Thing 23 -- Whoo-hoo! I'm done!

Wow. I feel like I've run a marathon.

A few thoughts. First, this took a lot more time than I expected, however, I feel like I got a lot out of it. So it balances out.

Thanks to Cindy for the comments and encouragement!

I'm now actually looking forward to going back and revisiting some of the Things. I think there are a few that I will understand better and see more value in now that I've finished, and have more of a picture of the whole.

So, maybe I will keep blogging, at least for a while!

Thing 22: Keeping Current

I feel like I'm signing up for an eternity of information overload...

As I was following the links provided for continuing our learning curve, I looked at the Blue Skunk Blog and had to laugh at the latest blog entry by Doug Johnson. He says he thought of Mr. Creosote after the latest invitation he received to join another social network.

For those of you who may not know or remember, Mr. Creosote was an archetypal glutton played by Terry Jones in the 1983 Monty Python movie The Meaning of Life. Creosote eats, vomits and eats more until a final mint, as I remember, causes his entire body to horrifically explode.

I am worried that Diigo just might be that final 2.0 mint. At what point does one's social networking time commitment become so consuming that one figuratively explodes?

I am therefore adopting the same rule I apply to adding books to my bookshelves, clothing to my closet and RSS feeds to my reader - for every item I add, I toss one as well.

I believe it to be the only path of sanity and survival. Entirely too much of my life is already taken up by trying to keep up.

Ooh, I too think this might be a good idea!

Unfortunately, I realize that keeping up with the new also means keeping up with which of the old have been merged, morphed or tossed in the waste bin.

Frankly, I'm not sure whether I'll keep up this blog, although I do want to find ways to keep talking with folks. Perhaps it will be through a social network instead of a blog. This is actually the second blog I've had. I started the first after I finished my novel and found that I was terrified of the thought of anyone actually reading it. So I started a blog in order to "train myself" to know what it would feel like to know that total strangers were reading and evaluating my words.

What actually happened is that, like my novel, my mother and partner were pretty much the only ones who read it. I missed that whole marketing part of it, I guess.

I think this is the reality of blogs: there are some that "make it" but the vast majority have a very limited readership. It takes a lot of work to make a blog interesting and relevant.

The good thing is that after going through the 23 Things, I know of several avenues other than blogging that I can use to stay current and to communicate with peers.

Thing 21: Beyond MySpace

This is what I really like about the concept of social networking sites. The Internet makes the world seem both smaller and larger: you can be a lonely geek in your little corner of the world, but via the Internet, find a whole bunch of similarly geeky folk to share with. That's an amazing thing, and very exciting. It takes the old idea of pen-pals and makes it much more immediate and exciting. You find others like yourself and discover the extraordinary breadth and diversity of people, places, cultures... that's so very cool.

I liked the look of Gather and Ning, and I also wandered around Bake Space for a while. I also played with google briefly and found Schmooze, a Jewish social network; Citizen Scientist for the layperson with a lot of curiosity, Maccaca, an online Digital Museum of Art for artists, and so much more.

So yes, I'll spend more time looking through these sites. I'd also like to find a way to let patrons know about these sites -- it seems that MySpace and Facebook get all the press, but they are so oppressively glitzy and teen oriented. It's nice to know that there are options for people who don't want that.

One note: I was watching a little bit of snowboarding on television yesterday, and between runs they were interviewing a couple of the "star" snowboarders. The interviews were not what I would have expected, instead they were right out of the MySpace "Coke or Pepsi?" survey. Sort of a media mashup. But it's alright for snowboarding, I guess, though I will be really scared if interviews start looking like this on the nightly news.

Thing 20 - MySpace & Facebook

Sometimes I think of MySpace and Facebook as black holes... I go near them and all sense of time and place is forgotten...

I haven't actually spent that much time on them. Don't have pages of my own and have zero inclination to start one, but I'm just totally fascinated by them all the same. It's the whole idea of "social networking" and how these sites are creating a paradigm shift in our definitions and perceptions of privacy, identity, place, community, association... even the definition of "friend" has undergone this strange transmutation. It's fascinating and perplexing.

