I finally followed through on the podcasting segment of BPL 2.0. I'm intrigued by the educational potential for the podcasts, and I did find several Universities offering publicly available podcasts from some of their classes. I haven't checked out the itunes University yet. I have yet to find a real gold mine for this kind of material however. Most of what I've located is spotty and the educational institutions don't seem really keen on keeping things up to date. I suppose what I'm looking for is Learning Company type of educational podcasts (our Learning Company cds tend to be missing pieces).
My little Dell Axim PDA is apparently a more than adequate tool for creating podcasts, which is fun to know although I haven't the slightest idea what I could podcast about.
I'm guessing a library could create a fun/ informative series of podcasts, either stand-alones on a variety of library oriented topics (how to put together a business plan, how to research a paper, how to find a good book to read); or as a weekly or monthly magazine on library events, recommended books and the like. Key to this type of endeavor would be to keep it interesting, energized, and up-to-date.
Another semi-thought: Staff readings from favorite books, or story-time for kids. (Although staff reading styles might leave a lot to be desired from a public accustomed to professionally read books on cd.)
Sunday, January 11, 2009
Monday, November 24, 2008
Curmugeon 2.0: RSS
I don't have any strong thoughts on RSS feeds. They've been around for a while. I've used Firefox and then Internet Explorer to subscribe to a couple of them, then rarely checked back on them. More casualties of the problem of too much information and too little time. Probably the equivalent I use most often is the Google News page, which is probably a different kind of Internet animal.
I didn't find the newsfeed search utilities that useful, but maybe I was using them in the wrong way. I generally go to webpages I'm already familiar with and look for newsfeed options there (not always successfully).
http://www.bloglines.com/public/AnnB
I didn't find the newsfeed search utilities that useful, but maybe I was using them in the wrong way. I generally go to webpages I'm already familiar with and look for newsfeed options there (not always successfully).
http://www.bloglines.com/public/AnnB
Thursday, October 30, 2008
Curmudgeon 2.0 (continued): Blogs and Wikis, oh my!
The next stop in our overview of Library 2.0 is Wikis!
But first a word on Blogs, which I didn't comment on specifically in my last post.
Interesting figures on blogging here:
http://technorati.com/blogging/state-of-the-blogosphere/
A study done by Universal-McCann (March 2008) suggest 184 million blogs floating around on the Web. That's a hell of a lot of blogging to sift through. Where does the average user even start? Yet the Universal-McCann figures suggest that 75% of the web users are also blog readers. One has to wonder if they're simply following the daily meanderings of various friends and relatives, or if there are a lot of blogs out there with big followings.
Following Sturgeon's Law ("90% of everything is crap.") the potential blog reader is left to wonder and wander in search of the 18.4 million blogs out there that might be worth more than a cursory glance.
The Curmudgeon observes: There are a lot of well written, entertaining, and/or informative blogs out there. Too many to even follow a fraction of a fraction closely. At the side is the issue of plowing through the crap to get at the good stuff, and then plowing through the good stuff to get at the good stuff of interest to the specific reader, and then still being overwhelmed by the output. Mostly I tend to stumble over interesting blogs Googling for information on specific topics. I'll bookmark those blogs, but I rarely get back to them.
I tried the review route with a book Ultimate blogs : masterworks from the wild Web by Sarah Boxer, but I have to conclude that, as with all reviewed things, one person's masterwork is another person's spam. I will look around for additional blog review sources. Or maybe, as with books and music and movies, I'll continue to limp along following the good, the indifferent, and the bad.
Wikis are another creature entirely, being a product essentially designed by a committee. I admit to being a fan of Wikipedia, even while being aware of its limitations. (I have been burned by mainstream media enough to have become cynical about the limitations of just about every information source out there. As with anything, the consumer needs to take everything with a potential grain of salt.) Wikipedia is like a giant flea market of just about anything you ever did (or never thought about) fancying that you might want to know about. Published encyclopedias contain thoughtful articles on numerous topics of importance written by people who are presumably experts in the field they are writing about. But you're probably not going to find a synopsis for every season of the television series, The X-Files in the Encyclopedia Britannica.
The problem with wikis is, they only seem to work well if they have an active, mature, and interested (better yet passionate) user base. Since they are a hodge-podge of user donated scraps and bits of information, many of them seem to be begging for a stronger organizational structure to make the useful information easy to get at. Also, without a largish active user base, the information seems to drift towards being outdated, as the original wiki creators and enthusiasts get bored and move on to other projects.
