Why?

I could be wrong (wouldn't be the first time, and certainly not the last), but it seems to me the 23Things concept is a way to update knowledge of technology within the Library community. But why?

Not that I don't think it's laudable. But what is the goal? I know why I keep up with technology, but this set of exercises was not conceived for me. These exercises, in this setting, targeted all library employees, asking them to try out various web technologies, think about them in a library context, and report on them in a now old (by web standards) medium: blogs. Why?

Is anybody even reading the blogs (besides a few friends and coworkers)? I get a picture of someone somewhere checking 249 feeds...for what? That they were written? Why?

What possible relevance will this have in their jobs for those who have (or haven't) participated? From what I've seen and heard, it's been diverting, it's been strange, it's been stressful. It has not been useful for work.

Where is the culture of Web 2.0 in this library? Where are the leaders that will join the dialog?

Technology is only a tool. 23Things is about learning the tools. The architecture of Web 2.0 requires new and different tools. But the architecture itself is so radically different that the new tools are useless without a paradigm shift. What these exercises have done is teach the tools, show the blueprints, and withheld the permits necessary to build.

Why?

Podcasts are so old school

For millenials and younger, it's all about vidcasting (videocasting). But even more important, where's the comment box?

In the true spirit of web 2.0, how do you interact with a podcast? On Last.fm, there are recommendations, ratings, comments, community. Podcasts are like television: one way communication.

I'm looking for a site that dialogs in podcasts: "Leave your comment: upload it here!"

Compatibility

One of the web design statements I come across frequently is that it doesn't make sense to invite people to your site only to face annoying obstacles or be blocked entirely because they don't have the preferred browser or plugins. They will either leave without a second glance, or they will be increasingly annoyed at the frustrating experience at your site.

This concept is also applied to "brick and mortar" sites: you don't want to invite customers then make it difficult to enter the building after they get there. This seems like basic Marketing 101: make it easy to find, easy to get in, easy to use. I think it should be applied to everything an organization does, whether for profit, not for profit, or governmental. If a service or product is going to be offered, don't allow roadblocks. You never know how many people will be turned away, and in today's web 2.0 world, what the consequences will be (how far and how fast will the word be spread).

Which brings me to OverDrive, a good example of a flawed product/service that is being marketed to library patrons. How many iPods have been sold? Over 150 million? How many mp3's with DRM on them? A million? A couple million? Why on earth would a library excuse itself from that Marketing 101 rule by citing the Apple/Microsoft/DRM debate. Who cares? Not the patron. All the patron cares about is that the library is offering a service that doesn't work for them.

Is it really a good idea to promote a service or product that won't work for the majority of people it is targeted for? Yes, I am lumping iPod users in with MP3 users, because from their perspective, those devices are just the modern version of portable CD and tape players, and they aren't interested in the finer points of DRM which now plague us.

On the other side, is it really a good idea to spend public money on resources which promote a specific industry player (Microsoft)? But that's fodder for another post.

Relevance

I was talking with an IT manager recently (actually there were a few of them in the discussion), who offered this observation, which elicited much head-nodding:

The problem with collaboration is that once you get to the people high enough in the chain of command to effect a change, you find they don't even know what a computer is.

The example at hand was a case of IT support checking on a web access problem for individual users and finding the problem could be solved by installing and using Firefox instead of Internet Explorer. But the computers are set up by another department, which only installs I.E. on the computers. So the IT support folks are constantly going out to install Firefox. The problem was how to get the other department to include Firefox in the applications they install on new computers.

What does this have to do with Libraries and 23Things? The chain of command.

It's very nice to encourage employees to update their knowledge of web technology. But what good is that knowledge within an organization if the ones required to effect change don't know or understand the very technology they are encouraging the employees to learn about? What good is knowing about Zoho, or Technorati, or LibraryThing, or PBWiki, if there is no hope of doing anything with them beyond the 23Things exercise because the people high enough in the chain to effect change "don't even know what a computer is"?

Web 2.0 is disruptive technology. It requires administrators face risk and rethink what is and what will be. The status quo will not work any more. 23Things will be relevant when library administrators understand the technology of Web 2.0 and are willing to accept the risk of disruptive technology and start rethinking what is and what will be.

A: How many posts are there?

Q: How many lightbulbs does it take to change a wiki?

A: welter of wikis

Q: What do you call a whole lot of wikis? (like pride of lions, gaggle of geese)

One upping LibraryThing

I have told a few people about this already, and they liked it: zoomii.

It basically makes Amazon like a bookstore. Browse by clicking and dragging. Use the scroll wheel on the mouse to zoom in or out. Click on a book to see whether it is in stock, how much it is, and add it to a shopping cart or wish list (requires an account to do so).

