Thing 22: Audiobooks

Our library system's access to e-books and audiobooks is really marvelous, and has gotten much more user friendly over the years. The addition of more titles that are iPod compatible and the ability to download directly to your MP3 player is a great improvement. I looked at Overdrive and NetLibrary, and I only wish more "hot" titles were available. I couldn't find any Rick Riordan or J.K. Rowling books, for example, but Anthony Horowitz was available. So, it's a nice perk, but will not necessarily fit the bill for when a patron wants a particular book on CD and it's not on the shelf.

Whenever I or my colleagues talk about the e audiobooks, patrons are most often surprised and pleased to hear about it. They are very often not aware of the service, and hopefully they are taking advantage of it once they learn more about it. Perhaps more of a p.r. campaign to highlight downloadable and e-books is in order.

Thing 21: Podcasts

I am familiar with podcasts mostly from looking at the NPR website to listen to programming I missed on the radio. I've just signed up to get the feed for StoryCorps, for example. As for searching for podcasts, podcast.net isn't there any longer, and I got an error message while looking for the Yahoo podcast site. So, I went to podcast alley. I did a search for "storytelling" and got 123 hits. They didn't appear to be organized in any particular way, though, and I saw some duplication of podcast titles, plus some things were not found through one search term, so I used another. I think in some instances I might be better off just using Google and typing in "podcast" and the search term I want.

Thing 20: YouTube

YouTube has been a staple in our home for years. When my husband and I are reminiscing around the dinner table about some cartoon show we loved when we were kids, we can then go to the computer (after doing the dishes, of course!) and show our two girls, ages 6 and 11, what we found so transporting when we were children. Hanna-Barbara's "I Dream of Jeannie" cartoon, anyone?

Aside from trips down memory lane, YouTube is a great place to find news clips. I watched President Obama's acceptance speech after the votes were counted last November on YouTube the morning of November 5th. Plus, libraries can imbed YouTube videos to promote reading, as happened recently when I sent an email around to MCDPL J staff with a link to a Florida middle school's tribute to the Black-Eyed Peas "I Got a Feeling," "Gotta Keep Reading", which was subsequently posted on the Teen Site page.

I can't figure out how to imbed the videos in my blog post, but I'm sure there's a way. I know how to do it in Facebook; does that count? : )

Thing 19: Web 2.0 awards

Lots of marvelous new things out there I'd never heard of! However, once again the message is out of date. These awards were published in 2008, and they are useful because they introduced me to some new applications and website I hadn't heard of, but again I am stymied by how things change. I was interested to see what other online productivity tools are out there, so looked at the Online Desktop/OS awards. The second place winner, Ghost, caught my eye, but when I went to the homepage, there was an announcement that all online personal accounts have been closed. Did the people who used that system and had their files stored online lose all that information? Brings up a cautionary message about using online document creation sites. Oh, and if you live in the US, you can't use the BBC's iPlayer to watch BBC television any longer. *sigh*

Thing 18: Online Productivity Tools

I have some experience using Google Docs--I was collaborating with a fellow preschool parent on a spreadsheet to keep track of books in the preschool's library. It is a great thing to be able to create documents and store them remotely, with access at any computer anywhere. What was very useful is that that document was available to several people and we all worked on it collaboratively. You can see who edited an item and when, add notes about any revisions, and so on. Very useful tool. Zoho has not only word processing tools available online, but also spreadsheets, document storage, and PowerPoint-like presentation tools. They aren't all free to use, but look like they could be very useful to small business owners and the like. One online tool we use all the time at our library is Google Calendar. We keep the master info staff list on the calendar so all staff members simply log into the library's Google email account and can check and edit staffing levels from any computer in the branch and also from home if need be.

Thing 17: Kicked out of the Sandbox

Well, after spending about 15 minutes trying to figure out how on earth to register and sign in to the Maryland Libraries Sandbox, I asked a colleague if she was able to get in, and she said it's not available any longer. *sigh* This training needs a major upgrade, and soon!

Thing 12 Redux: Rolling back to Rollyo

I'm glad Rollyo is up and running again; it's a neat site. I like the idea of being able to limit searches to specific websites that I know will produce results. It certainly sorts the wheat from the chaff! There is the disadvantage of missing out on a new site because I'm not aware it exists, though. Here is my rollyo search engine, to be used to try to track down those obscure children's titles that patrons come looking for from time to time. "I remember my mother reading this book to me in the fifties; it had a mouse in a toy car and he had to use a rake to make it stop." (A real example!)

