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How to Bathe a Cat

One more Thing

Suggestions for additional Things (these mostly involve going beyond consuming the media out there and learning how to contribute as well):

• how to record a video and upload it to YouTube
• how to record a podcast and embed it in a blog
• how to create a widget
  
• how to create an RSS feed (that's probably too advanced, but still interesting!)
• annotating an OPAC.

Thanks again, Learning 2.0 Team and everyone else (it's a sizable list!) who made this happen.

Reflection on my 27 Things experience

I'm feeling ambitious, so I will attempt to answer all the suggested questions....

How has this program assisted or affected your lifelong learning goals?

My lifelong learning goal is to, uh...continue learning throughout my life. How's that for circular redundancy? Seriously, I do get bored unless I'm constantly learning new things (in moderation), and I was thrilled to be able to become more familiar with 2.0 tools through this program.

What were your favorite Learning 2.0 discoveries or exercises?

I liked exploring the online document tools--those seemed the most obviously useful for school as well as perhaps the workplace, and something practical to point out to patrons.

I also liked embedding a YouTube video in my blog.

I just appreciated the approach of this program--to get a taste of the variety of tools, and simply expand our awareness. It's much less intimidating when we are encouraged to take little steps and play around with things so that they're in the back of our minds.

Did anything surprise you?

I'm not sure what the official count is, but I thought that more staff would participate in this program because it's such a great opportunity...I mean, there's the mp3 player and all, but being able to discover technology that may be of use, and just plain FUN...why would one pass on that? Puzzled I am.

Was there enough help available when you needed it?

Yes, I had enthusiastic advocates at my workplace, and of course the Learning 2.0 team was ultra quick in responding to any Q's or other general issues.

What could we do differently to improve upon this program’s format or concept?

Maybe highlight more of the library applications of the tools we explored...although the team did a good job in connecting where apps exist.

Also make the blog posts a little briefer, split them up because sometimes I felt overwhelmed by all the text to read and the links to click and stuff to do.

But it was fantastic overall, and I liked how the teaching was delivered in the formats we were exploring (blog, podcast, etc.).

Would you like to see similar training opportunities as new library-relevant technologies emerge?

YES oh yes oh yes! I think it's important for all staff to be encouraged to keep learning, and to have a general pulse of what's going on in the tech world. Let's not fall prey to technolust, but let's also be known for being more savvy than scared or ignorant!

And, last one, if you could go back in time and tell yourself to either participate in the program or skip it, what would you do?

Do it...and persuade more co-workers to get involved too!

Snoodle's 1st and last annual comment-er awards

I must give thanks to the kind folks who responded to my last post, which was an unabashed plea for more comments.

Dearest Kikiduck, you have been a faithful comment-er and I give you the highest award I can bestow: a BlogWogDood! Never mind that it has really no value except that maybe you'll be slightly boosted in a Technorati search because I linked to you...well, it also looks good on any resume. :D

Yorick, I don't know who you are, but I appreciate your valiant commenting so I must mention you also. I must also say, clever to put a number before your blog title so that you'd be one of the first to appear on the staff blogroll! :P

And KCLS Learning 2.0--you have been there for me from the beginning (of 27 Things). In fact, I (Snoodle of Blogger) wouldn't exist without you!

Softly Sniffling

It looks like there is a total of 0 comments on my last five posts. So, dear reader, if you see me weeping in front of my computer monitor, you'll know why....

eAudio books

The KCLS eCollection is impressive! I knew that we had these resources available, and even checked out the eAudio book The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe by CS Lewis and borrowed a regular eBook, but I'm not a regular user and so most of this catalog is new to me. There's so much to explore! It's actually a little overwhelming, and I'd love it if there was an orientation video on the home page of the eCollection.

I love the Books 24X7 service that lets you read the latest technology books online. I'm a little sad to not have the paper version to hold in my hands, but I see how quickly these books get dated, and it makes sense to store them online.

I'm sure lots of patrons don't even know these fabulous resources are available! How can we let them know? Also, they are fairly easy to use, but if there are a lot of people like me, they might appreciate a more personal orientation and then become enthusiastic teachers who spread the word....

paper PDA

At first, I thought this was a joke, but The PocketMod might actually be a cheap and useful tool. I have a PDA that I use out of guilt (it was a gift), but I still prefer paper for the most part (except for entering recurring appointments and sorting tasks by date or priority--that's what the electronic stuff does well).

