A great example of the usefulness of Zoho!

I uploaded our New Materials Tracking spreadsheet to Zoho, and now Irene and I can both add titles to it as they come through circulation, without having to constantly email it to each other. This is so much more convenient! Not only that, but at the end of the month Tom can view the additions to the spreadsheet without me needing to email him the most recent version of it. Just one example of how useful applications like Zoho can be for the workings of our library.

Extra extra credit #2: Second Life

I created a Second Life account initially because the School of Library and Information Science at SJSU has an island there, and I thought I'd better check it out. It is a vast, confusing world, and I still haven't really figured it out. Moving around is okay, but I don't get the money thing. There are supposed to be money trees that you can use to get some Linden dollars within the first 30 days of your membership; after that time, if you want money you either have to come up with a good or service you can sell to other users, or you have to pay real world dollars and have them converted. I'm not sure why I'd want to do that, so I haven't yet.

Every time I go to the SJSU SLIS island, there isn't anyone else there. I've only actually ever talked to another Second Life user once, as a matter of fact. When I first signed up, and was putzing around on Orientation Island (the first stop, where you learn to navigate and such). A person bumped right into me, and was making these strange little waving motions with his arms. I thought, "what's wrong with this freak?" and tried to move away. He followed, doing that weird little arm-waving thing. After a minute, I realized there were words appearing in the bottom left portion of my screen. He was typing! Oooohhh!

All in all, I'm not sold. Maybe I read Snow Crash one too many times, but Second Life just seems like a glorified version of the Sims.

Woo Hoo, I'm Done!! Here's Extra Credit 1: YouTube

I'm embedding a video from YouTube that was posted by an amazing organization based in San Francisco called Bad Rap. The name stands for "Bay Area Doglovers Responsible About PitBulls". It's a rescue organization that works to re-establish the good name of these amazing dogs, and to encourage responsible dog ownership. Their mission is to find and rescue the "breed ambassadors", those that represent the best and brightest of this vilified breed, and place them with good people. Their rescues routinely go on to work as therapy dogs with special needs children, the infirm and the elderly; get service dog certification to work as companion animals for the disabled; and earn Canine Good Citizen certifications.

This is a little clip of a dog named Sophie. She's eleven years old, and was severely abused by her former keepers. She was fought and used as a puppy making machine. She's missing an eye and an ear, but her tail works just fine!



If you want to learn more about Sophie and the organization that's been her saving grace, check out the Bad Rap Website. I'm hopefully going to start volunteering with them soon, and I just think this is one of the best non-profit outfits I've ever seen!

MySpace?(Or Rupert Murdoch's Space?)

Okay, I admit it. I use MySpace. You might even say that I like MySpace. And really, who can blame Tom for selling out to Rupert? I'd have taken the millions and ran, too.

Originally, MySpace was a place for bands and musicians to share their music and information about shows, albums, etc. with other bands and music people. And, believe it or not, some people still use it for this very purpose! I do; I have bands and venues in my friends list, and they post bulletins that keep me up to date on what they're doing.

So how can libraries use MySpace for the betterment of humankind? I loved this page I found for The Loft, a teen space at the Public Library of Mecklenberg/Charlotte in South Carolina. They have an IM space, a great blog, information on all of the cool stuff their teen space in real life has to offer (a blue screen studio?! Recording space?! WOW!), special events, and over 1.000 friends! MySpace can be a great way to connect with young adults in their own environment. They may skip right over a piece of paper tacked to the wall, but post something to the bulletin board on MySpace, and you bet that almost anyone who's subscribed as a friend will read it. Sure it might be a fad, but isn't just about everything, anyway? Might as well ride the wave, and use it while it's popular.

By the way, Here's the URL for my Myspace page. It's set to private, so you'll have to send a request if you want to see it. Or just stop by my desk and I'll show it to you.

Online applications

I was suprised to find that I like Zoho better than Google Docs. I guess maybe because Google seems to have the corner on everything nowadays, they'd have the best online collaborative applications, too. Zoho excelled in a couple of areas: It is really easy to invite collaborators and viewers to see your documents. One window, one click of the "ok" button, and that's it. In Google, the user has to invite collaborators and viewers separately. I liked that in Zoho a list of all of your documents appears on the left while you are viewing one. I also like the "switch to" link, which allows you to quickly change to the spreadsheet, presentation maker, wiki, etc.

All of the apps we looked at are useful in one way or another. I wish I would have known about these a couple of years back, when I had this huge collaborative project to do for my Information Retrieval class! I spent so much time adding comments and highlighting changes in a regular old Word document, and emailing attached revised papers to my group mates (the thing ended up being like 38 pages long). Being able to access a shared document online, and having the ability to compare older and newer versions (like on Writeboard) would have been absolutely great!

