How 2.0 R U Now?

Way back in January when we first got started on this blogging journey, many of you took a quiz -- How 2.0 R U? We'd like to see what kind of difference this training has made, so please give the quiz another try and let us know, How 2.0 R U Now?

Some of you followed the training all along, some of you participated every so often, some of you read along silently. We hope everyone found something interesting, something new, and something that will help you help our customers in the future if not now.

Please comment on this final post to let us know what you thought, what you liked, what you didn't, what could be done differently, better, or not at all. This is the feedback we will use to decide where we go next in the 2.0 world.

In the next day or so we'll put the names of those who completed the training in a hat and one lucky blogger will receive an iPod Shuffle. Look for the winner on your library news blog -- LibBlog.

Soon all the participant blogs will be detached from this training blog. If you have a blog it is yours to keep up with, or you can delete it. If you don't plan to use your blog you can go to the same screen you use to create a post, click the Settings tab at the top, scroll all the way to the bottom of the Settings screen and Delete your blog.

This hcplc = lib 2.0 training blog will stay here so you can read and work through the lessons and other posts and continue to learn.

So please, take the quiz, comment on the training, and enjoy the blogosphere!

is for VCarious, "a new way to explore travel destinations." You can read travel guides written by others, post your own photos and journals, and share interesting items with your friends and colleagues. This is based on a core Web 2.0 concept to get the users to create and contribute the content. Actually, this site is quite cool; it's definitely worth a look if you're planning a trip somewhere.

VCarious is a new kind of travel site for exploring destinations in the same way as first-hand travel. Using Web 2.0 technologies, VCarious provides a dynamic, interactive environment for exploring photos, journals, and travel guides. Members can interact with other travelers, share their photos and journals, and participate in creating community travel guides.

VCarious was created by travelers who were tired of canned, one-size-fits-all printed guides and frustrated with disorganized travel web sites filled with sponsored links. With its dynamic and interactive tools, VCarious enables travel enthusiasts to share their experiences and truly explore the world.

and Yes, I know I skipped "U".

Web 2.0 Alpbahet:Part 2 (letters N-Z) were originally published in Information Today 24.10 (Nov 2007): p.15(2).

Gaming in the Library

Much is happening in the world of gaming right now, and it's not just a lot of teenage boys sitting in the basement staring at a screen for hours on end. No, gaming has tremendous potential for libraries to reach out to new users, offer new services, and help complement efforts in community-building, information literacy, and other areas. - Don't know much about gaming but you want to know how it can benefit libraries? - Not sure what kinds of services your library could offer (especially on a limited budget)? - Are you an avid gamer who would like to offer services but you need help convincing others? - Just want to hear what other libraries are doing? We'll cover all of these topics and more in just one hour. Get the scoop that helps you clarify your thinking about gaming and libraries.

Get the archive of the Sirsi Dynix Institutes presentation by Jenny Levine —Internet Development Specialist and Strategy Guide, ALA:

Gaming in the Library

...or go right to the good stuff:

Listen Now (mp3)

Podcast (php)

View Now (wmv)

Supplemental Material (pdf)

Get a (Second) Life!

There's been a great deal of talk about the virtual world, Second Life and how it could be used for instruction and for meeting library customers online.

Educause has put together a fact sheet about Second Life - "7 Things You Should Know About Second Life" (PDF) answering your burning questions like:

-What is it?
-Who’s doing it?
-How does it work?
-Why is it significant?
-What are the downsides?
-Where is it going?
-What are the implications for teaching and learning?

I'm a Believer!

There has been a lot of hype concerning libraries and gaming, with professional publications touting incredible benefits. THPL started down the road to gaming over a year ago as one of many options for Out of School (OST) programming, proving to be enjoyable for our customers and beneficial to our staff.

I became a TRUE believer of gaming in libraries as a result of my interactions with customers during the Teen Tech Week gaming tournament and qualifying events. It was a marketing event made to order! I mingled in the crowds and took advantage of every opportunity to converse with teens and parents, promoting library services and learning more about their perceptions of the library, the services of interest to them, and amazingly, their preferences on how they wish to learn about upcoming events.

There are many documented benefits to gaming, but I believe one of the strongest arguments is that it can help libraries become involved in teen social networking and provide opportunities to promote other relevant library services to this demographic.

Gaming is good for you

Here is a detailed list of New York State education standards that are met by gaming in the library. Plenty of food for thought.
And take a look at the normally staid lobby at the main research library in New York.
Libraries all over the country are realizing the benefits of gaming and we are too. We have more teen programs, and more teen participation, than ever before!

Gaming and Libraries

Here is an interesting presentation by Jenny Levine, The Shifted Librarian and gaming librarian extraordinaire. There's a ton of information here but a quick browse will give you lots of facts on the value of gaming in libraries.

2.0 Alphabet

is for Twitter, "a global community of friends and strangers answering one simple question: What are you doing? Answer on your phone, IM, or right here on the web!" My immediate reply was, who the heck cares? For some reason, Twitter has received a lot of buzz in the library community. It's not as though we weren't already plagued by information overload.

Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that allows users to send "updates" (or "tweets"; text-based posts, up to 140 characters long) to the Twitter web site, via the Twitter web site, short message service (SMS), instant messaging, or a third-party application such as Twitterrific or Facebook.
Updates are displayed on the user's profile page and instantly delivered to other users who have signed up to receive them. The sender can restrict delivery to those in his or her circle of friends (delivery to everyone is the default). Users can receive updates via the Twitter website, instant messaging, SMS, RSS, email or through an application. [Wikipedia]

There's always a lot of chatter on Library 2.0 blogs about the significance, need, point, etc. of Twitter. I'd comment more, but I've got to read my email (8:05am); then I'm going to drink some coffee (8:07, 8:15 & 8:34am); I have an appointment with my supervisor (9:15am) but will stop by the restroom first (9:06am) ... "What are you doing?"

Web 2.0 Alpbahet:Part 2 (letters N-Z) were originally published in Information Today 24.10 (Nov 2007): p.15(2).

Learning Library Skills Through Gaming

Carnegie Mellon University Library now offers students the opportunity to learn about the library through games in the Library Arcade. The Library Arcade features flash-based games designed to help students develop research skills through entertaining and easy-to-repeat activities.

Graduate students from their Entertainment Technology Center have teamed up with the University Libraries to create educational games to help students develop library research skills. They have two games so far - “I’ll Get It” in which players must help fellow students find library resources, and “Within Range”, a library re-shelving game using the LC classification system. They are still in the testing phase, but have made the games available to the public.

Two learning games are now offered:
(1) I'll Get It! - helps students identify research materials.

(2) Within Range - for students to learn the correct order of items on the shelves.

This information was found in a posting from the library technology blog - iLibrarian.

Gaming Gone Wild

gaming presentation01
Originally uploaded by ALA staff

I've been saving lots of good stuff to post during our gaming weeks, but then I saw this post on The Shifted Librarian and it's full of interesting links on the value of gaming in libraries.

There's Jenny Levine's presentation on gaming in libraries that she gave in Second Life on the right.

#12 - Gaming in Libraries

..."If you don't offer them something they value now, you're going to be irelevant to them the rest of their lives." Eli Neiburger (Gaming in Libraries Symposium, December, 2005)

Learning Objectives

• Learn how libraries are using are using online and video games to promote learning and technology skills.
• Learn about virtual communities, like Second Life and how they are being implented in libraries.
• What is Dance Dance Revolution anyway?
• What is an "avatar"?
• Review the Learn More: Avatars tutorial.


• Second Life: Info Insland Archipelago Tour (on YouTube)
  
• "When everything is available online, why come to the library at all?" See how Aarhus Public Library in Denmark is answering that Questions (via YouTube).
  

Skills Practice

• Go to Just for Kids: Games and play one of the education games that the library offers through it's Web site.
• Explore one of the more popular online games that our young customers are playing in the library - how about World of Warcraft or RuneScape?
• Go to YouTube and watch a view clips of Dance Dance Revolution.
• Learn about Speed Stacks; how would you incorporate this into a teen or adult program at the library?

Experience Sharing

• Share your gaming experiences on your Learning 2.0 blog.
• Did you create an avatar of any of the online games you explored? Why not share that image on your blog as well.

Resources

1. Library Technology Reports (July/August, 2006) - "Gaming in Libraries."
2. Christy Branston, "From Game Studies to Bibliographic Gaming: Libraries Tap into the Video Game Culture."
3. Ameet Doshi, "How Gaming Could Inprove Information Literacy."
4. Donald T. Hawkins and Barbara Brynko, "Gaming: The Next Hot Technology for Libraries."
5. Popular Mechanics, "Microsoft Surface: Behind-the-Scenes First Look (with Video)." Is this gaming or computing?
6. SirsiDynix Institute, "Teen Second Life: Library Services in a 3D World."
7. "Second Life" on Wikipedia.
8. "RuneScape" on Wikipedia.
9. "World of Warcraft" on Wikipedia.

2.0 Alphabet

is for Squidoo. Squidoo is a network of user-generated lenses --single pages that highlight one person's point of view, recommendations, or expertise. Lenses can be about anything, such as ideas, people or places, hobbies and sports, pets or products, philosophy, and politics. Lenses aren't primarily intended to hold content; more emphasis is placed on recommending and then pointing to content on the web. Annotation and organization and personalization delivers context and meaning.

Squidoo's goal as a platform is to bring the power of recommendation to search. Squidoo's goal as a co-op is to pay as much money as we can to our lensmasters and to charity. And Squidoo's goal as a community is to have fun along the way, and meet new ideas and the people behind them.
Read more about Squidoo at The SquidLens.

Check out Squidoo's Library 2.0 Lens.

Web 2.0 Alpbahet:Part 2 (letters N-Z) were originally published in Information Today 24.10 (Nov 2007): p.15(2).

