Networking - and farewell

Social networking is clearly one of those things that isn't going to go away - and nor, in my opinion, should it. I think it's a great way to keep in touch with people, as well as to reach out with the information you have. It makes sense, then, for libraries to join in and make a space for ourselves.

I enjoyed reading about the different things being done on SecondLife with and by Libraries, though I admit, I can't imagine that kind of thing ever getting of the ground here. I know that libraries in the US, in particular, are larger than ours, with more staff, which probably helps: we just don't have the time, at least in my library. Even doing this course has primarily had to be in my lunch breaks, or whenever I had a few minutes free to scribble some more things down. My branch is already understaffed, and I don't believe that the central library really has it any better - there just isn't time to dedicate to these extras, when we have so much face-to-face to work on. Also, our network infrastructure clearly isn't as good over here: it takes us often ten minutes to download a YouTube clip. There's no way we could do anything on SecondLife without bringing everyone else to a halt, and really doing something nasty to the network.

But if SecondLife is, for the moment, out of the question, that doesn't mean all social networking is. I know we've talked about Facebook and Myspace within my library, and I think these are things we will be pursuing over the next few months or so. There's some talk about letting people search the catalogue through facebook applications, for example, but I think the main point of introducing these things would be for some quick and easy self-advertisement. Book talks, for example, links to interesting resources, or, if we were able to put a little more time into it, maybe even a quick-answer reference service - just basic answers, but still, right there in the middle of Facebook.

Of course, the trouble with this is that our teens in this area are not terribly engaged with the library. They'll come in and use our stuff (sometimes), but they have no interest in really getting involved. And while there are plenty of 20-somethings that also use Facebook and Myspace, and so on, they're equally not as inclined towards getting involved, at least in this way. But maybe if it was available, we could use it to help. I'm a little dubious (I'd only barely be interested in joining this kind of thing, and I actually work for the library), but it's not impossible. Obviously other people have made a go of it, and successfully, too.

I wonder if there would be young adult authors out there willing to do online author talks - question and answer sessions, primarily, I guess, since the medium is best for interaction. There are a lot of authors I know we'd have interest in (I'm thinking people like Anthony Horowitz, for example) that we can't necessarily get out here. That kind of thing might not get them INTO the library, but, at the end of the day, I'm less concerned about getting people in, and more about being of service to them. Hm. I may have to do somet thinking on this.

Anyway, I guess that nicely wraps up the end of this course, for me. I've found it really interesting, even though I did know a bit about a lot of the things we've used before. It was excellent to put them into a library context, instead of a personal user context. I'm not sure, honestly, that we'll be implementing much that we've looked at here, into our library - but that doesn't mean it won't be useful information to share. And, who knows: maybe we'll get more money, one day.

One day.

(Hahahaha. Okay. I know).

All this kind of stuff is rad. And it's not the kind of thing I would have ever thought of. I mean, five years ago? The idea would have seemed incomprehensible. And yet, it is so incredibly useful.

I've actually used GoogleDocs before. For a while, I was managing the 'swaps' section of a website. So if someone had something they didn't want, they could swap it, for money or another product, with someone else. And in doing that successfully, you got swap points, which proved to other people that you were worth swapping with. Anyway. Long story. When I took over the whole thing, I had to be e-mailed all the files, save them, and then keep editing them at home. But that meant that if I had a spare five minutes at some point, when I was not at home, I couldn't do anything with them. So I set them all up in GoogleDocs, which let me fix them up anywhere I wanted, and when I passed the whole thing on to someone else, I just had to give them the gmail login details, and they could work from there. Simple. Straightforward. Easy.