I uploaded the New Book tracking spreadsheet to both Google Docs and Zoho, plus a couple of word documents (the copyright guidelines for reserves and the opening procedures). Yay!

More Wiki Madness

I have added a page about the library's fine policies, and edited a little of Irene's page regarding Desk Assistant training. She was really thorough; there wasn't much to add at all! However, I had to do something, because I am desperately trying to finish this 2.0 stuff up by the deadline. iPod Shuffle, here I come!

Finally got to the Wicked Wikis!!

Actually, I don't think that wikis are really wicked. They are pretty useful, as a matter of fact, and I can't help but be drawn to the idea of "radical trust". I like the community spirit that wikis seem to arouse in people, and it warms my heart to see individuals with similar interests and expertise all contributing to these online forums. Of course, there are the down sides of trolls, vandalism, and know-it-alls, but they make up a small subset of users. Besides, that's why the rest of us are here, right? To make sure the good information stays, and the unreliable information goes.

I created the Course Reserves Information Page on our wiki. Feel free to edit if you see anything I missed!

Widgets!

Wow, widgets are weird. Personally, I don't find them very useful. I deleted every default widget that came with the Yahoo! Widgets thing except for the Werewolf Monitor. The widgets I ended up downloading aren't very useful for the most part. I did find, however, a Foreign Word Game widget that gives a word in English and then shows you the translation in Spanish, Russian, German, Portuguese, Italian, Japanese or Thai. It will also link you to the Travelers' Dictionary website, which provides all kinds of games and drills to help you learn a new language. This particular widget is seriously entertaining.

Fun with Mapplets

I was trying to find a mapplet that would show me good places to hike and camp in California; I did find one wiki that was a trail mapper, but there weren't any trails mapped in California at all! So for this exercise, I decided to find what I consider to be a totally useless mapplet. Now, there may be people who would find this information useful, but in conjunction with Google for use by the general public, I fail to see who that would be. Someone out there created a mapplet that shows you the median age of the population of each county in California. Nifty, but silly.

Mashups and mapplets are interesting, and in some cases even useful. There's a website that I like, called Yelp, which combines a search engine and message boards where users can leave reviews and other information with Google Maps. I use it to get information and reviews for all sorts of goods and services. I find that it's most useful for restaurants, but there are listings for clothing boutiques, salons, mechanics, you name it. And you can search by city and state or zip code. Like the Bookwormz site mentioned in my previous post, this site is user-driven, and people can add their own listings of places they like (or don't like). In that sense, mashups can be great. So many people seem to be making these useless mashups though, and the good ones so often get lost in the sea of mediocrity.

Mashups I like

Here are a couple of mashups I found that I thought were kind of cool:

Flickr Sudoku : This mashup lets you play sudoku with tiles that have photographed numbers taken from Flickr. Not very utilitarian, but entertaining definitely.

Bookwormz : Ever wonder where all the independent bookstores in your area are hiding? Look no further! With Bookwormz you can search by zip code, city or state, and users can add stores that they know about but aren't listed. Very cool!

Flikr address

Like I said in an earlier post, I have no camera, so there are no photos in my Flickr account.
I'm one of those people who always mean to get an album or scrapbook together for my pictures, but can never seem to find the time or motivation to do it. I also always mean to buy a digital camera, and can never seem to get around to doing that, either. I just rely on my friends and family to do the recording of events stuff.

Rousillion-13

Rousillion-13
Originally uploaded by Scout Nibblet

Found this in the orange color field. I love orange!

LibraryThing (not to be confused with Swamp Thing or The Thing)

When I first started to use LibraryThing, I didn't really see the point of it all. I have all of my books at home, on their shelves, and can look at the covers and titles whenever I want, so why should I catalog and tag them online? Now that I've used it, I still don't really think the site is all that utilitarian for me. It is fun, however, to see who else has the same titles as me, and what else they own that I might be interested in reading.

I'm having a hard time getting into the whole concept of an online community. Even in the flesh and blood world, I'm pretty private and don't make new friends easily. Communicating with people I've never seen (and probably never will), and sharing things about my personal life (like my reading habits) is not easy for me. I like that I can anonymously peek into other people's libraries, though. Kind of voyeuristic in a way, don't you think?

If you want to check out my LibraryThing catalog, feel free.

glen alpine trail

glen alpine trail
Originally uploaded by dazzzmien

Lichen is such an interesting organism. The bright green color is so striking, and the relationship it has with the tree is so agreeable. Not only that, lichen makes a great scrubby pad for cleaning camp pots!

Now that I have a Flickr account, I guess I should get a camera...

de.licio.us!

I need to catch up here... a few days off and *POOF*! My motivation disappears like an elephant at a Sigfried and Roy engagement. So here I am, playing around with de.licio.us while the rest of you are knee deep in LibraryThing.