Thing 16: Wikis

I have had some experience working on a Wiki years ago after hurricane Katrina hit and I was volunteering with a group of parents and students who organized the donation of backpacks of supplies to be sent to affected New Orleans residents. The organizers used a program called seedwiki, and working from home, on a Mac, all those years ago, the wiki interface was not happy with the web browser we were using (it was Safari). We had to specially load FireFox so I could successfully update the page I was in charge of. I have no idea if this PC-chauvinism is still a problem with some wiki software, but I suspect it probably is...

Our new intranet is in a wiki format, I believe, but I don't believe it's open to all library staff to edit it. I doesn't have the same obvious wiki format, so maybe I'm wrong there. Anyway, One very obvious wiki application would be a library staff listing wiki. We never have an up to date listing of where staff are working, and every time I try to get the person who's in charge of updating it to get a new one out, they say that the staffing is in flux and it would be a lot of work for nothing. If we set up a wiki, all staff members could edit and update it very easily.

As far as using wikis for the general public (say, soliciting reviews or suggestions for subject headings), I still have a concern about quality control of the information. Maybe something moderated would be best in our setting. I can certainly see the appeal of letting everyone add content. As long as it doesn't get too raunchy or malicious!

Thing 15--Library 2.0

*sigh* It seems like everything is getting "2.0" appended to it. As I keep saying, all the resources for this training are at least 3 years old now. Still, Library 2.0 is a laudable goal. I'm not sure how far Montgomery County will be able to go with this idea, though. It seems like we are waaaaay behind the technology curve, and we're always scrambling to try to catch up. I doubt anything truly innovative will happen anytime soon, with the budget the way it is. Or maybe the budget crisis will push us into this brave new world sooner--providing online information content in places other than a brick and mortar building has to have some economic advantages. But I think the biggest obstacle is getting the library "out there" where most tech users don't expect to find it. Looking quickly at the library's facebook account, I see it has a little over 250 fans, many of them other librarians or people in the field. A fairly obscure webcomic, "Shortpacked!" has over 1,400 fans, for example. People who use social media the most are least likely to expect to find the public library there. How do you get the message out?

Some Library 2.0 things I heartily agree with:

make the catalog more user friendly--there must be some way to allow for spelling mistakes. How do Google and Amazon do it? When I went to ALA a few years back and was researching other catalog vendors, the one I liked best had that technology in place. I doubt if JavaNow or Symphony has it! Or do they?

Link to other library systems' catalogs through our OPAC, like the Santa Monica public library system did. It sounds fairly simple to do, and works with Sirsi. Since we're down near the District line, I'm often going to the DC public library online catalog site to search for titles MCPL doesn't own so I can refer patrons to them.

Thing 14--Technorati

Well, Technorati has changed since the 23 Things training was put together, but is certainly a great place to go to track down blogs. I'm not finding it so useful for actually locating posts on specific topics, though. For example, I plugged in learning 2.0 as a search term as the exercise requires, and kept getting hits for blog posts that had the words "learning" and "2.0" in them. I could not find a way to limit the search to those two terms together. The help page was not helpful at all in that regard. I suppose I could submit my question via email to their support staff, but didn't want to go that far.

The top 100 blogs didn't surprise me much; lots of techy and news and political blogs, plus celebrity gossip. Probably the most surprising thing was the list only had 99 blogs, not 100! I'm not sure where top searches are--couldn't find it on the site. Maybe disappeared in the beta version of Technorati?

Thing 13 delicious, but frustrating!

This is what I get for trying to learn online about libraries 2.0. four years after the training was created. The world is changing so fast, and broken links are littered behind in the wake of progress:

12 minute delicious tutorial: gone
us.ef.ul--a beginner's guide to delicious: gone
several habits of wildly successful delicious users: gone
many of the links of libraries that use delicious just take you to the library's home page

I ended up going to the delicious site and clicking on "Learn More" to get an overview of how it all works. Personally, I see the most utility in being able to carry my bookmarks from one computer to another. If I were not so discouraged by the difficulty in getting this training done, I'd make my own delicious account and add the bookmarks I use frequently at work and are not necessarily bookmarked on each computer that I use. The Mid Continent Public Library system's guide to Juvenile Series and Sequels is one I use almost every day, for example and is invaluable for my work. What a time-saver!

I can also see the research potential of delicious--I like the way users can add comments on the the sites they add to their bookmarks. Plus, seeing what else is popular that other users have found opens up so many new possibilities without having to spend all of one's time surfing the web!

Thing 12--Rollyo not available!

Rollyo is undergoing maintenance and will be "back soon." Will have to defer this thing until a later date.