Twitting On Twitter

I can understand the appeal of Twitter and how it can be useful in certain circumstances - e.g. to promote an upcoming event or item of interest or provide updates and certainly that is how we try to use it here in the library. I have done tweets on the Central blog to promote specific books or programs to library users and I hope they do find it of interest and helpful. It is most useful for last minute changes or updates.

Personally, though, I am not interested in using it at all. I did set up an account a few months ago just to see how it works but frankly, I don't need another time waster - which I think it is, for the most part. By the time you change your Facebook status and update your tweets - is anyone really doing anything important or interesting?? Perhaps it is a generational thing. I did not grow up using social networking tools (except the telephone!) and so privacy is important to me and I don't particularly want to share a lot of personal information, nor am I all that interested in what other people are doing unless there's something exceptional happening. It's just one more place to look and another password to remember!

LibraryThing

I love LibraryThing. I have been using it for the past two years and try to use it regularly to keep track of those books I think I might want to recommend to someone. The old way of writing them down in a journal never really worked for me as I never had it close by when I was thinking about it and then would promptly forget the name of the book when I did. However, I am almost always near a computer! I set up an account initially to become aware of it and now I think it is one of the greatest sites ever for book lovers. I've used it for Reader's Advisory for customers and being the visual person I am, having the book covers to see also helps me remember the book. In fact, I used LibraryThing today in coming up with a book to talk about at our staff meeting. What I think is funny is that one of the members that has many of the same books I do, I think is a staff member at Fish Creek but I haven't identified them yet! Actually, I discovered the website BookMooch through this person and I loved finding about a site where books can be exchanged.

DOCumenting the Calendar

Aargh. Must be a Friday afternoon. I did enjoy exploring the Google calendar and would probably use it at home, especially if I could synchronize it with my Outlook calendar at work. However, although the instructions seemed relatively straight forward to do, I had no success whatsoever in trying to import my work calendar to the Google calendar. I would have to play around with this for more time than I have to spend on it right now and so I'm left feeling somewhat frustrated. To further add to my joy, the link to Google docs did not work either from the 2.0 blog or the direct URL - I kept getting a redirect message and an ominous clicking sound so I thought I would leave it for today. I do mean to go back and look at Google docs though as this certainly seems like a very useful application.

I really enjoyed the Social Media Revolution video and in fact, passed it on to some people. It is very interesting and insightful and Youtube is a great method to show this type of information.

Picturing Videos

The main advantages YouTube and Flickr are the ease of use and ability to share. These features will be essential, I think, for any new and emerging technology. They also have an important time-wasting entertainment factor built in too! I tried Flickr a couple of years ago just to see how it works and I was impressed by the number of new features they have since added - such as creating cards. Flickr is great for sharing pictures with family and friends but I'm hesitant about it being the sole repository of my pictures. I guess I'm still too old fashioned and need to see the print version and have several backups too!
Youtube really has gone beyond just the astonished chipmunk and entertaining cats videos (although I still confess a weakness for them!). Definitely this is the go to source for music and entertainment questions, both historical and current. Very topical relevant information can be accesssible instantly and I'm not surprised that it's the number 3 search engine now!

Blogging the Line

What is so good about this excercise is the opportunity to explore some things that you hear about but never actually get a chance to look at. Bloglines is one such thing - I had heard of the site but never realized exactly what it does. It is straightforward to use; however I did have difficulty adding the CBC feed to Bloglines as they said they were unable to find the feed. Mashables was an easy one to add, though. I have not yet figured out how to add Bloglines to my blog but will keep attempting it. It is certainly a good quick way to keep in touch with things that are happening in the book and library world and I will keep looking at these ones; however the temptation is that this can be a real time wasting activity too. Somehow, you feel compelled to read each and every entry and feel guilty if you don't!

Google Eyed

Today was Google day and it was great to have the time to explore some of the changes and additions to Google beyond the basic tools used everyday like the search engine and image search.
I looked at the Directory, Google's attempt to catalogue the web, and through the Reference Category - Libraries I was delighted to find the website
You Are Not Alone (Maybe) Frequently asked reference questions, posted by the University of Michigan's Internet Public Library. This is very much like our old "Where to Look" file that we have in the Humanities Department and I was pleased to see some old favourites like Words ending in GRY - with a few other additions. It has World's All Time Best Selling Books and a nice entry on Genealogy for beginners.

The other product I explored was Orkut. I had no idea that Google had its own social networking site, apparently named after one of their employees who developed it. It seems to have many of the features of Facebook but not the applications and from the testimonials and fun facts, seems to be popular as a dating site. In trends, it looks like (no surprise) it is popular with the younger age demographic and very little use in Canada.

Facing Facebook

I do have a Facebook account that I originally set up (with my children's assistance!) to see what the fuss was all about and also because I learn best by doing. I rarely use it although I do play around with it from time to time when bored as it can certainly be a great time waster. I did upload a video and some pictures to see how it worked and I must confess, I did use it successfully to re-establish contact with an old friend from library school who is now living in San Francisco. Interestingly, rather than keep using Facebook to communicate, we exchanged phone numbers! I would not use it as the sole means of keeping in touch with people and frankly I'm not all that interested in what other people are watching on TV; however it can be useful to see what favourite authors (Lori!) and music groups are doing. You can also waste a lot of time trying to be witty at the expense of reading a good book! It can be awkward too in terms of protocol - do you ask your boss to be your friend? What if they say no? Is it considered public knowledge (despite the friends only limiters) if someone posts something sensitive?

My kids live on Facebook and it seems to be the main method of communication for that generation. They won't let me be their friend though! I have heard of a trend that is starting for some of them to get "off the grid". It will be interesting to see if in future the younger generation withdraws from it and the older computer savvy generation takes it over as a means for staying in touch with family.

Wicking with Wikipedia

What fun! It was certainly easy to find some corrections that needed to be made on the Calgary Public Library entry. I corrected the original opening date of the library as well as inserted a link to the Memorial Park entry in the Community Heritage and Family History Digital Library. The article could stand a bit more editing too and I hope to go back and do that. I'd like to add the link to the Digital Library in the references and the citation but the citation process seems complicated and will take a bit more time to figure out. I'd also like to create a whole new entry on the Community Heritage and Family History collection when I get a chance.

Tasty Times With Delicious

I have been using Delicious for a while now, both at work for Best Websites and at home for my personal use. In fact, it was through setting up my own Delicious account that I found one of my favourite websites that I now use all the time for travel: Tripit


I don't think that Delicious is the most user friendly site. As with any uncontrolled vocabulary, the tags may not be uniformly consistent. Some links have a lot of tags and some don't have many at all. Tagging could use some cataloguers! However, the advantage of Delicious is also the ability to customize. Of most benefit is the ability to search it from any computer.


Does anyone know if there are any other websites comparable to Delicious out there?

What I hope to learn from 2.0

This is a great hands-on way to apply some of the things we hear about but may not have the time to explore on our own. I'm hoping to learn a few tips and tricks along the way - I've already learned a few more things about how a blog such as blogger works!

Hello!

This is a great way to find out about the ins and outs of blogging! I love the templates too.