Marianne the Librarian 2

Going back to Web 1.0, or worse?

2010-10-29T09:13:00.005-05:00

Two things catch my attention today, both of which have come up at work in the last week or so. First, this announcement from EBSCO:

Effective with a software release due this week, EBSCO will treat a short list of command line search tags (when entered in lower or mixed case) as text. Only UPPER CASE instances of these tags will be treated as search tags.... We highly recommend that all users become accustomed to entering ALL command line search tags in UPPER CASE to accomodate future additions to the short list of affected tags....

So, what can we do to incovenience power users? If you want to do an author search, you need to enter AU, not au. Descriptors (subject terms) are only DE, and not lowercase de. Let's go back to the good old days of case-sensitivity. Let's change something people are used to using, for no clear reason to the customer. As my director said, "Let's re-learn DOS while we're at it."

Then, a colleague noticed that a lot of the locations in our library catalog (which are somewhat cryptic abbreviations) no longer have links to what the location codes mean. Since it's a consortial catalog, there's often no way for a user to know what library has the book they need. I'm told there are over a thousand location codes in our catalog, and that individual libraries are responsible for maintaining their own information. Since some of them aren't doing it, it's the patrons that lose. And who knows why those libraries aren't doing it; maybe they don't have the staff time, or the system makes it too hard to keep up. But once again, our users get the short stick.

In the meantime, we've put on our a website a list of the main tags, and which libraries they represent. We'll try to see if something can be done at the consortial level. I don't know what we can do about EBSCO - may get the patrons after them?

Instructional Progress Report

2010-09-17T13:22:00.003-05:00

We're into the second week of classes, and so far I've talked to one international marketing class and three finance classes. Coming up are marketing, PR writing, and advertising to see me to the end of the month. I have more classes scheduled this term than my average, with still a couple of faculty I'm waiting to hear from. The library must be hot this year!

Also coming up are presentations with my colleagues at the South Dakota and Minnesota Library Associations meetings, talking about our high school librarian/student research. It is SO neat to be doing original research, however small, and talking to audiences that REALLY are interested in your topic. So even though work is hectic, it's pretty satisfying.

Guides and More Guides

2010-08-27T09:10:00.004-05:00

How sad that I haven't blogged since June. Since then I've had a vacation in the Black Hills, and have been short on sleep. Two colleagues and I went to Duluth to do a presentation on our high school research. I've also been working on LibGuides, the oh-so-wonderful new-to-us product for presenting our subject guides. It's addictive!

Gotta go - I have to work on a LibGuide for biography.

What I've Been Up To

2010-06-04T09:57:00.004-05:00

So, what HAVE I been up to since April? Darned if I know. I know I've been working with students, teaching (talked to a graduate International Marketing class this week), preparing for our poster session next week at the Association of Christian Librarians conference (more on our high school research, and the poster is VERY well done, thanks to Donna!) Transitioning our subject guides to LibGuides. Keeping up with our databases, and reviewing "mine" as they come up for renewal. Had a retreat/strategic planning meeting for our latest reorganization, which is partially triggered by the several early retirements we'll have at the end of the fiscal year. Using up vacation time before the end of June.

I really, REALLY like LibGuides. I treat myself to working in it, when I'm caught up on my other projects. Our goal is to migrate our guides for fall. The business librarians will be meeting in a few weeks to review our business guides, decide who will handle what, and decide which guides can be combined or go away. I've already been looking at the usage and working on some of my guides. I haven't figured out yet how I'll migrate the international business guides: we have eight, which could be trimmed down - but how? Do we need separate international marketing, company, and industry guides? What about country information (used by other disciplines than business)? And the regional guides, which overlap a lot? I'm still pondering this.

In a week, I'm off to the Special Library Association (SLA) conference in New Orleans. I've never been to the city, so I'm looking forward to that, mixed in with my recent dislike of travel and utter confusion about how this conference is organized. Although I've been to SLA more than once, their conference and their online site for it bewilder me. But, onward I go!

Conference presentation

2010-04-09T09:35:00.002-05:00

This week, my colleagues and I presented some findings of our high school research project at the National Catholic Education Association conference here in the Twin Cities. We had a good turnout (35-40 folks), the technology behaved itself, and we somehow managed to talk over the hymn singing session in the room next door. We found that graduating students from Catholic high schools know a few things that we academic librarians can build on (plagiarism is bad, how to cite sources in MLA style, how to select and organize materials for their project, etc.) One thing that surprised me is that they don't know about investigation footnotes, bibliographies, and other clues along the research path. This is something I'll want to talk about more when helping students one-on-one.

In the next few months, I'm talking to a management capstone class, I'm a co-presenter at a regional conference (different topic), and our group is doing a poster session at another national conference. I'll try and catch my breath, every now and then.

Thoughts on being a professional

2010-02-19T10:06:00.003-06:00

I've had three or four ideas for blog posts recently, but when I don't make time to blog, they get lost in the ether and miscellany of my life. At least in my last post I noted one: what does it mean to be a professional? I've noticed that within the community of librarians (those "degreed" or job-titled folks), not everyone has the same standards of how you do your job. I've seen some behavior that is incomprehensible to me. How can you do x, or not do y, and still call yourself a professional? It's been in my mind for awhile, so today I'll riff on that a bit.

A professional (in the library biz) takes a stab at a question, even if it's not their area of expertise. Even if the technology is way beyond them. A professional tries.
A professional is not afraid to say, "I don't know," and then keep trying.
A professional can say, "I didn't think of that," and give credit to another's good idea.
A professional can learn from anyone: younger, older, peer.
A professional thinks about the patrons.
A professional goes the extra mile (which can get them in trouble.)
A professional cares.
A professional may "lose it" at a meeting (we all lose it sometimes), but a professional tries to improve their behavior - they don't keep "losing it," meeting after meeting.
A professional has a bad day, or a bad week, and so sometimes fails to live up to the idea of a professional. But they acknowledge that, and move on.
A professional wants to do something for the profession, and does it when they can.
A professional learns and grows in their profession.

And now, back to my regularly scheduled workday. Take care out there.

What I've been up to lately

2010-01-22T11:11:00.003-06:00

I'm dismayed that it's been so long since I've done a blog post. It isn't like I haven't been working. It isn't like I haven't had good ideas for blogging (so far I've found one: what does it mean to be a professional? I'll have to figure out where I hid the other ideas.) But December mean the holidays, and getting ready for them. Just as we rolled into January, the valve on our dishwasher at home broke, and much of our upstairs and downstairs was flooded while we were at work. For the past few weeks, we've been living out of storage tubs (luckily, insurance will cover most of the repairs.) I may blog more on that later. But here's what I've been up to professionally.

Two colleagues and I are doing research on the information literacy skills of our incoming first-year students. We have surveyed (and are interviewing this month) the librarians at some of our "feeder" private high schools, to see what their graduates know, that we can build on. It's a hot topic right now. We are replicating a study done by Islam and Murno in 2006 ("From perceptions to connections: Informing information literacy program planning in academic libraries through examination of high school library media center curricula." College and Research Libraries, 67(6), 492-514.) Earlier this month, we interviewed high school librarians in the Twin Cities metro area, and for the last two weeks of January, we're doing greater Minnesota, Iowa, and Wisconsin (we were "iced in" earlier this week in Des Moines.) It is very exciting to be involved in primary research, even in a small way. I'll try to post more on this later, but right now I need to do more catchup now that I'm back in my office.

Do You Like Being a Librarian?

2009-11-20T10:25:00.004-06:00

"Do you like being a librarian?" asked the student. I was helping her track down the journal article she needed. She couldn't find it in print upstairs. We'd looked up the title (she'd gotten it wrong a few times while we figured it out.) It started with "U.S.", which puts it at the very beginning at the U's. So as I went upstairs with her to make sure she could find it, she asked me, "Do you enjoy being a librarian?"

I must have been having a good day. Without even thinking about it much, I said, "Oh, yes. It's like being a detective. Right now, I'm helping you find something. And it's like solving a mystery." And I went on in my head, "The research process is a lot like that. Which way do I go, which terms do I use, how do I even get started." Much of life is a mystery to me, trying to make sense of the world, and it's such an important part of my life, that it's my vocation.

It's interesting that in 20+ years of being librarian, this is the first time I can remember a patron asking me if I liked doing what I do. I've been asked why I do it, how I got into it. I wrote last time about why I do it. I remember (with some embarrassment) years ago when a colleague introduced me to a friend who was planning to go to library school, and I laughed. I was thinking at the time, "why would anyone just starting out want to follow MY example? We're all going to be obsolete in a few years anyway." So I guess I was young, and very foolish.

Things are very busy at work. Change is happening faster, and faster. Much of technology is confusing to me, and I don't like many user interfaces. Times to think are few and far between. But I'm fortunate to have a job, and I'm happy to say that I like being a librarian.

That's my job

2009-10-30T10:23:00.003-05:00

Sometimes in the rush of actually doing your job, you don't notice, or have time to savor, the best moments of your job. In my case, the moments that say, "and that's why I became a librarian." I was lucky enough to have two of those moments this week, so I'm taking the time to enjoy them.

On Monday night I talked to an Entrepreneurship class. I was asked to update a case they'd studied this term, and show resources to find information on the industry, where to look for articles, etc. One interesting thing was the different ways that the faculty member (who's in the field) and I talked about what information they would want to find. I used terms as you saw above - about the industry, about companies, about products and markets, etc. Her terminology was more specific - customer segments, industry economics, regulatory issues, etc. (Luckily, we both use the term "competitors!") The variation in the industry that they wanted to explore was "green" - i.e., how to produce the service in an environmentally responsible way (or however you define "green.") One student asked me to do a search on that industry and "green" in one of our subscription databases. Here's my "ah-ha" momement: just as I'm saying that "green" is a broad term, which doesn't have an exact definition, I find that the database has added the subject term "green business." Bless their hearts! You learn something every day in libraryland.

The moment I cherish happened at the reference desk this week. I'd been helping a student find books and book chapters on his topic - first how and what to search, then how to find books in our building. Soon he came back to the desk and said, "I can't find it." (I always try to tell students if they can't find something, to let us know.) I offered to go to the shelves with him, with my usual patter about sometimes the books don't want to be found, etc. We found the book, not quite in the place he'd been looking. He apologized for bothering me, but I said, "no, no, I'm glad to help. And that book looks right on for your topic." I didn't want to embarrass him further, but I wanted to say, "that's what I DO as a librarian. It's my job - every reader, his or her book. And I really do enjoy it!" I didn't say it, but I thought it. And I savor it, because it's my job.

Technology thoughts

2009-10-16T09:58:00.004-05:00

I've been working hard preparing for classes, and teaching classes (and working on an article-in-progress), so I haven't been blogging much, or following other blogs. I didn't realize that Free Range Librarian had asked for ideas on netbooks and other technology purchases. What would have been my advice? My Samsung NC10, how I love it! Lightweight, portable, friendly - did I mention that her name is Harriet Jones? (All of our computers and peripherals are named after Doctor Who characters.) But Free Range is waiting for Windows 7, and has her eye on an Acer. I think that was on our short list; we just preferred the Samsung.

I got a great error message from Firefox this week: "Well, this is embarrassing. Firefox is having trouble" doing what I wanted it to do. I have never seen a Microsoft product indicate that it was embarrassed (although as a friend pointed out to me on Facebook, maybe it wasn't Firefox that was supposed to be embarrassed.) It's still one of my favorite error messages.

The Best Classes

2009-09-25T09:15:00.003-05:00

The fall rush is on, and I've been teaching a lot of classes on library stuff - mostly marketing classes, with some finance thrown in. Still to come are advertising/public relations classes and accounting. I've had some great sessions and some not so great, so my thoughts today concern what leads towards the best library instruction classes.

Faculty buy-in. Generally, most faculty don't schedule a library session for their class unless they believe it's important (not counting the "I'll be out of town, can you talk to my students?" minority.) But there are levels of buy-in, including those who collaborate with the librarian on the assignment, or share a copy of the assignment before the session, or who attend the session and participate in it, or time it so that the students realize its importance.
Student buy-in (which depends a lot on faculty buy-in.) There's nothing like the faculty stressing the importance of the session to make students pay attention (except maybe "this is due real soon, so I'd better pay attention.") When they're really interested, it generates an energy like nothing else.
"Ah-ha" moments, for the students, and even for the presenter. It's great when the "I get it" light bulb goes on (for them, and for us.)
Technology that behaves. This includes hardware that works (machines that aren't in la-la-land, computer mice and monitors that are actually talking to the computers) and a network that's in a good mood.
Databases and other resources that behave. Two weeks ago I presented at one of our satellite locations: the first database I went to gave us the "we're too busy, try again later" message; the third database had a similar message (and these were database messages, not our network.) It's nice when that DOESN'T happen, when everything behaves as it's supposed to.
Databases that haven't done anything wacky since last term. I understand vendors changing interfaces; I can handle that, and the students can handle that. What I don't like are vendors asking for mysterious plug-ins that you didn't need last term (never mind the fact that you probably don't have admin rights on the machine you're using, and couldn't download a plug-in anyway.) Nor do I appreciate vendors whose products suddenly have less functionality that they had last term (if I could use this example in the spring, why have you changed your content so that it's not possible to recreate that search?)

