23 Anaheim things?

Well, it's ALA eve at the Quality Inn Main Gate. Photo is very good--perfect PR angle. Boyfriend, dog and I arrived a suppertime, after grueling traffic. Everyone was out of sorts. We supped at Chu's Wok Inn (so-so Cantonese) sans dog. Now they are both collapsed on the bed while I organize, or try. I forgot the camera. And my book. Therefore I will not sleep for a bit. I think it's mostly ok. Tomorrow, a rented scooter will arrive. I'm a bit nervous about how that will work. We shall see. The main SDCL Conference blog is here and quite formal. I thought I'd try my posts as I go here.

Thing 23--The FINISH LINE

23. Summarize your thoughts about this program on your blog.

In checking to see that I had actually done all of the other 22 Things (one of the payments for going out of order), I had many chances to revisit what I liked, didn't like, etc. Plus what I didn't get to: if you want to know the only library use I found for twitter, email me.

The time constraints were difficult. I originally said I would set aside one to one and a half hours a week to work on this. Of course, there were some weeks when I just did not have a spare 5 minutes. There were also many weeks when I thought the Things were too interesting to leave alone and gladly spent my own free time to work on them. Not every student is going to want to do that. (Note: I have no idea how much time I should allot to training this week :D) My boyfriend did NOT approve.

I found my Learning Contract this week accidentally (it was in the Program Expenses file?). I had correctly identified time as my main obstacle, and told myself to find off-desk time, attention/focus, and access to the office PC. I have to report that these things did work a bit for me. My co-workers have been great about giving me time--now I know I can ask when I need it. My attention and focus have been pretty good. Once you have played with enough of these Things, you learn to stay on track. Or you make your boyfriend mad, don't meet deadlines, etc. ANYTHING that helps me with time management is GOOD. So that was an unexpected side benefit.

One of my thoughts is that I'd like to keep on mentoring others doing this challenge. I think a more active leader could really help. I hated hearing people say they were stuck on stuff or lost or whatever. Now that I'm done, I don't want to lose these skills. So I'm going to see if I can find a way to keep this going.

One of the reasons I wanted to do this course was I hoped it would be a way to get to know more people at SDCL. It was, but on a fairly limited basis. I think the decision to do our posting by email was a mistake. Subscribing to all the blogs with an aggregator really worked for me to see what others were doing--Outlook just doesn't have the same functionality for links, images, etc. Meanwhile, now I'm going to miss keeping up with some of 23 Thingers--I already have informal plans with a couple. The interactivity is my fave aspect of library 2.0. I would like to see more interactivity with my colleagues, as well as our customers!

When I read Walt Crawford's article (see Thing 15), I started to wonder 1)why did InfoPeople suggest an article so opposed to the "Library 2.0" bandwagon and 2)why were we all doing these Things?

I went back to the FAQ

There is a lot of buzz in the library press about Web 2.0 and its impact on libraries. The California State Library believes that Web 2.0, and the social software that it has given birth to, has tremendous transformational potential, perhaps second only to the introduction of the Internet itself. In recognition of the importance of Web 2.0, the State Library has made a special grant award to Infopeople for a series of FREE training events titled Moving Libraries Forward to Web 2.0.

I think staying fresh on new technology is important in our line of work. We need to know what our most "permaconnected" users want and need. In part because we need to serve them, but more because things trickle down from the early adopters. I didn't want to touch a computer when I was in college. I keep wishing I could find that boyfriend-with-the-incredibly-common-name who tried so hard to get me interested. YOU WERE RIGHT! I also thought iPods were kind of stupid less than three years ago. Now, you will take mine from my cold dead ears.

The fun aspect of 23 Things is important, too. Having fun helps us learn, and opens us up to innovations. Many of the 23 Things left me cold, and/or I never saw any compelling way to use them in libraries. But other people have. Great! Let's keep the candles burning.

So, let's make our online presence vital, let's reach out to our communities and start two-way discussions, let's look at new services, let's look at existing services in new and different ways. In the words of one of my top ten favorite biblioblogs, It's All Good.

Now I'm not going to touch a computer for at least ten minutes :D

Thing 21--Podcasts

21. Discover some useful search tools for locating podcasts.

First thing I see when I click on the link is "Yahoo! apologizes deeply, but we will be closing down the Podcasts site on Oct. 31, 2007".

I only looked at the Yahoo site a little--since it is going away, I didn't want to waste time learning it.

There's some analysis at TechCrunch:

There is no official word from Yahoo as to why the site is shutting, aside from a message at the top of Yahoo Podcasts that reads “Yahoo! apologizes deeply, but we will be closing down the Podcasts site on Oct. 31, 2007.”

Other podcast directories have struggled as a medium that years ago held so much promise was surpassed by the rise of video. Odeo was acquired from investors, then sold off, then acquired another podcast directory called FireAnt; and more recently the podcast provider/ directory Podshow is rumored to be closing a third round of funding this week as they run short of money.