You can customize your own mini 8-page pocket organizer with calendars (daily, weekly, monthly, yearly), notepaper (lines, grids, blank), lists (shopping, finance, even a food diary!), and reference tables (for tips and conversions).

Pod

Podcasting is probably the tool I'm least excited about, just because I'm such a visual (and sometimes kinesthetic) learner. I have a hard time focusing on spoken words. If someone gives me important instructions verbally, I have to write it down or else I'll puzzle over what was said.

I signed up for the SirsiDynix Institute's podcasting rss feed because they seem to be offering cool seminars.

U-Tube

I like YouTube. At first I thought it was hokey like MySpace, but there's some really neat stuff here. A lot of library bloggers like to post videos from here. I've seen the Betty Glover workout video, The March of the Librarians (at Midwinter Seattle), and--my favorite--Cookie Monster in the library.

For library application, it's nice to be able to record moments like the opening of the library that the 27 Things blog highlighted, or storytimes. It could be helpful for internal communication--maybe the Billboard could be transformed into a video blog. Nice to show the community progress on building projects too.

And there's less danger of accidentally recording over precious memories, like my dad did when he taped a basketball game over our family vacation....

Here's a video I found just browsing. It features clips from The Lord of the Rings films, remembering Frodo and Sam's friendship, set to Josh Groban's "You Lift Me Up."

Bingo, Blyberg!

I read these words of John Blyburg on the blog librarian.net, and wanted to applaud:

Some people also just don’t like to step out of their comfort zone. They don’t want to absorb new things. I was on a top technology trends panel at OLA last January when someone asked, “what if we don’t want to learn about all these new technologies?” (paraphrase). I don’t think I was in the mood for hand-holding because my answer was, “it’s your job.” Really. I don’t believe libraries are life support systems for staff. We need to work for our bread. That means that we have so stop bunting and try to knock it out of the park every single time. That takes passion, and too many people in every industry, including libraries, lack it.

I wholeheartedly agree.

Happy Mappy!

I browsed through some of the Web 2.0 Awards sites. My favorite is Wayfinder because it lets you create personalized maps and explore others' creations. MacroMaven wrote about a Google maps mashup that listed local Starbucks locations.

This could be used personally for when I host visitors, and they'd like to know of interesting places to visit and good restaurants to try. It'd be nice to have it all on one map, and to be able to color-code by category (museums, sports, food, etc.) and add notes (e.g. which menu items to try at an eatery).

For the library, it might be useful for having a map of our libraries. Although we have one under the Find Your Library link (along with general directions), this could eliminate a step of inputting addresses for more specific driving directions.

We could also make a special map for local booklovers, with not only libraries, but bookstores and local sites mentioned in stories.

G infinity

Remember the Animaniacs cartoon duo "Pinky and the Brain"? Brain, the genius rodent, constantly plotted to take over the world...maybe he would like to work for Google, because they seem to be aiming to take over the world [of information]! (Although according to The Invisible Web by Chris Sherman and Gary Price, there are plenty of websites that go "uncrawled" by Google for various reasons.)

Here are other online articles about the "invisible web" (sorta ironic that I found these via Google, eh?):

• "Those Dark Hiding Places" by Robert Lackie
• "Invisible or Deep Web" from the UC-Berkeley library
• Wikipedia's entry on Deep Web.

Anyway, back to the point of this post, which is to describe my explorations of Google Labs products. It's neat that they have so many experimental projects going on...maybe when I'm more tech-savvy, I'd be interested in participating...whoa, that would be even more ironic. ;D

I tried Google Sets (since it was the last one listed, and I have sympathy for Last Things Listed, having a surname toward the end of the alphabet), Google Ride Finder, and Google Page Creator. Even though the last two names are clunky-sounding, I have to say that G--gle is doing a good job of branding these services to make sure everyone knows these innovations are associated with them....

• Google Sets is neat...it tries to detect a pattern out of items you input. I first entered "apple," "mango," "persimmon," "pineapple," and "guava", and then it generated a whole list of fruits! I also did a sorta-library related set of "cataloging," "web," "service," "books," and "maps," which generated mostly appropriate terms, except for "heraldry"--where did that come from?
• Google Ride Finder could be useful for seeing whether a private transit vehicle is nearby to pick you up. However, when I tried to refresh the position of the taxi cars, they didn't budge on the map. This would be more useful if I could see where the King County Metro buses are...I wonder if Google Transit shows this.
• Google Page Creator is just what it says. I'm not so interested in this, although I like the idea of having a website hosted for free.
  

Google and Zoho

Thoughts on...

