the 28th thing

in my previous post i mentioned that i'd like to get a new lesson at the first of each month. but beyond that i'm stumped. that's why i want it to be pushed out to me monthly. i know there are things out there i should know about, and i can try to read all the things i put in my bloglines, but i may very well miss something absolutely unmissable. that's why i liked 27things, and i'd like the 28th thing to be a heads up about the things i'm probably missing out on right this minute.

it's over it's over it's over (sing it like elvis)

How has this program assisted or affected your lifelong learning goals?

i like to learn. i don't think that's been changed by 27things. i'm a librarian, and when asked why i'm a librarian, my reply is "i didn't know what i wanted to learn about so i learned about something that will help me learn about anything." it was really nice to have a structured path for a little while, and to share the experience with folks around me. i like that it didn't have to be approved by a supervisor, didn't require time away from the work location, was paced to the individual (and continues to be so, since it's not going anywhere).

What were your favorite Learning 2.0 discoveries or exercises?

i was glad to have a reason to refresh my attention to my six year old personal blog while embarking on a corollary 27things blog. librarything made me happy, and i'm looking forward to having some time to add more to that, as a friend just needed a booklist i'd compiled. wouldn't a link be easier than an attachment? the cluster lead LA started a cluster wiki so we can post information for staff there. i love youtube but i already loved youtube. the web 2.0 awards garnered me an excellent resource.

Did anything surprise you?

i was surprised by the sense of panic i felt upon initially reading most of the 27things. there were a couple i'd already done, which were fine, but i really thought at each new thing "i can't do that!" i think i'd have been completely paralyzed by the project if i were a novice.

Was there enough help available when you needed it?

yes, but i was fortunate to only need help once or twice.

What could we do differently to improve upon this program’s format or concept?

i liked the earlier lessons being pushed out to staff email. i know we could see them at any time, and that our bloglines accounts would show us the new lessons each week, but for many staff, working part time, checking email is all that is manageable, not logging in to several different accounts each shift "just to check." i'd like that to continue, as well, maybe a lesson at the first of each month, just to keep us on our toes.

Would you like to see similar training opportunities as new library-relevant technologies emerge?

yes please.

And, last one, if you could go back in time and tell yourself to either participate in the program or skip it, what would you do?

i'd participate again. and now i'm through, i'm going back to other staff to encourage them to give it a go.

the whole reason i'm here

i would love to use downloadable audiobooks. but the ones kcls has don't work with ipods yet, so i can't. that's a big reason i'm so enthusiastic about the learning 2.0 thing, the mp3 player awarded upon completion.

see, i don't really "get" audiobooks, not like lots of folks seem to. i don't have much of a commute, and i don't process aural information nearly as well as i do written. so i couldn't justify to myself buying another mp3 player when i don't use my ipod as much as i should. but put it in the context of professional development, and i'm there!

i was surprised and delighted to find several titles by authors i enjoy actually available through overdrive right this minute. jennifer crusie, michael connelly, robert parker. i also enjoy the advanced search where i can select mystery and limit to overdrive audio book and available copies and get a list of what i can download now.

when the service was launched, many of the titles were unavailable due to use, i'm so happy to see copies available for many things. i suppose this is a sign the service is well used and continues to be supported, which is always good. i'll be counting the days till i can join our users in enjoying this service

invasion of the body snatchers

now we're all pod people. i, like lots of folks, originally thought podcasts were exclusive to the ipod. after getting an ipod for my birthday, i still didn't want them because i thought i would have to pay for them (i'm perfectly happy to spend dozens of hours copying hundreds of CDs, but i draw the line at shelling out a nickel).

so i was delighted to learn, with the advent of learning 2.0, that podcasts are free for all, can be played by clicking on them, and are generally not as scary as we thought!

i couldn't get itunes to open this afternoon, so i just did searches with podcast.net, podcast alley, and yahoo podcasts. i had no luck at all finding library oriented podcasts that interested me (i'd just feel inadequate knowing exactly how far ahead of kcls this or that system might be on this topic). but i typed in david sedaris and found one worthwhile in each of them. i added bowl of cheese, irrational public radio, and one cunningly titled david sedaris.

rick the teen librarian at shoreline has done some podcasts of book reviews by teens on the shoreline teen advisory board blog, and that's pretty darn cool. i think other branches could try that, and there could be staff book reviews podcasted through the good reads section of the website. there are dozens of ways they could be employed. perhaps we should form a committee.

