Adventures in Technology

Week 23-24: End of Semester 2

noreply@blogger.com (Melissa) — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 12:00:00 +0000

These hands are clapping for YOU! Congratulations on making it to the final weeks of 2nd semester of Adventures in Technology! We can hardly believe the Adventure is coming to an end. Thanks so much for participating and playing along with us!

You’ll have the next two weeks to finish up all of the Semester 2 exercises. Your posts to your blog should be completed by December 13, 2008 to be eligible for any incentives. We’ll take it easy on you this week, so you’ll have time to catch up if you got behind.

If you have questions about anything, be sure to contact us - we’re happy to help!

Reasonable Expectations

What were our hopes for Adventures in Technology? That the participants would learn:

playing with new tools doesn’t have to scary
the more you play, the more you learn
with all of the new tools available, collaboration has never been easier
users’ expectations of how they want to interact with libraries have changed
there is no such thing as a dumb question.

With those points in mind, here are some expectations for what we hope you’ll do with what you’ve learned throughout our adventure.

First and foremost… Know that it’s okay not to use every new tool out there!

You don’t have to love every tool we have presented, but we hope you’ll be open to new things because you have taken the time to explore and perhaps leave your comfort zone behind from time to time. Your use of Web 2.0 tools should be based on the right tool filling a need, not “Oh, this is so cool! I’m going to come up with an idea for how to use it just because I think it’s slicker than snot!”

You’ll need to make some choices about what tools to use (see “What to Use and When” below), but essential to choosing is continuing to play. Playing with new tools creates an awareness of what’s out there, so that when a problem arises you might know of a tool that could help fix it or if a chance to collaborate presents itself, you’ll know what tools are available to help make that collaboration happen.

Secondly, you can’t ignore Web 2.0, because it’s not going away.

People’s expectations of what they want to get out of their online experience have changed, and we need to be willing to explore and be curious about ways to improve their experience with us or get left in the dust. Providing ways for your community to communicate their wants and needs with you is essential, and Web 2.0 provides plenty of ways to allow and encourage interaction.

Many of the tools we explored provide ways to put your library’s presence and content out where people are on the web. Don’t assume people will just find your library’s website. Get out there where people are and start some conversations. As we begin to redesign our library website, we hope that the staff will have some great ideas for ways that we can incorporate some of these new ideas into the site.

And lastly, do the best you can!

Adopting even one new tool can go a long way in changing your community’s perception of your library. Start small and think big!

Adopting and encouraging change at your library comes down to a “yes, and…” attitude.

What to use and when

We know that even “starting small” can seem overwhelming: how do you even begin to implement any of these tools? Well, here’s one process you can consider:

Identify the need and possible solutions: It’s important to know what you’re trying to do before you begin. Are you trying to solve a problem? Improve customer service? Make more efficient use of staff time?
Once you know what you’re trying to fix, then figure out what tool is the best for the job. Sometimes the choices can seem overwhelming, but try to focus on the tools that might best serve the needs of your customers & that fit with your library’s mission.
Educate: Your project won’t get off the ground without buy-in from the staff you’re working with. And, to buy-in, they have to understand it! So, take the time to educate them about the problem and the tool you’re going to use.
Plan: Once you have other staff convinced, you’ll need them to help plan the project. Think about how you will support and sustain the project (both financially and with staff time), how you’ll promote the project, and how you’ll evaluate it.
Launch: Wasn’t that easy?? Your project is now up-and-running! Congratulations! But wait: there are a couple more steps left.
Promote: You planned for it in Step 3 — now you should do it! Promote this new project to the people who might use it! Make sure to consider if they’ll need training and what benefit the project gives to them. When promoting your project, focus on what they can do with it or what the benefits are instead of focusing on the tool itself.
Evaluate: It’d be great if every project worked like a charm. But they don’t. Projects fail. In Step 3, you’ll need to decide how you are going to determine success or failure. You’ll need to figure out how you’re going to get feedback from the users, and use that feedback to tweak the project (or start over with a new project!).

Continue to play

Just because Adventures in Technology is ending doesn’t mean you need to stop playing and learning — you’ve got the tools now, so you can take charge of your learning path!

Web 2.0 applications continue to develop, so if you make a commitment to keep current you’ll know about new technologies as they emerge, so you can evaluate them for potential use at your library.

Newsfeeds: Keeping up doesn’t mean a huge investment of time if you use a newsreader like Google Reader to subscribe to library blogs and podcasts. Here are some library blogs we recommend:

Play with new Web 2.0 applications; see if you can carve out 15 minutes a day to play. Here are two good sources to new apps and tools:

Check out eHub for news of useful Web 2.0 tools and mashups
Visit Go2Web20 and click on any icon to explore new Web 2.0 tools, with an eye towards their potential use in your library
Subscribe to Lifehacker or MakeUseOf.com in your RSS feeder to stay current with some new websites and technologies.

Blog: Now that’s you’ve started the habit of both keeping up and sharing with others what you’ve learned, continue writing at your blog to share new discoveries you’ve made.

Conferences: If you’re able to attend the WLA conference and/or WAPL conference, they both offer presentations on tech topics. Keep an eye out for system conferences that talk about technology too.

Webinars: You don’t need to travel in order to see a presentation by a speaker; you can participate for free from your computer! Most webinars combine slides & demos with audio, to replicate as closely as possible the in-person experience. Besides offering a current schedule of upcoming presentations, each of these services offer archived presentations you may view at any time:

SirsiDynix Institute
OPAL (Online Programming for All Libraries)

And it’s good to keep an eye on what the folks at the Pew Research Center report on “the numbers, facts, and trends that shape your world.”

Assignment

View this video in which Seth Godin explores the topic of curiosity.

Write a post in your blog about your impressions of what Godin commented on in the video. Are you a curious person? If not, what can you do to encourage curiosity in yourself and others? How does curiosity apply to what we’ve been doing in Adventures in Technology? Write about your final impressions of Adventures in Technology and what you’ll do to continue playing in the future.

Fun Extras

We couldn’t resist including additional tools that we like but didn’t have time to cover. Take a look when you have a minute or two and play at will!

Google Sites is Google’s version of a wiki. Easy to use, and if you’re a Google product fan, why not?

Very Short List sends you a daily email with an interesting website, book, or video to check out and share with your friends. Its a great way to learn about interesting topics you might not otherwise think about.

Widgetbox allows you to make cool web site widgets for just about anything you can imagine.

Kaboodle is a social networking site that proclaims "Shopping is more fun with friends". As a member you can discover new things from people with similar taste and style, recommend and discuss your favorite products and stores, and share wish lists and shopping lists with others.

Week 22 - Mashups

noreply@blogger.com (Melissa) — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 12:00:00 +0000

Mashups

This week’s topic is mashups. We’ll learn what they are, take a look at some cool examples, share ideas about how libraries might use them, and find out how to create them.

Listen to this week’s podcast (or read the Week 10: Semester 2 podcast transcript) and then read the info below. If you have any questions about anything along the way, be sure to contact us - we’re happy to help!

What is a mashup?

The term mashup originally referred to the practice in the music industry of creating a new song by mixing two or more already existing pieces. In technology terms, a mashup is a web application that combines information from more than one source into a single, new tool.

For a bit more info, view What Is a Mashup? from ZDNet.

As is mentioned in the ZDNet video above, mashups are the “fastest growing application ecosystem in the world today,” and you don’t need to be a programmer to be able to create them. The most popular services for people experimenting with mashups are Amazon, eBay, Facebook, Flickr, Google, Yahoo, and YouTube.

Top Mashup Tags from ProgrammableWeb:

Mashup Examples

You already encountered a Flickr mashup in Semester 1 of Adventures in Technology! It’s called Spell with Flickr and was included in fd’s flickr toys, which includes many other Flickr mashups for your entertainment.
HousingMaps is powered by craigslist and Google Maps and enables people to find housing for rent, sale, or sublet.
Daily Mashup pulls together the day’s popular photos, links, and news items.
Netvibes is an aggregator that mashes together information from a variety of sources of your choice. Pull in weather, web searches, news feeds, Flickr photos, to do lists, and more from your own online accounts or generic sources. Similar to iGoogle which allows you to do similar things with even more access to customizable widgets.
EveryBlock Chicago compiles news sources, public records, and other local sites, so Chicago residents can track what’s happening in their neighborhood.
Meebo Map shows where IMs have been sent or received over the past 15 minutes worldwide.
Newsmap is an application that “visually reflects the constantly changing landscape of the Google News news aggregator.”
PlaceOpedia connects Wikipedia articles with their locations.
Zip Code Census Dashboard uses United States Census information to share demographic info by zip code. Great way to learn about your community!

Library Mashup Examples

Go-go Google Gadget was created by John Blyberg for the Ann Arbor District Library. It brings together data from their online catalog and Google widgets for iGoogle.
Hot Titles Carousel is provided by the Cambridge Libraries & Galleries in Ontario, Canada. The Carousel brings together data about most popular books with book covers and links to their online catalog. Great visual presentation!
LibraryThing for Libraries brings LibraryThing and library online catalogs together. Search any one of the catalogs in the Libraries Using LibraryThing list and find the full record of an item (try a mainstream title for the best results). On the full record you’ll see book recommendations, a tag cloud, and reviews integrated with the catalog from the LibraryThing database.
MeL Delivery Locations uses Google Maps to share the delivery locations of the Michigan Library Consortium member libraries. I created something similar mapping OWLS member library locations.
Libraries 411 is a public library directory. Don’t see your library on the map? Read Secure Access for Public Libraries to find out how to get yours added.
Learning 2.0 Throughout the World shows a map of libraries who have participated in the Learning 2.0 program created by Helene Blowers at PLCMC. Adventures in Technology is on it - can you find us?

How To Make a Mashup

There are generally three ways to create a mashup:

Point and click - This method is used when the site you’re visiting offers an “add an app” kind of link where you can select a widget to include on a page. iGoogle’s widgets and Facebook apps are good examples.
Clone - Yahoo! Pipes is an example. View Learn How to Build a Pipe in Just a Few Minutes for more information on using Yahoo! Pipes. Microsoft Popfly is another example, and you can view some video demos about it (after installing their video viewing software, Silverlight). Dapper is another option.
APIs (application programming interfaces) - Google, Amazon, del.icio.us, Flickr, LibraryThing, and YouTube all offer APIs, but this method requires a bit more web savvy to create a mashup.

More Information

Visit ProgrammableWeb for more examples of mashups, along with loads of other info about what’s happening with mashups these days.

If you’d like more information about creating mashups, visit ProgrammableWeb’s How To Make Your Own Web Mashup.

And, if you have an hour to spare sometime, you might want to view the SirsiDynix Institute’s archived presentation, “Mashups: A Little Bit of This, A Little Bit of That” for a well-rounded review of mashups in general.

Assignment

Create your own Google Map.

a. Login to Google Maps with your blogger login.

b. In the left hand frame click on "My Maps."

c. Click "Browse the Directory" or "Create New Map"

d. If you browse the directory, find a map that looks interesting to you and click "Add it to My Maps"

e. If you create your own map, just enter addresses of places you like and remember to save your map when you're done.

f. After you've created or added a map, click on "Send" in the upper right hand corner of the map and email it to Melissa. Don't forget to write about your impressions of your map making skills in your blog for this week!

Write about your impressions of mashups in your blog. Do you have any creative ideas for something you could create for your library?

