Web 2.0 journey

So, the end is nigh. Having read through all my blog entries again I was somewhat surprised by my recurring scepticism. I'm excited by the new possibilities of Web 2.0 for libraries and thought that perhaps this would have been more obvious from my blogs.

I suppose I am also, however, cautious of being wowed by the flash new Web 2.0 applications without taking into consideration any potential down-sides. For example, breaches of privacy, lack of focus on reader needs, security issues, and too much concentration on the whistles and bells. Someone's suggestion in their blog about readers being put off by libraries trying to be 'down with the kids' also struck a chord (see the fabulous Libetiquette Blog on this point).

Working through the 23 Things program has been instructive and, given the time, will prove really useful for my library work. I'm now more confident about approaching the new applications, and don't feel too daunted to have a go myself. The language takes a while to get used to, which can make one feel isolated, but I think it's sinking in slowly.

One thing I'm going to do as a follow-up is to have another dig in Delicious. I have noted some other bloggers saying that it has grown on them, so I will give it the benefit of the doubt and have another go. I'm not even going to consider giving LinkedIn another chance, as I wasn't keen on the idea at all and felt that uploading my C.V. was one step too far. I really enjoyed looking at the uses different libraries make of Facebook, and am keen to get my library site up and running. Twitter is fun from a personal perspective, but I think my readers would be better served by Facebook for library information.

I was struck throughout the process by the odd connections that different applications made by looking at linked profiles and customisations. For example, when I first logged in to iGoogle, up popped a suggestion for a blog in which I might be interested, about the city I grew up in. This spooked me a little until I worked out that the ghost in the machine was looking at a gadget I had already added which shows the temperature in that particular place.

Another odd coincidence: when I was digging about in Twitter I found that one of the other Oxford 23 Thingers was following 5 out of the 8 unrelated people I was following! You know who you are.

Another thing that stuck me was the necessity of having a disciplined approach to Web 2.0. It's no good following twenty blogs if you're only going to check for updates once a fortnight, unless you want to log in to find thousands of unread entries. Somewhat daunting. Similarly, there's little point creating an all-singing all-dancing Facebook presence, only to realise six weeks later that all the information is now out of date and therefore useless to your readers. Dedicating time for both picking up new posts and for updating information is hugely important.

One of the most interesting things I've found about the 23 Things has been reading some of the other blogs. I've been enormously impressed about how people are thinking about Web 2.0 constructively and really trying to link the new applications to the needs of their readers. The different themes people have chosen and the styles of writing they adopted are also fascinating on a more mundane level. I was also struck by the number of 23 Thingers who started their blogs full of enthusiasm and didn't get further than the first post. I wonder if this is due to a lack of time or a lack of interest, or a little of both.

So my challenge now, at the end of 23 Things, is to integrate Web 2.0 into my working life, so that my readers can get the most out of these emerging technologies. On a slightly grandiose note, using Web 2.0 in libraries seems an ideal way for librarians to maintain their relevance amid talk of bookless libraries and the death-throes of librarianship as a profession.

Thank you to the Oxford 23 Things organisers for the many hours of work which made this journey worthwhile.

More gadgetry

My iGoogle page has been changing constantly over the last few weeks, but here's a screen shot of the Delicious bookmark gadget. The green leafery is in honour of Spring, who seems to have deserted us. Even though I've not been that keen on Delicious, the small list is quite appealing, and I may even use it!

I've also added a Twitter gadget (not pictured), but it doesn't look very pretty, and isn't at all customisable. Isn't it odd that even though all these applications do things we'd never have dreamed of 15 year ago, we still expect them to look good and have colours etc that we can choose ourselves? Spoilt, perhaps.

Truth be told, I've not been that keen on iGoogle, and have been leaning more and more towards Google Reader, which seems to do more of what I need everyday.

The Editor's Picks weren't particularly fascinating, and mostly seemed to be the sort of things that people might use on a personal level, rather than for work. The only one that I was tempted by was Remember the milk, a task management application, but I already have a similar function on my phone.

The Librarian's Book Revoogle looks quite interesting, so I've added that. Now my iGoogle page is completely unrecognisable from the beginning of the 23 Things!

Returning to Flickr and Widgets

I had already added my Flickr photostream to my blog, so this Thing proved quicker than most. I did, however, rethink the gadgets on my blog, and rearranged them a little. At the outset of the 23 Things I disabled the followers gadget, as I was convinced that I didn't want to know who was reading my blog. Having become a little green-eyed about followers whilst browsing other Blogs, I've enabled the gadget (queue disappointment at not having any followers).