For library purposes, I'm guessing wikis work best for subjects with clearly defined informational content (e.g. a calendar of events) and several library staff people specifically assigned to keeping the wiki up to date. I'd like to think that you could have a wonderful library wiki for all users of the library, but the Curmudgeon is guessing that such a creature would either collapse under the weight of patron apathy, or would become the creature of a fanatical few.
But first a word on Blogs, which I didn't comment on specifically in my last post.
Interesting figures on blogging here:
http://technorati.com/blogging/state-of-the-blogosphere/
A study done by Universal-McCann (March 2008) suggest 184 million blogs floating around on the Web. That's a hell of a lot of blogging to sift through. Where does the average user even start? Yet the Universal-McCann figures suggest that 75% of the web users are also blog readers. One has to wonder if they're simply following the daily meanderings of various friends and relatives, or if there are a lot of blogs out there with big followings.
Following Sturgeon's Law ("90% of everything is crap.") the potential blog reader is left to wonder and wander in search of the 18.4 million blogs out there that might be worth more than a cursory glance.
The Curmudgeon observes: There are a lot of well written, entertaining, and/or informative blogs out there. Too many to even follow a fraction of a fraction closely. At the side is the issue of plowing through the crap to get at the good stuff, and then plowing through the good stuff to get at the good stuff of interest to the specific reader, and then still being overwhelmed by the output. Mostly I tend to stumble over interesting blogs Googling for information on specific topics. I'll bookmark those blogs, but I rarely get back to them.
I tried the review route with a book Ultimate blogs : masterworks from the wild Web by Sarah Boxer, but I have to conclude that, as with all reviewed things, one person's masterwork is another person's spam. I will look around for additional blog review sources. Or maybe, as with books and music and movies, I'll continue to limp along following the good, the indifferent, and the bad.
Wikis are another creature entirely, being a product essentially designed by a committee. I admit to being a fan of Wikipedia, even while being aware of its limitations. (I have been burned by mainstream media enough to have become cynical about the limitations of just about every information source out there. As with anything, the consumer needs to take everything with a potential grain of salt.) Wikipedia is like a giant flea market of just about anything you ever did (or never thought about) fancying that you might want to know about. Published encyclopedias contain thoughtful articles on numerous topics of importance written by people who are presumably experts in the field they are writing about. But you're probably not going to find a synopsis for every season of the television series, The X-Files in the Encyclopedia Britannica.
The problem with wikis is, they only seem to work well if they have an active, mature, and interested (better yet passionate) user base. Since they are a hodge-podge of user donated scraps and bits of information, many of them seem to be begging for a stronger organizational structure to make the useful information easy to get at. Also, without a largish active user base, the information seems to drift towards being outdated, as the original wiki creators and enthusiasts get bored and move on to other projects.
For library purposes, I'm guessing wikis work best for subjects with clearly defined informational content (e.g. a calendar of events) and several library staff people specifically assigned to keeping the wiki up to date. I'd like to think that you could have a wonderful library wiki for all users of the library, but the Curmudgeon is guessing that such a creature would either collapse under the weight of patron apathy, or would become the creature of a fanatical few.
Sunday, October 12, 2008
Curmudgeon 2.0
These are, I freely admit, my very superficial first impressions of Library 2.0 based on the reading of a couple of articles, and over a decade wandering around randomly on the Internet, grazing on anything that looks interesting.
I am something of a technology junkie, and by extension something of an Internet junkie as well. I love cool gizmos and gadgets and things that spin and make pretty lights in the night. If my apartment were on fire, my evacuation plans call for me to evacuate in order of importance: 1) Me, 2) My cats, 3) My computer. I'm the only person I know (as far as I know) who owns a robotic vacuum cleaner (my lovely white Roomba).
My geek credentials somewhat established then, I have to admit that 'Web 2.0' and 'Library 2.0' haven't made much of a mark on my horizon. Yes, the terms are out there, floating around, but give me a book or magazine article with either of those terms in the title, and my brain starts making its way for the door. The powers that be, however, have deemed it important that the library employees that be learn something of these things, so I have gritted my teeth and dived in.
This is where I should report then, how the veil has lifted from my eyes to reveal the brave and fascinating new worlds of 'Library 2.0' and the exciting tools it offers us, the library workers, to offer our patrons to energize, empower, and involve them in the library.
