No, Seriously

How has this program assisted or affected your lifelong learning goals?

It has given me the opportunity to learn something about some things I would otherwise never have had the time or inclination to pursue. I have learned some new terminology, and an expanded vocabulary is (almost)always a good thing.


What were your favorite Learning 2.0 discoveries or exercises?

Library Thing, and the personalized google search engine.


Did anything surprise you?

I anticipated that I might learn things that would help me help patrons with questions they have about these technologies. So far, I doubt that will be the case because I didn't have time to get into any of it enough to really discover all the potential uses &/or pitfalls. I can imagine possibly telling certain patrons about RSS Feeds or Library thing. And I think Library Thing may prove helpful for reader's advisory.


Was there enough help available when you needed it?

Yes.

What could we do differently to improve upon this program’s format or concept?

Go for a more visually appealing look to the blog. Include a structured list of the URLs included in the various lessons in outline format on one page for handy future reference.

Would you like to see similar training opportunities as new library-relevant technologies emerge?

Yes.

And, last one, if you could go back in time and tell yourself to either participate in the program or skip it, what would you do?

Do it. I think most people who would answer differently probably dropped out along the way.

One more thing?

I won't know it until I see it.

YouTube, Podcasts, etc.

I find YouTube works best by referal only. I find most of what I come across browsing not worth spending time on, but I have been enormously entertained by some of the clips to which people have directed me, such as the one below (Thanks Anne!).

THE CHUBB CHUBBS


OR, Check out SODA MUSICAL (Thanks Carrie!)



PODCASTS: I searched on "library" in podcast.net. I tried to subscribe to the Library Channel, but the RSS feed link was broken. I did subscribe to Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks Video Library, the Johnson County Library Writer's Place Poetry Reading Series, the Kern County Law Library Self Help Workshops, and Book Voyages. Too soon in the experience, and I'm to brain dead to think of KCLS applications right now.

E-Audio. I have been using overdrive, and to a lesser extent, net library, for a long time now. I love it. I did run into some difficulty getting it to work after the installation of the new windows service pack, but the answer line folks were able to get directions for a fix from the overdrive people that worked with only minor changes.

Online Applications and Tools

ONLINE SOFTWARE:

Think it's a good idea. Probably wouldn't want to use it personally, given any other option. The collaberative functions might be more helpful under certain circumstances.

Google Trial:

TITLE

Well, Here's an attempt to see how I like Google's online word processor. Hmmmmm. So far so good, except I have to be content with Tahoma instead of Arial.

And now an attempt at an indented paragraph, which I use quite a bit. la di da di da di da, la di da di la di da....... Not sure I would want my personal financial spread sheets or letters or journal entries stored on a server somewhere though.

Well, that indent worked fairly well, though the spacing seems off-- much too large. Does the dotted line around the paragraph show up when you print? Yes, it does. Don't like that. I like formatting appearance control too much to want to give it up.

Zoho Trial:

TITLE

Well, Here's an attempt to see how I like Zoho's onlline word processor. Hmmmmmmm. So far so good, and I don't have to be content with tahoma. There are more font choices, and they include arial. Yay!

And now an attempt at an indented paragraph, which I use quite a bit. la di da di da di da, la di da di la di da..... Not sure I would want my personal financial spread sheets or letters or journal entries or schedules stored on a server somewhere though.

Well, that indent worked better than the Google one, although the spacing is still large. But no dotted line around the paragraph. If google offers spell check, it's not readily apparent, which seems odd, given their web spell check feature. Think it's funny that Zoho thinks "Google" is a spelling error! :)

GOOGLE LABS:

Tried out "Local Voice Search", "Transit", and "Trends". I liked voice better than the regular 411 service-- definitely faster. I would have to compare the transit results with those from KCLS Metro on a number of trips before I would have any real sense of which (if either) is more user friendly, more reliable, etc... what, if anything, Google offers that improves upon Metro. Trends gave me virtually the same result for everything I tried looking up, and compared to trends graphs I am used to seeing elsewhere, was neither fine-grained enough, or over a long enough time span to be of much use. I did get the impression that everything I was interested in was declining in interest for the population as a whole. Guess I'm behind the times.

WEB 2.0 AWARDS:

Mostly not very iteresting or useful. Think I might register on www.linkedin.com. Who knows?