Picasa Web Albums

Picasa (another free Google application) is what I use to edit, store and share my photographs. It's so easy to use and to upload to your blog from there. I love the way I can now put together a web album and share with friends. The web album is a relatively new feature and I noticed that Picasa now automatically creates and builds a web album from your blog if you are using blogspot (also a free Google application). It does include every photo ever added to your blog, even if you have edited them off your blog, and it does include some twice, though I am not sure why.

Here's the web album Picasa created all on its own from my blog, om musing. Photo below, of the front entrance to the main library in Brooklyn, is from the om musing album.

Social Media in Plain English

I know this is somewhat out of order (unless you consider all Web 2.0 stuff to be "social media") - Common Craft has released another great explanatory video.




Take a look!

9 Free Online Storage/Backup Solutions–for Varying Needs

Originally posted to Web Worker (April 2, 2008):

"The price of storage has been dropping dramatically for some time now, and along with that trend, web workers now have an ever-expanding set of options for backing up and sharing files online. In addition, the various services you can use offer many different kinds of options–so how much capacity you get with free online offerings isn’t necessarily the only issue any more. In this post, I’ll round up some of the best free services to consider, and what their specialties are.

I mentioned Adrive here once before, and after continuing to use it, I’m impressed with it. It’s a no-frills online storage and backup solution, and the real attraction to it is how much capacity you get: a whopping 50 gigabytes. That’s much more than the 5GB you get free with Xdrive, or the 1GB you get free with Box.net.

Speaking of Box.net, its main attraction is the large set of free applications that you can now use in conjunction with it through its OpenBox service. You can do online editing with Zoho, document signing with EchoSign, CAD previewing with Autodesk Freewheel, working within the ThinkFree productivity suite, cropping photos with Picnik, and more.

I’m also a fan of some of the on-the-fly services out there, designed to let you shoot files and images online and share them with colleagues as instantly as possible. Recently, I mentioned Clip2Net, which is really good for these speed collaboration applications. I also like Drop.io which creates a web site for you to deposit files on, and you can password protect it. Another player to look into if you’re interested in this type of online storage and sharing is DropBoks.

For folks interested in a Mac client for backups and storage, Mozy remains a popular choice. And if you’re interested in backups in particular, MediaMax is worth looking into. You get 25GB of free online storage, and you also get a free piece of client software called MediaMax XL Beta which allows you to automate backups so you don’t have to do the work."

We actually used eSnips for the hcplc=Lib 2.0 survey.

2.0 Alphabet

is for reddit, where users submit links to content and then vote on the links, so the most popular items bubble to the top. Similar sites are Digg.com and Newsvine. A study released in September 2007 by the Project for Excellence in Journalism showed a wide divergence in what the so-called "mainstream media" considers to be important and what "the masses" perceive as worthy of attention. This is proof.

"The site has discussion areas in which users may discuss the posted links and vote for or against others' comments. When there are enough votes against a given comment, it will not be displayed by default, although a reader can display it through a link or preference. Users who submit articles which other users like and subsequently "vote up" receive "karma" points as a reward for submitting interesting articles."[Wikipedia]

Web 2.0 Alpbahet:Part 2 (letters N-Z) were originally published in Information Today 24.10 (Nov 2007): p.15(2).

Even More Cool Online Tools...

The Internet site - "Webware: Cool Web 2.0 Apps for Everyone" - has just published its list of the Top 100 Web Apps for 2008 (votes by visitors to their site).

Take a look at the follwoing categories for some interesting online productivity tools:

• Productivity & Business
• Storage
• Widgets & Desktop Enhancements
• Education & Reference.

Here's some useful online apps...

10 Free Web-based Alternatives to Photoshop
LifeClever has put together a nice list of 10 free Web-based applications which can be used for photo-editing. Be sure and check out the full post for screenshots of each:

• Picnik
• Splashup
• Phoenix
• Photoshop Express
• Snipshot
• flauntR
• Pic Resize
• Pixenate
• FotoFlexer
• Phixr

These were posted to iLibrarian (which posted them from somewhere else).

Lab Graduate

It's time to have some fun in the lab!

Have you been somewhere -- a branch you don't normally work at, away on vacation, at your parents' house, etc. -- and wished you had your computer with you? Or wished the computer that was available had the software to run the document you have on your flashdrive?

Forget the flashdrive, say goodbye to the software.

When you use Google Docs it won't matter where you are or what computer you have available. You can even use your phone. You can create, access, and import word processing documents, spreadsheets, even presentations.

Google Docs is a graduate of Google Labs which is full of good ideas, some great ones, some that may seem silly to you. The reason so many Google products work so well is that they are made available to anyone to play with during development at Google Labs. You too can test drive and give input on such Google ideas as searching concepts and chat resources.

Some of the Google platforms you know and love were graduated from the Google Lab, like the Reader you use to gather your blogs and news, the Maps you use to get around, and your personalized iGoogle pages.

So play in the lab and take part in creating our 2.0 future.

