YouTube

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g0HcI7aRrUM



C-5 Galaxy landing at Dover Air Force Base, Delaware. I was honored to have worked around this type of aircraft for 20 years. It's on the top of my list of favorite military aircraft. (The other contemporary favorite is the B-52.)



There are a LOT of what I consider to be huge wastes of time on this site. Do I really want to watch someone getting falling down drunk? Or someone stepping in dog excrement? Uh, NO! Comment all you wish, but it sure seems like an awful lot of people posting to YouTube have quite an exaggerated opinion of themselves and their activities.



Where I can see a possibility for library website use is to advertise programs, especially ongoing or recurring ones such as the summer reading program. Did Sneaks make a particularly memorable visit to your library? Post the video to YouTube and add it to the library's website as well. Highlight portions of your collection. Is there an appropriate YouTube video of backyard mechanics? Add that to your library's website with a banner that advertises your car repair resources.



Looking over the most watched videos illustrates for me the phenomenon of information, in this case a video, moving at breakneck speed across the world and becoming fodder for the water cooler. Here we have the electronic equivalent of the water cooler.

Web 2.0 Awards

Nothing like getting paid to play games at work, is there! I liked the variety of games on Arcaplay - much larger than Yahoo has. I also liked that the list had a large number of sites and that they were grouped by topic. I used Zillow and was gratified that the house the spouse, the bank, and I own has appreciated quite nicely since we bought it, if this site can be believed. (I've heard that the figures are inflated on this site.) It was also fun to see the aerial view of the neighborhoods at which I looked. I browsed Etsy and saw some interesting things for sale. I also looked at some travel sites that gave me an idea of what airline tickets might cost. This site also let me know exactly which flights go where I want to go.

What I didn't like is that there weren't more sites! I could play with this list for a very long time!

I could see using this in a library setting as a referral tool. Almost like a "read-alike" site - as in, "I really liked this site. Are there others like it?" It could also function as a starting point for those interested in pursuing a particular topic but unsure of which websites might be helpful, but who are put off by the hundreds of thousands of hits that a Google search might return.

Zoho Writer

OK, I created a document. Thoughts on this - while I can see that being able to access documents from anywhere I can snag a computer is worthwhile, I have a real concern about security. Yes, you ARE noticing a theme running through my ruminations! Perhaps that is due to my military background, where security is of paramount importance, especially of the written word which is so easily compromised. I can see the usefulness of this site for a group project, so that other team members can log on from wherever they might be and contribute. This would have been valuable in college and library school where students came from a large geographic area and plans had to constantly be made to meet and hand off work or to get together and discuss. There are also applications for telecommunicating, as documents can be saved in various formats. (How about it, boss, may I stay home on Monday?) :)

Sand between my toes

Now - what did I say in my last post about wikis regarding the potential for "hacking"? The first thing I see when I go to the Sandbox Wiki is this "Here's the BAD news... someone edited the HOME page for our wiki and deleted all the labels that linked to all the pages that belong to other folks. Here's what has to happen to bring them back..." See what I mean? OK, off my soapbox.

Well, I managed not to make a bunch of stuff disappear. I duly logged my blog address and added to a couple of wikis. I think I'm ready to leave wiki world behind for a while now.

Wiki World

Having spent more than half my life validating information, I have an innate distrust of wikis. Their very appeal and ease of use and contribution makes them vulnerable to what we might call "hacking" if the same material were on some other kind of website. What's to stop me from adding my name to a wiki list of great mystery authors? Sure, others may see my name and, recognizing it for that of a reader, but not author, of mysteries, delete it. They may even possibly have a few choice words to say about my self-inclusion. In the meantime though, some poor souls will be out there seeking my wonderful (and non-existent) mysterious utterings.

The value of this section for me was seeing what some libraries are doing in the area of wikis. In addition to the ones mentioned in the 23 Things article, the current issue of "American Libraries" includes the Biz Wiki, developed by an Ohio University business librarian. www.library.ohiou.edu/subjects/bizwiki This same article addresses one of my own concerns about inaccurate content being added to wikis by mentioning that wikis can be restricted to a select group of contributors. I think these people might have grown up validating information . . .

Web 2.0 & Libraries 2.0

That the web is evolving and that libraries evolve as a corollary activity is a given for those of us in the field. If you are reading this in a library building, look around. How many people do you see at computers? How many people are reading something in a print format? My own count: 3 people reading, and all 23 of our public computers in use. Customers routinely use the phrase "can you look in your computer and find out . . . ". Strictly speaking, if I looked into my computer, I would find circuits, boards, and other tangible objects. I will not find information. For that I need to USE the computer. I need to avail myself of the software written by others much more technologically savvy than myself. Using the computer, taking advantage of the many technological advances about which we have been learning, I can play (love that bookworm game), find out something I need to know (what time does the Howard County Pow-wow start on Saturday?), or just explore (hmm, what's this?). As what is available expands, so will my horizons.

One of the commentaries I read said ". . . our patrons will expect access to everything – digital collections of journals, books, blogs, podcasts, etc.". That same commentary also indicated that print collections need to be stringently evaluated to determine if they are cost-effective. Does this migration to electronic methods of receiving information herald the death knell for libraries? As another commentary said ". . . libraries have always been 2.0: collaborative, customer friendly and welcoming." As long as that continues, and I expect it to be a long time, libraries will be relevant. If our customers had the technology at home, they'd probably be there. At least 23 of my customers don't have access to a computer elsewhere that suits their needs. Since I started writing this blog post, I've helped 8 people find the right path to get where they wanted to go using a computer. Web 2.0/Library 2.0, here we go.

Technorati

Looking at the Blog Directory, I randomly chose a page (page 5) and there was our own John Krivak's blog!



In Blog Posts I was suprised to see "hits" in languages other than English. I didn't know how global this learning experience had become.



I was interrupted several times while looking at the blogs that had "Learning 2.0" in them. As I would rerun the search, I noticed that a few new "hits" appeared. Maybe my colleagues all over the place are hitting the same assignment in this Learning 2.0 venture.



As an aside, I was searching Amazon.com for a title and noticed that that site gives you the opportunity to tag titles you're looking at.



While exploring tags has been interesting, librarians are used to more of a "controlled environment" (at least those of us who have been around for a while are used to it!). Users who hope to find all on a topic using taps will need to keep a thesaurus close at hand!

Thing 13 - Tagging/Delicious

The most interesting thing about this exercise was to see who else had saved the same bookmaks as I did, and then to look at THEIR bookmarks. I searched for information about the C-5, a military cargo aircraft. Not a terribly popular topic, at least for Delicious users, as there were only a handful of users who had also saved bookmarks that pointed to information on the C-5. But this little journey led me to more websites on a topic of interest.