Podcasting and YouTube

Well, youTube is one of those things that, even as someone a little behind the times technologically, I could hardly have missed and I was aware of podcasting as an audio-visual medium for conveying information. I hadn't really grasped the connection with subscriptions and RSS feeds though so am glad to have learned about that. I have a programme in mind I'd like to subscribe to - just wish I could remember the name of it, then I might be able to see if that service is offered by said programme makers!

Some of the youTube videos suggested by the Cam23 team were very entertaining. Romance of the Living Book was great and you could see that sort of thing achieving a cult following amongst students. I am hugely in favour of using the audio-visual medium to reach library users. Podcasts / audio-visuals can be entertaining, often humorous and can convey valuable messages at a time that suits library users, at the point at which they need it and can overcome some of the anxiety associated with using the library or not wanting to admit to lack of knowledge. Though this is of obvious benefit to distance users its value to local users should not be underestimated. Students have a lot to take in when they arrive at university. Particularly, in Cambridge where firstly they call on college and faculty libraries. They, therefore, may not visit the UL until some time into their studies and then be embarrassed at not knowing things and may have missed earlier induction programmes. The UL is not an easy place to use - largely because of its size.

Podcasting / audio-visuals nowadays entail little expense and I can also see a value not only in providing short introductions to resources available but also in providing information on new services / resources offered by the library or changes to usual procedure which it would help users to know about in advance. I'm not sure we can rely on users subscribing to an RSS style feed for podcasts though and feel that links on library web-pages and e-mail links would also be necessary.

Image courtesy of derrickkwa via Flickr CC

Google docs

Ah, now this one I really can see the benefit of - but only amongst librarians rather than between users and librarians. How refreshingly easy it is to use too. My immediate concern though, and something I have not been able to find out about quickly and easily, is whether when a person edits the document the previous version is saved. It may be, for example, that one of the people you share the document with and invite to edit it changes something to something you are not happy with - can you then easily cancel the change or revert to the original? Similarly if one person edits something and then another later edits the same thing does the second edit overwrite the first one - is the first editor wasting their time - or are the 'participants' of the sharing process aware of all changes? I suspect this is something I will only become aware of after having shared a document and found out. So, now I'm more or less up-to-date, I'm off to do just that ...
Image courtesy of helenmoverland via FlickrCC

LinkedIn - should we be in the loop?

Loved this image but then was quite a smurf fan when little! Thanks to 99zeros via FlickrCC. Anyway to LinkedIn which I knew little about though had come across when working on NACO authority proposals for my Legal Deposit Libraries Shared Cataloguing. Can be quite useful for this! LinkedIn seems to me to some extent the other extreme from facebook. It has a much more professional/business feel and outlook. Profiles can look quite like CVs and I believe the site has been used for looking for jobs, conference speakers, etc. Libraries, however, need to question at least 2 things 1) Are their users here - for somewhere like CUL which operates as a Research Library for academics and not primarily as a lending library for undergraduates they may well be. 2) Do our users who are here expect to find us here? - do they associate libraries with business? If a library is participating in LinkedIn this would probably need to be advertised via other means -RSS feed on web page for example. Haven't spent as much time looking at this as I would like but think there might be potential for making contact with publishers, electronic journal providers etc. - finding out about what they offer, which new ones exist, keeping up to date with new technological innovations through a professional network and indeed expressing our own needs.

Del.icio.us

Firstly, thanks to Aaron Landry for the picture of Strawberry Macaroon Cupcakes, acquired via FlickrCC.


