I took this exercise an an opportunity to mess around with Facebook like I've been wanting to. I already have a Livejournal account, a MySpace account, a Care2 account, a bloglines account, and this blog, so setting up an account with yet another social networking site seemed a bit silly...but I wanted an excuse to do it anyway!
As far as social networking goes, I can definitely see why FB came in first! Whereas livejournal and MySpace can end up dedicated to memes and community drama, FB seems like more of a grown-up site. No sparkly page lay-outs, no "My 100 favoritest things ever!" quizzes - just straight out contact information and facts about the user. (Though you can customize parts of your profile with shiny bits of code to personalize it.) I have to admit that I was a little taken aback by how much contact information you can make available to the public - take that with the fact that you can also use FB as something of a matchmaking service, and this is definitely not a site teens should be allowed to use unsupervised. Of course, there is always the option to keep things like phone number, addresses, and various chat client names hidden from everyone but your friends...but teens are not famous for being very discriminating about who they make friends with online. (Check out a few MySpace accounts from the friends list for the Loft's MySpace page - a lot of these kids have upwards of 200 random users listed as "friends" in their accounts...heck, the loft itself has over 400 friends!) Still, before I bash this site too much for its potential creepiness factor, I should check if there are any age-based restrictions in place - it could be that I only have the option to toss all of my personal info out on the web because I'm supposed to be old enough to know better.
The possibilities for library use are endless - the potential networking among staff and patrons, the ways libraries could use the "notes" options, the professional yet personalized feel of the site overall - these all fit the feel of a library much better than Livejournal or MySpace. I could see it being used for book clubs, book reviews, public opinion polls/discussions, ways of sharing information in the system or out of the system with other libraries...and, of course, as a way to give librarians and libraries a more personal feel for those who like meeting folks online.
Wednesday, September 27, 2006
Tuesday, September 26, 2006
Messing about with Zoho Writer
Yay for tic tac toe!
Obviously, I was taking this exercise very seriously. But, really - what better way to play around with a multi-user word processor than to actually play?
This is a pretty nifty little site, and I can see a million uses for library users - no more worrying about whether the version of windows installed on the home computer is compatible with the one on the library computers! (And don't even get me started about floppy disks - this is a much better way to save files!)
Two big gripes, though:
1. It's a bit buggy. Me being me, I had to play around with all of the different functions, and some of them either just plain didn't work, or didn't work the way they were supposed to. Fonts didn't always change correctly, (or at all), resizing sometimes caused my text to either disappear or become strangely formatted, and the tables are a bit tricky to deal with. (Occasionally, a cell would randomly delete, or I wouldn't be able to enter any text into it...hmm...)
2. It doesn't post well to blogs - which is supposed to be one of its big features. First, it refused to acknowledge my blogger account. To get it here, I sent it to my livejournal account, then copied the html and pasted it here...except the images I was using instead of Xs and Os wouldn't load, and I got their text equivalents. Also, for some reason, copying and pasting the text from livejournal tweaked the table settings so that the text/characters in each box were no longer centered. I have a basic grasp of html, so I tweaked things here and there until I got it to look roughly the way I wanted it to...but it's not quite as convenient as it's made out to be. (Imagine if I was trying to post an elaborate spreadsheet instead of a tic-tac-toe game!)
Overall rating: needs work, but it's a good idea, and I'm looking forward to messing with it and seeing how it improves in the future.
| O | O | X |
| X | X | O |
| X | X |
Yay for tic tac toe!
Obviously, I was taking this exercise very seriously. But, really - what better way to play around with a multi-user word processor than to actually play?
This is a pretty nifty little site, and I can see a million uses for library users - no more worrying about whether the version of windows installed on the home computer is compatible with the one on the library computers! (And don't even get me started about floppy disks - this is a much better way to save files!)
Two big gripes, though:
1. It's a bit buggy. Me being me, I had to play around with all of the different functions, and some of them either just plain didn't work, or didn't work the way they were supposed to. Fonts didn't always change correctly, (or at all), resizing sometimes caused my text to either disappear or become strangely formatted, and the tables are a bit tricky to deal with. (Occasionally, a cell would randomly delete, or I wouldn't be able to enter any text into it...hmm...)