Here's hoping that your fall is going well, and that things are behaving themselves.

This 'n That

2009-09-11T09:21:00.002-05:00

Twice recently I've been asked, "so what kind of netbook did you get?" I realized yesterday that I didn't put that info in this blog! So for the record, I have a Samsung NC10. Have I mentioned that I love it?
I have had a small flood of faculty asking me for presentations this semester. So far my peak time is the week after next, when I have 6 library sessions, 3 finance and 3 marketing. So I won't be very profound in my blog posts for now.
I have a reference desk shift this weekend, so one thing I could work on if it's slow is collection development. It's not very flashy, or very 2.0, but I enjoy it. At least I do nearly all of my selecting online, and use almost no paper!

Library 2.0 seeds take root

2009-08-28T09:07:00.005-05:00

We're seeing a few 2.0 changes around my library these days, which is exciting (when I have time to think about it.) Here are some things that are happening, or going to happen soon:

We've added a Discover Layer to our public catalog. While it's sometimes confusing to me as a power user, I think it's appealing to the novice. (It's funny that the html title for the initial page is 'Encore,' while the "classic catalog" has the regular catalog's name.)
We're moving along in implementing Sharepoint as our new intranet/wiki/online bulletin board. We've roughed out a structure, and we're opening it up to staff to use. Our first 'killer app' is a new statistics application, which all staff will use to track patron questions. (It's great to have a web developer on staff!)
We're looking at sprucing up our subject/resource guides. We've come up with a few short-term facelifts for fall; long-term, we're looking at products like LibGuides and Library a la Carte.

It's been interesting being involved in these developments. Sometimes I have the reaction, "Well, it's about time. I thought we should do something like this years ago!" Sometimes it's gratifying when staff are getting it. Sometimes I have to stop and take a breath, and get used to change. But I guess it keeps me on my toes.

Subject guides, netbooks, and Cary Grant

2009-08-21T11:50:00.003-05:00

I'm on a task force at my library looking at various options for subject guides (aka research guides, pathfinders, etc.) I've registered for a free webinar that OCLC is doing next week on Library à la Carte from the University of Oregon. I'm glad we're finally going to do something about our guides. This has been one of my interests for years, and I remember being excited some years ago when I first heard about SpringShare's LibGuides. We've needed products like this for a long time, and it's great that there's now competition (I feel like I've been ahead of the pack in MPOW on this for one so long.)

In netbook news, I watched a movie on my netbook this week. Now this is no big thing for many people, but my personal movie-watching time has been quite limited as a working parent, and my chances to play with my netbook haven't been plentiful either. This week my family wanted to watch "Coraline" on the dvd we'd just bought (they'd seen it a week earlier, at the World Science Fiction Convention, but what the heck?) I'd noticed that "An Affair to Remember" with Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr was on Turner Classic Movies, realized that we had dvds of both films, and I said, "We can watch one on the TV and one on the netbook. I don't care which one I get." So I got to sit in the comfy chair and watch my movie, while they watched theirs. Very nice.

My Own Travel 2.0

2009-07-31T09:31:00.003-05:00

So next week (I hope), I'm off on vacation. Since spouse works for an airline, we fly "standby." This is not my idea of a good time, but he prefers to take advantage of this perk. I'm crossing my fingers, and toes, and anything else I can cross without being a safety hazard.

But in the spirit of 2.0, I revisited my Travel 2.0 posting. The Travel 2.0 blog reminded me that airlines charge fees for a lot these days, including bags (I don't think we stand-byers have to do that, but this may have changed.) I still haven't decided if I'm taking my new netbook, or we'll be bringing a couple to share for the family (it will depend on how much carry-on weight/bulk I want to deal with), but I probably won't be keeping a travel journal on Mapness. I think it would take away quality time from La Famille. I hope to be on Facebook, though, so I'll still keep a hand in the 2.0 world. So far the ratings on TripAdvisor for our hotel are positive, so once we get there, we should be fine.

I have a new error message to add to my collection. Yesterday I was trying to get into our content management system to update some web pages, and I got this friendly error: "Several Java Virtual Machines running in the same process caused an error." Yeah, well, what does that mean? There's too much going on somewhere, I get that part. Does that mean it's on my computer, at the other end, or somewhere in between? And what should I do about it? What process were they involved in, and is it legal in all 50 states? In the end, the brower crashed, so all the windows I had in that brower disappeared (at least it wasn't ALL of my browser sessions.) Will the new Millennium eventually bring error messages that make sense to non-techs? I'm not holding my breath on that.

This morning's hailstorm

2009-07-24T11:26:00.005-05:00

We had hail this morning. It was worse in the cities around us, but we had weather enough to keep us home longer than usual and away from the windows (although we did have to look when the hail started.) They'd been talking about golfball-sized hail on the radio; we didn't quite get than, but some was definitely 3/4-inch size. I said, "I should use my new Netbook to take a picture or something." (Yes, the Netbooks are configured, and I've used mine a little bit. Her name is Harriet Jones, after the Doctor Who character.)

My husband said, "I'll take a picture on the digital camera, and you can upload it." So he walked my through it, first on Facebook and then onto my email (I hate the new Outlook web access; it's SO hard to look up an email address, and move around your email, grrr.) The Netbook has a slot on the bottom for a memory card, of the kind our camera uses. Now I'll see if I can upload it here. It worked! I feel so very 2.0 today.

A puzzlement: it's pretty easy with the right tools and a bit of help to do this sort of thing (upload a photo, make a video, etc.) Why does it seem so difficult at work? How much of it is my being used to the old, hard way of doing things, and how much is that I just don't have the right equipment?

P.S. My one fan asked what happened to my avatar. I didn't do anything to it, but it seems to be messed up. I'll have to try troubleshooting it sometime. And the paragraph spacing at the end of my post is being flaky - what's up with that?

It's time for Laundry 2.0

2009-07-17T09:34:00.004-05:00

I've been using Facebook for almost a year (I started it in connection with 23 Things on a Stick.) My non-work friends became a critical mass earlier this year, so I check in every day or so to see how people are doing. Given my circle of friends, I thought my post this week about the website recreating the Apollo 11 mission, We Choose the Moon, would stir up some interest. But no. What got people commenting this week? Laundry.

I noted that my family had been asking about laundry this weekend, since we'll be on the road soon. I said, "Who needs clean laundry?" Well, a goodly number of my friends had thoughts on laundry, whether it can be planned, how it can be done, and who should be able to do it. (I agreed with the comments on red clothes. Only once have I had something bleed significantly that wasn't red, and it was a dark green t-shirt from Wales.) Who knew that laundry would be such a hot item?

So given this flurry of interest, I propose that it's time for Laundry 2.0. Dare I paraphrase from A Librarian's 2.0 Manifesto?

I will recognize that the universe of cleaning culture is changing fast, and that laundry and cleaning services need to respond positively to these changes to provide what users need and want.
I will try to educate myself (no promises here) about cleaning culture and look for ways to incorporate what I learn into laundry services.
I will not be defensive about my laundry, but will look clearly at its situation and make an honest assessment about what can be accomplished.
I will become an active participant in moving my laundry forward. [There's got to be something about user contributions in this - hold on - yeah...]
I will recognize that homes and cleaning processes change slowly, and will work with my colleagues to expedite our responsiveness to change.
I will be courageous about proposing new cleaning processes and services, and new ways of providing cleaning services, even though some of my household will be resistant.
I will lobby for an open laundry room that provides personalized, interactive features that users expect in modern cleaning environments. [!]
I will encourage my household's administration to clean.

What do you think? Will it ever take the place of night baseball?

What can I do to improve patrons' lives?

2009-07-10T09:27:00.006-05:00

Al Franken was sworn in this week as Minnesota's junior senator, many months after the election. In his remarks after taking the oath of office, he said (quoting the late Paull Wellstone) that he's going to "wake up every day saying, 'what can I do to improve people's lives?' " As I librarian, I find that very inspiring. Here's why.

At my institution, we are intensively weeding the print reference collection, to remove resources that are no longer relevant. The web has changed how students and faculty do research, and it has changed the kinds of questions we get as reference librarians. Statistics in books? If they can't download them, they don't want them. Quotations? They look on the web. Big encyclopedias? Why come in to look at books - the library may not even be open when they're doing their research.

We acquire online databases, and monographs - to the point that we don't exactly know what "reference" works we have right now. The print reference collection was a collaborative effort, librarians working together to recommend titles, including titles not in their subject areas. The online collection is often developed in a vacuum, or at least done solo - fewer discussions on how this fits into the greater collection, or gaps we see in others' subjects. I feel sad to see the old collections going away, even as I know it's part of modern reference work.

Then I hear a quote like Franken's, reminding me that my job, the reference librarian's job, is to improve patrons' lives. To help them find their stuff. The patrons are online, so we need to make sure they find their stuff online. Some will continue to use print, or need to use print for their disciplines or topics, but we need to have the stuff online. And we need to know what we have online, so that we can connect patrons with it. One of Ranganathan's laws of library science is "every reader his (or her) book." Which today might be "every researcher his/her source," be it online or print, pdf or html or ILL or paper. And I wonder if I can live up to the call of waking up every day, thinking about how I can improve patrons' lives. I'll try.

New computer (I think)

2009-06-26T09:12:00.004-05:00

When I went to Computers in Libraries in March, I noticed many people at the conference with small laptops, which I found out are often called "notebooks" or "netbooks." I thought, "This could be a killer app for me. If I had a small, lightweight computer, I might really use it! and take it with me out of town!" I went to a session about mobile reference at the Frederick County Public Libraries (they use Samsungs) and got more excited. Then I went to Wiscon (the feminist science fiction convention) in May, and attended their session on netbooks with my computer spouse. Oooh, we wanted them!

Computer spouse did some research, and we decided to get one to try out - if we liked it, we'd get more of the same. He couldn't find what we wanted in a bricks-and-mortar store, so he ordered one online. After several days of trying it out, we were hooked. So the new ones were ordered (a total of one each for me, computer spouse, and daughter.) But so far the first one is the only one he's had time to configure, so I almost have a new computer. Real soon.

At my library, a few of us are thinking about how to let students know what we have in the realm of online reference tools, particularly the specialized dictionaries and encyclopedias. Do students even use that terminology anymore - should we be calling them "background sources?" Reference work in the modern world is anything but dull.

End of the fiscal year

2009-06-12T10:42:00.003-05:00

I'm sad (and surprised) to realize how long it's been since I've blogged. No good excuses, but the reasons include using up vacation time before the end of the fiscal year, reviewing databases that come up for renewal at this time, and summer projects. Today I have to work on another database renewal and my performance review. On the 2.0 front, I can report that a coworker and I are planning this summer to work together on some of the 23 Things.

In a totally different vein, I have to say that lately I've become more thoughtful about my writing style. I recently purchased a book for my daughter called Writing Magic: Creating Stories That Fly, by Gail Carson Levine. My daughter is a writer, and for her at age 11 this sounded like a good title. She hasn't read it yet, but I have. Among other things, Levine talks about what to include, and not include, in your writing (for example, appealing to the senses - what does the character hear? what does the character touch?) as well as the craft of writing. I find myself doing more tweaking of my sentences, to make them read more clearly. Maybe someday I'll be a writer after all.

Thing 33: Travel 2.0

2009-05-13T10:53:00.004-05:00

I kind of like this Thing, although I don't travel as much as many do. We've done a little more traveling recently as my husband now works for an airline and we can fly standby. I like Lonely Planet's Thorn Tree Travel Forum, since I buy Lonely Planet country books for our reference collection (I hope we can get them online soon.) LP books have good cultural information on countries. I was amused by the entry I read in the Travel 2.0 blog (written by two travel industry professionals.) It was about the re-branding of Montana, in a travel sense. As a business librarian, I'm often intrigued by things that re-brand, or feel the need to re-brand. "Montana's redefined brand is all about natural splendor, charming and vibrant towns, and invigorating experiences by day with relaxing hospitality in the evening." It just makes me smile.

I know I've seen various travel review/rating sites as I've done travel planning. Took a quick look at TripAdvisor, and it doesn't look like they list MY favorite hotel in San Francisco (maybe someday I'll remedy that.) Given my recent adventures with Google Maps, Mapness (travel journal plus Google Maps) looks interesting, but feels intimidating (it gets you started at the get-go, but that's how I crashed my browser with Google Maps.) I took a brief look at the Travel Mashup - Mashup Awards; I'm not excited about the Twitter winners, but the others seem worth a visit.

I'll think about adding the Lonely Planet site to our country information guide. My favorite of those I saw is still the Travel 2.0 blog. I seem to remember the Twin Cities was trying to re-brand before the Republicans came to town. I wonder how that turned out?

Thing 32: Google Maps and Mashups

2009-05-12T15:07:00.008-05:00

Well, I was a little "anti-Google" when I started this (surprise, surprise.) I'm not a big fan of Google taking a picture of my house and posting it on the internet without my permission. Yeah, I know, I could opt out. But my husband believes in this stuff, so I err on his side. But I ask you, if this had been a government agency going around taking pictures of people's houses, and posting them in a public place, don't you think people would be up in arms? Why is it perfectly fine when a company does it?

