Who said radio was dead?

Podcasts! My favourite!

I'm a big audio book fan - I spend up to two hours in the car every day, so it's a great way to get some reading in when I would otherwise just be wasting time. Plus, I find, early in the morning, listening to something that requires my concentration is a much better way at making sure I stay alert.

Podcasts, for me, are a similar concept. At home, I subscribe to a number of different ones, which iTunes helpfully downloads and organises for me, so that when I plug my iPod in, they get loaded on, ready for me to listen to on my way to and from work.

That's not the only way I use podcasts, though. The SciFi channel in the US, for example, has made available audio commentaries for episodes of Battlestar Galactica, via podcast. So I can download these and play them concurrently with episodes, much like I would with an audio commentary included on a DVD. For a movie/TV buff like me, this is awesome: I love hearing all of that, and I love that it just arrives on my computer, like magic, ready for listening to.

In a library context, I think podcasts are much more useful than videos, at least for training purposes. Videos are great for showing things (like an author talk - though that could also work as a podcast), but not so good for letting people learn things hands on. With a podcast, you could have someone listen as they follow the instructions offered, thereby connecting them with the learning process. And, of course, they could always pause, or go back, if they needed more time to get the concept. I'm far too impatient to sit and watch video clips unless I'm really interested in the subject; I'd far rather figure something out for myself, through trial and error. But I'd probably listen to something, as I tried things out.

So I guess that would work for both staff and patrons. And yes, author talks could also be presented that way (and they'd certainly need less bandwidth as podcasts, which has certainly been a problem with YouTube... it's very slow for us, here at work). I know audio from Council meetings are put on our Council's website, though I can't see any library meetings needing that kind of attention. Still, I like the concept of making things available this way.

I imagine this is also useful for reference. Not so much that we would create our own - but OEDb list is an excellent resource, for example. I'm a big fan of making this information freely available, so anyone can have a listen.

Who said radio was dead! We just... evolved a bit, I guess.

Answers, answers, answers

Although neither are places I usually hang out, I have actually, recently, had need to look at WikiAnswers and Yahoo!7 Answers. I bought a handbag from Etsy, which is effectively an online craft market, full of people selling the things they make from necklaces to handbags to clothes to, you know, whatever else. It arrived, exactly what I wanted, except that it smelled very strongly of stale smoke. I had a look through various answer boards, and was able, therefore, to get the smoke smell out with lots of fresh air and vinegar steam. Magic!

Anyway, I really do love the concept of Librarians jumping in and reminding people how useful we are for these things. Unfortunately, these days, most people feel like the Internet will tell them everything - and while to some extent, that's not entirely untrue, they are missing out on valuable information by bypassing us. Even if only one in every fifty people who notices how good we are at answering these sticky questions goes to the library, next time, or even just registers that Librarians might be a good resource, well, that's enough to make it worthwhile.

(Besides, I think the whole thing is kind of fun.)

I wish we had time at my library to officially participate in this kind of thing. We don't provide any online answer service, and while there are plenty of places that will do it for people, a lot of people don't think to use them anyway. I just really like the idea of reaching out into the community, and reminding people about us - because this is the kind of thing we are actually good at.

I'm tempted to start seeing if I can start answering more things, in my Librarian-guise (glasses: on). Maybe we can't do it officially, but I can still put in my two cents.

I'd really like it if we had a rating system within the library, too. We're always begging for feedback, and we almost always just get complaints from people - which is a shame, because I know that there are heaps of people who just love what we do, but never think to say it. And getting reviews or ratings on the items we have in the collection would make it more interactive, and a better resource: you'd know which books are the ones people thought were good. Unfortunately, people are not used to being interactive with their library. It would take a lot of reconditioning before people thought to actually use any such feature.

Scanning through the questions asked on these sites, I do have to say that there are a lot of very stupid people out there, asking really stupid things. The amount of people who want someone to do their homework for them! Or validate their beliefs. Also, I can find answers with seriously two minutes of googling - how lazy are people? Evidently, very lazy. I answered this question in seconds. I wikipediaed home schooling, and just followed their reference to how many children were home schooled. Easy. No wonder people are too lazy to go to the library!

(Okay, I accept that not everyone is as good at googling or wikipediaing as I might be. But...)

Anyway. That was fun!

Long time now blog - yay, Easter. Or, if we're really being honest, boo Masters assignments. While I am confident that having my Masters will eventually be of some use (if only in impressing someone who knows nothing about higher education, and the real use of theoretical subjects), the actual doing it is proving difficult. I'm sorry, but very little I have ever learned in higher education, particularly things relating to management, and especially IT, has any practical application in the real world. Things work differently, here.

Anyway. All that aside...