Fun extra

Cartoon by Rob Cottingham at Social Signal.

Explore the MashupAwards Winners and see if you find a favorite. Mine are Logobama and flickr fight.

Week 21: Video Sharing

noreply@blogger.com (Melissa) — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 12:00:00 +0000

This week you’ll learn about YouTube. Listen to the podcast and read the info below, and if you have any questions about anything along the way, be sure to contact us — we’re happy to help!

What is YouTube?

YouTube is a popular video hosting & sharing service that was founded in 2005, and was bought by Google in 2006. YouTube lets people view videos, and allows registered users to upload videos. In addition to hosting videos, YouTube lets users rate videos and add comments, turning it into a social networking service.

There are other places to find videos on the internet, but YouTube has become the most popular central location to find videos.

To watch a YouTube video you don’t need to install special software, figure out your bandwidth setting, or sign up for an account. You don’t even have to visit the YouTube web site to view a video. Videos are easily embedded in blog postings or on web pages — like those Common Craft videos we’ve provided here in the Adventures in Technology blog!

When you explore YouTube it’s possible to find comedy, cute pets, music videos, notices of videos that have been removed due to copyright infringement, and people making fools of themselves. There’s everything from 1960’s TV commercials, to library dominoes, to the most annoying dog in the world.

In a January 2008 Pew Internet Project data memo Lee Rainie reports, “The audience for YouTube and other internet video sites has risen sharply the past year. Nearly half of online adults now say they have visited such sites.”

How are people using YouTube?

Besides watching and uploading videos, YouTube provides social networking features for those who set up a free account. These features include the ability to…

create a profile, like this one for Racine Public Library
customize your profile with favorites, playlists, and subscriptions to channels & tags
upload & tag your videos
“friend” other YouTube users
send messages, and even broadcast messages to all your YouTube friends
rate and add comments to videos

How can libraries use YouTube for marketing?

Here are some great examples of creative ways libraries are using YouTube:

Calgary Public Library Story Time (no, it’s not the kind of storytime you’re thinking of!)
Tour the Harper College Library (this one is a hoot!)
iACPL 4.0 (Allen County Public Library’s homage to the “I’m a Mac; I’m a PC” commercials)
QandANJ: Now Your Library is Open Late Night Too! (this ad originally aired during the 2007 MTV Video Music Awards)
The Best of Library 2.0 Playlist on YouTube

How can library staff use YouTube as a reference tool?

Have you ever needed to help a student find a famous speech or a news clip? You can find videos of Martin Luther King Jr.’s ‘I Have a Dream’ speech, the first moon landing, and John F. Kennedy’s “ask not what your country can do for you” speech from his 1961 inaugural address.

How can I create a video to share on YouTube?

You’ll first need a device that can capture digital movies. This could be a camcorder, a digital camera, and even a cell phone that has this capability. YouTube accepts a wide range of video file formats such as .WMV, .AVI, .MOV, and .MPG. You’ll then copy the movie to your computer and upload it to YouTube; or you could edit it with software like Windows Movie Maker or iMovie (for Macs) to add titles or special effects before uploading it. For details, visit YouTube’s help center and Video Toolbox. This 3 minute video explains it all (and is especially funny if you’ve seen an episode of the 1983-1995 Bob Ross “The Joy of Painting” TV show.)

Another way is to create a screencast using Screencast-O-Mati, then export it as Quicktime video in .MOV format (watch this screencast to find out how), which you can then upload to YouTube.

How else can I get a video onto YouTube for our library?

Consider setting up a YouTube contest! Here are some examples:

OWLSnet ran their InfoSoup YouTube Contest in January 2008, and you can see all the entries at http://info.infosoup.org/youtube/
AskAway is planned a YouTube contest as part of the Fall 2008 AskAway Awareness Week
The Director’s Chair video contest to promote Florida’s Ask a Librarian service
Denver Public Library Evolver
I Love My Library video contest top five finalists

There’s even an entire section of YouTube just for Contests.

Assignment:

Watch some of the library videos linked to above, or use this link http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=libraries&search=tag to find other videos tagged “libraries”.
Explore YouTube to find a video on any topic that interests you.
Create a blog post about your experience:
a. Write about what you liked or disliked about YouTube.
b. Add a link to a video, or embed a video in your blog post.
c. Write your thoughts about libraries’ uses of YouTube.

Not sure how to embed a video in a blog posting? I used Screencast-O-Matic to create a 1-minute screencast that shows how to do it.

Optional assignment:

1. Sign up for your own YouTube account at http://www.youtube.com/signup. (Good news for those of you with too many usernames & passwords already -– if you have a Google account, you can use your existing Gmail address to create a YouTube logon.) Create some playlists, “favorite” some videos, subscribe to some tags, explore & have fun!

2. If you have access to a device that can capture digital movies, create your own YouTube account at http://www.youtube.com/signup and upload a video clip. If you feel so inclined, link to or embed your video in this week’s posting on your blog.

Fun Extra:
Enjoy some of my favorite book/library/literary YouTube videos:

My Baby Loves a Bunch of Authors by Moxy Früvous
Library Girl by Bôyzvoice (a mock boy band)
The Zombie Survival Guide
Conan the Librarian
Betty Glover Library Workout Tape (“The only medically-approved workout for librarians.”)

Week 20: Second Life

noreply@blogger.com (Melissa) — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 11:00:00 +0000

This week is all about is all about Second Life. Listen to the pod cast. If you have any questions feel free to ask us!

This is a general over view of what second life is. This information is from Wikipedia.

Second Life (abbreviated as SL) is an Internet-based virtual world video game launched on June 23, 2003, developed by Linden Research, Inc (commonly referred to as Linden Lab), which came to international attention via mainstream news media in late 2006 and early 2007.^[4]^[5] A free downloadable client program called the Second Life Viewer enables its users, called "Residents", to interact with each other through motional avatars, providing an advanced level of a social network service combined with general aspects of a metaverse. Residents can explore, meet other Residents, socialize, participate in individual and group activities, and create and trade items (virtual property) and services with one another.

There is no fee for registering an account or participating in Second Life, however registration of "payment information" (i.e. a credit card) is mandatory in order to participate in some functions, such as owning land or islands, as well as to access certain support features such as Second Life's support portal and online forums.

In 2008 Second Life was honored at the 59th Annual Technology & Engineering Emmy Awards for advancing the development of online sites with user generated content. Philip Rosedale, President of Linden Lab, accepted the award.

Second Life is currently available in several languages, the main ones, at the moment are English, German, Japanese and Korean

Watch this video from YouTube. It will give you a glimps to what Second Life is all about. It also shows you how compies, schools, etc. are using Second Life.

Here are some presentations that were put together about Second Life.

Second Life for SAE

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: sae nswlearnscope06)

Flying Librarians of Oz: What's all the fuss about Second Life and what's it got to do with libraries?

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: second life)

Assignment:
On your blog please think of ways that the library can use Second Life to help our Patrons.

Extra Credit:
If you are daring please sign up for Second Life and blog about your experience.

Week 19: Catch up Week

noreply@blogger.com (Melissa) — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 11:00:00 +0000

Catch up Week!

Welcome to Week 19! There aren’t any formal exercises this week, as we’d like you to have a bit of time to catch your breath and catch up on anything you haven’t had time to do in the project so far.

If you’re struggling with a lesson or just have a question, please be sure to contact us. We want to help!

Week 18: Pod Casts

noreply@blogger.com (Melissa) — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 11:00:00 +0000

This week you’ll learn about podcasts – what they are, how to find podcasts to match your interests, and how libraries are using them.

Listen to this week’s podcast and then read the info below. If you have any questions about anything along the way, be sure to contact us – we’re happy to help!

What is a podcast?

“Podcasting is a simple means of distributing audio content over the Internet, taking advantage of the power of RSS. Content consumers (end-users) can subscribe to a feed of a producer’s audio content and receive automatic downloads of new content as it is made available online.” (from Podcasting: Library Success: A Best Practices Wiki) The term “podcast” was formed from the words “iPod” and “broadcast,” but you don’t need an iPod to listen to a podcast – any computer or MP3 player will do.

Watch this Common Craft video, “Podcasting in Plain English:”

According to a recent report on eMarketer, it’s estimated the total US podcast audience reached 18.5 million in 2007, and by the year 2009 that number will double.

If that’s the case, libraries might want to think about ways they can use this fast-growing medium to connect with their patrons!

How to find & subscribe to podcasts

There are some easy ways to find podcasts, one of which is simply to check out your favorite web sites to see if they have podcasts available. But you can also check the following sites that gather podcasts by topic or genre, so you can easily find podcasts that match your interests.

iTunes – not just for Apple users! Requires a download of the free iTunes software.
podscope
Podcast Alley
NPR Podcast Directory
additional podcast directories can be found on Podseek.net

In case you don’t run across these in your searching, here are some podcasts directed toward library staff which you might find interesting:

LibVibe : library news
OPAL Podcasts : Online Programming for All Libraries
SirsiDynix Institute archived presentations
Uncontrolled Vocabulary : a live discussion of news, trends, and topics in librarianship

Once you find a podcast to which you’d like to subscribe, just look for a “subscribe” button or link. Copy the feed URL into Bloglines or Google Reader like you did when subscribing to other RSS feeds in Semester 1 of Adventures in Technology and you’re good to go. (If you didn’t participate in Semester 1, you might want to take a look at Week 4: Semester 1’s exercises on RSS & subscribing to feeds.) If you’re an iTunes user, simply click on the “subscribe” button and you’re all set. You’ll see the podcast added to the Podcasts section of your iTunes.

How libraries are using podcasts

Many libraries have started using podcasts to syndicate their programming or to share other info like book or movie reviews. Here are my favorite examples:

Boulder Public Library: Teen Webcasts
Denver Public Library Podcasts
PLCMC’s LibraryLoft Podcasts
Worthington Libraries: Programs to Go
Orange County Library System: Podcast and RSS

For more examples, visit Podcasting – Library Success: A Best Practices Wiki.

I found numerous examples of libraries providing audio and video online, but then didn’t provide a way to subscribe to regular offerings via RSS. New York Public Library’s Webcasts, Audio and Video is one example where there is fantastic programming available, but no way to subscribe (as far as I could see). It’s a great start, but they aren’t taking advantage of the push technology available with RSS, and that’s the most important component of podcasting, IMHO.

There’s really no end to how you could use podcasts in a library. How about a 1 minute booktalk every day (or week)? Record a book discussion and post it online for people who want to participate, but couldn’t make the meeting (and pair it with a blog, so that participants can carry on the discussion in another format). Author visits, guest speakers, tour of the library with an embedded PDF map of the building, staff training sessions, original stories for kids… whew! Podcasts provide a great way to be creative at your library.

Some libraries are even setting up podcasting rooms that provide equipment and training for patrons to create their own podcasts at the library. What a great idea!

How to create podcasts

Creating podcasts can be as easy as calling an 800 number and recording your podcast via the phone. This is how the Adventures in Technology team has been creating our podcasts each week. We’ve been using a service called Gabcast which is free and very easy to use. Visit our Gabcast channel and listen to all of the Project Play podcasts or subscribe to get them delivered to you each week.

If you want to do something a little fancier and add music or other sound effects, there’s a bit more involved. That’s beyond the scope of this post, but if you want more info you can visit CNET’s Create Your Own Podcast tutorial. It gives a good, basic intro to what’s required and the steps involved.

