Et tu, YouTube? Thing 20.0

I've spent the last year saying, "I have no time for YouTube." But I bopped over to play, per 23 Things. I was not deeply impressed when I clicked on some of the featured videos. I'm not a big fan of TV to begin. I looked at the subject directory. I watched some so-called funny videos. At best, I found them disturbing. So I searched for something I would like to watch, and found the above clip of Patti Smith on Saturday Night Live. I greatly enjoyed it. But when I looked for the date of the filming, or the source, I couldn't find anything. I found the info quite easily via Google--it aired on SNL April 17, 1976. I watched it with my best friend Eric in my parent's den in suburban Philly.

I'm assuming there's no meta-data because this clip is protected by copyright, which is being violated. I'm sure Patti doesn't have a problem, but I bet NBC does. I looked at the comments, thinking they might be interesting. They weren't; mostly sophomoric. They did not add to the content.

I surfed a bit more. Some of the videos do give meta-data, but it's very uneven, which makes the searching uneven.

I must say embedding the clip in Blogger was VERY easy, and that video clips can make web sites more interesting. But I will probably never be very interested in YouTube as a social interaction--just not my thing.

My biggest surprise: when I went to email the clip to my daughter, I had to sign in. It said my preferred username was taken! So I tried my default password, and lo and behold, I already had set up a YouTube account. No recollection of when or why, but there it was. YouTube says I joined 11/30/2006, and have watched 3 videos. Maybe it was that Book 1.0 video? It's here--if you haven't seen it, do--hilarious

Thing 15--a little leit reading, wince

15. Read a few perspectives on Web 2.0, Library 2.0 and the future of libraries and blog your thoughts.

I started by reading the Wikipedia article on Web 2.0. Here's the bits I found most interesting, or at least most worthy of snipping:

"It’s actually an idea that the reciprocity between the user and the provider is what’s emphasized. In other words, genuine interactivity if you like, simply because people can upload as well as download"—S. Fry

business embracing the web as a platform and utilising its strengths

o The web as a platform
o Data as the driving force
o Network effects created by an architecture of participation
o Innovation in assembly of systems and sites composed by pulling together features
from distributed, independent developers (a kind of "open source" development)
o Lightweight business models enabled by content and service syndication
o The end of the software-adoption cycle (the so-called perpetual beta)
o Software above the level of a single device, leveraging the power of the "Long
Tail"
o Ease of picking-up by early adopters

This seems like ideas that for most libraries aren't realistic. Our ILS systems seem like the opposite of Web 2.0, in my experience. There are now open source ILS in development and in use, but I don't think any large public library systems have joined that particular bandwagon.

On to Cites & Insights Library 2.0 and "Library 2.0". First I have to say how thrilling it was for me to be able to print a 32-page issue of C&I and read it and mark it up with a highlighter ON MPOW's DIME. I've been reading it rather irregularly for about can-it-be six years? But always printing and sharing with at least three people, or not printing...so this was the height of luxury, in my mind.

Walt (I get to call him that because I do know him) really looks at the rather intense storm that gripped the biblioblogosphere in late 2005 early 2006. I can remember reading some of those posts at the time, and thinking people weren't defining their terms very well. In some ways, I think someone got it right when they said "Library 2.0" would become so 2005.

I think Walt is correct in seeing the concepts of Library 2.0 as being useful if they allow us to examine new technology and how it can strengthen our services to our users. However, implementing "Library 2.0" willynilly for some "revolution" will not serve us or our users well at all.

Reading the statements Walt gathered and his commentary made me think more about this course. Why is Infopeople doing this? Are they jumping on a bandwagon. I'm going to muse about this a bit more in my final post! Walt may come off a little curmudgeonly, but his careful and thorough analysis is whipped up with wonderful dry wit. So, for me, reading his 32-page perspective (and skewering of some biblioblogosphere bigwigs) was fun!

Thing 14 Technorati

public libraries

I don't quite know what this tag will do--it was on the Technorati home page, saying "See your posts here. To contribute to this page, include this code in your blog post:" Now it doesn't seem to work. Oh well, I tried.

I have not been very happy with my searches in Technorati--searching by tags seems too open to interpretation. When I tried Lakeside and California, I got LOTS of hits about speeding tickets!

I didn't find a way to really understand "authority" in Technorati. The number of blogs that link to another blog seems to be a key component. However, the fact that my "home" blog appears on some other bloggers' blogrolls does not add to it's importance in my mind...

I found it more interesting/useful to look at Statscounter, which I discovered via Rule the Web, which I subscribed to via RSS after reading about it here. Or maybe it was by email? In any case, I think Technorati is probably more important for people working in journalism, advertising, entertainment, etc. I don't think libraryland is as concerned about how many read and link to how many.

Thing 8, +13+22 +99 reasons why I haven't done my homework

I started this post at 5 minutes before closing last night. Now it's Saturday and I am finishing it on my own time.

Did it say anywhere that we needed to do the Things in order? Because I realized in looking over the list of Things that I had managed to jump around a bit. Sorry if that causes any inconvenience.

