference?
I think I probably will use del.icio.us as a research tool and as a convenient other place to park my bookmarks. However, looking at the "Favorites" on my home computer (one which admittedly is used by 6 people) I can see that del.i (i'm getting sick of typing out the whole damn thing with all the dots) will only be as useful as the time I'm prepared to put in to keeping it neat and tidy. Otherwise I'll still have the clutter of sites like "that B&B we stayed at in New Zealand two years ago", "Sound effects search results", "footy tips", "bell flowers by Yurii Shumakov" etc. etc.

#12 Rollyo

Has the cyber world been waiting for a search roll on all things Moomin? I doubt it, but now we've got one anyway.
I added some other people's search rolls on YA things and green technology. I found it quite hard to find search rolls on the topics I was after: several times nothing was returned for my search terms or I had to go too broad and got a lot of dross.
I kind of get Rollyo but to be honest I think I'll find myself opening Google in the time it takes me to remember to hop on over to Rollyo. I just don't have the passion to pursue particular topics that other people seem to have; I guess I'm more of an intermittent eclectic grazer really.

#11 All about LibraryThing

I like LibraryThing! It has a warm and fuzzy community feel to it. And it will be good for finding new things to read. What more can I say? PS That's Tove Jannson with some of her characters above.

Just About Blogging with Blogger

So I've spent a little time trying to make my blog look a little more bloggish (ok it was a lot of time but you wouldn't know from looking at it). Is it just me or is the template really rather rigid and not so user-friendly?
I tried to make a pictorial blog header using a blog-header generator but it looked awful when I uploaded it. And I'm having real trouble getting images to go where I want them to - why can't I just drag and drop?
One thing I do like is the colour choices for fonts that are shown in Settings.
I'm going to change some colours and fonts when I get around to it.
And I might ask some of my colleagues how they manage to get the thing to do what they want....

#10 Image Generators cont'd

First of all I tried to use the Bob Dylan Message Generator http://generatorblog.blogspot.com/2007/09/bob-dylan-message-generator.html. It replaces the words on the cue cards that Bob flips in the Subterranean Homesick Blues film clip with words of your choice. I put in some favourite acerbic quotes about books and movies and was quite pleased with the finished result. But then I realised I could email the clip to my friends but not save it onto my computer - so you can't check it out.
Then I had some fun with the Conspiracy Theory Generator http://www.cjnetworks.com/~cubsfan/conspiracy.html and came up with a highly implausible theory about library fines and Family First. It was ok but the prompts weren't very clear so it would've needed a bit of reworking to make it read properly but I was just too tired.
Later I tried using the Motivator Generator http://bighugelabs.com/flickr/motivator.php, taking one of my family snaps and adding a slightly witty motivational caption. I saved it to my computer where it still languishes as Blogger just couldn't upload it despite several tries.
As you can see, I did have some success with Captioner http://bighugelabs.com/flickr/captioner.php. So although I haven't got as much to show for my time spent, I can assure you I had some fun and know where to go if I want to while away more happy hours on my sometimes temperamental computer.

#10 Play Around with Image Generators

Not so very succesful with all my image generating this time but I did try! I had some fun putting things into neon signs. Why Thesaurus? Well it's not a word you see up in lights very often, but why not?
The horse image is in honour of the forthcoming and possibly horseless Melbourne Cup. The other two are in honour of the election campaign we're all over already.
The link to the neon sign generator is http://www.neonsign.com/bizsign.html

#9 Finding Feeds

Here I am leaping boldly from one Feed to another!

I've added a few more feeds to my account. The tools mentioned were useful but you have to be pretty spot on with your search terms to avoid lots of dross.

I was looking for feeds on early literacy programs in public libraries, Philip Reeve's books (and upcoming film I believe) and the situation in Burma.

I had a go at adding RSS feeds from Ebsco searches but not sure if they worked! I've now got a news feed on Burma and have also subscribed to the Avaaz Foundation blog - information on this came to me via email.

Time will tell whether I access these feeds regularly or not!

#8 RSS

Really Simple Syndication or Redundant Subscription Service?
Yes it really is pretty simple and I can see how time-saving it could be if you had sites that you regularly access and topics you want to keep updated on it's just that I don't tend to use the internet that way at the moment. The honest truth is that I don't have time at work or at home to keep my finger on the pulse of whatever's going on in cyberspace. I know, I know there's heaps of relevant interesting, important, clever and amusing stuff being posted all the time and I'M MISSING OUT but then I'm also missing out on getting enough exercise, reading all the good books that come across the circ. desk, writing my novel, visiting art galleries, seeing Prague etc. etc. etc.
If I feel the need to know something about a topic then I'll go searching on the net and sometimes I'll stumble across something fabulous that leads to something else fascinating - that's how it works for me at the moment. Who knows, now that I've got some RSS feeds I might become a convert and devote regular time to reading blogs and looking out for new news, but something else will have to go to make room in my day and I'm just not prepared to give up coffee or chocolate yet (Randomly Silly Suggestion: I could check my feeds while drinking coffee and eating chocolate if I'm really careful)
This exercise has been useful to me in that I now know what RSS feeds are: I did wonder what the little buttons and symbols meant and had even tried in the past to get onto the SLV's Read Alert without understanding what I was trying to do and (consequently) with no success.
I can also see how RSS could be relevant and of use to our library patrons. I'm sure there are many who would like to be updated on our events and new titles, for example.
For the record, this is my public bloglines account:
http://www.bloglines.com/public/TIPtoes7
And now I'm going out to enjoy the Really Super Sunshine!