As for the further Things, I tried to add a Google search gadget, but the layout of the theme I've chosen for my blog meant that the Google box was cropped badly and some of the wording was missing, so I removed it again. Since the blog hasn't been going for long, it shouldn't really be necessary for people to search it using Google.

At this stage of the 23 Things, I'm wondering about the future of my blog. Should I morph it into another blog (possibly about my letterpress enterprise) or erase it from the Blogosphere completely? What does everyone else think about the future of their blogs?

Free thinker

I initially had great trouble opening ThinkFree without crashing the rest of my browsers (very annoying), but eventually changing from SeaMonkey to Internet Explorer allowed me to complete Thing 20, albeit very slowly.

The additional functionalities that ThinkFree offers are obviously a good thing, but since I still can't make it run normally, I'll be sticking with Google Docs. I liked the additional fonts, and the way documents can be tagged.

It's hard to see all the cool features of ThinkFree and other similar applications without using them for a longer period, and without amassing a larger number of documents than I have, but it looks good and would be useful for using documents both at home and at work. I particularly like the function that allows different word-processing software to be read without depending on what is loaded on a particular computer.

Uploading a document from my desktop took longer than I'd expected, but maybe that's because of the browser problem I mentioned earlier. I had a quick look at the extra Things, and attempted to create an HTML note. The limited number of template options available was a bit of a disappointment, in that I couldn't change the style or colours on the template that I chose, and the one on offer was rather twee.

Further to Thing 19, I had another go at trying to see how our students might use Google Docs. I found a random article on Jstor and tried to save it as a Google Doc, bearing in mind the copyright laws, and found that each page of the document could be dragged and dropped into the Google Doc, and saved as usual. It might not be the best way of using Jstor, but in order to solve an essay crisis, it might be just the thing.

Google, Google everywhere

Having used Google Docs in a previous incarnation, and being driven almost wild by its idiosyncracies, I was not best pleased when I first spied the subject of Thing 19. However, now that I'm not having to edit a Google Document at the same time as a colleague, I can see that it's a very useful application.

The word-processing elements are easy to use and look very familiar, whilst the Google Docs main page is easy on the eye and intuitive. I chose a William Morris quote ('If a chap can't compose an epic poem whilst he's weaving tapestry he had better shut up') which I displayed in a number of fonts, colours, and sizes.

In my library, since the computers are on a network, Google Docs is probably slightly redundant, but if I wanted to take my work home with me the application would be useful.

Students, however, could really benefit from Google Docs. We're often presented with a memory stick which a student desperately wants to use to save a document from the internet. For security reasons, we don't allow access to USB ports on our SOLO machines, but anyone using them can also get access to Google, and thus Google Docs.

Confused by the Twitter/Facebook thang

I thought that making different Web 2.0 applications update each other automatically was meant to be easy!

I'm currently trying to make my Facebook updates appear on Twitter and vice versa, but it doesn't seem to be working. Firstly, there seem two be two different applications - one that sends updates from Twitter to Facebook and another that sends updates from Facebook to Twitter. Is it just me, or is that cumbersome and a bit boring?

Help!

What's not to like?

I'd almost forgotten that Wikipedia is a Wiki, and have been using it for a couple of years as a 'proper' reference source. I often referenced Wikipedia whilst working on obscure cataloguing projects when all the other information I could find about a particular item was from even more obscure sources! Hopefully the fact that it's a collaborative project will mean that if you are writing an article for Wikipedia, you're an expert or at least a very interested amateur. There's no advertising, no garish colours, and the the interface is so much friendlier than some other, more traditionally print-based reference sources. I'm also fond of the featured and random articles, from which this clown image came.

The 'history' and 'discussion' tabs are easy to miss, but they're interesting and help to point out which areas of a subject are contentious. I must mention that I have seen the occasional vandalised site where a few words have been changed in an article (usually to good comic effect). The changes were blindingly obvious and now that I think of it, I should probably have done my librarian-ish duty and sorted out the truth from the lies.

In my library Wikipedia is usually the first point of call when I'm confronted with a book about Markov chains or heterocyclic compounds, and for this purpose it is perfect. I don't need to become an expert, but a general summary of the subject is useful for cataloguing purposes, and to avoid looking like a complete fool in front of students.

Painting by Herbert Schondelmaier, photo by Erik Christensen.

Wiki-mania

The most intriguing thing I can see about a Wiki, in the words of Ward Cunningham and Bo Leuf, is that it 'seeks to involve the visitor in an ongoing process of creation and collaboration that constantly changes the web site landscape.'  This, to my mind, is one of the really exciting things about Web 2.0. But, having spent a little time Googling to find some interesting wikis about my personal interests, I came up with a blank. Maybe it's just me.

