Rethinking the 23 Things

I have to admit, in all of the time I've been using computers and trying to make them work for me, I never realized until yesterday how task-specific any computer knowledge is.

Okay, yeah, they're the spawn of Satan and all that. But I had a woman come up to me whose flash drive, she said, wasn't working in Internet Computer 10. So fine, I go through all the usual stuff with her. Then I plug it into #10 and the software loaded on her flash drive doesn't bring up her files. Having used flash drives that have no software loaded on them, I opened her files from the file pulldown menu. They opened just fine.

"You have to open them manually," I told her.

She panicked. "Wait, what did you do? How did you do that?"

"Word > File > Open > Drive F."

Here was a woman with a flash drive full of Word and PDF files, with the software at home to use and create them, who had apparently never *ever* saved a file to, or retrieved one from, her hd. *facepalm*

No wonder that in an entire human generation of computers in common use, people still can't make heads or tails of them. Nothing you know how to use makes much difference to using any other software/websites.

Which is why the 23 Things were so time consuming, but also helpful just for Learning More Random Stuff.

Thing 22

I cross my heart that I'll try to keep up with what's new on the internets.

I'll start with Flock. It's a browser that integrates social networking websites. You can watch your MySpace and Facebook pages, subscribe to RSS feeds, and blog from multiple blog. I can even export news feeds, once I discover what that means. It's built on Firefox code, so many Firefox extensions can be used with it.

The advertisement-intro-comic for the Google Chrome browser is interesting, if a bit thick for your average cartoon and also my brain.

I promise to follow random links to interesting applications and spend moments out of my surf hours doing Stuff. Maybe I'll even start playing Kingdom Of Loathing!

Thing 21

Thing 21

I put a Ning badge on my blog and left comments for people. I thought about putting some photos in a slideshow, but I still haven't got my fall photos uploaded to SmugMug. SmugMug is a far better choice for me than Flickr, because I can have photos printed with decent color reproduction. My monitor at home is calibrated to Adobe RGB, and I need a photo printer whose printers are calibrated properly as well.

I read the Gather article, but I raise an eyebrow at their aspirations. I'm sure Gather has the potential to do for books what MySpace did for music. But . . . a survey of 17,000 people turned up 47% who read a fiction book in 2002, with numbers declining for a decade, while a survey of 5,000 adults in 2008 had 94% of them listening to the radio.

There are a lot more people listening to music out there. I'm just sayin'. And readers can be very picky about what they want. Reading a book takes time and concentration. Listening to a song takes three minutes. Readers aren't going to dig through the slush pile of offerings by unpublished authors that appears on Gather. They're most strongly influenced by recs from family members! They don't want to waste their mental energy.

Gather's idea to hold contests for genre works is a step in the right direction. And I was surprised when Paula pointed out their system of "rewards" for people posting content. I hadn't seen any other user-content website doing this. I know Amazon has a yearly dinner and award ceremony, but that's different.

The WebJunction article made some good points about how libraries can use new tech, but I suspect Pierce County might not be as busy as we are. The guy who wrote the article is their system trainer. They can has trainer? I bet he helped them with their 23 Things.

Thing 20

Dude. Facebook is FREAKING ME OUT.

I don't want all my personal information posted on the internets! I mean, it's there, one can find out just about anything about me by looking my name up on some website that I can't remember (I was horrified when I saw it), but even that didn't have a PHOTO. But now I'm supposed to put one up, along with all that other info, of my own free will? Not on your Network.

I don't want Facebook to mine my email address book to find me 'friends,' (of course, they promise not to keep that access to my email account and spam all my buddies using my name, like Grouply.com does) and I seriously don't want them managing my credit card information!

The thing about LiveJournal is that nobody I come in contact with uses their real name or posts any but the vaguest personal info in their profile. There's a reason for that. Nobody wants random strangers to know who they are! You can get to know people by reading their journals and go on from there; it happens all the time. I met some of my best friends through listserves (back in the dawn of time) and LJ.