Anyway, I've tried to use Google's mapping a bit, since I've gotten mislead a few times by MapQuest (I don't know what it is, but there directions are just plain wrong sometimes. We've gotten lost.) I have never been able to figure out the zoom out/zoom in symbols, much less how to go east, or north, or whatever. It always does what I don't want it to do.

So you won't be surprised when I tell you that my browser crashed while I was making my Google map, will you?

************************

At least when it crashed I didn't lose the whole thing. "Google My Maps is easy to use." Ha! After spending too many minutes trying to get the map to do what I wanted (sometimes there's an "undo" link, sometimes not), I realized that I should have tried my initial thought, "a map of my daily commute." It's easier to make a map of streets that you're very familiar with (at least, I assume it would be.) So I've only got two places marked on my map, but I really can't spend any more time on this today. I'd like to put in a picture, but the pictures must still be on the camera (they don't seem to be on our website yet.)

Let's see if the link to
View
View Mike, Marianne, and Ellie go to San Francisco 2009 in a larger map'>Mike, Marianne, and Ellie go to San Francisco 2009 in a larger map'>our San Francisco trip works. I hope so! (Yeah, I know, it's not displaying correctly. But I've been messing with it for 10 minutes, and I'm fed up.)

Other maps/mashups that I found interesting: the various ZIP code maps, since we get regular questions about ZIP code boundaries (too bad the maps had disclaimers about not necessarily being accurate); the World Bank's mashup of ease of business in different countries. We have Google map things on our library websites. I'd really like to spend more time doing this - it could be fun, for creating work-related things, maps of vacations, etc. But I'll have to do this later - gotta get back to work.

Thing 31: More Twitter

2009-05-11T15:16:00.004-05:00

First, I have to follow up on my last post about Delicious. In the "I have to see somebody doing something before I realize its usefulness" department: just after that post, I went to a meeting of local library colleagues. One of them is developing library subject guides using LibGuides, a newish tool for developing library subject guides (that I wish we'd look at.) In his subject pages, he's using Delicious tag clouds to provide links to useful websites by subtopic (it's not live yet, so I can't link to it.) Now this is an application that makes sense to me. I do have a couple of reservations - I'm not sure I want the "group mind" to prioritize recommended websites (although I'm interested in trying it out), and I don't have too many guides where "websites" is a category. I tend to group things by content (industry overviews, demographics, etc.) But it's an intriguing idea.

Twitter. You know, I'm just not a Twitter person. Maybe if I had more current mobile technology, and/or were online more. I don't have the dexterity to text on my cell phone to begin with (not to mention trying to read the small display.) I don't have an iPhone, or a BlackBerry. My cell phone is a Nokia, no camera, with a font that's about two sizes too small for my eyes. I can't remember where the backspace key is. Maybe this sounds lame, like I'm some klutzy antique who just can't figure things out. But it seems to me than some responsibility for usable interfaces falls on the designers of these technologies, and why do I keep hearing stories about people who hate their cell phones.

I'm not going to do mobile twittering. I could do email, but I'm still a day behind on my recent work email (the price of taking a real day off), and I'm three days behind on my personal email. Doggone it, it's the gardening season! I've been in the garden, not online!

I've looked at some of the Twitter options, and examples. I like the idea of Twilert, that gets you updates on product availability. I can think of several times recently I could have used that (I wonder if I could get to a store in time to get an item before it's sold out?) And TwitterSnooze, which lets you "hit the snooze button on your verbose Twitter friends" (I could something like that in Facebook.) So I'm at the Denial/Presence, "I don't get it, but I have an account" stage of Twitter. What do I think Twitter is? I think it's a scene from the radio play "The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy," where our hero Arthur Dent is vainly trying to communicate something, and no one quite gets what he's saying.

But one thing I can say about these last several weeks of looking at new tools: sometimes the "killer application" has to hit me on the head, by seeing somebody else do it, or by letting it percolate in the back of my head until the connections are made. Sometimes I really do Get It.

Thing 30: More Ways to Use RSS and Delicious

2009-05-06T10:38:00.004-05:00

I've been struggling with this Thing, and I think I know why. One of the things I struggle with is sensory overload: too much coming at me at once to make sense. The more that new things come at me, the more I need to step back and go STOP! Let me make sense of this at my own speed! Another thing I struggle with is that I have LOTS of interests (gardening and books and old movies and old television and library stuff and....), and I struggle with "moderating" the flow of my information so that I don't miss things that might interest me.

I have not been using my Bloglines account for RSS feeds, and have been feeling "guilty" for not using it. Going directly to blogs that interest me and reading them "live" on the web works better for me, partly because I feel more in control. I can read it when I want to, and what I've missed, I don't know about. The idea of using keywords to filter RSS feeds is interesting, but what keywords would I choose? The trick with keywords is that there isn't necessarily standardization (none of that subject heading or descriptor stuff.) I should be interested in Delicious, despite my privacy concerns, since I do use things on multiple computers, and it would be nice to have my bookmarks someplace. But I'm just not there yet. I think it would be handy when planning a trip, for example, to have links to sights to see, to plan with your fellow travelers. And you could share links with your colleagues (we used to do that on our reference desk computer, but they kept getting purged by the tech folks.)

When I first finished doing the 23 Things, I tried to set up a schedule of 2.0 activities (schedules are something that work really well with me.) Doing my blog posting on a schedule worked pretty well (I posted most Friday mornings.) I didn't find a workable schedule for the other things I tried to do. Since we don't have regular schedules at my institution (i.e., I don't have a regular schedule that I'm on the reference desk, it's different every day, every week), that makes scheduling other things more challenging.

I guess I just need to make some time in my schedule to play around in these things, so that they work well for me. What works for me seems to be different than what works for most people.

Thing 29: Google Tools

2009-05-05T13:49:00.004-05:00

Ah, yes. The World According to Google, again. This things deals with various lesser-known features of Google, with the option to use other, similar tools if you're not a Google fan. I think I've blogged before about my adversion to putting all of my eggs into anyone's basket, including Google's, so I'll be looking non-Google.

News: Google News lets you personalize your news page and get sources by topic. The ProQuest databases are listed as an option, and we get ProQuest Newsstand as part of the ELM database collection. In ProQuest Newsstand you can set up table of contents alerts for new issues of a magazine or newspaper, and search alerts for new articles on a particular topic. ProQuest doesn't make it easy to figure this out, and I can't think of a publication or topic right now, so I changed my mind and moved on to EBSCO databases.

Currently I have one search alert through EBSCO (I used to have more, but I tended not to check them.) I've been meaning to get a family subscription to Newsweek for a long time (we thought we got one last year, but somebody got our money, and no subscription.) So I signed up to get an alert on Newsweek. I guess I'm just used to the odd, library way of doing things, rather than the new-millenium Google way. The search alert I have been using is for Computers in Libraries, and I do like that, and much prefer it to the system of routing paper journals (which I'm really bad at, and should get off all paper routing. Really.)

For the other part of this Thing, I have to choose between Mail, Calendar, and Web Site creation. I'm not keen on corporate America peeking into any of these parts of my life - which is the lesser evil? Sigh. I thought I already had a Google Mail account, since I've had to use Google for other things (this blog, a Google Groups activity at work last year), but no G-Mail, apparently. So I turn to Yahoo Mail, which I know I've used before. And guess what? I'm deactivated (either I turned it off, or I haven't used it for four months.) Grr. Well, poop on this mail stuff. I have two email accounts already (work and personal); I don't need more. What about Calendar?

Calendar: Yahoo Calendar lets me in (even though my email through them is deactivated.) So I've been tweaking settings and so forth. It is nice that you can make your day as long or short as you need. One of the big drawbacks of my paper calendar is that it's a traditional, 8-to-5 calendar, with little room to add details for the evening (and miniscule space for weekends.) It's interesting that you can only set appointments on the "15s" (i.e. 9:00, 9:15, 9:30, 9:45.) It would be tricky for our university setting, where we have classes starting at times like 9:40 and 1:35. I DO like the Event Type pull-down, with a LOT of possible settings (anniversary, appoinment, breakfast, interview, movie, etc. - interesting that they have Breakfast and not Brunch. Oh, well.) Much nicer in this than Outlook Calendar. I like that the display of one week seems to be customizable, you can go Friday through the following Thursday, for example. If I didn't have such major privacy concerns about this, it would be an interesting way to set up family calendards, schedule what our daughter is doing which week this summer, etc. I'm not sure this calendar can be embedded in the blog, as suggested in the Thing, but here's the URL: http://calendar.yahoo.com/marianne.hageman.

This calendar thing is worth thinking about.

Thing 28: Customized Home Pages

2009-05-01T09:53:00.004-05:00

Before I blog about today's topic, I have a Twitter addendum. After I logged off the other day, I listed to more news on the radio about the flu outbreak. A reported noted that MANY people were following the government's public health presence on Twitter, to keep up with the latest information. So for many folks, Twitter is becoming what the radio (or television news) has been for past generations: a way to get current, reliable information where they are. Since I'm not "there" in Twitter very often, no wonder I don't get it!

On to Thing 28, customizing a home page. This covers iGoogle, PageFlakes, My Yahoo!, and other productivity tools. I looked back in my blog, and we first focused on this in Thing 13. I looked at the three, and liked PageFlakes the best, so I opened it up. (I discussed in my earlier post what I liked about PageFlakes over the others, but basically it could tell the difference between St. Paul and Minneapolis, and displayed better.) It took me a minute to remember how to navigate, but it was pretty easy. Had to add that Facebook widget right away! I would like to get more on top of podcasts, but I need to learn more about the relationship between my home laptop, iTunes, and podcasts before I get started. I think I'd like to dink around with it a bit more, but I'm going to do some blogging before fun. ;^)

But wait - this is interesting. I looked at the link to the blog post about PageFlakes, and discovered that there's a teacher edition of PageFlakes that can be customized for educators. How cool is that! I like what's in the example - a to-do list, research link (Google, Google, always Google - funny how it isn't "Link to My Library"), educational bookmarks, etc. When you have your "work" hat on, this makes more sense that all of the entertainment widgets in the regular PageFlakes (I'm not that much into modern entertainment.) I want to look at this more later.

On portals and customized pages: we have been talking at my institution about personalized library experiences for a long time. We'd look around the web and see it done at other institutions; why not here? Either our IT folks didn't get it (for the library experience), or we didn't have the software tools we needed to make it happen, but we made little progress until just recently. This semester the university did a beta trial of a student portal, and over Easter break it was opened up to all students. The library had been consulted on our presence last year, and the subject librarians ranked databases and other content that students could pick. Then, as it came closer to going live, it sounded like we wouldn't have access to it right away (we weren't students, after all!) So our library tech folks made the case that we couldn't help students with library-related portal questions if we couldn't see what they were looking at, so we were given accounts. And I think we're using Google Analytics to get some good data on use. I don't have a good impression yet on how it's going over with students, but I think they'll be comfortable with using it.

Portals for library staff? I think I've pondered in other posts about coming up with a go-to place for my colleagues. We've had Outlook Public Folders, shared network folders, a commercial wiki, a staff presence in the Blackboard course management system. Now we're beginning to talk about Sharepoint, and our tech students are using it already. We need something to get people into the same shared space, which is something of an uphill battle (not all staff seem to be OK with email, for that matter.) We need some big nudges.

More Things: Thing 27

2009-04-29T10:56:00.002-05:00

Thing 27 is Twitter. I have heard a lot about Twitter for at least a year. We watched a YouTube video on it at home a few weeks ago, spoofing it and the "Fail Whale." I admit to being one of the ones who so far doesn't "get it." Who wants to know what I'm doing in odd minutes of the day? It sounds to me like a cross of Marshall McLuhan (everyone's famous, for 15 minutes) and Dickens/stream of consciousness narration (BTW, I really dislike novels written in the present tense. Seems to be a recent trend in literature, and it just rubs me the wrong way.)

So I got on to Twitter yesterday, and tried to find some people/personalities to follow. I searched for a friend that I know is on Twitter. I searched by her professional name. Searched her married name. Searched several combinations - no luck. I am not impressed with the searching on Twitter. Signed up to follow a writer I've heard of, a public radio reporter I've heard of, my library. Also Weird Al Yankovic and the More Things feed. This morning I found my friend (firstnamelastname all squished together), and am following her. Big whup. For the benefit of my one follower (so far), my Twitter username is mdhageman.

Our library just started using Twitter a few weeks ago, I believe (I happened to see this in some meeting minutes, I don't it was announced widely.) They're thinking of using it as a "here's what's going on" notification - "cookies in the library have arrived!" Since we sometimes have food left over after events, they could tweet about that - could have tweeted about activities during the recent Library Week. The trick is that I've read recently that college students are underwhelmed with Twitter - I'm not sure are students are there. We'll see.

I really don't think Twitter is my thing (until they improve the searching, at least.) I like the social networking features of Facebook (and similar sites) that make it easier to find people you know, or are interested in, and have more of a context (here are their photos, here are groups they've joined, etc.) And Facebook changed their status field to say "What are you doing?" - just like Twitter.