oh thank heaven

another thing i've done before! i've sat for hours watching 80s music videos on youtube. and cat videos. and alan davies talking about cats.

i love youtube. i can get lost in it, going from one thing to another, kind of like when i was a kid getting lost in the world book. i've seen lots of cool clips, sent by friends or the american libraries direct email, that sort of thing. and once i'm in, i may never get out. here's one i positively adored.



seems kcls could use this for a variety of things. live press releases. broadcasts of events like groundbreakings and building openings. clips of events like author readings. training modules for staff. i'd like to see them all. how soon can we start?

it's 5 o'clock somewhere

for the web 2.0 awards "thing," the first item i clicked on was fun stuff and boy did i pick a winner. i even went back to browse around a few other categories such as books, games, health, organization, retail, travel, and video just to make sure.

there were things i'd seen before and things that were brand new to me, but nothing caught my attention quite like cocktailbuilder. i used to use barbug for my "this is what i've got, what can i make?" needs, but cocktailbuilder does it far more elegantly.

type in the items you have on hand (alcohols, mixers, fruit) and it populates a list of drink names you can make with what you have, as well as other drinks you could make if you had one more thing, two more things, etc. and here's what really got me: IT REMEMBERS YOUR LIST. i closed out and went on the desk and came back and returned and it still had my list on there. i don't know if it's an IP thing or what, but i loved it. i'm going straight home and entering a true list of everything in the house. you can delete items from the list when you run out, and it will change the list of what you can make accordingly, without having to click refresh or submit or anything.

in addition to this function, you can search recipes, suggest recipes, make a list of a few cocktails to print a menu, and submit your own concoctions for inclusion. all of it happens on one screen, fading in ghostily and automatically. it's just plain groovalicious.

i may be the only person who's happy to have a reason to have the computer on for a party, but this could really be fun.

where the future is being made...today

i miss dr. bunsen honeydew sometimes. but how cool is it that there is a muppet wiki?

google labs is cool. i looked at google trends as david suggested and entered "cat videos." i was delighted to see that seattle is the number 9 place where this search is entered. hee.

i looked at google music trends and learned that of the top 20 songs, five are by linkin park. i don't think i'd know linkin park if they appeared on my front porch. i'm not sure how they gather the information but it seems to be drawn from instant messenger or something (which kind of freaks me out a bit). it says "what google talk users are listening to" so maybe it's just what's playing on the computer when they are chatting rather than what they are discussing in their chat windows. msn messenger does that too. it was nice to see snow patrol and the fray on the list.

it's nice that google is getting into the feed reader game too with google reader, i'm a great fan of one stop shopping and if i could have my google home page have my feeds and my news and all that other stuff all together i'd be a happy camper. until something new and shiny came along, that is.

i'm delighted to live in a city that has google transit available, and i feel guilty that its trip planner surpasses that of metro. i typed in the airport abbreviation and my home zip and it gave me routes and a map instantly, much more comprehensibly than metro. yay and sigh.

zoho zoho a pirate's life for me

today i learned all about online software. well not all about it, i don't suppose, but i visited google docs and zoho and messed about a little bit and here i am.

first things first: i LOVE free things! free things are cool! i can't figure out why i didn't know about this stuff before! i mean, i just bought a computer and i agonized far too long about whether i needed the full office suite or not, and now i find out i didn't need ANY of it! rats rats rats.

i was pleased to learn that i preferred zoho over google docs. i'm sure google docs will take over the world, but zoho has more programs, and behaved better when i pasted in some text and monkeyed with it. it looks like it even has a version of publisher! neither one would change my font to suit me, but maybe i was going too fast.

library dude commented on the kcls27things blog that it's a good way to convert a word document to pdf, which is brilliant. i will have to check to see if it goes the other way as well. i could really get behind that idea.

the possibilities for a group to work on a document collaboratively are wonderful, it makes me want to get on another committee right away to try it out.

long ago in another life, i was frustrated by having to haul around floppy disks with me wherever i went, and never knowing what computer had my stuff saved on it, and having to do work at different workstations, and so on and so forth. i was thrilled with the advent of the zip disk, to which i consolidated dozens of floppies, and then the flash drive, to which i consolidated several zip disks. somewhere in there, during the era of the floppies, i used an "online hard drive" but that predates high speed access so it was mostly annoying. and it was only storage, so you couldn't play with things or enjoy the luxury of constant autosaving (which is also lifesaving).

