Moving forward: think, reflect, play...

This blog is a continuation of Stepping back, looking forward: A year to think, reflect and play... More than anything, my sabbatical leave taught me that I need to take the time *daily* to look forward...even in the midst of a hectic work schedule. And the library staff needs to do the same...think, reflect, play... Formerly Stepping back, looking forward

11/28/2006

Mary Ann's notes on "25 Technologies in 50 minutes"

RSS: Really simple syndication; “promotes the web of connections”; Check out Hennepin Public Library, University of Alberta, Seattle Public Library; DIGG (breaking news of technology); real benefit is taking the library to the next level within the community


Wikis: PBWiki, Mediawiki; valuable for storing knowledge that is in Librarians’ heads—bookmarks, files, etc.; check out your own organization (PCC) in Wikipedia; allows cooperative editing; knowledge is sustainable

Blogs: Blogger, Technorati, Moveable Type, etc. Interesting part is that you insure that you connect with your community; book clubs, staff use only; directors’ blogs;
use Vox to connect up with your users.

Photoblogs (Flickr): Tampa Bay Public Library; Teens taking pictures of historic buildings and seniors tell the stories; Bradford County Public Library

Tags: Event blogging pulls tags together to organize it;
Blogmarks; del-icio.us, linkfilter, livemarks, Stumble Upon, Wists, openIBM, Dude, Check this out

YouTube: 90 second videos about the library; use trailers to promote DVD collections; authors to promote book clubs; book cart races; Library dominoes;

MP3: Recognize mp3 files in iTunes and on the web; staff have not really been engaged in this media; show them the tools they need; get some players and teach them to do it; Overdrive Talking books now in digital format; Pandora (metadata driven radio station you can make); Limewire

Streaming media: Library TV; Denver Public Library has many streaming video collections; Get your texthead to nexthead; Spiralfrog

Google office: Writely hasbeen purchased by Google; merging with Google calendar; Office style applications to users; bridges digital divide;

Instant messaging:not using instant messaging is unethical (check out Cha Cha search; Search with a Guide has someone helping you with a search; IM bridge to virtual reference);

Meebo Trilliam and GAIM: Meebo is a messaging aggregator; GAIM

Visualization: displaying information rather than excessive links; KARTOO; Touchgraph provides timelines (very interesting); Antarctica application at Belmont Abbey College...

Second Life: Reuters, Second Life Library (some press conferences done ahead of actual press conference); infoisland.org (blog that supports Second Life Library); Check it out for Library instruction...

Avatars: Create a "Librarian Trading Cards" on Flickr; builds online identity;

Retrievr: Playing with sketches to find pictures without using words and when they do not have any metadata

Podcasts: Mp3 or audio file put into a blog; load your recordings into iTunes; content where the users are;

MySpace: combines Web 2.0 interactive events and communication, publishing and creativity 320,000 new users last week in North America; average age is 31; Average age of video player is 32; Hennepin County Library has Myspace in their catalog;

Facebook: Now open; converted her whole high school to Facebook; sfer environment; sustainable social networks for life; major shift in social networking

Skype: long distance for free; conference reports; told stories about what they were experiencing; American storytellers in Africa told a story once a month to her home library

Library thing: 40th largest library in North America (MARC records for your home library collection); book suggester based on what people buy for their home collections; book unsuggester;

Endeca: North Carolina State University Endeca on the catalog; information using metadata, Endeca powers Barnes and Noble and Borders; worth playing with

Virtual Reference: still in primitive stages; VRLPlus; next generation to how IM will work in the future

Folksonomies (professional metadata) and TagClouds: Technorati (what's happening in the blogs); what are people searching on...

Blinkx and Singingfish: Audio and video sites search; new spoken word search engines; searches podcasts, web accessible sources, tv/radio (e.g. how to use Lexis Nexus; distance education uses; Blinkx TV: 6 million hours of TV

Using 43 things to keep track of the 15 minutes a day (Stephen Abram)
article he wrote...

Helen Blowers started this movement; learning 23 things in 9 weeks; Stephen Colbert;

Get started with blogging...

Blogs he recommends: Use bloglines...
Tame the web blog (Michael Stephens)
The Shifted Librarian
Library stuff
Library crunch (Michael Casey)