Google Docs:

• I've used this before, primarily to back up Microsoft Word files for assignments.
• I discovered that you can not only collaborate with others on a document--you can also sign up for an RSS feed that notifies you of any changes...cool! I will definitely keep this in mind for group projects.
• At this point of available functions, how do these collaborative documents differ from wikis? Is the wiki's additional value the ability to organize pages? All of these tools are starting to blend together, sort of like how TV and internet and PDAs and cell phones and DVD players are starting to blend together on single comprehensive devices....
• I mentioned before my wariness of Google knowing so much about me...I use Gmail personally, and share my calendar with close friends. I don't care to use Google for my documents as well because I'd rather limit the information that a single company knows about me. Which is why I appreciate...

Zoho:

• This is the first non-Google service that I prefer to Google! Yippee!
  
• The interface is just prettier.
• The downsides? No RSS feeds for the word processing doc, as far as I can tell. Also, I had to scroll sideways to see the whole editing space. Maybe that wouldn't be a problem with a larger monitor, but still...
• I also appreciated the version number that appears on the bottom bar. I updated the document twice, so it went from version 1.0 to 1.1 and then 1.2. I wonder if I made a major change, if it would jump all the way to 2.0 or it would continue to graduate in tenth increments.

Both services seem interoperable with lots of other things, including blogs and commercial office software. Very nice! I wonder if this makes Microsoft or other companies nervous....

And also, I wonder how long these beta services will be offered free. Will they start charging, or will there be advertising? Is their plan to get us "hooked" and start paying for more? I just might sign up!

Library 2.0 articles in OCLC's report

I am most excited about Wendy Schultz's future-projecting article. Library 4.0?!! I appreciated her point that Library 4.0 would incorporate Library 1.0-3.0, not be something completely different. I think that's where people start to panic, when they fear that everything's changing. But the principles and products and services should still be there, just enhanced.

The OCLC report was presented nicely, in brief paragraphs with subtitles and generously sized photos of the authors in silly poses. There's great content in these OCLC reports, and the attractiveness factor means that more people are likely to read it.

I was also happy to explore North Carolina State's Endeca-based catalog, which seems to be a much more useful way to explore the library's resources--to enter a keyword, and see which categories the results fall under, and continue to narrow the results until you get something you want. It obviously needs some refining, but there's so much promise there.

Let's play!

I compared Rollyo and Google Search Engine. I was really trying to like Rollyo because I don't want Google to dominate my internet life, but I do prefer Google because of speed and the results, which were more even.

Rollyo seemed to favor Sno-Isle-related results, while Google seemed to slightly prefer KCLS (is it because they detected that the 27 Things search engine was created by KCLS staff?), but generally came up with Sno-Isle and SPL results as well.

keyword/search engine	Rollyo	Google Search Engine
storytime	Sno-Isle, Tacoma	KCLS, Sno-Isle, Seattle
gaming	gambling (homework help), SPL, Sno-Isle, KCLS	KCLS, SPL, Sno-Isle

PS Don't know why there's so much space between the text above and the table. I wrote the html code myself...if you have an idea of how to decrease the margin, let me know.

PPS Here's the link to my Google search engine (also embedded within my blog). The theme is board and video game reviews...the first five sites included are Uncle's Games (local game store with great customer service and weekly game nights where you can play and eat pretzels), Board Game Geek, FunAgain Games (online retailer), Board Games With Scott (a videoblog where Scott, a LIS professor, orients people to interesting board games), and Games Magazine, which does monthly reviews of both board and electronic games.

RSS Feeds 2

I read Talking Story's post about RSS feeds, and have to agree that I wish aggregators were more visually appealing. As much as I value Bloglines, I miss appreciating the graphic design of individual websites. Library 2.0 tools are often presented in aqua, hot pink, and black, and white; this color scheme get monotonous. However, I have hope because I'm sure people will start to make things more beautiful once they master the basic tools.

Another issue that Bloglines brings up is that since I subscribe to so many feeds using my personal account, I have a hard time recalling which blogger said what, since everything is presented in a similar format.

The South Park Me

I have to say, David's South Park avatar looked a lot like him. I don't know how well mine reflects me (especially because that gynormous book covers my fabulous outfit), but here it is:

PS I just realized that I have no nose! Yikes...how can I breathe in South Park without a cartoon nose?

I'm Blogging!

I am blogging for LISNews.org! It was exciting to see my first three posts appear in my Bloglines feeds today. I would link to them, but I want to retain some semblance of anonymity...and make people work to figure out who I am.

