Thing 10

Downloadable eBooks and eAudiobooks…they haven’t quite caught on with me yet. I find electronic books to be too sterile; scrolling through text is just not the same to me as turning physical pages. I tried an eBook on my Palm a few years ago but I didn’t find it enjoyable at all. Also, while audio books may be handy for some, I find that I can’t immerse myself fully into an audio book if I am listening to them while driving or some other activity.

I tried some eAudiobook downloads from both of our digital sources; I found the download process a bit cumbersome and ran into a problem. While I successfully downloaded three children’s audio titles from the North Suburban Digital Consortium, I discovered that I had “insufficient privileges” to install the proprietary OverDrive software necessary to listen to them on my Library computer…bummer. I was able to download a few titles from NetLibrary without much of an issue, however. After creating an account, I was easily able to get the eAudiobooks downloaded and up and running on my computer with Windows Media Player. Not usable on iPods! That’s a shame. With iPod’s overwhelming market share, we are missing out on a lot of potential eDownloads.

As discussed in earlier postings, I think that there are several Things that we’ve learned in our technology training that could be incorporated into SPL’s virtual library branch – IM, podcasts, collaborative documents & blogs, and community driven wikis. Another idea that has intrigued me came after reading LibrarianInBlack’s blog suggestion about diversifying a library’s web presence by creating a MySpace account. How cool (and engaging) could that be for teens? Link a few appropriate Library resources which would then, hopefully, lure them into the virtual or physical Library.

Many thanks to the 10 Things team. I had a lot of fun with these exercises and learned a lot of cool new technology. It has prompted a lot of thought on how we can make the Library’s ever-changing web presence more dynamic and valuable to our patrons.

Thing 9

I have only used a handful of Google’s products prior to the 10 Things exercises – the web search tools (including photo and video), tool bar, maps, Earth – but those that I have used, I’ve used often. The mapping program has been extremely useful and has easily overtaken Mapquest as my favorite, especially with the addition of the satellite and street views. Over the last five weeks, the 10 Things experience has pretty much doubled my Google abilities with the addition of GMail, Blogger, Talk, Reader, and now Docs skills.

After playing around with a shared document (with 8 others) on Google Docs, I find I have mixed feelings about the tool. It is great being able to work together on a document, but I found the word processing power of Google Docs, at least in its current state, a bit too basic. I suppose that it could work well, however, for creating and editing a collaborative library blog.

More later.

Thing 8

Until now, my only contact with wikis was the online encyclopedia Wikipedia. I have used it a handful of times, but mostly as a quickie tool for fact corroboration. I tend to steer students away from it and to our extensive, and reputable, list of homework help links.

I checked out a couple of the public library wikis found on the 10 Things "librarywikis" bookmark on del.icio.us; both chose a slightly different route for their use of wikis as an outlet to distribute information. St. Joseph County Public Library used their wiki to provide a collection-based subject guide to patrons. Editable by librarians only, this example shows how wikis could be used by a group – librarians – to effectively collaborate as a staff to create web content. I preferred the wiki in use by the Pierce County Library where they allow the community to contribute content. Similar to the 10 Things wiki, the PCL’s wiki allows patrons to comment on favorite books, movies, games, and music, as well as my favorite, “Why I love libraries.” I like how this wiki shares the responsibility of information distribution with the public.

It would be interesting to see SPL test the concept of radical trust and offer a community-based wiki where patrons could comment on their favorites. I think a wiki could help to strengthen the public’s connection to the Library.

More later.

Thing 7

It’s taken me a week to play around with, or should I say, stop playing around with Podcasting. I kept finding more things of interest to listen to as I explored the directory sites. This Thing was very cool, and something that I had not delved into before now. I very much like the ability to listen to, or learn from, a program at my own convenience. I also did not realize that there was such an immense variety of podcasts available.

I subscribed to Denver Public Library’s podcasts from the libsucess.org site. The DPL has been posting podcasts since August 2006, primarily from their children’s department, and includes offerings such as nursery rhymes, stories, and folk-/fairytales. I can see libraries also making podcasts available to their patrons for major programs, guest speakers, author visits, book/movie/music reviews, etc. Can’t make that library program because of a conflicting schedule? Find that a program is full? No problem! Listen to it later when you have the time. Nice.

Number 15 on Learn Out Loud’s list of most popular podcasts, NPR’s Fresh Air, was a personal choice. I enjoy Terry Gross’ radio interviews of contemporary artists; recent discussions about Bruce Springsteen and with Dave Grohl were a treat. I find, however, that I prefer NPR’s Fresh Air RSS feeds since each day’s hour-long program is broken down into individual audio stories. It is easier for me to pick and choose the stories that interest me rather than having to listen to the full program.

More later.

Thing 6

It’s been a while since my last Thing post. I’ve found that as I learn more Things, I am compelled to go back and explore them in greater detail. I have spent the last few days browsing and commenting on staff blogs, perusing shared photos, and reading my feeds.

Social bookmarking is a new Web 2.0 concept for me. I can definitely see its usefulness. Having a web-based bookmark list would come in handy as I would be able to organize and access often used links whether I was at my desk, the YS Desk, or at home. The ability to tag items, whether it is for photos or web links, is proving pretty beneficial.

I added a link to del.icio.us for Allmusic.com, which is one of my favorite music sites. It turned out to be quite an unoriginal link as over 6600 people have also posted this site. Also, I noticed that the tag “library” made del.icio.us’ Tag Cloud, but it runs near the middle of the pack in terms of popularity. Maybe it will move up to the boldface ranks as more of us finish this Thing.

This was a fun one. I ended up lingering on del.icio.us for quite some time exploring some of our shared posts. I’ll definitely be back to check it out again.

More later.

More Musings on IM

My seventh grader has become enamored by IM over the last few weeks; his dabbling beginning shortly before our 10 Things program, and my experimenting, began. He was troubled by having to choose between either Yahoo or Aim as his main IM vehicle…that is, until I tipped him off to Meebo. Now he’s able to connect with both sets of friends without missing any of the action.

Last night, I witnessed the power of IM that had me pretty impressed. I caught my son IMing a friend when he was supposed to be working on homework, or so I thought. It turned out that they were helping each other with their homework – math help coming my son’s way, and social studies help traded in return. Pretty cool! I imagine it could be similarly helpful for Library patrons and reference questions.

More later.

Thing 5

Curious George & TMITYH
Originally uploaded by theskokieten

I’ve used Flikr on occasion over the last year or so, often to view various SPL programming photos, but haven’t taken the opportunity until now to try it out from the poster’s perspective. It was pretty straightforward for me to upload my photo to the 10 Things account and connect it with several tags. It turns out that there are already quite a few public pictures tagged “Skokie Public Library,” “Skokie,” and even “Curious George”; however, there are only three pix of TMITYH – go figure! Also, I found the ability to add notes to various areas of the photo is quite appealing.

For this exercise, I did find it a bit awkward to post my photo and blog entry via Flickr. I would think that you would be able to add the photo directly from Blogger. I’ll have to look into this…

Lastly, I imagine that one useful way for the Library to use Flikr would be to promote events using tags such as “Skokie Public Library” or “SPL events.”

More to come.