Elag’s blog

Most of the Web 2.0 tools that we've touched upon in this series of explorations have a certain amount of "staying power", which made them valuable to look at. Youtube and blogs have become a cultural mainstay and often contain valuable information that is hard to find elsewhere. Wikis, while not quite as prevalent, have found a solid footing in the group-think compendium that is Wikipedia. Photo sharing sites like Flickr are also solidly in the mainstream of 21st century techno-culture.

Some of the things that are unique to libraries and book lovers, such as Library Thing or Good Reads, fill a niche for a particular interest group. However, in all of my time at the Info desk, I've never had anyone ask me for recommendations for a book-lovers networking website, but at least once a week I get asked for help with My Space or Facebook. (Of course both of those also have places to note interests and activities, such as what you are reading or listening to).

As someone who lives on the computer at home at work (I confess to owning three computers), I find some of these more useful than others. Internally, we need to be familiar with blogs and wikis. Public service emphasizes a need for basic familiarity with Facebook, My Space and Flickr. In the branch I work in, much time is spent teaching patrons the basics to function on the computer---email and internet searching. Some of this other stuff isn't even a blip on their radar because they are struggling just to keep from falling off the edge of the digital divide.

Personally, though, I make use of quite a few of them. Delicioius helps me track my favorite sites as I go between my various computers; I use Google Docs for much the same reason (I also have both PC and Mac, so Google Docs helps keep my formatting problems to a minimum). I use an RSS reader several times a week to keep up with my favorite blogs and news sites. I confess I'm not much of a Facebook user, although I do have a minimal page. However, I keep up with friends around the world through the graphically interactive social networking site of Second Life.

This was a fun exercise for me because I use most of these things anyway, and I read articles about new 2.0 or 3.0 gizmos and jump on the ones that look interesting. I know that I will continue to take this beyond what we've done here.

I love using delicious and having access to my bookmarks anywhere I go. I own three computers just at home and am always switching between them for one reason or another. Okay, for the really curious, I own one iMac, one PC (both desktops) and one MacBook Pro laptop.

We have played a bit with delicious at the branch, putting the system and branch links and passwords on it, making it private access only. However, up to this point it really isn't used much. It is still faster to go to the bookmarks on the browser and pull down what is needed.

Tools like this can be helpful, but can also, despite the simplicity, be too time consuming to be of much use on the job. In the case of much used websites like B & T, it really is far faster to go to the pull down bookmark than to load up delicious and hunt for it. Theoretically, it would be nice to share websites for school assignments through delicious, but quite often those assignments' due dates pass too quickly to make it worth the effort. Even as an avowed techie (see three computers above), I admit that sometimes helpful hints and notes written with old fashioned pen and paper are a more effective communication tool.

Although I've read wikis for various reasons, I've never given too much thought to them except in general terms. I particularly enjoyed reading the Web Junction article because I learned what the word wiki means and read about some "out of the box" uses for wikis in libraries.

For personal use, I've certainly taken advantage of wikipedia and other wikis that address hobbies and interests, although I've never posted to any of them.

We are certainly working to embrace the Wiki world in our library system, although it can get a bit cumbersome if you are trying to find information that may be in more than one wiki. Frankly, even to a highly adaptable techno-geek like myself, sometimes there really is no substitute for memos if you are trying to get info out immediately. Using wikis as an archive is great, but they don't make good communcation tools. If you could subscribe to wikis like RSS feeds, and the subscription software could filter things for you, imagine how much more useful they would be!

Two years ago when these things first came out, I did an afternoon breakout presentation on Cool Tech Toys. Online office software was one of the things I demonstrated, including the Zoho software. I usually use Google Docs, so I hadn't taken a look at it since then. There have been more features added and it is definitely more robust.

I found using the word processor to be easy and straight forward. I added a photo of a friend of mine from the Internet (* see note below), made a numbered list and added a table. My only complaint was that the tab feature didn't work to get from one cell in a table to another.

As I said, I've had much more experience with Google docs. When I was doing my book reviews, I was able to directly upload my reviews from Google Docs to my blog. The only thing I had to edit was the header.

One thing that's very nice about online office software is portability. I can work on a document from any online computer and not have to save to a thumb drive, which I almost invariable forget that I left in the computer when I'm done. :) Another personal advantage is that I use my MacBook Pro to do most of my work. While I can read and save documents in MS Office format, using Google Docs or Zoho saves a couple of steps.