In other news, I checked out my tags for this blog...each one is unique, making my tags utterly worthless except for purposes of amusement! Exactly what I desired...heh heh.

Online weeding

Information overload disturbs me. As much as I adore books, magazines, and basically anything interesting to read and learn, I sense that I need to establish some boundaries for allowing all this stuff into my mind.

It might be helpful to write some sort of script that prompts people to delete blog feeds from their RSS reader...though the reader probably can't tell which feeds I peruse, skim, or just click on so it'll be eliminated from the to-read queue. It could also be helpful to prompt people to delete tags from their del.icio.us account if they haven't been clicked on for a certain period of time.

Libraries care about weeding physical materials, but what about online materials?

I recently learned that Google acquired a whole bunch of land in Oregon in order to store their server farms. It hadn't dawned on me that all my e-mails and other online whatnots have to be processed and stored via these huge machines which require electricity...thus, energy is spent (squandered, I should say!) on preserving much information that is useless.

Wacky Wikis

The tempation to commit an act of alliteration was too great for me, folks. Hence, the title of today's post.

I think that wikis could be very useful....An engineer I interviewed for an iSchool class on information behavior expressed excitement about using a wiki to clarify what was the most recent development on his team's project. But he said that he suspected that the majority of his colleagues would be reluctant to adopt this way of communicating.

(Note: these engineers are definitely confident with technology, and yet there's still resistance to learning new things, an attitude that doing so is a burden--in spite of this being potentially hugely beneficial in the long run.)

Anyway, the wikis that were highlighted were of varying quality. I believe that a wiki done well can be super convenient and gather much timely and helpful information from a variety of contributors. However, many that I've viewed seem to be lacking content. Plus they just look plain, not very sexy, and look uniform in presentation. And if those are the first examples that one sees, their imagination may be limited by these sparse representations.

My favorite wiki was the one about best practices and services in the library, founded by Meredith Farkas.

I wonder if it's possible to merge wikis...having multiple related wikis combine could resolve the problem of duplicating info and automatically beef up content. Win-win!

Good Name for a Dog

Hey, do you think "Widget" would be a good name for a dog? I'm thinking maybe a pug.

I remember one four-year-old girl I taught once, who was very small--more petite than any of her classmates. She said to me softly, "I'm bigger than Molly...Molly the pug." So cute!

Preschoolers are the best.

(Picture is by M Sarz, found on Flickr.com)

Link to LibraryThing

Oh, it says in lesson #14 that we must provide a link to our LibraryThing account. Is it sufficient that I added a widget to display some random books from my library?

PS I am glad to learn about how to add a widget to my blog! Thanks, 27 Things for encouraging me to learn something new every day. Though I was familiar with many of the tools we've been exploring, my knowledge of them has grown deeper thanks to these lessons.

GuruLib

I signed up for GuruLib because I saw that it features the ability to write reviews about your books, DVDs, games and more. That's nice that it's not just about books since more and more people are format-agnostic and also because many people I know have more extensive movie collections that book collections.

But I couldn't add Final Fantasy X to my game section due to a hardware upgrade. Shucks! This means my GuruLib account may die if I forget about it because I didn't have the chance to try it out on the first time. Crucial moment.

LibraryThang

Okay, I'm slowly falling in love with LibraryThing too. I have three accounts, though two were for demo purposes and I forgot what they are! I'm also unsure about sharing what's in my library with others because I'm pretty reserved, and hesitant to reveal much of my personality at work. But, I'll go wild and give you a glimpse into my library (I own about four bookcases' worth of books, but am inputting just what comes to mind)....

I'd love to have a LibraryThing account for books I've read too, sort of an online book journal. That would come in handy for booktalks too. And to let people look up if you've read something and commented about it. You could also insert new comments if you read a book multiple times, and marvel at how your response changes over time.

I guess I could just create a separate LibraryThing account for this, but there's not really a space for writing annotations about the books, just adding tags.

Caught Up!

I'm happy to be caught up w/ the 27 Things lessons. I know we'll get an extra month to complete them, but it's still nice to be current.

I searched Technorati with the keywords "Learning 2.0" and saw how the results changed when I searched blog posts, tags, and the blog directory.

It was fun to search using the keyword "KCLS27Things" and see coworkers' blog posts appear in the results.

Scr.ump.tio.us!

I like del.icio.us a lot. I first discovered it last year, thanks to a Weekly Memo tip. I love the flexibility of tags and being able to see which websites my friends like. I usually try to make my tags useful, though I confess that on this blog I've been creating disposable tags just for fun.

