The final countdown....

Some final thoughts on the 23 Things programme:


What have been the highs and lows of the 23 Things for me?
Highs
Talking about 23 Thing with others
Discovering some exciting new tools I can use to help manage information
Finding some interesting blogs about library trends
Getting to "play" with new technologies

Lows
What is this obsession with having "friends"?
Managing all of my multiple identities
Second Life menace with limited vocabulary
Having a photo of myself added to a social networking page by another 23 Things participant without my permission and very much against my wishes


Where to next with emerging technologies?
For me?
Contemplate, consolidate, reconsider, be objective
Retreat from networks I am unlikely to use again

For libraries?
Review, evaluate, validate, implement, review, evaluate...

RSS retrospective

I deliberately wanted to leave this blog entry until I had received RSS feeds for a substantial period of time and my reflections were considered:

In what cases do you think RSS will be useful?
For users of news type services, web pages and blogs if the services are stable and reliable, updates are made regularly and not incessantly, and the interest of the user is sustained over a period of time

For you?
A useful way to keep a watch on library trends - I tend to look at posts occasionally but not regularly

For our users?
Useful for updates - a good way of promoting new services, trials, or resources
A different way of providing alerting services

What makes it different to email?
Only what I want to read , when and if I choose to read it
No spam!

Revisiting my goals

Revisiting the goals I set in Week 2. Did I reach them?

Goals
To learn about emerging library technologies
Well I definitely know more than I did before, in some cases more than I needed or wanted to know.

To evaluate these technologies and assess their potential for adoption
I can definitely see a use for some of the technologies, others I'm less sure about, some I just think are irrelevant - I think the Library as a whole needs to seriously evaluate these technologies and the role, if any, they should fulfill in the provision of our services.

To adopt some of these new technologies to resolve current workplace need
Have already begun using RSS feeds and del.icio.us to help management information, will possibly adopt other technologies as the need arises.

To help mentor others
I found that many of my colleagues did not need the assistance of a mentor.

As I thought at the beginning of this programme regularly finding time to complete the tasks was the greatest difficulty of all.

Now at the end of the programme, my overriding thought is that all of these technologies need to be rigorously evaluated and pedagogically validated before they join our current methods of service delivery.

In my eyes it is preferable that we use these technologies to find creative solutions for existing service delivery needs rather than the "lackey band" situation that causes us to deliver the same service using so many different technologies that staff and other resources are stretched to breaking point and we provide no service well. Just because a technology exists and other libraries have chosen to investigate its use, does not necessarily mean that it is valid or that we have to use it too.

Retroland

While in Learning 2.1 I had a quick look at Retroland and now I'm definitely feeling my age.

However, it did give me some ammunition to use in a disagreement about this horror product of the '60's and '70's - Fresca:



Big Brother remembered it as lemon flavoured but I was sure that it was the most awful version of synthetic artificially sweetened grapefruit drink that I have ever ingested. It used to be sold as a diet drink along with the equally awful tasting Tab, so I was amused to read this description in Retroland:

"In Spanish, the word "fresca" means fresh, and that's something the Coca-Cola company sought to bring to diet-conscious soft drink consumers in the early 60s. The grapefruit-flavored beverage catered to more 'discriminating' palates, and has grown a cult following over the years. While its popularity has grown slightly since its introduction, it remains a cult beverage with followers that grew up with the drink. It joins the ranks of Tab, another specialty diet soda that didn't get mass market appeal."

It was apparently the beverage of choice of US President Lyndon B Johnson - go figure.

Learning about Learning 2.1

The learning 2.1 activity that I chose to look at was Thing 45: Go With the Flow which is all about mind maps and flowcharts - I looked at two different web-based tools for creating this type of graphic: bubbl.us and Gliffy.

bubbl.us is an easy to use tool for creating mind maps - easy that is until you try to export or embed the image you have created, their help is non-existent! as you can see from my mind map I had lots of ideas about how this technology could be used in libraries, including brainstorming, project management, promotional literature and information literacy. I could see a direct tie in with the information road maps that were discussed at the Sharecase.



Gliffy is similar to bubbl.us but also has this nifty floor plan creator.

Sharing slideshare.net

Web 2.0, Hip or Hype - A Library Perspective

An intelligent and reasoned look at what libraries can do to harness the potential of the collective intelligence.

SlideShare Link

Most useful to libraries ... hmmm...