so these are great and i can see myself using them.

just can't wait for 3.0

i have to grouse for just a little bit before i can get on to the glories of library 2.0.

case in point: i got in trouble for instant messaging at the information desk when i first came to KCLS. i came from another large public library system, where i had many friends and acquaintances across age level specialty and throughout the organization. several of these friends were in my instant messaging buddy list, and were far more available to me than kcls staff. working the information desk and having an instant message window open was not common there, but it was habit among my circle. we had libraries of various sizes, but were often alone on the desk if not the only librarian in the building. when faced with a question outside our expertise, we'd ask each other, getting answers for the patrons from someone across town, in the workroom, upstairs in the children's room, or anywhere else they might be logged in from (even home).

don't get me wrong, instant messaging is a social tool, and provides interpersonal contact in addition to (and precedence over) professional service in most cases, but now that it's all legitimate and 2.0, i wish the folks who reprimanded me would just say "hey, i had no idea what a visionary you were at the time, good on ya!" and no, i know we're not addressing instant messaging as part of this program, but it broke onto the KCLS scene during the course of it so it's fair game for comment.

one more small point: each of the five articles on this topic has at least one editing error, be it a left out word or disagreement between noun and verb, which make me wish they themselves were in wiki or perpetual beta so i could fix them and then focus more on what they say rather than how they say it.

i must not have had enough tea this morning.

ok, so, 2.0--i have heard more than once the mention of "perpetual beta" which i think must be accepted and acknowledged. this is absolutely critical. there can never be a final draft of anything, as i've seen in my recent experiences on the web page redesign advisory committee and the reader's advisory plan committee. even if there was just one week between meetings, the whole scope could change in the interim, leaving us sadly out of date no matter how open ended we tried to make things. we talked about blogging in both groups, while the blogging committee was meeting furiously at the same time, and things are going to be completely different after everything has been through the mandatory administrative approval (waiting) period.

catalog explorer already provides information about nearby resources (including KCLS databases and nearby library systems) but that needs to be expanded and explored. catalog explorer also provides some of the relevance ranking mentioned in one of the articles (i read all five), but could probably enhance that further as well. i'd like to see a search interface that could combine the concrete function of the classic catalog with the fuzzy yet often desired results of catalog explorer. now THAT would be cool.

so these ideas are great, and it would be good to explore them, but i don't know how we're doing so far and don't know where we're going with it. there are still lots of committees working on plans and policies and i don't see that going anywhere fast.

have it your way

i gave the kcls27things custom search engines a try. i did searches on locations, book groups, and crafts.

i preferred google because it doesn't integrate advertisements and presents a clean and uncluttered results list. i found rollyo's red anxiety inducing, and the results list messy. i'm glad they indicate what links are sponsored, and i understand that everyone needs funding, but it wasn't what i'm looking for in a results list.

so i guess google has taken yet another step toward world domination. and off i go to make my own. i'm going to do free video sites, because i can't get enough cat videos. but you can search for any sort of videos.

fun fun fun

this is a catch up week and time to play. all i have to say is thank heaven for "post options." and if you don't know what i mean, even better for me.

here i am on the simpsons. (do your own here.)



i couldn't really find a way to make my hair messy, and clearly trinny and susannah haven't been anywhere near springfield.

here i am on south park. (do your own here.)



this seems closer to my true self than the other one. i like that i can have a cup of tea and design my own t-shirt.

wiki wiki tembo no sa rembo chari bari ruchi pip peri pembo

now i know all about wikis. i like the concept. i'm not sure i quite understand how they manage to save all previous versions for reposting or reverting or whatever else might be necessary, but that's fine, it works for me. i'm often paralyzed bu doubt, leaving my blog entries in draft form for days and days because i don't want to publish them and then have to make a minor correction (which makes the whole thing reappear on bloglines) five minutes later.

i absolutely adore the possibility of intranet committee wikis, and policy manual wikis, for the reasons stated by meredith in her web junction article. sarah is absolutely right in the podcast, having twelve (or forty) emails on a topic that occurs on one's day off, and is resolved before one returns, would be completely unnecessary if there were system, cluster, department, specialty, and branch wikis.

