Week 8: Mashups

1. After browsing through the winners of the 'Mashup Awards', I decided to take a look at '50 Matches', a search engine that only searches websites with web 2.0 activity (ex: tagged on del.icio.us or reddit). I was curious to see what the quality of the results would be when searching only sites found useful by other people.

I did a quick search for 'libraries', and got (of course) 50 results. The results were pretty scattered, which stands to reason because without a context, the term 'libraries' could be used in many, many different ways. I refined the search to library 2.0. The results were still pretty scattered. There were a few blog posts that would be useful if I was looking for library 2.0 information, but the rest of the links were to sites with web 2.0 applications. I think the idea for the search engine was good, but it may have ended up limiting the search pool too much to be useful.

2. After that I went over to rollyo.com and searched the librarianblogs engine for privacy. I read a blog post by 'The Annoyed Librarian' which, among other things, discussed posting and commenting in blogs annonymously vs. posting while using your name.

Week 7: Podcasting

My experience with podcasting has been pretty limited to this point. I haven't done much beyond downloading a few library 2.0 related podcasts from iTunes and listening to them. I know my library has done some work with podcasts, creating a few podcasts for educating patrons on library resources. My experience with streaming video has been purely on a user level. I watch videos on YouTube a lot.

I browsed the 'Health' section at podcastalley.com. It seemed like a broad category, with more consumer health related podcasts. There were podcasts on exercise and alternative health in addition to some podcasts recorded by health professionals. I didn't see anything at first glance that looked helpful to me in my library setting, but these podcasts may be useful to someone working in a public library.

I had never heard of Odeo before, so it was interesting to poke around the resource and learn about it. After I signed up, I did a quick search for 'medical library'. The results I got were pretty scattered, it doesn't look like the podcasts are tagged or cataloged, so the search just looked in the podcast description for any time 'medical' or 'library' was written. I had a little trouble browsing the site: a lot of the links loaded extremely slowly or not at all. I subscribed to a podcast called 'KidneyNotes', which is a podcast on "medicine, science and technology from a nephrologist in NYC".

The potential for using YouTube in the library is enormous. Libraries can create videos with programs like 'Camtasia' to screencast instructional videos for using their catalogs or databases. Libraries can videocast library events such as book clubs and lectures, allowing distance learners and outside parties tune into the library. The library could also use YouTube to introduce patrons to their staff and services, conducting Q & A sessions with librarians about library services. These videocasts increase the library's visibility, which is always important.

For example, Eastern Michigan University has an account on YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/user/emulibrary). This account has videos touring the library, teaching users how to search databases such as Google Scholar, and how to use library resources (ex: requesting books via ILL, locating books in the stacks, accessing course reserves, etc.).

Week 6: Photo Sharing

I've used Flickr in the past for personal use: vacation pictures and family get togethers. Here's a link to my account:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/46627964@N00/

It had been a while since I'd uploaded pictures to that account, so I uploaded some new ones from some of the student association events I'd helped plan this past year. One of the things that I didn't like about Flickr the last time I used it, and this still holds true, is the limit on the number of pictures you can upload per month. This makes sense considering it is a free service, and they have to keep server costs low, but it's still frustrating to have to choose only a few pictures to put online every month.

I've also used Facebook's photo service quite a bit too, both for personal pictures and student association event pictures. I've uploaded one of the latter here:


This is a picture from when our student association (DUSLA) visited the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society.

This application could be used in the library to publicize library events as well as to instruct users about the libraries (by posting pictures of areas of the library).

Week 5: Office Tools

Step 1

I had already created a Google Docs account before the start of the class, so I used my existing account (attached to Katherine.ruth.fischer@gmail.com) for the assignment.

Step 2

I have 10 documents saved in my Google Docs account, which I’ve started either for school, work, or personal use. It was easy enough to start a new document. I saved my new document as the first line I typed into it: ‘Test Google Docs Document for MLA 2.0 101 Class’.

