Thing #19: Web 2.0 Awards

I checked out several award winners. I think I could use and enjoy Yelp (Best in City Guides & Reviews). It seems like a good place to get insider information on different locations - where to eat, where to shop, where to catch the best live music. Unfortunately, it will only work for major cities. And it is subject to shills disguised as regular users (I know there is a cool term for this but I can't remember it). Again, if enough people commit to it, the wisdom of the crowd will prevail. But there are lots of services out there like this one - what makes this the one that will stand the test of time?

Honorable Mention: I loved Guess the Google! That is too much fun. So random and addictive.

Thing #18: Web Apps

I have used these before in a very limited way. Web apps would be helpful when you need to collect information from people spread out over a distance. For example, the Teen Librarians have used it to order different types of fliers and brochures for a summer program. A collaborative spreadsheet made it easy for the person gathering the information to collect it from 20 different people. Instead of waiting for a response from each person and copying and pasting the information into a spreadsheet, each responder enters the information. This has the added benefit of helping the collector know who has not responded yet. It is much more efficient!

Thing #17: Playing in the Sandbox

I added a few songs to the favorite CDs request, and also added my blog to the sandbox. I found the experience to be easier than I expected. I could see this as being very useful for collaborative efforts, like committee work. Or it could be used to revise a policy manual. I was just on a committee revising a communication plan, and it would have been interesting to have used a wiki instead of endlessly exchanging emails. I wonder if there is any way to track accountability. I assume that there is a way for administrators to track who made what change. That could be necessary to know who to ask for clarification (or, sad to say, in the case of Wikipedia, who to block from making any more edits.)

Thing #16: Wading Into Wikis

My first thought on wikis is that there has to be some "tipping point" of participation that will guarantee fact checking and accuracy. If too few people participate, the wiki is subject to opinion and paranoia. If enough people commit to the wiki, it can work. But they are mostly volunteers. What about the long haul?


So, I watched the Common Craft video and can see how wikis are more than a reference source. Their utility as a communication and collaboration tool is really exciting. Just today I found myself on a merry-go-round of email messages about something at work. A wiki would have made the process flow much more efficiently.

I was a little disappointed by the Library Best Practicies wiki. I am currently taking the Certified Public Manager Levels IV, V, and VI course, so I gravitated toward the management subject areas and did not find much content. It felt like false advertising. The wiki seemed to be saying "Look here for some great information" but when I clicked on the topics, it was more of a "If we build it, they will come" scenario. What if nobody shows up? There is no guarantee that anyone is looking out for comprehensiveness.

A cool wiki I have seen:

Flu wiki - This one started up back when the possibility of a global flu pandemic became big news. I see it has not been updated in 3 months. That's slightly alarming.

Thing 15: The 2.0 Thing

The things about 2.0 that I like:
*User driven content
*Customizing ability
*Interactive
*Social

It's exciting and fun. Really!

Challenges:
*Infrastructure - that cool Google map mashup loses its effectiveness if your Internet connection is so slow that it takes 5 minutes to load
*Digital Divide - users who do not have computers at home do not have hours to spend on the Internet playing with the latest 2.0 widget - they need what they need now, not for fun, but for survival. They do not have the luxury of play. Many of the customization and convenience aspects of 2.0 mean nothing to them. All they know is that they have to use the Internet to apply for a job. The trip to the store where they want to work now involves an additional trip to the library to use technology unfamiliar to them.
*Literacy - all of this 2.0 stuff is useless to the person who cannot read.
*Perpetual beta is not a working environment compatible with government bureaucracy

Please stop telling me my profession is close to disaster if I do not pay heed to 2.0. I am trying to learn. My head is not stuck in the sand. I am living and working in a real place with actual living breathing customers who need help right now. Thank you!

Thing #14 is Technorati

My first reaction is that it seems like a whole lot of noise being made by just a handful of people. The top result for the Learning 2.0 search in the Blogs section has 102 fans. The second top blog has 12 fans. Hardly a large slice of the blogosphere. It strikes me as a cliquey club that those "in the know" probably obsess over. I thought at first that this site might use some kind of popularity indicator like Google uses PageRank. But it looks like you only get considered on Technorati if you add their html code to EACH POST. Is it me, or does that seem like a lot of bother just to stroke my own ego? Or maybe it leads to more readers. I don't know. I guess I will have to try it on my own blogs. At least delicious seems to be more democratic and a more accurate reflection of what people are reading and caring about on the blogosphere.