As for library application, I see the benefit of having a department share an account of useful links. Also making accounts specific to certain areas of research too, such as genealogy, as a service to patrons.

Speaking of patrons, I bet ours would love to participate in 27 Things too! I wonder if there'll be a program later that invites them to learn 2.0 technologies as well. Since we're "the people's university" and all...

Wariness Quickly Evolves Into Disgust

Hello again. I had to update my account settings for MySpace to stop the notification e-mails about friend requests from strangers in the Midwest. Two in five minutes!

Then, looking at my MySpace homepage, I felt a little sickened by the gross design and the flashing ads. Go away, obnoxiously oversized blinkin' ads! I'm sure I have to pay money for a premium account to banish them from my page.

Somebody Cares!

Okay, I promise that this is the last post related to the book Nobody Cares What You Had For Lunch.

I think I found someone who might care after all....

Thanks, Love-a-Lot Bear!

MySpace Not YourSpace

My good friend V urged me two or three years ago to set up a MySpace and a Friendster account. After frequent requests, I finally did. I looked up some high school and college friends and acquaintances, and then I said, "Now what?"

Even though we're a year apart in age, I've noticed that people from her class and later are much more present on social networking sites than my class and earlier.

Although I appreciate social networking in a cautious way, I dislike MySpace because it looks so tacky and also the creep factor associated with online stalkers. Also, I agree with Stephen Abram's daughter that it's the most teenyboppery of social network sites.

I do see how it's nice to have a pseudo e-mail service and a blog and lots more integrated in one site. But since I'd rather not have acquaintances see my personal blog, it's hosted through a different site and this handy dandy feature is therefore useless to me.

More importantly, after reading the articles linked to on the 27Things blog, I am growing in conviction that if our patrons are there, we should be there as well.

Nobody Cares What I Had for Lunch, But What About What I Had for Dinner?

A spicy tomato stew with pork, peas, carrots, and onions (of Filipino origin?). Yum.

What Do You Mean, Nobody Cares About What I Had for Lunch?

In honor of the book Nobody Cares What You Had For Lunch, by Margaret Mason, I will be posting about what I had for lunch.

Today, it was a Mexican vinaigrette salad from Acapulco Fresh. Tasty!

Subscribe to me...

The title of this post is a lame and impotent attempt to hypnotize unwitting visitors into subscribing to this modest blog.

I see from my Bloglines account that 3 people are subscribed to my account. Since I had to add my own blog to Bloglines in order to view this information, I deduce that the actual number of people subscribed is 2. Shucks! At least I am able to subtract, though. This is good news.

Hungry for Feeds

I tried searching for blogs about css in Feedster, but the results didn't seem very relevant. I'm not a huge fan of keyword searching because it usually comes up with some crazy results that you have to work to sift through--sort of like shopping at Goodwill...there are definitely treasures, but you have to look through maybe fifty to a hundred items to find something you actually like.

Which reminds me of the importance of cataloging, or some other method of information organization. After taking a class on the subject, I have become convicted of the importance of ordering resources well to facilitate retrieval and browsing.

Anyway, I appreciate the categories that Feedster presents for users to browse; however, the feeds seem to be arranged by when they were last updated, which is kinda interesting...but not really.

Bloglines

I've been using Bloglines for several months now...I'm tracking so many blogs that most days there are 300-500 posts to read, which overwhelms me, so I end up skimming them and feeling like it's a chore.

I do find interesting news or tools every day, and often forward them to friends or classmates.

I appreciated learning about an alternate way of subscribing to a feed--by clicking on the Add link under Feeds, and pasting the url of the desired website. I've been using the Sub With Bloglines button, which is simpler and still my preferred method; however, it's nice to know about other ways of doing things.

Monster Mash!

Of the Flickr 'n' Friends mashups highlighted on the 27 Things blog post for today, I am most excited about Spell With Flickr and Flickr Color Pickr. I am taking a class on designing web pages, and these two tools may come in handy. At least, I am re-inspired to work on my web pages because of these mashups.

Great Crepes!

I found this photo on Flickr, courtesy of finistere. I haven't been to this particular creperie, but I think it is beautiful. One of the things I miss most about France are the yummylicious crepes (esp with Nutella)!

Play

Here's what I'm thinking:

• I love the "play" aspect of Learning 2.0.
• I hope to learn more about publishing audio and video online.
• This is an amazing program.