Heaven only knows what I would have done without the woman who offered advice about helping my mom . . . the woman who turned out not only to have extensive personal experience dealing with sick parents/doctors/hospitals and is a lawyer, but also is an elder law specialist who writes books for accountants about financial planning for the elderly, and handbooks on Medicare.

Now that's effective social networking.

And I didn't have to make an avatar, post my photo, my real name, my phone number, my workplace, my life history.

I would consider continuing to do this for work if . . . well, even if I limited myself to work-oriented groups, every Friend of somebody who's in X group, even if Friend is not a member of X group, can see my profile. It's all about making it easy for people to find you online.

Thing 19

I attached a couple of MPR podcast RSS feeds to my Google Reader. It was easy. I just pasted in the url. On the Road With MINITEX, otoh . . . the RSS icon did nothing but bring up a page of .xml coding, and then Podcast Alley bonked my computer! Good work, guise.

The Naked Scientists podcast went on GR just fine, like MPR.

Yahoo Audio Search has nothing but a search box, and so is impossible to use unless you already know what you're looking for. Podcast.net was down or doesn't exist any more. Podcast.com at least has browsing options.

Thing 15

Puzzle Pirates didn't sound interesting, so I was going to try Kingdom Of Loathing. A few of my friends play that, and after reading the wiki and some interviews with the game developer, I can see why! It sounds like a hoot. It's played with stick-figure avatars and the currency of the realm is meat. You can gain power by drinking booze, although drinking too much gets you a time-out. I really think my destiny in life is to become an Accordion Thief.

If I ever get Much More Time, I'm definitely going to start that.

In the end, I watched the Second Life vid, read the debunking of video game myths, scanned the Info Island blog, and listened to the YALSA podcast.

Mainly, I want to know how much it cost the library to buy the island, or if Second Life gave it to them for free.


I was amused that the kids think adults spend way too much time on Second Life and highly interested to read an article about "banking" on SL.

With people making actual cash money doing various things on SL, and "banking" concerns inside the virtual world promising to invest their money at a high rate of return, it's no wonder that some people transferred their cash into these unregulated and ultimately spurious "banks," losing their money when the "banks" simply vanished. It gives a whole new meaning to the phrase "play money."

Most SL financial transactions take place in the real world -- you have to link outside of SL to buy products and services over the internet.

The Library of Charlotte & Mecklenburg County puts out a lot of programming on Info Island. I imagine these programs are done concurrently with RL programming in the library buildings . . . or they have way more money than I can imagine. Setting up on SL seems like a fine idea. It's a terrific outreach project, if a library has enough staff who are already players. The learning curve for serious involvement in this game must be something like World of Warcraft's. It's not a hobby, it's a lifestyle.

I am curious to know how many people they reach who live in their own service area -- of course, there's no easy way to find out -- and how they justify the expense of staff time.

Thing 17 ELM

The ELM productivity tools RSS feed sounds like it's more trouble than it's worth. I actually drug myself through the entire explanation of why, but the "mixed results" made me roll my eyes.

I made the html file on Academic Premier, but the photo doesn't show up in it when I open the file from the jump drive. I suspect I would see it if this .html file were actually posted on the web. It's certainly more secure to keep photos you're using in a webpage on the same server rather than assume the web-based photo will always be there. Saving the picture file onto my jump drive would have solved the problem if only I could go back into "edit web page" and edit the location. (Obviously my jump drive is not going to reach out into the internets and pick up this picture.) I can't; the editor won't let me edit anything.

I emailed an html file of documents from ProQuest to myself and Rachel, then saved it to my flash drive. Still don't know why an html.doc. Is there some reason why people without elaborate means (paid server space, Dreamweaver, etc.) to make their own webpages would be using this feature? Services that offer free web space often come with page creators. I won't even ask why somebody would want to put the results of their ProQuest searches up on a webpage.