I like de.licio.us (check out my bookmarks here). It's fun, and I like that I can access my bookmarks from any computer, not just mine. There have been times when I'm at the library, or a friends house, and can't for the life of me remember how to navigate to where I want to go. Sure, you can always Google it. But it's so much more convenient to just access the bookmarks!

The first site I added was the home page for Black Hen Farms, a chicken/fowl sanctuary in Santa Cruz that sells eggs at various farmers' markets. To my surprise, only one other de.licio.us user had bookmarked this site! I clicked her user name and discovered that she has tons of sites about sustainable and organic foods tagged. I really like that aspect of de.licio.us: it is easy to find users with similar tastes and interests, and it allows you to discover all kinds of sites you may never have known existed otherwise!

Podcast subscription

I decided to subscribe to the Authors On Tour - Live! podcast, and not just because it is pretty much the first thing you see when you go to Yahoo! podcasts. I clicked on the description icon and saw that one of the most recent episodes was Les Claypool reading from his debut novel, South of the Pump House. Les Claypool is one of the most amazing musicians of all time, and when I learned that he had written a book, I was ecstatic! Now I can listen to him read an exerpt from the book through this Podcast. Perhaps we could order the novel for the library, so I can read it?!

A Blog about A Blog About Libraries

The 2 posts we read for this week were spot on in a lot of ways. I agree with the view that librarians and other library staff should be able to offer support to users for any service the library has, and that has to include computing. I also agree that there need to be common sense boundaries to the support that we provide to patrons. This is true in all areas of library service, not just new technologies. Just the other day a patron came to the circ desk and asked me if she could leave a car key for someone to come and pick up later on in the day. I was not willing to provide that service, due to the myriad complications and liability issues I could forsee arising from that situation, so I said no. Same goes for computers. If someone asked me for help setting up a Yahoo! account or creating a table in a document, I could probably handle that, and I think that's within the scope of what I can be expected to do.

I like the parallel the author draws between libraries' active participation in literacy campaigns and the libraries' responsibility to offer support for computer technologies. Libraries have traditionally offered workshops, tutoring and support for their patrons, and that should continue. A big difference is that these new technologies are new for nearly everyone; librarians included. This means that library staff will need to make an effort to learn the new technologies, and pass that knowledge on to users.

RSS Adventures

This is my first experience with Google Reader, and I've got to tell you that I really like it! Beats the heck out of My Yahoo!, although I still use that for maps, directions, weather and sports scores. I subscribe to feeds on it, too, but now I might move those to Google. I've been getting feeds from the San Jose Merc, the Onion, Library Revolution, Surreal Coconut, and NPR for a while now.

In my Google Reader, I have added the feed for De Anza's 2.0 blog as well as Alex's, Irene's, and Carole's blogs. I also added feeds from that Book Review site for all new reviews, and for the horror genre. Good times!

Finishing up Week 2 (and a little extra credit)

Here's the rest of my week 2 commentary:

• I looked at the 43 Things site. So, people can go to this site and build their 0wn list of things they would like to accomplish, and tag their things. Users with similar goals can find and encourage each other, and become insanely jealous when their cyber-buddy beats them to the finish line (just kidding).
• Debbie Faires has a lot of interesting things to say about Web 2.0 in her webcast. The content actually reminded me quite a lot of Willie Pritchard's workshop. Wikis, virtual worlds, RSS, etc. are all covered. Her examples of libraries' implementations of some technologies help get the imagination going. Instant messaging with librarians? Sounds great! I remember using a similar kind of service for one of my classes, but the name escapes me now. I thought it was through the IPL, but I can't find it. People's Network, based in London, offers real-time question and answer sessions.
• For a little extra credit, I read Stephen Abram's "Earning the Right to Give Advice". I agree that many people poo-poo technological trends and advances without actually spending the time to learn what it's all about. I also agree that it is possible to adapt various technologies to suit the needs of libraries. I also think that a little skepticism (cynicism?) is healthy.
  

SJSU SLIS in Second Life: An Overview Video

Take a look at this video for a quick overview of the SJSU SLIS island in Second Life.

Just in case anyone is interested...

I just received this through the SJSU SLIS listserv. I thought I'd post it here in case anyone is interested in attending:

Date:  Wednesday, June 27, 2007
Time:  6 - 7:30 p.m.

Event:  Lecture/Discussion - "The Power of Web 2.0, Collective
Intelligence,
and Online Communities"

Description:  What is Web 2.0? What implications do innovative ideas
like
collective intelligence, crowdsourcing and online communities hold for
the
Internet and beyond? Professor David Silver from the Media Studies
Department at the University of San Francisco will explore this
pervasive
phenomenon that has flooded the virtual information landscape in recent
years through social networking resources such as Wikipedia, YouTube,
Facebook and Flickr.