I have to admit this is difficult as I listen to more news about the swine flu; it sounds like the first case may have come to Minnesota. Stay healthy, follow common sense. And wash your hands.

More Things: Thing 26

2009-04-27T16:40:00.002-05:00

Thing 26 is Ning, specifically the 23 Things on a Stick Ning. I joined it in the last go-round, and frankly, it just hasn't captured my fancy. Maybe I haven't made the effort to make friends there. Facebook has been more compelling to me, partly because I already know people I've connected to there. And of course that I'm now trying to do More Things on a different schedule from others doesn't help. But I did upload some photos, now that I have some thanks to my personal tech support. I wanted to upload one of my newest favorite toy, but since I don't own the rights to the image, I didn't really feel that I could. I looked back at my blog from last summer, and I had Ning on my list of "things I'm excited about," but for some reason I didn't keep with it.

I looked at some of the videos, and made some comments. There was a film of library dominoes (we did something similar a few weeks ago at my institution to kick off Library Week.) And one of my all-time favorite YouTubes, the Medieval Help Desk.

I could see getting involved in an interest group in Ning (my husband is active in some on Facebook.) I just haven't found/made time in my life for that, not in Ning or Facebook. I said last August that I have the problem of having TOO MANY interests - how to limit oneself by the time available?

More Things: Thing 25

2009-04-23T18:17:00.002-05:00

So I've spent time trying to add some gadgets/widgets to my blog tonight. I tried a couple of clocks, but Blogger said the first one was broken, and the second one doesn't seem to appear (and Blogger is having some trouble tonight - I've gotten several error messages in the last few minutes.) I tried to add some "quote of the day" things - at least three that Blogger said were broken. The Cave Photo one was broken, too. One is working: the Britannica "library quote of the day" gadget (which I've had to relocate a couple of times.) I'd added the Follower thing earlier, and that's been working.

Err. The clock is on the bottom. Oh, well.

If I were doing this at home, I'd try to do more picture stuff. But I don't have my own digital camera, and our better photos are at home. I did manage to open up the comments on the blog the other week, encouraged by my Follower (Google Mail recognized him for one blog he was following, but not mine.) I was intrigued by the "trackbacks" idea, but Blogger searching isn't working right now. Maybe later.

More Things: Thing 24

2009-04-23T17:19:00.003-05:00

I got an email late yesterday from the More Things on a Stick folks. I'd registered fairly soon after they started, and tweaked my blog a trifle, knowing that my library would be a pretty busy place at the beginning of term, but certainly I could get started on this in early March. I'd made a commitment.

And then Life happened, including a semi-impromptu spring break trip with some good things (got to see Wicked!) and not-so-good things (2+ days at airports, waiting for a flight home - the joys of flying standby.) Also a trip to the Computers in Libraries conference. So by the time I semi-started my expense report after the conference, I'd written off doing More Things. "There's only a month left," I mused. "No way I can do this." But the More Things email said, "If you complete at least 10 of the things and blog about them," I can get a bag. And they won't be doing a second round of More Things. So I'm going to try, and see what I can do.

As it turns out, I'd already done a chunk of Thing 24 and didn't realize it. I'd refreshed my blog, and due to some nudging from my Number One Fan (and Follower), I'd played with the gadgets. So I did some more refreshing, and now I'm blogging away again.

They ask, "How much have you blogged since you finished 23 Things on a Stick?" I finished in August, and according to Blogger, I had 13 posts for the rest of 2008, and 12 (and counting) for 2009. I haven't been commenting much on blogs, but I do have some blogs (and friends on LiveJournal) that I check on a regular basis. The library blog that I look at the most is Free Range Librarian, Karen Schneider's blog. She's quirky, and interesting.

They ask, "What do you like about blogging?" I like sharing odd bits and pieces of things, when I come across something of interest. I usually need something external to give me a "poke" (to use a Facebook term.) And I have to say again that Facebook has become quite the "killer application" in our household, since my husband discovered it in January, and more and more of our friends pop up on it. None of my friends from high school yet - maybe they're all on MySpace?

Government 2.0

2009-04-23T17:07:00.002-05:00

National Public Radio ran a story tonight about Recovery.gov, the website that's tracking spending on the economic recovery. "It's an enormous task - publishing a real-time, reliable account of what the government is doing - and it wouldn't have been possible a decade ago. Call it Government 2.0."

High school students and library research experiences

2009-04-17T10:13:00.005-05:00

Next week a colleague and I are doing a brief presentation for coworkers about what high school students do and don't learn about libraries and library research while in high school. She will discuss a University of Montana poster session at ALA last summer, and I will discuss a session by Kellian Clink at the Minnesota Library Association conference last fall. In both cases, college librarians surveyed and interviewed high school librarians at their institutions' "feeder schools," the high schools from which a number of their entering freshmen graduate. Many high school libraries and media centers have had their book budgets decreased or frozen for years, although state programs do provide access to online databases. And high school librarians report that students are creating more PowerPoints and iMovies than research papers. This has interesting implications for those of us doing college-level library instruction, about what concepts first-year students have experienced (library databases, online catalogs, citing sources, Dewey classification) and those they may not (evaluating sources, controlled vocabulary, synthesizing & analyzing information.) My colleague hopes to do a similar study of feeder schools of private colleges in Minnesota. The findings should be interesting.

Computers in Libraries 2009

2009-04-07T09:58:00.002-05:00

Amongst my recent traveling adventures, I attended Computers in Libraries 2009 in Arlington, Virginia. Some highlights:

Mobile is hot: there were sessions on mobile searching, applications for mobile devices, and mention of websites that will let you develop a mobile-friendly version of your own website.
Twitter is still hot (at least in some circles.)
What do you think is Facebook’s fastest-growing demographic, as of January? I’ll put the answer at the end of this message, so you can think about it.
“Steal this code!” session: presentation on encouraging faculty to link to library content (in course management systems, etc.) by putting “cut and paste the code” info on your library website. They suggested “search the catalog” and “search databases” links. Here are some examples from Auraria and UM-Duluth.
Frederick County Public Library talked about Mobile Reference using Samsung mobile computers networked to library printers.
I went to a couple of presentations on getting/improving library content in course management systems, including customized portals and sending library content info to faculty that they can upload into their courses.
I also saw a couple of sessions on training and e-learning, for teaching/training library staff and patrons. I also attended some interesting sessions on using Web 2.0 tools for library content (Flickr for library tutorials, “Meebo me” widgets, podcasts and screencasts on library guides, etc.)
Townson University talked about their Sharepoint reference wiki (Powerpoint link.)
So, what do you think Facebook’s fastest-growing demographic was in January 2009? Seniors! I knew that was coming as soon as my mother-in-law joined Facebook. ;^)

What Was I Thinking?

2009-03-27T09:54:00.002-05:00

Christine Lavin has a great song, "What Was I Thinking?," where she ponders some choices that weren't perhaps the best. Here I am, just back from a spring break trip to San Francisco (which included two days at airports awaiting a flight home - ah, the joys of flying standby.) Tomorrow I leave for the Computers in Libraries conference in Arlington, Virginia. I'm sure the conference will be great, but right now I don't want to see an airport. Never. Well, maybe in a few months, but not NOW. I'm still tired from trying to sleep in the San Francisco airport Sunday night.

I hope the conference will regenerate me. And I'll get back into blogging again.

Snowed Under

2009-02-27T09:40:00.003-06:00

We had several inches of snow yesterday, PLUS I got a last-minute request to teach a class next week, so "snowed under" is how I feel. But I can share a few tidbits:

A counterpoint to the "Facebook, I Quit!" article I linked to last week: "Why Facebook is for Old Fogies" from Time Magazine (especially "Facebook is about finding people you've lost track of... son, we've lost track of more people than you've ever met.")
My husband was out of town during yesterday's snowstorm and expected back last night. I missed his call to my cell phone (I was shoveling out my car) and only got his voicemail message much later. He said, "But I changed my Facebook status!"
I got my first File 404 error message from the new administration the other day:
"The page you requested wasn't found at this location. The Obama Administration has created a brand new White House website, and it's possible that the page you were looking for has been moved. Please take a moment to explore our new site, learn more about President Obama and his team, and read about their plan to bring about the change America needs."

Facebook, I Quit!

2009-02-13T09:51:00.003-06:00

I don't have a lot of time today, but I do want to post a link to the Newsweek blog post by Steve Tuttle, "You Can't Friend Me, I Quit!" Quite ironic, in our context. (I'm not quitting Facebook yet, in fact I'm in about once a day.) I'm getting error messages from Blogger, so I'd better stop for today.

Why I'm Not Doing More Things, Yet

2009-02-06T15:49:00.003-06:00

Got upgraded to Microsoft Office 2007 on Monday. Still learning some of the ropes.
Preparing for 4 classes next week (marketing, entrepreneurship, and 2 sections of finance.)
Ordering books in my subject areas as fast as I can, before the end of the month.

These are not good excuses, I suppose, but I knew when I signed up that I probably wouldn't have time for More Things in the month of February. This has proven true. So I will be behind people, but I have at least one coworker in the same boat as me.

How I Love My Spam Filter (Not)

2009-01-30T13:48:00.003-06:00

Ah, the joys of the Spam Filter, that interesting piece of software that's supposed to make your life easier. Ours at work is slow, p-a-i-n-f-u-l-l-y slow, and I often get the "server timed out" message. So I sometimes miss a useful message.

I registered with More Things on a Stick earlier this week, and while looking at the site, was wondering if there was much activity yet. Little did I realize that with one exception, my "More Things" messages were getting caught in the spam filter. I made the mistake of looking yesterday afternoon, and have been wrestling with the filter since then to get a dozen or so messages out of there (perhaps even deleting the real spam, hmmm.) So if anyone of the More Things participants come across this blog, I have started Thing 24, but I'm not getting the messages - yet. This too shall pass, right?

This 'n' That

2009-01-23T09:28:00.004-06:00

Update on my Computer Woes: after taking a turn for the worse, today my computer seems better. Yesterday was a mixed bag: my second Outlook personal folder came back, Outlook slowed to the occasional crawl, and my calendar reminders refused to work - which was where I started 2 weeks ago. However, a wonderful tech has worked on my machine, and when I logged in today the Terrible .DLL Message did not come back (although Outlook was slow to load again.) I'm crossing my fingers.
Ever since my earlier post on computer error messages, I've been saving examples for another fun-filled post. But now that I've been in DLL Hell, it's not so fun anymore. That blog posting will have to wait.
More Things on a Stick has opened for enrollment; that's still on my to-do list. Maybe today. They recommend using Firefox to do the Things, so I have to remember this. I've gone back and forth in the browser wars over the years, but I retreated some years ago when my institution said that they only supported Things Microsoft. (Which didn't stop me from installing Firefox on my newly-leased computer this summer.)
Web 2.0 hit our household last weekend: my husband discovered Facebook. (He did help me load a picture of myself to Facebook, which is nice. The picture I did months ago on this blog was the only digitized one I could find at the time, and it's of me and our dog.) He's still in the infatuation stage ("I have 24 friends!"), but he assures me that he'll settle down soon. I wonder...he's thinking about encouraging his mom to get on Facebook, that it might be a killer app for her. My killer app is my handheld, an antique Palm III Palm Pilot which has 3Com on its lid, bless its heart. I use it every day, and haven't migrated to the newer Palm that I was given by computer spouse some years ago because I can sync the old one at home, but not the new one.

Onward to the new week. I assume that once I get going on More Things, I'll be posting more often.

Computer Woes

2009-01-16T11:40:00.003-06:00

I'm having a bad week. My computer has a Something. I'm not sure if it's a virus, or spyware goop, or what. Being a mere user, I am not privy to the illness that has befallen my machine. I'm told it's not even my fault, that it came through the network, and is not a result of anything I did. But it's ill. It started with my calendar, which spread to other pieces of Outlook. My preferences and personal files are gone, at least for now. I've had a wonderful tech person here several times for the past few days, and she's referred my problem to another tech. So I wait, and suffer.

It's not unlike the Bad Old Days that we tried to explain to our daughter the other day, when a child in the family was dying, and the mother wasn't told what was wrong (it might upset her, which would upset the child and delay recovery.) The child wasn't told (the child would be upset and delay recovery.) So I know there's a Something on my computer, and that I get a System32 message when I log on that ends in a .dll. We tried looking up the particular error message on the web and couldn't find it. But now I feel better knowing that Wikipedia has an entire entry on DLL Hell (DLL means "dynamic link libraries," and is a Windows thing. Learn somethin' every day, don'tcha?) Now I know where I am. DLL Hell.

Meanwhile, I've learned that More Things on a Stick is coming, starting on January 20th! I hope I get out of DLL Hell before then.

What is Presearch?

2009-01-09T11:48:00.003-06:00

One blog I like to scan on a regular basis is Karen Schneider's Free Range Librarian. Recently she had an interesting post on her Top Ten Words and Phrases for 2008, and the one that caught my attention was "presearch":

"Presearch: the informal Google/Wikipedia look-ups students do before digging into better resources (and yes, they do that!)"