In my professional capacity, I think of MySpace in two primary ways: first, to protect kids' right to go online and connect with their friends (however they define "friend.") Second, to learn as much as possible about these venues so that I can talk coherently with the parents who come in to the library and are concerned about their kids going online and therefore being exposed to the evils that may lurk in cyberspace. For them, I want to know enough about MySpace to be able to sit them down at the computer and give them tips on how to explore it as well as being able to suggest books that might help them parent in this new frontier.

I watched a PBS Frontline episode called Growing Up Online. It's available for viewing online, and I would highly recommend it to parents/teachers/library staff and other concerned folk. The program covers a lot of ground, from kids spending so much time online that they have more of a virtual life than a real one, to cyber-stalking and cyber-bullying.

I was struck by one of the parents in the program, a New Jersey mom who was incredibly concerned about some "bad man" stalking her daughters online. I don't want to minimize this concern in any way, but how is this worse than the greasy, doorway perverts who we grew up learning to avoid? (One note from the Frontline episode: the reporter said that in every case where a teen was stalked online the teen had been an active participant, at least initially... It stands to reason that it's much easier to block an inappropriate advance online than face to face with a real person.)

I think one thing that will be very interesting to watch unfold is what these online networking sites will mean for our evolving definitions of privacy. The little time I've spent bouncing around on MySpace shows me that people put the most unbelievably private info out there. And I'm not talking sexual things. I'm talking about cell phone numbers, place of birth, age, full name, etc. Everything but the social security number. (This while we hear more and more about identity thieves creating endless havoc for their victims.)

This should matter to us as library professionals because we (should) put a great deal of care and thought into issues around protecting privacy, not to mention media literacy, copyrights, etc. What does that mean for us as professionals to be zealously guarding patrons' privacy, then watch them put their entire life up on MySpace? I'm guessing that we haven't even begun to imagine how this will play out.

Then there is the whole issue of our privacy. We are out there in the public eye, and I have no doubt that there have already been several occasions, whether it be bored teens or bitter patrons, where individual staff get Googled. Not a bad thing if you lead a stereotypical librarian's life. But what if you don't? Is it safe to be Out in your blog if you identify where you work (okay, that might fit a certain librarian stereotype, still, I think you can get my point)? Then there's a whole gamut of choices and behaviors that fall into the category of "questionable taste." You have to wonder how many ways it could come back to haunt people. We all did stupid stuff as kids. Many of us do dumb things as grown-ups. But hopefully by now only a few people remember, and we can count on memories to fade and fugue with time, details to blur. The nature of people's memories allows a lot of room for compassion and forgiveness.

But when it's sent out to the Internet... it's really there. Forever. Any anyone can access it. The new NEA Today came today, and in it is an article called "The Whole World (wide web) Is Watching." The article gives several examples of teachers who were fired because their students or administrators discovered "inappropriate" content on their MySpace pages. In every case cited, the teachers had sexually explicit content on their pages. None of the examples involved interaction with students or minors. So the teachers were not blogging about things that were technically illegal. Still, they were fired.

The article goes on to say:

But what about free speech? Don't school employees have the right, on their own time, to blog about their private lives without fear of losing their jobs? Probably not... It's the general rule that school employees can be disciplined for off-duty conduct if the school district can show that the conduct had an adverse impact on the school or the teacher's ability to teach.

The article ends with the comment:

There's an old lawyer's adage that goes something like this: Never put in writing anything that you don't want read in open court or by your mother. Maybe it's time for an updated adage: Never put in electronic form anything that you wouldn't want viewed by a million people, including your colleagues, students, and supervisors - and your mother.

I don't think that these Internet social networking sites have made life more dangerous, although it is more overwhelming packed with options and opportunities for catastrophically stupid choices. I think there are some really, really good things about these sites (I'll get to that with Thing 21). It's just that it was safer to screw up when your friends were folks in your neighborhood, and you knew their secrets as much as they knew yours. But all of you could leave your neighborhood to go elsewhere and start over, making all new mistakes with all new people.

Now, you misstep online and it could follow you everywhere and for always. That's a really big paradigm shift. I'm not sure the ape side of our brains is up to processing the full ramifications of that.