Yahoo Podcasts joins the ever growing Yahoo graveyard along with Yahoo Bill Pay (announced in July for Sep/ Oct shutdown) and the hat trick of closures in May of Yahoo Auctions, WebJay and Yahoo Photos. Yahoo Podcasts joins the TechCrunch Deadpool.

TechCrunch is a "is a weblog dedicated to obsessively profiling and reviewing new Internet products and companies. In addition to new companies, we will profile existing companies that are making an impact (commercial and/or cultural) on the new web space."--semiuseful in our line of work.

Doing a Google search on "search podcasts", I found podcastalley.com which looks like a portal like Yahoo; and Podscope a search engine that "Podscope lets you search the spoken word for audio and video that interests you." I tooled around in Podscope a little, but was unable to understand where my search results led me. I wandered around blindly a bit. I have enjoyed some podcasts I've heard, but the more unprofessional ones, which are rampant, leave me feeling a bit cold toward the experience. This made me think a portal like Podcastalley would be better. However, Podcastalley doesn't let you listen to a lot of clips to see how much you like them. It makes you subscribe using a podcast aggregator. Too much work for me! Plus the few I did listen to were really obviously commercial marketing. Oh well. Next!

Thing 18--Google Documents for productivity

I discovered Google documents a while ago, as I am a completely devoted fan of Gmail. It's been fairly useful when I've had to do some documents with my daughter in Japan. However, as I discovered when I did my ALA schedule in their spreadsheet, they do not play all that well with others. It was a ton of work to export a spreadsheet usable in Excel, or even as an email attachment. So it's just great if you are going to be working with a document in a web-based online environment, but may not be the solution for all business needs.

That said, it's a whole lot cheaper than licenses for Microsoft Office, and it doesn't take up a ton of room on your hard drive. I've also used it to park some really large attachments that I didn't want to save in email.It does that very nicely and seamlessly.

I hadn't really used Google Docs since July, so it didn't fill a crucial need for me. But I can imagine library customers finding it very useful. The sharing thing is particularly great for students doing short-term team projects.

I notice I do not have the ability to attach or insert a Google doc here--that might be a good direction for them?

Thing 1.b

Going back to check on what Things I had and had not done so far (tick, tick), I saw I had never posted anything about the Web 2.0 class I took. It was Web 2.0: How to Teach the Public about Social Software with Instructor: Beth Gallaway. I enjoyed the class. The most useful thing I took away was getting people to create their usernames and passwords before they go to register on a site. There was also a snazzy handout on thinking outside the box--I have to dig it out.

Of the sites Beth showed us, the one that's had the farthest reaching consequences has been LinkedIn.
I've gotten in touch with all kinds of people through LinkedIn, including my former assistant froma library in NYC in 1994-95. It's been really great getting back in touch with her!

I'm still not to sure about teaching social software in classes. I usually help people one-on-one who want to set up email accounts. I can't really see doing much more--our public computers are too locked down to allow downloading or uploading. We'll have to see if there is a desire for more.

Et tu, YouTube? Thing 20.0

I've spent the last year saying, "I have no time for YouTube." But I bopped over to play, per 23 Things. I was not deeply impressed when I clicked on some of the featured videos. I'm not a big fan of TV to begin. I looked at the subject directory. I watched some so-called funny videos. At best, I found them disturbing. So I searched for something I would like to watch, and found the above clip of Patti Smith on Saturday Night Live. I greatly enjoyed it. But when I looked for the date of the filming, or the source, I couldn't find anything. I found the info quite easily via Google--it aired on SNL April 17, 1976. I watched it with my best friend Eric in my parent's den in suburban Philly.

I'm assuming there's no meta-data because this clip is protected by copyright, which is being violated. I'm sure Patti doesn't have a problem, but I bet NBC does. I looked at the comments, thinking they might be interesting. They weren't; mostly sophomoric. They did not add to the content.

I surfed a bit more. Some of the videos do give meta-data, but it's very uneven, which makes the searching uneven.

I must say embedding the clip in Blogger was VERY easy, and that video clips can make web sites more interesting. But I will probably never be very interested in YouTube as a social interaction--just not my thing.

My biggest surprise: when I went to email the clip to my daughter, I had to sign in. It said my preferred username was taken! So I tried my default password, and lo and behold, I already had set up a YouTube account. No recollection of when or why, but there it was. YouTube says I joined 11/30/2006, and have watched 3 videos. Maybe it was that Book 1.0 video? It's here--if you haven't seen it, do--hilarious

Thing 16 & 17

I have a little experience with wikis. I contributed to the ALA conference wikis in 2005 and 2006, and I have contributed to Library Success: A Best Practices Wiki . These have been such good experiences, that I have decided to add a "Meredith Farkas" tag to my collection.

Just recently, Jenne Bergstrom set up a wiki for the SDCL reference committee. That was a brilliant idea! I'm happy to say I have contributed!

I have indeed edited the InfoPeople wiki. I don't know if they really wanted a link to the Lakeside Library flickr page, but they've got one!