Library 2.0

It's one thing to keep up to date and not let our users leave us in the dust. It's another to puff up our sense of self-importance with fluffy, lofty rhetoric. Much of what I read about Library 2.0 left me with a "blah, blah, blah" impression. Some I wanted to say "DUH" to, and some I outright disagreed with. The one I thought had the most genuine substance was the one about icebergs, but I disagreed with much of it. A few comments thereon:

No just in case collection huh? Guess those Seattle folks are out of luck, as are the students with a book report due tomorrow, or those who have relied on Web resources and left their required book sources to the last minute. If the day comes when teachers no longer require print resources, and patrons no longer want to savor the sensory experience of reading a paper source, maybe. But I don't see that happening anytime soon.

NO user ed? Many patrons can't even sign up for an e-mail account without help. And if users are relying more on web sources and less on print, education about how to evaluate reliability of sources becomes important. Further, although I think self explanatory interfaces that need no instruction are important to strive towards, I doubt such a beast exists or is even possible. Different learning styles... The ability to overlook something staring you right in the face... Difficulty coming up with labels that are transparent and mean the same thing to everyone... One thing I think would help greatly would be more uniformity across sites and databases (in layout, appearance, labeling, results structure, help functions, etc. etc.) so that what is learned about one could be expected to directly transfer to most others. This is much more the case today than it was yesterday, but there is still along way to go. Staff frustration with some of the sites introduced through Learning 2.0 is just one case in point.

Don't come to us? Well, we certainly can take services to our patrons by way of the Web, and things like ABC express or TLC. But I don't believe the day will ever come when a virtually library can fully replace the functions offered by a physical place and collection.

Of what I read in the other articles, the thing that caught my attention the most was the idea of broadening relevance ranking. This sounds like it would be both beneficial and doable.

More Thoughts on MySpace & Library Thing

On MySpace: Do we REALLY want to support advertisers with library sites?

On Library Thing: I noticed that title searches typically led to several variations of the same book, each with its own number of people having it in their libraries. Do recommendations consider only the version you select?

Custom Search Engines

I liked Google better than Rollyo-- Partly because the appearance is more familiar, and partly because a search for "Events" yielded a KCLS result on the first page of Google returns, where I found only Seattle and Sno-Isle (at least in the first 5 pages, which was as far as I went) in Rollyo. The search for "Programs" led to a quite different outcome. Since the two terms are fairly interchangeable, I would have more confidence in either engine if they gave me the same results on both. Too bad there's not an advanced search option that lets you use an OR operator (for those who don't know the sytax). I AM quite excited to have my own Google search engine (On Fine Art Paintings, of course). I chose to have it include the entire web, but emphasize my URLs, and so far, my results lists seem to be more relevant than what I get with a straight Google search.

Marty Simpson

Here I am. Don't you think it's a good likeness?

WIKIs

I have used Wikipedia as a starting-point/overview type of source for information on various topics for some time. Am glad to learn about some of the others. Two Library applications that come immediately to mind are Reference FAQ with answer &/or source and a forum for LTA's to share expertise and tips that is more organized than bulletin board postings.

Myspace Update

Well, myspace seems to be allowing me to accept friend invitations now, but still no invite from the 2.0 team!

Technorati & Library Thing

I love library thing! Think it will be a help in reader's advisory, and I now plan to recommend it to every patron who asks me for a record of what they have read. I know we can show them how to "opt in" to having a list saved for them through KCLS, but Library thing allows for so much more!

Delicious NOT (Or maybe)

Yes, I could see everything mentioned in the 2.0 blog, but I think del.icio.us (did I get those dots in the right places?)would quickly drive me nuts if I just browsed link to link in endless loops and crossovers. Search, however, looks like it might lead to the discovery of things I maybe wouldn't find through google. Only time will tell.

On Second Thought...

Social networking sounded good in theory. But as of today, I have had it with myspace. Everytime I attempt to do anything, it tells me to log in (even though I am already) and then tells me to verify my email address (which I have now done about a dozen times). After I do that, it says I will now be able to do things I couldn't before, but I still cannot add friends. The ones whose emails I entered when originally setting up the account (which I later learned I was supposed to skip) worked, but none have since. The find a friend search yields a null result set even for the the 27things account, or for friends that are already linked to my account! I could not even successfully respond to the invite from one of our advocates. GRRRR!!!! It remains to be seen if I will be able to respond to the 27 things invitation when I get it. I'm not hopeful.

And then there's the matter of layouts. I have spent hours in a vain attempt to find one I like completely, and could spend hours more tweaking the closest approximation to get it up to my standards. Forget it! And why does my basic info display not match what I entered in the form? In my opinion, the whole thing is too unweildy and unreliable to be worth the effort.

P.S. I just noticed that there is an RSS folder in my KCLS Webmail account. How would I get those feeds I subscribed to through bloglines to show up in Webmail instead (not that I would necessarily want to, but maybe some of the library related ones...)?

Social Networking Sites

Seems like a good outreach vehicle.