I'm now back to finish up week seven. I started off looking at del.icio.us whenever that was, and now I'll finish off with technorati and LibraryThing. I tried the suggested searches in Technorati, and got the same results for both, which had something to do with the fact that it was a single word search. I did a random search for 'brown rabbit', which came up with over 3000 results in the basic search, and 74 for the exact phrase (or 2000 odd for both words). Alas, a search for 'sock girl' brings up mostly porn. I'm not sure that I'd use Technorati on a regular basis for anything - I manage perfectly well on my own, finding the kind of things I want. (It's worth noting that, once upon a time, someone randomly googled up my online journal with only a random phrase that I happened to use, and turned out to live about fifteen ks away, and is now my Significant Other. And that was before Technorati - or at least before I'd ever heard of it).

Actually, I suppose if I was looking for what people were saying about a specific thing, at a specific time, Technorati might be useful. And perhaps, in that context, I can see it being useful for libraries to know about it. Still. I don't know. Not convinced.

Meanwhile: LibraryThing! I have long been enamoured with LibraryThing, although my few forays into this kind of thing have focused on Delicious Library, because that particular brand of personal library database will scan barcodes using the inbuilt iSight webcam in my Mac. And there is nothing better, in my mind, that being able to scan a barcode instead of type in an ISBN, don't you think? (Obviously, at work, I have access to a normal barcode scanner, but not at home). Unfortunately, I never got very far, because (at least at that point - things may have changed since) the databases it took results from were all American or British, and either didn't recognise my Australian barcodes, or had different covers (and I am too much of a perfectionist to let that slip). So.

I do love the concept of this kind of software, though. The idea of being able to share information about what you're reading, find out things you might like based on who shares books with you, and so on, is an awesome tool. I do similar things on Facebook, through a similar tool, and I really enjoy seeing what people I know are reading, and what they've thought of it. This kind of tool would be great within a library, because it provides an instant selection of books that other people have enjoyed, which you might also.

Please excuse my inability to write a proper english sentence today. Call it post-Masters assignment brain. Yes. That's it.

Anyway, I've put a link to the rss feed for my LibraryThing account on the sidebar of this page. Yes, okay, I did just scan in the barcodes of the closest books at hand (a couple are my personal reading material, and a couple are in here waiting for re-cataloguing or repair).

NOM NOM NOM

(See? That title? It was a joke. Maybe an internet in-joke. You know, linking LOLCats and the funny of del.icio.us... No? Oh well.)

I like del.icio.us very much; I think it's an awesome tool. I'm one of those people who has a dozen or so sites that I keep up with, many of which are things like forums, which can't really be kept up with by RSS feed. At home, of course, I have everything bookmarked nicely, but if I'm not at home, and I want to check up on something? I just jump on to del.icio.us, and there everything is, lined up and waiting for me - and organised exactly the way I want it, because that's what tagging is for.

Though my library doesn't use this tool, I think we should. We have a fairly substantial database of links housed on our intranet; to me, it makes much, much more sense if it were housed publically, allowing library staff members to add new links at will, and patrons to find things we've recommended. The tagging system makes it very easy to find things; it's exactly the kind of thing we library staff love.

I sometimes feel that we (as libraries) try and hold some of our cards close to our chest, as if to reassure ourselves that people will always need to come and use us if we don't just give them everything from afar. But I think making this kind of thing public is exactly what we should be doing, because it broadcasts what we, as librarians, can do. It's just another service we offer. I'd like to see more libraries show this kind of thing off.

On happier subjects...

Let's have some uplifting political demonstration! I love this video. It's an excellent example of how YouTube can be used to spread a message (though admittedly, this particular video originated elsewhere, and in better quality).



I like how easy YouTube makes it to share these things - just copy the code, paste it in, and you're set. It's instantly possible to see exactly how incredible a tool this is for the sharing of video information.

I don't actually have a television at home (or, rather, I have a television, but it doesn't have any kind of antenna): we watch everything off the internet, or on DVD. One of the great things about the internet is the increasing ability to not miss out on things, just because you don't generally watch 'the box'. Last Federal Election, here in Australia? I watched the results all night, straight off my computer. It wasn't perfect - it lagged sometimes, and the quality wasn't great - but it did the job.

While I do like the idea of videoing author talks and presentations in the library, as Mosman has done, I'm not sure how many other applications this kind of technology could have for the libraries. I don't really feel like tutorials, for example, would be worth the time. Most of the people who might be inclined to look at them are the kind of people who either don't have an internet connection at home, or have dial-up, and thus would find it incredibly painful to try and get the thing to load. It is possible to view these things in the library, but our net here is not much faster (all of these videos took FOREVER). And given the staff time, and set up costs (video cameras are getting cheaper, but they're still pretty expensive, and you'll need a decent mic as well), I just don't see it happening for us.