Step 3

I uploaded a spreadsheet I keep of the student workers I manage for my job. The spreadsheet contains names and contact information in case I ever need to get a hold of any of them while I’m not at work.

Step 4

A while back, I planned an informal instructional session for the student chapter I run on Google Documents. For this session, I created a brief presentation on Google Docs, more to show how it works than anything. Instead of sharing this presentation, I shared a document containing meeting notes from the last officers’ meeting for my student group. I shared the notes with all of the attendees so that they could make any changes they saw fit.

Step 5

I like the Zoho application a lot, I think it’s a better example of a complete online office tool than Google Docs is, just because its applications are a little more segmented, making it a little less confusing to navigate straight off the bat.

Microsoft Office live is useful just because it was created by Microsoft, and so probably has the best compatibility with documents created in offline Microsoft applications. However, at least in Google Docs, I haven’t had too many problems uploading existing Microsoft documents.

Step 6

While I think eventually this may be the future of office products, I don’t think it will happen anytime soon. It may be because the examples we explored were all free, but they did not have the versatility and capabilities of offline products such as Microsoft Office. Features in Microsoft Office such as outlining, creating macros, mail merging, creating templates, and hyperlinked tables of content, are not available. I personally use these features often, and would be frustrated by the limitations of the online office tools if they were the only options available to me.

In the immediate future, I definitely see an online component being added to traditional office tools. It is too useful a feature for collaboration and creativity to leave out.

Week Four: Social Bookmarking

I’ve used delicious in the past for work and for school. I like to create delicious accounts for the classes I take online to help me keep track of helpful bookmarks shared by the professor, and links that I turn up in my own browsing. At work I tag links I find helpful for answering reference questions, and links to sites that I might need to access from home. The tagging feature helps me organize my links as well as access them quickly and easily.

When I first started using delicious, it was mostly as a repository for links that I needed to access over and over from different computers. Emailing the links to myself, or remembering how I found them, was incredibly tedious and time consuming. Delicious made keeping track of noteworthy links very simple. Now I can use it to come back to interesting articles and to share articles and sites with others (via the “for:” function). This feature makes it an invaluable tool to researchers. Although difficulties may arise when password protected sites are tagged, Open Access, and other free, sources of information are easy to tag and return to later.

I even prefer using delicious on my home computer than to saving links to my ‘favorites’ folder. This is because delicious’s tagging features allows me to organize them so much more clearly than a Favorites folder. The ability to bundle tags means that I can go from looking at a long, comprehensive list of tags to a short and focused list.

You can take a look at my delicious links: http://del.icio.us/krf26.

Week Three: Social Networking

Part 1 - Facebook
Step 1
This step was easy for me! I've been using Facebook to help with activities in my student association. We have a Facebook group we use to invite connect with other members, publicize group events, and share newsworthy items.

Step 2
I'm already friends with several other members of my student association, and a few of my co-workers and colleagues, but I always like making new friends on Facebook. I 'friended' a few of the people in this class.

Step 3
I left a message on one of my colleague's wall thanking him for a link he sent to my del.icio.us account.

Step 4
I'm familiar with Facebook's 'events' application. I've even created events myself. I searched for and found MLA's Annual meeting and the Technology Trends meeting. Unfortunately I won't be able to attend the conference this year. Maybe next year!

Step 5
I have a couple of library related applications on my Facebook page, but the UAB catalog isn't one of them. I found the application by searching the 'apps' for 'UAB catalog'. After I added the app to my page, I did a quick search for 'catheter'. The search opened a new Firefox tab with UAB's catalog and my search results. My search returned 46 hits, mostly books.

Step 6
Again, this step was easy! I already had both Pubmed applications 'Pubface' and 'Pubmed Search' added to my profile. I've tried them both out before, and they both do the same thing, returning search results in the same format. I think these applications are good for quick Pubmed searches, but are not real replacements for PubMed itself.