#7 Technology - lifelogging, mobile phones etc.

We went to the Melbourne Show the other night and after a fair bit of inner turmoil I decided to go on the giant Ferris Wheel (the one that is fearsomely high with fully-enclosed glass-sided gondalas that sway gently in the breeze). This was the first Ferris Wheel ride I'd had since I was about four I reckon. You see I suffer from claustrophobia and a fear of heights so this was a biggy for me. The first few minutes were the worst: I now know that the cliche "to have one's heart in one's mouth" is not a cliche at all but an accurate description of what happens when you are wrestling with a full-on panic attack. My heart must have been in my mouth because I could hear it pounding in my ears and at a rate way faster than is healthy and something was stopping me from breathing properly and no matter how much I swallowed I couldn't dislodge it.
Meanwhile, the rest of the family were finding the view AWESOME and the lights AMAZING. My daughter grabbed the mobile phone and started taking pictures of the city lights and the pullsating neon rainbow of the other rides and sideshows below. Then she shot some video footage - on the phone - panning around the gondola and momentarily catching me on camera. I'm sure I had the look on my face of some small creature about to become road-kill. I remember thinking "if I have a heart attack now, she's going to get it on film: DON'T HAVE A HEART ATTACK!!!"
Anyway, I survived the first few minutes and with lots of encouraging self-talk and white-knuckled gripping of the seat I even managed to look around a bit (around, not down) and affirm that yes, the view was AWESOME and the lights AMAZING.
It was wonderful to reach the ground again and I was really quite proud of myself. I looked at the photos on the phone and although they are interesting and (some) quite beautiful, I really don't need them: I'll save the experience to my mind's hard drive and retrieve it next time I have to negotiate a plane trip or a lift to the 30th floor of a building. I would post a shot of me looking feral on the Ferris Wheel for the world's enjoyment but we don't appear to have the technology or the knowhow to get the photos OFF the phone!
Which segues nicely to...an article I was reading on "lifelogging", which is recording and storing, as much as possible, all the information of your life: "everything you did for every minute of every day". It just seems crazy, self-indulgent and insufferably boring to me. But I do love the delicious irony that "lifeblogs begun at any given time may not be readable in the future if programs and formats continue to be superseded. Imagine having your entire life only on tape, and no VCR to play it back on" (The Age Good Weekend 6/10/2007)
It seems to me that just being able to do something is not justification enough for doing it. Having said that, the possibilities that mobile phone and information sharing technology offer to us now are truly amazing and have great potential for doing good in the world.
Which brings me to a thought-provoking article I found called "How Mobiles and Blogs Don't -- and Do -- Help Human Rights" on a great site http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/007350.html.
It talks about the images coming out of Burma right now that let people around the world see what is happening to the anti-government protesters. It seems vital that these things are recorded and disseminated but the question is posed as to whether it makes any difference to what is happening: the government is still engaged in brutal repression regardless of whether cameras are rolling or not.
It makes me think back to Tiannamen Square and the days before mobile phone technology could be used by ordinary people to bear witness to human rights abuses. I still hold in my mind's eye the image of the man who stood in front of the tanks - one image that went all around the world before an awful visual silence descended and who outside China really knows the full extent of what followed?
I missed "International Bloggers' Day for Burma" on the 4th of October when bloggers were asked to hold off blogging and instead put up one banner underlined with the words „Free Burma!“. How effective was it? I don't know. How can you measure such a thing? I think you do what you can in hope.

#6 More Flickr Fun

Today I had a look at Flickr Color Pickr and became quite mesmerised by the palette - so many choices and great photos out there. I still feel a bit spooked by the amount of time and energy people obviously spend on these things - all that uploading and commenting and mashing going on with me totally oblivious to it. It is heartening to see that so many people are using their cybertalents for good, not evil, or at least for niceness...
Then I had a go at Montagr and after some fairly lame attempts and wondering what to montage I stumbled on some Moomin postcard images. I decided to put my mosaic up near my Blog title because the images make me feel happy. I didn't mean it to be quite so big but I'll leave it like that for now.
Looking at other people's blogs I can see that mine could be much improved if I spent more time on it; but I guess that applies to lots of things in life. Anyway I think I'm doing enough to learn enough for now. So much so that I'll give the Librarian Trading Card a miss and not feel guilty!