2. It doesn't post well to blogs - which is supposed to be one of its big features. First, it refused to acknowledge my blogger account. To get it here, I sent it to my livejournal account, then copied the html and pasted it here...except the images I was using instead of Xs and Os wouldn't load, and I got their text equivalents. Also, for some reason, copying and pasting the text from livejournal tweaked the table settings so that the text/characters in each box were no longer centered. I have a basic grasp of html, so I tweaked things here and there until I got it to look roughly the way I wanted it to...but it's not quite as convenient as it's made out to be. (Imagine if I was trying to post an elaborate spreadsheet instead of a tic-tac-toe game!)
Overall rating: needs work, but it's a good idea, and I'm looking forward to messing with it and seeing how it improves in the future.
Monday, September 25, 2006
Well, it's definitely a wiki.
I don't really know what to say about the PLCMC Learning 2.0 wiki that I haven't already said in my last post. (Yay for being repetitive! Except not!) I added my blog to the Favorite Blogs list, and I put in a quick plug for Cape Cod on the Favorite Vacation Spots page, but that's about it.
Eh, don't mind me, I'm cranky today - my back and shoulders hurt, and yesterday was my three-year anniversary with my sweetie and we didn't get to do anything. (His back hurt, my back hurt, and we're both broke. Ah, youth.) Plus, I have to:
-Make up a poster or something to get people to join the PLCMC Race for the Cure team
-Type up the (VERY late!!!) minutes for the Holds Expired team
-Rock out the October edition of the Freedom Flyer
-Bake a few batches of dessert-type stuff for the party Wednesday
-Look into taking the GRE in a bit more detail and sign up for a session
-Look into orthodontists so I can do something about this retainer
-Get around to writing my review for The Good Fairies of New York, which I have had checked out forever
-And maybe, just maybe, get back on track with Learning 2.0?
There's probably more that I'm forgetting, too. Oh...and I should call my dad before he starts thinking I'm dead in a ditch somewhere. And I need to e-mail Kevin and Robert, and I need to finish uploading the Hawaii pics to Flickr, (haven't done that YET!), and I need to get the apartment ready for the hoards of Ren-Fair goers heading my way and, and and...
and I need to stop, is what I need to do.:P
I don't really know what to say about the PLCMC Learning 2.0 wiki that I haven't already said in my last post. (Yay for being repetitive! Except not!) I added my blog to the Favorite Blogs list, and I put in a quick plug for Cape Cod on the Favorite Vacation Spots page, but that's about it.
Eh, don't mind me, I'm cranky today - my back and shoulders hurt, and yesterday was my three-year anniversary with my sweetie and we didn't get to do anything. (His back hurt, my back hurt, and we're both broke. Ah, youth.) Plus, I have to:
-Make up a poster or something to get people to join the PLCMC Race for the Cure team
-Type up the (VERY late!!!) minutes for the Holds Expired team
-Rock out the October edition of the Freedom Flyer
-Bake a few batches of dessert-type stuff for the party Wednesday
-Look into taking the GRE in a bit more detail and sign up for a session
-Look into orthodontists so I can do something about this retainer
-Get around to writing my review for The Good Fairies of New York, which I have had checked out forever
-And maybe, just maybe, get back on track with Learning 2.0?
There's probably more that I'm forgetting, too. Oh...and I should call my dad before he starts thinking I'm dead in a ditch somewhere. And I need to e-mail Kevin and Robert, and I need to finish uploading the Hawaii pics to Flickr, (haven't done that YET!), and I need to get the apartment ready for the hoards of Ren-Fair goers heading my way and, and and...
and I need to stop, is what I need to do.:P
Wednesday, September 20, 2006
Ah, wikis.
In my experience, wikis tend to either go really well, and produce amazing results, or else they go very badly, and result in hurt feelings and flame wars. Or else, as is the case with the few I've set up with my on-line friends, they go well for a few weeks, and then everyone gets bored with them and moves on to something else.
To be honest, I'm not quite sure how a wiki would work within a library in general. A lot of the wikis linked to on the Learning 2.0 blog certainly look interesting...but they don't seem to get a lot of traffic. I love the idea behind the "Library Success: A Best Practices Wiki"...but again, I can't help but notice that it's nowhere near as active as, say, the plain old forums over at LIS news. The main problem I have with wikis is that they don't work unless everyone pitches in and plays nice - and how often does that happen on the internet? As has been demonstarted with Learning 2.0, it can be hard to get everyone to work together on the same thing unless you make them, and when you make them, you're going to end up with a few participants who are...less than enthusiatic about the whole thing. Which, with wikis in particular, leads to junk postings, people deleting other entries accidentally or out of spite, and plenty of infighting. Of course, you can always create resrictions on who can post, what can be posted, and who can edit or remove other participants' entries, and you can have a group of users go through the entries from time to time and remove entries and/or participants who don't follow the rules. But...if you're going to do that, why not just set up a forum and be done with it?