When creating your own podcasts, copyright issues need to be considered. You can’t read books for a storytime podcast if the book isn’t in the public domain or if you haven’t received permission from the publisher to do so. You can’t mix in music that isn’t in the public domain either. The good news is that there are sites like CCMixter and Podsafe Music Network that provide music you can use in your podcasts.

Assignment

Subscribe to a podcast in your RSS reader.

Use one of the podcast directories included above to find a podcast to which you’d like to subscribe.
When you find a podcast click on the RSS icon or “Subscribe” button for it and copy the feed URL.
Open your Bloglines or Google Reader and click on “Add” or “Add Subscription.”
Paste the feed URL you copied into the “blog or feed URL” or “add subscription” box and click “subscribe” or “add.” (Bloglines users will need to click on one more “subscribe” button to complete the process.)

Note to participants who didn’t do Semester 1: If you aren’t familiar with Bloglines or Google Reader, you can either do Week 4: Semester 1’s exercises to learn about them.

Write a post on your blog about your impressions of podcasts and the ways libraries are using them.

Fun Extra

While The Onion’s humor isn’t for everyone, it is definitely one of my favorite podcasts and usually gets a laugh out of me if not even a snort once in a while. How can you resist headlines like, “New Video Game Tied To Rash of Head Explosions,” “Nation Demands Easier Instructions,” and “U.S. Department of Over-Analysis Issues Rambling, Inconclusive Report”? If you’d like to subscribe to their podcast and get your daily dose of humor, here’s the feed: http://feeds.theonion.com/theonion/radionews.

Week 17: Feedback Thingies

noreply@blogger.com (Melissa) — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 11:00:00 +0000

Feedback Thingies

This week, you’ll learn about how to get feedback from your community, an important part of Library 2.0.

You’ll learn:

Why it’s important to get feedback from your community
How to use blog comments to get feedback
How to get feedback using an online survey tool called SurveyMonkey

Listen to this week’s podcast and read the content below. If you have questions about anything along the way, be sure to contact us. We’re happy to help! Listen to the podcast by clicking on the play button below.

Doodle
Doodle is a website that allows you to create quick and easy scheduling and polling of participants. We used Doodle back in Week 1 of Adventures of Technology to poll where each participant fell in the technology spectrum.

To use Doodle, follow the simple instructions below.

Go to http://www.doodle.ch/main.html
Create a poll.
Forward the link to the poll to the participants.
Follow online what the participants vote for.

Comments on blogs

One way to get feedback is to allow (and encourage!) comments on your blog.

I’d like you to read David Lee King’s blog posting “Inviting Participation, Part 4: Specific Tools Blogs”

(This is part 4 of a series, so he’ll mention things from earlier posts…but don’t worry about it. You should be able to follow what he’s saying without reading the earlier posts.)

So, actively asking people to participate is a great way to start a conversation on a blog.

Some other tips:

Write in a conversational way: Try to write like you’re talking with someone. Avoid being stilted or stuffy in your tone. It’ll keep people from responding.

Respond to people’s comments: If you want your blog to be a conversation, you need to keep talking! If someone comments on your blog, make an effort to respond to them if the comment warrants response.

You can practice these “inviting conversation” skills in your Adventures in Technology blog (in fact, that will be one of your assignments this week!)

By default, your Adventures in Technology blog allows for comments, but only if people have signed into Blogger. If you’d like to encourage easier participation, you can change it to allow anyone to comment.

You can also set the comments to be moderated, meaning that comments will only appear on your blog if you approve them. Moderating is a way to stop any inappropriate or spam comments, so I’d encourage you to consider turning on comment moderation.

Here are step-by-step instructions for changing your blog comment settings:

Sign into Blogger.
In the “Manage Your Blogs” area, click “Settings”.
Click the “Comments” link in the bar below the tabs.
Change the “Who can comment?” question to allow everyone to comment, if you’d like.
Change “Enable comment moderation?” to “Yes” if you’d like to moderate comments.Provide an email address if you’d like to receive an email when there is a comment to moderate. Otherwise, you can go into Blogger and moderate comments there.You can find more details about comment moderation here: “How do I moderate comments on my blog?”
Click “Save Settings”

Online surveys

If you want to get more organized and specific feedback, using an online survey could be the ticket. It’s a great way to get feedback on all sorts of topics – customer satisfaction, collection development priorities, programming ideas, etc. etc. etc.

Keep in mind, though, that how you advertise surveys really makes a difference in who responds. If you only put bookmarks in the library, guess what? You’ll only get library users to respond! If you put an ad in the local paper, you’ll get a wider audience. If you only have the survey online, guess what? You’ll only get people who use a computer! You may want to create a print copy of your survey, too.

SurveyMonkey is a great tool for making surveys. It’s easy to use, and it’s free for small surveys (10 questions or less and less than 100 responses). If you want to do a bigger survey, it’s only $19.95 per month, and you aren’t locked into any longer than a month. The paid version also allows you to print a PDF version of your survey, which is an easy way to have paper copies available.

To get started with SurveyMonkey, check out their tutorials. You will need to create an account, but you only need to provide a username, password, and email.

Assignment:

Part 1: If you haven’t already, change your blogger settings if you’d like to allow anyone to comment or to moderate comments. (See the step-by-step instructions in the reading above).

Part 2: Post to your blog about this week’s topic. Some ideas: How could you use these feedback thingies for your library? What would you like to learn about them? What barriers do you see to doing this?

End your post with an active invitation for other Adventures in Technology participants to comment on your posting.

Part 3: Check out some of the other participant’s blogs. Comment on at least 2 posts from 2 separate blogs.

Bonus Assignment:

1. Use SurveyMonkey to create an online suggestion box. Ask for at least the suggester’s name and email address (and make them optional) and the suggestion (and make that mandatory). You can get started using SurveyMonkey’s “tutorials”. Link to your survey from your blog.

In case you want to try this, but don’t have the time to review the tutorials, or if you get stuck, there are Step-by-Step instructions at the end of this lesson!

2. Schedule a meeting or create a poll using Doodle. Blog about your impression of the site.

Extras: The Automatic Flatterer and Sloganizer

You’ve made it through 4 weeks! You deserve some praise!
The Automatic Flatterer can give you that, and all you have to do is enter your name! (You will have to let it praise you a few times to get out of the site….don’t be alarmed…..you deserve it!)

…and after all that praise, I bet you’re feeling like you can take on the world! Use the Sloganizer to find the perfect slogan whatever your cause. Enter whatever you’d like and hit “Sloganize!”—It’ll do the rest!

Step-by-step instructions for creating an online suggestion box with SurveyMonkeyStep 1: Create an account with SurveyMonkey
a. Click “Join Now for Free!”
b. Complete the form and submit it.Step 2: Create a new survey
a. Click on “Create Survey”
b. Enter a title for the survey, and click “Create Survey”Step 3: Add questions
a. Click “Add Question Here” button
b. Choose your question type from the pull-down (Your name and email questions should be “Single Textbox”. Your suggestion question should be “Comment/Essay Box”.)
c. Enter the Question Text (or what you want them to see next to the box).
d. Check “Require Answer to Question” if you want the question to be required.
e. Click “Save Changes”
f. Repeat for all questions.

Step 4: Get the link for collecting responses
a. Click the “collect responses” tab at the top of the survey.
b. Since you want a link for your webpage, don’t worry about changing anything on the first screen.
c. Click “Next Step”
d. Copy the link in the “Sending Survey Link in an Email” section. (It might seem like you should take the “Placing Survey Link on a Webpage” link, but your blog doesn’t need all the extra code in that part.)
(Tip: You can use CTRL+C to copy the link)
e. The top of this page urges you to review the collector’s setting and restrictions before sending out the link. Feel free to take a look at these. If you were doing this for real, you would want to check these setting before sending out the survey. For playing, the defaults are fine.

Step 5: Put the link on your blog
a. While editing a post, highlight the word or words you’d like to be the link.
b. Click the link button (it’s between the font color and the left-align buttons right above where you are typing).
c. You’ll be asked to enter the URL. Paste the survey link here. (Tip: You can use CTRL+V to paste in this box)

Step 6: Check out your results
SurveyMonkey doesn’t send you an email when people complete a survey. You have to go to their site to see responses. To see them, just click “Analyze Results” while in your survey.

Week 16: Catch Up Week

noreply@blogger.com (Melissa) — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 11:00:00 +0000

Catch up Week!

Welcome to Week 16! There aren’t any formal exercises this week, as we’d like you to have a bit of time to catch your breath and catch up on anything you haven’t had time to do in the project so far.

If you’re struggling with a lesson or just have a question, please be sure to contact us. We want to help!

Week 15: Other Productivity Tools

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 11:00:00 +0000

This week, you’ll learn about some cool tools to manage tasks, reminders, and to-do lists. I’ll tell you a little bit about two tools – Remember The Milk and Jott – and give you a chance to play with them in the assignments. In this week’s reminder email, there are some passwords and other information you’ll need to complete this lesson. You might want to dig up the email right now, if you don’t have it handy!

Listen to this week’s podcast and then read the info below. If you have any questions about anything along the way, be sure to contact us —we’re happy to help!

Remember the Milk
Remember the Milk has the features of a traditional to-do list. You can set up multiple lists, sort tasks, set due dates, set priorities, and add notes. You can print a weekly planner of tasks. But what makes Remember the Milk so nifty is its “Web 2.0”-ness:

Share lists and tasks: If you’re working with a group of people who are all Remember The Milk users, you can share a list and all update it together. You can send tasks to other people (a great way to get rid of the things you really don’t want to do!!)
Publish lists: …or if you’d like other people who aren’t Remember the Milk users to see a list, you can publish it, and it will be automatically updated when the list changes.
Tag your tasks: Not only can you divide tasks by lists, you can also tag them to further categorize them. A tag cloud appears to show you which tags have the most tasks.
Get reminders by email, IM, or text message: No matter what you use to communicate online, you can get task reminders via your preferred method.
Interact with other web services: Remember the Milk interfaces with many, many other web services. You can see your tasks in Google Calendar, Gmail, or iGoogle. You can set up locations for your tasks and plan the best route via Google Maps.
Access with your mobile device: Remember the Milk has special versions for Windows Mobile, iPhone, iPod Touch, and other mobile devices (like phones and PDAs).
Import tasks through email: Your Remember the Milk account has a unique email address. You can email a task to it with the list you want the task to appear on as the subject, and it will automatically appear in your task list.
The flexibility and features of Remember the Milk let you use it in a way that makes sense for you and fits into your current routine.

Jott
Jott has a very simple purpose: you call a phone number, speak a message, and the message is converted to text and sent somewhere. It’s the “sent somewhere” part where things get interesting…

Using Jott, you can send a message to:

Your own email address: Let’s say you’re walking down the street, and remember something you have to do that’s important. Call Jott and it will send a message to your email so you don’t lose the thought.
Someone else’s email address: You can add as many contacts as you would like, so you can Jott friends, family, and co-workers.
Groups: You can send a Jott to a bunch of people at one time.
Your blog: Yep, that’s right. You can Jott your blog. You can talk on your phone and your speech will be converted to text and displayed on your blog. You can see how this worked for me here.
Google Calendar: You can send events right to your calendar from your phone.
Remember the Milk: What? That’s right!! You can send a task to Remember the Milk right from your phone. (and, if you don’t believe it, you’ll have a chance to try it as an optional assignment in just a minute!!)

