Libraries the new (?) tastemakers

One of the major reasons niche markets are expanding is not only because they are easier to access, but because of bit torrent, YouTube, media fire and all of the ways for people to share files for free. This makes people far more willing to try something new and outside of their established tastes. This is an area libraries have been excelling at long before the invention of the Internet. As Steven Colbert recently pointed out, at libraries, everything is free (unless you don't return those books).

Libraries already have systems in place for introduction people to new ideas, authors and tastes. Readers' advisory is a great way to introduce patrons to new books (music, videos ect.), authors and genres. It is also a good way to match books to patrons' interests. Recently I was helping a high school student find a book to read. While he was looking for an author he had read before, I asked his mother about his interests. Finding out the boy liked chess, I recommended a book about a teenage boy on a chase through Europe looking for a grand chess master. The boy was interested and took out the book. It is unlikely that without the recommendation he would have asked for a fiction book about chess.

Bibliographies are another way librarians match people with books. Fliers and bookmarks with recommended reading lists can be created for just about any interest. Many libraries have also been posting these types of lists on their web pages. BCCLS's teen page is a great example of what can be done with this. http://www.bccls.org/teens/bookBonanza/

Programing and guest speakers also help people develop new tastes and explore new interests in a familiar environment. People who don't want to travel to a museum may attend a lecture of a local artist at the library (or wander past the program and get 'sucked in' while looking for the newest People magazine).

Because libraries are still primarily physical places that have limited staff and budgets, they can not reach people the same way Amazon and eBay do (yet). However, with expanded inter library loan, collaboration between libraries and librarians to create content to help people find new niches, downloadable audio books and other digital services, libraries can expand the materials and services that they offer and reach greater numbers of people.

Will libraries ever go all the way down the long tail? Probably not, but we already have many of the necessary tools to help our patrons navigate increasing larger areas of this new territory.

I got Stats

I checked out my Google Analytics stats and found that IE was the top browser and that cable was the top speed of all the people viewing my blog. All of the times I visit my blog are obviously affecting the results, still its fun to see the statistics.

Most Used Browsers:

Most Used Connection Speed:

My kingdom for a good cup of tea

I almost always have a cup of tea in hand. I come from a family that, if at a restaurant the tea selection is not up to par, someone will pull out a couple spare teabags and ask for hot water instead. I spent time in China, where you can get hot water for free just about anywhere, and in Japan where there are usually about 3 vending machines on every street corner, each carrying a wide selection of canned hot tea and coffee (real brewed tea), with sugar and milk or without it.

After that, this is a disappointment.



The hot chocolate is passable, but the tea tastes like weak coffee.

I can (and do) run to the cafe (I forget the name of it) by the Student Center and they have always been happy to fill my travel mug with hot water (some other places on campus have charged me 50 cents for hot water). However, lugging my laptop, purse, lunch bag, books and anything else I happen to be carrying with me from the SCILS building there and back every time I want a cup of tea gets tiring fast.

Mostly, I've ended up buying the green tea citrus thing from the soda vending machine. It's not bad, but its not really tea either.

For the positives of my SCILS experience (except for the hair-eating chair) check out my Flickr set. And here is the 598's group SCILS experience.

Virtual Introduction

Looking at all the favorites shared on Delicious was fun and gave me an insight into my classmates that doesn't often come out in normal class interaction. While only a few of my websites were also listed by other people, I recognized many of the websites and also found some new ones that I will have to check out. It was fun to see that some of my classmates shared my interest in things like Dr. Horrible, steam punk, Lord of the Rings, cat macros, travel, tea and the PHD web comic.

I think this would be a fun 'get to know you' activity in future classes.

The Long Tail

I'm not a business or economics person and was honestly not looking forward to this reading. Then I picked up and actually read Anderson's book and found myself really enjoying it.

So is the library world ready to benefit from the long tail? I would say not quite yet, but we're working on it. Libraries are still primarily a physical place and still have to deal with the limits of space and budget. However, websites like the Internet Public Library and the Librarian's Internet Index are collecting vast amounts of knowledge while circumventing the traditional limits of space and budget. Librarians are also creating their own mini indexes and databases of specialized, helpful information by bookmarking favorite and often used websites or starting wikis.

Many libraries have subscribed to digital audio book archives, though according to the feedback of patrons at my library, the service imposes limits on how many copies of a file can be "checked out" at a time, creating waiting lists to download the most popular audio books (which to my mind defeats the main benefit of a digital audio book service).

Before we are ready to truly grasp the long tail, services like the one mentioned above need to improve. Web sites like IPL and LII should become commonplace on the computers of librarians and we should follow their example (and the many examples presented in this class) and share our knowledge, experience and bookmarks with our colleagues. We are moving toward a library world ready to take on the long tail and I believe that as the current group of library students bring their personal and school experience with web 2.0 technologies into their professional lives this shift will increase greatly.

Online Collaboration

In the first class I took for this degree one assignment was a major group presentation. While my group met up and worked together a bit, in the end my partners emailed me their notes and I dropped them into a PowerPoint. A wiki or other online collaborative service would have made the project much easier to put together. I think wikis, Google Docs and other web 2.0 services are a great way for a group of people to create something, especially when they can't meet in person often or are working at different times.

A few of my professors have already started incorporating wikis and other collaboration tools and methods into their classes. All of my professors have at the very least used eCollege to share class readings and some have allowed their students to post related articles or work as well. While I'm sure not all the professors would be comfortable with a group writing one paper in Google docs, I believe that the professors I have had thus far would at least consider the idea.

Wet Paint and PBwiki

Wetpaint and PBwiki have a lot of stylistic differences and Wetpaint seems more accessible to people unfamiliar with wikis then PBwiki (little notes explain each step). However, the main difference I noticed was how prominent Wetpaint's collaboration tools were.



