Week 13: What have been the highs and lows? Where to next with emerging technologies, for me and for libraries?

The 'highest' high has been the comments and conversations of my fellow 23 Thing People (and others) which have helped me explore and appreciate each of the Things. It's really helped me clarify my thoughts and ideas. Thanks to all of you. And thanks to all who have become my Friends!

Another high has been the learning aspect. Learning is something I enjoy, and having a programme broken down into lots of small (and incremental) steps is a good way 'to eat an elephant'. Thanks, Kathryn.

The lows? Finding the time - and sometimes this meant lost sleep. Plus having to keep track of my usernames and passwords - thank goodness all but Flickr accepted my chosen (standard) username and password combination - yes, I know that's not good practice.

Where to now? I'll be interested to see what ideas come out of 23 Things - hopefully there'll be some T/things that we can use to move our library services forward. From here, I need to keep an open mind about new ideas on the Web 2.0 front, and try to look at them objectively in terms of what they could do for libraries.

Week 12: Revisit the goals I set in Week 2. Did I reach them?

1. The time to do what's needed to complete all 23 things? I'm nearly there. One more post (I think) and I need to tick off one last Thing.
2. The determination to finish all 23 things? See the Point 1 - I must have reached this one, the end is in sight!
3. The acceptance that I will probably not have time to do it all perfectly? There's lots more I could have done, but I've had a go.
4. A record of interesting things I find that help my understanding of the this programme? See RecentlyRead.
5. The ability to see how we could use any or all of the 23 Things in providing a rewarding and relevant library service to our clients? Hmm... Well, I've tried, but I did keep getting distracted by the personal/social aspects of the 23 Things. Linking Things to Library Services was a little more challenging, but I did have some ideas (see some of my other posts).

So yes, I think I did reach my goals.

Week 11: Which of the tools covered so far seems the most useful to libraries?

My top 3 votes go to:

• blogs (users can contribute and comment);
• RSS feeds - show our users how to set up feeds for the resources they use for their study and research, and implement RSS feeds for library resources and services; and
• social bookmarking and tagging.

I like the concept of making it easy to share and use images. Not everyone learns easily from text, some people are visual learners. But does it have to be Flickr or a similar site? Could we design our own?

Facebook - not sure - I could see a Facebook-type application being used for online reference services, but do we need yet another such service at this stage? I do feel Facebook is more personal than Psi, but then we're using Psi and associated authentication for valid reasons.

Second Life - yes, I think there is scope to use Second Life for services and teaching - as I've described in this post.

But we have to consider also how many different services we can support. I feel very strongly that there'll always be a lot of users who want old-fashioned face-to-face services, and we need to maintain these. There's no point in offering a vast array of services if we can't support them all and do them well - there's no point in promising what we can't deliver.

Week 9: How are these new tools likely to change our users' attitudes to the service offered by their library?

The emphasis of Web 2.0 generally is on participation, collaboration and sharing amongst communities of users. So should we anticipate that this is what users will expect of libraries? We could provide services and facilities that make it easy for users to do this in a library context. But I'd be wary of expecting them to all rush in and take it all on immediately. We can't force it on them. And not all of them will want to do this.
The new Learning Common has become a congenial physical environment for users to participate, collaborate and share, so anything we can do online to facilitate this would be a logical extension of the Learning Common concept.

Just another thought: Blogging about blogging

I've decided that blogs are a good thing depending on the content and purpose.
I find the refdesk blog really great - it puts the info we need to provide a good refdesk service in a place that's easy to use and update. Thanks to the ref desk committee for all their work in making it available. It certainly beats having to search through old emails to find the answer you need right now!
I understand one of the purposes of this blog was to save each refdesk staff member from having to keep copies of the emails that come to the list. That's true, but if we had archived the messages to refdesk in the first place, we wouldn't have had to all keep our own copies of each email.
So do blogs have a place in libraries? I'd say yes. I don't know how we'd manage access to it. Who do we allow to post and/or comment? How do the posters identify themselves? How would their identities show up on a library blog - are there privacy issues here? I'm sure there are more questions, but I think blogs are worth considering.

Thing 19: How many lives do we need?

Second Life is interesting.
It's another way of meeting people, communicating with them, getting to know them (or their avatars), and going to places.
I do wonder if it has a place for people who feel marginalised in some way, or feel that they just don't fit into mainstream society. Does Second Life give them the opportunity to take on a different persona, and experiment with being 'just like everyone else'? Is this a good thing? I did read a newspaper article which suggested, half-seriously, that if you don't like this life, then there's always Second Life (when I find the article I'll note the details so I can find it again!).
So for libraries, is it another communication channel we should use for clients who don't feel comfortable communicating with us FTF, by phone, by email, by snail mail, etc?

Things 17-18: Tweeting about Twitter

I'd like to thank my fellow 23 Thing People who've become my friends in Twitter and have helped me understand why it exists and how it can be used.
However, I've decided that Twitter is not for me. It's great for people who like to communicate in short sharp bursts (of text) and share their thoughts with their friends. I see it can be linked up to mobile phones and SMS - though I didn't investigate this bit.
For libraries? I think the message limit of 140 characters is limiting, you can't say much, even with abbreviations.
What Twitter has highlighted, for me, is that some people like to communicate in short sharp bursts of text - it works for them. So we need to remember this when thinking about how and what we communicate with our clients - Not Too Much Detail to start with!
Update 3/12/08: have now redone Twitter as part of 23 Things 2008 (Thing 18). I found it a bit disconcerting to receive 'follower' requests from people whose 'names' did not identify them as someone I know. However, I've now worked out how to give myself a real name so people can identify me as me rather than just 'sue10749'.
So, what uses for Twitter in a library? Well, as Kathryn does, letting people know where you are when. It's useful for someone like Kathryn who never sits still for a moment! More seriously, I guess it could be used as a 'mini' blog to communicate with users about things happening now or soon - eg South Wing of the library will be closed this coming Friday. How would we manage requests from others to follow us? We do need to communicate with our users in ways that suit them, so perhaps we need a Twitter presence as just one channel of communication - just as we'd also need Facebook, and so on. Of course, we need to be able to manage these ...