I can't watch the video instruction for clues to these mysteries, as neither the upstairs ref pc or mine downstairs seem to have quicktime.

NetLibrary is obviously bonked right now.

Thing 16

The Assignment Calculator is absolute genius! Imagine having someone hold your hand through every possible aspect of a research paper! Jeez, when I had to walk three ten miles to school through the snow uphill both ways, we had to use freakin' ESP to determine what to do with research papers. If you weren't a good writer already (or good at slinging bull), you were in for some trouble, because I don't remember an English class in my high school that went through the process in detail. All I remember is index cards.

English 102 certainly didn't. I didn't have to take 101, but I doubt it was research oriented.

Then again, it was a completely different process when dinosaurs roamed the planet, and my little rural K-12 didn't have much in the line of sources anyway.

I'm not so sure a lot of Youth 2.0 is going to use this. I've heard from teachers that the students can't even grasp the concept of citations. Why do that? Information about everything is free and free-floating! Look, there it is on the internets!

But if they did, the papers would be worth reading.

I can't see much use in my work life for it, although if I were ever to write a subject pathfinder, the Research Quickstart is awesome! I notice that the one for Alternative Medicine refers to nothing that would cover the social implications involved with or history of alternative medicine use.

Thing 14

I would never put my own book list up on LibraryThing, since I'm the only librarian in history who doesn't collect books, but it's interesting for the reviews and for the Authors Who LibraryThing. This is fun as I know some of them from fandom and from their own blogs, and I'm just generally nosy that way. (I'll admit I didn't realize I'd met Naomi Novik -- I didn't know her real name -- until I saw her picture on the back of Temeraire.)

It's obvious that fantasy/scifi readers weigh heavily in the user list. This could come in handy if I ever run out of Vampire/Witch/Werewolf recs.

IN LOVE WITH TAGMASHER. THAT IS ALL.

Thing 13

I messed around with My Yahoo, changing this and that, then was glad that I don't have to use that page and can still use the basic Yahoo home page instead. I still like that better, although the forest scenery was pretty. I don't want to have to scroll down the page for information, and I don't want to read the local news on my email entity.

The calendars and lists would be much more useful if I had a Blackberry or laptop, or even an iPhone. As it is, paper and ink are a lot more portable than my monitor and CPU.

I'll admit I've wondered where people got those countdown widgets from.

Randomly

I'm glad to see that Blogger has finally gotten a Reading List. Of course, you can only watch, from the comfort of your own Dashboard, the blogs that have RSS feeds. It's nice that they've joined the modern age, though.

Thing 12

I love user generated content as much as the next person. A lot more, probably, given the metric boatload of fan fiction I've read in the last decade. However, I wouldn't necessarily hold user generated content up as the be-all and end-all.

Thing 12 has a very telling comment right in the description:

"See a theme here? No editors to decide what information is important, user-generated content, reader recommendations/sharing, and you and others get to vote on what makes the top lists—the very definition of Web 2.0."

We all know WHY user-generated content is such a popular thing, right? Yes, people like it. But it's a primo way, marketers hope, to make money -- LOTS of money -- without any work on their own part. They hope that when they build websites, people will come, and the advertising dollars will pour in. And the people do come, sometimes. Everybody's got something to say. Whether it has anything useful for me, I can't know until I wade through the thousands of voices. Which -- I don't have time.

I don't even have time for the top recommendations. I already have a couple of hobbies.

There's nothing wrong with or even new about "everybody gets to talk." The real revolution is that there might actually be people out there to hear you, if you're interesting enough. Hey, I have a friend who got a nod from Time Magazine last year as one of the top 10 blogs for her Velveteen Rabbi. That made me feel pretty connected, I can tell you. And needless to say, she does have an RSS feed.

Still, I'm not as impressed by The Revolution as I think I'm supposed to be.

AHAHAHAHA. Found on del.icio.us.