That definition hasn't hit Wikipedia yet (maybe a good thing?), but I like it. Years ago I worked with some folks at our campus Writing Center, and I remember they emphasized "prewriting," the writing that goes on as you're just getting started. It doesn't have to be perfect, and it's not unlike brainstorming on paper. I think this is an intriguing idea, and it will be interesting to see if the term/definition catch on.

Musings on Web/Library 2.0 Reluctance

2009-01-02T10:17:00.003-06:00

Recently I received an email from a student librarian asking for my thoughts on why folks are reluctant to use Web 2.0/Library 2.0 technologies. I hadn't thought conciously on this much, but my subsconscious must have, because I was able to distill several ideas into some coherent points. Here's what I came up with, from an academic library perspective:

A feeling that it pulls us away from what’s been important in our profession: the personal contact with patrons, diminishing the human touch.
The thinking that our patrons aren’t there yet. I’ve heard from some colleagues that students (particularly graduate students, but not limited to them) aren’t aware of these technologies, and students want things to be as simple as possible. And many faculty aren’t there either.
The belief that making things too simple is not good pedagogy. Research is a process, and it’s work, which isn’t necessarily easy (at least at the college level.)
An impression that faculty make assumptions about student use of technologies, that students know more than they do; this idea is in tension with library staff perceiving that students know less than they used to, and/or have more to deal with than they used to.
It’s a fad, another “trend” that will be replaced with something else.
Lack of time to learn new technologies.
Lack of support, in training and in ability to acquire and use new tools, both hardware and software.

She also asked about how we might overcome these obstacles. I didn't have many ideas there: frankly, we haven't made a lot of progress at my institution. But here are my thoughts:

23 Things programs of various types are helping library staff get on board with new technologies. Here in Minnesota, we’ve had two rounds of 23 Things on a Stick, with new Things promised for 2009. (The joke is that at our Minnesota State Fair, which is one of the biggest in the country, you can buy almost anything on a stick, including turkey, ostrich, and alligator.
Incentives, even small ones, can be helpful. The original 23 Things program, as you may have seen, offered a prize for completion, as well as a chance to win a laptop computer and other prizes.
I think any kind of partnering, or teamwork, or mentoring can help. Working with someone else, or a group, can give you encouragement and someone to ask if you run into problems.

I hope we can make some progess in 2009!

Federated search: hats off to the U of Wisconsin!

2008-12-12T09:25:00.004-06:00

I have great admiration for the University of Wisconsin Libraries, and their willingness to share information on their various projects (I should send them a fan letter sometime.) Their materials have helped me more than once. This time my hat (black fleece, since it's below zero) is off to their Metalib Assessment project. This year they've been assessing their federated search product, Metalib. And they're terrific enough to share their working bibliographies and other documents. We're thinking of assessing our federated search product (we have CentralSearch), and some of the conversations stray away from actual assessment of the product. The UW Libraries are providing a great example. Thanks to them!

End of term is in sight

2008-12-05T09:25:00.003-06:00

I've been "away" at the Minnesota Library Association conference, and then the Thanksgiving holiday, so I haven't posted for awhile. When I got back to work after the holiday, I had several requests for student appointments. Aha! It's December now, so the semester is almost over, and the students need me (it's nice to be needed.) While it can be challenging to deal with this, juggling their schedules and yours (just coming in to find me may not be the best option), it IS great to be helpful to students. And it's nice in a way to have another marker in the turning of the year (so THAT assignment is here again.)

One way that I think I'm good as a reference librarian is that I can usually put myself in the place of the novice user (I've been confused by many web interfaces in my day, much less subject headings, etc.) While I've been through THAT assignment many times, I can understand what it must be like to a novice. I went to a very interesting presentation at MLA about what some of our high school students are and aren't learning about library research (I need to post on that in the near future), and I realize that for many first- and second-year college students, this whole idea of Subject Headings is a new thing. Knowing this helps me help them.

Generation Jones Goes to the White House

2008-11-14T09:42:00.004-06:00

I'm one. President-Elect Obama and his wife both are. So is Alaka governor Sarah Palin. But have you heard of Generation Jones, aka "The Jonesers?"

I first heard about them in 2000, in the midst of "Baby Boomer this" and "Gen X" that. "You're a Boomer," said my coworkers and the pundits. "You were born between 1946 and 1964 - Woodstock, Vietnam." "Are you kidding?" I'd think. "I was just a kid then." I didn't know from Woodstock, except as a Peanuts character.

Then I read an article in the Minneapolis Star Tribune about Jonathan Pontell, who coined the term, and now has a Generation Jones website. Generation Jones are the people born between 1954 and 1965: the end of the Boomers and the beginning of Generation X. Why Jones? There are several definitions: it embodies the idea of a large, unknown, invisible generation, or a generation longing for its own identity (or "keeping up with the Joneses" and conspicuous consumption.) We are the generation of shag carpets, avocado appliances, the Brady Bunch, and Watergate. We are one quarter of the adult U.S. population. (Interestingly enough, the article disappeared from electronic sources for awhile after the Tasini court decision, so I was glad I'd printed it off.)

The president-elect will be the first Joneser in the White House. I heard Garrison Keillor last week on A Prairie Home Companion noting the end of the Booners in the White House, and I was intrigued to see on the Generation Jones website a section on its impact on the Presidential election. We've hit the big time, with coverage in Newseek, the Chicago Tribune, and YouTube. Obama's older daughter is the same age as my daughter, just as my brother and I were about the same ages as President Kennedy's kids. In my quiet, Midwestern way, I'm celebrating. My people have arrived.

Ups and Downs of the Long Tail

2008-11-07T09:29:00.006-06:00

The Long Tail (in recent popular parlance) is the string of unique items, sold in small quantities, which are more "findable" in the online age. It's cool in a lot of ways, making all sorts of things float to the attention of possibly interested people ("if you like Doctor Who, maybe you'll like Diana Wynne Jones!") But for me, there's a downside. I keep finding all of these out-of-print, not-at-my-local-library, hardly-anyone-on-the-planet-seems-to-have THINGS that I get interested in. The local public radio station used to play a particular version of the Marseillaise (French national anthem) every July 14, Bastille Day. Out of print. One of my favorite writing blogs has a "what books do you read again and again?" posting, and someone mentions some intriguing books I've never heard of. Out of print, and copies of area public libraries are missing, withdrawn, or in storage.

Now back in the day (ah, my misspent youth), if something was out of print, that was it. My favorite author as a child was E. Nesbit, a British author from the early 1900s who wrote books about children and magic (magic cities, magical creatures, mermaids) and name-dropped some of her favorite authors in her works. E. Nesbit was born in 1858, and in the 1950s there was a British publisher who republished most of her books in a somewhat uniform edition, a few of which managed to make their way to the children's section of my downtown public library (while we lived in the suburbs, my parents worked downtown, so I was there a lot.) Of course I read and reread them, and wanted them for my own. But they were British books, and for some reason it was almost impossible back then to get a British book through an American bookstore. So I managed to get a few, found others in American editions, and hoped that some day, I could find them all.

Flash forward many years, and online bookstores make it possible for me to use my disposable income to find them used in various locations (I even found some at used booksales, which is a story in itself.) I have over the years picked up copies of nearly all of E. Nesbit's children's books (and ran out of shelf space in the process.) So I'm tempted to do the same when I want that recording of the Mareillaise, or those historical novels that the public libraries don't carry. You can even buy things online from British bookstores now - how cool is that? The Long Tail makes it so easy to spend our money, darn it. I have to reign in my desires and be fiscally prudent, especially these days. I make my little lists, and allow myself a few at a time.

But I do have to commend the Long Tail effect of that popular author, J. K. Rowling. With the popularity of Harry Potter, publishers looked around and said, "who else writes books about kids and magic? What do we have on our backlist?" So the great author Edward Eager comes back in print, the writer whose book Half Magic I found in fourth grade, which led me to E. Nesbit and so many other writers years ago. So I can flesh out my Edward Eager collection, and buy my daughter her own copies (in print!) I guess I can't complain too much.

Error 2.0

2008-10-31T10:09:00.007-05:00

I've been writing lately about Millennials as well as Library 2.0, and it occurred to me that there's one area in Computerland that really needs some 2.0 attention. You know it, I know it, we all know it. It's those Dreaded Messages from Computers. You know what I mean. "You are low on disk space." "Memory error." "Error in line 27." "Mistake in line 9." "Illegal operation."

"Illegal operation" is a good one. So, I think. I've committed an illegal operation. What law have I broken? Are you sending the Computer Police to get me? Do I have the right to remain computing? Or was this a surgical operation I've unwittingly committed? Are we talkin' the American Medical Association here?

How about some helpful error messages? I wanted to call this post "Help 2.0," although I have to admit that online and network help has gotten better in the last few years. I can often find what I need to know in the help, local or on the internet (although it's sometimes under a heading that would never occur to me.) I still make notes in my computer books when I find the answer, because sometimes it takes awhile to find it (or, in the case of our reference desk computer, it gets re-imaged every so often, and I have to change all of the Microsoft-preferred or My-Place-of-Work-preferred defaults and settings back to the Marianne-preferred settings. There's nothing like having your own name underlined because Microsoft thinks it's misspelled.)

What would a helpful error message be like? It would not only tell you what you did, but either what you should do to fix it, or how you can do better next time. What do you think of these reflections on what I think recent error messages have been trying to tell me?

Oh, you silly! Don't you know you can't have that many tabs open? It's really more than this poor program (or machine, or whatever) can handle. I know that YOU, with your superior human brain, can deal with this, but your poor, benighted computer really can't cope. So next time, no more than six or seven tabs at a time, ok? Especially if you're going to be playing music, downloading pdfs, and all of that other fancy stuff.
Oh, bother. I've run out of memory again. No, really, it's me, it's not your fault. How were you to know my true limitations? Even I can't admit them all. So please, could you shut me down for a bit, and try again a little slower? I'd really appreciate the rest.
Oops! Um, I don't know how to break this to you, but there's a new version of this program available, at it can handle more things than I can. I know, there's no way that you'd know this. If I could, I would have told you. Really. I wish they'd set me up to do that. But I only hear about it after the fact. So if you go to the Help and look under "New Stuff That No One's Told You," they'll have the answers there.
Owie! Oh, I really blew that one, didn't I? I've been doing fine all this time, and you had no reason to suspect I would fail you this time. So sorry. I'll try not to let it happen again. So if you sneak around the back and save what you were doing, you should be fine.

My favorite help message of all time (in response to an acutual error) was on our old mainframe network, back at the Dawn of Time. "You have invoked Help," it began. Well, duh, I thought (although it may have been back before "duh" came into the common language.) If you think I need to be told that I'm asking for help, our relationship isn't starting off on a good footing, is it? Like the washing machine repairman who asked my mother, awash in suds, if she was sure that the machine was plugged in.

On this Halloween, let's see if we can invoke some helpful Help and error messages.

Mid-term break

2008-10-24T14:17:00.002-05:00

It's mid-term break, so we're catching our breath a bit, and I'm ordering books for my subject areas (business and economics.) We use Blackwell's Collection Manager for a lot of our book selection, and can order Ebrary versions of electronic books. It's interesting to decide on an individual title level - should I request this book in electronic format, or not? A number of the titles I request aren't available electronically yet, or on the platform we've chosen. But I come up with a few each time I go in, and then I think. Is this the sort of book that will get a lot of use, and having it electronically will be a Godsend to patrons? Is this the sort of book that needs some "digesting," and not be in heavy demand, so it would be better to have it in paper? And I know that every title I order as an ebook won't be available to patrons in the rest of our consortium (unless they came into our library - I think they could use it then.) While these are not "life or death" decisions, they are challenging, and not something any of us contemplated back in the olden days in library school.

Google Books and computer tips

2008-10-17T09:49:00.003-05:00

The Chronicle of Higher Education on October 13 had an article about university libraries participating in Google Books that have been building a backup to Google Books. They've unveiled it as HathiTrust (pronounced hah-TEE), from the Hindu word for elephant. Says Bradley C. Wheeler, Chief Information Officer at the Indiana University system, "Elephants remember, elephants are large, and elephants are strong."

My favorite computer tip this week comes from David Pogue in the New York Times, who recently blogged on "Tech Tips for the Basic Computer User." Did you know that on pc's you can use the Control key and the Plus key (Ctrl +) to enlarge the text of a web page? How many pages do we see that have tiny fonts? This is one tip I can use!

More on Millennials

2008-10-10T09:33:00.003-05:00

In the midst of teaching classes this week (accounting, journalism, and economics), I can share another item on Millennials. Wayne Bivens-Tatum, is the Philosophy and Religion Librarian at Princeton University, and his Academic Librarian blog has several posts tagged with Millennials, including a recent review of Mark Bauerlein's new book The Dumbest Generation (Wayne doesn't think they are.)

I'm off to do my last two presentations for fall semester (at least, those that are scheduled so far.) This term I've done hands-on sessions in our building, online demos on pc's in other buildings, one online Mac-based demo in another building, and this morning a road show with no computer. So I'm running the gamut.

