Week 8 (Yippee!) - Mashups and APIs

I think this week has been the most interesting by far of all that we've experienced in this class. Mashups hold such promise. I loved the podcast by the Library 2.0 Gang discussing the possibilities - especially for making the library catalog more relevant. Their digression on whether we should be looking at new technology to fix our problems or looking at our problems to see how they need to be fixed was very thought-provoking. The scariest thing about this week is that it feels like creating a Mashup is way beyond my abilities. I can think them up, but my coding skills are pretty limited. Maybe this points to the next class I will have to take.

So I've been exploring these Mashups, and for my assignment, I need to write about one. The one that has caught my attention is World News Map at http://www.tsmaps.com/. I guess I've been helping my kids out quite a bit with their homework over the years, and it seems that current events are a perpetual assignment. What better that to have a world map that allows you to click on a country and see the top news headlines relating to it! Fun for kids. Fun for moms. Fun for librarians! Now I want to see a map with health care statistics for each country! Or a US map with state licensure information popping up.

Rollyo was interesting. While I enjoy blogs, I do find the number of them overwhelming. I love that there is a friendly way to search them. Searching librarian blogs on privacy was fun. We are so passionate about it. The Shifted Librarian, The Annoyed Librarian, and the LibrarianinBlack were all writing about privacy. There were the expected rants about our government, but I particularly appreciated The Shifted Librarian's examinations of young people and their lack of concern about their privacy with respect to what they post on Facebook, Flickr, etc. The Shifted Librarian also had a nice discussion about OpenID (which allows a user to have a single id/login that can be used across much of the internet) and how we librarians can use the trust that the public has instilled in us to help educate them about privacy issues online.

Week 7 Podcasting & Online Hosted Video

This week has been fun. I can see a lot of applications for podcasting in my library. We currently do Camtasia video tutorials for a number of our services and databases. A podcast seems like a great alternative, especially with the ability to send regular podcasts to "subscribers". We could do a semester long orientation of brief podcasts that are sent to freshman throughout their first semester.

YouTube seems like another great possibility. Not only is it such a friendly site, but it also groups similar videos together, so if I put up a video about using the library's bibliographic citation manager, our students might find related videos that YouTube suggests. One of my favorite videos (it's silly of course) is How to Use a Book: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQHX-SjgQvQ&feature=related.

One thing that had not occured to me was how important the sound and video quality are. I'd want to be sure any podcast or video representing my library was done as professionally as possible. I think poor audio would be particularly annoying for our patrons - and the whole point is to constantly improve the library-patron relationship!

Week 6 - Photo Sharing

This was a straightforward assignment using very friendly website interfaces. Operating in flickr is easy. Uploading my photos to Facebook is a breeze. The professional uses of this technology are not so clear to me. It could be fun to invite attendees of MLA or other professional meetings to contribute to a photo page documenting the conference. As far as within my library, I just don't see any way to use it.

I've begun to wonder as I've blogged about finding uses in my library for the technologies we've covered, am I too consumed with trying to fit my current methods and services into 2.0 technology? Maybe I need to be thinking more outside the box. New technologies present the opportunity for new methods and services, and none of us should be too attached to the old. Perhaps we need to discontinue the old for our sanity as Web 2.0 opportunities generate more for us to do. Unfortunately, I can't figure out what to do with flickr in relation to libraries. With this in mind, I'm going to watch the class blog to see if others have library-use ideas for flickr.

Week 5 - GoogleDocs

I began to use GoogleDocs after the MLA webcast on 2.0, and it has been wonderful. Last week I sent off my portfolio to apply for AHIP status. Putting that portfolio together was made so much easier by GoogleDocs. Some of my documentation was at home, and some was at work. With a document online, I could access it at both locations and then send it out to a few colleagues for review.

I think these types of office tools will revolutionize the office environment. It's hard to imagine that just over 30 years ago there were still typing pools with expert typists making use of carbon paper! The convenience of today is amazing. Using the presentation feature for this assignment blew me away. It seems just as good as PowerPoint!

My only two concerns are permanence and security. Having my documents hosted on servers beyond my control make me wonder about backing up the information (Remember when Y2K sounded like the end of the world? Imagine what would happen if Google went out of business overnight?) and determining if anything I work with is too sensitive to be hosted elsewhere. I've just got to face the fact that although I have these concerns, I'm going to take my chances with convenience.

Week 4 was delicious!

I'm a little late in posting, but I thought Week 4 was a blast. I loved playing around with delicious, and it is definitely more efficient to be able to access my bookmarks from anywhere - not just from one pc. Now my bookmarks can travel with me from my office to the reference desk to my home. Aside from this convenience, I could see delicious as a research tool. Why not set up all your favorite research sites on a delicious account and share with your colleagues? It would be worthwhile to see their favorites, too. My institution has 108 campuses. Delicious could be a powerful tool for faculty at various campuses to use in collaborative research or for students who are in a program like our global MA or global MBA where they spend weeks at campuses in London, Leiden, Vienna, Geneva, Thailand, and China. Not only can they take helpful sites with them, but they can also share their finds with fellow students.

In thinking about delicious and the tagging features, I wondered about possibilities with my library's website. We have a series of pages of suggested websites in over 100 different subject areas. Right now we maintain these websites with all the fun of working with the xml coding. I wonder about linking out to judiciously tagged delicious pages. My biggest concern is that we are no longer hosting the information on our servers. If delicious were to go away tomorrow, where would we be?