Delicious...or merely appetizing?

Here's my take on Thing 13, which demonstrates tagging and folksonomies via Delicious: Interesting, but not thrilling. Perhaps my opinion will change with further use.

What I like:

• Non-browser-specific bookmark portability (obviously)
• Ease and flexibility of bookmarking and tagging (less redundant and easier than IE)
• Ability to share/collaborate with others by using a unique tag

Well, obviously, I like the portability of the links. However, since I use 2 computers 99% of the time (home and work) and the browser-specific bookmarks I have are unique to the types of things I do on those particular computers, not having portable bookmarks has rarely been a hindrance for me. There are the occasional circumstances when this can be handy, though. There are other ways around this hindrance, too, that don't involve Delicious.

I do like the nice little browser buttons that let me bookmark a web page in a click and tag it immediately. This is infinitely better than clicking Favorites/Add to Favorites in Internet Explorer (IE) and then sorting within folders. It's nice to not be limited to either choosing one place to file the link (i.e., choosing the equivalent of one tag) or having to repeatedly copy the link into multiple folders. In the Delicious model, one link can have many tags. This is a very good thing. BTW, I found the IE manual installation to work best for me, since there are many controls on my work computer. (See Installing bookmarklets on Delicious.)

I wouldn't have immediately (eventually - yes, since my library roots are in database design and this is a basic principle, but immediately - no) thought of creating a unique tag to collaborate on a research project, except that I recently was following tweets from the Consumer Electronics Show that were tagged with #CES09, so the whole concept just happened to be top of mind. This idea also was stated in Otter Group's podcast, Del.icio.us tutorial. This could be handy when slamming together rush research with the library team, although the confidentiality issue would need to be addressed; I need to investigate that issue further.

What I don't like: using it as a research tool. When I started following tag trails, I didn't find anything better or faster than I found by searching traditionally. The trails are going to be, by nature, irregular. Consider, someone needs to tag a page for you to find it in the first place, and unless you know the tagger (that might happen), their credibility and tagging prowess is questionable. I waded through a lot of muck only to find some of the bookmarks I already had on a very straightforward topic. I can't really see myself following Delicious tags for research unless I am really desperate. I guess I'm not the sort who holds the blind hope that if I comb through the sand on the beach long enough, I might just find a real shrunken head.

For some reason, my Delicious network badge only shows up in my browser when I refresh the page. I hope you can see it, below:




Technorati tags: learning 2.0, 23 things, bookmarks, folksonomy, social tagging

Unimpressed with Rollyo

Well, here is the first thing in Learning 2.0, Thing 12, that has been thoroughly unimpressive. It is a tool called Rollyo that allows you to "build your own search engine" that simultaneously searches only the internet sites that you select. I tried it, both with custom engines that I created and some of those available on the site. I thought the results were poor -- too many irrelevant hits.

So, I went to Google, looking for a better option, and, as usual, Google did not disappoint. Google custom search worked beautifully. There are some who disagree. (I prefer the simplicity of Google.)

In my side-by-side test of Rollyo versus Google custom search using the exact same sources, Google gave me precise and 100% accurate results, with the relevant content highlighted in the results, so that I did not even need to go to the returned site to verify. Rollyo gave me a bunch of irrelevant results and didn't highlight enough in the results page to help me to know why it returned those results. I'm sold...on Google. As an added feature, Google immediately asked me if I wanted to add a widget to my iGoogle page for my new search engine. In one more click, my custom search widget was ready to go forevermore on my iGoogle site. Hooray!

So, here are my two custom search engines that simultaneously search the two most popular listings of school closings in Cleveland:

ROLLYO search of Cleveland school closings

VS.

Google search of Cleveland school closings:

Which do you think works better (and looks infinitely cooler)? I wish I would have set this up earlier this week -- my children's school was not listed on the source from which I receive text alerts, but it was listed on the other. It would have saved an unnecessary trip in blustery weather conditions.