Wetpaint sounded exciting, but failed to deliver in that most of the pages I could find were about TV programmes that I've never heard of (and admittedly some I had). Why can't I find people creating poetry, or art, or novels, in a collaborative way? The possibilities seem endless, but the most prolific wikis are apparently for soap addicts!

Wikia seemed a little more interesting, but the range of topics was odd, to say the least. See below for a random drop down list entitled 'Lifestyle' containing wikis on Recipes, Genealogy, DIY, and Vintage dress patterns!

Ourproject looked a little less sensationalist, but I couldn't even find an active English language wiki and the website wasn't at all intuitive.

There are an awful lot of different Wikifarms, but the numbers of active Wikis doesn't seem to justify their existence. Maybe, like mini-disks, Wikis are a technology that everyone got a little over-excited about, only to find that they were obsolete before very long.

N.B. Please note that the title of this blog in no way refers to 'Wikimania'.

Oh - the pressure!

 I know that Tweeting is pretty much the same as updating Facebook, but the pressure to be witty and erudite seems so much greater on Twitter.

One thing I wonder is how to make Facebook updates appear on Twitter as well... That would be a useful and time-saving application. Maybe that'll be Thing 17.

Do libraries that use Facebook also have a Twitter account, I wonder? I also wonder if anyone has done a survey about whether Oxford students mostly use Twitter, Facebook, or some other social networking site. I think we'll probably stick with Facebook in my library, unless we can make our Facebook updates appear on Twitter as well.

Un-link me now!

Has anyone ever got a real job through LinkedIn?

There may well be 60 million people with a LinkedIn profile, but I wonder how many of those are active and up-to-date.

I'm afraid I'm not convinced. It's not that the website is difficult to use, or even that it looks unattractive; I'm just not sure that professional networking online is the way forward in the very small world that is Oxford libraries.

Facebook frenzy

The number of times we find our SOLO machines displaying Facebook should be reason enough for our library to create a presence on the ubiquitous social net-working site. We have in fact created a dummy site, but are waiting for the powers that be to give their approval before going live.

When we started thinking about a library Facebook presence we kept stumbling upon questions which were tricky to answer. For example, we didin't know whether we needed to worry about people not related to the college becoming fans of our page for security reasons. When we looked at other college library Facebook pages, there seemed to be large numbers of fans who appeared to have no connection with the college. Does anyone else worry about that?

We decided early on that we wanted to keep our Facebook presence quite focused on library information, not becoming too embroiled in the more social aspects of the site. So, we included our address, a reminder of the opening hours over Easter and when books are due back, some links to other college-related Facebook pages, and a link to SOLO. We'd also like to have links to our own web catalogue, but there are some technical problems with that at the moment.

With more time on our hands, we'd create a number of groups in order to target information to specific subjects about new books and lists of Delicious bookmarks. Does anyone have an idea of how many hours in a week this might take us? Our fellow librarian is wondering if the time needed to keep Facebook up-to-date is going to be equivalent to the increase in student awareness.

Photo by Scott Beale / Laughing Squid.

Love to hate YouTube

I either love or hate YouTube depending on the day of the week.

The Education pages are useful and there are some really worthy library information videos. But as someone else has noted, it only works if it's done well. We have even been thinking about creating a library information video which could possibly appear on YouTube for prospective students, but finding a moment (or twenty) at this time of year is troublesome.

One thing I don't like about YouTube are the comments. Has anyone ever seen an insighful or instructive comment about one of the videos? I think not. The second thing I don't like about YouTube is all the home videos of people on their soapboxes. Why not blog, so we don't have to look at you too? The third thing...

I won't go on.

Podcasting quietly

 

Podcasting is a fabulous invention. The choice is limited only by your imagination and it's not hard to find high quality material which you can then listen to anywhere. There is the usual amount of dross to wade through, but the BBC, Guardian and other respected news sources are always reliable, in my experience.

I already subscribe to a number of Podcasts, but have added a few more to Google Reader (which I'm taking-to more than iGoogle). I'd prefer to keep all my Podcasts in one spot as I tend to listen to them on my iPod, so would probably prefer to use iTunes than Google.

On a professional level, Podcasting for library information seems a little out of our scope, but I imagine that Podcasts of lectures would be useful and interesting for students. Our Classicists and Modern Linguists might also find Podcasts useful for rote learning - "amo, amas, amat".

As the 23 Things are progressing I find that navigating the different sites is becoming easier and Web 2.0 in general seems to be a little more intuitive and less scary. Progress!