Thing 19 - Podcasts

Ooh, I love podcasts. I am a big fan of NPR programs like This American Life and The Splendid Table. However, it's not often that I have the radio on at the "right" time for catching these shows. I think podcasts are to Radio sort of what TiVo is to cable -- and, I love my TiVo, too. I find that I'm not real keen to set up RSS feeds however -- or else it's the same thing that happens with magazines and books on hold. We subscribe to several magazines, then I put others (as well as books) on hold, and sometimes I just feel buried under the avalanche of things I could use to amuse, educate, distract or alarm myself with. For me it works better to just know that the podcasts are available and then go seek it out when the whimsy strikes.

Work-wise, I appreciate the educational potential provided by podcasts and such. I've taken advantage of quite a few webinars and podcasts about various library topics. Some were great and some not so much. I was talking with a former coworker about this a couple of months ago, and I think that there are still a lot of creators of educational podcasts who haven't quite adapted to the medium. They deliver podcasts the same way they would an interview or lecture, completely forgetting that with the podcast they do not have nonverbal communication to support what they are saying verbally. They can't check in with the audience to tell if they are boring people silly, and they can't do dizzy signs over their heads to show that they are being ironic when they say something. So the end product suffers.

Regardless, the possibilities are endless. And thanks for the resources list. I rarely go further than NPR/MPR websites. I look forward to exploring these other sites more.

And, the link to one of my favorite episodes of This American Life. Should be required listening for all Americans, I think.

Thing 18 - You Tube

Viewing You Tube videos is one of the few ways that I actually "play" on my computer. I can waste a significant amount of time perusing videos, though I don't think I'm the "typical" you-tube viewer. I love looking for new videos from places in Europe and Africa where I've lived/traveled. I also like looking at mashups put together by Browncoats (those freakishly devoted to the Firefly series and the movie Serenity) and Discworld aficionados (those freakishly fanatical about the stories by Terry Pratchett).

However, what I have never found You Tube to be particularly good at was helping me find practical information. I'm sure it's out there, and a percentage is probably well made. But generally speaking, it hasn't been useful in that way. I looked for a video on weeding a library collection... nothing found. At least nothing relevant. I was thinking that it would be good to add such a beasty into the GRRL weeding manual wiki (which I'm currently updating). Guess we'll have to make it ourselves.

Anyway, here's a short video clip of the market in Kpalime, Togo, about 15 k from where I lived a lifetime and a half ago (okay, from 1990 to 93). I've spent many a day perusing the aisles here, looking at beads and fabric, mostly. If my memory serves, there was some excellent street food to be found there as well.

Thing 17 - ELM Productivity Tools

I've been using some of these tools for a while. I love the journal alerts feature provided by Ebsco. It's an easy way to keep up on what's new. There are three or four journals that get circulated throughout the GRRL libraries. However, since there are 32 branches as well as several HQ departments, it's not uncommon to get a particular issue six months to a year after it's come out. That's hugely frustrating to me, so I've set up journal alerts for my favorite journals so that I can get the info right away.

I have fiddled with the web page feature a little, but didn't really find it that useful. It feels fairly cumbersome and putzy, especially in contrast to the ease with which you can create text, add links and graphics, etc. in Blogger.

That said, I can see where this could be a useful tool for school libraries and teachers in those districts where there are not sufficient funds for the district to support much in the way of teacher/staff websites. Based on what I see with my partner's school and what I hear from parents at the library, it is becoming an expectation that teachers will have web pages where they list assignments due, suggestions for projects, etc. Parents want to be able to look on a web page to see whether their child has homework due. However, I'm unclear as to whether ELM assists with hosting the page, as opposed to simply creating it. And, I'm not clear why a teacher would prefer an ELM-created web page as opposed to a Blogger-created blog. I suppose it could be as much a matter of what you start with (and invest time and energy into) as anything.

Thing 16 - Assignment & Research Project Calculators

I thought these were pretty cool things, but I'm not sure how many opportunities I'll have to share this with my patrons. In the majority of cases, the students I see are 7th grade and under, and they are looking for one or two articles on a topic. In those cases, Kids InfoBits and InfoTrac Kids or Junior edition are the most helpful.

However, I really like these calculators. I can see talking about them more with teachers and parents. I really liked how the RPC broke the process down into little bits: ask these kinds of questions, find the right kinds of sources, use the correct kind of font sizes and colors for slide presentations, etc. I think the detail could be helpful for parents and students for understanding what the process should be to create an A project.