Thing #13 Del.icio.us is Add.dict.ive

Jill got me into delicious about 5 months ago. My links are at:

http://del.icio.us/chrodas

At first I did not see the practical use for it, but now I find it to be addictive. I am one of those people who loves to save newspaper and magazine clippings of interesting articles on all kinds of topics. Now I can do this virtually, conveniently, and in an orderly fashion with del.icio.us. So far, I am using it for quick and easy access to the ALA Great Stories Club page, which is hard to find on their web site. I am also using it for lots of library related topics. And since I am currently crazy about soup, I have bookmarked all kinds of soup recipe sites. I love how del.icio.us is portable and can be accessed anywhere I go. I am just getting into the social aspect. I used to browse a site called Blogdex, which was run by somebody at MIT. It employed some sort of algorithm to determine the most popular blog posts on the Internet. Now I can see what the current zeitgeist is by checking out the most popular sites - which means the most frequently tagged sites - on del.icio.us. It's fascinating. I also stumbled on a feminist's bookmarks, and have learned a lot about current women's issues from trolling her faves. It's also a great way to keep up with co-workers and colleagues who I do not see every day. And it's so exciting when someone sends me a link. It means they were thinking of me and knew what interested me. So so cool!

My one concern is for the potential ephemerousness (is that even a word?ephemeralness?) of the Internet. I love saving and tagging interesting news articles, but I do not think they will last too long. They get pulled by Yahoo and other news services in a relatively short amount of time. I guess time will tell if tagging and social bookmarking affect the actions of these news wires.

Worldcat

I have used Worldcat to look up items here at the branch. My biggest beef with it is that although it looks like a union catalog, it is not necessarily comprehensive. There has been commentary on the blogosphere about Worldcat and its advantages and drawbacks. This post from Jessamyn is a good place to get the gist of some of it. Basically, it SEEMS authoritative. It seems to say that if it's not listed here, you will have to buy it (and here's the link to Amazon to do so - does anyone besides me have a problem with that? Why not encourage Interlibrary Loan? Is this ultimately discouraging the use of public libraries by saying "go buy it"? OCLC is a company after all, right? It's not a library, and it does not operate as a library.) But what Jessamyn is saying is that a lot of smaller and/or rural libararies may not have their holdings listed there.

AND I often wonder how current the information in Worldcat is. If anyone can point me to the place where I can find this out, please let me know.

NetLibrary

I have not used NetLibrary in quite a while, so this exercise was a good refresher. I like that it displays a summary for each title. That could help me to decide whether or not I want to view the book. I tried a "for Dummies" search and sorted the results to see newest publication first. The most recent "--for Dummies" title is copyright 2006. That doesn't seem very up to date at all. So that's a little disappointing. My results also included books that are not in the "--for Dummies" series. It looks like, although I chose to do a title search, netLibrary also searches the descriptions. That seems a little strange.

When I choose to view all of the e-books available via OCL, I see that about 3,500 titles are available. The most recent publication date is 2007 - not very current.

I like the fact that you don't need to check books out anymore to view them. Also, the ability to add titles to my own Favorites is a plus. I can also add notes! These are very nice features. I printed 8 or 9 pages from the book I viewed without any trouble as well.

On the whole, I have found this product has improved since the last time I tried it. I still found online viewing to be somewhat disjointed. It just doesn't feel like book reading. The information seems to have less weight and depth somehow. It lacks some elemental sensory experience that I associate with reading a book.

Library Thing

As is evident from my Sidebar, I have created a LibraryThing account. I am using it to keep a running list of the books I read in 2007 and am reading in 2008. It was very easy to set up. I like the display of information. It is very intuitive and visually interesting. Easy access to similar title recommendations has great reader's advisory potential. I cold see spending a lot of time on this site. It is a book lover's paradise! My titles do not directly match anyone else. My kidlit and teen titles match other teen librarians. But the adult stuff I read is all over the map.

The Techno Sweat Shop

For Thing #10 in the OCL Web Challenge, there's a front page article by Matt Richtel in today's New York Times about the stressful life of bloggers who get paid by the post. It's currently the most blogged article on the New York Times web site and the most e-mailed article in the Technology section. Richtel writes of three well known bloggers who have recently had major heart attacks. Two, aged 60 and 50, died. The third, 41 years old, survived his coronary (so far). These bloggers worked in the highly competitive technology blogging world, which requires 24 hour committment. Richtel writes,

"To be sure, there is no official diagnosis of death by blogging, and the premature demise of two people obviously does not qualify as an epidemic. There is also no certainty that the stress of the work contributed to their deaths. But friends and family of the deceased, and fellow information workers, say those deaths have them thinking about the dangers of their work style. "

Being plugged into the world via the Internet means that there is literally an endless stream of data to view, process and communicate about. There is no natural filter or brake mechanism. How many of us have gone online just to do one little thing and looked up 2 hours later, wondering where the time went? Combine this aspect of the Web with a competitive, capitalist economy and you've got a store where the doors never close. We are Open All Night. To turn off may be interpreted as lazy, and, even worse, it means you are out of the loop. You are missing out on the next big thing that everyone is talking about. How are we going to manage this particular technological challenge? I can foresee Computer Turnoff Weeks in our future.