and that doesn't even begin to address the potential for reader's advisory wikis, book club wikis, local information wikis, school wikis, and so on and so forth. the possibilities are endless (and overwhelming). it might be straightforward enough to start off with an answerfile wiki or a web links wiki and go from there. there could be areas for community submissions that were checked by a librarian before going live. but it would be unstoppable. are we going there?

the sjcpl subject guides wiki is good, it's not comprehensive but it isn't obvious about it. library success and ala midwinter 2007 look great, the familiar format is comforting.

the book lovers wiki is a bit of a disappointment, perhaps because it just got started? i mean really, there are only two romances on there! i was also disappointed by citizendium, which did not have an entry on cannibalism.

i have something i want to add to the library success wiki but i don't know what category it would fall under. i should probably be ashamed of this, as i am an information professional, but i'm mostly just afraid of doing it wrong. what if i put it under apples and someone comes along and moves it to oranges and i can't ever find it again? i'd better have a cup of tea.

stage fright

i got myself all signed up for librarything and then couldn't think of any books to add to it. what's worse is that going home and looking at my shelves won't help because i get rid of books i've read. the books in my house are insurance against house arrest or other disaster, as i've a terror of not having anything to read. but that's a path we don't want to go down today.

i concentrated hard and thought up a few books to add, tagged them, and thought some more about tags. i actually read the librarything blog entry comparing their tagging to amazon's and found it illuminating. i will continue to work on appreciating them, against my instincts.

i like seeing how many other people have the titles i've selected in their own listings, and will try to add titles with fewer advocates (to increase my chances of finding like-minded folks). stay tuned for the addition of a widget, meanwhile check me out.

you're it!

and on with tagging. i still don't like it. i went to technorati and claimed my two active blogs and even tagged them. it's interesting to know that other blogs link to my blogs. when i was doing the discovery exercise i was pleased to note that a search for kcls27things in blog posts garners me some links to porn. or items that have the appearance of porn. and as a side note, in my personal lexicon, "wtf" doesn't stand for "where's the fire." (neither does it involve tae kwon do.)

so in response to the questions in the discovery exercise, yes, the results are different when i choose different search parameters (revolutionary!). and thanks for the porn!

so cute

ordinarily i reserve my swoons for my cats alone, but this one just grabbed me.

tasty treat

ok so i'm learning all about del.icio.us. it strikes terror into my heart. my obsessive compulsive librarian mind will not allow me to be charmed by something so messy as a folksonomy. i have my books arranged by dewey classification at home, my personal files are structured by a strict controlled vocabulary, and i'm utterly paralyzed by the little box at the bottom of every blog entry inviting me to tag it. this might not be a problem if i had a copy of lcsh on my desk, but i don't so i can't.

that said, i'm supposed to be revising my worldview for the sake of all things 2.0, yes? ok then.

i would like for there to be a live and managed del.icio.us account (is that what it's even called now?) for librarians at a branch and in a system. a place to find the nearest notary public or public fax machine on the local level; a place to collect all those links we receive in informative emails from the government documents librarian on the organizational level. this would save us scrambling around asking the staff members who live nearby if they know, or deleting the pertinent message exactly two hours before a patron inquires about that specific item.

the key to the success of this is that it be maintained. delete dead links, find new ones, fix it when ins changes their name to cis. that sort of thing.

on a personal level, it will be nice to bookmark things from an email from a friend and be able to find it again whether i'm at work or at home. cat videos, online quizzes, articles about public toilets in europe.

whew. whenever i look at that blasted tag box i just want to type in "scooters, vacation, fall" like they suggest.

*whew*

can i just say how glad i am that this week's lessons were something i'd already done? thank the force for that. rather than starting from scratch, i updated my myspace profile for work appropriateness, added learning 2.0 as a friend, and i'm golden. yay!

oh. wait. i'm supposed to comment on the experience. hm. well, i got on myspace in march 2006. i think one of rick's teens badgered me into it. or one of my friends. i didn't really do much with it, just signed up and later put up a picture and later still added some more information. i guess i mostly wanted to be able to view the profiles of the boys another friend was dating.

since then a guy i went to high school with has messaged me, and i saw some frightening pictures of someone i have known since fifth grade. i'm not sure of the precise value of those experiences, but hey, it's better than calling around the country asking hapless librarians to page through city directories.

i'm glad that rick showed me how to pimp my profile, i was feeling very sad and boring and now i'm lilac and thrilling.

and again with the feeding, oy!

