Catching Up

I'm reading Everything is Miscellaneous: the power of the new digital disorder by David Weinberger (Joho the Blog) and I just finished reading Henry Jenkins' Convergence Culture: where old and new media collide. Both books are fascinating reads.

I was tickled to find myself quoted in Stephen's Lighthouse while catching up on my Bloglines subscriptions last weekend. Stephen Abram's inspiring presentation at my library earlier this year sparked the enthusiasm felt by many of the kcls27things participants in my department and division.

I saw this item first reported by the excellent Librarian in Black a few days ago.

PLCMC has followed up their trend-setting Library 2.0 program with:

Learning 2.1: Explore...Discover...Play.

In the first Library 2.1 lesson I learned about a nifty file conversion utility called Zamzar. I used it to convert a .wma sound file I created to an .mp3 file in less than a minute.

I've fallen behind on my posting because I am learning how to set up wikis on pbwiki in my spare time. My goal is to eliminate up to half the paper clutter that surrounds my desk and go digital and miscellaneous!

So long, farewell?

I can't believe we've already come to the end of our kcls27things learning experience. Participating in this program and being an advocate was the most satisfying experience in my professional career. If I am given the opportunity to do something like this in the future, I will leap at the chance. I would like to be part of whatever plans there are to implement Library 2.0 ideas and programs at KCLS in the future. This experience has left me feeling revitalized and excited about my career again! I intend to explore the virtual environment that is Second Life; create APIs and mashups; and use tools like wikis, Zoho, and Google Documents to collaborate with co-workers and friends, and post about my experiences in my blog.

Surprises: I never expected that I would have much use for Flickr until I started using it. I was so inspired that I bought a digital camera and found I way to use Flickr in my job. After a frustrating and fruitless experience trying to download podcasts with iTunes, I thought I wouldn't enjoy listening to podcasts. Then I fed them to Bloglines and everything changed!

This program had a remarkable effect on people in my department and division. Participants appear to be more engaged in their work. They have greater confidence, connect more with co-workers, and have a sparkle about them. Our collective energy, excitement, and laughter was infectious as new discoveries were made and shared with others. I hope our patrons will feel that way when they are invited to participate in Library 2.0 programs and services in the future.

2.0 libraries that we've seen along the way invite patrons to:

• imagine
• create
• connect
• collaborate
• explore

If Web 2.0 and beyond is the Internet made personal, then Library 2.0+ is the library made personal.

Imagine a patron entering a branch through a physical or virtual portal and receiving a warm greeting and an array of user-inspired choices with the message:



Welcome to Your Library. What would You like to do today?

Game On!

Had a fantastic time trying out Dance Dance Revolution, Guitar Hero, and Wii Bowling today. Many thanks to Barbara and Debbie for their encouragement. It's easy to see why these games are so popular and why they belong in libraries. Need more convincing? Read the Gaming issue of our electronic serial Library Technical Reports Sept/Oct 2006. Vol. 42, issue 5 in Proquest or other full-text online databases.

Assignment #22

I explored Webware and found a search engine called YoName which lets you search for people in FaceBook, MySpace, LinkedIn and a couple of other social networking sites. I found myself and a couple of friends in MySpace and FaceBook and a college friend on LinkedIn. LinkedIn is a social networking site for adult professionals. Exploring Google Labs earlier in the week, I found a tool called Google Notebook. I think it will be very useful. I downloaded the browser extension so that I can keep the Notebook open while I search Web sites and work on my blog. I do most of my kcls27things assignments and work on my blog at home so I think it is very cool to keep my notes on the Web instead of on two computers.

The dog ate my homework

... and other excuses could be a thing of the past with Web-based office tools that allow users to create and save their work online. I hope our patrons are already using Google Documents and Spreadsheets or Zoho because these services are really user-friendly and they are good for the environment (less printing, no need for floppy disks). I plan to use these tools for collaborating on documents with other people in my department.

Google Mars was neat and I pitted certain authors against J.K. Rowling in Google Trends. Rowling garnered a healthy amount of interest compared to other authors in my research set.

I stumbled upon a road trip planning tool that seems like a rather nifty alternative for getting somewhere: http://trippish.com/

Not just an exercise

I put Flickr to good use yesterday when I uploaded some photos and shared them with my work team. Baker & Taylor took photos of books that are being processed and housed off-site for Snoqualmie's opening day collection. I retrieved the photos from their ftp site, posted them on Flickr and sent a guest pass to members of the ODC team and other interested librarians. Here's one that caught my eye:

Are you being served?

After reading all five articles for this week’s lesson, I was not sure what I thought of them. I needed some mulling time. It seems to me that college and university librarians are the main audience for these articles and for the kinds of services they advocate. There’s value for public libraries as well but many of the Web 2.0 services do seem to be targeted at one particular demographic: college-age students. Events in Virginia earlier this week seem to bear this out. News reports repeatedly mentioned some of the ways college students are reaching out to each other during this tragedy: Facebook, blogs, IM, and Second Life. University and college libraries should be meeting their students where they are and serving their target demographic.
Public libraries serve a much wider range of patrons and some of them may be interested in Web 2.0 services and others may not. I’d love to see our library embrace Web 2.0 ideas and incorporate them into a thoughtful, well-rounded and diverse service plan that meet the needs of all our patrons.