In my experience, wikis tend to either go really well, and produce amazing results, or else they go very badly, and result in hurt feelings and flame wars. Or else, as is the case with the few I've set up with my on-line friends, they go well for a few weeks, and then everyone gets bored with them and moves on to something else.
To be honest, I'm not quite sure how a wiki would work within a library in general. A lot of the wikis linked to on the Learning 2.0 blog certainly look interesting...but they don't seem to get a lot of traffic. I love the idea behind the "Library Success: A Best Practices Wiki"...but again, I can't help but notice that it's nowhere near as active as, say, the plain old forums over at LIS news. The main problem I have with wikis is that they don't work unless everyone pitches in and plays nice - and how often does that happen on the internet? As has been demonstarted with Learning 2.0, it can be hard to get everyone to work together on the same thing unless you make them, and when you make them, you're going to end up with a few participants who are...less than enthusiatic about the whole thing. Which, with wikis in particular, leads to junk postings, people deleting other entries accidentally or out of spite, and plenty of infighting. Of course, you can always create resrictions on who can post, what can be posted, and who can edit or remove other participants' entries, and you can have a group of users go through the entries from time to time and remove entries and/or participants who don't follow the rules. But...if you're going to do that, why not just set up a forum and be done with it?
Tuesday, September 19, 2006
Oh no, the dreaded "read this and write out your thoughts on it" assignment. (Flashback to highschool)
Ah well. I thought Rick Anderson made some good points in his Away from the "Icebergs" piece. I think one of the hardest things for me...and any bibliophile to accept, is that digital resources are slowly growing in popularity over print materials. (Not that I'm entirely against the idea - the reader in me is already thrilled at the thought of someday being able to download any book, any time, anywhere!) As Anderson says, though, this doesn't have to mean disaster for libraries - it just means change.
I also agree that libraries need to get out of the "come to us" mindset. I think that PLCMC has already started doing this, with our on-line audiobooks, library MySpace accounts, and websites like Reader's Club. Of course, we can take it even further - I'd like to see PLCMC get more involved with e-books, MP3s, and digital news sources.
A point Anderson makes that I somewhat disagree with, though, is the reliance on user education. Yes, it would be wonderful if we could remove the barriers between people and the information they want to access, but those of us here in the trenches every day know that it's not so easy. No matter how user-friendly you make a site, you're always going to end up with a patron sitting at the computer saying "This screen says 'hit Enter,' and there's a diagram of the keyboard with the Enter key circled in red. What does that mean?" For every new piece of technology that comes out, there are thousands of people who need all the help they can get in understanding it, and I think the library is a wonderful place for those people to come. After all, what are we here for, if not to be a source of information? I would like to see more technology classes - maybe even classes geared towards adults on how to use basic library equipment. (I know we have some patrons here who would sign up!) I would also like to see better staffing solutions. At the beginning of this paragraph, Anderson says that libraries are "poorly equipped and insufficiently staffed for teaching." - I think that's the real iceberg. If the patron-to-librarian ratio is something like 680 to 1, then patrons coming in and needing personal help aren't going to get it, and they aren't going to come back.
And there's your two cents worth from a humble Library Assistant.
Ah well. I thought Rick Anderson made some good points in his Away from the "Icebergs" piece. I think one of the hardest things for me...and any bibliophile to accept, is that digital resources are slowly growing in popularity over print materials. (Not that I'm entirely against the idea - the reader in me is already thrilled at the thought of someday being able to download any book, any time, anywhere!) As Anderson says, though, this doesn't have to mean disaster for libraries - it just means change.
I also agree that libraries need to get out of the "come to us" mindset. I think that PLCMC has already started doing this, with our on-line audiobooks, library MySpace accounts, and websites like Reader's Club. Of course, we can take it even further - I'd like to see PLCMC get more involved with e-books, MP3s, and digital news sources.