To finish off, I'll share another video. This is not a hugely popular thing, spread everywhere, but it's another example of what can be done. It's a trailer for a short film called Jumpcut, by Rohan Harris. (In retrospect, this is a little embarrassing, because the quality is terrible, and that's not just because YouTube compresses things badly, but there you go). Bonus points for anyone who can pick me out of it... (Now that really is embarrassing).

The Fisher Price of Wikis

PB Wiki drives me nuts. I mean, yeah, okay, I get that it's pretty easy to use, so anyone can jump right in... but so is MediaWiki, which is so much more powerful, and allows you so much more control over what you do.

Bah.

WikiWiki

I actually have experience installing and setting up a Wiki. I started the project with enthusiasm, and a group of apparently enthusiastic people, and then all but one or two of them just failed to materialise in their support. I spent hours writing pages for the thing, and then everything just ground to a halt because a wiki with only one contributer is not much of a wiki at all. The moral of the story is that wikis CAN be an excellent resource... but you need people to get involved. I know my library service has talked about having a staff wiki for notes and training and links to important resources, and I would love to see it happen, but I remain dubious as to how well it would really work in the long term. People are very good at using resources, but not necessarily so good at making them.

This is, I suppose, the strength of places like the Wookieepedia - places that have a very strong core group of devoted enthusiasts, who know great amounts of material, and are willing to put it together to share. That makes it sound as though I'm pointing my finger at these people and calling them Nerdy McNerds, and that's not quite true. I think that kind of enthusiasm for anything is admirable - and it's awesome that it can be harnessed and put together for this kind of resource. It may seem useless on the surface, but I bet there are heaps of people who look at it, if only to get the definitive answer to a trivia question.

I'm delighted to see how much content there is on Princeton's BookLovers Wiki - because that is exactly the kind of thing I would expect not to work. We tried to have book reviews on our website for customers, and it failed (It's pretty embarrassing being one of two people to contribute to such a thing). But this is open to anyone, and I imagine that makes a difference, as to does the fact that it is linked to the summer reading programme. The truth is that a lot of people do like writing reviews (I know I review pretty much everything I read/watch on facebook - and I'm definitely not alone), but people like a convenient way of doing it. And a wiki definitely is convenient! There really isn't all that much to writing up a page, aside from a few little formatting rules.

I was much less impressed with the Wisconson Heritage Online site. It was so hard to find the interesting parts - too much text, too many options. The great thing about a wiki is that you don't need to have great slabs of text - you can break it up, you can do multiple pages, you can do pictures. And the front pages of this just don't use any of that. Ugh. This kind of thing is exactly what we SHOULDN'T be doing with a wiki.

Next up will be editing the wiki, once I get the key. I'm curious to see what PBWiki will be like to play with. I've only used MediaWiki in the past - which I love. So. I may be hard to convince.

I have done a little edit on Wikipedia, though I'm curious as to whether it will last - I probably should have referenced my change. Still! It was nice to have done something.

FEED me!

While I haven't used a dedicated RSS reader in the past, I have been using feeds for some time, through my Livejournal account. One of Livejournal's great strengths is the 'friends page' it offers, which basically lets you subscribe to other people's journals on livejournal, as well as to any external rss feeds you'd like. It's a great way for me to keep up with everything, all in one place.

That said, having now played around a bit with bloglines and Google Reader, I can see the benefits of that kind of dedicated reader. I like that I can see it all, no distractions, fully formed. Or I can limit it, to only show me headlines, or just from one feed. Whatever I like! Feeds are a fantastic thing for those of us who like to keep informed in all kinds of areas.

A lot of sites I already use regularly have RSS feeds (pretty much any blog will, I know), so it was pretty easy to find some to subscribe to. To continue themes I've already mentioned on this blog, these are the ones I sought out:

1. Stephen Fry's blog (Here)
   
2. Daily Kos (A US, left-leaning political blog) (Here)
   
3. Photos from Kythryne (Wyrding Studios photos) (Here)
   
4. PostSecret (Anonymous secrets sent out on postcards) (Here)
   
5. Fighting Monsters with Rubber Swords (a father's blog of his journey with a wordless daughter) (Here)
   

Plus the Powerhouse Museum one. I did have some trouble finding the feed for that one - but I sought out the flickr feed, and added that, in the end, which seemed to make sense. I wish more sites made it more obvious, though I didn't have too many problems for the most part. I suppose a lot of sites do make money off advertising on the site, and feeds would circumvent it a little. Interesting thought.

We do have feeds listed for use by library staff, and on our website, but I just don't see it being used. I think it really depends on what you're looking at. If it's something you want to keep up with daily, yes, but you might also just get it by e-mail (where available). That said, not all of these sites have e-mail updates. So! I think it might be a little hard to train people into this, but I think it would be worth it for some things.

(I have now added feeds to the sidebar - ooh and ahh as appropriate, ladies and gentlemen.)

(PS: Thank you for all the comments on my sexy, sexy socks! I'll have to put some more up at some point).