Someone has mentioned (and others are probably testing out the idea right now) doing the same thing with OPAC search results. While I wouldn't consider it a must have option, still, it's pretty cool, and a fun way to virtually browse the shelves for what you want.

By the way, it didn't show the books I wanted, but I found them by doing a search. It says the books I want aren't currently available, so I put them on a wish list. I'm waiting to see what happens with that. I wonder if the wish list feature could be configured, working with an OPAC, as a "place hold" request?

Scrobbling

"Audioscrobbling" is a music recommendation system used by Last.fm. The definition from Audioscrobbler is:

The Audioscrobbler system is a massive database that tracks listening habits and calculates relationships and recommendations based on the music people listen to

Basically, Last.fm tracks the music you listen to, and compares it to what everyone else is listening to, to find connections between what you listen to and the music that others who listen to the same things are listening to. Then it suggests related or similar music you might like. Often the suggestions are obvious. If you are listening to Bach, for instance, it will probably recommend Mozart, Handel, Brahms, and other classical music authors.

There is a downloadable plugin which will track what you listen to, or you can create playlists on Last.fm and play them from the site. While the tracking and suggestion part is rather nice, the best part is being able to create playlists to listen to when you are at a computer that doesn't have your music on it (*cough* public computers *cough*).

Other uses? It also lists "popularity" of artists, showing how many people have "scrobbled" them. I'm not sure how useful the "similar artists" part is, but it's an interesting way to browse through music you may not otherwise find. Not all artists have music, and not all have full tracks available. In fact, it seems like most of the music is just 30 second samples. But there's enough to make it a good time sink. :)

I wonder if something like this could be done with OPAC data? I guess that would be like the Amazon feature "People that bought also bought ..." Maybe it could say something like "people who liked this also tried ...." or "also looked at..." or "also liked..." Of course, to make it more scrobbler-like, it could say something like "people who loved this also loved ...."

Which brings up another possibility: Book ranking. You "tag" a movie, CD, book, or whatever, that you like, with a heart symbol. Patrons would see aggregated data in the form of hearts (bigger heart means more people "loved" it).

Just sayin'. But not holding my breath for it to happen (at least not here).

Bookmarkers

Bookmarkers are cool tools. When the first one I was using retired itself about 5 years ago, it recommended spurl, which had a nifty option of transferring all the bookmarks I had saved at the old site. del.icio.us appeared about the same time, but it didn't have a way to keep bookmarks private (that has since changed - you have the option of making it public or not when saving a bookmark). So I used two for awhile. In the end del.icio.us was just easier to use. If I needed to get to my bookmarks on Linux, for example, from the shared Reference desk computer, I could just type in del.icio.us/clbean/linux.

But what makes them even cooler is using their RSS feeds. Spurl and del.icio.us, and probably all the other bookmarkers as well, have RSS feeds. Besides it being a time sink, it is an easy way to discover new resources that others think are important enough to bookmark and tag. Like browsing any RSS feed, you can usually tell just from the title if it's something worth checking into or just deleting from the list. Both spurl.net and del.icio.us have "hot lists" of things that are being bookmarked by lots of people. Spurl.net also has a "just in" category. Initially, the hot lists were pretty useful. But they seem to have fallen prey to link spammers: they're getting a high signal to noise ratio.

Another good use of the social bookmarking sites is searching for resources. You can browse by tag (del.icio.us generates tag "clouds"), or search by tag or keyword. While one could do this on any search engine, think of it as an alternative ranking system, where people's votes (by bookmarking) gives an indication of it's usefulness.

For example, searching del.icio.us for "palm beach county library" (see the image below) shows 88 web pages have been tagged with those terms. But it also shows how many people have saved the same page. While the Palm Beach County Library System Home Page was saved by 22 people, 14,526 people have saved the Google Maps location for the library. Notice the highlighting for number of people who have bookmarked an item. Fewer numbers are lighter, and higher numbers are darker, giving a quick visual indication of "ranking."

del.icio.us was acquired by Yahoo.com, who, so far, hasn't made any significant changes. But since they eventually required Flickr users to have Yahoo! accounts after they acquired it, I'm waiting to see what happens with del.icio.us, and scanning the horizon for a possible replacement. There's always Spurl, but right now it's not as good a del.icio.us for my purposes.

Major scheduling blunder (on my part)

Sirsi Dynix is having a Webinar with Marshall Breeding this Friday (6/13/08) at 11:00, and I have a class starting at 10:30. For the uninitiated, Marshall Breeding is to Library Automation as Greg Notess is to Search Engines (what? you haven't heard of Greg Notess?). Marshall Breeding has been following and tracking what has been going on with Library Automation for eons in Internet time.

He is one of the people you want to listen to when it comes to library technology. At the Internet Librarian 2007 Conference, he gave a quick presentation, during the lunch break, on Next Generation Library Interfaces.

