I LOVE Prangstgrup, so I had to post one of these videos. Most of you are probably familiar with their "Library Musical: Reading on a Dream." If you haven't seen that, then WATCH it, you won't regret it. I found their "Public Hygiene" (getting to work on time at any cost) quite amusing, too. Watch it below:
What's not to love about YouTube, other than the videos that really are a waste of time? Many of the videos are very funny, and this is a revolution, whereby people can self-publish their videos. I love the fact that YouTube makes it easy to share videos through e-mail and blogs like this. It's also cool that you can join a discussion about a video you liked or couldn't stand, and you can search by topic or keyword for videos. YouTube also hosts contests for those submitting videos. A library might adapt these ideas on their website by highlighting particular materials owned by the library and asking patrons to make a video to "advertise" the book/movie/whatever, then give an award out to the best one. Or, the library could link to users' research inspired videos hosted on YouTube. I'm just brainstorming here--so far, I'm not really big on these ideas, but it's something worth mulling over and maybe something will develop over time and discussion, or just fall from the sky one day.
Sunday, February 10, 2008
#19 Web 2.0 Awards
After examining several of the Web 2.0 award winners, I settled on 
.
That's an image link, so go ahead and click it if you want to visit the site. Upcoming is a fantastic concept in action: Join a community of people interested in catching the best events in their favorite locations and areas of interest. It's neat that you can register a location, then search by a topic, such as gardening. I did this, and found out about the CT Flower and Garden show coming up in Hartford on February 23rd. If you'd like to meet up with folks in a particular interest group visiting the same event as you, this tool connects you. In some cases, you can subscribe to RSS feeds. For example, someone registered the Cloisters in this tool, and there was an RSS feed for Cloisters events. The only problem was that that person registered it in 2004, and no events were ever loaded, apparently, so it's a dead area in the site (and while the Cloisters lists upcoming events on their web site, there is no convenient RSS feed there, either). You can also monitor a particular location. Doing so for Fairfield, CT, is easy, because not much is in there. The Fairfield Theater Company is listed though.
I wish every cultural institution/park/venue/community group would become a member of this tool. I don't care if it would amount to a lot of self-promotion--at least it would be very convenient and useful. I for one need some easy help with planning events on the fly. With a busy life, it's hard to keep track of all the great things going on and pick one before it all passes by. This tool isn't that useful to me yet, because so much isn't in there, but the potential is great. Of course, I could by-pass this tool entirely if places like the Cloisters would just publish an RSS feed. On the other hand, this tool offers something extra: serendipity and social networking. You can join groups, add your own events, tag things by topic, and connect with others who share your interests.
Library applications? Who has time, but if we had time, we might keep track of local events of interest in our liaison areas, post them in here, and guide students to them--some extracurricular learning for the kids! I don't see why we couldn't also post philanthropic activities in the local area. That reminds me, there was a whole category for philanthropy on the Web 2.0 Awards page.
.That's an image link, so go ahead and click it if you want to visit the site. Upcoming is a fantastic concept in action: Join a community of people interested in catching the best events in their favorite locations and areas of interest. It's neat that you can register a location, then search by a topic, such as gardening. I did this, and found out about the CT Flower and Garden show coming up in Hartford on February 23rd. If you'd like to meet up with folks in a particular interest group visiting the same event as you, this tool connects you. In some cases, you can subscribe to RSS feeds. For example, someone registered the Cloisters in this tool, and there was an RSS feed for Cloisters events. The only problem was that that person registered it in 2004, and no events were ever loaded, apparently, so it's a dead area in the site (and while the Cloisters lists upcoming events on their web site, there is no convenient RSS feed there, either). You can also monitor a particular location. Doing so for Fairfield, CT, is easy, because not much is in there. The Fairfield Theater Company is listed though.
I wish every cultural institution/park/venue/community group would become a member of this tool. I don't care if it would amount to a lot of self-promotion--at least it would be very convenient and useful. I for one need some easy help with planning events on the fly. With a busy life, it's hard to keep track of all the great things going on and pick one before it all passes by. This tool isn't that useful to me yet, because so much isn't in there, but the potential is great. Of course, I could by-pass this tool entirely if places like the Cloisters would just publish an RSS feed. On the other hand, this tool offers something extra: serendipity and social networking. You can join groups, add your own events, tag things by topic, and connect with others who share your interests.
Library applications? Who has time, but if we had time, we might keep track of local events of interest in our liaison areas, post them in here, and guide students to them--some extracurricular learning for the kids! I don't see why we couldn't also post philanthropic activities in the local area. That reminds me, there was a whole category for philanthropy on the Web 2.0 Awards page.
Sunday, February 3, 2008
zohonobozo
No Kidding Zoho, You're no Bozo!
by Ray of Hype
I almost took the easiest route and used Google Docs & Spreadsheets, because I already have an account in that. I'm glad I tried Zoho, instead!
Yeah, this document was published FROM ZOHO DIRECTLY TO THIS BLOG!! Wow. I'm impressed with Zoho. It offers more features than Goole Docs & Spreadsheets. Nice formatting! Zoho is NO BOZO. Very exciting.
Zoho Writer is what this document is. But Zoho also offers an online meeting tool. I downloaded the Zoho Meeting thing. I played with the spreadsheet, too. Wow! It does so much of what Excel offers. This blows me away. The notebook feature is pretty cool, too, because you can upload images and sound and share it! This almost makes Google Docs look clownish. I have to revisit this!