I really, really could have used this a couple months ago, to send to my junk-forwarding uncle and my mom's junk-forwarding friend. Mom's friend tends toward the treacly and religious. The uncle has a friend whose real-estate company actually *purchases* junk links from an internet aggregator and sends it all on to him. He wanted to share.

It was for my mom, of course, but she refuses to touch the computer. 25 pages a day of printed-out internet-humor emails isn't the same as getting it yourself.

Thanks, But No

I am glad to say they've mostly quit when I never replied to the junk. But I got a good laugh out of this, so del.icio.us has already done something good for me.

To be fair, there's internet humor I like. Some of it's absolutely hilarious, like the "relieve your shyness and social phobia -- ask your doctor for Tequila," but I usually get it from people who know me.

Tagging, Del.icio.us

I am a tagging virgin.

No, wait, I think I put in some tags on Flickr.

I wasn't about to go back through years of journal entries to do it, which has some drawbacks, to be sure. But I did link my photography and writing in my Memories.

Now I really want to read the Guy Kawasaki blog entry that Kathleen Gilroy refers to in "Learning 2.0 and Del.icio.us." The one that features, 'Don't Worry, Be Crappy.' Except, of course, that I can't find it on his blog. Cause, you know, he doesn't tag, and what tag would he slap on that, anyway? And I'm sure not looking up her del.icio.us account to find out if it's really listed there.

I have never used del.icio.us, although I have lots of friends who do. They use del.icio.us for fannish links, and if I wanted people to know what I was reading, I'd put it in my journal. When I was thinking about a laptop, one pal even urged me to buy a Mac so I could scan in the barcodes of my books to LibraryThing [which is not del.icio.us, of course, but bookily related]. Unfortunately, I'm the only librarian in the Known World who doesn't collect books.

The Magic Middle for people who can filter information for you . . . hmm. There's an interesting concept all by itself. Like the rest of life, it's all about choosing your filters.

10, which is a Thing: Library Wikis, Library Blogs

Library wikis seem pretty useful for those who want to brush up on their reference techniques. I was thrilled with our Reference Newsletter and its easily-found compendium of info that I'd formerly been saving up in backlogs on my email. I do want the tags in alphabetical order -- I thought that sort of thing was automatic. I don't remember ever seeing a journal or blog without tags arranged alphabetically.

Yes, I can search it by plugging in a word, but that's what tags are FOR.

From the Blogging Libraries Wiki list, I note that Fairfax County Library does have a moderated blog. Fortunately for whoever moderates, there isn't any discussion. I didn't see any blogs with discussion, and some of them had comments turned off. This seems like marginal use in the magical 2.0 interactive universe. Okay, wait, Ann Arbor had one comment.

Book blogs are voted most likely to be kept updated. Cincy's reminded me of a non-fiction book that I want for our collection. There were libraries on the list that were noted as "not updated since . . .", and other dead ones that had yet to be noted. This leads me to suspect a lack of staff and lack of response as culprits.

The Gold Coast Public Library's blog had useful information in it, like a post about Economic Stimulus Refund email scam and the fact that firewalls need to be disabled for Reference USA and Morningstar access. Plus! "The Free Web vs. Library Databases." There's a post that should be on every library's page. Yay for Gold Coast!

Skipping Ahead, In Brief

I was going to watch vids to learn about wikis for libraries, but I still haven't got Flash 9 on my workroom computer. I went ahead to #20 because the only time I ever looked at anything on MySpace, I couldn't figure out how to track the comments on someone's topic. Of course, there might not actually be a way; it could be a mostly nonlinear communication method.

(I've noticed that with Blogger; yeah, you can set your own comments so you're notified about later posted comments, but there's no way to respond to one person specifically rather than simply making a post to the wide world. Or at least no easy way, since I haven't found it yet. I know some other blogging services have this feature.)

Looking again, it may be that one needs an account to read the comment threads. For some MySpace accounts, I'm sure you have to have mutual friending. That doesn't seem likely for the Denver Public Library. I suppose they just never reply.

