Hail to thee YouTube

I love YouTube. It has single handedly saved the email forward. It used to be that I deleted all forwarded emails on principle (no I don’t want to read the mushy story about the cat, no the joke isn’t that funny, and no I don’t think that I’m going to die a horrible death if I don’t forward this email to ten people in the next hour). Then came the advent of YouTube. Now I get forwarded emails that I actually find entertaining. So Hail to thee YouTube! You are my hero!

Seriously though I think the library could and should use YouTube as a way to share author and other speaker events at the library. For the cost of a cheap video camera, a tri-pod, and a case to ship the equipment in, we could record library programs and make them available on the Web. Why wouldn’t we want to provide this service?

-Catherine

Social Networks

This is a 2.0 technology that I can really get behind.  I love social networks!

Okay, I admit I was a little slow to adopt social networking.  By slow, I mean that I finally got a facebook page because MY MOTHER sent me an invitation.  At that point I decided it was embarassing for me not to have it, when your baby boomer mother hops on a technology trend before you, the token millenial, do  it’s downright embarassing.  Even after getting the page I didn’t usually log in or do much with it.  Mostly I viewed social networks as this thing I did at work.  I didn’t need to play with them in my real life.

My brother is the one who finally really got me hooked.  He sent an invitation to Mom and I to play Scrabble with him on facebook.  He lives in DC.  My parents live in Canada.  Yet suddenly it was like we were all at the same kitchen table squabbling over whether or not ‘Ha’ is a real word (“yes I know that it’s in the Scrabble dictionary but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s actually a word”).  From that point on I was absolutely hooked!

I like Ning too because it lets you create networks around a common theme.  In my explorations I found one called Library Youth and Teen Services 2.0 that I think every youth/teen librarian would benefit from being a member of.  This is a way for librarians to meet each other and swap ideas about what works and what doesn’t when incorporating 2.0 into library services.

I actually see many potential uses for social networks in the library.  Obviously we already have a MySpace page for the teens.  The Virtual Library is working right now to create subject guides that have an embeddable facebook application attached.  People would be able to search the guides from within their own profile on facebook.  I also think Ning, with its ability to create themed networks, could be used for an online library book club or for a library community forum.  I’ve never explored Friendster but I’m sure there’s a way to use that too.  Ultimately I think that’s the great thing about all of Web 2.0, it has the potential to be used in so many different ways.

RSS – A love/hate relationship

In the past whenever I’ve spoken about RSS it’s always been with a bit of condescension. I mean, sure, it’s great that Evanced makes it possible to display programs on each library’s page without having to add them manually. When I first started at the library I spent about 10 hours a week just updating program pages so having this be automatic was enough to convince me that RSS deserved to exist. Self populating web pages are fabulous.

However, I was more than a little contemptuous of the touted RSS benefit of being able to keep up with updates on loads of different web sites. Mostly my response was “yes, it allows me to check 50 different web sites a day, but why would I want to do that? Who honestly needs to check 50 web sites a day. Don’t people have better things to do than read the latest gossip on some blog? And do you really need to read the news from EVERY newspaper in the country?” Generally I preferred to say these things with my nose as high in the air as possible to achieve the maximum smugness effect.

Lately though I find that my stance on RSS is weakening. People are always emailing me interesting news stories from NPR and I keep thinking “hmmm…I really should check that site more,” but of course I never do. I logged into my wedding web site for the first time in months the other day and discovered that a bunch of people had left messages on the guest book. Now I’m checking it constantly to see if anyone else has left a message. Being an actor, I try to keep an eye on the web sites for all the local community theatres (there are more of them than you think) to see who’s holding auditions for new shows. I am an avid reader so obviously I check the library catalog regularly to see what new stuff has been added (working in the virtual library means the books don’t cross my hands as often as they did when I was at Lafayette). And of course, I log in and check my email multiple times a day already.

When I logged in to do this exercise I subscribed to the Pleasant Hill programs, noticed that all of them were children’s programs, and decided I’d probably delete that post later. However when I set up my feed for new “historical romance love stories” I thought how nice it would be to get these sent to me instead of having to peruse the catalog everytime I need a new trash novel to read. I have the New York Times and the Washington Post Book reviews in my account, now I’m thinking I might go back and add Newsweek and NPR. While I’m at it I’ll probably subscribe to my email account too. There are a couple of other catalog searches I want to create too. And if my facebook page has an RSS feed maybe I’ll add that as well. I mean I’m already logged in so why not.

