Play 2.0

Microblogging

2008-02-21T19:10:00.000-08:00

Everyone participating in hcplc2.0 should be familiar with blogs and blogging now - how many people are sharing their ideas and interests online. So I want to write about something that involves sharing even more personal information - microblogging. This means using online sites to send a small amount of information at a time. The most well known of the microblogging web 2.0 sites is Twitter.

People use Twitter to send out messages of only 140 characters. You can say anything you like, but most people are answering the question "What are you doing now?". Some people detail their lives throughout the day to let their friends know what they are up to, others post useful URLs, some use it to market their brand, and some people use it to discuss a conference session - while still in the session! People can twit by posting online or by using their cell phone to text message to Twitter. There is even a Firefox browser Extension called TwitBin. Webware has a very good introductory Guide to Twitter here.

I think that people tend to either love or hate Twitter. I have not done a lot of posting to it, since I prefer to network in Facebook or Library2.0 Ning and also post to my blogs. There does not seem to be a lot of time left over for Twittering! My twitters can be read here. You can use this twitter search engine to look for other librarians who twit. I recommend looking at these "tweets" to get a better idea about what twitter is.

However, Twitter can also be used by libraries to give instant news and updates- for example the Missouri River Regional Library posts about changes to bookmobile routes and about library closings due to severe weather. Other libraries using Twitter include: Boscobel Public Library, Lester Public Library, and Yale Science Libraries. The Public Library of Charlotte & Mecklenburg County has a twitter feed of literature quotes from the first line of novels.

For more information, I recommend Ellyssa Kroski's (iLibrarian) excellent post, called "A Guide to Twitter in Libraries".

More Suggested Library/Librarian blogs

2008-02-21T13:59:00.000-08:00

In the sidebar to the right, under the recent comments section, I have a list of my favorite librarian blogs. In this post, I will give some additional suggestions.

Here are some good general purpose library blogs:

Papercuts (Topeka and Shawnee County Public Library)
Icarus (Santa Fe Public Library Blog)

Libraries with several blogs:
Ann Arbor District Library System (AADL) - has lots of different blogs and you can choose what topics to subscribe to on their RSS page.

Pasco County Library System - has several blogs - including library information, e-government, outreach, youth services, teen, programs and exhibits, resident information, and reader's advisory.

Blogs with Library-Related Topics:

Dewey and Main - Where Library Meets Local
The "M" Word - Marketing Libraries
OPL Plus - blog for librarians in small libraries
The Reader's Advisor Online
MADreads - Madison Public Library book reviews

Fun With Image Generators

2008-02-21T04:31:00.000-08:00

Here are some examples of fun with image generators.
Here is a cute ImageChef mashup:
(found via A Library By Any Other Name)

Beagle is best in show at Westminster 2008 Championship:
(also created at ImageChef - which supplies the code to paste to your blog)

Funny Blog Readability Test

2008-02-15T07:15:00.000-08:00

Heidi, over at Heidi in 2.0 Land, has posted her blog readability level. I am not sure how the test determines readability level. However, readers of this blog must be really brilliant - since Play2.0's readability is:

Some of my Favorite Non-Library Blogs

2008-02-13T08:17:00.000-08:00

Humor and Personal Blogs:

Cute Overload - cute animal pictures. Here is an example:

I can haz cheezburger - cute animal pictures with funny captions - these can cheer you up! Here is one:

moar humorous pics

Confessions of a Pioneer Woman - beautiful ranching photos, recipes, humorous stories
Here is my favorite picture from this blog:

User Friendly - comic strip about computer programmers and some political humor

Misc. :

Lifehacker - technology tricks and general life tips
Bargainist - sales, coupons, and special deals from major stores

Environmental Scanning for Librarians

2008-02-13T07:11:00.000-08:00

Librarians should keep up with new trends in society and technology, so that we can plan for the future.