A point Anderson makes that I somewhat disagree with, though, is the reliance on user education. Yes, it would be wonderful if we could remove the barriers between people and the information they want to access, but those of us here in the trenches every day know that it's not so easy. No matter how user-friendly you make a site, you're always going to end up with a patron sitting at the computer saying "This screen says 'hit Enter,' and there's a diagram of the keyboard with the Enter key circled in red. What does that mean?" For every new piece of technology that comes out, there are thousands of people who need all the help they can get in understanding it, and I think the library is a wonderful place for those people to come. After all, what are we here for, if not to be a source of information? I would like to see more technology classes - maybe even classes geared towards adults on how to use basic library equipment. (I know we have some patrons here who would sign up!) I would also like to see better staffing solutions. At the beginning of this paragraph, Anderson says that libraries are "poorly equipped and insufficiently staffed for teaching." - I think that's the real iceberg. If the patron-to-librarian ratio is something like 680 to 1, then patrons coming in and needing personal help aren't going to get it, and they aren't going to come back.
And there's your two cents worth from a humble Library Assistant.
Monday, September 18, 2006
Okay, I'll admit it, I blew Technorati off at first...but now that I've played with it more, I'm impressed. This is the first thing on the checklist to really intrigue me! (The first thing that I wasn't already aware of, that is...I do love my Librarything and Flickr accounts!) I really want to come back to this later and play around with it some more - but since I'm already behind on my checklist, I'll just stick to the basics for this post.
Searching for "Learning 2.0" in blog posts brought up 27,856 results - not surprising, as this lists any blog post with "learning" or "2.0" anywhere in its content. Searching for "Learning 2.0"brings up 11 results - several of which are blogs of PLCMC staff. (Hopefully I'll get my own up there too - as soon as I figure out why what I'm doing now isn't working!)
Messing around with the popular searches, tags, and blogs didn't really surprise me - some weird things came up, but that's pretty standard for any search you do anywhere on the Internet.
What a dry post this turned out to be - but I'm not through playing with this yet. I may have to come back and blog more about this later on...after I'm caught up on my checklist!
Technorati tag: PLCMCL2
Searching for "Learning 2.0" in blog posts brought up 27,856 results - not surprising, as this lists any blog post with "learning" or "2.0" anywhere in its content. Searching for "Learning 2.0"brings up 11 results - several of which are blogs of PLCMC staff. (Hopefully I'll get my own up there too - as soon as I figure out why what I'm doing now isn't working!)
Messing around with the popular searches, tags, and blogs didn't really surprise me - some weird things came up, but that's pretty standard for any search you do anywhere on the Internet.
What a dry post this turned out to be - but I'm not through playing with this yet. I may have to come back and blog more about this later on...after I'm caught up on my checklist!
Technorati tag: PLCMCL2
Sunday, September 17, 2006
Ah! I'm so far behind now - I didn't do anything at all last week! Well, not anything Learning 2.0 related, anyway. I kept busy at work...and there was my reading at the anniversary celebration for the Salem College Women's Writing Center on Tuesday. (Gack!) Regarding the reading...I did my best, but I was so outclassed it wasn't even funny! (The other four women were reading from poems they'd written as part of a Master's Thesis, or from stories that they'd won awards for, or from books they'd published - I was reading a crappy little story I'd struggled with for a week! Helphelphelp!) Ah well, it's over, and everyone was really nice to me...plus it was really inspiring to be around such amazing people. I hope I can be that talented, calm, and professional some day. (As it was, I did my pathetic reading, relaxed through the rest of the program, hung out a bit for everyone else's signings, then got overwhelmed and ran to hide out in the parking lot when too many people came up to congratulate me...*sigh*)
Anyway, enough about all that - on to my thoughts on Del.icio.us.
I don't really have all that much to say about it, other than that it's a fairly nifty little tool. I created an account for myself to mess around with, and although I haven't done much with it yet, I can see how it would be a great research tool. The main problem with standard bookmarks is that you can only access them from your PC - unless you're a nerd like me who saves them to a floppy and carts them around with you. (Haven't done that since college, though...:P) Del.icio.us lets you access your bookmarks from any computer - and also lets you see what other people are bookmarking. Obviously, this would be a great research tool for anyone using internet resources - and it's fun for those of us who just enjoy playing around on a lot of different sites. I'll probably continue to poke at it now and then - but I really can't see myself getting deeply involved in it or using it for anything other than its primary purpose: storing bookmarks. (I don't think I'll use it as a public wishlist, or a way to share links with family and friends without e-mailing them, to quote a few of the ways the site suggests using your account.)
As a side note - does anyone else have trouble remembering where the periods go when typing in the Del.icio.us site name? For a site that wants to replace my web bookmarks, it sure is hard to access it without bookmarking it!
Anyway, enough about all that - on to my thoughts on Del.icio.us.
