Are You Talking to Me?

I've really enjoyed the podcasts I've listened to, but as with everything else in the wide, wide world of the web, there are just too many of them. I find myself weeks behind in listening to the ones that interest me and then just skip them. I've enjoyed All About Books from NET Radio (an NPR station) and the Atlantic Free Press always has something interesting to say, but... Where do I find the time? In theory I like the idea of using my Ipod, but in practice that takes too much time too. So...

For libraries I have thought it useful to have a podcast that walks a patron through a process. Think of museums and the walkmans they give you to listen to as you walk through an exhibition. That would be helpful for larger libraries in a physical sense. But also helpful would be online podcasts to help a patron search for job sites or walk them through setting up a Yahoo email account. Would they solve everything? Probably not, but they could certainly become a tool in our arsenal.

My Space or Yours?

I used to be more of a proponent for libraries creating a presence in these social realms but in thinking about how much libraries should participate, I kept coming back to a comment I read somewhere. Could have been on a blog or in an email or something a project player said. I don't remember that, but the comment stuck.

Their analogy went something like this: Having a library presence on MySpace and Facebook or other mostly social networks was like being a librarian walking into a bar and giving a presentation about library services. Certainly you may find customers who've never used the library or don't know about your services, but are they people who want to be found? Do they want to hear all about your library while they're socializing?

I'm not arguing against all efforts to network in these social settings. We do visit groups to tell them all about the library when we're asked - the key is being asked. But I don't expect much from them either. What I do argue is that there are networking places that may be a better fit for libraries. If you want to catch people socially, how about meeting them through books on GoodReads?

Am I off the mark here?

Keeping a List and Checking it Twice

I'll admit that while I think Jott and Remember the Milk are cool online gadgets, they don't do much for me. The issue is probably in how many things they do rather then in how few. Both have lots of fun aspects and with a little more exploring I'd probably find even more, but when I need to list something, I really just want the list - on the back of a bank envelope or a scrap of paper usually. In the past I have played around with Ta-Da Lists but even that - which is a little more basic in its service - is one of the online tools that I've left behind.

I will keep these sites in mind and will perhaps come up with a use for them in the future. But for now I think I'll stick to the scraps of paper I can stick in a pocket.

Writing the Web Way

I've been using Google Docs for a while now and have been happy overall. In the past, at my library I might find myself on any of four or five different desks and my work tended to get spread out. If I wanted to work on a particular project it always took me a minute to figure out which machine or floppy disc I'd stored it on. When we first got USB's, my problem was mostly solved. They hold a lot of data, are small and portable, and can be plugged in to all the machines. But...I still had to remember to unplug it at this machine so that I'd have it handy for the next. And if the PC I was on didn't have the application I needed for my project, then I was out of luck. To add insult to injury, I lost the darn thing (I think I left a pocket on my backpack unzipped!) and there went all my work. Luckily most of it was also backed up on the PC at my desk. Unluckily my updates weren't all as updated as they could be.

Given my experience I decided to give Google Docs a try. Voila! Problems solved - for the most part. Is Google Docs perfect? No. It sometimes has some wonky editing and formatting. And experimenting with the slideshow in this week's coursework made me realize it can freeze up as well (as Pinky said). And transferring back and forth between Google Docs and Word and other applications doesn't always go as smoothly as I'd like (formatting again). The other reservation I have relates to the security. Though I love the ease of access and use, I don't include any documents that are confidential or extremely private. Do I think Google Docs is secure? Sure. But only in as much as anything is secure out there on the big bad web.

But small issues aside, it's been great to have my documents available whichever machine I happen to be on. I like the blending of blogging tools with the word processing. I also appreciate the ability to share documents with co-workers for collaborative projects.

As a final note, may I suggest that those who are new to this Google tool check out some of the other tools also available. I'm regularly using the Google Calendar as well.