Yeah, this document was published FROM ZOHO DIRECTLY TO THIS BLOG!! Wow. I'm impressed with Zoho. It offers more features than Goole Docs & Spreadsheets. Nice formatting! Zoho is NO BOZO. Very exciting.
Zoho Writer is what this document is. But Zoho also offers an online meeting tool. I downloaded the Zoho Meeting thing. I played with the spreadsheet, too. Wow! It does so much of what Excel offers. This blows me away. The notebook feature is pretty cool, too, because you can upload images and sound and share it! This almost makes Google Docs look clownish. I have to revisit this!
#17 Famous on PBWiki
As suggested, I logged into the PLCMC Wiki on PBWiki, and I listed Ray of Hype among the favorite blogs! Now, kiddo, we're famous. Who knew that becoming a star was nearly as easy as putting together a peanut butter & jelly sandwich, or as easy as using a Wiki, specificially PBWiki? Now, that's wicked cool!
#16 Wiki Wanderings
I wandered around in the recommended Wikis, and I noticed something good about a few of them. The Library Success Wiki is an ambitious venture, and a great idea, but to be great, it needs greater participation. Then, I realized that it also could become overwhelming. The idea to have a wiki for all library best practices is terrific, but not workable yet. The Bull Run wiki seemed to immitate a traditional web page, so it's function didn't seem to solve a novel problem, but maybe allows people to easily update the library's web page, a fairly old problem. Or, maybe I didn't "get it." The subject guides wiki was lots of fun. I like how users can view the guides by title (topic) or may instead choose to browse by category (type of resource, such as book, directory, government info, etc.) What I didn't like was that you couldn't do both. Right now, tools like PirateSource do a better job at this than wikis do. Finally, my favorite wiki on the list was the Book Lovers' Wiki. I can imagine library users participating in something like this, reviewing books in the library's collection. Even better would be patron's participation in the library catalog, directly, though.
#15 Once Upon a Library 2.0
The perspective on library 2.0 that resonated the most with me was "A Temporary Place in Time," by Dr. Wendy Schultz. She recognizes library 2.0 as one stage in a continuum of libraries serving their communities. This continuum emphasized the role of libraries as repositories in its earliest stages. Then, libraries began to offer data retrieval. With library 2.0, we're seeing libraries blossom in the areas of commentary and annotation. What I love most about Shultz's perspective is the acknowledgment that no function of the library will necessarily go away. We may decrease our participation as repositories, but there will always be rare materials or censored materials or out of print materials we'll want to hold on to. We'll always want to collect the histories of our local communities. So, we keep adding on, without losing sight of any of the services we're relied on to provide. What we may end up with, in Shultz's words, is a "knowledge spa," (in both a physical and virtual sense) with libraries providing a retreat and space to contemplate or meditate. She describes libraries as a place for everyone and anyone to go to be pampered and "immersed in a luxury of ideas and thought." Library as sanctuary--I hope library 2.0 will lead to that, without losing anything that makes libraries so valuable.
#14 Technorati, it's a hottie!
To get started on this task, I visited Technorati and clicked the advanced link, which led me to a bunch of search boxes. When I searched for blog posts, several results turned up. The first among them were "SEMLS workshop on Wednesday 2/3," from librarian.net; "Jane Knight's Weekly Bulletin;" a Wordpress screencast by Kyle Jones (from Tame the Web); and a posting out of the UK from a blog called "Minds on Fire." Searching by tags, my results were somewhat similar, but not exactly. Different items were at the top of the list. It was interesting to note that the tag search wasn't exact, as I found one posting, titled "Teaching an online course using educational social tools," that was tagged "E-Learning 2.0." Finally, searching the blog directory was quite different. This was similar to searching a subject index, and found blogs, not just postings, focused on "Learning 2.0."
Looking around Technorati's popular area, I found out that Sarah Silverman is having a good time with Matt Damon and Boing Boing is still the most popular blog around. Relevant to 23 Things, there is a blog called "Mashable: the Social Networking Blog." I visited this Mashable post, at
http://mashable.com/2008/02/03/13-tools-for-tracking-discussions-in-the-blogosphere/#more-19987
and found out about cool things called Memetrackers, very mysterious! A memetracker will help you find and track bloggers' discussions about a topic or story you're interested in. A couple meme trackers reported in that posting include BallBug.com for baseball fans, and CoComment.com. Pretty cool!
Now, I'm being ambitious. I'm going to tag my post DNLibrary right here:
[DNLibrary].
Technorati is very much a hottie, but I didn't get an account yet. Too many accounts to keep track of just yet. It will be very cool, however, to search blogs and try memetracking!
Looking around Technorati's popular area, I found out that Sarah Silverman is having a good time with Matt Damon and Boing Boing is still the most popular blog around. Relevant to 23 Things, there is a blog called "Mashable: the Social Networking Blog." I visited this Mashable post, at
http://mashable.com/2008/02/03/13-tools-for-tracking-discussions-in-the-blogosphere/#more-19987
and found out about cool things called Memetrackers, very mysterious! A memetracker will help you find and track bloggers' discussions about a topic or story you're interested in. A couple meme trackers reported in that posting include BallBug.com for baseball fans, and CoComment.com. Pretty cool!
Now, I'm being ambitious. I'm going to tag my post DNLibrary right here:
[DNLibrary].
Technorati is very much a hottie, but I didn't get an account yet. Too many accounts to keep track of just yet. It will be very cool, however, to search blogs and try memetracking!
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