So, while the concept is simple, what you can do with it is far from it. Jott is yet another illustration of how these productivity tools can actually make you MORE productive by interacting with other services you use, making it easier to keep everything in one place and to keep organized!

Required assignments:

1.Add a task to the Adventures in Technology sandbox list at Remember The Milk by sending an email.

Start by beginning a new email message in your usual email application.
Make the “To” for the email the address included in this week's reminder email.
Make the subject “Adventures in Technology sandbox” (without the quotes)
In the body of the message, put your name or pseudonym and a task. It can be an Adventure in Technology-related task, a silly task, or anything you’d like.
A few seconds after you’ve sent the email, check the list at Remember the Milk to see if your task is there.

2. Blog about Remember the Milk and Jott – would they be helpful for you? What do you think about the interaction between these tools (and others that you’ve learned about)?

Optional assignments:

1. Edit the task you’ve added to the Adventure in Technology sandbox list at Remember The Milk.Change the priority, add a due date, or add some notes.

Here’s how:

a. Log in to Remember the Milk using the username & password that was in the email you received from your library system’s Project Play coordinator.

b. To get started, click on “Tasks” at the top of the screen.

c. Click on your task in the list, and then click on what you’d like to do in the right-hand pane.

d. Once you’re done, visit the published list to see how it’s changed.

2. Use your phone to add a task to our Adventures in Technology sandbox list in Remember the Milk using Jott! (mind-bending, isn’t it??).

Here’s how:

The first thing you’ll need to do is associate your phone number with the Adventures in Technology Jott account:

a. Log into the Jott website using the information included in the email you received from your weekly reminder email.

b. Click “My Account” up in the top right corner.

c. Click “Phone” in the left-hand frame.

d. Click "Add a new phone number" and type your phone number in the box provided.

e. Click “Add”.

f. Call 1-866-JOTT-123 and enter the validation number listed on the webist

Now you can add your item to the Adventures in Technology list in just a couple of steps:

a. When it asks who you would like to Jott, say “Adventures in Technology”.

c. Say what task you would like to show up on the list.

d. After a few minutes, check the Adventures in Technology list to see if your task appears.

Fun extra: 43 Things
Whether you want to write a book, be happy, or travel the world, you’re not alone. Want proof? Check out 43 things, a site where you can make lists of your goals, share them with others, and find people with similar goals. The 43 Things Zeitgeist Goals is a fun place to get started. It shows you most popular goals, new goals, and more.

Week 14 - Tagging, Social Bookmarking & Del.icio.us

noreply@blogger.com (Melissa) — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 11:00:00 +0000

This week you’ll learn about tagging and the social bookmarking web site called del.icio.us (it’s pronounced just like the word “delicious”).

Listen to our podcast for this week and then read the content below. If you have questions about anything along the way, be sure to contact us— we’re happy to help!

Tagging

Tagging is a new form of classification used in many Web 2.0 apps, including some you’ve already learned about in previous weeks — blogs, LibraryThing, and Flickr.

You can think of tags as informal labels, used to help organize a collection of resources or to find a specific resource again. When tagging, you can use words, acronyms, numbers, asterisks, or whatever makes sense to you. Tagging gives you the power to tailor and give organizational value to your own online experience, and contribute to the online experience of others.

The concept of tagging may cause discomfort to library staff! Rather than a cataloger assigning Library of Congress or Sears subject headings to a web site, individuals assign subjective, unstructured & free-form keywords and/or phrases. There is no controlled vocabulary or synonym control, and there are no hierarchical relationships in tagging.

In the words of Ellyssa Kroski, “The wisdom of crowds, the hive mind, and the collective intelligence are doing what heretofore only expert catalogers, information architects and website authors have done.”

A “tag cloud” is a visual representation of tags used on a specific site or page. In most tag clouds, the more frequently used tags are depicted in a larger font, while also displayed in alphabetical order. Selecting a single tag within a tag cloud will generally lead to a collection of items that are associated with that tag.

The best way to understand a tag cloud is to see one! Here are a couple of examples:

All time most popular tags in Flickr
In this example, you can see that wedding is the most popular tag (look how big it is!)

The US Presidential Speeches Tag Cloud
This interesting site uses tag clouds to represent words used in presidential speeches. Along with big font meaning more mentions, there is also a difference in color to represent when a particular word reached its peak usage in history (so you can see terrorists and Iraq are not only used a lot, but also a recent addition to the presidential speech vocabulary). Use the slider above the cloud to see older speeches.
Adventures in Technology
Even AIT uses a tag cloud in our left hand navigation bar to help you try and better navigate through your adventures!
RPL's Most Popular Summer Reading Titles

Some libraries are opening their online catalogs, allowing customers to add user-friendly tags to library item records. Melissa L. Rethlefsen says this new trend, “… help[s] librarians bridge the gap between the library’s need to offer authoritative, well-organized information and their patrons’ web experience.” One library offering this feature is the Ann Arbor District Library. In the right-hand column of the catalog’s main screen are dynamically-generated lists of the Top 10 Tags, 10 Most Recent Tags, 10 Random Tags; here’s one example http://www.aadl.org/sopac/tag/time%20travel/ of a record that’s been tagged “time travel”.

del.icio.us

To understand what del.icio.us is, first enjoy this 3-minute video, “Social Bookmarking in Plain English”:

del.icio.us is a social bookmarking website, which means it’s designed to allow you to store, create and share bookmarks online. It makes your bookmarks personal, portable & sharable. It’s a collection of favorites – yours, mine and everyone else’s.

Each del.icio.us bookmark contains a link, an optional description, and a set of tags. You can assign as many tags to a bookmark as you like, and easily rename or delete them later.

You can even subscribe to the newsfeed for someone’s bookmarks, or just items that have been tagged with a certain keyword.

Here are examples of some ways you can use del.icio.us:

Research – Use del.icio.us to keep track of all the materials you find online. Jill keeps tracks of websites that she's discovered that she thinks look interesting; you can peek at her del.icio.us bookmarks here: http://delicious.com/hansje/bundle:Adventures%20in%20Technology

Wishlist – Instead of creating an Amazon wishlist, use the tag “wishlist” for the items you’d like to receive, and then share your wishlist by giving a link to http://del.icio.us/username/wishlist

Cookbook – When you find a great recipe on a website, save it to del.icio.us. Tag it with the recipe’s ingredients, method or style of cooking (grill, Chinese, etc.) and when you need ideas for what to make for dinner, you can use your del.icio.us bookmarks to find those recipes you saved.

Collaboration – Friends, coworkers, and other groups can use a shared account, special tag, or their del.icio.us networks to collect and organize bookmarks that are relevant and useful to the entire group. As an example, here’s the del.icio.us bookmarks http://del.icio.us/haveuheard/ that I & three colleagues used as a workspace to collaborate on a WAPL 2007 conference program; we tagged items with asterisks to indicate which ones each person felt were most important to cover during the presentation, and it worked really slick.

Here are examples of ways libraries are using del.icio.us for their patrons:
• Seminole County Library http://del.icio.us/SeminoleCountyLibrary
• Menasha Public Library Recommended Websites http://del.icio.us/MenashaLibrary (note the “bundling” of tags by topic)
• San Mateo Public Library (tags are bundled together by Dewey Decimal number) http://del.icio.us/SanMateoLibrary
• Nashville Public Library Teen Web Links (note the use of a tag cloud) http://www.library.nashville.org/teens/teenweb.asp

Tagging your blog postings
So, at the beginning of this lesson, we mentioned that blogs use tags. You can use tags for your blog postings on Blogger, if you’d like. In Blogger, they call tags may also be called “labels”.

When you’re adding a new post, just add some subject words (separated by commas) to the labels box at the bottom of the post. It’s that easy! You’ll see the labels appear at the bottom of the post.

If you’d like to add tags (aka labels) to posts you’ve already written, it’s easy to do that, too:
1. After you’ve logged into Blogger, click “Posts” to manage your posts.
2. Click “Edit” next to any post you want to add labels to.
3. Add your labels.
4. Click “Publish Posts”
Not so bad, right?

You can also display your labels in the sidebar of your blog, so people can click on a label and see all of the posts with that label. You do this with Blogger’s “Layout” feature. If you’ve already added a blogroll or picture or other things to your blog, you know how to do this already. Just choose to add “Labels”. If you haven’t done this before, and you’re interested in doing it, check out the step-by-step instructions from Blogger.

Assignments

1. Write a post in your blog about this week’s lesson and add some tags/labels to the post. Some questions to consider: How can libraries harness the “massive amounts of participation” in tools like del.icio.us? Where else could libraries use tags? Is the concept of tagging, with its uncontrolled vocabulary, unsettling to you?

2. Explore del.icio.us: Search for something you’re interested in. Try clicking on different things in an entry to see what happens (What happens when you click on the title of the bookmarked page? How about the tags? How about the “saved by xxx people” link?)

Optional assignments:

1. Set up your own del.icio.us account and share its URL on your blog. Del.icio.us has a How do I get started? page to get you started!

2. Choose someone’s account in del.icio.us who is linking to things you particularly like, and subscribe to their RSS feed in your Google Reader account. (HINT: Once you get to their del.icio.us page, look for the orange RSS icon at the bottom of the page!). If you can’t find someone’s account to subscribe to, try Libraryman.

3. If you really like del.icio.us, set up the del.icio.us bookmarklet in your browser. This allows you to add new websites to your del.icio.us collection. You just go about your business on the Web until you find a website you want to visit again, then click the bookmarklet on your Web browser. del.icio.us will then automatically open a window that lets you write any notes you want to save about the website, as well as “tag” it with keywords.

Week 13 - IM Stuff

noreply@blogger.com (Melissa) — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 11:00:00 +0000

Welcome to the 2nd semester of Adventures in Technology!

We’re starting this semester off with instant messaging, or IM, as it’s also known.

Listen to this week’s podcast and then read the info below. If you have any questions about anything along the way, be sure to contact us ; we’re happy to help!

Put simply, IM is a way for people to communicate online in real-time. In other words, I type something to you. You see it and type something back. We can talk privately or we can join a group of other people, and all talk together.

Sounds simple enough, right? But how do you actually do this? Well, that’s what this week of Adventures in Technology is all about.

There are 4 steps to getting started with IM.

You don’t have to do all these steps to complete this week’s lesson, but please read them all and then check out the assignments.

Let me reiterate that—you don’t have to do all these steps to complete this week’s lesson. It’s just to give you an understanding of the process.

Step 1. Decide what service(s) you want to use for IM.

There are four primary providers of IM:

• AIM (from AOL)
• Google Talk (We used this through our chat in our email.)
• MSN Messenger
• Yahoo! Messenger

Right now, you can only IM people who use the same service you do. So, if I’m using AOL’s instant messaging service, called AIM, then I can only talk to other AIM users. Same thing is true for the rest of the services.

Luckily for libraries thinking about providing IM reference, there is software that allows you to log into all of these services at one time. That way, people using any of the IM services can chat with you. Two examples of this software are Trillian and Meebo.

Step 2. Decide if you want to download software or not.

Most of these services have two versions: one that is web-based (so you don’t download and install software), and one that requires software installed onto your computer.

