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?

The Queen of Wikis

Meredith Farkas is known to some people as the Queen of Wikis. She's probably most famous for creating Library Success: A Best Practices Wiki, and the event wikis for the ALA Chicago 2005, ALA New Orleans 2006, and the Internet Librarian conference 2007.

I attended an online seminar that Meredith taught through Sirsi Dynix and I was most impressed with her practical uses of the tool. She says she isn't "wiki crazy" its just that she happens to have found a lot of good uses for them in her life. Her theory seems to be that they're useful, available for free, easy to create, and practical, so why not use them?

Social Networking for Book Lovers

If you would rather spend a day curled up with a good book than in front of a computer, have I got some 2.0 sites for you!

I discovered LibraryThing about a year ago and decided to organize the books in my home library using the site.

More recently, a friend sent me an invitation to join her on Goodreads, and, while I am partial to LibraryThing, suddenly I had lots of friends on Goodreads, so I set up an account and invited some other people and now I know what my friends are currently reading, what they thought about books they have already read, and what they plan to read next. I've found books to add to my "to read" shelf this way.

The book club I belong to, which has had trouble finding a good meeting time lately, is considering having some meetings online.

You can even find out what is going on in local bookstores and libraries on some of these sites, as I mentioned in my post on mashups last week.

Listen, or read, more about these sites as heard on NPR's All Things Considered recently.

Maybe you'll decide to sign up for one of these; let us know if you do in the comments and let us know how you like it on your blog.

It's Finally Arrived!

First the online course - now the book!

In partnership with Wiley Publishing and the Florida Library Association, we are please to announce the first edition of HCPLC=Lib 2.0 for Dummies [Chicago: Wiley, 2008]. This is now the official "1.0" workbook for the library's 2.0 learning experience.

Reserve your copy now. -->Click here.