Thing 23 = Thing 40 (or, this is now, that was then)

No, it's not a new mathematical equation. Thing 23 is "Explore the Learning 2.1 blog and do the exercises in a post that interests you."

I chose Thing 40, or Retroland. It's described as "a social networking site where members can reconnect with the things they loved "back in the days" and interact with people who share the same fond memories." To complete Thing 40 you need to create an account on Retroland, explore the Retropedia, find a tv show, toy, or fashion accessory that I'd long forgotten about and then blog about the experience.

The Retropedia brings together aspects of popular culture from each decade, starting with the 1900s. These aspects are collected under the headings of tv, movies, toys, music, fashion, arcade games, food, places, and school 'daze'. Sounds great, I thought!

So, I created my account. However, when I started browsing, I didn't recognise anything from the 1950s, and when I explored the 1960s, there wasn't a "tv show, toy, or fashion accessory" that I remembered (or am I going senile?). The only collection in which I recognised/remembered anything was music - with the likes of Jimi Hendrix, Petula Clark and The Beatles. Did I lead a sheltered existence? (Answer: probably yes, growing up on a farm, and then going to a very strict boarding school). Or is Retropedia more representative of popular culture in another country - the US?

The memory that did come back to me was of the first time I heard Beatles music played, very loudly, in the school hall, and I thought it was great. So I posted this memory.

I could spend ages exploring the Retropedia, and when I told Ross about it and sent him the URL I could tell he was hooked immediately.

So what does Retroland have to do with 23 Things? It does illustrate how things have changed, in particular how we communicate with others, how we find information and make it available, and how easy it is to do these things now. But is it better?

One thing hasn't changed - recalling memories from our past - 'the good old days' - is something people have always enjoyed doing. Retroland gives us another way to do this.

And just for a laugh, I've uploaded a photo of myself from 'the good old days' [of miniskirts]. For 'this is now' see the photo on the left (Where I've been 2).

Week 10: Do libraries belong in Facebook? Do I belong in Facebook?

My first idea was that we could use Facebook as an online reference service facility. It seems to combine the ability to message with the ability to display some info about who you are (so the person you're messaging knows you better). And it's presenting another 'face' of the library to the world. Then I discovered that institutions shouldn't use Facebook - it's for individual use. So no, that won't work. But are there features of Facebook that we could copy in our existing online reference service?
Work aside, what does interest me about Facebook is that it's a just another way to get to know people and make friends. In the non virtual world we get to know people by meeting them, talking to them and doing things with them and while we are doing that we are getting to know them better. We form impressions of them based on what they look like, what they sound like, what they say, and what they do.
We do the same in the virtual world, eg on Facebook, but we do it all differently.
At first Facebook was a bit scary, but as I started to make friends and gain confidence I decided it's not that different to the non-virtual world. Yes, there are lots of people out there on Facebook who probably don't want to know me, and lots of people who I would probably not choose to spend much time with, but I can still find a niche and a set of friends that feel right for me.
But do I want to be there?
Update 3/12/08: Yesterday I did 2008's Things 16 and 17 (Facebook). It's quite different from last year, but I'm gradually finding my way around. Do we need a library presence in Facebook? I think yes, it's another way of communicating with our users.

Just another thought: RSS - useful for us? For our users? Is it better or worse than email?

Yes, I think it's useful for all of us as a way of keeping up with things you're interested in (this can be personally or professionally). Anyone who gets RSS feeds has chosen to get them, so in this respect it's better than being on the receiving end of the far too ubiquitous mailbomb. But I guess this puts the responsibility on to the recipient to choose to get those feeds that they need to get. For example, if we sent library notices only by RSS how many patrons would choose to get them?
It's another form of communication too. Do we need yet more of these? If it's one of a number of options, then at least we can choose RSS over, say, email.
So is RSS all about choice, as with so many other aspects of life today?

Just another thought: del.icio.us is delicious

I like del.icio.us. I guess it's partly because I like the tag concept - not just the idea that anyone can use whatever words he or she wants to describe what a page is about (yes, LCSH looks a bit staid), but also the tag cloud with each tag sized according to how much it's been used, and the fact that these tags (or bookmarks/favourites/whatever) are available to me wherever I can get internet access. I also like the idea that I'm in control and it's so easy to go to a list of just the sites that are about whatever I'm interested in at the moment. And I see from Kathryn's last 23 things email that you can import your bookmarks! That's clever.
So how could we use social bookmarking and tags in libraries? I do like the idea of adding tags to catalogue records. You have the quality control that a well-made catalogue record provides, AND the words that users use to describe whatever the users think of the item that the record represents.
Perhaps subject web pages could use tags as well?
One site that's been around for a while is Connotea, described as "Free online reference management for all researchers, clinicians and scientistsCompletely free, no download".
Then there's 2collab (I've already posted about this). Note that it doesn't seem to work with Firefox (well, it didn't for me).
So where is my del.icio.us page? It's right here.
Update 21/11/08: I've added the Delicious badge to my blog!

And I've discovered how to add people to my network! Thanks, Kate! Or should that be, "Thanks, 23katethings"!