Thing 15 - Online Games & Libraries

There was a period in my life when I loved playing SimCity (and this was way back in the days of floppy-disk installation). I thought it was the coolest idea ever hatched and was endlessly fascinated by the complex interplay of roads, industry, homes, stores, etc. City as living, breathing, dying and reviving thing. It blew my mind.

So you'd think that I'd be all over Second Life. But, my love affair with SimCity happened way before I got a real job, a mortgage, a partner...

Okay, maybe "growing up" isn't the only thing responsible for this change in my interests. But again I realize that I very much tend to look at and treat my computer (and, by extension, the Internet) as a tool. It's something I use to help me in my work. Whether I'm doing library (ie. paying) work, volunteer work, organizing my home life (housework, essentially), or writing a novel, the keyboard, screen and all accompanying widgets are part of one spiderifically productive tool. Games are sporadic and short lived (think solitaire or 10 minutes on You-Tube). Entertainment, for me, is what happens after I turn off the computer.

However, Second Life is full of interesting possibilities, and I am so pleased that someone else has the interest and creativity to explore this frontier. I watched the Eye4You Alliance video blog. I love the idea of a teen art gallery, and buildings designed with strong input from teens. Also, of course teens would come up with a cookie making machine in the robotics lab! And the idea of bringing favorite books to life... whether the author or readers are the instigators... that's just cool. Makes me want to see what the Browncoats and Discworlders have come up with.

So, yes, cool. Thanks for introducing me.

What I hope is that libraries will be generous about sharing their Second Life ventures. Would it be possible to have a link from the GRRL teen page to Eye4You Alliance? Creating SL islands and filling them seems like an awful lot of work for individual libraries to take on, yet at the same time, it's not quite fair to expect the innovators to share everything they accomplish. I think this presents the greater library world with some real challenges about how we support, assist, encourage and compensate each other.

Thing 14 - Library Thing

This was fun. I had a great time setting up my eclectic library (werewolves and baking, oh my...). The links were great too.

I really like the idea of using LT widgets to showcase new items in the collection and to facilitate social networking over books via the library. I also like the way LT might help with getting more user-friendly tags into the OPAC, and therefore helping patrons find what they're looking for. I understand the importance of formalized subject headings, but I think libraries risk becoming irrelevant if they don't find a way to combine that level of technicality with some way for the lay person/patron to interact with the catalog in a way that feels comfortable and accessible.

Another interesting area was the Library 2.0 blogroll under Thingology Blog. There were some very thought provoking blogs there that I look forward to revisiting.

Thing 13.5: Survey Monkey to the Rescue!

Okay, where's Survey Monkey in the listing of 23 Things?

Surveymonkey.com is the coolest, most useful, fantabulous Internet tool. I might even like it better than google docs.

A couple of us are using SMky to do a follow up survey with branch managers about how we move new items in the collection. SMky provides lots of options for how to set up the survey, then does all the tabulating for you. It's so cool! And it is a huge time saver. Last year we surveyed branch managers, and it took two of us several hours to compile all the surveys and pretty it up so that it was presentable at a committee meeting. SMky does that for us. All we had to do was come up with the questions then enter them.

Easy-peasy!!

(Image found on Flickr, by floridapfe )

Things 13 - Online "Productivity" Tools

I sort of yawned through most of these tools. I am a list-maker, but I make my lists on little scraps of paper or on the backs of obsolete library-hour cards. Then I leave them scattered all over the house and later wonder where they are or, more likely, why whatever it was was important enough to write into a list. It's sort of messy but it works for me.

I've been using "my yahoo" for quite a while, and like the "everything on one page page" idea. I did like iGoogle, and since I've become so enamored with google-docs lately (I'm telling everyone), perhaps I'll look at changing to that.

One thing about Remember the Milk -- did you know that there's also a dontforgetthemilk.com. And I know this because I misplaced the scrap of paper with notes about Thing 13 and then attempted to rely on my memory. Dontforgetthemilk is not nearly so pretty as Rememberthemilk.com.

I looked at the calendars as well, but they didn't rock my world either. I adjusted my lifestyle several years ago so that I don't need a fancy, thorough, detailed calendar. I like my life that way, thank you very much. The freebie purse calendar that came in the mail is plenty for me.