The web-based version may not have some advanced functionality that the installed version has, but it’s more secure and easier to use. When you’re just starting with IM, we recommend the web-based version. Here are the URLS for the web-based versions:

AIM Express
Google Talk Gadget (Some of you may have added this to your start page.)
MSN Web Messenger
Yahoo! Messenger

Remember Meebo and Trillian that I mentioned above? Well, Meebo is a web-based product, while Trillian is a piece of software you download and install. So, if you’re interested in trying one of these products, we’d recommend Meebo (and there’s another reason why you’ll find out about in a minute!)

Step 3. Create an account or screen name with the service(s) of your choice.

The process to create an account varies, depending on the service you choose, but you typically have to pick a screen name (which is what you’ll be called in the IM world), a password, answer a few questions, and agree to the terms of service. You can create an account by visiting any of the links in Step 2 above.

Step 4. Login to the service, and you’re ready to go!

Once you’ve created an account, you should be able to login to the service you’ve chosen.
What you can do with IM depends on what software and service you’re using, but there are a couple of standard things in all services, like:

A buddy list: Your buddy list is where you keep the list of people you talk to on IM. You have to know someone’s account or screen name to add them to your buddy list. Once you have that information, there should be an icon at the top of the buddy list (usually with a plus sign on it) to easily add buddies.Once you’ve added someone to your buddy list, you can start a conversation with them by double-clicking on them in the buddy list.
A status indicator: Because IM is real-time communication, it’s important to let people know if you’re available or not. If you aren’t logged into the service, then you won’t appear to be available. But, once you’ve logged in, you will appear to be available unless you say otherwise. The status indicator lets you say that you’re not available or in a meeting or busy or whatever you would like to say.

One last thing about Meebo
There is one last thing I want to tell you about Meebo—it has a really cool feature called the Meebo Me widget. Here’s what it looks like:

If you have a Meebo account, Meebo will make this little widget for you. You can then put the widget on any web page or blog. The especially cool thing is that anyone can IM you through your widget. They don’t need to have an IM account on any service!! This is a great feature for libraries with IM reference services. You can put this on any page on your website, and anyone can contact you.

Check out how David Lee King is using the Meebo Me widget in his library’s catalog.

Be sure to read the blog post’s comments for lots of other great ideas on how to use Meebo Me and IM.

Required Assignments:

1. Try IMing someone.

a. You can use the MeeboMe widget above to IM me (Melissa) if I'm online
b. Try chatting with one of your co-workers using Google Talk. One cool thing about our email, is that Google Talk is embedded in the left hand column of our inbox.
c. Try some from the “Libraries Using MeeboMe for Embedded Chat” at the Library Success Wiki.
(P.S. – This is a great place to find more information on how libraries are using IM —scroll down to the “Specific Blog Posts/Articles to check out” section.)

2. Write in your blog about your experience trying IM, and how you think IM could be useful in libraries or in general.

Optional Assignments:

1. Create an account or screen name for yourself for one or more of the IM services. Once you’ve done that, add Jill to your buddy list.

For Jill:

AOL Screenname: ifowlpres
Yahoo Screenname: hansje54
Google Talk Screenname: jill.lininger@gmail.com
MSN Messenger Screenname: ifowlpres@hotmail.com

2. Create a Meebo account for yourself, and a MeeboMe widget. Once you log into Meebo, you’ll see a “meebo me” link right at the top to get you started.

Weeks 11 & 12: Wrap - Up

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 15:55:00 +0000

Congratulations on making it to the final weeks of Adventures in Technology! While we have some closing thoughts included below, we’re going to take it easy on you for the next few weeks and give you some time to catch up and finish up your AIT stuff.
Be sure to take a look at the video and info below. If you have any questions about anything , be sure to contact us - we’re happy to help!

Wrapping Up
In Week 1 we started things off by having you watch a video about Web 2.0. The video’s creator, Michael Wesch, recently created another video entitled Information R/evolution. Play the video below to see his latest installment.

The world is changing! And it’s changing fast. We need to be willing to take a look at what we’re doing and re-frame things in light of what’s happening around us. Will every tool we’ve shared with you be something you want to use at your library? No. But we hope you’ll be more willing to play with new tools when you discover them and more open to how they might the library solve a problem.
We also hope that you’ll use at least one new tool and come up with some ideas to share with the Emerging Technologies team to invite our patrons to share their thoughts about the Racine Public Library. People expect to be able to participate when they visit online services. By providing opportunities for patrons to interact with our services, to let us know what they think, we show them that we value them and want to provide the best service possible. Take a look at David Lee King’s post, Valuing Users by Allowing Comments. He does a great job of talking about why inviting participation is so important.

Besides using these tools to communicate with the community, we might consider using them to find out what your community is saying about the library. Our patrons might be blogging about their library experiences, and it is important for you to know what they’re saying. Do a Google or Technorati search once in a while to get a reading on what people think about what you’re offering and how your services are being received. And then take it a step further - if you find something, add a comment to the post! It shows that you’re out there and willing to start a conversation.

Our Favorite Blog Posts
We have enjoyed reading your blogs and appreciate the thought and time you put into creating your posts. We hope that you'll continue sharing exploring new technologies and sharing your insights either via your blog or through email or face-to-face communication with the Emerging Technology Team. There's a lot out there and we can't do it without you.

The Last Assignment
Your last assignment for Semester 1 of Adventures in Technology is to reflect on your experience with the Adventure so far. Have you started using any of the tools we shared, personally or at work? What was your favorite week and why? Do you think you’ll continue with the 2nd semester? Let us know what you thought about the process and how it has (or hasn’t) affected you. We'll take your feedback and incorporate it into how we proceed with Semester 2. We also need to know which of the incentives you would like to receive, so remember to include that in your final posting. Semester 2 begins September 8, 2008 so sign up today!

Fun Extras
We couldn’t resist including additional tools that we like but didn’t have time to cover. Take a look when you have a minute or two and play at will!

Relaytor
“Email your messages, files and polls in seconds to query your friends and get the results and comments aggregated automatically for you!”

I can has cheezburger
A blog of LOLcats (or, basically a bunch of pictures of animals with funny captions)

Western Springs History
Not a tool, but an interesting use of a blog from the Thomas Ford Memorial Library. They’ve posted historical pictures of houses to a blog and given people the ability to comment on the pictures. Thomas Ford Memorial Library also has created a newspaper obituary index with a blog.

Week 10: Library Thing

noreply@blogger.com (Melissa) — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 12:47:00 +0000

LibraryThing

This week you’ll learn about phenomenal LibraryThing!

Listen to the podcast and read the content below. If you have questions about anything along the way, be sure to contact us. We’re happy to help!

What is LibraryThing?

LibraryThing is a wildly popular web site for creating and sharing personal library catalogs and book lists. Created by programmer Tim Spalding and supported by librarian Abby Blachly and a crack team of techies, LibraryThing has become the premier social book site on the web. Its users are called “Thingamabrarians.”

Here’s how it works. You can sign up and sign in in one step by providing a username and password (LibraryThing takes privacy very seriously, so they don’t ask for any personal info). You may add up to 200 books for free, or pay for an unlimited yearly or lifetime membership.

When you add a book to your LibraryThing account, the book is automatically cataloged by importing data from libraries and booksellers. Six Amazon.com stores and over 80 libraries supply basic book information. If you can’t find the correct book, you can add it manually.

So far, so good, right? Well, there’s much more! After you catalog your books, you can tag them. (Stef and Joy will get into tagging in more depth next week, but for now, just consider a tag a simple label you can make up.) You can add cover art. You can write reviews. You can add a LibraryThing badge or a “random book widget” to your blog’s sidebar. You can compare your library with other people’s collections and comment on the profiles of your LibraryThing “soulmates.”

Explore LibraryThing

As you can see, LibraryThing has the potential to be the ultimate readers’ advisory tool. They make it even easier with their “Suggester” feature. The Suggester provides book recommendations based on users’ catalogs with similar books. Conversely, the “Unsuggester” lists books it thinks you won’t like, and is good for more than a few laughs!

The Suggester works by leveraging the massive amount of Thingamabrarians’ participation to find truly smart recommendations. Unlike Amazon.com, which just looks at what you’ve recently bought (which can include random gifts that skew your results), LibraryThing uses the richer data gleaned from comparing users’ whole libraries.

LibraryThing also makes it easy to see book data from several book-swapping web sites such as BookMooch, What’s On My Bookshelf, and Bookins.

Finally, LibraryThing loves libraries and works with them on exciting projects such as “LibraryThing for Libraries” (LTFL). LTFL is a way for libraries to integrate LibraryThing tags and recommendations into their catalogs. See it in action at any of these libraries and check it out for yourself! (Some books won’t have the extra LTFL data - if all else fails, search Danbury PL’s catalog for Harry Potter and scroll down.

Related sites

There are a few other social book sites out there which deserve mention.

Shelfari allows people to catalog their books, and puts more emphasis on the social aspects of interacting with other members. goodreads is another, reviewed briefly at infodoodads. Finally, Revish has the added feature of a reading journal that you can use to keep track of what you’ve read.

Assignment and Tasks

Create a LibraryThing account and add at least 10 books. (Speed tip: when adding books, try scanning the publisher’s barcode with a regular circ scanner wand - it worked like a charm when I tried it.)
Write a blog post that:
a. links to your LibraryThing account
b. reflects on a couple strengths and weaknesses of LT
c. lists a book you have or like, and a book that the Suggester (or Unsuggester!) recommends.

Fun extra: FOR DUMMIES book cover generator

Since this is a bookish week, we thought you’d enjoy this one: supply your own title & cover info, and the Dummiez Book Cover Maker 2007 will generate a “For Dummies” book cover image. They say you can even buy your image as a fridge magnet!

Week 9 Social Networking

noreply@blogger.com (Melissa) — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 13:00:00 +0000

Social Networking

This week you’ll learn about social networking tools, with a focus on MySpace and Facebook.

Listen to the podcast and read the content below. If you have questions about anything along the way, be sure to contact us. We’re happy to help!

What is social networking?

Sit back and watch this 2-minute video that explains what social networks are and how they work:

A social networking service focuses on building an online community of people who share interests and activities. Most social networking services are web-based, and provide a variety of ways for community members to interact via chat, IM, email, blogging, discussion groups, etc. Members create profiles that include personal interests & photos, exchange private or public messages, and join groups.

What do people do on social networks?

Create a profile: you can share as much info or as little info as you’d like, within your comfort level
Communicate: you can blog on your page, send bulletins, post photos, and more
Interact: you can “friend” other members and build a network of friends who can stay in touch via the social network; some social networks offer a “feed” that updates you on what your friends have updated on their pages.

There are lots of social networking sites out there; here’s a chart showing the notable ones. That aside, for this week we’ll just focus on the two “500-pound gorillas” of social networking, MySpace and Facebook.

MySpace

As of January 2008, MySpace is the 3rd most popular U.S. web site. MySpace attracts 300,000 new registrations per day, and has more than 110 million monthly active users around the world.

Originally MySpace was for people 18 and older and all data was public. Over time, the age limit dropped to 16, and later to 14. The youngest users are given the option to make their profiles visible only to people they’ve friended, and their profiles don’t appear in search results.

Users may post personal profiles including photos, videos, and lists of favorite books & movies. They can email, post bulletins, and chat with their MySpace friends.

Facebook

Facebook is the second-most popular social networking site. As of January 2008, Facebook has more than 62 million active users worldwide. It attracts one quarter of a million new accounts per month, and receives over 65 billion page views per month.

The name Facebook refers to the paper facebooks provided by some colleges, which depict members of the campus community as a way to get to know students & faculty.

