Week 10 - This is the end

For months now I have avoided Twitter. I'm already on Facebook, writing a blog and sending smoke signals (provided the weather is nice) - how many more means of communication do I need?! Don't get me wrong, I do understand the appeal of Twitter. Lots of bite size nuggets of information (proof that my generation will no longer stand for chunks of writing larger than a paragraph) and pretty much like Facebook when all you could do on Facebook was write status updates and post on peoples walls.

Most of my friends don't have Twitter, which is another reason I stayed away for so long. In my social sphere, Twitter is used more often by companies/organizations/libraries to disseminate information to the masses, which makes sense. E-mail lists seem to be passe in the age of Twitter. Instead of compiling lots of information and sending it out all at once, companies/orgs/libs can send them out piecemeal but in a more timely manner. And as anyone who writes long winded emails knows, it's a lot less time consuming to write something with 140 characters. So long etiquette! Now you don't have to worry about subscriber lists or spam - I can simply follow you or not.

Obviously I did not start following friends, but groups I was already passively following on Twitter. And in minutes, I had no information I was unaware of (like my current branch would be opening till 8:30pm on Fridays in the near future). So I understand the point of Twitter, I just don't like to use it. To me, it is simply a 140 character Bloglines and I wish the two could be merged so I have one less website to check on a daily basis. This is why people get technostress!

By the by, my Twitter is @tplguybrarian.

23 Things Assignment #8

Here's our first video in our YouTube tour.

And video #2.

Ooh look, another! Who knew there were so many videos out there about the Toronto Public Library?

And I couldn't have this post without some beer related content. Here's an interesting look at Toronto's Mill Street Brewery, which includes some interesting facts about the Distillery District.

Well, that showed how easy it is to compile a bunch of YouTube videos, but how can we use this to expand customer service? Obviously the hard part is creating the content - YouTube merely makes it extremely easy to offer up video content without using TPL IT resources. For that reason, there is really nothing it can't do. Whatever video idea you have is possible (okay, maybe not 3D, but you get my hyperbole). Create promo videos before events and then record them to show off what a glorious success they were. Make how-to videos that aide patrons in navigating our new website. And then there is the class booktalk, which TPL already did for this years Keep Toronto Reading Campaign (personally, I loved that TPL patrons could send in their own videos. I already know what my colleagues think!). What about having Ready for Reading sessions available online? That way parents, caregivers and children could have access to them at any time. The possibilities are endless.

23 Things Assignment #7

Podcasts - I listen to them, I've made them (for school, not just for kicks). The future of radio? Possibly. A more egalitarian system? Definitely. I ended up subscribing to Vegetarian Food for Thought, Craft Beer Radio and The Lost Podcast (I couldn't help it). I searched for podcasts with relevant library content, but couldn't find any.

As a regular recreational-user of podcasts, I'm going to look at two things: iTunes vs. Bloglines and how libraries can use podcasts. The iTunes vs. Bloglines question is a no-brainer to me - iTunes is far superior. It has far greater depth for searching for podcasts. None of the podcasts I download (mainly ones from CBC Radio 3) were on podcast alley. The subjects fields also go more in depth in iTunes. Of course, iTunes rarely features independent podcasts (at least from what I've seen), so that is a minus.

Another problem I encountered was that some of the podcasts were no longer current. Many had discontinued and the last episode was from two or three years ago (like LibVibe or Library Geeks.) Yes, the same issues occur on iTunes, but they at least show the most recent dates for podcasts before you subscribe. For The Lost Recap, Bloglines wasn't pulling in all podcasts for some reason, even though I could find the other podcasts elsewhere online. A Bloglines error or the podcasters? Who knows. Made me wonder about some of the other podcasts, though.

My last point on iTunes vs. Bloglines is really a matter of personal preference. I enjoy the fact that iTunes will automatically download my favourite podcasts when they come out, or that I can choose which episodes to download. Once they're downloaded, it's a quick step to get them on my portable music player. iTunes also remembers where I stopped listening to a podcast. And has chapters to help me skip to what I want to hear. But that's just me. If you like just stream your podcasts, then use Bloglines. I'm going to stick to my iTunes, thank you very much.

Podcasts are fairly easy to make, especially using free software like Audacity. Libraries can make them for users, or patrons can join in the fun (imagine a YAG making a podcast!). But podcasting is a large commitment and one that takes its toll and a majority of small podcasters (hence so many dead podcasts that I tried to subscribe to). This is something that applies to all Web 2.0 technologies: the drive has to be there to last past the first two weeks of months.

23 Things Assignment #6

Hey, finally something I've used! Being a recent grad from a library school where group projects are the norm, Google Docs were very popular with my classmates. Everyone worked at different speeds and different hours, so it was helpful to have everything online. There are lots of other pros to working with Google Docs with very few cons:

• You don't have to worry about everyone using the same software. Some people have different versions of Microsoft Office or use Open Office. It is annoying to have to resend something because the other person can't open .docx files. This may not be a problem within the TPL, but it does when we're working with individuals from other libraries, organizations, etc. Which brings me to my next point...
• Google Docs is great for working with people that are far away from you, either in another branch or a different city. Yes, everything can be sent back and forth via email, but Google Docs saves time and energy. Yet another example of how small our world is becoming. It takes collaboration to a whole new level.
• Everyone also gets instant access to the work being done. This helps eliminate overlap in a document and saves time. Also, there is that inevitable situation where there is a misunderstanding of the work to be done. With Google Docs, hopefully any mistakes will be caught sooner and save even more time.
• Along the same lines, haven't we all had the problem where the person who has the file goes on vacation or is sick and we can't do any work on something? Or, as often happens to me, we'll forget our USB key somewhere and have to restart or work off an older version (I blame all my traveling for extra hours!). Not an issue with Google Docs.
  