I think one thing that comes across to me with the calendar, sticky notes, lists etc. is the overwhelming notion that I don't want to be that attached to a computer. Scraps of paper lists are messy and sometimes do get lost, and that does occasionally result in embarrassing moments of double-scheduling, but I'd rather have that than feel like I was one-limb short if I didn't have a computer and Internet access with me at the moment that I have a burst of inspiration.

So, thanks for introducing me to these lovelies. Glad they're cool and useful to some folks, but they don't do much for me.

Thing 12: I Reddit but don't particularly Digg-it

Oh I'm going to sound like such a elitist, snobbish putz for this one, but wow. I am so unenthused by this Thing. It really seemed like the most grating waste of time since (completely out of morbid curiousity) I bounced onto Fox news and ETonline. I don't care about the latest narcissistic and ill-advised stunt pulled by some celebrity. I don't want to know (at least not on good days) what warped conspiracy theory is being promulgated by far-right nutcases.

Actually, I really like editors. I'd rather find sites that have good, competent editors and let them do their jobs. One of my favorite sites: Common Dreams. I also like New York Times online and the Christian Science Monitor. I know I'm showing my progressive/liberal bias. As I write this there is granola baking in the oven.

So, yes, I browsed all these sites. There were a couple of interesting stories or pictures. There were far more annoying ones (that showed up on more than one site).

I also was reminded of an article I read somewhere that said that every day there are 100,000 new blogs created (I will try to find the source). I don't want to sound dismissive, but I suspect that the vast majority of the people starting those blogs are not really up to providing reliable analysis on issues of Mideast peace, global climate change, or even the best-tasting brand of dark chocolate.

Can Flickr get me through the morning?

I just keep telling myself... Spring will come again. Spring will come again.

If these pictures are proof, just two short months from now and I will have my garden again.

And then, there won't be ANY time for this Web 2.0 foolishness. I'm so glad it's happening during the winter. I would never waste this much time indoors when I could be having fun outside.

Thing 11 -- Delicious

Onto another thing which, like so many other things, has led me on to so many other things that I could easily fiddle my day away at the keyboard and accomplish not one single thing on my list of many things to do on this absurdly cold Friday.

Okay, is anyone else out there COMPLETELY SICK OF WINTER YET? It is March 6, and this morning IT WAS 18 DEGREES BELOW ZERO... STANDING TEMPERATURE.

Sorry. Please forgive the shrieking. I'm just do damn sick of winter I can hardly focus on anything else. At the library we put up tropical decorations to try to take our minds off of the weather. Patrons get a laugh out of it, in between grumbles. We did this a couple of weeks ago, thinking it would be warmer by now. Now, we're cold and starting to get weary of the hula-skirt look. These things shouldn't happen.

So, anyway, back to Delicious. I like the idea of it, and am eager to spend more time getting comfortable with it. There have been many times that I've been either at home or work and wanted to get to a page that I had bookmarked on my computer at the other place. Delicious can help with that.

While putzing around Delicous I found a blog called "Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies," by Charlene Li and Jeff Bernoff. Their post for the day is called, "The Future of Social Networks: Social Networks will be like air." In other words, ubiquitous, and if we find ourselves without them for any amount of time we'll start gasping and feeling freakishly anxious. (Okay, I'm paraphrasing.)

Although I haven't a clue who Charlene Li is or whether she is someone I ought to be paying attention to, it does seem like a noteworthy article on a few points. Li suggests that five to ten years from now, "[W]e will look back to 2008 and think it archaic and quaint that we had to go to a destination like Facebook or LinkedIn to 'be social'."

Fortunately, Li does point out that the technology needs to be ubiquitous. Like phone service, Internet service must be available everywhere. However, when will Internet access be as easily affordable as a telephone? I've yet to find an article that addresses this. Yes, just about anyone can purchase a phone, thanks to Walmartization (don't get me started). How long will it take for that to be translated to the Internet?

This also makes me think of an article I read a couple of weeks ago from Multi Channel news. The article, "Cable 3.0 Is Aiming to Co-Opt Web 2.0," speaks to emerging cable technologies that will bring social networking to our television sets. In this future, "a 'My TV' personalized screen... [will] combine a list of someone's favorite movies and TV channels with recommendations on videos to watch from friends and Internet content-like video blogs."