Some Views of the Google Generation

2008-10-03T14:28:00.003-05:00

My local academic library consortium is planning a discussion next month on the current generation of undergraduate students - Millennials, Generation Y, the Google Generation, etc. One of my colleagues has recommended this article from Inside Higher Ed: Understanding Students Who Were 'Born Digital'. And our library director shared with us the NELINET environmental scan, which has a couple of articles on Generation Y and the Google Generation. What our today's students doing, and expecting from us? What is changing in how students do research? This should be an interesting topic for discussion.

Killer Cold on a Stick

2008-09-26T09:33:00.002-05:00

This week, half of the people in my department have a killer cold, including me. It started with a slightly scratchy throat about 5 a.m. on Sunday morning, and by the end of breakfast it was in full gear. So I've been loading up on the zinc lozenges and soup this week.

Not much this week on the 2.0 front, I'm afraid. One bright thing in the week was getting my "congratulations on completing 23 Things" package, with the memory stick and lanyard (I like lanyards.) I still need to get my head around the idea of this portable medium, and how it can fit into the greater scheme of hard drives, network drives, shared network space, backups ("we don't need no stinkin' backups" seems to be the philosophy around here, at least as far as one's own computer is concerned.) I'm excited to think that there will be more Things to learn later this winter - something to look forward to once the cold weather hits. (Apropos of nothing, tomorrow my family is going to the Renaissance Festival, which may be about as un-2.0 as one can get these days, but we're looking forward to it.)

Time to drink more fluids, or maybe have a cough drop.

Meetings & More Meetings

2008-09-19T09:21:00.002-05:00

I have a full plate of meetings today: a departmental meeting, a faculty committee (librarians at my institution don't have faculty status, but we represent the libraries on certain groups), then a presentation and search committee interview. We're hiring a webmaster for the libraries, and we're learning some things in the process. As library folks, we have little experience in either web design or back-end programming, and we're realizing that these are very different things. Our candidates will be strong in one area, but not the other. How do we decide what we need more? We need to make a decision soon.

New student orientation idea

2008-09-08T08:57:00.004-05:00

After my last post, I came across this idea from the Information Wants to Be Free blog: a slide show/movie library orientation. Quite 2.0, and not too complicated.

The Blog Goes On, and school begins

2008-09-05T14:11:00.004-05:00

It's the first week of classes. I did two presentations today in Finance classes (30 minute show-and-tell about the best resources for their research.) This week I've been working on library instruction and getting my research guides updated on the library website. I did do a little bit in Facebook and LinkedIn (connected with a few more people), but not a lot of 2.0 learning this week. I did find out that our public printers have been having memory problems for the past several weeks, and sometimes give a "not enough memory" message when people try to print pdfs. Printers having "issues" - not a pretty situation.

Thing 23: Final Thoughts on 23 Things on a Stick

2008-08-27T13:57:00.002-05:00

I went to the Minnesota State Fair yesterday, so now I feel truly ready to complete "23 Things on a Stick" in the proper spirit. ;^)

What did I find most useful, and most likely to continue using?

Bloglines: I had a Bloglines account before, but it needed some tweaking for me to use it effectively. I adjusted what feeds I'm getting, and I'm more committed to using it on a regular basis.
Social networks: I'm excited about LinkedIn, Facebook, and Ning. They look like exciting ways to keep connected. I need to investigate ways to contact faculty through LinkedIn. I don't think I mentioned in this blog about reconnecting this summer with a friend from 20 years ago (we ran into each other, and she recognized me.) I suspect that with all of the new ways for people to keep in touch with each other, it will be less likely that people totally lose track of their friends. It will be interesting to see ten and twenty years from now if/how technology proves me right, or wrong, or "well,...."
LibraryThing and YouTube: So far, little practical connection to work (although there are possibilities); they're just fun.

I did a little connecting with others during this time, but I would have liked more. It would be nice to do this with a group of colleagues (at my place of work or in the greater community), but that didn't work out this time. I will continue to talk about this at work, and see if I can stir some interest and support if there's a next-time-go-round.

If there were a follow-up to 23 Things, I would definitely be interested in participating. I didn't participate in the first go-round as it coincided too much with the busy times of my academic year, but I'm a little more flexible in summer. I would like a reason to work on a collaborative wiki and/or map site (a la what people are developing for convention visitors, or vacationers), but I suppose if I found time to volunteer to work on a conference, I'd get that kind of experience! It might be nice to get a nudge to try Twitter.

One word or one sentence about the experience: Get the nudge you need to learn about Library 2.0!

Thank you very much to the opportunity.

Thing 22: Staying Current

2008-08-25T13:33:00.002-05:00

Ah, this is a tricky one: resolving to keep up this blog, to keep learning new 2.0 things, to make a commitment to keep up and use the new tools. (I should have known this would be in the fine print somewhere.) I suppose that one doesn't remember what one doesn't use. Years ago in my academic library, we had to know how to Shepardize (tracking legal citations) and how to use printed citation indexes 9oh, they were a pain in print.) You'd get questions at certain times of the year, and then it was the crash course (or, if you weren't ahead of things, an on-the-spot crash course.) Keeping your hand in with these tools was a service to patrons, but darned hard to keep up. Since this is a benefit to me, as well as my patrons, this SHOULD be a priority.

I'll try this, for now: since classes are starting next week (and bringing with them the busy season), I'll start small: I'll try to blog once a week, until the term settles down. I will try to keep track of new things I've learned, as well as "old" things I've relearned (I just reinstalled the "Save to Delicious" link that I lost when I got my new computer a few weeks ago.) I think my RSS feeds are at a manageable size, so I won't add any right now. I will get back into Facebook soon and flesh out my profile, respond to the responses I've gotten, etc. (I found several of them in the email spam filter this morning, so I'm not as negligent as it might seem.) I'll even think about setting up a schedule for checking Facebook, LinkedIn, Ning, Bloglines, etc. (I think I'm the sort of person that works best on a schedule, at least for something like this. I guess that's my way to plan on keeping up.)

I plan to be back later in the week, to finish up. Right now, I need to do some collection development.

Thing 21: Beyond MySpace: Other Social Networks

2008-08-21T14:45:00.004-05:00

This Thing covers other social networks such as Gather, WebJunction, and Ning. I was sure I'd been in Ning before, but it didn't recognize me. And once I got in, when I moved to another section, it didn't seem to recognize me. I've signed in three times so far (maybe it's just having a bad day.) Let's see if I can capture the code....

View my page on 23 Things on a Stick

I looked briefly at some of the other social sites, and again, if I had more time, it might be interesting to explore more. My problem is that I have TOO MANY interests (books, gardening, film, etc.) How to choose?

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I joined LinkedIn the other week. It seems to be a good social networking site for professionals, and has some "cred" at my institution. One of my coworkers teased me yesterday about not responding to him yet in Facebook. I'll get to it soon. I like the fact that you can put in information about what you like (favorite books, films, quotes, etc.), but part of me is still dubious about this. How much do I want the greater universe to know about me? How much personal information do I really want floating out there?

Well, I've spent an hour on this today, and I'd better get back to updating my web guides. I'd like them to be finished when fall classes start in less than two weeks, and I've still got a stack to work on.

Be seeing you!

Thing 20: Libraries and Social Networks (Facebook, MySpace, etc.)

2008-08-19T16:07:00.003-05:00

I'm up to social networks, including Facebook, MySpace, and LinkedIn (not mentioned in this Thing, but it may be coming.) I've heard about the first two for years now, but being a busy professional and parent of a not-yet-teen, I haven't ventured there. Just before I went on vacation, one of my coworkers sent me an invitation to join LinkedIn, so I did. (Then I "friended" several of my coworkers and promptly went on vacation - I still need to go back and respond to their responses.) So now I've joined Facebook, found some of my coworkers and sent them notes, started browsing through the list of people who graduated from the same high school (I stopped at 100, because I need to get this Thing finished. And I'll have to work on my profile more, too.) I was confused about "write on at least one wall," but I watched one of the video tutorials and figured that out (I suspect that the woman doing the Expert Village is Canadian - based on her pronunication of the word "about.")

For now, I just joined the 23 Things on a Stick Group, but I have in my notes that several of my "social networks" (listservs, business/academic librarians, fan groups) have groups in Facebook, so I'll have to add some down the line.

One of my colleagues has set up a Facebook page for our libraries, which he uses in new student orientation. Now that I'm in Facebook, I'll have to check it out and see if he's been updating it, added a link to the catalog and our Ask a Librarian service, etc.

Why do I think Facebook is growing rapidly? Well, I glanced briefly at MySpace, and it looked busy and glitzy to me. However, last year I read an essay by Dana Boyd called "Viewing American Class Divisions through Facebook and MySpace" that makes me think that this question is not as simple as it sounds.

That's all for now - almost time to go home for the day.

Thing 19: Podcasts

2008-08-18T15:17:00.004-05:00

From the 23 Things on a Stick website - a nice definition of podcast:

"The word podcast is used to refer to a non-musical audio or video broadcast that is distributed over the Internet....A podcast is distinguished from other digital media formats by its ability to be syndicated, subscribed to, and downloaded automatically when new content is added, using an aggregator or feed reader capable of reading feed formats such as RSS."

I've listened to things online (particularly radio program snippets: National Public Radio, Michael Feldman's Whad'Ya Know.) The Satellite Sisters used to be on the radio and are doing podcasting now.

I haven't subscribed to any podcasts until now, but since I've been nudged, I'll try Minnesota Public Radio's weather podcast, Jet Streaming. I heard an interview on climate change with Dr. James Hansen of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies. I have to pass on the "create your own podcast" option for now, since I'd like a little time to work up a script, and practice. But I'll keep it in mind.

P.S. Since I've been gone from blogging for a few weeks, I forgot about tagging. I have to go back and do some "remedial."

Just one more YouTube!

2008-08-18T15:15:00.002-05:00

OK, I'm being geeky here, but I just can't resist one more (from another of my interests), the 1938 match race between Seabiscuit and War Admiral:

Back again with Thing 18: YouTube/Online Video

2008-08-18T14:38:00.002-05:00

I've been gone for awhile (mostly vacation in Denver, Colorado), but it's time to move on to Thing 18. YouTube and I are old friends. I've watched bits of old television shows (Monty Python, Star Trek, Mathnet), commercials, library-related videos, and more. I've seen on various websites, LiveJournal, and blogs that you can embed a video, so now I get to try it (woo-hoo!)

And it's not going to be just ANY video. As a Doctor Who fan (SciFi Channel site, BBC site), I can't resist linking to a Doctor Who video. In 2007, David Tennant and Peter Davison (the current Doctor and a former Doctor) teamed up to produce "Time Crash," a special for Children in Need:

WELL, how cool is that!

I wish I had the technology to make my own videos, but I don't. I think it would be good for our library to produce one (and maybe we have, and I'm just not aware of it.) Some academic libraries are developing these for student orientation, or a "produce your own library video" contests for students to enter. Fun stuff.

I think to get a good library promotional video, you need some level of production values - a decent script, people that can act or perform reasonably, music as well. You need to be something of an artist to produce this, which I'm not (sigh.) I also prefer videos with a decent picture and sound (not always easy for those copy-of-a-copy for old TV things. Sometimes, you take what you can get.) Every now and then that old Copyright Fairy whispers in my ear, "You know, those film companies (TV companies, etc.) don't like this idea" - but I think some of them are learning to roll with the punches.

I almost lost this post once, so I'm going to publish it now. Then, on to the next Thing!

Thing 17: ELM Productivity Tools

2008-07-31T15:27:00.003-05:00

I've known about ELM (the Electronic Library for Minnesota)for a long time, mostly in my worklife. We've relied on the "statewide databases" (as we sometimes call them) to cover some of our basic subjects, and when ELM has picked up a subscription that we had (as when they picked up the EBSCO databases), it influences how we allocate our dollars. I've used them a bit for personal things, most notably last year when my daughter had a report for school on Native Americans that she hadn't finished (due the next day, of course), and she'd left most of her notes at school. What a help the ELM databases and the Minnesota History Center website were for us! I must agree with the one commenter on the 23Things site (near the bottom): thank you to the legislators and taxpayers that make these resources possible (as I often say to students, "our tax dollars in action!) The ELM databases that I use the most are Business Source Premier (hey, I'm a business librarian!), Academic Search Premier (good for economics), ProQuest Newsstand (wonderful), and of course WorldCat (good for verification, collection development, etc.)

It's easier for me to do this Thing through work (direct access vs. proxy server access), so that's what I'm doing. [Later] OK, I tried to use the Page Composer through EBSCO, and it lost several minutes of work just now, so I'll capture what I was trying to say here instead. I've been creating web pages for some time, using programs such as HotDog, Microsoft Front Page, Liquid Matrix, and Collage (not to mention our intranet.) I'm not happy with EBSCO losing my content so quickly and completely (no Undo, no Are You Sure, etc.), but I understand the need for something like this to let people experience creating a web page for the first time.

Ah, netLibrary. We go way back. We benefit from the statewide collections, and were part of the CLIC consortium group purchase for several years (I was a netLibrary selector a few years back.) I've used the notetaking feature, all of that fun stuff. A year or two ago, my library decided to look for another option for ebooks, which we're doing, but I still find the netLibrary titles, and I've benefitted from them. Students find ebooks very convenient.

