Thanks to Amy Grasmick and the VLA Personnel Committee, I’ve actually worked on a doc collaboratively, via Writeboard. Looking at changes other committee members had made was often a timesaver (we didn’t have to correct that glaring typo, someone else had done it) and offered a good substitute for getting together to laboriously work out changes.
I wonder if we’re coming to a time when there will be enough apps on the web to obviate the need for real software on the computer. While the work environment supplies word processing, database management, and presentation tools, I’m not that eager to go out and work with them on the web. And the exception would be: those collaborative projects.
Come to think of it, there is one other case. I choose not to travel with a computer. I could see using the web as a place to cache or create materials while I’m traveling.
Fun assignment– and Wetpaint was extremely easy to use. PBwiki is the site that I’d heard of before, but if I were starting one up it’s Wetpaint I’d try first. Sad truth: how things look is important to me. The toolbar with easy inserts made the process seem pretty easy.
I added a restaurant to the PBwiki site, and books to Wetpaint and Mediawiki.
I have been thinking about wikis for more than a year, particularly when I was playing with how to present a publication for Vermont libraries, the Good Ideas. Should it be a wiki, maybe with editing privileges for a few people or perhaps open to the world; or would it be better as a blog? I’m still leaning towards the blog– particularly now that I’ve become a little more comfortable with editing and presentation, thanks to 23 things.
When a library asked me for a ” new ideas in collection development,” the Princeton Library bookwiki was one of the ideas we discussed. Still looks like a great model to me, if we’re in a community where folks enjoy having a web presence. Meredith Farkas’s library successes wiki is an obvious way for connected librarians to build useful content– and I see that many subjects are fully populated. Nancy Pearl’s BookLust wiki seems like a natural link for book clubs.
Colbert’s story on wikis does point up the down side of using the world to post ideas. And certainly many academic institutions have sent the message out to students, don’t ever cite a wiki. On the other hand, I remember how amazed Grafton seniors were when they used Wikipedia to look up town information. It certainly says something about people who are interested in town history, when the entry is long and detailed.
Wikipedia has helped me with background information on anything technology– Digg It, Delicious, or acronyms, for example. I saw a new term in the Library Journal automation roundup– so obvious to the author that he hadn’t spelled it out. Thanks to Wikipedia, I get the context now.
Otis Gospodnetic called me on the my remark that Delicious searching works better than Simpy searching– so I went back and checked. The difference I perceived initially isn’t there. Both sites offer a vanilla search box that retrieves whatever the users have saved.
I feel a little creeped out having been spotted so quickly by Gospodnetic, who manages Simpy. But that’s the web environment too.
I like the word perspective used in the context of Library 2.0. It reminds me that I have a perspective, one that was shaped by the MLS years ago and by 30 years work as a librarian. Rick Anderson’s remarks resonate with a virtual presentation I heard from the MidAtlantic Library Futures Conference. Check out the audio presentation and PowerPoint given by futurist Joan Frye Williams.
Information customers, who are also library customers, aren’t as picky as librarians about what they find for sources. We’re still saying “make sure that’s a reputable document”– the customers are happy to find a blog/ story/ user group and go with that for the answer.
Two points Rick Anderson made:
1. Put library services and content where the customer goes, which is now on the web. Integrate them into the customer’s “daily patterns.” Quite a challenge for Vermont’s places filled with books!
2. Make sure library services are usable without training. Make them “user-centric.”
Both of these points make more sense in Anderson’s academic environment than they do in mine. The public library environment I know includes many tuned in, blog-reading, Google-using customers– but it also includes my young hairdresser who knows e-mail but not much else on the web. And how about the seniors, the largest demographic in New England? Eager to learn– but taken as a group, not yet on the web.
I’m paying attention, I’m recognizing how fast change comes, but I’m not convinced we should jettison the habits of the past and switch our attention to IM now. Unless (thanks, Michael Stephens) our customers are truly demanding that we do so.
I had a good time in the Blogosphere, by which I mean Technorati. Checked out Vermont, National Library Week, Jessamyn West, my town, and of course my consuming interest, Middlebury Quidditch. Turns out there are lots of people around using blogs to comment on the world.
The take-away for me is probably another way to identify up and coming topics. Will I use Technorati regularly? No, probably not– but I might jump on to check out a Vermont story and see whether it made headlines in the blogosphere. My preference is still to look at a few blogs that I’ve found keep tabs on what is new– rather than looking at the tool that counts what is hot.
Claiming my blog turned out to be pretty straightforward. I wasn’t tempted by the Watchlist (well, not on this visit anyway), but I did enjoy another feature of Technorati: Today in Photos. Why did I see so many photos related to video games, iPods or i-commercials, and superheroes? Looks like a youth-driven culture to me.
I’ve been dragging my feet on this week– the old remember the password problem. For some reason, I initially picked Simpy to do my social bookmarking. But the help has not been as helpful as the Del.icio.us site– and now I’ve proven to myself that the search function on Del.icio.us works better.
Is password management one of the 23 things? It probably should be for me.
Both Simpy and Del.icio.us are great for keeping track of my websites– ADA, interesting library pages, topics from workshops. I think the public aspect of dangling those bookmarks out there makes me a little nervous– but that’s why we’re fooling with the new technology, right? To get over the nerves and feel out the advantages.
Next challenge: to log in from a different computer and see if I can still get to my new bookmarks. The sceptic isn’t sure….
What I like about LibraryThing: the attractive visual images of the covers, plus the links to what other people are reading. I stuck in a bunch of different books and found lots of paths away from them to similar reading.
On the other hand, it’s lists that I prefer. Give me an old fashioned annotated bibliography any day! Perhaps it’s just that I haven’t created a library web page– that’s where I expect LibraryThing would shine. I also found it a little frustrating scoping out the LT and WordPress relationships– until I realized that the blogs that showed me LT book jackets were not WordPress.
Another tiny reality: when I’m really busy as I have been lately, new technology is way down the list. Cooking, reading, talking to friends– they all come much higher than figuring out how to make code work or how a new tool interacts with the old stuff.
I’m tickled with the ALA-created videos for National Library Week, especially the one that compares visits to the library with visits to McDonalds. Someone really had fun writing these spots! And they’re free for embedding in your blog, site, etc.– great idea for celebrating online. Almost as clever as the McDonald’s spot– Go Fish.
Justin Bogart, Middlebury student, has made a documentary of the Intercollegiate Quidditch World Cup, played last fall. Interesting jump to the muggle world from what J.K. Rowling gave us!