Fortunately, they keep an archive of their presentations. Of course, you can't ask questions viewing the archive (and expect to get an answer...).

Browser Addons

If you are not using the Firefox browser, it's time to change, if for no other reason than the addons available for Firefox.

What's an addon? It is a small program that can be added to the browser to extend functionality to provide more features. Firefox has thousands of them, for just about anything you are doing, or can think of doing, on the Web.

As an example, consider RSS feeds. Rather than using Bloglines, or Google Reader, how about a Firefox addon? Currently, searching the Feeds, News, & Blogging category of Firefox addons for "rss" returns 64 addons to choose from.

The summary of an addon in any list of possible addons includes some helpful information, such as a "starred" rating and link to reviews, as well as the number of weekly downloads for that addon. Also be sure to note when the addon was last updated (indicated in the bottom right corner of the summary box). To read more about the addon, click on its name in the summary.

The Firefox addon site also includes a "Recommended" button on some of the addons. Look for it in the upper left corner of the summary box.

But something to watch out for is the browser version that the addon will work with. In this example, the recommended addon has been upgraded to work with the newest Firefox browser which is still in beta testing. The site will recognize which version of the browser you are using (if you are using Firefox), and let you know you will need to upgrade Firefox to use the addon.

Finally, there are the "Experimental" addons, which cannot be downloaded without logging in to the site (accounts are free). But unless you like beta testing, it's a good idea to leave these alone.

Adding the addon is pretty straightforward. Simply click on the "Add to Firefox" button and it will be downloaded. A box will pop up asking if you want to install the addon. Assuming you click the button to install it, the addon will be installed and an alert box will then let you know that you need to restart Firefox for the changes to take effect. Look for a button added to the toolbar or the status bar (at the bottom of the window) for the new addon.

One other nice thing about the Firefox addons is that they let you know when new versions or updates are available (you will typically see a popup alert box when you start Firefox). Convinced yet?

Flickr Trading Cards

Since I have been in this Flickr group for a couple years, but never actually made a trading card, I thought this would be a good toy to play with.


There are some interesting and fun cards there. Some are real people, some historic figures, some are libraries. A couple of my favorites are the Pirate Librarians and the little librarian in training.

Here's how to make a trading card and add it to the pool:

1. You have to have a flickr account, which means getting a Yahoo! account (sorry about that).

2. Join the Librarian Trading Cards Group: click on the little triangle next to the "Groups" menu at the top of the page, and select the "Search for a Group" option.


In the search page that opens type "librarian trading cards" into the search box.

Click on the "Librarian Trading Cards" link on the results page

Click on the "Join this group" link on the right side of the page.

3. Go to bighugelabs.com/flickr/deck.php to make a card.

Click the "Browse" button at the top of the page to select a picture from your computer. Fill in the information you want to display on the card. You might want to browse through some of the Trading Cards already in the pool to see how different people have done this. When you are done, click the "Create" link at the bottom.

4. Check out the result. If you don't like it, go back and try it again. Otherwise, click the link at the bottom to "Upload to Flickr"
This will take you to a page that explains (a little) about the process.


Clicking the "Continue" link then takes you to flickr, where you will be warned about granting access to your account. I decided to go back (click the back button) and click on the link to download the image.

5. Once you download the image, you will have to upload it to your flickr account, of course. Then when you view the image there will be a link at the top to "Send to Group." Click on it and select the group you want to send it to (most likely the Librarian Trading Cards group).

Click the "OK" link that appears when it's been added.

6. Go see your trading card!

Unfortunately, it seems to be only librarians in there (or library students). Perhaps we could create a 23Things trading card group.

Queens Law Library, New York

Queens Law Library, New York
Originally uploaded by clbean

The Queens Law Library is in the Courthouse. When I went through security, they insisted on taking my cell phone because it was a camera phone, but left the digital camera in my purse.

This is on the second floor of the library, which overlooks the main floor through the alcoves (like the one on the right side of the photo).

Needless to say, the library itself is a gem.

Take that! Google!

The next step in the 23things quest is Flickr instead of Picasaweb!

Of course, Picasaweb might make it easier,



but you've made it so hard already! Hello, Yahoo! here we come! (Please be nicer than Google).

Please, oh please let me in, Google!

I have 23 Things I'm supposed to do to win a prize, and you are step one!
Your help files say locked accounts will be unlocked in 24 hours, but it's been 4 days, and now it's disabled!

Honestly, I really don't think they meant to scare you by putting 23things on the end of 500 usernames. We really aren't spammers. We're just trying to learn to use your blogger service!

In the meantime...

YouTube videos!

Need help understanding blogs?

Why, Oh Why, Google?

Why did you lock me out of my account? Didn't they tell you that 500 others from the same IP address would be logging in and changing their passwords today?

Really, I'm sure they are sorry. Please let me back in!