Not so tasty

 

I'm still not convinced by the 'tag cloud' phenomenon, even after having read a number of blog entries about why they're useful (see here for example). Just because I only have one bookmark with the tag 'ephemera' doesn't mean that it's less important to me than a tag that appears larger in the cloud. It may just be that I can only find one site that I want to keep an eye on for that particular tag.

The networking tool also strikes me as odd. I've added a couple of people to my list, and now I get some random bookmarks appearing that are of no interest to me whatsoever. Just because someone shares my interest in letterpress (good) doesn't mean that they're not also interested in Egg Watching (bad).

Whilst I'm struggling to find a personal use for Delicious, I can see their importance for libraries and educational institutions, and I must admit that I'd be quite happy squandering quite a lot of time playing about with the possibilities, and nosing into the bookmarks collected by other people.

It's not you, it's me

It's just me, I suppose, but sites like Delicious seem to be aimed at people who use the web in a more systematic way than I do.

The site was easy to use and fairly intuitive but I can't see how I would use Delicious on a personal level. If I'm at home I have my bookmarks organised in my web browser and I don't really see why I would want to share my bookmarks with other people.

If I'm at work I tend to use different bookmarks but if I did want to look at a site bookmarked on my Mac at home I'd be more likely to Google it than log into another web site. If some of our fellows used Delicious a little like a reading list, then it might be useful for the library to know about it, but I've not heard of anyone considering this.

I'll look at the other 23 Things blogs to see what other people think, but if anyone uses Delicious on a personal or professional level, I'd be interested to hear about it.

Blogging's no Picnik

Using Picnik seemed relatively intuitive, but it took me a while to work out how to save images to a location from which I could use them on my Blog. Maybe I wasn't doing it right, but it worked in the end. I'm not sure what the advantage of Picnik is over my normal image editing software.

I'm starting to see how Blogging works: If you sit in front of your machine for long enough you forget that there are potential readers out there in the Blogosphere and then you can ramble away to your heart's content.

The above image is an attempt at editing the brightness and sharpness of one of my photographs, then cropping it to a Blog-friendly size.

Yet another email address

How does everyone keep track of all the email addresses created when joining sites like Flickr? At latest count, I have 7 email addresses with different providers, and one that has become inactive through lack of use. Maybe there's a way of redirecting all email to one account, but if so, I've not found it yet.

My misgivings about uploading my life have not abated.

On a more positive note, I have learned how to use Flickr, and the Geotag function was fun.

Things 5 and 6

 I'm still not quite sure about the difference between iGoogle and Google Reader, so will go in search of an explanation in words of one syllable...

Here's what Wikipedia has to say:

iGoogle (formerly Google Personalized Homepage and Google IG), a service of Google, is a customizable AJAX-based startpage or personal web portal (much like Netvibes, Pageflakes, My Yahoo!, and Windows Live Personalized Experience). Google originally launched the service in May 2005. Its features include the capability to add web feeds and Google Gadgets (similar to those available on Google Desktop).

Google Reader is a Web-based aggregator, capable of reading Atom and RSS feeds online or offline. It was released by Google on October 7, 2005 through Google Labs. Reader graduated from beta status on September 17, 2007.

 And why might I want to follow a particular blog in iGoogle rather than Google Reader? These Things seem to create more questions than they answer. However, I am becoming more familiar with how to use Blogger and the different Google pages, even if I'm not sure of their specific purposes. Blogger isn't the most intuitive web site, and I don't seem to be going about things in the quickest way.

Thoughts about blogs

The only two blogs I've ever looked at regularly are 'Reasons to be Hopeful' (intended as an antidote to the focus on bad news in the world) and 'Mostly Eating' (a sustainable, local, healthy food blog). Otherwise, my intentions are good, but I lose interest very quickly.

Retospective

In retrospect, Things 1 and 2 were mostly things I had done before, and I, for one, spent most of my time choosing the frivolous parts of the page, notably the themes and templates. Having said that, no-one likes looking at badly designed web pages, or those with offensive colours.

One issue I have with this process is that I wonder about how easy it's going to be to delete my presence from the Bloggosphere once 23 Things is finished. I'm not happy with the idea that my blog will remain on view indefinitely. The trail left by individuals is also slightly worrying. I noticed that the iGoogle screen-shot on one of the blogs reveals that the blogger was playing online poker at the time, and one of them reveals snapshots of personal emails!

Thing 3

The thought of participating in 23 Things soured a little when the time came to start writing a blog, I must say. There are not enough hours in a library day to spend writing posts which will probably prove unappetising, even to myself. But, in the hope of being able to use Web 2.0 to communicate better with our students, I'll struggle on.