• Formatting is also made easier with Google Docs. If you have four people make a slideshow, they will make it four different ways. Having everyone work in the same document saves the annoying step of reformatting everything so it looks the same.
  
• One of the problems is that it's not exactly pretty, especially the Presentation feature. You don't come out with the best looking slideshow, though that may be a positive depending on how much you hate Powerpoint.
• At the same time, it is nice not to have all the bells and whistles. I find myself caring a lot more about the content than the visuals when working in Google Docs.
• One area of concern, especially as we are librarians, is that this information not stored by our computers. How can I put this without sounding like a conspiracy nut? Google is known to be massive data hoarders, so who knows what they do with this information. Do we want to put sensitive information like an incident report on Google Docs? I don't know that answer to this, but it is worth pondering. Paranoia over.
  

23 Things Assignment #5

Hmm... another week and another social networking site that I'm not quite sure if I get. This week, we tackle Delicious (or del.icio.us), a site I'd heard a lot about but haven't explored - until now.

Delicious really has two ways of searching: by tags or by profiles (or a hybrid-combo of the two). The only time I had heard about Delicious was in reference to links/videos that had gone viral, so I assumed it was just a site where people posted "cool links" that had little real value. To evaluate Delicious, both aspects must be explored and their relevancy to public libraries examined. Starting with the broad tag search, I find it a little overwhelming. The sheer amount of information you get by putting in a simple tag (for example, "cooking" or "library") is daunting and rather useless. As an information professional, I shudder at the jumble of knowledge put forth. This just seems like a time waster - a way of saying, "Hey, what weird or interesting links can we find today?" But I found I was clicking on a lot of useless websites before I found one or two that were interesting, pretty much confirming my initial thoughts on the website.

Where I see some practical use for Delicious is in the profile section. For libraries, using Delcious as a means of conveying relevant and important links to the public and/or staff is quite feasible. Essentially, it operates in the same way as our Virtual Reference Library (except accessible to other users on Delicious), but using tags to give a picture of the link. For specific Research and Reference departments, this would be especially useful.

I find the functionality of del.icio.us to be rather annoying sometimes. If I'm looking in someone's profile and see a tag that looks interesting, clicking on the tag will only show what links that person has tagged with that word. If I want to search all of del.icio.us for that tag, it requires some extra work. Perhaps others like how this works, but it feels onerous to me. This was not the only issue I had with how Delicious works.

Personally, I probably won't be using Delicious any time soon, but I'll tuck it away in the back of my mind.

23 Assignment #4

I'm a big beer snob, so I found a photo online of the superb Thomas Hardy's barley wine and made...

That was remarkably easy and fun! I think I'm going to grow quite fond of Big Huge Labs.

As a Children's librarian, one of the generators I liked was What's Your Pokename? This would be a big hit with the kids.

I also tried out the Simpson Church Sign Generator. I came up with this:

The child in me also loves Thank You Mario. A generator I like that isn't on the blog is Wimp Yourself, where you can create a picture of yourself in the style of the Diary of a Wimpy Kid books. While a lot of these are fun, I'm having a hard time thinking of a practical use for them - I guess that's why this week was just for fun!

23 Things Assignment #3: RSS

The RSS feeds I subscribed to other than Library Journal were chromewaves.net, Pitchfork, New York Times Books and Publishers Weekly - Best Sellers. Here are my comments in no particular order:

• Two of my feeds (Pitchfork and Publishers Weekly) stopped working. I added these directly through Bloglines, but they only worked for the day. The only way to get them to work was by finding the RSS feed from their website and adding the feed that way.
• This is the second time I have used RSS feeds (I believe the last time was with Google Reader) and my experience wasn't any better than the first. Yes, it is a nice way to compile everything together and eliminates the need to endlessly check different blogs, but it feels wrong. I'm a creature of habit and like the comforting look of my favourite blogs. To me, it is akin to the book/e-reader debate: there is just something about the real thing.
• I find readers also eliminate a lot of the functionality of blogs. For instance, chromewaves.net has a built in audio player that opens in the webpage while keeping the content visible. But in bloglines, it opens an external media player. Want to find out the tags for a post? Got to click on the post and go to the original webpage. Blogs are also becoming part of larger websites (or websites are forming blogs) with increasing frequency - take our TPL blogs, for instance. Only reading the blog through Bloglines will either create extra work to find the other content on the website.
  
• In my experiences, readers do not have photos, which I detest. (If I remember correctly, Google Reader may have had photos, but it looked horrid). Functionality is fine, but aesthetics also account for a lot.
  
• Would I use an RSS reader? Maybe for the websites I check periodically and would prefer to browse the headlines. But, for now, I don't prefer it over those websites that I check daily/hourly.