#11 - Online Applications & Tools

Learning Objectives

• Browse some online productivity tool (ex. word processing, spreadsheets, image editing, calendars, mapping, etc.).
• Explore the Web 2.0 Directory categories: Calendar Services, Note Taking Services, Office Services, Mapping Services & Photography Services.
• What's a "Web widget"?

Skills Practice

• Play with some of the productivity products listed on the Best of The Best Web 2.0 Web Sites.
• Create, save and edit a document using ThinkFree.
• Create, save and edit an image using FlashPAINT.
• Log in to Google Docs & Spreadsheets - how could you put this to good use?
• Find a widget that will work on your blog and add it.

Experience Sharing

• Share your experienc with the online tools that you used on the hcplc=Lib2.0 blog.
• Post the document and image that you created on your 2.0 Learning blog.

Resources

1. Michelle Boule, "The Internet is for Use." ALA TechSource Blog.
2. Richard MacManus, "Widgets are the New Black."
3. The Unofficial Web Applications List.
4. Check out Widgetbox.
5. "Learning 2.0: Web-based Applications" by Helene Blowers
   
   powered by ODEO

2.0 Alphabet

is for Pandora, which lets you create your own streaming Internet radio station that plays only music that you like. The technology at work here derives from the Music Genome Project, which parses a song using 400-plus attributes, making it easy to find more related or similar songs. If you love music, you've probably already found Pandora.

Take a look at the recent article from Information Today - "Pandora lets users create online radio stations.(Link-Up @ Home)." by Thomas Pack. [Information Today 25.5 (May 2008): p.38(2)].

Web 2.0 Alpbahet:Part 2 (letters N-Z) were originally published in Information Today 24.10 (Nov 2007): p.15(2).

Back on Topic

I know my post yesterday had nothing to do with the current topic but it was so good, hope you all took some time to explore.
Back on topic, tagging, here's an interesting post from the Free Range Librarian, Karen Schneider. She will be in town tomorrow over at TBLC presenting a class on writing for the web. I'm looking forward to it; I worked with Karen long ago on The Internet Filtering Assessment Project.

Imagine this with Burgert Brothers photos....

Grant Schindler is my best friend's son; I've known him since he was born and I couldn't be prouder of him. He's a PhD. candidate at Georgia Tech and his research project is an amazing mashup of Atlanta in 4D you must take some time to play with. His group is working on a way to make this software they have created work automatically, so eventually we will be able to enter "Tampa" and it would do the same thing they have done for Atlanta, pulling Burgert Bros. and other photos off the web and creating a visual history.

2.0 Books

Everyone's a cataloger...

"Tagging : People-Powered Metadata for the Social Web," by Smith, Gene.
Berkeley, CA : New Riders, 2008.

Tagging is fast becoming one of the primary ways people organize and manage digital information. Tagging complements traditional organizational tools like folders and search on users desktops as well as on the web. These developments mean that tagging has broad implications for information management, information architecture and interface design. And its reach extends beyond these technical domains to our culture at large. We can imagine, for example, the scrapbookers of the future curating their digital photos, emails, ticket stubs and other mementos with tags. This book explains the value of tagging, explores why people tag, how tagging works and when it can be used to improve the user experience. It exposes tagging's superficial simplicity to reveal interesting issues related to usability, information architecture, online community and collective intelligence. [Amazon.com]

"Everything is Miscellaneous : the Power of the New Digital Disorder," by David Weinberger. New York : Times Books, 2007.

Human beings are information omnivores: we are constantly collecting, labeling, and organizing data. But today, the shift from the physical to the digital is mixing, burning, and ripping our lives apart. In the past, everything had its one place--the physical world demanded it--but now everything has its places: multiple categories, multiple shelves. Simply put, everything is suddenly miscellaneous.
In Everything Is Miscellaneous, David Weinberger charts the new principles of digital order that are remaking business, education, politics, science, and culture. In his rollicking tour of the rise of the miscellaneous, he examines why the Dewey decimal system is stretched to the breaking point, how Rand McNally decides what information not to include in a physical map (and why Google Earth is winning that battle), how Staples stores emulate online shopping to increase sales, why your children’s teachers will stop having them memorize facts, and how the shift to digital music stands as the model for the future in virtually every industry. Finally, he shows how by "going miscellaneous," anyone can reap rewards from the deluge of information in modern work and life.
From A to Z, Everything Is Miscellaneous will completely reshape the way you think--and what you know--about the world. [Amazon.com]

2.0 Alphabet

is for Ourmedia, "a community of video producers, podcasters and other grassroots media-makers coming together to show off citizen creativity, discuss methods for creating higherquality works, and interact with one another." This one is interesting (at least to me) because J. D. Lasica, who has a long professional history in print journalism, started it. With those at so many print publications scratching their corporate heads over how to remain relevant (not to mention profitable) today, sites such as Ourmedia need to be on the radar screen as an archive for grass-roots multimedia content.