The two most useful tools that I have looked at so far are RSS feeds and del.icio.us.

I can see that these tools could be effectively used to aid information management by both library staff and library patrons - right here, right now.

Another advantage in my eyes is that they don't rely on critical mass and the obsessive need to have "friends".

Second Life = Sierra circa 1980

This is another new technology that I just don't get.

In the beginning I thought okay a way of combining gaming technology with educational purpose this could interest me. Then I made an avatar and checked out Lindenworld - the cynic in me very quickly realised that the main purpose of Second Life is to make money (lots of money) for Linden laboratories.

What I discovered is that for me it offered little in the way of inducement to learn. There are a lot of hoops to jump through to achieve nothing that could not already be achieved using existing library technology such as web pages, phone or IM, videoconferencing or wikis.

This combined with graphics that were so clunky they reminded me very strongly of the old Sierra PC games of the early 1980's such as King's Quest and Mystery House - it is so slow. Unlike Tibia or WoW you don't even get to kill anything but there is every chance that my avatar will commit suicide due to frustration.

The final insult to injury was having my screen filled with obscene messages and my avatar "frozen" by some other user.

Wittering on twitter

After posting on Twitter for a week I'm not sure I ever want to use it again.

However, I can see a possible use for it as a way of disseminating (perhaps embedded in our web page?) info about library services or upcoming events such as tours and classes. This would be especially useful at the beginning of semester or to provide rapid information but would require constant attention and appropriate content.

Socially, I don't need constant snapshots of other peoples lives in 140 characters or less and lets hope it doesn't have this effect.

Librarians in popular culture

Librarians should be saluted on a regular basis...

19 down, 4 to go

I'm now more than half way through the 23 Things programme and my feelings are somewhat ambivalent. There are a number of new technologies that I find really useful such as Google Reader and del.icio.us and I can see a role for these, and the use of blogs and wikis, in improving the way we manage information in our daily working lives. However, I'm less convinced about how many of the new technologies would improve the way we interact with our patrons. Some Things such as Twitter and Second Life I just find downright irritating! I still find the most effective method of communicating with patrons to be the face to face interview and my second choice would be by telephone - so many of the nuances of language are lost in text based communication. I certainly would not want to limit the communication of library information to 140 characters per conversation.

From Google Reader

I was most interested in an article posted at librariesinteract.info about the Australian Access Federation, a programme to develop infrastructure to facilitate electronic communication within and between research and higher education institutions. Each institution in the AAF would trust the authentication credentials of other members’ users to provide authorised access using Shibboleth and Public Key Infrastructure technologies.

Social networks

Littérateur will now don her grumpy little old lady suit...

I know what social networking is about and I know a lot of our students and academic staff use these tools - what I don't know is why are we here?

Social networking is just that intended for just that - social purposes. Students use Facebook and Myspace to interact with their friends and classmates. Anecdotal and other evidence suggests the intrusion of others into their space can cause resentment or ridicule - an American college student recently described librarians in Facebook as "like a soccer mom wearing a Pikachu T-shirt". There was a considerable outcry when Facebook was made available to users outside of educational institutions.

Facebook precludes usage by institutions - so why would a group of librarians create a Facebook Group or Network and then hang about waiting for students to "friend" us. The even creepier alternative would be us trying to "friend" the students.

Another consideration is that many employers are now banning the use of Facebook including banks, television networks, councils, government departments and private enterprise. Why encourage students to use a resource for any library purpose which they will probably not be able to use once they gain employment?

I can not think of a single purpose that we could use social networks for that could not be met by web pages, CE6 or email/chat reference services.

Maybe I'm just not social...

Flickr gives me the flick

This week I added some photos to Flickr following Kathryn's instructions.

This is the first Thing that I found really difficult to follow. Often what I was seeing on the screen didn't seem to match the instructions. Even more frustrating was that the Flickr help screens didn't actually help with my problems.

I did succeed in the end but I think I would only use Flickr in the unlikely event that I needed to share photos with a large number of people.

Images in a blog

A word of warning my photography skills are no match for these guys...


When Kathryn suggested that we take photos and add them to our blogs I thought of my subject instantly.

Hidden away on North Wing Level 3 is a wonderful series of black and white photographs which document the history of Murdoch University and the Library. Some of the photographs are attributed to University photographer Brian Richards.
It was a shame that these photographs were not relocated during the refurbishment as they are not displayed to their best advantage. Unfortunately the cramped conditions and light reflections make them hard to photograph.