We've occasionally shown patrons how to use this software when they come in with an incompatible file, such as word perfect. Although this won't read word perfect files for them, they can at least re-type their work, save it and then access it from another location later. There's nothing particularly intuitive about this software for a beginning computer user, but anyone with a little experience with using word processing software would be able to figure out the basics fairly quickly.

*Note: the most challenging part of this exercise was when I got sidetracked trying to figure out how to convert a photo file in webshots format to one in jpg that I could use for this exercise. Webshots uses a proprietary file format which is unreadable by Photoshop. I finally found a free little gizmo for mac computers that did the trick! So....I learned something new although it wasn't quite what was intended in Exploration 6 :)

Interestingly enough, I was introduced to Good Reads by a friend outside of my library circle. She sent me a friend invitation and I was immediately impressed by how easy the site is to use and maintain. It's fun reading other people's comments about the books that you have read or might want to read. Keeping booklists of "to be read" titles is also a breeze.

Within days of signing up, some library staff members found me and issued additional friend invitations. I now get regular updates from them on what they are reading and sometimes find new books to add to my own list because of that.

I was a bit of a latecomer to the canned Web 2.0 book sites because of the book blog that I maintained on my own for almost three years. I started it as a way to keep track of what I had read and as a possible reader's advisory tool because my reading taste is pretty eclectic. My original goal was to create a tool in which I could track titles and authors as well as some notes to remember what each book was about. At first, I wrote brief notes, but soon expanded to something that vaguely resembled a book review.

One day, out of the blue, I was contacted by a book publicist in New York and asked if she could send me a book to review on my website. I wrote back and asked if she was kidding; after all I'm not a professional. Oh, she said, your site is perfect for what we're looking for. So, I accepted the book, read and enjoyed it, and wrote the review. Free books! I was hooked! Over the next few months, I was contacted by several other publishers and publicists and soon had several books a month mailed to me for review. I also had the opportunity to communicate with some authors.

Alas, for some personal reasons, I was unable to continue the book blog and dropped it completely a couple months ago. Because I was looking for a tool that was very flexible, I chose a fee-based blog service and didn't wish to continue paying for something I wasn't using.

The arrival of Good Reads allowed me to still keep track of my books as well as see what my friends are reading. As far as something like this goes, it might be fun to make patrons aware of it and maybe start some community reading circles. Busy people who don't have time for book clubs might get that "book connection fix" that this provides.

 Here's the link for my fairly new Good Reads list. http://www.goodreads.com/review/list/876955?shelf=%23ALL%23

When I first read about RSS feed software a couple years ago, I thought..."What do I need this for?". It took me a little while to get into it, but once I did I realized I could no longer live without it. Of course, it's both a blessing and a curse as I tend to oversubscribe to things and never have time to read all of those blogs! But then, that's what the delete key is for...

I use Bloglines although I have also tried Yahoo Reader and Google Reader. I didn't particularly care for Yahoo's Reader  because of the way the blogs were displayed and it seemed to take me longer to get to them. Bloglines was easy to set up, organize and use. You get enough of a preview to decide if you want to read the whole blog. The Google Reader is tied into a gmail account and since I have (ahem) 5 of them, it was a bit of a pain to log in to a different account just to read blogs. Simpler is definitely better!

The Making of Second Life: Notes from the New World

Wagner James Au

I enjoyed reading some of the comments from my Fellow Explorers and added three of their blogs to my bloglist as well as in my feed reader.

I subscribe to a lot of blogs about Second Life in order to keep up with what's happening out there in the metaverse. Of course all the great SL fashion blogs are just totally cool, too.

I started perusing Flickr a couple of years ago as friends and family posted picture on there. After my trip to Palm Springs, CA last year, I posted some photos on Flickr in order to share them. Here's the link to those photos: http://www.flickr.com/photos/62801414@N00/

Problems that I encountered  with Flickr included the limits on photo albums with a free account and the total limit of photos. I also use two other file/photo sharing services, Photobucket and 4shared. 4shared isn't free, but I've certainly gotten my money's worth out of it. It's a general purpose file sharing service that although not free, is reasonably priced. I use it to share photos, music and documents with people on my personal Web 2.0 network.

I have enjoyed other friends photos on Flickr and sometimes use the site to come up with a particular picture that I need to reference for my digital design projects. It is a great resource and a fun way to share pictures with people around the world.

I first learned of the Library of Congress' Flickr project when I read this article on NPR about a misidentified Lincoln Inauguration photo: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=19094867. This certainly is an example of web 2.0 at work!

As for uses closer to AACPL, a flickr page could hold photos of programs, events or library construction/renovation projects.