Web 2.0 Alpbahet:Part 2 (letters N-Z) were originally published in Information Today 24.10 (Nov 2007): p.15(2).

Great Google Mashup

Wikipedia added to Google Maps!

Tagging Gone (terribly) Wrong

Tagging items with keywords that are meaningful to us and assumedly to other online viewers sounds like a great idea - and it is. What could be better that helping like minded people find the same things we like, using the vocabulary that we share?

But...what about when tagging goes terribly wrong? There's a phenomenon called "protest tagging" where folks tag products, books, videos and anything else they can tag with purposefully misleading descriptions. The single most obvious example of this would be Ann Coulter's recent book, "Godless: the Church of Liberalism." Let the political rhetoric begin...

Take a look at "The Long Tail of Ann Coulter" [on LibraryThing] which details the popular - and very political - tagging of the book.

Here's another summary from Michael Huang's technology blog: “Ann Coulter's Godless shows up [on Amazon.com] as the #1 result, with 9 instances of 'poop'. Other top tags include: hateful (143), lies (101), propaganda (80), evil (73), fascist (64), hateful divisive political rhetoric (49), and horsecrap (48). What I find interesting about the tag "hateful divisive political rhetoric" is that 49 people all tagged it the same 4 words -- it's not "divisive political" or "hateful rhetoric" but "hateful divisive political rhetoric". I'd guess it likely that whoever tagged it "hateful divisive political rhetoric" probably also tagged it "horsecrap" too.” [Micheal Huang]

Yes, that's right - Amazon.com shows Ann Coulter's latest book ranked first under the search tag "poop".

LibraryThing has tried to examine the vialbility of tagging in, "When Tags Work and When They Don't".

Just to be fair - viewers of MySpace TV have also tagged Ann Coulter - she's in the top 10 search results for "pundit"!

It's all about me!

My delicious site is what I'm talking about. And it really is. It's got urls to things I might post on a blog one of these days, recipes I might cook someday, things and people I might need when I move one of these years, stuff I might buy as a gift for someone, or for myself, and so on. Lots of library 2.0 links. Anywhere I see something I want to come back to I just grab that url and put it on my delicious page. And as long as I tag it right I will be able to find it when I need it. There is much more that can be done with delicious, but I love the organized way it helps me keep track of things I might want to find again one day.

#10 - Social Bookmarking, Tagging & Folksonomies

Learning Objectives

• Review the Learn More: Tags & Tag Clouds tutorial.
• Learn about the process known as “tagging” – why is everybody trying to catalog the Web?
• Explore del.icio.us and learn about collaborative tagging or descriptive indexing of the Web.
• Review the Learn More: del.icio.us tutorial.
• Take a look at the CommonCraft video, "Social Bookmarking in Plain English."
  


• Using del.icio.us (tutorial on YouTube)
  

Skills Practice

• Create your own portable bookmark page using del.icio.us , Diigo or another online bookmarking service; create an RSS feed for a topic that interests you and subscribe to the feed.
• Explore Technorati and see how blog tags/labels relate to this search engine of the blogosphere.
• Play with the library database – Fiction Connection – and see how tags/subject heading relate to each other in a graphical display.

Experience Sharing

• Share your experience on your 2.0 Learningblog.
• How could a service like del.icio.us be used in the library – comment about this on the hcplc=Lib2.0 blog
• Discuss how this trend to collaborative description could effect libraries on the hcplc=Lib2.0 blog (visit the library catalog of the Ann Arbor District Library for some ideas).

Resources

1. Pew Internet & American Life Project. “Tagging.”
2. Jason Morrison, "Why Are They Tagging, and Why Do We Want Them To?"
3. Joan Beaudoin, "Flickr Image Tagging: Patterns Made Visible."
4. Thomas Pack, "A 'del.icio.us' Way to Use Bookmarks."
5. "A Librarian's Guide to Creating 2.0 Subject Guides." at iLibrarian.
6. "Folksonomy" on Wikipedia



7. "Learning 2.0: Tagging & Del.ico.us" by Helene Blowers
   
   powered by ODEO



8. "Learning 2.0: Getting not so Technical with Technorati" by Helene Blowers
   
   powered by ODEO
   

2.0 Alphabet

"is for Ning, an oddly named service that lets you "create, customize, and share your own Social Network for free in seconds." Well, we like anything that is free, and that's a good thing about Web 2.0 apps in general. Ning is one I really don't get, but apparently plenty of others do; thousands and thousands of networks are listed on the site. I couldn't tell you how many are active. I'm not sure why someone would choose this particular social network rather than Facebook, for example, but a Library 2.0 Network exists here."