When Facebook launched in 2004, only people at Harvard University could sign up for an account; within a few months it opened up to other colleges, then to high schools, and now anyone 13 or older with a valid email address may create a Facebook profile. At present, people using Facebook are mostly college and post-college; more than half of Facebook members are out of school. The fastest growing Facebook demographic is 25 years old and older.

Originally Facebook didn’t allow institutions to create Facebook accounts, but in November 2007 they opened up the ability to create business and institutional profiles. Now you can create a profile for your library so you can interact with other members of Facebook, they can become your library’s “fans”, and you can create updates that feed into the newsfeed your friends will see on their own profile page.

In May 2007 the “Facebook Platform” was created, which allows third-party developers to create applications that work within Facebook. Two library-specific apps are:

Facebook Librarian provides links to a range of resources that include WorldCat & Google Scholar, plus an “Ask a Librarian” link
WorldCat provides a search box so anyone can search the database right from your page

A big difference between Facebook and MySpace is… to view a Facebook profile, you must have a Facebook account. This makes Facebook a private social network; MySpace is a public social network. You can see just as far as a public search listing into a person’s profile before logging in to Facebook.

Why would a library be interested in creating a social networking presence?

Even though social networking services were set up with the individual in mind, libraries are creating a presence in both MySpace and Facebook…

To be where millions of people are hanging out
To reach a community of potential library customers
To use it as a forum to announce the library’s events and services
To communicate informally in an approachable, friendly, and fun way

Meredith Farkas writes, “I think there is a big difference between ‘being where our patrons are’ and ‘being USEFUL to our patrons where they are.’” In that spirit, instead of simply creating a MySpace or Facebook page with your library’s photo & hours, consider “surfacing” your library’s services right there: try including your library’s MeeboMe widget to make it easy for people to ask questions or give feedback, or try embedding a search box that goes right into your library’s catalog.

But are social networks the right place for libraries?

There’s been debate in the library community about whether social networks are the right place for libraries to be.

Pro: librarians need to go where people are, to be there at the point of need.
Con: libraries are unwelcome guests in social networks, and it’s wrong for us to try to create a presence there.

For a good overview of the pro’s and con’s, read Libraries in Social Networking Software.

What’s your opinion?

As an alternative to a library presence in a social network, individual librarians can create their own MySpace and Facebook pages so they can network with others. Judi Sohn’s 12 Ways to Use Facebook Professionally has some helpful tips for doing just that.

Great places to find other library folk with which to network are these Facebook Groups:

Wisconsin Library Association
Library 2.0 Interest Group
Answer Board Librarians
UW-Madison SLIS Alumni Association (sorry UW-Milwaukee grads, I didn’t find a SOIS Alumni Association group on Facebook)
“Librarians Are Hiding Something” Stephen Colbert
Don’t Mess With Me, I Worked in a Public Library
Library Workers are the Best

Examples of ways libraries are using MySpace and Facebook

MySpace
Note: when visiting these web sites you might want to use Firefox with the Adblock Plus add-on; I think you’ll enjoy MySpace more without all the advertisements!

Facebook:

Assignment:

Facebook:

A.
1. Watch this 2-minute video to get details on registering for an account.
2. Go to Facebook to register & set up a profile for you.
3. On your blog write about your experiences and post a link to your Facebook page.

B. Already have a Facebook account? Become a fan of Racine Public Library and Friend Jill Hanson Lininger. And then write on your blog about your Facebook adventure.

Fun Extras

Open an account for you at MySpace.

MySpace:
1. Take the MySpace Tour.
2. Go to MySpace http://www.myspace.com/ to register and set up your page.
3. On your blog write about your experiences and post a link to your MySpace page.

Week 8: Photo Sharing

noreply@blogger.com (Melissa) — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 11:00:00 +0000

This week we will be discussing online photo sharing. There are many sites that you can use.

Listen to week 8's podcast and read the content below. If you have questions about anything along the way, be sure to contact us. We’re happy to help!

Photo sharing websites have been around since the 90s, but it took a small startup site called Flickr to catapult the idea of “sharing” into a full blown online community. Within the past year, Flickr has become the fastest growing photo sharing site on the web and is known as one of the first websites to use keyword “tags” to create associations and connections between photos and users of the site.

For this adventure, you are asked to take a good look at Flickr and explore what this site has to offer. Find out how tags work, what groups are, and all the neat things that people and other libraries (list also here) are using Flickr for.

Discovery Resources:

Flickr Learn More tour (6 steps)
Mediamazine Flickr Tutorials
Flickr: Popular tags
Interesting- Last 7 days
Look at some other libraries on Flickr

Assignment

There are 2 options for this assignment.

Option 1
1.Create a Free account in Flickr. You can find some digital pictures of the library to load onto the website on the m drive under the Adventures in Technology Folder (M:\Adventures in Technology). Thanks to Chris Tobias for taking all these great pictures!
2. Upload these to your Flickr account and tag at least one of the images “AIT” and mark it public.
3. See if you can find Jill or the library on Flickr and add them to your contacts. Jill's username is Hansje54 and the library's is racinepubliclibrary.
4. Create a post in your blog about your photo and experience. So go ahead, explore the site and have some Flickr photo fun!

PS: A quick word about photo posting etiquette - When posting identifiable photos of other people (especially minors) is it advisable to get the person's permission before posting their photo in a publicly accessible place like Flickr. Never upload pictures that weren't taken by you (unless you have the photographer's consent) and always give credit when you include photos taken by someone else in your blog.

Option 2
1. If you do not want to use Flickr, explore the web and find another photo sharing website. Create an account on there website.
2. Upload a picture on the website you choose.
3. Then blog about your experience (remember to mention which photo sharing website you choose!)

Week 7: Catch Up Week.

noreply@blogger.com (Melissa) — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 11:00:00 +0000

We are a little more than half way through our Adventures. Hope you all are having a great time. We are giving you some time to catch up this week.

Below is just a funny movie from YouTube that is about this years Summer Reading Program and links to some fun websites to explore this week! Have fun! Stop back next week we will be moving on to our new adventure!

Links

FuelMeUp.com

Find gas prices in your local area

"MIT Reinvents the Post-It Note...with Post-It Notes"

Be sure to watch the video at the end of the story.
In 1993, Saturday Night Live spoofed computerized post-it notes. Who would have ever thought it would be a feasible technology.

Myxer Tones

Find and download ringtones and wallpaper for your cellphone

Retail Me Not

Find coupons and deals for online shopping

Swotti

Compare consumer and product reviews

Typeracer

Practice your typing skills and race against other online players

Week 6: Wikis & Wikipedia

noreply@blogger.com (Melissa) — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 11:00:00 +0000

The Wonderful World of Wikis

This week we’ll learn about:

wikis
Wikipedia
how libraries are using wikis
free wiki tools

Listen to our sixth podcast and read the content below. If you have questions about anything along the way, be sure to contact us. We’re happy to help!

All About Wikis

Wikis use software that allows multiple people to easily edit, create, link and collaborate on shared web pages with little or no web-coding know-how. They get their name from the Hawaiian word WikiWiki, which means quick. They were named this way, because they make collaborating on a web site very quick and easy.

Take a look at the following video to get an idea of how wikis work:

Wikis vs. Blogs
Wikis differ from blogs in the following ways:

Blogs are organized in reverse chronological order, while wikis can be arranged however you like with links between pages building the structure.
Wikis are more fluid than blogs - pages can easily be added and developed without the constraints of a “post.”
Blogs are good for disseminating information and/or starting a dialogue, while wikis are better for collaborative documentation or guide building that works toward a common goal.

Wikis and blogs are alike in the following ways:

Both have commenting features built into them.
Both can be used and developed collaboratively by many people.
Both provide RSS (you can subscribe to most wikis, just as you would a blog - look for the orange RSS icon)

So, when is it good to use a wiki? Read When To Use a Wiki for some good tips

Wikipedia

Wikipedia is the most well-known wiki on the planet and is essentially a free encyclopedia on the web that anyone can edit. As of September 2007, Wikipedia had approximately 8.29 million articles in 253 languages! You can learn more about Wikipedia by reading the page about the wiki (which includes information about the accuracy of the information provided on the site) and by exploring what’s available by searching for things in which you’re interested.

How Libraries Are Using Wikis

Libraries have really jumped on the wiki bandwagon! At the very least, a wiki could be used to build a library web site. The following examples will show you other ways libraries are using wikis.

St. Joseph County Public Library’s Subject Guides
Biz Wiki (Ohio University Libraries)
University of Minnesota Libraries Staff Wiki
Antioch University Library Staff Training and Support Wiki
Wisconsin Heritage Online Wiki
Library Success Wiki
Internet Librarian 2007 Wiki
makingchoices (presentation wiki created by Beth and Stef of Project Play)
Davis (CA) Wiki (not done by a library, but a fantastic example of a community site that could be created by a library!)

Would wikis help solve a problem at our library? We hope the examples above provided a good range of ideas for you to explore.

Free Wiki Tools

There are some fantastic, free wiki tools out there if you’re interested in playing around with this kind of application.

pbwiki (free, hosted service, extremely easy to use, and highly recommended!)
MediaWiki (open source software that can be loaded on your own web server)
PmWiki (open source software that can be loaded on your own web server - wiki looks more like a web site)

You can use WikiMatrix to compare the features of different wiki applications to find the best one for your situation. You might also want to read pbwiki’s Best Practices for Creating a Collaborative Wiki to ensure the success of your wiki as you get started.

Assignment

Search Wikipedia for an entry on a community in Racine County.
If you find an entry, check the External Links section (usually at the bottom of the page) to see if the is a link to our library.
Write a post in your blog about your impressions of this week’s exercises and any thoughts you have on how you or your library could (or could not) use a wiki.

Week 5 : Google Documents and Google Calendar

noreply@blogger.com (Racine Public Library) — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 11:00:00 +0000

Google Docs

This week we are going to be having a refresher for Google Documents. The movie below shows how this program is useful.

Listen to our podcast and read the content below. If you have questions about anything along the way, be sure to contact us . We’re happy to help!

Why would I want to use Google Docs?

1. Anywhere editing

You can edit documents from any computer that has an internet connection & a web browser; both Firefox and Internet Explorer work equally well in Google Docs.
Edit using an interface that’s similar to Microsoft Office software, with familiar features like spell check & word count.
Don’t have Microsoft Excel or PowerPoint on your home computer? No worries—just use Google Docs instead.
Create your document at work in Microsoft Office & import it into Google Docs, then add more ideas from home or a conference.
You’ll never again need to copy a file to a portable flash drive or email it to yourself to continue working on it elsewhere.

2. Collaboration

Invite colleagues and co-workers to proof-read your work & add their suggestions, without having to merge their feedback into the final version.
Allow everyone on your committee to co-edit a document.
Avoid being “locked out” of a shared file if a colleague leaves a Microsoft Office document open on his/her computer.
If you and another collaborator are editing the same document at the same time, a box at the bottom left of the screen will appear, telling you the name of the collaborator(s) you’re working alongside.
If multiple people are editing or viewing the same spreadsheet at the same time, the Discuss tab will open and you’ll see the names of those people listed. From here, you can chat with these people about changes being made to the spreadsheet, or anything else!
Review changes made by whom & when, and (if necessary) roll back to any earlier version.

3. Self-publish

Publish your writing & presentations on the web, allowing a wide audience access to your work.
Once you click the “Publish” button, your document has its own URL to which you can link.
Avoid sending humongous 10MB PowerPoint presentations as email attachments; send a link to your online presentation instead.