And on the Eighth Day, God Created Instant Messaging

I didn't have much luck with Meeboing Me, but was able to successfully chat with a co-worker. Of course our chat went something like this:

Me: hey, I'm chatting with you
Her: cool
Me: look I've changed the color of my font
Her: me too and look I'm typing it with my fav font
Me: cool man i see why people give up on the caps and use lol's

Well, you probably get the picture. First chats are always about as edifying as that, but having practiced a little bit now I can definitely see the benefits of connecting with co-workers or the public using the easy Meebo interface. Madison might use it as a way for the lone reference worker in a branch to get additional assistance for tough questions if the staff at other locations were online in Meebo. For the public it's got a couple of benefits, the first would be the easy access to staff if we started using it. The second could be to use Meebo to cover their chat if they're not able to get into Yahoo or AOL from the public machines (which are usually a mixed bag in terms of the updates).

Good opener for semester 2 and thanks to the Sloganizer for my blog post title.

Here a Wiki, There a Wiki, Everywhere a Wiki, Wiki

I did the actual assignment for the Wiki week on the first day of the week - posted MPL's link into the City of Madison Wiki Entry and re-posted it when it didn't seem to work the first time - but didn't actually blog about my efforts. So here I am blogging...

I do think Wiki's can be very useful for library work and wish that we all had more time to create the content necessary to make a Wiki that's appealing and utilitarian. One use I know we've thought of at MPL is to create a circulation manual with a wiki. Because Madison has multiple locations and the circ staff is never all in one place at one time, communication of policy changes can be tough. A wiki would allow live changes to a policy and everyone would have access to the latest, most recent information. In a broader sense, the same would hold true for libraries who wanted to make a wiki their library web site.

The beauty of a wiki is that anyone can make the changes as they occur. Contrast that with the old/current way of distributing memos, emails, even phone calls. In all of those cases the person seeking the information needs to be able to find it in a timely fashion and has to know that it's the most up-to-date information.

The trouble with wikis is that you need to have the 3 C's in place before you can get started. Having run a library blog for over a year now I can tell you my theory of the 3 C's. The C's are Commitment, Content and Contributors. If you're missing any of the three, a wiki (or a library blog) won't work.

• Commitment has to come from the people running the wiki but it also has to come from the powers-that-be in your location. Because the C's take staff time, management needs to be behind the effort before it can even get off the ground.



• Content sounds so obvious, but without content a wiki is pretty useless. And by content, I don't mean a few lists of things or your intentions to add things at a future date. Adding content needs to happen before a wiki is even shared and it needs to be updated regularly and continuously.



• Contributors may be your toughest C of all. You'll find that people will volunteer with all the best intentions in the world and then their other work duties intervene (this has certainly happened to me) and suddenly contributing to the wiki moves further and further down the list of things they may need to get done on any given day. If this happens often enough, suddenly your content evaporates. A way to balance the very real fact that other work will most definitely outweigh the wiki for importance is to get as many contributors as you can and to try and create a structure for their posting to the wiki. perhaps they need to commit to once a week or every other week, of if it works better to commit to being responsible for a particular area of the wiki.

Whatever is decided for a library wiki, staff needs to make sure they have the basic ground rules worked out before getting started.

When You Say Del.icio.us, You've Said it All

I used the sloganizer to come up with a title for this post and had to decide between this one and "the gods made del.icio.us". I decided that while the techie people who designed the social bookmarking site are probably pretty smart and special, I don't think I can quite classify them as gods yet.

I've become familiar with tags over the last couple of years but truthfully can not find a use for del.icio.us in my repertoire of web tools personally. I know all the arguments but really have few bookmarks that I need to take with me from computer to computer and the ones I do need I can generally either remember or find as necessary. And while I did set up an account as part of this week's assignment, I wasn't able to add the buttons to my work computer because it requires installation and only the automation gurus are able to do that. Without the buttons on the toolbar, adding links becomes much harder.

That's not to say del.icio.us isn't of use to libraries. In fact our library is working on converting our web page links into del.icio.us (as an aside I have to say that typing that name each time is sort of a pain - can I just call it Delish?) bookmarks which would hopefully be editable by anyone on staff once they are set up. That would mean that if I found a cool new consumer site, I could add it to our reference links/Delish bookmarks rather then having to contact the library web masters.

Will I use my personal Delish account? Doubtful. But it was fun to explore it a little more and the whole idea of tagging in this weeks' assignment.