I imagine it will be some time before libraries even consider getting rid of their Microsoft products and instituting GoogleDocs or similar - it involves too much fiddling around with more logins, and, also, Microsoft Office is an institution. For better or for worse, we have it (though if I was in charge we'd be using OpenOffice, but that's another story). Still, I do absolutely recommend GoogleDocs to customers who don't, for example, have a USB memory stick on them, but want to be able to save their documents somehow. E-mail also works, but the real benefit of GoogleDocs is being able to access them from anywhere, whatever the software installed on the computer. We do loan out USB memory sticks (I think it's a one week loan, on their card, same as for any item), but if they have the internet at home, I tend to recommend GoogleDocs.

It's also useful for me, as an employee. Sometimes, when I'm writing an important letter or document, I want to be able to sit down without interruptions, and just finish it off. If I work on it in GoogleDocs, then, I can take it home with me without any kind of compatability problem (I have a Mac at home, see), and do some of it there. It also means that I can share documents with coworkers, and we can work on things together even if we're not in the same building or location, or even working on it at the same time. I love that kind of flexibility.

Utilities like Zamzar are great, too, and I wish I'd known about that one in particular sooner. We had a problem for a little while because people have been showing up with docx files, created in the latest version of Microsoft Office - which we don't have. There is a utility you can install to allow the version we have to read these documents, but because our computers are locked down against software installation, we can't actually use it without getting IT to install it for us. Which was painful for a while, because we kept having to tell people that we just couldn't open those files. But using Zamzar? We could just convert them to doc files, and to be done with it. Easy. And there are so many file formats it can work with! I'm really impressed.

I had a look at Zoho, which I'd never touched before, to see how it compared to GoogleDocs. It definitely does a lot more, but it's also, therefore, a little more complicated. That said, it's not really any more complicated than using the Office equivalent, except that it's a little be different in layout. I really do like the convenience of just being logged in to one account (my gmail account) for everything, but I'd be tempted to use Zoho anyway, just because it has so many more features - and I am a feature girl.

All of this is food for thought, anyway. We're moving further and further away from external storage devices, I think. None of our computers here at work have a floppy drive, for example. And if you look at computers like the Eee PC or the Macbook Air, well, they don't even have a built in CD-ROM drive. Using something like GoogleDocs or Zoho means that you don't need huge amounts of storage on your computer, either, because it's all stored online. It makes a lot of sense to me, as connections get faster, and bandwidth bigger.

LOLcat! Though, I have to admit, I am not a funny person... so it's not very clever. But. Still. Cute! I liked using that utility to make it: it was so easy! And there are so many options for things you could make with it... if you had access to a really decent printer, for example, printing up some of those calendars with local studies images, or whatever, would be a great thing.

But I am much more interested in some of the other things you can do with this kind of technology, like the London: A Life in Maps, and then Star Viewer. So convenient! I used that kind of thing when I was travelling, a few years back, by placing marks on a map of where I was staying, different museums and shops I wanted to visit, and where all the transport was. It made it much easier to plan my days, because I could see where things were in relation to each other.

In a library-specific context, the first thing I thought of was WebFeat, or any other federated search utility. The idea is that you have one 'search engine', which searches not only your library catalogue, but also any other source you nominate - your online databases, for example, a local bookstore, and so on. This is something we are going to be instituting in my library, and I can't wait: the possibilities are endless! I see more use in this than in a lot of other kinds of mashup. I can see libraries using things like the London: A Life in maps, and the Star Viewer, but not necessarily creating them. That said, local studies could do a lot with this kind of thing - linking to sites of interest, adding in old photos, and so on. But I just can't see them ever having the time to work on that (at least, not in my library).

We have talked, vaguely, about putting together a facebook application that allows people to use our library catalogue from their facebook profile. I'm not really sure how many people would use that kind of thing, though. I mean, the catalogue is already online. Why would you go through facebook, instead of directly through the website? But I may not be the target audience for that.

The point of all of this is that I think mashups are really useful, and that there are definitely going to be ways to use them effectively within a library context (and it won't be because of LOLcats). I think we need to be aware of what is out there, and how it might be useful to us, and to our clients, but I think most of them are better suited to individuals, with individual needs.