Thing 23: Summary

It's curious how all those Library 2.0 sessions at Computers in Libraries didn't have nearly the impact that this self-paced learning experience did to help me understand the importance of social networking tools in my life and the lives of our customers. It was a very good for me to be an novice user for a change and to muddle my way around unfamiliar web sites; this brought new awareness to me of what our customers face when they try to use the Library's web site. One thing that's very evident is that users need to be able to create their own portal where they can add all the sites they visit, with a single login to access all of them. It's a real challenge to track the usernames and passwords for all the sites I wanted to use. Security is essential to protect our privacy, but can't it be handled in a better way?

Even so, we really just scratched the surface of what's available (300-500 sites and growing all the time). What I plan to take away from this experience is a greater willingness to explore and learn on my own, clicking through when I see a link in a blog or a reference in an article. I was pleased to see that I have already done some of Stephen Abram's "43 Things I Might Want To Do This Year". What I hope we can do as a library system is integrate some of these great tools into the services we provide.

I love RSS, de.lici.ous, Flickr, and LibraryThing and will continue to use them both at work and in my personal life. Widgets and image generators are great fun; I could have gone really crazy adding them to my blog. Blogging was very hard for me because I'm not used to vocalizing my impressions and ideas. At first I felt like I was being watched, then got more comfortable with it and was lulled into thinking that probably no one was reading it anyhow. Do people blog because they feel anonymous and can say anything they want, or because they have thoughts they want to share, with the hope that others will comment back, or simply as a way of journaling online? No doubt some of each.

I would certainly participate in a similar learning experience in the future. The only suggestion I have is that the information provided be more up-to-date. Some of the blogs and articles we were given to read were several years old and, although still applicable, did not contain the most current information. There were even a few dead links. Overall it was a wonderful experience. Kudos again to the developers of this great program.

Thing 9: Library-related blogs and newsfeeds

Bloglines search tool is great, and the "preview feed" option saves time spent clicking to view, then returning to the list. Subscribing, of course, is a cinch since all you have to do is click, decide where to file, and save. It's also incredibly useful to see the date of when the blog or feed was last updated since there's no point in subscribing to one that's not current.

There's a wealth of information on the Merlin site. I wandered through Learning Links > Computing and Technical Resources > Trends & Cool Stuff > Library Success. This is a wiki for libraries to contribute their best practices in every imaginable area. The contributions are pretty sparse, but what's there is interesting and useful:

• Libraries that circulate games and their success stories
• Services to special groups
• The Technology category
• Library-related blogs and web sites

I didn't immediately take to Topix but after poking around for a bit, I could see the value of using it instead of subscribing to feeds. You could go right to Topix for most news -- consolidated in one place -- or simply subscribe to the Topix RSS feed, since it serves as an aggregator of feeds from multiple sources.

I considered subscribing to some of the popular blogs on Technorati (Boing Boing, Lifehacker, 43 Folders, Creating Passionate Users) since the topics were of interest, but found a lack of worthwhile content. It meant too much sifting through useless comments.

Thing 8: Feed it to me

I've been receiving RSS feeds for about a year now, ever since we set up, tested, and implemented them as part of the AquaBrowser catalog. My preferred method has been through FeedReader, software loaded on my desktop. The down side? When my computer crashed this month, I lost all of my carefully constructed feeds. Lesson 1: With an online news aggregator, you can read the feeds from anywhere, and if something happens to your computer, you don't lose your feeds.

I had also set up some feeds using the Firefox browser but again, I lost them when my computer crashed. Besides, I was getting annoyed at the pop-ups when I logged in every morning and throughout the day while in the midst of my work. Lesson 2: While not as timely as instant feeds, Bloglines allows you to read the news or blogs at your convenience.

[Note of Nov 7: OK, so I'm not so keen about Bloglines. It's too much trouble to log into another web site just to read my feeds. I want them to come directly to me as soon as they are posted. I need to find a way to archive my feeds so I don't lose them, but have a more direct method of delivery. How to do that without multiple setups and extra work I don't know.]

In spite of the slight annoyance, I was kind of addicted to instant feeds, glancing down to see if there was anything on interest and getting caught up in following the trail of news stories on the BBC or Marshall Breeding's library technology announcements. I felt that I was much more up-to-date on world-wide library news as a result. [Postscript: Marshall Breeding himself posted a comment to this blog entry. Wow!]

That said, we're missing the boat if we don't take every opportunity possible to push Howard County Library information to our customers -- searches on their favorite topics, new materials added in categories of interest, programs / classes / special events, new services, book lists, and general announcements.

My public blogroll deals mainly with technology and the future of libraries.