RSS Feeds

STEP #7

I think it's too soon yet for me to tell how I'll like the feed thing. In theory it sounds good. (I sure love the KCLS book alerts, which are a bit similar.) I was frustrated by finding that many sites and newsletters I tried out did not have RSS feeds (although sometimes they are hiding in strange places). I'm guessing that if it does not have to be subscribed to on the site itself, that it would still work by pasting in the URL, and that you could still only see what you haven't previously "read" (i.e. "new" stuff), but that if you have to subscribe, it wouldn't. Is this assessment correct? I also anticipate frustration when I have to use my snail-paced dialup internet service to look at all the cool feeds I did discover! I was pleased to find book review sources among these. Maybe I'll finally stay up to date on those reviews!

STEP #8

In addition to "cheating" and subscribing to librarian.net, I came up with the following library related feeds by using the bloglines search tool: Combined library job postings, Librarian's Internet Index, and Library Link of the day. I found the feedster categories useful, but only to the extent that they had a category that I wanted. A search returned generic cut and paste search term ads and articles, only some of which appeared at all related to the search terms entered, and the site names did not seem at all search-term specific. Syndic8 also returned some rather confusing results. I thought Google was very straight-forward.

Making Progress

Well,

I've finally figured out how to narrow the side by widening the middle, but "spell with flickr" is still vertical! It looks like there is more space that can be cut hiding somewhere in the code, and I am DETERMINED to find it.

Help Please!

Does anyone know what the right and left borders on the blog template are called in html? I figured the reason my "spell with flickr" entry turned vertical was because the space for it wasn't wide enough. (It looked fine in the preview.) I tried changing every width or padding or margin I could find in the html code, and nothing affected those exasperatingly wide sides. Some of the changes did eliminate the sidebar image and log, but that was not what I was going for!

Retrievr

I have to say it's something of a mystery just what criteria Retrievr uses to judge similarity. Color is obviously one of them. Shape much less so, although the flower did bring up two flower pictures and the dog sketch did result in one image of a dog, along with a flower, a baby, an old man with a hat, and a rear head shot of a woman with long black hair! Mildly amusing, but not very useful.

Spell With Flickr

Here goes an attempt to use the spell with flickr mashup.




Hmmmm. It sure looked a lot better horizontal on the screen than it does vertical!

Here is an example of the kind of digital "restoration" I do with fine art images of paintings that are in poor condition. These are excerpts from the painting "The Mischievous Tale" by German painter Edmund Adler. The original (top) was obtained from Guarisco Gallerey at www.guariscogallery.com/. As you can see it was quite scummy looking in the lower left quadrant. The edited image (bottom) is the one I use in my wallpaper and screensaver program.

Have just thankfully discovered that you CAN go back and correct typos etc in previous postings.

Discovered my coworker Union Guy's picture when I went to flickr on the pc he used to set up his account. I'm sure all of us who know him would agree it's a great likeness!

Lessons Learned so far. Always preview before publishing to catch those errors! Nice that they offer you the option of easily editing the HTML to customize the template any way you please. My change was modest: The change of the Header Color from white to Greenish Blue to better compliment the image I included.

Inspiration has struck!

Created this blog as an assignment for KCLS's learning 2.0 package. Probably not something I would have ever done otherwise. After scratching my head for a theme or topic, I have decided on my hobby of restoration of digital images of fine art works, which I add to my Webshots wallpaper and screen-saver collection. This hobby was inspired by the RGB labs displays we now have in some of our branches at KCLS. This gives me something of the same effect, and helps me painlessly learn something about art and artists at the same time. Unfortunately, many paintings are in somewhat crummy condition, with flaking paint, scratches, moldy spots, cracks, and the like. A degree of this adds character and is fine by me, but I find it interferes with my enjoyment of some pictures which I otherwise like very much. As a result, I have tried my hand at digital "restoration", and have become quite adept at it. Purists might scoff, but I don't much care. I have wondered if there might be others interested in doing the same thing, and in perhaps sharing restored images. Granted, what bothers me, might not be what bothers others, but you never know, and the process does take time. My favorite source of fine art images are the Art Renewal Center Museum(http://www.artrenewal.org/asp/database/contents.asp) and the Athenaeum (http://www.the-athenaeum.org/), although I have occasionally found errors on the ARC site, which they are not very responsive in correcting. Any one have any other suggestions? I have been working my way through the alphabet, and to date, I have a fairly extensive collection of artworks from artists beginning with Hans von Aachen and ending with Albert Bierstadt. Anyone been working backward from the z's? Sample before and after images to follow.

Going through the motions

Waiting for inspiration to strike. Not a blogger at heart.