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.