Technorati tags: learning 2.0, 23 things, custom search engines

LibraryThing

Late to the party on yet another one. Yep, I've known about LibraryThing for a long time. Yep, people I know and respect, including my library co-workers, use it enthusiastically. Yep, it was yet another thing I never got around to trying, until now (Thing 11).

Well, now I've tried it. I added 10 books in a matter of seconds. Slick!

If I can add a few books from our extensive personal library a little at a time, perhaps we can stop buying duplicates. I'm going to need the paid lifetime subscription to LibraryThing.

You see, my husband and I are addicts....to books. The only way I can avoid overindulgence is staying away from bookstores, cold turkey. One might think that Amazon would be online crack for me, but Amazon is my utilitarian version of a bookstore; I am less likely to overindulge because I usually am seeking something in particular. But in a brick-and-mortar bookstore, I am swept away by the entire sensory experience of browsing: gazing upon tall shelves of beautiful and colorful covers, floating on the scent of new paper and coffee, feeling the smoothness of the pages and hearing them crackle ever so gently as a book is opened for the first time. I love the aesthetics of books as much as (sometimes more than, if it is a truly beautiful book) the content. Put me in the classics section of Borders and I will walk out with a big bag of books and a huge dent in my credit card.

My husband is more likely to fall off the wagon in Half Price Books, as he always entertains the notion that he'll find an overlooked first edition by a hailed author buried among the cast-offs of others. In that store, my strategy for virtuousness is restricting myself to the children's section, where I figure my inevitable purchases are, at least, benefitting our household youth. (Truth be told, the kids' books I buy are really for me. My latest overindulgence: The Tales of Beedle the Bard. I read the kids one of the stories. Really.)

I'm going to mull over using LibraryThing professionally. It certainly is cool for personal use.


Technorati tags: learning 2.0, 23 things, book addiction

Return to the 23 Things: RSS

Okay, I need to start jamming on The 23 Things again. It seems appropriate to address RSS and Newsreaders (Things 8 and 9), because I recently had a day from heck that could have been much less irritating if RSS had been used properly.

So, what happened, you ask? Well, I post entries on behalf of a group of other people to a particular internal blog at work. (Trust me, there's a reason.) The blog is in SharePoint which has a clunky blog editor, so my preferred tool for editing and posting entries is MS Word. Using the blog template in Word, I can post to any blog to which I have publishing rights with a simple click of my mouse.

This time, however, it wasn't so simple. I published a new post, and when I went into the blog to ensure that it displayed properly (there often are differences between the preview and the actual post), I saw an error. I went back to Word, fixed the error, and then published a draft copy (i.e., unapproved for general viewing) of the post to the blog. Unfortunately, this triggered a memory problem and I received an error message telling me that the draft could not be published. But that's not what really happened. The draft did publish, crashing Word along the way and corrupting my document. But, on my end, it just looked like Word was slowly trying to save the document. I left Word alone to crunch; it usually is better to let Word finish whatever it's doing and close itself down properly than to force it to abort with the Task Manager. What I didn't realize until my email box started filling up was that Word was stuck in some sort of weird loop and kept republishing the same corrupted draft. I finally had to force Word to close and restart my laptop, thus pulling the plug on that particular problem. Then, I went back into Word, started from scratch to avoid propagating whatever had corrupted the draft, published the new draft, deleted the original post for fear of possible embedded corruption, and, finally, approved the new draft.

So why was my email box filling up? I subscribed to the "alert me" feature for the SharePoint site on which the blog resides so that I would know if any changes were made to the site or its contents. Every time the draft republished, I received an email. These alerts weren't a problem for me; I want to know about every little change. That's the point of the "alert" function. Frankly, if I hadn't done this, it may have taken me longer to figure out what was going on with the endless loop of republished, corrupted drafts.

The problem is that, instead of subscribing to the RSS feed for the blog, some of the readers of the blog also had subscribed via "alert me." So, they, too, received a barrage of emails while Word was going through its endless loop crisis. I received a phone call from a co-worker admonishing, "Stop editing the blog! I've already received 9 emails on it!"

