No. 20 (YouTube, Etc.)

The highest purpose YouTube serves is MAKING ME LAUGH — which I need quite a lot of these days.

The following is a commentary on married life:

And this is a profile of the father of our country, cast as a mytho-historical god-monster:

I also learned how to install an additional internal hard drive in my computer through YouTube videos. However, if you insist on boring, academic, library-related uses, you can try:

Also, there’s a great deal of potential user instruction — library tours, article-searching skills, etc. — to offer with online video. But why would you waste time with stuffy, edumacational uses, when you could watch this?

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No. 19 (Web 2.0 Awards List): Paul submits, goes with IM

I looked at the short list of Web 2.0 Awards winners, and figured it was high time for me to swallow my snobbery and try out Instant Messaging.

My main concern over IM is that it will turn into Instant Pestering — that, if I let too many people know my IM handle(s), they’ll have things to say to me all day that ought instead to be developed into full sentences and even paragraphs (that include spelled-out words). It’s already difficult enough to leave my e-mail unchecked when Thunderbird reminds me that new messages have arrived. However, it’s possible that I need to develop my skill at filtering out garbage and ignoring potential distractions. Shortcoming acknowledged, snobbery swallowed.

So, be it known henceforth that my IM handle — in Google Talk, Yahoo! Messenger, AIM, and MSN — is “pablovolmadas“. I hereby invite all to “IM” me on matters work- and drinking-related.

I’m using Meebo as an IM client so that I can chat with people regardless of their client choice. One peculiarity so far is that Karen Jensen says that, in her Yahoo! client, I show up in the list as off-line, while Brad Krick, using Trillian, says I show up as on-line. Showing up as off-line is probably the IM equivalent of not listing your telephone number in the Yellow Pages, so that’s a problem.

I hear that scads of libraries are using IM reference — at least, people talk about it a lot — so it’s good to get some practice. I suppose IM is also a useful collaboration tool: you can’t always know which phone number to reach somebody at, even if they’re in your local calling area, but if they’re on-line, you can get hold of them for quick consultations.

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No. 18 (Zoho writing sample)

	THE thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne as I best could;but when he ventured upon insult, I vowed revenge.  You, who so wellknow the nature of my soul, will not suppose, however, that I gaveutterance to a threat.  At length I would be avenged;  this was apoint definitively settled - but the very definitiveness with whichit was resolved, precluded the idea of risk.  I must not only punish,but punish with impunity.  A wrong is unredressed when retributionovertakes its redresser.  It is equally unredressed when the avengerfails to make himself felt as such to him who has done the wrong.

(I didn't write this text.  Do you know who did?)

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No. 16 (Wikis & Libraries)

In what sense does a wiki really belong to the library that hosts it? Sure, if it’s an internal wiki, it fully belongs to the library. But what if it’s a product that the library provides for patrons? Isn’t it their wiki then? I don’t mean that patrons shouldn’t feel and have some ownership of their library’s resources — but what is the library providing?

Of course, this raises the question of how much the library has to be a provider as opposed to a facilitator. Maybe this is our new job: not only provide information, but provide a platform for its creation, too. (Is that the same as publishing?)

Actually, the SJCPL wiki is a little more “Web/Library 1.0″ in that it’s the traditional activity of making pathfinders or reading lists (in this case, of web resources). I like it. I think that lots of libraries could emulate that one, starting with their commonest reference questions and common research topics.

Another wiki use I’d like to see might be appropriate to a public library website: a “Guide to Fairbanks [or FNSB]” wiki. The public library gets plenty of questions from tourists on things to see, places to eat, walks and hikes to take, et cetera — and those aren’t of interest only to tourists. What a great place for locals to get the skinny (and dish the dirt) on their favorite restaurants, CSA ventures, health care options… hell, anything. People would be willing to share plenty.

I think that another interesting one would be a UAF wiki: “The Student, Faculty, Staff, and Visitor Guide to UAF”. Would the university, having sponsored this, engage in “radical trust” over the content? What an exciting — and maybe dangerous — way for current and potential studnets to learn about us.

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No. 15 (Library 2.0): A difference of kind, or of degree?

I disagree with those who believe libraries have always been “2.0″ — it is a new way of thinking about new modes of service — but I don’t think it’s that useful a label to dwell on. (“Omigosh!” says the director. “How can we make our library more two-point-oh?”)  I suspect it’s more useful to think in terms of staying up on technology and keeping in touch with what our patrons want.

Perhaps libraries were always “user-centered”, but they have also been paternalistic, even elitist, institutions — not involving the “radical trust” of the users that has come to define Web 2.0 applications. We control the selection; we control the cataloging; we control the programming: control, control, control.

Of course, to give that all up would be chaos; it would contradict fundamental principles of librarianship: that we should select, organize, and make available material for our patrons. Radical trust in cataloging would seem to mean the death of standards, which would do in effective, precise searching.

But there’s no reason we couldn’t have radical trust riding alongside conventional bibliographic control. I’ve already mentioned LibraryThing for Libraries, which allows a library to retain conventional bibliographic control while incorporating user-assigned tags. I’m uncertain about what kind of user control we could allow for collection development, programming (events), or computer systems.

The “Web 2.0″ model seems to be founded on the ubiquity of programmers.  Your average library does not have even a handful of programmers: it is one agency.  It cannot afford the quick-changing, eternal-beta service model — especially when it is tax-funded and accountable to a public who wants systems that work.  For us to create or invest in a stream of ephemeral software or services is irresponsible, and it flies in the face of librarians’ traditional duty of selection.

I want to be enthusiastic about “Library 2.0″. Maybe I don’t fully get it yet.

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No. 14 (Technorati)

Am I just dense? Because I’m really not “wowed” by Technorati. Okay, it searches blogs. What search engine doesn’t search blogs? Should I be impressed because it searches only blogs? I’d be much more impressed by something that searched only (and all) user forums. Are blogs that get indexed by Technorati really more likely to get read?

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