Final Thoughts

Web 2.0 reflections
So - how do we continue this learning experience. That mantra
"embrace continuous change" has stayed with me as a very important concept (one that I don’t always like). This class was relatively short, with 11 week session - well I guess there 29 subcomponents. Would it be something such as a group of learners working on a common wiki or blog, posting information they believe the rest of the group should know about. For instance, I came across an article in Discover magazine, that showed a pic of the "Blogosphere", similar to a starscape at night or similar to a cluster of neural networks -showing the various types of linkages: popular sites such as DailyKos ; porn, sports, one-way linkages, etc (http://www.personaldemocracy.com/files/blogosphere%20network%20map-1-tm.jpg ).

You’d need a way to limit some of the “trivia” from being posted and from people wasting your time, by posting for the sake of posting. I guess you'd figure out who's posts are worthwhile reading. For example, there's one person on Genealogy listserve whose posts I always read no matter the subject. But, currently I delete most of the emails on this listserve, sometimes I scan a bit, but at the moment its creating more noise than its worth. This interesting and intelligent listserver will retire someday; and surely there’s more than 1 person with consistent intelligent posts on this listserve. I started off reading other library staff's weblogs, but a certain percentage of what gets posted is just filling space to meet the requirements (myself included) of the assignments, sometimes superficial or reflective - and these were worthy assignment, useful for the individual to digest what was learned - kinda like keeping a journal of reading assignments for a class, it furthered my own understanding of the topic, but one probably would Not bring up for discussion every fleeting thought you jotted down.

Did we miss any topic? hmm none that I can think of. I do wish the class had been more interactive, I really miss the F2F interactions. I learn stuff way more quickly when in real time F2F. I did ask different classmates for help, but while those who’d already completed the assignment, could offer some compassion “yeah, I found that part difficult, wish I could help you”...” they often couldn’t tell me the specifics I needed. Often to learn things you need repetition, right now I have the knowledge that I was capable of doing a given task, and that for the most part I could probably play around with the tools and recreate it for a patron or myself.

YouTube, Podcasts, & Ebooks

Here is the link to a video I liked (we've taken lessons from the dude when he's been in this neck of the woods.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1420867159848572449&q=lindy+silton
There's a lot of really poor dance videos where you can't really see the dancers movements, and then there's a lot of good photography (or videography) for Ballroom type swing dancing, with fru-fru moves and fru-fru costumes. Here's another link these 2 guys' clip shows up several times on the web http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWYZM4Wj7ZI.

Well - the podcast search engines sure are helpful. Larry has listened to Science Friday podcasts dafter ownloaded them, but they're so short, I find them annoying. I occasionally need a fix of spirituality, and know where some medium short sermons my national church has on their website. But Podcast Directory steered me to a whole new set of inspirations. Only problem is they wouldn't play on my itunes - I thought I'd downloaded them (though that seemed to go too quickly). Unfortunately, the only stuff on crocheting (or knitting) was an advertisement, hmm too bad. Podcast.net seemed pretty easy to navigate, Podcast Alley wanted me to download something I wasn't sure I wanted; PodcastYahoo was also easy. I guess these
sites work more like directories, because when I searched on "Epigenetics" I didn't find but one incomprehensible article. Yet when I browsed through Nova articles, the very 1rst one dealt with Epigenetics, though as far as I could tell the others didn't. Of course I couldn't get that one to play on my computer.

I've checked out ebooks in the past, just to know how to use them when patrons ask. You won't catch me reading an ebook anytime soon though, the computer screen glare is too much on the eyes. Until the technology improves, patrons will continue to prefer print over digital reading material. On a related note, the glare from TV screens is thought to mess with a person's daily melatonin cycle/production and linked to early puberty in girls; some recommend no TV before age 3.

Online Aps/Google Labs/Best of the Web

Online Aps: Software Updates - Not having to worry about these wouldbe wonderful. I've seen my husband struggle with various nastyramifications due to updates. Our bank changed their software fordisplay of customer accounts – the new display unfortunately wasincompatible with our version of Quicken. Since we could No longerdownload our banking data, we switched to another bank and they lost acustomer. Their attitude seemed to be that everyone should own thelatest version of whatever software. But we've had too much troublewith updated software (plus it may have cost us), that workedperfectly fine until the update. We updated our BroderbundArchitecture software program and to our dismay found many of theprocesses absent or at least not "findable" by us. We refuse toupdate some of our software programs because who knows what changesthe programmers have wrought. OK, I'm off on a bit of a rant or digression here.

I Love the Color options (this would be in color except, well my computer won't let me open my blog page {in addition to not opening Mobius searches while still in MrrlCatalog search frames) - so I emailed my stuff to my home email and lost the color - I should have trusted the online docs and wouldn't have lost formatting). At present I use my email to write stuff down that I want to retrieveon another computer – I can see where it'd be real useful forwriters/authors. I see that Zoho has Online Database applications – h'm that could bereal handy for creating an inhouse index of the newspapers orsomething like that. PS – My Gmail account doesn't have the term "all my services" on thewebpage, there is a direct link to Documents at the top.
There are certain documents that I add to while at work, because I've saved them at Mrrl (like books to read) but if I use an online doc, I won't have to email myself new entries, nor would I have to take up precious space on our server).