And right below this article, another one titled "Advanced Ads on Tap," telling us that "Google wants to take the ad-targeting capability that powers Internet ads and marry it with the 'emotion' provided by television advertising." It's coming soon, as some companies are "already selling interactive overlay ads to let viewers request more information from a sponsor."

Oh brave new world...

Thing 10 - Wikis

The GRRL staff page is slowly moving toward more of a wiki format, and I think that is a really positive thing. It will hopefully make updating staff info quicker and easier. Our work, by nature, is so putzy and detail oriented. Some days I'm just astonished at how many bits of information are jammed in my head. You'd think I'd have a constantly glazed and dazed expression. Anything we can do to make it easier to stay current on procedures and policies - not to mention authors, bestsellers, websites, etc. - will be helpful.

I really liked the SJCPL Subject Guide wiki. Very easy to navigate. Also, it was very accessible and personal (ie. staff's favorite recipe of the week) yet comprehensive (ie. listing all the cooking related magazines that the library receives, and linking the titles to the catalog). Thanks for providing this example!

I did add an entry on the 23 Things wiki. The only challenge was coming up with something to say.

Thing 9 - Online Documents

Ooh. Now this is a Cool Thing.

My mind is just a-spinning with the possibilities on this one, for work and volunteer duties. I can easily think of dozens of applications for Google Docs. In fact, if I were working on this from work instead of home I'd be uploading a current project and inviting two other staff people to work on it with me. We've been doing the e-mail attachment thing. That suddenly feels so 15 minutes ago!

I didn't go into Zoho much beyond the intro "this is what we can do for you" pages. Google docs felt comfortable and intuitive.

I have to admit that one reason I didn't go into Zoho is that I simply don't want to have to keep track of another user name and password. It just gets ridiculous how many of these a person needs to come up with and remember in order to do anything.

Some of these productivity tools are really cool. Half the battle, I think, is just re-training ourselves to think that we might use an online tool. In April I and another staff person need to do a follow up survey to branch managers about a collection issue. Last year we sent out an e-mail and asked everyone to respond, then scribbled and tallied the results. This year, thanks to the 23 Things program, I had the craziest idea... ooh, maybe there's an on-line tool for this... ooh, there IS. It's called surveymonkey.com. I don't even know if survey monkey is mentioned in the 23 Things program, but it's cool and we're planning to use it. And let it tell us how many people answered in which ways.

And I can see Google Docs providing a similar -- and similarly time-saving -- service.

Thanks!

Thing 8 - Online sharing

The presentation sharing possibilities in Thing 8 look very promising. I did an early literacy presentation last month for expectant parents, and was frustrated with the pile of left-over handouts at the end. I can see uploading my presentation (I'm assuming that PowerPoint presentations can be uploaded into Zoho or the others...) and then just offering a few printed copies to those participants without easy Internet access.

Of course, this brings me back to that first blog and my concern about the gap between the haves and have nots with respect to online access. My partner is a high school science teacher, and yesterday she received the March issue of NEAtoday. The cover story is "Mind the Gap," about the "participation gap" between those kids who have access to online technology and those who do not.

"For more affluent kids, using technology is like using a pencil... After second or third grade, they no longer think about how to hold the pencil; it's become second nature.

But at-risk kids aren't able to use technology every day and haven't had exposure to it at home and have to play catch up to learn the technology as well as the lessons. When they're concentrating so much on the tool rather than the lesson, it costs them time and presents a steep learning curve."

Later in the article a teacher suggests that kids who feel more comfortable using computer and Internet technology are more likely to want to go to college. If they don't have an understanding of the technology, then college may feel doubly intimidating to them because they know the technology is out there and that they will have to learn both it and whatever subject matter they are interested in pursuing. When kids don't have computer and/or Internet access at home, they rely on their schools and libraries for that access.

What excites me about the 23 Things program is that I am learning about this stuff so that hopefully I can help some of those kids. The problem is that I don't see them very often. Most of the kids who come in to the library to use the Internet are coming in to access myspace and facebook, and they are already familiar enough with the tools to neither want nor need my help.

What makes the technology so exhilarating is the opportunity for spontaneous exploration and creativity. But I wonder how enticing the library computer will seem to someone when they know they can only have it for up to an hour and anyone else in the room can see their frustration when things don't work out properly the first seven times they try.