Here's another example of a user created social network: The Barista Exchange - just for Baristas (one who has acquired some level of expertise in the preparation of espresso-based coffee drinks):

"Ning hopes to compete with large social sites like MySpace and Facebook, by appealing to users who want to create networks around specific interests or have limited technical skills.[5] The unique feature of Ning is that anyone can create their own custom social network for a particular topic or need, catering to specific audiences. At its launch, Ning offered several simple base websites developed internally and by members of a closed beta. In late September of 2006, Ning narrowed its focus to offering a group website, a photos website, and a videos website for people to copy and use for any purpose. Later, these three templates were superseded by a single customizable template aimed at allowing non-developers to more easily customize their copy of the social website. However, Ning does allow developers to have some source level control of their social networks, enabling them to change features and underlying logic." [Wikipedia]

Web 2.0 Alpbahet:Part 2 (letters N-Z) were originally published in Information Today 24.10 (Nov 2007): p.15(2).

Take the challenge

or just read along, for now. The 31 Day Comment Challenge encourages blog readers to become blog commenters and take part in the great 2.0 conversation.

Make it yours

Here is a nice and simple example of how a library attracts children and teens to use their homework help site. Check out the drop down menu on the right under the log in boxes -- Choose page style.

No April Fools Joke?

There's really a book for Amazon.com!

Amazon.com for Dummies. by Friedman, Mara. Hoboken, NJ : Wiley, c2004. You can learn all about the personalization services and how Amazon recommends items for you based on your searching and shopping preferences - wouldnt it be cool if the Library catalog did that?


Of special interest:

-Chapter 3: You Are the Master of Your Account
-Chapter 11: It's All About You!
-Chapter 12: Putting Your Two Cents In


You could just visit Amazon.com and check out how their recommendations feature works.

2.0 Alphabet

is for meebo, which is "instant messaging everywhere." If you're stuck at a place where the IT department has locked down the computers to keep people from installing stuff, head for meebo to use popular IM programs, including AIM, Yahoo!, MSN, Google Talk, ICQ, and Jabber. Its versatility makes it useful for librarians doing chat reference or as a bookmark on public access computers, if you don't want to mess with separate applications for all these IM services.


Remember meebo? Way back in Lesson #2 - IM & Virtual Reference we used meebo to sample chat with each other -> take a look...


Web 2.0 Alpbahet:Part 1 (letters A - M) were originally published in Information Today 24.9 (Oct 2007): p.17(2).

My Times

It's worth the time to personalize sites that you will use on a regular basis. Your reader, whether it is the Google Reader or another, is a highly personalized site, almost all the content is there at your request. A relatively new one that I like a lot is the My Times page on the New York Times web site. It allows you to use it as a news aggregator, pulling in headlines and other links from your preferred sources. Also, you can take a look at what sources your favorite NY Times writers are using on their own My Times page.

Here is my page:

And you can check out it out for yourself here.

iGoogle, do you?

Have you noticed those iGoogle/Sign In links at the top of the Google search page? Using iGoogle you can create your own, personal Google search page seeded with a huge selection of widgets, google tools and your favorite sites & feeds.

Sign in to iGoogle and...
*Indulge your creativity: Select a visual theme to decorate your homepage and drag and drop individual sections to rearrange the page however you'd like.
*Focus on your interests: Pick and choose from thousands of Google Gadgets to add games, news, pictures, weather and more to your homepage, all for free.

*Organize your cool widgets into tabs by topic.
*Change your mind: Switch back and forth between your iGoogle page and Google's "Classic Homepage" through the link in the upper right-hand corner.

Here's mine...

#9 - Personal Relevance (aka Online Personalization)

Learning Objectives

• Learn about online personalization for Web sites ans search engines.
• Take a look at Netvibes - you can personalize your entire online experience...

Skills Practice

• Create a MyYahoo or iGoogle page and have some fun showing off your personal style.
• Go back to Amazon.com, create a login if you don't already have one, and do a bit of nrowsing for items you like - check your recommendations.
• Check out a few of the specialized search services on the Web 2.0 Directory; create your own search engine ar Rollyo.

Experience Sharing

• Take a look at Library ELF - how could personalization be used in the library?
• Design your ideal library catalog using Library 2.0 principles - what features would you include.
• What about the concern for privacy with all this personalization and collaborative filtering?

Resources

1. Steve Abrams. “Growing Your Own Search Engine.”
2. Nitin Karandikar. "Top 17 Search Innovations Outside Of Google."
3. Chris Payne. “Everything You Need to Know About Personalization.”
4. Suzanne Cohen, et al. “MyLibrary: Personalized Electronic Services in the Cornell University Library”.
5. Micheal C. Habib. "Managing Your Online ID." (LJ netconnect)
6. ALA. "Personalized Library Services."


7. "Learning 2.0: Roll Your Own Search Engine" by Helene Blowers
   
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1.0 Stuff About Online "Collaboration"

Here's a few recent - thought provoking - books that discuss about the mass participation in creating Internet content, ratings, reviews, etc.

Wisdom of Crowds (why the many are smarter than the few and how collective wisdom shapes business, economies, societies, and nations) by James Surowiecki. New York, Doubleday: 2004.