Library Curmudgeon 2.0 says this smells far more like a marketing tool than it does a Brave New Approach to being a library. First we had Web 2.0, then there was Business 2.0, and now we've got Library 2.0. I've seen the terms Reading 2.0, Health 2.0, and Education 2.0, not to mention 3.0 iterations, being thrown around as well. I suspect we're early in the game yet, we've yet to see Television 2.0, Automotive 2.0, or (heaven help us) McDonald's Happy Meal 2.0. The best my poor brain can make out it that 'Anything' 2.0 means grabbing as many of the cool/wow/'everyone is using them' Internet/High Tech gizmos that you can and using them to browbeat/ inspire the customer into spending more time with you than they would under the old ways of doing things. More generically, (I'm scanning Google news for '2.0' now to see how the term is being used in various headlines), I see the Salt Lake City Weekly positing that "(Sarah) Palin is either Dan Quayle 2.0 or a performing seal". In this case, I suppose that Dan Quayle 2.0 is a term for the next generation of vice-presidential-ness for good or for bad. I'm guessing the writer of the article isn't highly optimistic that she'll revolutionize the vice presidency.
I'm reassured to learn that I'm not alone in thinking Anything 2.0 is the same old PR spin of corralling a mess of old and new Internet and tech stuff, bundling it up as a package, slapping a neon paint job on the box and a brand of HighTechInteractiveNew&Exciting!(TM). The American public likes their concepts tied up into nice neat visual 1-minute spots with a catchy label thrown on to make it all sparkle and stick in their minds, or at least that seems to be the prevailing wisdom of marketing things (be the things microcomputers, deodorant, political issues, life insurance, or government services). At first glance, Library 2.0 seems a pretty shiny marketing bundle to this technophile, but then again I enjoy watching commercials to make fun of them. I'll see what the Curmudgeon in me makes of this particular package.
So one more Library 2.0 tutorial completed. Lesson 2 is creating a blog and blogging about Lesson 1 (some slightly moth-eaten articles on Library 2.0). Done and done.
I am something of a technology junkie, and by extension something of an Internet junkie as well. I love cool gizmos and gadgets and things that spin and make pretty lights in the night. If my apartment were on fire, my evacuation plans call for me to evacuate in order of importance: 1) Me, 2) My cats, 3) My computer. I'm the only person I know (as far as I know) who owns a robotic vacuum cleaner (my lovely white Roomba).
My geek credentials somewhat established then, I have to admit that 'Web 2.0' and 'Library 2.0' haven't made much of a mark on my horizon. Yes, the terms are out there, floating around, but give me a book or magazine article with either of those terms in the title, and my brain starts making its way for the door. The powers that be, however, have deemed it important that the library employees that be learn something of these things, so I have gritted my teeth and dived in.
This is where I should report then, how the veil has lifted from my eyes to reveal the brave and fascinating new worlds of 'Library 2.0' and the exciting tools it offers us, the library workers, to offer our patrons to energize, empower, and involve them in the library.
Library Curmudgeon 2.0 says this smells far more like a marketing tool than it does a Brave New Approach to being a library. First we had Web 2.0, then there was Business 2.0, and now we've got Library 2.0. I've seen the terms Reading 2.0, Health 2.0, and Education 2.0, not to mention 3.0 iterations, being thrown around as well. I suspect we're early in the game yet, we've yet to see Television 2.0, Automotive 2.0, or (heaven help us) McDonald's Happy Meal 2.0. The best my poor brain can make out it that 'Anything' 2.0 means grabbing as many of the cool/wow/'everyone is using them' Internet/High Tech gizmos that you can and using them to browbeat/ inspire the customer into spending more time with you than they would under the old ways of doing things. More generically, (I'm scanning Google news for '2.0' now to see how the term is being used in various headlines), I see the Salt Lake City Weekly positing that "(Sarah) Palin is either Dan Quayle 2.0 or a performing seal". In this case, I suppose that Dan Quayle 2.0 is a term for the next generation of vice-presidential-ness for good or for bad. I'm guessing the writer of the article isn't highly optimistic that she'll revolutionize the vice presidency.
I'm reassured to learn that I'm not alone in thinking Anything 2.0 is the same old PR spin of corralling a mess of old and new Internet and tech stuff, bundling it up as a package, slapping a neon paint job on the box and a brand of HighTechInteractiveNew&Exciting!(TM). The American public likes their concepts tied up into nice neat visual 1-minute spots with a catchy label thrown on to make it all sparkle and stick in their minds, or at least that seems to be the prevailing wisdom of marketing things (be the things microcomputers, deodorant, political issues, life insurance, or government services). At first glance, Library 2.0 seems a pretty shiny marketing bundle to this technophile, but then again I enjoy watching commercials to make fun of them. I'll see what the Curmudgeon in me makes of this particular package.
So one more Library 2.0 tutorial completed. Lesson 2 is creating a blog and blogging about Lesson 1 (some slightly moth-eaten articles on Library 2.0). Done and done.
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