How can I use these tools? I use them every day in my work. For my job, we do searches to keep current in the field, or do environmental scanning to see what's up. As I said above, I use WorldCat weekly for collection development, referring patrons to nearby libraries, etc. Our students and faculty use these resources in their coursework, and for their research. Bravo!

Thing 16: Student 2.0 Tools

2008-07-29T10:31:00.003-05:00

This Thing considers some tools developed by the University of Minnesota, Minitex, and MnLink: the Assignment Calculator (for undergraduate students) and the Research Project Calculator (for secondary students.) I have had my eye on the Assignment Calculator for a long time, and had it on my "wish list" for our library website. Why can't we use this, or at least link to it? I've asked more than once. But it's never risen to the top of anyone's priority list.

So now I have a chance to look at it in some detail. I didn't realize that it links to content beyond the U of M (UNC, for example.) That's interesting, and very collaborative. I have one problem with the layout of their steps: on the timeline it produced for me, finding and using websites comes up as Step 7. Why is this so late in the process, out of synch with how most students do research today? Yes, it makes sense to look at books early on - they take time to get, to read, to take notes, etc. But not addressing the fact that many students START their research with the web, it's like not addressing the elephant in the room. (And does it make sense not to address evaluating sources until Step 10, AFTER you've written the first draft? Oh, well.)

With that said, there's a lot of good information here. I like the fact that you can get email reminders for the project (I wonder if students today would prefer text message reminders?) I'm not sure how I would use it with the students I work with (mostly upper division and graduate students.) This would be great in connection with an English writing class, or an introductory class in your major field in connection with a specific project.

The Research Project Calculator is a fantastic idea - I could have used something like that myself. I suspect that my daughter (she just finished fourth grade) has brought home some sheets like this. Hmmm....

Could we use this for project management at work? Perhaps. It would take some adjustment. I haven't had a chance to use some of the commercial project management tools that people talk about (some people assume you have access to this and understand project management concepts, even if you've never been exposed to them.) It's worth pondering.

Oops, I have to go to a meeting now - on staff training!

Thing 15: Online Gaming and Libraries

2008-07-22T15:03:00.002-05:00

I just noticed that Blogger is going down in 25 minutes for maintenance, so I'd better make this short. This Thing is about online gaming, including the examples of Puzzle Pirates and Second Life (which is a 3D world, not a game, but whatever.) I watched the Second Life video, and may come back later to explore it more. (I'm getting a new computer in the next few days, and I realized after I downloaded the del.icio.us stuff the other day that it probably won't transfer to my new computer. I wonder what else I'll have to do over?) I've seen presentations on Second Life, and it's just not my thing. The closest I've come to intense gaming is the computer game Myst (CD-ROM, rather than online.) My husband was quite involved, and solved many of the puzzles (I think he has both the first and second games.) I tried, but the puzzles were too mechanical for my mind. I need to get off Blogger before it goes down. Maybe I'll try one of the above and come back later to blog about it.

Thing 14: LibraryThing

2008-07-22T14:04:00.003-05:00

Aha! I thought. I'm one up on this Thing! I played with LibraryThing a year ago, so I should be just find. And how long do you think it took me to FIND my LibraryThing account? Don't ask. And LibraryThing doesn't require an email address, so I couldn't email them to ask. And then Life Happened again. Anyway, I found my LibraryThing information (from December 2006, further back than I thought.) While I have 40-odd titles in there already, I took this opportunity to add a few more. You get 200 books for free, then you can pay $10.00 for a year, or $25.00 for life. LibraryThing is very cool, definitely what I'd call a "killer app" (as in "killer application," something to really get you to use a computer product.) If I had more time, I would be putting in a lot more of my books.

I know of a couple of colleagues who use LibraryThing for collection development, adding the library's new books in their subject to LibraryThing and encouraging faculty to look and make suggestions. (Obviously, I haven't gotten there yet, but it's an interesting idea.) While the students I work with don't use books very much, we do publish a summer reading list which would lend itself to LibraryThing very well.

I was going to try adding a LibraryThing widget to this blog, but I'm still leaning on the "do I really want the world to know this?" side of things, so I'll abstain.

Thing 13: Online Productivity Tools

2008-07-17T15:23:00.002-05:00

Now, THIS is more like it! Here is a Thing that makes sense to me. We've been talking about user customization and portals at my library for some time, and now I get to see some portal-like things in action. I don't know that I'll convert to using one as my home page (I'm still not excited about sharing so much personal information etc. with a dot-com entity, and signing away my rights to my own information), but it's a very interesting concept.

Before making my choice, I looked at all three customized home page options: iGoogle, PageFlakes, and My Yahoo! Of the three, I had heard of iGoogle and My Yahoo before. I was least impressed with iGoogle: as a native St. Paulite, I was annoyed that iGoogle thought I was interested in Minneapolis! ;^) It's default news was from CNN - just not very "in touch" with me yet. My Yahoo knew I was from St. Paul, had St. Paul Pioneer Press news stories, and had weather information on the top (the weather is always important to Minnesotans - we know what it can do to us.) But the My Yahoo page design at my browser display required me to scroll across to see the entire screen, which I don't like (nothing like a "hey, can't you read this screen" reminder in your face.)

So I went with PageFlakes, the unknown quantity. It had the weather in the upper left (which I totally agree with.) It knew I was from St. Paul, and had St. Paul news stores (from the Strib, but that's life.) And it just felt better. So I spent too much time tweaking my settings. I could play with this a lot more, but I need to move on.

Online calendars: curiously, the link went to page 2 of the Wired magazine article about them. Google and Yahoo again - have I mentioned that I don't like to put all of my online eggs in one basket? I don't like the world according to Microsoft, so I don't think I'm going to give my life to Google just yet. (Personally, I use Ask.com for my web searching.) And while I have an email account with one of the big names (I think it's Yahoo), I don't use it. I'm still hoping that my personal tech person will get my old personal email account fixed, since we are paying for it and all.

We use Outlook Calendar at work, and while it has its quirks, I've gotten used to them. Back in the day, I could sync my handheld at work, and have my stuff in two places. But I lost that with the last computer upgrade. We rely on Outlook Calendar at work, and rely on it heavily for scheduling meetings, etc. My work calendar is too crucial to risk confusing it, and unfortunately I don't have time to maintain multiple calendars. However, I could see using one if you're scheduling people in multiple organizations, or for volunteer activities.

By the way, I do sync my handheld at home, and its "killer application" is the list feature. I have all of my lists there - books I've read, things to buy, ingredients for some of my favorite recipes, movies to watch/buy, clothes my daughter has/needs, etc., etc. It might be nice to use one of these productivity tools for that, BUT the way it is now, at least it's private.)

For the list options (Remember the Milk and Ta da List) - again, my handheld lists are my killer ap. I'm not ready to share them with the world yet. Although I can see the point of it in project management, event planning, etc.

Thing 12: Social Media Sites

2008-07-16T15:09:00.002-05:00

I've heard of Digg, Reddit, etc., but never had occasion to use them. I think (hope) that this is the wrong time of year to be evaluating something like this. Here's a sampling of today's popular stories:

Digg: Microsoft, Google, and Yahoo talking to a subcommittee of the Senate Judiciary Committee; movie review for the new Batman/Dark Knight movie; pictures of the most memorable home runs in Yankee Stadium history. I was impressed that this did change from when I first looked at it 10 minutes ago (the "Yankee Stadium home run pics" item was at the top, now third on the list.)

Reddit: Something about Karl Rove posted directly to Reddit; a picture of something about asbestos; Comcast cancels MSNBC but keeps Fox News.

Today these don't seem to be earth-shattering items. I could see when a big story hits (as we come up on August 1, the 35W bridge collapse comes to mind) that these would be compelling, but today's sampling seems a little more ephemeral. On the news sites, the BBC has footage of the Queen when she was a child, and it's usual good selection of international news. I could see these tools being both enhancing or detracting from productivity (you could spend way too much time with this sort of thing.) I think the fact that I'm in an academic library gives me a certain perspective on this; we don't get many questions about newsy items at my library (the economy, sports economics, social responsibility - all yes, not so much pop culture. We do share stories from the New York Times and the Chronicle of Higher Education with colleagues.

Thing 11: Tagging and Del.icio.us

2008-07-15T13:58:00.003-05:00

I have heard a lot about Del.icio.us for some time, and now it's time to take the plunge.... OK, so it wants me to close my browser windows after I've installed the Del.icio.us buttons. Good grief. I had to do this yesterday, when the network rebooted, and some things didn't come back on my machine. Don't these systems realize that I have multiple brower sessions open at any given time? (seven at the moment, between two browsers.) Plus I'm supposed to be blogging about this while I do it. Hmmm. So I have to log off, and come back to this.

Later - I'll have to come back to this when I have more time to explore it. I put in a few bookmarks, and it's nice to have the easy-to-get-to tabs now. When I get more of my bookmarks in, I can use this as I go between our campus libraries, as well as at our reference desk (where the computer is occasionally re-imaged, so one's bookmarks go poof.)

At the recent SLA conference, I attended a session about making your content more accessible, and how you should make your content as searchable as possible. I asked, what about those libraries whose major content is licensed, and not owned by them? The panelist suggested creating Del.icio.us lists. I can see this, especially for quick reading lists, projects, assignments, etc. It would be interesting to try it at a larger level. I wonder what current college students think of this - is it "old" technology to them already? It would also be good in a ready reference setting - sources to answer a particular question, assignment, etc. The copyright thing does make this tricky.

I poked around in the Minn23 account a bit. Thanks to whoever posted the list from PLA of librarians in literature (mysteries, etc.) That was fun! I'm always on the lookout for reading list.

I'll be back another time; I have some reference questions to work on.

Back to Thing 9

2008-07-11T15:27:00.002-05:00

I forgot to update you on the Flash Player situation (re slide sharing.) My husband was able to look at the slides on his laptop, so at least someone can see them.

Thing 9 is Online Collaboration Tools. I got the email invitations for Zoho Writer and Google Docs. In Zoho Writer, it was a little confusing to know what to do at first, and I had to change my screen display to find the Sign Out button (I don't appreciate websites that don't work on my browser settings!) It was fine otherwise. Google Docs was a little easier for some reason, and I like the ease of linking, and describing flyover text (haven't had the chance to do that before!) And it didn't make me reset my browser!

What would the Founding Fathers think of it? Well, I'm a big fan of the movie 1776, and I just think of Adams and Jefferson quarreling about "unalienable" and "inalienable," much less the southern delegates taking out the condemnation of slavery, and the northerners putting in right back in. At some point, they'd have to come up with what we at work call a "gold" (final) copy.

Next time, on to Thing 11!

Things 9 and 10: Online Collaboration Tools, and Wikis

2008-07-10T15:36:00.004-05:00

A couple of updates, first:

My daughter is visiting relatives in Wyoming, so the other night we tried Skype for the first time (I think I can count this as a 2.0 tool.) Skype lets you communicate online, using a microphone and/or a webcamera. My sister-in-law uses Skype to teach non-English speakers online, and this was our chance to hook up with her for a live demo. It was very interesting (although my personal computer support spouse didn't get to tell me why Voice Over IP and TCP/IP don't always play well together.) The same computer spouse would like to point out that it took days, rather than hours, to fix his personal email last summer. That may be, but his is working now, and mine still isn't....

We're having network problems today at work, so while I'll come back to Thing 9 later and move on to Thing 10, Wikis. We have used a wiki in our libraries for a couple of years now; we use it for technology tips, conference and training reports, and some project brainstorming. I like the fact that the wiki software is smart enough to know when you're linking to a web page, and it deletes any extraneous part of the address (the extra "http://" that you sometimes get when you copy and paste), while the content management system we use for our website can't do that. Hmmm.

I like the idea of wikis as collaborative workspaces, whether is trip or conference planning (which I've seen for library- and non-library situations), project planning, or idea collecting. It's probably one 2.0 tool that I've used a lot. I could see it as a way to plan a poster session or conference report, to share departmental information, for teaching - lots of things. We've looked at Chad Boeninger's Biz Wiki at Ohio University Libraries (business research guides in wiki format - very cool.)

About Wikipedia - I'm not very sympathetic with a general ban on Wikipedia or similar resources. I don't think it's necessarily less reliable than any other source; there are times that it's an appropriate resource, and times that it isn't. I use it myself for quick lookups, or background information on certain things.

I went into the 23 Things Wiki and editing a few things (added a comment on the front page, editing some literary classics, and added a B movie.) Very straightforward.

The network is still being slow, so I'll have to come back later for Thing 9.

Thing 8: Sharing Your Creations

2008-07-08T15:22:00.002-05:00

This Thing is about sharing content. This is good. Some years ago we went to sharing electronic folders at work, the idea being that someone could create a document, and someone else on campus could add to it. We had problems with the permissions across departments and campuses, and eventually moved on to other technologies. (Note: I can't see the "Web 2.0 Tools in Your Classroom" slideshow because I don't have the right version of Flash Player. Grrr. Not my fault.)