"While our culture generally trusts experts and distrusts the wisdom of the masses, New Yorker business columnist Surowiecki argues that "under the right circumstances, groups are remarkably intelligent, and are often smarter than the smartest people in them." To support this almost counterintuitive proposition, Surowiecki explores problems involving cognition (we're all trying to identify a correct answer), coordination (we need to synchronize our individual activities with others) and cooperation (we have to act together despite our self-interest)."[Amazon]

Smart Mobs, The Next Social Revolution, by Howard Rheingold. Cambridge, MA: Perseus Publishing, 2002.

"Mobile, wireless, Net-connected devices are now being hawked by the computer and telecom industries, prompting technology author Rheingold to take stock of the incipient revolution. Glimpsing the future in vignettes of wireless users in Helsinki and Tokyo, Rheingold primarily explores the sociology that might characterize a world of "ad-hocracy," in which people cluster temporarily around information of mutual interest. Rheingold describes how consumerism might change when pedestrians, as their mobiles detect stores and restaurants, patch into electronic gossip about an establishment. The location-detection feature of these devices will inevitably breach privacy, which informs Rheingold's somewhat skeptical stance toward this brave new world, and contrasts with the enthusiasm of certain computer scientists he interviews, such as Microsoft's promoter of a wireless urban space pervasively connected to the Internet. The cyber-savvy and socially aware will be interested and undoubtedly concerned by Rheingold's informed report. " [Booklist]

Cult of the Amateur: How Today's Internet is Killing Our Culture, by Andrew Keen. New York: Doubleday/Currency, c2007.

"Keen's relentless "polemic" is on target about how a sea of amateur content threatens to swamp the most vital information and how blogs often reinforce one's own views rather than expand horizons. But his jeremiad about the death of "our cultural standards and moral values" heads swiftly downhill. Keen became somewhat notorious for a 2006 Weekly Standard essay equating Web 2.0 with Marxism; like Karl Marx, he offers a convincing overall critique but runs into trouble with the details. Readers will nod in recognition at Keen's general arguments—sure, the Web is full of "user-generated nonsense"!—but many will frown at his specific examples, which pretty uniformly miss the point. It's simply not a given, as Keen assumes, that Britannica is superior to Wikipedia, or that record-store clerks offer sounder advice than online friends with similar musical tastes, or that YouTube contains only "one or two blogs or songs or videos with real value." And Keen's fears that genuine talent will go unnourished are overstated: writers penned novels before there were publishers and copyright law; bands recorded songs before they had major-label deals. In its last third, the book runs off the rails completely, blaming Web 2.0 for online poker, child pornography, identity theft and betraying "Judeo-Christian ethics." [Publisher's Weekly]

Virtual Soapboxes

This past Sunday NPR unveiled the Sunday Soapbox, an opportunity to have serious conversations about politics with a variety of bloggers and NPR listeners, or at least users of the NPR website. Lots of news organizations, radio, TV, print, offer something like this. But this is unique as it doesn't necessarily spin off the stories on the radio and it offers the blog entries in podcast format.
Another way to participate in online conversation is by sharing items of interest-- podcasts, vodcasts, print, photos, etc. -- on your blog, or delicious page, or your personal social networking page.
Blogrunner allows you to see who is blogging what and how often. It's presented by the New York Times but covers blogs and content from elsewhere. It's organized by topic and is a good way to find other blogs, and content, of interest to you. Here's the Books page.

Libraries and Peer Services

As we continue to work through this Web 2.0 training, I think it's helpful to observe how other libraries have begun to incorporate some of these technologies. The Ann Arbor District Library has an interesting website (blog) which allows customers to comment on employee posts concerning upcoming events and programs. The Pierce County Library System allows customers to comment on book reviews written by staff. In both cases the community is inivited to provide content and quite often they help to promote the library collection and services. Is it possible that a very powerful form of marketing could arise from giving library users and advocates in our community a similar opportunity to provide comments or reviews?

Instant Feedback & Ratings on Tech Help

Social networking meets technical support with FixYa, a social networking site dedicated to helping people with their computer and gadget problems. Recent solutions and problems, as well as a plug for the top experts, can be found on the homepage. You can search for both products and solutions or browse by manufacturer to find the help you need.


The site also lets you register and store all of your product warranty and support information in one place. Registering also gets you alerts when warranties are about to expire and direct manufacturer contact information, among other things. Nice!

There are thousands upon thousands of problems and solutions in this database - a great place to check when the library (or one of its customers) needs help with a technical problem. [From Librarian in Black]

FixYa lets users rate the effectiveness of the help provided so that you can use only those tech tips provided by the highly rated postings.

Useful sites

Reviews can be very important when making a committment -- to a new camera, to a auto mechanic, to a vacation spot. There are many places now where people submit their reviews and you get to read all about it. Ebay is huge in this area, every thing is based on buyer and seller reviews and many people make it a practice never to buy from someone who has not garnered lots of great reviews.
I used cnet Reviews recently before deciding on my new digital camera. Lots of information here, but the user reviews are what finally tipped the balance for me.
Trip Advisor can be useful when deciding where to stay. User reviews, and photos, can be an enlighting addition to the official hotel site.
One of the best collaborative sites I have use is Car Talk. Maybe you listen to Click and Clack on NPR, but have you ever tried their web site? Full of valuable information, my favorite is the Find a Mechanic section. It is how we found our trusted mechanic and how we will find our next one if he retires before we do, as he's been threatening to do.