To be honest I'm in two minds about this "thing" called del.icio.us which to begin with makes me think of all things tasty - those who know me well will know I have an exceedingly sweet tooth! Sometimes even chocolate doesn't cut it. Anyway, that's rather beside the point. Aside from it's strange name, I can understand why this resource has, according to some of the literature, taken off rather less among libraries. The big undoubted bonus is portability and the strength of this bonus grows the more you need to move from machine to machine - working on an enquiry desk, giving presentations, job-sharing, working from home etc. It strikes me, however, that to be successful this tool would demand much greater administration to make it work well for libraries if used in a public setting. It doesn't, for example, create a good impression to readers if the library is providing out-of-date bookmarks, broken links or links which for one reason or another simply don't work anymore. Similarly Rethlefsen's article interested me by describing the way the Bibliotheques de l'Universite Paris-Sorbonne was using delicious. Isn't the "extensivley organised" way in which it "divvies up" by tags/time/period/discipline/format etc. becoming more like a classification scheme for online resources? If so this demonstrates well the skills of the librarian but again would need constant attention. Arguably, I think this "thing" would work better for more subject specialist libraries or be best found on the web pages of individual departments where subject specific bookmarks could be provided. The fact patrons can contribute suggestions is also useful as a form of peer support. I don't think I'll be subscribing too soon. I spend a limited amount of time away from the same computer at work and would just use Google or email myself a link in advance if using another machine.

Slideshare

Another invaluable tool on the 23 things programme. I can see this being greatly beneficial for preparing presentations - seeing what is out there, what issues others have covered, how they have branded their presentations, used images and humour to get their points across etc. Though a bit dated now, having been created for a plenary talk at the "Library of the Future" forum, Learning Resources Services Network, Western Australia in 29 November 2007, I particularly liked this one:

Five Social Software Sites that libraries shouldn't ignore

View more presentations from sirexkat.

I'm not convinced mining SlideShare for actual presentations, in their entirety, would be terribly useful to libraries but for mining ideas and to save reinventing the wheel this tool has to be an absolute plus. The importance of marketing / selling your library does, however, surely need to be borne out by the branding given by the institution / individual within the institution creating the presentation. In this respect the main benefit of posting your slideshow / presentation on Slideshare after it has been given is to try and encourage some of your end users to embed it in their websites. For example, a library as large as the UL could perhaps encourage faculties, departments, the university admissions office etc. to embed introductions to the library, presentations on research skills etc. into their own pages. This would make the presentation available to the reader in new social spaces and hopefully capitalise on sites they are already visiting. The potential for receiving user feedback on SlideShare must also be a bonus for making improvements to further presentations and in finding out what users actually want and how this can be catered for. The facility for the creator being able to delete comments deemed inappropriate should also hopefully ensure commenting remains relevant.

I suspect I will be using SlideShare in the future if not to create a presentation, to keep up-to-date with new technologies and to enhance my professional development. I love slideshows like this that give you a quick brief overview to something new leaving the potential to research further when time permits.

Twitter, tweets and tweeple - Aah! Not twits.

Have to admit if it had not been for 23 Things in all likelihood I wouldn't have signed up for Twitter. I knew little about it but had heard all the celebrity talk of people posting what they ate for lunch etc. and thought what a waste of time, I'm not getting into that! However, I am now beginning to see it has value. In particular I can see the benefit of libraries being able to share links and provide very brief updates without expending large amounts of time and energy. I also saw the fact it can be used via SMS as an advantage though am now wondering how significant a benefit this actually is when I consider how many people now carry pocket size devices of various types which allow them to access the internet? Being able to search tweets by subject is arguably a useful facility though sometimes the results may be so large in number that information is found more easily through a careful selection of people / places / lists "followed".

I read with interest the further reading which stated that currently libraries tend to use Twitter as a broadcast mechanism rather than interactively. Though I can see the benefit of library-user interaction I would be slightly concerned about the lack of filtering. There is surely a risk of receiving unhelpful responses as a result of the low character limit and tendency when using such tools to shoot off an immediate response on a matter which one might normally give much more consideration. Also, of interest was the issue of future potential charging for the service which once established would in all likelihood have to be continued, even at an unknown cost. How easy would it be to find a similar service at no / less cost that was compatible with what the library had already established?

On a more personal level I found some of the terms rather off-putting. I loathe the term 'tweeple' and found the idea of stalking (oops, no sorry following) a bit odd. Unlike on facebook where friend requests can be rejected I initially thought anyone could follow the tweets of a person / institution and was concerned about the potential of ending up being associated with the views of followers, who would be listed as such, who held views that you / your institution wouldn't want to be associated with. Through the further reading, however, I realised, with some relief, that you can pick and choose who you want to follow you.