Here are some good blogs for environmental scanning:

Docuticker - new research studies and statistics on everything
Teleread - what is new with ebooks and ebook readers
Massively - all the news about virtual worlds (like Second Life) and massive multiplayer online games (mmos)
GigaOm - general technology news
Mashable- social networking news
Read Write Web - web technology news

New Blogger Templates

2008-02-13T05:19:00.000-08:00

When you start a "Blogger" blog, you are asked to choose a template. You may be disappointed because there are not many to choose from. If you want to have a different style, you may create your own, but that takes a lot of time and effort. However, I have found a great post from Blogger Buster, called 101 Excellent Blogger XML Templates. There are many beautiful templates in this list and they are available as free downloads.

Blogger Buster is a great resource for Blogger information and hacks. I recently used her "create your own recent comments widget" to add a list of recent comments to the sidebar of each of my blogs. You can create your own by using the code generator on this page. I think that adding this sidebar may help to encourage readers to read the comments and to post comments of their own.

The value of conversations and community online

2008-01-31T11:36:00.000-08:00

Susan Oliver over at the hcplc=lib2.0 blog just posted about a new York Times article about Tutor.com. This article was very positive about the writer's daughters' experiences using this tutoring service. To a private individual, this service costs $29.99 for 50 minutes. Our library and many other systems provide the Tutor.com service to our patrons for free. Unfortunately, the article did not mention that many libraries provide this service for free.

I immediately looked at the end of the article to see if there was a place to add a comment. This would have been a great opportunity to market libraries and their services. However, I found myself frustrated - there was no commenting available. I think that many people are getting used to blogs and to newspaper websites (like the Tampa Tribune) where one can comment on the articles and see what other community members think about a particular topic. This gives a voice to every person and I think that it is very empowering. I believe that there will be more pressure over time for news agencies to provide a commenting feature. I think that online discussion is a major part of web 2.0.

Ask a Librarian Video Contest Finalists

2008-01-25T09:27:00.000-08:00

I just received a Facebook update about the Ask a Librarian Director's Chair Youtube competition for Florida high school students. The students create a 30 second public service video promoting the "Ask a Librarian" chat service. The videos of the top five videos are here. You can vote for your favorite video starting January 27th on this page. The winner will receive a video camera, second place is a Nintendo Wii, and third place is a Zen V Plus Digital Audio Player Jukebox.

New cultural and technological trends talk by Stephen Abrams

2008-01-25T05:18:00.000-08:00

The Furtive Librarian blog has a great summary post of a recent talk at the New York City chapter of the Special Libraries Association by Stephen Abram about future trends and how libraries need to change to match these trends. Mr. Abrams stressed the importance of librarians promoting what we do and communicating our value to the public. He talked about how we can use personal stories to highlight how librarians can help people.

By the way, Stephen Abram is one of the keynote speakers for the Florida chapter of the Special Libraries Association Conference in St. Petersburg (February 27-29, 2008).

Instant Messaging and "Ask a Librarian" exercises

2008-01-23T15:09:00.000-08:00

I have a Meebo account and have participated in some of the group chat rooms there. I do not have any contacts in Meebo, though, so I have not used it for chatting with friends. I have used IM within the "Second Life" virtual world to contact friends. I have also used the IM feature of Skype (the free voice over the internet program). Since I did my degree online, I have a lot of experience using the chat rooms from the "Blackboard" online course software.

For the exercise this week, I used my Gmail account which has a chat ability. I chatted with John R. and it worked well. If I was at home, I could have used the Google Talk program and had it on in the background, so I would not have to keep the Gmail program open. It was fun to chat, but I still prefer phone and email for most tasks. I think that this may be because I do not know many people who use IM a lot.