I thought last week was the crazy busy week. I was wrong. I did not get 45 minutes to truly play with any fun new toys at work this week. However, I did some stuff that was at least related.

My co-worker Molly and I set up a flickr account for our branch, and I showed Molly how to upload and tag pix. Our username is LakesideLibrary. Molly discovered some really great shots of our mural celebration on what must be a local photographer's flickr account, Joy Elizabeth. So we "friended" (aka added as a contact) her. We also created an avatar for our account, using the photo of LK on the SDCL.org site. So I think this counts as fulfilling Thing 22. Molly is just full of ideas for using flickr. She wants to do librarian trading cards for all the staff. This does seem like fun, and good PR.

I'm kind of amazed--I've been using flickr for like five years, and I had not begun to explore/exploit its interestingness. I have to remember to order photo paper. I want to print a set of Joy Elizabeth's mural pix for my mural documentation folder, with attribution of course!

I have to think more about how we are tagging them, since they aren't coming up when you search Lakeside Library. We put in the tags LakesideBranch and SDCL. Need to rethink.

I've now read all of the posts on all of the blogs my fellow 23 Thingsers have set up. I think that was 73 posts. Most were pretty short, but it was pretty interesting. I got to see lots of mashups, a little bit on image generators (which I look forward to trying since I think my current avatar looks anorexic). I also looked at Oddcast, but I couldn't find the way to do a trial. Oh well, maybe someone will post a link.

I accidentally ended up reading a bunch of Information Wants To Be Free from a reference to the survey there. I tripped over IWTBF ages ago, and always find Meredith's thinking useful. A recent post posed questions about why people blog. I think I will think about that over at my main blog. I recently had comments there from two of my old online friends, which made me realize how much I value that contact.

I also spent a lot of time this week looking at the Nashville Public Library site and their implementation of Encore. I was one of the people asked to evaluate it for potential for SDCL. Encore uses de.licio.us style tag clouds, but they are based on Library of Congress Subject Headings. It almost goes without saying this makes for some weird results.

And yet another Thing I worked on this week. I've opened a de.licio.us account for the reference committee. We are going to try to put together a set of reference bookmarks that will be useful for the entire system. Several of the people involved are also 23 Thingers, so I have to say this course/competition is certainly having some consequences. I have also been posting and getting more comments on my other blogs. Kick-starting those was one of my personal goals. So I am rather happy, even if I did spend substantially more than 45 minutes writing this post (it is now Sunday morning). So I will slog onward!

Thing 7 and thing 8

Since I already have tons of experience with Bloglines, I decided to set up a Google Reader account. It's just another aggregator. My Bloglines account is completely scary--thousands of unread posts from acoupla hundred blogs...

So I set up the Google Reader account with feeds from my 23 Things colleagues. I don't have time to finish this am--have to get ready for a Hispanic Heritage event. I'm just putting a note here to serve a reminder a) I stopped at Susan D in my blogroll and b) I want to talk about getting more from our blogs by using them as our reporting method!

Thing 6

I got a little seduced looking at Charlotte's page--lots of links that led me elsewhere.

I've looked at Ann Arbor's site before--I think it's tremendous. The user reviews of materials are just wonderful. The website asa blog seems to really work.

Denver Public's podcasts were cool--I'm jealous. I guess we need to start an author lecture series. Then we can have cool podcasts from them. This seems like a great idea, but we don't really have an auditorium space anywhere, do we?

What's our largest seating capacity? If anyone knows, please post a comment. Of course, we could go the partnership route. I think I can get like 300 in our community center. Great, another great idea to work on! (Sarcastic, yes, but still upbeat.)

BTW, I had no difficulty locating the podcasts on DPL's main page. Maybe they've improved it since InfoPeople made that comment?

I actually spent a little time looking for libraries that have implemented flickr. I found this group, which was cool, and led me here. I think I liked San Mateo's page best of all the ones I visited this week. I'll be looking some more at their use of flickr, as I start to try and get LK's flickr going!

Wheeee--a feed!

Thanks, Jenne.


I just added the rss feed to my blog, so now you can listen to the podcasts from here: http://23lkthings.blogspot.com/


The new Blogger template makes this kind of thing very easy. Yeah!

Lisle


"...me figuraba el Paraíso bajo la especie de una biblioteca" --Jorge Borges


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: B., Jenne
Sent: Thursday, August 23, 2007 1:54 PM
Subject: Rule the Web

We just received a new book called Rule the Web by Mark Frauenfelder. It looks like an excellent resource for learning Web 2.0 stuff.

There’s also a website at www.ruletheweb.net .

Jenne B.

Good reads

I worked out how to get GoodReads on the blog, following in Jenne's fotsteps. It's ok. Please note that it says I read a whole lot of books yesterday, because that's when I was playing around with the site. GoodReads uses the Amazon database. I may go back to LibraryThing, because their database includes more sources, like LOC for goodness' sake. It also leads to a MARC record, which always warms the cockles of this librarian's heart.