I really like the layout and general look of the DPL Teens MySpace, but was startled to see that their page is "Female 18 years old".

Must one have a "person" avatar, not a "thing"? And of course, if you must pick, it should be female (nonthreatening); adult, yet not too adult. But. "I'm the Denver Public Library Web Site for Teens!"

It just seems incredibly disingenuous and kind of creepy that they've endowed the website with teenage personhood. Fake Teen Personas: Not Just For Predators Any More! At least the Female HCL page is 88, and has avatar photos of several actual staff members.

On the upside, I can see how a library MySpace page might be a good place to meet other library-oriented geeky teenagers, unless of course they're somebody/something else masquerading as geeky teenagers.

Thing 9

I use GoogleDocs and I think it's great. There is a stack of documents in my account. However, the "23 Things" version of editing a document totally bonked me.

"In this Thing, edit a famous document using these two collaboration tools. Both are free. You don’t need an account to edit these public documents. . . . Look at this public document in Google Docs. Make as many edits and changes to the documents as you wish, using the various editing tools available."

I clicked on that link without signing in to GoogleDocs, since they say you don't need an account, and got the document to look at. Fine, great. Except . . . I can look at the document all I want, but I don't have a task bar, and thus no way to edit it. That part makes no sense. When I tried to get at it through my GoogleDocs account, a page came up saying I need permission, and to request access.

Make up thy mind, 23.

ETA: Okay, upon Rachel's suggestion, I read the user questions. :) I do need both an account and permission to edit the GoogleDocs one. The Zoho version has a few interesting edits, and several commenters trying to figure out how to get into it, but it certainly isn't as pretty -- how does the person being edited know where the edits are? This would be a serious problem in a document any longer. I've put edits into documents of 200 pages on GoogleDocs and they are usefully obvious.

What Would The F.F. Do?

The Founding Fathers' heads would explode. They didn't want anything to do with rabble like us, much less female rabble.

Thing 8

Flowers at the Como Conservatory

I managed to make a cube, and also I put up a slideshow of photos from Hawaii at the top of the blog.

Thing 7

Email is ubiquitous, and how we do almost all communication across the system. IM is handy for reference, except that sometimes I don't log out when I leave the desk for lunch or breaks.

I've been using AOL Instant Messenger for a decade, and it took me this long to get sick enough of the third party applications it loads and the explosion of noisy ads it spawns to download AIM Ad Hack, which works like a charm. I'm not sure if it will actually get rid of things like Viewpoint if you already have them loaded, but I removed them first before downloading the new version of AIM.

And by 'removed,' I do mean cleaned them Very Carefully out of my registry.

Yahoo IM doesn't seem to come with that kind of advertising tornado. I just started using that about a year ago. Otherwise, it's pretty much the same, and you can import your AIM buddy list as well.

I've used Yahoo email for ten years, and Thunderbird on my home computer since I switched to Firefox as a browser a couple years ago. I can't remember what brand of email I had with IE.

I suspect it's a lot harder to do a good reference interview over IM. It's tough enough sometimes to coax the real question out of a patron standing in front of you! Certainly extra care is warranted.

I've only done a couple of web conferences/workshops, and I don't like them as much as when the trainer is really there . . . but it's got to be less costly!

I'll admit, I haven't used Twitter, but I'll have to read the articles, because I'm baffled as to how it can help libraries.

A lot to say about Thing 4, apparently.

I looked at Picasa, since Library Guy likes it so well. I also saw other good comments on review sites, including someone who said he wasn't going to be using Flickr because he's already "married to Picasa."

One look made my decision for me. I hadn't realized it's not just an online sharing service, it's a download. "When you install Picasa, it instantly goes to work, organizing all the pictures on your hard drive by date in the "Folders on Disk" collection."

I think NOT. That's all I need is for Picasa to go in and "organize" my 16,000 plus photos.