I tried the "Ask a Librarian" chat. The preliminary screen asks for your email address. This is not a required field, but it takes a moment to figure that out. I am afraid that this may turn off some of the patrons who are using this service - since they may not want to give their email because of privacy issues. I first chatted with a public librarian in Jacksonville. He had some technical difficulties and transferred me to another librarian. The second librarian was from the Florida Gulf Coast University and she answered my question. I did not ask a question that required cobrowsing, so I am not sure if I had set my software up properly for that (for example, pop-ups must be enabled). Except for the technical problems, the question was answered quickly. It was pleasant chatting with the librarians.

Great book about library 2.0

2008-01-16T14:03:00.000-08:00

Andrew posted about using library 1.0 (i.e. books) to learn about library 2.0. My favorite book about Library 2.0 is "Social Software in Libraries: Building Collaboration, Communication, and Community Online" by Meredith Farkas. She does a great job of introducing the concepts and describing how to add library 2.0 features to your library. She is careful to emphasize that each library needs to evaluate which library 2.0 tools will work well for their particular patrons and staff.

Instant Messaging (IM) for Libraries

2008-01-05T08:41:00.000-08:00

David Lee King recently posted about a great IM idea. His library added a Meebo widget to the "unsuccessful keyword search results" page of their online catalog. That way, frustrated patrons can get immediate help to find what they are looking for. This is providing help at the "point of need". Of course, this only works during hours that the library is open! Also, it would be important for someone to be available at the desk to answer the IMs continuously. This is because people do not want to wait a long time for someone to answer their IM.

Another benefit of IM is that it is specific to that library, so patrons can ask questions about that library's programs and materials. "Ask a Librarian" services, on the other hand, are staffed by people throughout a state or region, and so they do not have such specific information about particular library systems.

Avatar pictures

2008-01-05T05:16:00.000-08:00

As Andrew posted in his blog, one of the fun things that you can do on the internet is to create avatar pictures. You can choose to create a character that looks similar to a Harry Potter character, a Simpsons character, or a create your own customized cartoon figure. People can use these as their profile pictures for their blog, for theirTwitter account, or for their profile pictures on social networking sites like Ning.com. On library 2.0, some people use avatar pictures, pictures of their pets, favorite pictures, or artistic photos if they want to keep their identity private. However, many people on Library 2.0 Ning do use real pictures of themselves.
Here are some avatar cartoons that I have made:

Stephanie S. showed me a nice site called Meez, that seems even better than the Yahoo avatars application. It even allows you to animate your avatar. Here is a picture of avatar from there:

As you can see, I am a fan of Golden Retrievers.

Oops!

2007-12-31T13:58:00.001-08:00

I just noticed that Blogger uses the same "About Me" page which is tied to my other blog. Please disregard the information in the side bar about the purpose of this blog - this blog really is a learning 2.0 blog! That is one problem with Blogger - it has fewer options and one has less control over format than with a Wordpress blog. However, it is very easy to set up and use, so I do not plan to switch to Wordpress or another blogging software right now.

Introduction

2007-12-31T10:11:00.000-08:00

Hi everyone, I started this blog to write about web 2.0 and library 2.0 websites and applications. My library system is starting a training program on Library 2.0 in January. I first became interested in library 2.0 last year, while I was still in the MSLIS program at Florida State University. Once I started reading some of the blogs about Library 2.0, I became very interested in user-generated content and social networks. I am also interested in finding information efficiently and not having to "reinvent the wheel".

For example, there are online wikis that allow librarians to add content and resource links about a topic, so that the best information is brought together in one place. My favorite wiki is Meredith Farkas' "Library Success Wiki", which she created to share best library practices. I was inspired to create a blog, Senior Friendly Libraries", to bring together resources for older adult services libarians. An interesting side effect is that older adults are also visiting my blog (via google searches) and learning about useful resources for older adults.

As I looked at more Web 2.0 websites, I found that there were many services that I could also use in my private life. I could share photos with family and friends on Flickr, play in a virtual world (SecondLife), get ratings and reviews on items that I wanted to buy, and find new friends on social networks (such as Facebook). I think that you will have fun playing with these Web2.0 applications, too!