I'm a little surprised to realize that I don't have recent Powerpoints or slide presentations that are just mine. For my library instruction sessions, I've gone much more to the joys of live demos, rather than using slides. And the slides that I have done are group projects, so I don't feel right in posting them. So I've done a quick-and-dirty slide show just to test SlideShare, waiting for it to load...

Well, here it is, my Slide Show for 23 Things on a Stick. And guess what? I still don't have Flash Player 9, so I can't see it!

I can see that sharing like this can be great. While some conferences (Computers in Libraries is one) makes an effort to get presenters to post their slides on the conference website, others do not. I know that at the recent Special Libraries Association conference in Seattle, some people mentioned that they would be posting their materials there. And I can certainly see it if you're doing this collaboratively, with people at a distance. I'm a little annoyed about the Flash Player business. I wonder how many others run into this roadblock? I assume when my computer is upgraded later this summer that this won't be a problem, but what would I do otherwise?

Thing 7: Web 2.0 Communication Tools

2008-07-08T14:06:00.002-05:00

This Thing deals with communication tools.

Email: Where I work, we've been using our current email system (Microsoft Outlook) since 1999. I have some emails (meeting minutes, etc.) from our previous email system going back to the early Nineties. Outlook has more features than our previous system (All-in-1, I think) - folders, good searching.) We use email a lot at work, for communication and reporting. I haven't used many other systems, but I've reached an OK meeting-of-minds with Microsoft on this. We have an external spam filter that is slow to load, and seems to change its settings every few weeks (you know this when a email from someone you need to hear from gets caught there.) It can only display 1000 messages at a time, so if you don't check every day, it can take you awhile to figure out just how much is in there. I would say it improves productivity as a convenient way to share the same message with many people, plus we can save it in a central location for use later (for example, for minutes, why did we decide to do something a certain way?)

My personal email disappeared last summer, while we were on vacation. Our provider did an upgrade, and my stuff went poof. (Needless to say, my personal tech support-spouse's account with the same provider was fixed within hours. Since he is one of two people that actually might READ my blog, I'll just add, hi, dear!) A few months ago I got a Yahoo Mail account because I had to register for something within Yahoo for my work, but I haven't really used it yet.

Instant Messaging (IM): We've been using IM for reference for about a year and a half. We started with AOL, then GAIM/Pidgin, now we're pretty much using Meebo. We set up accounts and practiced in-house for awhile before we started offering it as a service. We have divided responsibility for checking IM between two of our libraries, with whoever is covering the reference desk also covering IM (we also have an evening supervisor who covers late night.) Some questions I've had are quick ones (where do I find my barcode? do you have this journal?), but some are complex enough that I ask the person if I can email them back (I had a question like that last week, that turned into a lengthy consultation.) Meebo doesn't always notify us when there's a question; maybe we need to check some settings.

Text Messaging (SMS - Short Message Service): We don't offer text messaging yet in my library (no one has pushed for it, so far.) Hmmm. Let's see if I can figure out how to do this on my cell phone (someone sent me a text message at a conference last month, but I had never used that feature on my phone!) ***** OK, I've sent a text message, and found where the other one is. It took too many keystrokes for me to figure out (someone said to me, "you're phone doesn't have many keys, does it? I'll hope it's the phone, and not me.) I wouldn't say that I'm an "active" user of these services, but I regularly cover IM as part of my job.

Web Conferencing: Oh, yeah. I've done Minitex webinars, vendor webinars, OPAL once or twice, ACRL, Learning Times, etc. I even did a presentation for some of my colleagues once that we recording in Breeze, so that people could watch it later. Recently I've attended "Teaching Old Services New Tricks" and "Best Practices in Online Reference Services" (both from Minitex.) While I don't have my notes handy, I recall that the "Best Practices" session had several useful tips. Webinars are very convenient. I'm more likely to do something online (if the price is reasonable) than schlep somewhere else to do it.

More: we used Google Groups in May to discuss "discovery layer" options in our library consortium's online catalog. I'm going to pass on Twitter right now; I heard on public radio this morning that they're having some problems right now (and I've spent enough time on this Thing as it is!)

Since I don't think I linked to this earlier, for my two regular readers, here's more information on 23 Things on a Stick.

Thing 6: Online Image Generators

2008-07-03T15:38:00.005-05:00

Hey, this is fun! (I'm going to have to play with Image Chef sometime. I like that idea.) Here's the trading card (left), and here's the full shot, captioned (right.) My dog, Moccasin, is in the photo with me. I realized as I was working through this Thing that to make a trading card, I really should have a recent photo of myself. Tricky. So I went to our family's website and looked to see what was there. I chose not to use one of our Harney Peak photos from last summer, since my daughter was also in those, so you see me in our neighborhood, walking Moccasin. I had a technical problem with the trading card (the image was larger than the space allotted, and I don't have the skills to crop it), so it took me awhile to adjust it to my satisfaction. While flipping through our photos, I saw that my husband had a really nice photo of the 35W bridge reconstruction (they've been doing tours every Saturday, and we went in May), and I really think he/we should post it to Flickr. We'll see.

I really, REALLY like the Carleton trading cards. I could definitely see us doing something like that to reach out to undergraduates, if some camera-shy folks would give it a try. I wonder how they made the "Librarian Heroes" image?

Thing 5: More Flickr Fun

2008-07-03T14:07:00.006-05:00

I'm not sure how much fun I'm having with Flickr. It seems to take me too longer to figure out how to do things. I can hard-code html if I have to, so I must be trying too hard, or something. Let's see if the Fun Flickr thing copies over the way I want it to....

Err. The above is from the Spell with Flickr feature - my name, in Flickr images. It's kind of fun, actually. But for some reason, Blogger loaded it at the top of the page, rather than where my cursor was. And when I copied the code, I got twice as much code as I needed, so I had two sets of letters, and some messed-up code. But I was able to go into the "Edit Html" tab and delete what I didn't want. I wanted to do the puzzle one, but it took a while to find a photo on my computer that I could safely assume was not copyrighted, and then the service wanted me to create an account. Since I'm planning to set up Facebook and LinkedIn accounts this summer, I don't need another account right now. ;^)

If I had more time, it would be fun to play with the Yahoo! Travel Trip Planner (listed under "Look here" in the first paragraph of Thing 5.) We're going to Denver in August, and no one has done a Yahoo Travel mashup with Denver in it, yet. Recently I saw a mashup for this year's ALA in Anaheim, which had maps and photos of the conference location, information on local restaurants, etc. That looked VERY handy. As someone who goes to science fiction conventions, I appreciate how hard it can be to find some of that local information (what IS the nearest grocery store, drug store, or copy center outside the hotel? what about good cheap food?)

Sharing photos of objects (buildings, signs, sights, etc.) is fun. I'm still a bit uncertain on the "sharing pictures of people" part, especially children. How we could we use these tools at my library? Advertising/promotion for sure. A mashup might be a nice addition to the directions and maps we have on our website. On to the next Thing!

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Well, not yet, I guess. I just got this error message from Blogger: "Your HTML cannot be accepted: Tags cannot enclose tags.." etc. Oh, well. I told it to ignore the html error, and it did.

Thing 4: Photosharing and Flickr

2008-07-02T15:31:00.005-05:00

I've used Flickr several times to find particular pictures - things that I've seen traveling, or at conferences. When I visited the Seattle Public Library recently, I was quite impressed with their building and floor directories, so today I shared some photos of these with my colleagues. This photo was taken by TheLostDutchman in July 2007. It's a building directory showing all levels of Seattle Public.

By the way, I'm probably one of ten people left on the planet who don't have a digital camera. Nada. Spouse has two (I'd use his old one, except that the battery died and I don't know how to charge it, or where he put the memory card), daughter has it more or less on her new cellphone. No easy access to a digital camera at work, either. Sigh.

I have mixed feelings about the privacy of all this. My husband has posted photos of my daughter on our family website since she was born, but we don't like to have anything that gives away too much personal information. We're just touchy that way.

I think it would be great if my library got going on getting photos onto Flickr (but as I am technology-challenged in this area, it won't be me doing it at this point.)

Thing 3, coming up

2008-07-02T14:26:00.002-05:00

Thing 3 is about RSS feeds, and subscribing to feeds. For me, this is a "clean up your house" exercise. I've had a Bloglines account for some time, but I haven't used it for quite awhile. For me, if I don't conciously add something to my routine, it may not be on my radar. So I went in and tidied: cleaned up the accumulated feeds, unsubscribed to some feeds, then added some. I also added Bloglines to the part of my Favorites list that I check on a regular basis, so maybe this time, it will stick. (I know some people favor Google Reader, but I don't like to put most of my eggs in any basket. I like to spread out the market share.)

I will try to be more faithful and more judicious in my use of Bloglines this time. Previously, since I had several subscriptions suggested by colleagues, I always had feeds that I didn't have time to read. So I felt guilty, or irritated, or something. I have now weeded down to things that I REALLY want to check regularly, so this should work better for me.

My favorite library-related blogs include ALA TechSource, LibrarianInBlack, The Shifted Librarian, and Free Range Librarian.

Before Thing 3

2008-07-02T14:16:00.002-05:00

I've been away from 23 Things for sometime - partly using up vacation time before the new fiscal year, also attending the Special Libraries Association Conference in Seattle. Best freebie at SLA: IBISWorld's "Flingshot Flying Monkey." I think it's an Outdoor Toy, but the nice folks at the IBISWorld booth thought it would be a great addition to a library instruction session, to keep students on their toes. ;^)

Fun things that I did in Seattle: toured the new Seattle Public Library (and bought a new tub duck for my daughter's collection), visited the Elliott Bay Book Company, and I took Bill Speidel's Underground Tour.

I still have to put up my notes from SLA; I may link to them down the line.

Thing 2 Musings

2008-06-11T16:19:00.005-05:00

Before I muse, I have to say that Blogger has gotten more complicated since the last time I logged on. It wasn't happy with my cookie settings (which haven't changed lately, so it must be Blogger or Google that's being fussy.)

One reading that struck me in Thing 2 was the "The Ongoing Web Revolution." Some comments:

"We trust our staff, and we know that when we expect the best of people that is usually what we get." There have been substantial changes at my workplace in the last year or so, and trust has taken a huge hit.
"A well-trained staff is the key to utilizing social technologies." For various reasons, we don't have much training right now. We are encouraged to go to conferences and workshops, I give full marks there, but for the ongoing technology tools and questions, we don't have many resources.
I really think that 2.0 is important, and that we need to push ahead on this (I'm here, and I've been touching base with 2.o ideas for awhile now.) But it's sometimes an uphill struggle.

How has the Internet affected your use of time at home or work?

At home, not as much. I'm married to a tech guy, but we have one computer monitor (many computers, but one monitor.) At home, he's online much more than I am. I do have a website I check every day, and I do online ordering and look up the weather, but I'm online much more at work.
At work: I'm a mid-career librarian, so I can remember the dark ages when doing an online search was a Big Deal (modems, dial-up, BRS and Dialog information utilities, and do a good search because the meter's running!) It is fantastic that patrons have so many resources at their fingertips, and can get to many things in full-text from home or work (even in their jammies.) But it's a continuing challenge for them to find what they need, to know where and how to look. I spend most of my workday online in some way, shape, or form, with looking things up online (through subscription resources or free websites), teaching and helping users how to do it themselves, updating web pages, giving users tips on the quirks of various resources (scroll down and hit the grey button to get to the reports, the link to the full text is in the left margin, here's how to find that company report or industry analysis.) We have gone from days of "we may not have much on your topic, but we can order it if you have time" to "yes, we have the International Journal of Really Cool Stuff," and even the full text of journals I've never heard of! But we still have the challenge of getting people to their stuff.

Thing 1

2008-05-19T15:24:00.003-05:00

I had used Blogger before, but I spent some time looking around, changing settings, fonts, etc. I had never done an avatar before, and spent too much time playing around with that. After trying out several fashion options, it seemed a shame to just use the head of my avatar, so I opted for the full outfit (so fancy, basic jeans and t-shirt.) At least I found the glasses!

It's funny to have a Yahoo account on top of a Google account (like I needed another account.) I had to activate my Google account recently for a work-related project (did I remember setting up a Google account? No, but there it was.) The PTA at my daughter's school uses Yahoo Groups; now I could check that out (now that the school year's almost over.)

Don't get me wrong. I'm not a technophobe. I'm a mom. I get at most ten minutes of online time at home per day (can you say, computer spouse?) I'm online constantly at work, but doing work-related stuff, so having this chance to explore new technologies will be fun.

Thank you to the 23 Things on a Stick folks for running this over the summer. Many of us in academe wanted to participate, but just didn't have time earlier in the year.

Initial musings

2008-05-19T14:05:00.000-05:00

I'm signing up for 23 Things on a Stick, Minnesota's answer to the Library 2.0 program developed by Helene Blowers. Thing 1 includes creating a blog. Now this I've done before, for my place of work, but I haven't done a personal blog before. So I thought, my name's somewhat unusual. How many librarians named Marianne are there likely to be? It turns out there are at least two: one address had been deleted from Blogger and is no longer available; the other is MariannetheLibrarian from Texas. Who knew?

I'm a reference librarian at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul. My subject specialties include business and economics. I'm also a science fiction fan, which I think helps in things 2.0.