I don't really have all that much to say about it, other than that it's a fairly nifty little tool. I created an account for myself to mess around with, and although I haven't done much with it yet, I can see how it would be a great research tool. The main problem with standard bookmarks is that you can only access them from your PC - unless you're a nerd like me who saves them to a floppy and carts them around with you. (Haven't done that since college, though...:P) Del.icio.us lets you access your bookmarks from any computer - and also lets you see what other people are bookmarking. Obviously, this would be a great research tool for anyone using internet resources - and it's fun for those of us who just enjoy playing around on a lot of different sites. I'll probably continue to poke at it now and then - but I really can't see myself getting deeply involved in it or using it for anything other than its primary purpose: storing bookmarks. (I don't think I'll use it as a public wishlist, or a way to share links with family and friends without e-mailing them, to quote a few of the ways the site suggests using your account.)
As a side note - does anyone else have trouble remembering where the periods go when typing in the Del.icio.us site name? For a site that wants to replace my web bookmarks, it sure is hard to access it without bookmarking it!
Thursday, September 07, 2006
Playing around with Rollyo today.
Hmm...as with bloglines, I think this one's a little overrated. Yes, it's nice to have a search engine that hunts through my favorite sites all at once...but I still prefer browsing through the sites themselves. (I guess I'm old-fashioned...is there an old-fashioned way to surf the web?)
At any rate, here's my own little Rollyo thingy; I threw one together for bargain anime, as that's what I generally shop for when I'm on-line. (I'd already made up my mind to have my search tool be shopping-related... don't ask.)
And...that's it for now. Still working on that 5 minute story. Ach, writer's block is a beast!
Hmm...as with bloglines, I think this one's a little overrated. Yes, it's nice to have a search engine that hunts through my favorite sites all at once...but I still prefer browsing through the sites themselves. (I guess I'm old-fashioned...is there an old-fashioned way to surf the web?)
At any rate, here's my own little Rollyo thingy; I threw one together for bargain anime, as that's what I generally shop for when I'm on-line. (I'd already made up my mind to have my search tool be shopping-related... don't ask.)
And...that's it for now. Still working on that 5 minute story. Ach, writer's block is a beast!
Wednesday, September 06, 2006
Yay for LibraryThing! I already have an account there - I discovered the site about a month before Learning 2.0 started. (So far I've only catalogued a few of my manga series and some books I recently bought, though) Nifty place - for those of us who are absent-minded, it's also a good way to keep track of what you have. (When you have as many books as I do, it's harder to keep track of them all than you'd think!)
Check out my LibraryThing account here, if you're interested. (I'm also in the group "Librarians who LibraryThing")
Check out my LibraryThing account here, if you're interested. (I'm also in the group "Librarians who LibraryThing")
Tuesday, September 05, 2006
Urgh, my brain is not cooperating right now. What I need to be doing is writing a 5-minute piece of celebration-themed fiction for the Salem College Women's Writing Center anniversary next Tuesday. (At which I am a guest speaker! Zoiks!) What I am doing is mucking about with my blog, because I have a nasty case of writer's block. (I've got the beginning of my story, I've got the ending, and I know roughly how I want it to play out - it's those bothersome middle bits that keep giving me trouble!)
Anyway, without further ado, here are the results of my messing around with image generators. (At least my mind's still capable of doing something semi-productive...)
Scary stuff! From Spelling with Zombies. I cheated a little, though...I didn't like the way the cut and paste link looked in the blog so I took a screencap of it, resized it, and uploaded it from my computer.
And one more...from a dynamic Einstein picture over at Hetemeel. You have to mess about with the text a bit or it overlaps his hands and head...but you can't go wrong with a picture of a slightly-guilty looking Einstein!
Anyway, without further ado, here are the results of my messing around with image generators. (At least my mind's still capable of doing something semi-productive...)
Scary stuff! From Spelling with Zombies. I cheated a little, though...I didn't like the way the cut and paste link looked in the blog so I took a screencap of it, resized it, and uploaded it from my computer.
And one more...from a dynamic Einstein picture over at Hetemeel. You have to mess about with the text a bit or it overlaps his hands and head...but you can't go wrong with a picture of a slightly-guilty looking Einstein!
Friday, September 01, 2006
Yay for Labor Day weekend! Three days off to...well...clean the apartment. Although if it stops raining for long enough I might head out here for a day hike. For now, though, there's a spot on the futon and a good book waiting for me!
Happy Labor Day Learning 2.0ers!
Happy Labor Day Learning 2.0ers!
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