I know that's how many I've got because Absolute Evil Incarnate, aka Photoshop Elements Organizer, told me so . . while it was doing the same thing. I bet you can imagine how long the thing takes to populate 16,000 thumbnails every time you open the Organizer. There's a way to 'hide' them, but they still open even though you can't see them.

[It took me a whole weekend to put a couple thousand photos from Yellowstone into albums. That was before I realized it was way more work than it was worth, and that viewing 15 RAW files will freeze the thing up. It's a known glitch, but instructions for *possibly* fixing it take up two pages of fine print.]

Anyway, now I know why the guy is married to Picasa. A divorce would pretty much ruin his photography career.

A HA. aka Thing 4.

Enjoy your afternoon at Hamoa Beach. :)

Thing 24?

Facebook users can install a WorldCat application.

A free WorldCat application for the Facebook social networking Web site is now available. The application lets Web users search the collections of WorldCat libraries and monitor favorite WorldCat lists-their own lists, or those created by other users-right from personalized Facebook pages. Search results are returned from WorldCat.org.

Once installed, WorldCat library searching is easily accessed from the
list of applications beneath the Facebook search box.

The application includes a Home screen with WorldCat search box, as well as quick links to WorldCat searches based on personal interests a user has input in his or her Facebook profile. The application also includes tabbed access to:

* a built-in advanced WorldCat search
* a "Something to Read" panel that displays books recently added to other users' WorldCat lists
* a panel where the user can invite other Facebook friends to install the WorldCat application

On a user's Facebook profile page, the application adds a custom Facebook "box" with basic WorldCat search. The profile's owner can expand or collapse the box's visibility, and reposition it to a preferred location by dragging its title bar.

One option is to log into a Facebook account and install the application directly. Or follow the link from the WorldCat plug-ins page.

WorldCat.org users who maintain a personal profile - which lets them share information about themselves such as occupation, interests and links to personal Web pages - can now add a picture.

Adobe Photoshop Express

This is mainly applicable to thing 4, but interesting regardless.

Adobe has put a version of Photoshop online, for free, along with 2G of free photo gallery space. Makes sense that they would want to compete with flickr, when they have the full boat product to plug anyway.

I'll have to get somewhere that's not my work computer to explore the site, since I can't download the latest Flash version.

Thing 6

My real license plate is on a hybrid Highlander . . .

If we could print out some of these goodies on something more hardy than ordinary paper, they'd make great individualized summer reading prizes, or even just mass-produced handouts for Children's Book Week. One could even use them for National Library Week.

Once more into the Thing 5 breach.

My Presentation

Let me show you it.

I used splashr to link to a presentation of my Flickr photos. I wanted to embed it using an iframe, because that would have put the pictures on the blog rather than a link, but it didn't like to be resized. It seems to need its 1,000 by 700 pixels and nothing else. It cut off one side only when resized to 500x350, also cutting off the "forward" and "backward" icons from sight. It still scrolls the pictures using the mouse wheel, but I thought that was too opaque.

Jim gave me a new camera for my birthday, and I was really happy with some photos I took at the Como Conservatory over the weekend. I wanted to make a cube or other fancy slide show with them, but the old version of Breeze Browser won't convert my new version of RAW files (CR2), and Elements 6 is so slow it's not worth it, so it will have to wait.

Although it's been around a long time, I never had a deep need for the Microsoft RAW Image Thumbnailer and Viewer. Now? I feel like I do. It doesn't convert either, of course, but you can view RAW files in the Windows shell without accessing another program first, so I think I'll start by downloading that.

Frankly, I'm seriously considering blowing the cash on the Real Photoshop at this point. But given time I'd need to learn how to do everything in the new software, I shudder. At least I can take classes in Photoshop at the Science Museum, for a mere $159 each.

I know embedding video is a Thing somewhere . . .

Thing 18, to be precise.

I thought that some of you might be able to appreciate this.



I sing the LOLcat electric . . . or maybe it's just unplugged. :)

Thing 3

I logged into Google and created Google Reader, then subscribed to HCL's RSS feed with two clicks. For Library of Congress, I had to do it the roundabout way by adding the url manually. I found them by googling 'library rss feeds.'