Doodle - not only a random sketch

Doodle! Mmm, interesting name and formerly known to me as a random scribble - something reportedly drawn in boring meetings from what I have heard - not guilty of this myself of course! Turns out it is actually quite a useful Web 2.0 tool though. Have now tried it out and was pleasantly surprised by how easy it was both to send out meeting invitations and to view results. Didn't have to register, provide more information than was required or any of that nonsense. Don't have a need to set up meetings in my current job though so my use is probably going to be limited in the foreseeable future - I think my friends may think me a bit strange if I tried to use Doodle to set up a social gathering! It may take off in this respect though! Still in terms of library work I can see the advantages particularly for trying to organise meetings between people in disparate locations. Am wondering what the optimum number of invites is though - not too many I suspect. Aside from needing to know too many email addresses one wouldn't want to have to scroll down pages of results to find the most convenient time. Is it possible to send a Doodle request to a list (like users@lib.ac.uk)? Is there a case for this for setting up user education etc.? As one blogger pointed out several sessions could be set up at once in this way after all only those with the intention of attending would respond. Presumably all sessions stemming from one Doodle request would have to be on the same topic though?

Success! First image loaded into a blog. How rewarding. Definitely makes the blog less text heavy and consequently less boring. I enjoyed creating the iGoogle page. It was quite user-friendly and the instructions from the Cam23 team fool-proof. Thanks guys. May have taken me a bit longer to get to grips with otherwise - time playing around trying to work out what I was doing. Adding stuff was a joy but more important for me was deleting some of the stuff the page seemed to come with. I can understand having a few things on there so that you can see what type of thing is available but the screen just seemed a bit crowded until you get in there and have a good sort and clear out. Some of the things you can add are invaluable and if you use them regularly enough I can see the advantage of having them there rather than searching using the traditional Google search engine each time. For example, I have kept the weather report and added a Dictionary, wikipedia search engine, currency converter and arabic-roman numeral converter. Some of the boxes seem to take up too much unnecessary space though and I found this particularly true of the YouTube one. This has now been duly filed in a folder on the left menu bar. Organising things around the screen was really straightforward and allowed me to customise my page with heavily used things at the very top so that I don't have to scroll which I found to be a good thing. There seem to be no restrictions on this. There is nothing that has to stay which allows more freedom than I might have expected.

With regard to RSS feeds. Well I'd seen them and used them but never for one moment expected to add one to my own page. This was easily done and the fact RSS feeds are updated without me actually having to do anything to them or having to revisit the page is fantastic. I can certainly see the attraction of these and how they might be a valuable tool for libraries, or indeed, any other institution wanting to keep its customers / clients / members up-to-date - the possibilities do seem quite endless. The advantages of spam protection and easy cancellation for the user are also attractive ones. It may be, for example, that you are only attached to an institution for a fixed period of time. Adding an RSS feed doesn't have the same feel as saying you are happy to receive endless emails from some marketing monster just because you once expressed an interest in something. Its up-to-date information of interest to you where you want it and when you want it. Having said that, I'm not sure I fancy creating an RSS feed. That part of the article by Zeki Celikbas scared me off a bit! In that respect I'd hope it was easy to maintain one once it had been established.

Starting 23 Things

Have now created my first ever blog! I'm hoping that undertaking the 23 Things programme will help me find out more about many things I have heard of but never actually used. I'd like to know more about the new technologies that the Google generation are growing up with. I'm a bit worried I'm becoming technologically old already in my 30s! and know that if I'm not careful it will be all too easy to get so far behind I will become scared of such 'new-fangled things'. I also want to know more about how these technologies can be used by librarians and information service professionals for reasons of continuing professional development. I have a feeling I am used to using more Web 2.0 technologies than I am aware of without either a) being aware of them (or recognising them by that name ; b) understanding how they work and c) giving too much thought about their potential in my profession. I'm sure all this and much more will be revealed to me over the duration of the course.