4. Backups

You needn’t worry about losing your work if your computer’s hard drive fails; saved documents are stored on Google’s servers. Google says, “While we can’t give you exact figures, please be assured that we back up data almost as often as you can change it.”
A document is automatically saved multiple times while you’re editing it. Even if you’re interrupted or your web browser crashes while working on a document, when you return to the document you’ll find it the same as you left it.

5. Mistakes happen

If you’ve copied & pasted a formula into a spreadsheet and later realized there’s a mistake in the calculations, you’ll appreciate being able to review a document’s revisions to find where the error was made and correct it.
You can even compare different versions of edits!

You can take documents created in Microsoft Office and import them into Google Docs.
And then you can export a document back into Microsoft Office, or in PDF or plain text format.
Or you can create your document from scratch in Google Docs.

Ways libraries & librarians are using Google Docs:

Offer it at public-access Internet workstations for patrons to use:
Google Docs is offered as a Microsoft Office alternative at the Monterey (CA) Public Library. Here’s what they say on their web page: “Library computers do not have word processing or spreadsheet software, and you cannot access Library disk drives. However, you can read, create, edit, and email word processing documents using Google Docs & Spreadsheet, and download your documents later on another computer Microsoft Word and other popular formats.”
Publish a library operations manual easily:
Mt. Mercy College Library (Cedar Rapids, Iowa) published their Interlibrary Loan Manual for student workers.

The video below is a very good online video tutorial. It was made by a school system. The logo is different than what we have but the information is still the same.

Assignment:

1. Log in to Google Docs and edit either the existing text document, spreadsheet, or slideshow.
a. Go to Google Docs.
b. Log in using your email account username & password.
c. Add your name & jot a note on the “Welcome to Google Docs!” text document, and add a slide to the “Adventures in Technology Slideshow”.
d. Click the Revisions tab to see what changes have been made, and compare some versions of the document.
e. When you’re finished, click the “Sign out” link.

2. Post to your blog about your experience trying Google Docs — how you think it could be useful in libraries and/or in your life.

Google Calendar

Google Calendar has many uses. First of all you all have a personal calendar. It is like having a desk calendar available at any computer you may be at.

Please watch the online tutorial below. It will help you understand how to use the calendar.

Assignment:
Add an event to the AIT calendar and post to your blog about your experience using Google Calendar.

Extra Credit:
Try using your own Google Calendar (which is accessible through your library email). Add some events and try sharing them with another person. It could be someone else at the library or maybe your spouse!

Week 4: RSS & Newsreaders

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 26 May 2008 11:00:00 +0000

RSS and Newsreaders

Last week you started your own blog. This week you’ll learn about the RSS feeds that are automatically created by your blog & other blogs, as well as by other types of content.

You’ll learn:

What RSS is and why you might want to use it
How to use a newsreader to subscribe to RSS feeds
How to know when an RSS feed is available

Listen to our fourth podcast and read the content below. If you have questions about anything along the way, be sure to contact us. We’re happy to help!

What is RSS?

The initials RSS stand for “Really Simple Syndication”. RSS is a format for syndicating & publishing content online through newsfeeds. An RSS feed is updated as soon as the original content is updated.

RSS is revolutionizing the way content creators share information, and changing the way people consume information. It’s an efficient (and free) way to stay informed on topics that interest you.

Enjoy this video which explains RSS in Plain English:

What’s a newsreader, and why do I want one?

A newsreader is software that lets you subscribe to and read RSS feeds. With RSS feeds & a newsreader:

Updates come to you, instead of you seeking them
You tailor the news to fit your needs
News is gathered in one place
You can review lots of content in a short time
It’s easy to scan headlines & read posts

How do I find library newsfeeds to which I can subscribe?

We’ve recommended some library feeds below. You can preview them & choose the ones to which you'd like to subscribe.

Adventures in Technology
ALA Techsource Blog
blyberg.net
David Lee King
Information Wants to Be Free
Jessica's Reviews
LibrarianInBlack
Library Stuff
Lifehacker
MakeUseOf.com
RPL's Emerging Technology's Team Del.icio.us Bookmarks
Racine Public Library News, Events & Information
The Shifted Librarian
Stephen's Lighthouse
Tame the Web
The WLA Blog
Web2.0 Tools, WebServices, Mobile Apps

But wait – there’s more! You can find RSS feeds at lots of web content besides blogs:

WorldCat user-created lists
EBSCOhost alerts. Log in to your account to “create topic search alerts & journal alerts”: http://support.epnet.com/support_news/detail.php?id=334&t=r&page=&private=true (Note: EBSCOhost is available to Wisconsin libraries through Badgerlink)
Tags used on the del.icio.us social bookmarking service and Flickr
Podcasts like Uncontrolled Vocabulary
Newspapers like the New York Times & the Journal Times

A good way to tell if web content has an RSS feed is when you see a small (often orange) RSS icon on a page or in your web browser’s address bar (see some examples).

What other ways can I use RSS feeds?

You can display RSS feeds on your blog or web page to provide content that’s automatically & frequently updated. These feeds can be from one of your library’s blogs, or from an outside source like newspaper headlines. Or they could be del.icio.us tags used to collect & update content on a subject guide web page.

Some free RSS display generators you can try include Feed to JavaScript, Feed Digest, RSS Mixer, and RSS-to-Javascript.

Here are examples of some of the ways libraries are re-purposing RSS feeds on their web sites:

Denver Public Library There’s a live news feed on the right-hand side of the page; feeds are from Reuters, NY Times and other news sources
Homer Township Public Library District (uses Feed2JavaScript) The library’s home page displays the headlines of library blogs & news sources in the center column. Sources of the newsfeeds are Library News & Announcements, the Director’s Blog, Teen Events, and local news via Google News
MIT Libraries This page uses the RSS feed generated by the library’s del.icio.us list to populate their Virtual Reference Collection

Find more ideas for using newsfeeds at the RSS4Lib blog.

Assignment:

You’re going to set up a free Google Reader account and subscribe to at least 10 newsfeeds.

Tasks:

1. Register for a free account at Google Reader. After visiting www.google.com/reader scroll down and click on "Create an Account" on the bottom right hand side of the page. You can register for an account using your racinelibrary.info email address.

This tutorial walks you through how to set up a Google Reader account. This tutorial will show you how to subscribe to newsfeeds.
If you prefer, watch this video that demonstrates the steps.

2. Subscribe to at least 10 newsfeeds. Here are some for starters:

Preview & choose from a core collection of library & technology related blogs we’ve put together for you here.
Pick from a collection of library blogs at the Blogging Libraries Wiki
Find more than just library blogs: http://www.bloglines.com/subbundles

3. Create a post on your blog about this assignment. Ideas for what you can write about: What do you like or about RSS feeds and aggregators? How do you think you might be able to use this in your work or personal life?

Optional task for those who already use Google Reader:

try Bloglines
set up a RSS feed for a website that doesn't already have a feed using the site Page2RSS

Extra: Cute Overload

Every week on Adventures in Technol we give you a little extra something fun; this week it’s Cute Overload!

Winner of the Webby’s 2007 People’s Voice Award and the 2007 Bloggies award for Best American Weblog, Cute Overload is guaranteed to give you a daily dose (or overdose) of “prosh” critters, from aardvarks to zebra finches. News flash: Cute Overload now proven beneficial to your health!

“A thing, accompanied by a smaller version of that thing, is always cute” and “You’re cute if your furniture doubles as a meal’ are just two of Cute Overload “35 Rules of Cuteness”.

Subscribe to the Cute Overload RSS newsfeed using this URL: http://feeds.feedburner.com/typepad/CuteOverload.

AIT Participant Blogs

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 20 May 2008 16:33:00 +0000

Week 3: Blogs & Blogging

noreply@blogger.com (Racine Public Library) — Mon, 19 May 2008 11:00:00 +0000

Getting Started

This week, you get to dig in and create your own blog! You’ll learn:

* what a blog is
* why libraries (and individuals!) write blogs
* how to create your own blog

Listen to our third podcast and read the content below. If you have questions about anything along the way, be sure to contact us. We’re happy to help!

Listen to the podcast by clicking on the play button below.

What is a blog?

Grab yourself a fresh cup of coffee/tea or a Pepsi, and enjoy this 3-minute video about blogs:

Explore some library blogs

So, why would a library blog?

Darlene Fichter explains at Information Today: Why and How to Use Blogs to Promote Your Library’s Services. Here’s what she says a blog can do for your library:

promote library events
list new arrivals of books, movies, music, etc.
review books
provide important community news (about elections, community events, services, etc.)
reach a new audience of web-savvy patrons

WebJunction’s article Blogs for Libraries is a fantastic case for libraries using blogs.

Take a moment to explore some of these library blogs (some may be familiar to you!):

Feel-good Librarian - “the true stories of one small middle-aged Reference librarian, sheltered safely somewhere in a Midwestern public library”
Library Garden - a group blog from several NJ librarians
MADreads - Madison Public Library’s book review blog
The Shifted Librarian - Jenny Levine and cool technologies for libraries
David Lee King - David Lee King's blog about libraries and technology

If you like, go to the Blogging Libraries Wiki for dozens more.

Assignment

You’re going to use a blog as an online journal for your Adventure Each week, we’ll ask you to post your homework on your blog. (That’s how we’ll track your progress, too.)

You can sign up with your real name, or use a pseudonym. You may decide to retire your AIT blog after the project is over, or you might like blogging so much you’ll keep it up - which would be awesome!

Tasks

Register for a blog at Blogger and write your first post.
Go to this online form and register your blog so the AIT coordinators can track your progress.

Help with Blogger

These are instructions for setting up a blog at Blogger. If you are comfortable using another blogging service, please feel free to use it instead (though the AIT coordinators may not be able to answer all your questions about blog services other than Blogger). One thing we do ask is that the blog you use has an RSS feed - most do by default.

Go to Blogger and follow the “Create a blog in 3 easy steps” instructions.
Step 1: Create a free Google account if you don’t have one already (because Google owns Blogger).
Step 2: Name your blog and give it a URL.
Step 3: Choose a template.
Write a blog post. Type a title and some text in the body, and click “Publish.”
Look at your blog - click “View Blog.”
Bookmark your blog and the Blogger start page.
Log out and log back in again just for practice.

Fun Extra: Lifehacker

Every week on AIT we want to give you a little extra something fun. Let’s talk about Lifehacker!

Lifehacker is a blog of tips and tricks “for streamlining your life with computers (and sometimes without).” “Hack” comes from “hacker,” and in this sense means a faster, better way to get something done. From the Lifehacker FAQ:

A hacker believes that information-sharing is a powerful positive good, and that it is a hacker’s duty to share her expertise - so we will.

Recent fun posts from Lifehacker include Top 100 Productivity Enhancing Foods and Tips for Killer Presentations.

Week 2: Firefox

noreply@blogger.com (Racine Public Library) — Mon, 12 May 2008 11:00:00 +0000

Welcome to Firefox.

This week we will be learning about Firefox. One the more famous browsers that are currently around. You may be thinking to yourself why would I want to learn another program? Well our new email system that we have in place now works best in the Firefox browser.

Listen to our 2nd podcast and read the content below. If you have questions about anything along the way, be sure to contact us. We’re happy to help!

Listen to the podcast by clicking on the play button below.

