Library 2.0

A lot of this library 2.0 stuff sounds great especially in the weeding down of our reference book collection. The main thing it means to me is using technology to adapt to the information needs of our users and giving users more control over how they organize and access the information. People need information and are used to getting it as quickly and chaaply as possible and by using the search tools they are most comforatble with.

The hard part is I can not imagine our city government or its IT department addressing all of these issues and being able to adapt to rapid change. We can barely keep our webpage up to date as it is and we are supposed to be adding all this new webpage based content to it. There are new library technology tools and software that we bought months ago (and paid tens of thousands of dollars for) that I still can not use because they have not been installed on any staff PCs. And regular librarians are not allowed to install anything on their computers on their own. And this does address the fact that I mentioned a few posts ago about how many of our users, either a large minority or a small minority, are technologically illiterate.

I would love it if our library was ready to make it 2.0 and we are starting to do that by providing things like downloadable books, but all of the library and the city that runs its IT system has to be on board for thsi to happen.

Claimed on Technocrati

So I had some trouble claiming this at first beacuse none of the emails were showing up in my email account. So this post should finish claiming this blog and should tag it properly as well.

Technorati Profile

SAPLL2

Technocrati

I had heard of most of the blogs listed on technocrati, but a few of the popular ones were new to me. I was surprised by how mundane the search topics were with both Paris Hilton< jennifer Garner, and Jennifer Aniston being three of the top ten searches.

Del.icio.us

I think Del.icio.us can be a useful tool, but i do not use it much. It has been on our home computer for a while, but I never use it. For bookmarks I have my yahoo which I can access just as easily. For work book marks this could be a lot more useful since I use about 15 different PCs at work over the course of a month, but we are restricted to Internet Explorer and are not supposed to use firefox, which I use at home along with the new google seach engine. So far I just try to keep a "my favorites" list saved on my H drive for work links.

Rollyo

So I added a roolyo search bar to my right hand side bar. It is all about searching for primates and is a good tool to use if you need some information on lemurs or gibbons for instance. This is the first time I have used Rollyo, but I had created a customized google search box about a year ago. These are useful if you have a handful of sites that you trust, but I like having a little broader search than this. This is a good tool for when you have a small colelction of sites that you use on a regular basis and I could easily see setting up a site for my use for colelction development work.

Goodreads

I thought goodreads is a deent idea, but I did not really want to send a bunch of emails to my frieds bugging them to join up. I know I get a bit annoyed when people try to to get me to join up with their social networking type sites. Plus the emil adress I used for this account does not have any friends in it, it is the account that I use when signing up for automatic feeds so none of my friends are even in my address book. The site was easyt o use though and all of my books were on there, although none of them were obscure choices. For one I had a couple of different editions to chose from and I hope I picvked the right one.

Warning label

I was able to generate this handy warning label from this site. Now you can't blame me if reading this blog causes your hand to get caught in some gears.
(I hope this still counts as being tasteful)

More RSS

Do you think you'd regularly use RSS to keep up with personal or professional blogs? Why or Why not?

I have used RSS feeds before, but nveer got into them. I may use them occasionally for some sites and think they are a nice tool. The wowberry feed for graphic novels is useful since I help buy graphic novels and this lets me know which ones the library is getting. I looked around for a while but did not find too much more that I thought was interesting.

I had used technocrati before so I am most familiar with it and find it pretty eacy to use, It is organized by catagory fairly well. The google reader was relatively easy to use, but seemed slow for a google product. I usually do not go out looking for interesting sites, but will subscribe to one I find stumble upon.

RSS

I have subscribed to RSS feeds before a few years ago through yahoo, but have never been a big fan of them. Most of the sites I read are easy to navigate, keep all the stuff I am insterested in right on the front page, and update multipple times a day. I subscribed to a couple of them and thought they were ok, but will probably not use RSS that much in the future.

Techonology Problems

One of my biggest problems with this technology focus is that a huge portion of our population is techonologically illeterate. I have to help people with the most basic computer issues each day such a show to use a mouse, creating a password for the first time, how to minimize a window, etc. I know my sample is biased because the people who come into the library to use a computer often do not have one at home or at work so they come to use our computers, but this is a huge issue since you need to do so much on a computer now. You now have to use a computer to do things that a few years ago you did by making a phone call or filling out a paper phone with the some of the most common ones I see: applying for jobs, applying for citizenship, and getting customer service help. For people who are technologically literate this is great, but for a huge section of the population this is a huge new obstacle to overcome and lots of people are expecting libraries to fill in the gap without giving us the resources (staff, computers, etc.) to do it.

Trading Cards

Several of the sites linked to for this lesson, but I have to agree that the trading card one was the most fun. It was also easy to use and in a few seconds I had created a trading card using one of the pictures below. I may actually use that one in the future and send it to some of my geek friends.

The animoto anti-slideshow seems really useful and I know several relatives who would like it, but I am usually too lazy to do something like that with my photos. Montagr was also useful, but not that practical.

Christmas Pictures

Here are some Chirstmas pictures my son's grandmother took the other day.

Uploading and viewing from flickr was no problem, but...

The page for help with the blogger picture uploader from the 23 things blog gives me a "We're sorry, but the information you've requested cannot be found.", the google help section to upload from flickr keeps telling me to click on the "grant access" link which is not on my profile page like google says it is and I can not upload from flickr until I grant flickr access to my google account, and when I tried to upload via html it did not work. Uploading from the desktop worked fine so that is what I relied on. Here is my flickr page if you want to see it.

Fun Library Blog

I thought the annoyed librarian blog was fairly interesintg. It covered a wide variety of topics with a lot of good humor. It is nice to know I am not alone with many of my annoyances.

Fun

I also like the idea of encouraging fun and think people learn well through games and challenges set up like games. So far I have liked what I have learned through 23 things since it encourages you to actually make use of the technology rather than just read about it.

7 1/2 things

The easiest one for me is habit 6 using technology to your advantage. I have been exposed to new technologies for as long as I can remember and have never been intimidated by them. I like using new technology and usually assume that technology will make things easier or better until shown otherwise.

The hardest one is number 3, to view problems as challenges. I can get frustrated when faced with problems I do not want to deal with and try to avoid them instead of solving them. I do like helping other people solve their problems and am more than willing to give unsolicited advice.

I look forward to learning more about these 23 things.