I made sure to add Therese's and Bernice's blogs to my rss feed, because I know they're at about the same place I am, and a lot of people in RCL are much farther along.

An aggregator is the only easy way to keep track of what's going on in the library world -- chasing blogs all over the net would be pretty inconvenient.

Thing 4 Again

Still no love with the hotlinking, but I was utterly charmed by Flickr's photo editing feature. It's all most people really want. I've been calling PS Elements 6 every name I know of (and after a couple episodes of Deadwood, that's a lot), and I swear I'm going pop an artery over it. Maybe I should switch over. ;)

It's not hard to see how pictures can be added to any library information, be it online or otherwise. I contributed to that myself by photographing the children who won READ posters at Shoreview.

I'm not sure how Flickr specifically would add to this process . . . it's got loads of great doodads to spice up the photos you might want to use online, and if you didn't want to learn some other photo editor (I can attest that the curve is steep), Flickr would be great.

Back to Thing 2

The Ongoing Web Revolution

I appreciated this article a lot more that John Blyberg's blog entry. However, it took me several chunks of time to read, so I just made notes about some of its concepts.

******

If the internet is the new newspaper, and blogging is where people are going to get their information about their worlds (not the outside world, necessarily, but their own little worlds), then blogland seems like a good place for the library to be.

The upside of blogging is that, unlike the local suburban newspapers, nobody's going to cut your book review column to fit in more advertising.

The downside is that no freestanding library blog is going to get the number of readers who got that local newspaper twice a week. The blog will have to be somewhere that has a huge usership, somewhat like foot traffic in the mall . . . which is handy since Library 1.0 has an enormous following in the library's online catalog.

I do like the idea of comments-enabled catalog entries. Why go to Amazon to find out whether a book is any good?


I'm much more in charity with these people than with Mr. Blyberg, but this article does join most articles about new trends for libraries, in that it scorns "the old ways." (This article doesn't go quite so far as to demonize them.) Sure, libraries are still focused on how to protect people's privacy. Hello, it's the law.

Young teens couldn't care less about protecting their identity; they're too ignorant to know or care what criminals can do with it. But everybody old enough to have a bank account and credit cards still cares. That's what pseudonyms are for.

Some library 2.0 advocates claim that library buildings are outmoded, and in fact always have been a barrier to finding information. I say there are still more people who can walk, ride, or roll to a library building with its wealth of information (and HELP) than people who have computers and can use them fully to find everything they need with no immediate outlay of cash.

There is a mountain of information available on the internet that you have to pay for. Information's still a commodity, and that's not likely to change as long as any company can sell it.

I have found out what my uncle, a man who's pretty tech savvy for someone over 70, uses his computer for -- mainly spamming me with internet 'humor.'

>
> ****
>

I think allowing unmoderated public posting in library space is an interesting idea -- user generated content is always a crapshoot; just ask MySpace -- but I suspect the driving force behind "unmoderated" is that library staff doesn't have time to moderate it. Fortunately, that so-horrible upright and uptight vision of what libraries are and what they're for might limit the number and kind of library blog readers and responders. :)

Allowing the staff to post unmoderated seems pretty obvious -- it's somebody's job on the line, after all. I note they're providing their staff with rules on postings.

I read a couple of the shorter articles in that volume also, including one on using Flickr and its products in the library blog. As I digest more about Library 2.0, I feel more able to get past the hype. (After all, if it ain't a REVOLUTION, why would anyone pay any attention these days?)

Basically, they're saying that libraries should incorporate social networking space, either by their presence on ready-made social networking sites or on their own space or both. It's hard to imagine most of my online pals caring whether RCPL is on MySpace . . . or to imagine somebody paying me, the Second Life Librarian, to answer questions from some woman in San Antonio.