Ultimately, I think the real question for me now is, “will I actually log back in and read the new feeds or will this account, like my del.icio.us, ning, and meebo accounts, languish on an unknown server somewhere out there in cyberspace?” Only time will tell.

MeeboMe!

I think it’s pretty obvious that IM is a form of reference that we should be offering our customers because it lets us take our librarians virtual in a way that none of our other reference offerings do.  We offer email reference of course, but that’s assuming that the teen who has a research question has the patience, or the time, to wait 24 hours for an answer.  We also offer 24/7 chat, but while that’s a realtime reference answer it only connects our customers with us directly for 2 hours out of the week.  The other 166 hours our customers are connected with librarians at other libraries.  While this is fine for quick and easy questions that can be answered with internet resources only, it doesn’t help customers with any account information, any collection questions, and it doesn’t connect them to the rich resources contained in our databases.  Additionally, the meebo widget allows us to put our reference librarians on multiple pages in the web site; instead of making the customers find the reference page they have the option to start chatting from whatever page they’re on when the question arises.  This makes it far more likely that they’ll really ask the question instead of deciding it’s not worth the trouble.  The meebo widget also makes it possible for customers who don’t have an IM account to still contact the library through chat.  If they’re at our web site then they can chat with a live librarian, no technical knowledge (other than how to type) involved.

Google Gaggle

I love the google products.  Not just docs, although I think that’s terrific ESPECIALLY for the library, but all of it.  The Google Gaggle (as I like to think of it because there’s really nothing better than some solid alliteration) is such a powerful suite of products that it’s easy to see why it’s so popular among users.  In the library the obvious use is that we can offer programs (like docs) to our patrons when they’re on 30 minute PC’s (without Word).  But outside of that I think the real power of this is the desktop-less nature of it all.  I can’t even think how many times I’ve wished that I could get something saved to my computer when I’m no where near my computer.  Having my work be Internet based frees me from planning in advance what I might need to have where ever I go.

del.icio.us

I have to confess I cheated a little with this exercise. I already had a del.icio.us account that I created for one of the Infopeople trainings so instead of creating a new account I’m just reusing that one. However, I did delete all of the very boring bookmarks I had from that class and have filled the account with more interesting stuff. Enjoy the video selection.

http://del.icio.us/scheer.catherine

Theatre Pics

For everyone’s entertainment I’ve uploaded several of my old theatre pictures.

Being in theatre means you’re never short of pictures in which you look completely ridiculous.  Case and point being the one on the left here (if you click on it then it will take you to the rest of the set).  If you can’t tell I’m the one in the wig.

Blogs vs. Wikis

For me the real difference between blogs and wikis is whether or not you want to collect information or provide information.

If you’re trying to communicate something to others then a blog is great. You can post your information quickly and easily in a simple format that allows people to ask you questions about it and access it whenever is convenient to them. Blogs in libraries then are great ways to deliver news or services (like our podcasts) over the Internet.

If you’re trying to collect information from people then you want a wiki. Since the idea behind a wiki is something that’s collaboratively created, you can use this to build databases or guides to bits of information. Staffpicks or even customer picks are great uses of wikis because it’s information that everyone in the community has a piece of, and the wiki provides them a forum where they can share their piece (i.e. their picks) with others.

Another way to look at the difference is whether or not you have information that’s time sensitive. Blogs always put the most recent bit of information on the top, and send older information to an archive. That’s why they’re so great for news items, occasionally someone may want to find an old news story but for the most part people want to read current news. Wikis don’t care when the information was added, each wiki page is given equal importance no matter when it was created. That’s why it’s great for databases of information. Even if I wrote a book review a year ago that review is still useful to someone who’s never read it. That kind of information doesn’t get old so it’s better in a wiki.

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Here’s the URL for the page of the Staffpicks Wiki that I added my review to. http://staffpicks.pbwiki.com/Books-for-Adults I reviewed the book The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan.

Welcome to my Blog

This is it. The blog that I’ll be using to chart my progress through the program. If you’re ever unsure of what you’re being asked to do in a week’s activity you can refer to Bill’s or my blog to see what we’ve posted. Of course you can also ask your peer trainer for help or come to one of the Web 2.0 labs held every Tuesday and Thursday throughout the summer. (See the main program blog for more info. about the labs.)

I hope you all have a good time going through this program. It’s designed to be a fun way to learn about the 2.0 resources at our library. So relax and enjoy this opportunity to play with Web 2.0.