Watch the tutorials below. They will help you become more comfortable using the browser.

The first video will show you how to customize your browser to work for you. If you need some written instruction click here to visit the website the goes with the video.

The 2nd video shows you the Quickbar, Shortcuts, and Tabs. If you need written instructions that accompany the video, click here.

Assignment
Now that you have watched the videos, your assignment this week is to go to Mozilla.com and choose a theme for your computer. When you have finished please comment on what theme you choose and how you added it to your computer.

*Please note* Firefox is not installed on the library's public internet terminals. If you are using a public terminal to complete this lesson, see Jill or Melissa for help finding an available computer with Firefox installed on it!

Recommended RSS Feeds

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 01 May 2008 14:15:00 +0000

We’ve recommended some library feeds below. You can preview them & choose the ones to which you'd like to subscribe.

Adventures in Technology
Adventures in Technology Participant Blogs
ALA Techsource Blog
blyberg.net
David Lee King
Information Wants to Be Free
Jessica's Reviews
LibrarianInBlack
Library Stuff
Lifehacker
MakeUseOf.com
RPL's Emerging Technology's Team Del.icio.us Bookmarks
Racine Public Library News, Events & Information
The Shifted Librarian
Stephen's Lighthouse
Tame the Web
The WLA Blog
Web2.0 Tools, WebServices, Mobile Apps
WorldCat user-created lists
EBSCOhost alerts. Log in to your account to “create topic search alerts & journal alerts”: http://support.epnet.com/support_news/detail.php?id=334&t=r&page=&private=true (Note: EBSCOhost is available to Wisconsin libraries through Badgerlink)
New York Times
Journal Times

Semester 2

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 18:54:00 +0000

Semester 2

Start Date: September 8, 2008
Completion Date: December 13, 2008

Topics and exercises are still in the planning process, but, tentatively, here’s what we have planned for the second semester of Adventures in Technology. Each week’s Adventure will be posted on Monday morning of that week.

The Adventure By Week

Week 13
Instant Messaging
Learn about instant messaging. Set up AOL and Meebo accounts and IM other Project Players. Plus - fun extra!
Go to Week 13 >

Week 14
Tagging & Del.icio.us
Learn about tagging and discover del.icio.us (a social bookmarking site). Learn about tag clouds. Plus - fun extra!
Go to Week 14 >

Week 15
Other Productivity Tools
Play with Remember The Milk and Jott. Plus - fun extra!
Go to Week 15 >

Week 16
Catch up week
Time to catch up or have more time to play. Explore any site from the Web 2.0 awards list, play with it and write a post on your blog about your findings.
Go to Week 16 >

Week 17
Feedback thingies
Learn how to get feedback on the web: suggestion box, Survey Monkey, commenting on blogs. Learn how to trust! Plus - fun extra!
Go to Week 17 >

Week 18
Podcasts
Try out Gabcast and create your own podcast. See how libraries are using podcasts. Learn how to search for podcasts that match your interests. Plus - fun extra!
Go to Week 18 >

Week 19
Catch up week
Time to catch up or have more time to play.
Go to Week 19 >

Week 20
Second Life
Discover Second Life and get some ideas about how libraries are using it.
Go to Week 20 >

Week 21
Video Sharing
Discover YouTube and other sites that allow users to upload and share videos. Plus - fun extra!
Go to Week 21 >

Week 22
Mashups
What is a mashup and why would you use one? Find out this week by exploring Google maps, and Flickr fun. Plus - fun extra!
Go to Week 22 >

Weeks 23-24
End of 2nd semester & extra time to finish up
Read a few perspectives on Web 2.0, Library 2.0, and the future of libraries - summarize your thoughts on your blog. Summarize your thoughts about Adventures in Technology and your experience on your blog.
Go to Weeks 23-24>

Week 1: Welcome to Adventures in Technology

noreply@blogger.com (Racine Public Library) — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 14:05:00 +0000

Getting Started

Listen to our first podcast (by clicking on the play button below), familiarize yourself with this blog, and read/watch the content below. If you have questions about anything along the way, be sure to contact us . We’re happy to help!

Change can be Hard

Change is hard for everyone, but throughout the ages, people have had to learn how to use new technologies. Here is an example of the problems that they must have had when learning about the BOOK.

What is Web 2.0?

You’ve probably heard a lot of hype about Web 2.0 already, but if you don’t know much about it the following video will give you a good idea of where we started and where we are today. It moves pretty quickly, but that’s life these days, no?

(The above video is by mwesch on YouTube)

So, as you can see from watching the video, we have moved from linear, one-way information providing to an interactive, participatory climate where people want and expect to be invited to communicate their thoughts and needs regarding our services.

Predictors of Web 2.0

So how can you tell if you’re using a Web 2.0 site vs. any other site on the Internet? There are a few predictors you can spot that will give you an indication. Here’s what to look for:

Registration:
Web 2.0 sites invite you to create your own account. If you are a registered user, you receive special features or capabilities that help you create a unique user experience.
FAQs/”Learn More”:
Providing enough information for you to know whether or not you want to register at a site is another Web 2.0 predictor. These sites want you to learn more about what they offer and make it easy to do so.
Tour:
Tours are the Web 2.0 way to make it easy for people to decide if the site is worth creating an account at. Some tours are static pages with images and text and some are videos that demonstrate how the site’s features work.
Terms:
Whether it’s privacy statements or terms of use for the site, these features are common predictors of Web 2.0.
A way to do something:
Web 2.0 gives you a way to do something on their site. With Doodle, it’s the ability to create a poll that anyone you share it with can respond to. Other sites allow you to create music lists, family trees or other information that you can then share with others.
An invitation to add your comments and/or questions:
Inviting participation is universal to Web 2.0 sites. Communication, input, and discussion are a hallmark and essential to 2.0 success.

Once you become more familiar with these features, you’ll see that Web 2.0 sites really aren’t that different from each other. Look for the commonalities, and there will be less to fear as you encounter new tools.

Why Web 2.0?

The Pew Internet & American Life Project does a lot of research about how Americans are using Web 2.0 and other technologies. If you haven’t checked out their reports, we’d encourage you to do so. In fact, we’ll point you to reports on specific topics as we address them in the coming weeks.

But there are a couple of themes about Web 2.0 that you’ll see throughout their reports and other research:

1. It’s not just for kids

While more young adult internet users may be adopting Web 2.0 technologies, it isn’t just kids using these technologies. Here’s a couple of examples:

The majority of adult internet users in the U.S. report watching or downloading some type of online video content and 19% do so in a typical day. [Online Videos Go Mainstream]

In a 2004 study of instant messaging (IM), 53 million American adults regularly used IM programs. (And that was 3 years ago! Imagine how many more there are today!) [How Americans Use IM]

2. It’s not just for fun

You might think that most people are using these Web 2.0 technologies for fun or personal stuff – Chatting with friends, reading blogs about their hobbies, or watching silly things (like the Zombies in Plain English) on YouTube.

And you would be right. Most people are spending SOME of their time that way. But you know what? People are doing research and learning, too:

The Pew study about video found that 37% of adult internet users have watched news video, and 22% have watched educational video.

A recent study from the National School Boards Association found that 60% of students use these tools to discuss education-related topics. The majority of school districts have figured this out, and now use some sort of social tool to communicate with students, parents, and the community.

Where do you fit?

Another great study by the Pew group is called “A Typology of Information and Communication Technology Users” (whew! What a mouthful!). The title’s complicated, but the findings are pretty easy to understand. They surveyed a bunch of Americans to find out how they used different technology. They discovered that there are 10 unique groups:

Elite Tech Users (31% of American adults):

Omnivores (8%)
They have the most information gadgets and services, which they use voraciously to participate in cyberspace and express themselves online and do a range of Web 2.0 activities such as blogging or managing their own Web pages.
Connectors (7%)
Between feature-packed cell phones and frequent online use, they connect to people and manage digital content using ICTs - all with high levels of satisfaction about how ICTs let them work with community groups and pursue hobbies.
Lackluster Veterans (8%)
They are frequent users of the internet and less avid about cell phones. They are not thrilled with ICT-enabled connectivity.
Productivity Enhancers (8%)
They have strongly positive views about how technology lets them keep up with others, do their jobs, and learn new things.

Middle-of-the-road Tech Users (20% of American adults):

Mobile Centrics (10%)
They fully embrace the functionality of their cell phones. They use the internet, but not often, and like how ICTs connect them to others.
Connected But Hassled (10%)
They have invested in a lot of technology, but they find the connectivity intrusive and information something of a burden.

Few Tech Assets (49% of American adults):

Inexperienced Experimenters (10%)
They occasionally take advantage of interactivity, but if they had more experience, they might do more with ICTs.
Light But Satisfied (15%)
They have some technology, but it does not play a central role in their daily lives. They are satisfied with what ICTs do for them.
Indifferents (11%)
Despite having either cell phones or online access, these users use ICTs only intermittently and find connectivity annoying.
Off the Network (15%)
Those with neither cell phones nor internet connectivity tend to be older adults who are content with old media.

It’s interesting to think about this table from a public library perspective. Public library patrons come from all 10 of these groups. You don’t have to be a Omnivore to help them, but you do need to be able to communicate with all of them. You need to be able to understand what their information needs are, and how to help them (which is what we’ve always been about, right?).

It might be helpful to know where you fit in this table. Now is the time to find out!

Take the Pew “Where Do You Fit?” Quiz.

So, are you an Omnivore? Connected but Hassled? Something else?

Does this change your perception of yourself? Does it change how you look at other groups or at the technologies?

Take a second to share your results at http://www.doodle.ch/participation.html?pollId=zh6u7vbdsdrv8itn

To share, you’ll have to enter a name, but it doesn’t have to be a real name. You can enter whatever you’d like. Then choose your category.

Visit this same link to see the results from all the Project Play participants!

David Lee King, a library guy who thinks and writes about technology a lot, gives us another way to look at ourselves:

Think of this as a pond, with the middle being traditional library services, and the circles out from the center being ripples in the pond. The further from the center, the more “Library 2.0″. If you’d like, you can read a more complete description from David Lee King.

Where do you see yourself in this “pond”? Are you vaguely aware of Library 2.0 technologies, but not sure what they are or how they work? Or are you ready to experiment and are looking for ideas of how to use them in your library? Or are you in the more traditional center, and not even sure these technologies are worthwhile?

Well, no matter what, you’re in the right place! Project Play will help you with all these questions.

Lifelong Learning

Adventures in Technology isn’t just about learning about Web 2.0 and how to apply it to your library. It’s also about encouraging you to be brave about exploring new technologies and to recognize the importance of lifelong learning and how it can help you adapt more easily to change.

Exploration requires a spirit of curiosity, open-mindedness, and playfulness. Lifelong learning requires the same spirit, but also a commitment to being personally responsible for your own education. Don’t be afraid of what you don’t know, just be brave enough to play and find out more.

Take some time to read the articles and visit the site listed below. They will hopefully help you think about your own attitude, why exploring is important, and how you can approach your own development as a person and a library professional.

Yes, And (Creative Outlet Labs)
Three Hard Things (Library Journal, 6/15/2007)
7 1/2 Habits of Highly Successful Lifelong Learners (from PLCMC) (NOTE: You don’t need to create a learning contract at the end of this presentation, but we highly recommend it!)

Congratulations on signing up for Adventures in Technology and completing Week One. And remember: Play more. Learn more. Fear less!