As an aside, 70% of the women on Second Life are using male avatars, so I'm guessing that most avatars you see belong to a woman. Besides, all the men are over on World of Warcraft.

But it wouldn't hurt anything to be there, and I find it quite reassuring in my staid old-fashioned heart that the GIANT ALL NEW SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT REVOLUTION is just the usual stuff, applied to libraries. Of course, just building a library's own platform for interaction could be time consuming and costly.

Wow, the transparent library uses community open houses . . . kind of like every other library does every day.

Thing 4

Cute little birds always make a day better.

Still not hotlinked.

I uploaded photos to Flickr, I swear! I even got an Instruction -- in essence, "Want to link a photo to Blogger? Click here to sign in to your Google account, and tell it that Flickr is okay to link to." I did, but I couldn't find anything on that page, or any of its links, that would tell Google such a thing. Now I can't even find the Instruction, but I think it came up when I was uploading photos. I had to get the photo above off of my hd.

I didn't understand until I was reading the Top Ten Flickr Mashups piece that Flickr itself is yet another complete hobby (inna box!). I don't know why I didn't get that -- if it exists on the internet, somebody is going to make a hobby out of it. :)

Thing 2

How old is this John Blyberg? Srsly.

I am intrigued by his perception of, and want to see his definition of, “the dwindling elderly population.”

I’m fascinated by his theory that we can serve that apparently tiny group of folks, as well as the soon-to-be retiring baby boomers, with the same level of service that we have been so far, while simultaneously shoveling money into Library 2.0. After all, there are how many boomers moving into the dwindling elderly population – six or seven? These soon-to-be retirees, otherwise known as working adults, have been getting a significant share of our services. In terms of staffing, time is most certainly money.

I would love to see his breakout of the projected financials for his library – or any other library that intends to accomplish this.

Failing that, I’d like to see what he used for population statistics and projections, and a brief paragraph as to why, exactly, those soon-to-be retirees were named the 'Baby Boom.'


"Many of the problems we face are self-imposed – L2 assumes that we have solved them."

If you want to get metaphysical, all library problems are self-imposed by the fact that libraries exist. L2 assumes nothing. It is a concept of little brain.


"We’re going to have to find a way to harness the “peer-to-peer” abstraction in ways that can benefit all of us."

Um, okay. I can't disagree with that vague and sweeping statement.


"So, finally, what is Library 2.0? Is it just a collection of ideas? Is it a movement? A revolution? Maybe a little bit of all those things, and more. It may not be the right label, but whatever IT is, it IS."

OMG. If what the first commenter says is really true . . . "John Blyberg continues to be one of the most articulate voices for Library 2.0. " . . . no wonder people like me find Library 2.0, like Web 2.0, complete vaporspeak.

Still On Thing 1. This is very Seussian.

I couldn't rename my blog. That must be because the name of the blog is its url. In LiveJournal or its other OpenSource software ilk, you can rename your journal as often as you want because it's one's chosen alias that's used in the url.

But I decided not to rename this one anyway, because I didn't want to redo everything.

I also prefer LJ's use of icons instead of avatars, so that I can have a selection of many for any given post. It's easier than changing one's avatar at Yahoo, and you can just use a picture of your cat, or anything else.

ETA: Okay, I found out how to edit the header, and edit the links. Now I actually might be able to rearrange my blog decor, since there is something to rearrange.

Thing 1

Starting the blog was really easy. In my haste, I forgot the rule that you have to make a Google account to use Blogger, but it didn't seem to matter since I didn't make one. I need to rename my blog to reflect the '23 Things' aspect -- if it won't let me rename, I'll have to delete this one and make another.

The Yahoo avatar was really easy to create, and there were fun backgrounds to use for it. Unfortunately, it now also shows up in my Yahoo Mail and Instant Messaging. I couldn't seem to drag the avatar anywhere on my blog page. Perhaps that was because it was large instead of small.

I also note that one of my coworkers was right -- if you edit an entry, it doesn't change the date on that entry.