#8 - Peer Services: Comments, Ratings & Reviews

Learning Objectives

• Learn about Web sites that allow browsers/customers post comments, reviews and product and/or service ratings.
• What is "collaborative filtering"?

Skills Practice

• Visit Amazon.com and post a comment/rating for a book that you have read recently.
• Locate few Web sites that allow user driven comments and reviews
• Visit LibraryThing and catalog some of your own books online, comment on someone elses personal collection.

Experience Sharing

• Discuss your experiences by posting to your 2.0 Learningblog.
• How could this type of participation be applied in the library?

Resources

1. "United We Find." The Economist (March 12, 2005)
2. Neal Wyatt, 2.0 for Readers (Library Journal 11/1/2007)
3. Pew Internet & American Life Project, "The Use of Online Reputation and Rating Systems."
4. How Amazon.com's Recomendations Work and the Amapedia.
5. Squidoo at http://www.squidoo.com/
6. Epionions at http://www.epinions.com/
7. Hotels.com and Travelocity


8. "Learning 2.0: LibraryThing" by Helene Blowers
   
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2.0 Alphabet

is for Last.fm, which "taps the wisdom of the crowds, leveraging each user's musical profile to make personalised recommendations, connect users who share similar tastes, provide custom radio streams, and much more." Listen online. Yes, it's very cool; CBS liked it so much that it bought the site last May.

Last.fm is a UK-based internet radio and music community website, founded in 2002. It claims over 21 million active users based in more than 200 countries.[1] On 30 May 2007, CBS Interactive acquired Last.fm for £140m (US$280m).
Using a music recommendation system known as "Audioscrobbler," Last.fm builds a detailed profile of each user's musical taste by recording details of all the songs the user listens to, either on the streamed radio stations or on the user's computer or portable music device. This information is transferred to Last.fm's database ("scrobbled") via a plugin installed into the user's music player. The profile data is displayed on a personal web page. The site offers numerous social networking features and can recommend and play artists similar to the user's favourites.

Users can create custom radio stations and playlists from any of the audio tracks in Last.fm's music library, and are able to listen to some individual tracks on demand, or download tracks if the rightsholder has previously authorised it. Registration is required to acquire a profile but is not necessary to view any part of the site or to listen to radio stations. [Wikipedia]

The Charms of Wikipedia

"Without the kooks and the insulters and the spray-can taggers, Wikipedia would just be the most useful encyclopedia ever made. Instead it's a fast-paced game of paintball." Nicholson Baker

Take a look Nicholson Baker's latest - The Charms of Wikipedia [New York Review of Books, March 20, 2008] in which he reviews the new book Wikipedia: the Missing Manual by John Broughton. He also gives a few of his opinions too.

25 Useful Social Networking Tools for Librarians

Librarian Jessica Hupp recently published a profile of 25 social networking sites which can be used by libraries to share information with customers and students. Very specifically she highlights tools which can be used for communicating (blogs, MySpace), distributing (Flickr, You Tube) and organizing information. How many of these are new to you?

2.0 Alphabet

is for Keyword Density Checker. This is actually aimed at Search Engine Optimization (SEO) people who need help deciding which advertising keywords to buy on various Web sites. But it's a cool toy too. Type in a URL, and it generates not only a tag cloud ("visual depiction of keywords" with more frequently used words in larger fonts), but also a keyword density chart, with a count and percentage total for each keyword. It's easier to use than to explain.

Here's the tag clound for the hcplc=LIB 2.0 training blog:

Here's the keyword count:

Web 2.0 Alpbahet:Part 1 (letters A - M) were originally published in Information Today 24.9 (Oct 2007): p.17(2).

Wikipedia as a Reference Tool?

How could we avoid looking at Wikipedia - the mother of all wikis - during this section of our training? Wikipedia always stirs a lot of strong feeling from librarians when it is discussed as a reference source along side standard tolls like the World Almanac, Dictionary of American Biography or (gasp!) Encyclopedia Britannica.

First some “Wikinews” – The ten millionth article has been written on Wikipedia - a Hungarian biography of of 16th century painter Nicholas Hilliard (English version here ).
Those ten million articles have been written across 250 different languages, Wikipedia says. English is still the most popular language on Wikipedia, with 2.3 million articles (they reached 2 million English articles in September 2007). After English, the next most popular languages are German, French, Polish, Japanese, Italian, Dutch, Portuguese, Spanish, and Swedish.
Click here for an article count by language. [TechCrunch]

Check out a few articles - both scholarly and popular - about Wikipedia as a reference source (links to InfoTrac Power Search results).

How about a Google search about using Wikipedia as a reference source?

What do you think? Have you used Wikipedia with success (or not) when helping a customer?