Google Labs: Eric made the Google Notebook sound fun and interesting. And after I figured out how to use them correctly (by the way, I don't have totype in a label and url on a separate web-tab) I found them to be realcool and an improvement over, bookmarks or Favorites (which I tend touse them less often). I can see where they'd be very useful forplanning a trip, you don't want a permanent file, but something youcould come back to easily while researching your trip, and perhapsconsult en route if you have access. Notebooks could be kinda like myhomepage where not only do the url links have different labels,visually everything is laid out on a "normal" looking webpage (h'msurprised to find I have an idea about what is normal looking for awebpage). That said, I really wish Google would incorporate more tab navigation, I have tendonitis problems with my wrists, and if I can avoid using the mouse I put less stress on my wrists.
I tried out Google's Book search, searching on "Rubber Stamps". Initially I thought Wow –they have a lot of free books, then realized "Oh, nope these are for-purchase books, with teasers ".
Lastly, I tried GoogglePages. The hardest part of this feature was navigating back to the site where it can be edited. I looked forever on the Google list of "products" and couldn't find it again. Eventually, I navigated from my gmail-page using the link entitled "myservices" and was able to edit again. It is much easier to edit webpages in this manner. I added a couple gadgetsincluding: a GoogleSearch tool (so I don't have to navigate away to another page to do a search); a Cat (ie Maukie) whose eyes follow the cursor around the page; and also a "Bestof the Day National Geographic" pic. I'd like to be able to manipulate these gadgets more – minimize the GoogleSearch tool (I could go to the trouble of doing it in HTML) – but I realize that this is open source and you get what is freely out there.

WebAwards – For some reason, I was surprised to find there might be more sites like LibraryThing, that functioned like LibraryThing. Actually, onlyReader2Reader had much similarity – and I didn't like the layout as much. Lulu was pretty cool as a publishing site where anyone could publish and fees would only be taken from sales – I also listened to some awful music and some not too bad stuff, at Reader2Reader. I looked at several other of these web-award pages, like the Best of Discover mag stories, etc. Cool stuff, but kinda short or abbreviated.

Web 2.0 and Search engines

I like that line “embracing constant change”, a critical component of our lives will be constant change, with technology ever-evolving, partly due to improvements and partly to planned obsolescence. I guess the more I start wiring my brain in that the direction the easier it will get (that and meditation of course J )

Icebergs: I think we can weed a lot of the 800’s, they especially seem to be geared toward the “just in case” notion, that someone would actually want to read a classic – I guess this weeding should extend beyond the 800’s to include current “classics”, such as the Public Library Catalog items. Anything failing to circulate well out it goes. I don’t think we’re ready to get rid of books just yet. Looking at 2005-2006 data, only 2 groups from the Jeff Adult (400’s & 500’s) showed a slight drop in circs. Even across AV, only Books on Tape showed a decrease in total circs (a difference more than made up for by BCD circs).
Reliance on user-education: I frequently have a hard time getting patrons to stick with me to get complete instructions on where an item is located, let alone provide in-depth user-education Ha! So I totally agree with the argument that, while patron education is great, there are Way too many patrons to educate about changes in interfaces and how to use different tools to obtain the most benefit. Lets change the interface.

Listening to users: I think it is interesting to see how much libraries actually honestly listen to users, and the extent to which we just want to let users think that they have been heard. For example, the Ashland Public library hired an architect before they had consultations with the users – you’d think they’d want to get some input from the public about the feel of the new building to help them decide which architectural firm to choose.

Cooperation: I think it would be useful to have patrons contribute to keyword searching by adding tags. Series title help would be great. I wonder if its feasible to devise a method whereby patrons can help us with series titles, it would require some degree standardization built into the program. You wouldn’t want Mercedes Lackey’s series Valdemar categorized as Valdamar by some misspeller.

Broadening Relevance Ranking: At the moment we’re using circulation activity as a main indicator of relevance in deciding what to weed, where to allocate more funding, etc. I think this is heading in the right direction, but # of circs only indicates the number of people who check the item out. This is Not the same as reading the whole thing. I’ve checked out many a book that turns out to be too tedious to finish. What circs may indicate is how attractively an item is packaged.


Search Engines: Google, Ask Yahoo, Live Search, , , Wisenut: broke down by different phrases – seen these before. Exalead: nice that it breaks it down by site type, such as a blog, also find a lot more commercial sites, also nice to see a minimized screen of the different websites instead of just text. Gigablast: seem to have a lot of duplicates, less interesting hits retrieved, still getting new and different sites though.

Play Week and ImageGenerators

Interesting all that is available to play with, I'd expect some of them to be a little more elaborate - like the map image generator. Though the map does make it look like I've traveled to Hawaii (which sadly I have not) and to some islands above Sweden and Norway.