I checked my RSS folder for the blog. It had two new posts in it: the original post (that I deleted for fear of corruption) and the post-systems-disaster corrected version. (Check! RSS working as expected.)

Thus, my next task was sending out a general announcement on how and why to unsubscribe from alerts and subscribe to RSS. (Yes, readers should be blocked from alerts, but that's a whole different story...)

Anyhow, the point is that RSS is a great tool for keeping up on only what you want to know and arranging it a manageable way. If the readers had all been using RSS (as directed when the blog originally launched), my episode with Word's "undocumented feature" would have gone unnoticed by readers.

With respect to the 23 Things, I did, in fact, set up a Bloglines account a while back and I tried out other readers. I used the search tools and added lots of blog feeds relevant to my work. My conclusion is that having RSS delivered into my Outlook RSS folder works best for me.

While I'm at it, I did Thing 10 as well. Obviously, if you read my other posts, I've been doing Thing 10 unwittingly for a while now. Here's my official result, though:


I used Toondoo, which was very user friendly.


Technorati tags: learning 2.0, 23 things, RSS

The Avatar Quest

I would really like to have a cool avatar that subtly hints at my super-hero alter ego but still is recognizable as me. I can't seem to find the right utility, though (not that I've knocked myself out trying). I tried Gaia, which was just not the right set of looks for me -- too "teen hipster." Meez was another attempt, which I wanted to try for the animation. However, it's been loading for 30 minutes with no result, so I'm giving it up as a bad job. Tektek, which is very basic, worked well enough for me. The search wasn't working, which made it a bit tedious to find items, but otherwise it was easy. Here are my "3 seasons" results:

Loosely named "Brrrr", "Just right", and "Warmish."

I'm thinking I need to break out the art supplies and do my own. Of course, that would require a time investment of more than 5 minutes...

Update: I finally did get Meez to work. Couldn't really find the right options to make it look like me. But it does blink. That's something.

My last attempt, although there is no animation, was at BeFunky. I like the way these turned out, although I did some editing in my own image program.

Technorati tags: avatars

The Further Behind I Get...

Okay, I have totally abandoned the 23 Things for the present. The 4th quarter of the calendar year is just too busy for me. I'm behind on the 1023 Things I HAVE to do for work, so there's no time for 23 Things I merely WANT to do for my own professional development right now. Maybe I'll resume in January.

Anyhow, I did take a little while this morning to catch up on a few recent posts on LibraryBytes, the blog of the mastermind behind Learning 2.0 and The 23 Things, Helene Blowers. Of course, I had to analyze my blog after reading one of the posts.

Turns out that my blog type according to Typealyzer is ISTP - The Mechanics:

The independent and problem-solving type. They are especially attuned to the demands of the moment are masters of responding to challenges that arise spontaneously. They generally prefer to think things out for themselves and often avoid inter-personal conflicts. The Mechanics enjoy working together with other independent and highly skilled people and often like seek fun and action both in their work and personal life. They enjoy adventure and risk.

Interesting that I approach my writing as an ISTP (which sounds right to me) when my personal MBTI type is INTJ (which is me all over).

GenderAnalyzer guesses that my blog is written by a woman (59%), but "is quite gender neutral."

Here is my readability level from The Blog Readability Test:

Not very inclusive, eh?

Finally, my blog has no commercial value whatsoever, according to How Much is Your Blog Worth

My blog is worth $0.00.
How much is your blog worth?

Bummer, eh?

Also, for a real hoot (thanks again to Helene Blowers), try Hairmixer. My favorite look was my face with Donald Trump's hair:



although I look pretty darn good with Reese Witherspoon's short, wispy blond cut:

but just can't pull off the Gwen Stefani stylized do:

Next time I see my hairdresser, I'm bringing her a copy of me with Reese's hair. Or, maybe, The Donald's.