- Which method of finding feeds was easiest - going to your favorite sites or searching for them?

i found searching to be difficult, as the searches were keyworded and when i put in yoga i got any mention of yoga anywhere, same with cats and a few author names, so i kind of gave up on that tactic. i remembered a blog of an author i like and added that myself.

- Which Search tool was the easiest for you? Which was more confusing?

i used the bloglines search and the google blog search and feedster. they all seem easy enough to use, i'm just not that interested in their results list. i'm interested in news sites and "authoritative" sources rather than the random ramblings of the average joe. i'll follow blogs of my friends and other known quantities, but am not seeking the random serendipity of the blogosphere. (how many monkeys are out there typing now, anyway, and have they produced any new shakespeare plays?)

- What kind of unusual feeds did you find on your travels?

n/a

feed me!

good lord, i started reading this week's lesson on rss feeds and thought i was going to have a nervous breakdown. it took me a minute to stop freaking out and just read through the lesson and go along and do it. creating accounts all over the world is maddening, i'm glad sites finally started using folks' email addresses as the login, since i'm not likely to forget that. and i have a selection of three or four passwords that i use so i can rotate through those till i hit the right one for whatever i'm logging in to.

but i'm supposed to be writing about my experience registering for bloglines and subscribing to rss feeds. i liked that as soon as you confirm your bloglines account they offer you various choices to get you started. so you don't have to panic and think you're uncool because you don't know what to subscribe to. i picked a couple of word of the day things, a joke of the day from comedy central (will be cancelling that posthaste), reuters top stories, that sort of thing. then i got back on track with the assignment and found that i'm required to sign up for several other things as well, so now i'm creepily stalking a couple of other kcls employees (sorry jed and anna and julia). and reading more news and unshelved, which i already did.

erm. i digress. it's cool, if a little daunting. usually i spend an hour or so a week messing about reading things, now i'm going to know exactly how vast the information i miss from week to week is, as the rss feeds will stay there until i read them (gark). i'm not sure how i feel about that. onwards and upwards, i suppose. there's another lesson looming and blinking at me as i type...

mish mash mish

ok this may not seem creative to you, but anyone who knows me well knows how important spelling is and so having a source with which to spell important things (and what, really, is more important than kcls?) touches my soul. cheers.

my friend flickr

ok i got signed up and uploaded a photo and tagged it kcls27things. all of this was spectacularly anxiety inducing for some reason. let's see if it works to stick it here.



well, that seems to have worked. let me view it to see.

anne rose's rose

this episode has been brought to you by learning 2.0 in an effort to help the world smell nicer.

the countdown

rick is just full of fun, today he shared:

public service announcement

the boss sent this out today, it's kind of amusing. gotta wonder if they actually ran it on television and if it brought folks into the library...

thrills, chills, magic, prizes!

it's so exciting to see folks getting all into blogging. i'm glad mine is pink. hee.

no longer ahead of the game

today's learning exercise was to set up this blog. i jumped the gun a few days ago, but i've taken the intervening time to update my other blogs and get used to using the new blogger (which has changed since i started blogging in october 2001) and adjust templates and links lists and all that fun stuff. so check out my friends over there on the side and see you wednesday to register with the learning 2.0 program! for those of you wondering where all this came from, it originated at the public library of charlotte and mecklenburg county.

the early bird gets the mp3 player

well, today is the actual kickoff of learning 2.0, so here i am all blogged up and nowhere to record my progress...i have my log sheet tucked under my mouse pad and am positively itching to learn some of the stuff on there. is there an ointment for that?

learning 2.0

there's a training program being implemented tuesday at work. step 3 is starting a blog. i've had blog since october 2001, but it's not appropriate to register for this project, so i'm creating another to track my learning and document my progress.

there are 27 things i will have to do between now and june. i've already done many of them but there are training modules to be read and integrated and i think the process is to be stretched over several weeks.

the program has its own blog.

if i complete everything in the timeline required (by "early june"), i get an mp3 player. this may seem redundant, as i have a lovely ipod, but our downloadable audiobooks don't work with the ipod platform, so i need the mp3 player.

so there you go.