If you have a look you might even be able to identify one of the subjects of the photograph at the bottom.

• Adding the images to this post was extremely straight forward but I do wish that Blogger would improve the "drag and drop" capacity, so frustrating!

Image generators

Thing 14 before either Thing 12 or 13...

This is a clever piece of technology which has potential for application in information literacy or in enhancing web pages or WebCT.

It would be a really good method of catching a reader's attention or highlighting one aspect of a significant amount of information.

del.icio.us vs google...

This week's blog post will compare tagged sites with other sites. The task was to enter the same term into the search field of a range of sites and compare the results. The number of results retrieved was very different for each site.

The tagged sites brought up some duplicate sites and some unique sites. A search in a tagged site will only retrieve what has been tagged with that exact term, while other sites with a taxonomy will possibly achieve a wider recall. The number of hits may also depend on the number of users registered to use the site.

I particularly liked using Kartoo. This is a very different site which presented the results visually. It is very similar to the Visual Search option offered by EbscoHost databases.

I also like del.icio.us, it will be great to have a bookmarking facility which is not computer or browser dependent. I have already created an account and added some tags.

Here wiki, wiki, wiki

The latest tasks of the 23 Things project was to share a document with another participant using Google Documents and to create a wiki using PBwiki.

Both of these tasks were reasonably straight forward but the hardest thing I found was coming up with content that didn't bore me to tears, let alone my fellow participant s in the 23 Things project. I found myself creating and destroying different Pbwiki entries because they simply bored me stupid.

If you are interested you could check out my 'final' effort.

Things have changed just a little since the innovations of 1946...

Cute and cuddly...not quite

I wanted to practice adding images to my blog so I had a quick look at my fellow Participants blogs - there are an awful lot of furry friends represented on our blogs. Now those of you who have established my identity will know that I am usually not a fan of the cute and cuddly - there will be no fluffy kittens or puppies on my blog! So in keeping with the established trend, the image above will be the only thing cute and cuddly to ever be included In Black and White.

Feeds on a diet or diet of feeds?

I had to giggle when I opened Google Reader and like Scritty found Fiona Bradley's post on librariesinteract.info entitled How to: Put your feeds on a diet. What amused me so much wasn't the feeds she suggested should be cut shamelessly but more the feeds she suggested keeping:

• Blogs with few subscribers - because you won’t be rereading their comments on everyone else’s blog

(okay, so there's hope for my blog and the wiki for the Stapler Liberation Front yet!)

• Analytical, thoughtful blogs - they’re worth the time

(Flybrarian, this means your blog is OK?)

• Blogs outside librarianship, or with a higher ratio of original content

(yay! I can keep reading those strange news items from the ABC News Offbeat feeds - like the one about the guy who rolled his car inside the KFC drive through)

• Feeds you actually read, if you use Google Reader use the statistics feature to work out which you read the most

(this would limit my feeds to precisely... 3)

I guess ultimately putting my feeds on a diet is better than a diet of feeds

The opinions of others

This week I have used Google Reader to create some RSS feeds.

The conspicuousness of RSS feed links on pages is so variable.

It is fascinating to read the views of other librarians towards emerging library technologies and Web 2.0. It is reassuring to be part of a profession that thinks deeply about the adoption of new tools and allows for the expression of such diverse views as those expressed by Feel-good Librarian and Annoyed Librarian.

Another enjoyable task this week is looking at the blog posts by the other 23 Things participants. What a diverse group of people we are!

Goals, obstacles and toolkit

Goals
To learn about emerging library technologies
To evaluate these technologies and assess their potential for adoption
To adopt some of these new technologies to resolve current workplace needs
To help mentor others

Obstacles
Time
Did i mention time?
Time
More time
Time

Toolkit
A more active imagination
Time
Firefox
Earphones
Digital camera
A mentor for the mentor (Kathryn - where are you?)

Introductory post

This is the first of my 23 Things posts - where I will reflect In Black and White on the Murdoch University Library 23 Things programme.

So far, the first two things were actually rather pedestrian - too much reading and not enough doing for me.

Things 3 to 5 have proved much more interesting - more hands on and interactive. I'm just a little concerned about all of the usernames and passwords I am amassing.