Technorati tags: learning 2.0, 23 things

I'm Obviously Clueless About Public Libraries

Disclaimer: Not being a degreed librarian but merely a corporate library manager, I only understand public libraries from a patron's point of view. Read the following commentary keeping that in mind.

I read an interesting blog post by Kathy Dempsey about a missed opportunity to market public libraries within a 4-part series on Examiner.com called "Top 20 things librarians in public libraries wish patrons knew or did". I agreed with her, it was a sadly missed opportunity for marketing the "gee whiz, I didn't know you did that" things that libararians can do. One comment on her blog post chided her for criticizing another librarian by failing to see that the article was intended to humanize librarians. Certainly, public librarians must deal with a lot of unfortunate, inconsiderate actions from library patrons that probably make them feel like screaming, "Show some manners, people!" but I have to admit that the title of the article series made me think that something other than a list of wishes for better library etiquette was to follow. I was disappointed that I found myself reading tips for common library courtesy, which, in all fairness, must be not so common if the interviewed librarians overwhelmingly brought them up. I'm guessing, though, that a more thorough probe by the writer of the article into what the interviewed librarians really would like patrons to know/do would have produced 20 more interesting things than the top-of-mind ones listed. Kathy Dempsey alludes to some of those more intriguing concepts in her comment after the last installment of the article.

A friend who is currently looking to re-enter the library workforce recently offered me her insights on various libraries at which she considered seeking employment. I am amazed at how "old school" many of the public libraries which she has considered appear to be. These old school libraries seem to view themselves as an extension of ivory tower academia, rather than operating like organizations responsible for providing value to their taxpayers. Not that they don't provide value, but they can't articulate it. Their visions are weak. They have no marketing plan. Gosh, even universities are acting more like businesses these days because no one wants to plop down big piles of hard-earned cash if they don't see that they are going to be getting good value. People want cutting edge for their money, especially when it is to gain knowledge.

My friend's anecdotes confirm that, like any other type of profession, the library biz has a few innovative thinkers and many who are solidly pedestrian in their thinking. The trouble with the pedestrian view is that it leaves you out on the sidewalk when the window of opportunity begins to close. Sure, information is all the rage and that helps the image of libraries at present, but librarians who don't demonstrate their unique value now will be left in the stacks as end users develop a grass-roots understanding of information through the empirical approach to dealing with it afforded by the post-Web 2.0 world. The more information savvy the end user perceives himself to be, the less he will value a pedestrian-thinking librarian who doesn't see -- or maybe CAN see, but can't describe and market what they do with pizzazz -- beyond the bookshelves or children's story hour.

Librarians connect people with information, wherever it resides: in other people's heads, books, online, or in other media. They can take the increasing amounts of relevant content available to us and help us to extract the best value from it. Librarians who can demonstrate and articulate this unique value will relate to these new self-made information patrons/experts. (Thus, the value of Learning 2.0 and the 23 Things.) And, after all, the new self-made experts pay taxes. In the not too distant future, the millennials who already believe themselves to be savvy about everything, including information, will be deciding the fate of libraries with votes outnumbering those of the boomers. Are the millennials hanging out in libraries (physical or virtual), or are they bypassing them? I don't know the answer to that because I haven't researched it, but it seems that someone must have. In any case, shouldn't public librarians be listing 20 things that appeal to the the information savvy or, at least, to information-savvy wannabes? I'm guessing that reminders to respect personal space and refrain from sneezing on the reference desk don't really resonate with the current information generation. But, I could be completely wrong.

BTW, if you want to read a practical article on basic tips for using your local library wisely, look here. It is written by Jeff Scott, Library Director for the City of Casa Grande Public Library (Casa Grande, AZ).

One fabulous take-away from the "Top 20 things..." article, though, is the reference to The Book of Bunny Suicides. I, of course, have at least a dozen people on my Christmas list who are now going to get that book!


Technorati tags: articulating value, Examiner.com, Jeff Scott, Kathy Dempsey, librarians, library etiquette, library patrons, library value, public libraries