Place: San Francisco Public Library
           100 Larkin Street
          Main Branch, Latino/Hispanic Community Room
           San Francisco, CA 94102

Events Phone Number:  (415) 557-4277

Contact:  Jerry Dear - jdear@sfpl.org, 415-437-4844

Our contest is cooler than your contest

I took a look at Garfield and King County Libraries' web 2.0 "contests" (I'm not sure why Garfield County decided to call it that). One thing about the King County blog I thought was useful was the quick link to a "convenient list of the 27 things". Could we have an overview list on the De Anza 2.0 blog, too? It would be neat to see what we'll be doing in upcoming weeks and would clearly show the progression of the "contest".

Are there any other academic libraries that are trying this kind of training for their staff? I only seem to hear of public libraries doing this. Kind of goes back to Alex's "Bastard Child of Satan" post: Are these technologies really the best thing for the academic library, or will they detract from our ultimate goal of providing students with resources to enrich their learning experience?

Life, the Universe, and Everything (2.0)

The Wikipedia article on Web 2.0 is a pretty thorough one, I think. What I take from all of the discussions and definitions of this kind of new era of the internet is that the focus is really shifting away from users passively seeking content to users actively creating content that is meaningful to them. Library 2.0 has the same basic theme; I loved the short and sweet definition given on the Librarian in Black blog. It will serve us well to remember that, behind all of the seemingly complicated and unknowable technological hubbub, lies the goal of simply involving our users in the types of services we provide at the level of their everyday lives.

OOPS! Okay, I fixed it

I don't know what happened with the link to the Library Revolution blog...but I fixed it now, and it seems to work. Take a look at it if you have a chance; it really is insightful!

A very cool librarian's blog

I thought some of you might be interested in the Library Revolution blog. It's maintained by Emily Clasper, a librarian and systems administrator in New York. One of her favorite subjects is Library and Web 2.0. Her posts of late have been especially relevant to what we are currently learning about! I subscribe to her RSS feed on My Yahoo! page.

Template issues

I'm having an issue with the title part of the template I'm using. I ended up editing the HTML and adding a header so I could get "Pen and Ink" to appear on the top of the page. When I look at the example template, it looks like the title field is supposed to appear on the left, above the "about me" and archive sections. Does anyone know why this might be?

My SecondLife experiences so far

So, as you guys already know, I'm going through the Library Science program as SJSU right now. SJSU SLIS just recently purchased an island in SecondLife, and the instructors are now being urged to deliver their courses, or some aspects of their courses, in this environment. Since this seems to be the way the program is going, I've created an account and an avatar and gone to the island to have a look around. Learning to get around, fly, look at stuff, etc. wasn't too difficult, but it is definitely different and takes some getting used to.

I've been out to the island a couple of times. No one else seems to be around when I'm there; it's a virtual ghost town. There is a student union-type area with lounge chairs and a pool table; a "community sandbox", which I think is an area for building objects; and different areas with SecondLife tutorials and such.

There are a couple of concerns that I have about potentially attending lectures for my classes in SecondLife: First of all, I'm in the market for a new laptop. If I want to get a PC (which I do), it will come with Windows Vista as the operating system...which isn't supported by SecondLife, so I wouldn't be able to attend my lectures using my new computer (or I'd have to get a computer with Vistas Pro, then buy a copy of XP and downgrade. What a lot of time and money I shouldn't have to spend!). Also, I guess I'm just not comfortable with the format yet. Would I have to read the lecture as the instructor types to the class, or will there be streaming audio? How will questions be handled?

I'm excited about new technologies and new ways to implement them, but in some cases I really like traditional methods better. Hardly any of the classes in my program have regular class meetings any more, and I think that's a shame. Maybe I just feel I learn more when I'm actually immersed in a learning environment, rather than sitting on my sofa or at my desk pretending to be.

Teen Second Life

I watched the presentation about library services for teens in Teen Second Life (TSL) and the Eye4You Alliance project undertaken by Kelly Czarnecki from the Public Library of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County. I have such mixed feelings about 3D environments like Second Life and their place in library services and education. On the one hand I understand that these technologies are becoming wildly popular among teens and young adults, and that they allow for collaboration and cooperation among groups who otherwise would not interact with each other. On the other hand, I really hope that we are not forsaking the local for the global.

One of the slides in the presentation was a screen shot of a parody web page called Get A First Life. It's pretty hilarious, and it makes a good point!

Can we get a ninja for our library, too?

It could solve our cell phone problems once and for all!

First. Post. Ever.

Hey there, everyone (this is my rendition of "Hello World"). So here's my first attempt at blogging, and to my dismay I cannot think of anything profound to write. I'll be back to post a video later.