By tasteful, does that mean "Non-Political"? but isn't the abscence of politics an endorsement of the status quo? and thus in and of itself political? like PBS choosing to air Masterpiece theatre supported by Mobil Oil airing films dealing with issues far removed, instead of some of the earlier film projects supported by the Ford Foundation dealing with topics such as racism, civil rights issues closer to home? Alas my masterpieces will remain unveiled.

I thought the Clippy http://www.imagegenerator.net/create/clippy/ was fun, though to make the most of many of these image generators you need to have some comic flair.

I've seen some of this before with email Cards, where you fill in the name and details.

All in all a fairly easy assignment, maybe I've overlooked something?

RSS Feeds

Why is the website I use to check my various rss feeds called “Bloglines”? shouldn’t it be called reader or readerlines or aggregator? [I like my concepts to be really clearly distinct, not fuzzy].
I notice other tabs besides Feeds on the Bloglines page. I presume these enable one to get RSS feeds in the format of pictures as well audio?

I signed myself up for 19 different feedlines. Its kinda cool that you can go to a particular feed and see all these news articles, and you don't have to read them all, just the ones that grab you (or the ones that you should read). One of the feeds I signed up for is "Scientific American" and includes book reviews (except the books different science magazines review span a broad spectrum, including books across the Dewey spectrum: 100's, 300's 600's, 900's). Is it too much to ask to get just the book reviews, I mean is it possible to narrow the scope of the feedline...I guess it depends on what the initial site offers, like to what extent they break it down. What I would like is a tool that allows you to select whatever specific websites you want regardless of whether or not the site has fixed things on their end.

As an aside there's a teen book called FEED, its a dystopia, where everybody's brain is hooked up to the web, where people can carry on private chats, and where most of what is "fed" to people (the dystopic part) is consumer adverts.

Flickr & Mashups

Well I uploaded a number of photos from my new house onto flickr to show colleagues. Wow – being able to geographically map your photos could be very useful, especially if you’ve traveled the world, and want to remember for yourself, or brag to others where you’ve been. Although I myself have Not gotten into scrapbooking, it does seem like you could create something very similar with Flickr photosharing. It would lose that tactile dimension – which I’ve seen beautifully illustrated in artistic journals (and tackily/garishly illustrated in some scrapbooks). One drawback to the online version is Not always being present when another person views your images. I’ve put up photos of my new house, and I really want to be there, in person, to show folks the cool new house, to SHARE in the experience. I suppose I’m limiting myself geographically though. I keep losing my brother’s email address, I don’t have one of my best friends' email addresses who lives on the other side of the country, though I speak with her on the phone regularly. I could be sharing more though. Perhaps some of my initial attempts at online photo-sharing (I put together a website of my wedding photos) fell flat, because the users on the other end were older and not internet savvy. Here is a link to this picture on my flickr account (in case you need it for evidence) http://www.flickr.com/photos/60613275@N00/361903874/ [I'm not always sure I'm fulfilling all the requirements, (perhaps I make up for it in online verbosity :) )].

H’mm reading what you wrote about photo crediting online. I’m not quite sure who all took the pictures of the new house, some were taken by me, some by my daughter, some by my husband, all on our family camera. H’m I’ve seen a couple different online photos of myself, where I did Not give my permission; it’s probably a lot easier for someone with a uniquely spelled name like my own to find these pic s. I used to think you could find most anything with Google. But when you perform a search on Flickr you find stuff that Google misses. For example Google fails to retrieve/find one of the photos of moi that is on flickr (that I didn’t know about till now). [And Igads! the number of links/hits that google retrieves on me is just obnoxious (and has grown exponentially since MrrlLearning posts), maybe I should change my name to Mary Smith or maybe even Bill Rogers :) ]

Mashups: H'm, still unclear after reading Wikipedia definition. The color picker tool is cool, I like the fact that you can adjust the white-black (or tint-shade) dimension in addition to the hue, still need to be able to adjust for saturation. But even with a saturation tool, it still leaves a lot to be desired if your looking for a particular image. How would it be useful, say if I were looking for a desert picture, and wanted the color ocher to predominate? When I select different ocher colors form the tool, I don't find real appealing photos/pics. Ideally you would also be able to control/select for complexity of the image, and maybe have a couple of different hues that you wanted to predominate, not just say ocher. Also most of the pics I retrieved were close-ups of smaller objects like rope, or mud-cracks, or wood-grain. Small objects can be very interesting, but if I'm looking for say a background wallpaper for my computer, I usually prefer larger vistas, or at a minimum room to building-sized layouts. Perhaps scale is the dimension I'm after here.

However, another colr pickr tool, the "Crayola Box" one seemed to access larger scale pics - however, it seemed to be drawing from only one users' collection of images. Yet another colr pickr tool "Flickr Central Experimental" seemed to select from many more users' collections.

The fact that none of these tools are great at searching for images, that searching with specific words, with text that is, gets you better results, makes me wonder about the structure of our brains, that we are wired for verbal processing. I've heard it argued that people dream in words, although I remember specific scenes/images. Or maybe it speaks less to the structure of our brains, and more to the structure of computer and software. Sorry I'm afraid this last part isn't real clear...