Step 7
I already had the WorldCat application added to my profile, and have tried it out. I think the 'suggested readings' feature is interesting, but not that helpful to me. This application is a lot like the Pubmed applications. Results are listed within Facebook, but you can click on individual search results which will open the homepage in a new Firefox tab (for me).

Part 2 - LinkedIn
Step 1
I joined LinkedIn a few months back as part of an assignment I completed for a class I was taking. It looks like it's a great application for building a network of colleagues both in your area and afar. It's also a good tool for employers who might want to supplement what they know of potential employees.

Step 2
I sent 'Connection' requests to a few people I knew from my student association and a few of my co-workers.

Discussion Points
I definitely prefer Facebook to MySpace. Facebook has a much cleaner interface, and is overall easier to navigate and search. The applications offered by Facebook make it a more versatile and relevant tool than MySpace. For me, I would consider MySpace to be more for personal use, where Facebook could definitely have professional applications. Developing a catalog application should be a must for any academic library. As librarians, increasingly we have to 'go where the users are'. I think Facebook's median user age is a little higher than MySpace's though, so I can understand why a Children's Librarian, or a Public Library, would choose MySpace over Facebook.

As with anything on the internet, security and privacy are a huge issue. There is no guarantee that anyone is who they say they are, and websites can't guarantee that the security measures they put in place will stop hackers from gaining access to personal information. Outsiders aren't the only threat. Facebook faced criticism last year for not allowing users to stop them from feeding their information to their advertising agency, Beacon. As long as we exercise caution and forethought when dealing with social networking sites, I think they can help us reach new users and connect with our colleagues.

Week Two

I'd never used wetpaint before this week (I've always used wikispaces), and I'd never created a wiki of my own. I know how useful they can be for collaboration though, so I was excited to try it out. Wetpaint made it easy to click through the wiki creation process. I decided to create my wiki as a home for interesting websites, blogs and other wikis I've found while taking this course. I gave it a simple, easy (for me) to remember name using my initials: http://kfrmla.wetpaint.com/.

While I was in the middle of adding my wiki to the list of class wikis, someone had submitted his/her change right before me. I had to 'manually merge' my changes with his/her's. It was an impromptu, but important, lesson in wiki editing.

Discussion Points
Step 1
The library where I work uses a wiki. We use it as a document repository, as a shared place to record work processes, and for internal communication (ex. advertising and signing up for work events). It is also used to manage projects that have team members contributing from multiple library branches.

Step 3
I find this to be very true. My workplace wiki would quickly become irrelevant without everyone making contributions and keeping the content they submitted up to date. The wiki also lets us catch and fix any mistakes and dated material we find.

The student association I'm a member of uses our wiki to record meeting minutes, advertise upcoming events, and get opinions from our members. I've helped contribute to both of these wikis. However it doesn't get a lot of use because only the officers really contribute to it. With only a handful of people adding content, it isn't being utilized to its full potential.

Step 4
I joined the 'Baking Wiki' and contributed a recipe I have for 'raw cheesecake'. I know people use wikis for purposes outside of academia, but this is the first time I've done so personally.

Step 7
Blogs make it easy to track the history of a shared conversation using 'comments'. Using RSS technology, it is easier to use blogs to keep up to date with new content. While blogs are better for fostering group conversation, it is much harder to create a collaborative work using blogs. While blogs can have multiple contributors, most of the time these contributors have to be added by one or two main 'administrators'. Wikis don't have this restriction. They make it easy for many people to edit the same document. All of a blogs contributors could collaborate on the same blog post, but it would get confusing to track the development of the document. In a wiki, all edits are logged so that everyone involved in the process can quickly see who made what changes.

Wikis are also closer to being like websites than blogs are. Wikis allow users to create subsidiary pages which can be linked from the main wiki page and vise versa. For example in my wiki, I created separate pages for 'blogs', 'wikis', and 'websites'. While blogs could create separate posts where people could comment with additions (or edit the posts by contributing), the information would not be as well organized.