Part of the set up process is to invite friends and there are several notes in this section explaining the importance of multiple contributors for creating content. At the top of every page are various tools like a forum, a to-do section and a page that lists all the members of the wiki. Each page you create can be tagged with keywords and when the page is posted a box pops up inviting you to add a note about the page that other contributors can see. Wetpaint makes communication with other authors and maintainers of your wiki very easy and its communication tools are very visible.

Wetpaint is easy to use and set up, making it a good choice for people new to wikis. However the site is supported by ads. PBwiki has a more serious appearance making it a better choice if you want a professional looking wiki.

Re-education?

(First off I'm sorry this is so late, my roommates are getting married on the 18th and I'm in the wedding party so this weekend we were dealing with a lot of prep stuff plus we have two people who flew in for the wedding staying with us right now so its been crazy.)

Current technology and future developments are changing (and I believe will continue to change) how universities and schools in general will work. Will the digital classroom replace the traditional classroom? I feel this debate has a lot in common with the question will digital libraries replace physical libraries? I believe the answer to both is no. The Internet and all its capabilities will supplement both schools and libraries and broaden the services that can be made available but ultimately we are social creatures and need face to face human interaction. Social software imitates this but ultimately chatting with a friend online is not as satisfying as seeing them in person.

Will some guy in Hungry be able to get a degree from Rutgers without ever leaving his country (or desk chair for that matter)? Will a professor be able to teach a class while pursuing research deep in the rain forest? Yes. The services universities provide, the audience they reach and the range of facility they draw from have already and will continue to expand.

However I have seen in libraries, while people want more information available from home at all times, people still come into the library for more social reasons. In my own library I have seen parents and siblings sit and read to younger children and parents and their older children sitting side by side on a couch each reading. They could just as easily do this at home, they don't need to spend more then five minutes in the library if they didn't want to. They can order books ahead, pick them up and then leave. Yet despite the busy world we live in some people still linger in the library. Last year, at the patrons request, we started a knitting circle in the library. It is still going strong and the patrons really appreciate the social aspect of it as well as how easy it is to share what each knows. Those with greater experience help those with are still learning.

As someone else pointed out, to undergrads who are transitioning from teenager to adult the social interactions and independence of the college setting are just as important to their social development as the traditional classes are to their education.  Because of this I believe we will see more changes on the graduate level where this social education is not as imperative.

 

I am really enjoying this class and the subject matter lends itself to an online class, however with a few exceptions, I don't feel like I'm getting to know my classmates the way I do in an traditional classroom setting.

One of the best classes I had at Rutgers incorporated both an online component and the traditional classroom setting.  We would have class discussions in a face to face setting, then use the class wiki to work on our assignments collaboratively.  This is how I see colleges changing, not a total reorganization but a melding of the traditional classroom and digital technology into one seamless whole.

Shelfari

Shelfari is a web site that allows you to create a virtual bookshelf. It is easy to search by author, title or ISBN #. You can browse other users' shelves, share your own bookshelf, read and write reviews and find information on your favorite author. People who share similar interests can create groups dedicated to a certain topic. Shelfari is a great way to meet people who share your tastes in reading. It also allows you to create lists of what books you own, what books you want to read, what books you've read but don't own and so on. There are many ways to organize your lists of books. Shelfari can help you keep track of things what books you already own (for though of us who can't remember if we bought that book or only though about buying it) and what books you are planning to read (in your infinite spare time).

The coolest feature is that graphical interface. Your bookshelf really looks like a bookshelf with the cover images of the books you selected displayed on the shelf. Shelfari can easily be added to a blog or web page so you can show your friends what your currently reading. In a library setting, Shelfari is a great way to promote the new books purchased by the library.

Mmmm delicious magnolias

I'm fairly new to both Delicious and Magnolia.

So far as I can see, both have their benefits and both have head scratching moments.

Magnolia

• Its pretty. Very superficial of me perhaps but its pretty. :)
• User Profiles so you have some idea who is creating these bookmarks
• You can associate your Magnolia account with other accounts like LJ
• Avatars (again more pretty then useful but it pulls in more of the social aspect/expression)
• Groups we multiple users can compile bookmarks related to a certain subject (while tagging and networking on Delicious may be similar, this feature appears to take it a bit farther into true collaboration)
• It saves a copy of the web page when you bookmark it so if the page disappears you can still access a copy

Delicious

• Easier to search all tags ie find all bookmarks tag with "tea", not just within my friends
• In general a bit easier to navigate, certain features more prominent
• You can see immediately how many times a web page has been bookmarked and easily find the users who bookmarked it
• Toolbar add on makes it very easy to add bookmarks (though only on computers where you can download and install the toolbar)

New Web 2.0 (2)

Through Delicious I found the SlideShare website and recognized it as the service that hosts Peter Bromburg's RSS slide show.

http://www.slideshare.net/

The site has a tag list so users can browse for slide shows they might be interested in. Slideshows can be shared, commented on, added as a favorite (and thus easy to find again) or downloaded. Slideshows can also be embedded into a blog for website.

What really intrigues me is the possibilities for libraries. Using SlideShare it would be very easy to set up a simple tutorial to explain anything from how to get a library card to how to set up an email account that can be embedded into the library's web page. I think SlideShare would especially be useful for patrons who aren't as tech-savvy and who might not have headphones or speakers set up on their computer (or who do but don't want to mess around with them) to listen to a screen cast or video. Also, SlideShare allows the viewer to go at their own pace, unlike a video format. SlideShare would also be good for making a tutorial available to a hearing impaired patron.

Information Overload

(Warning: I've been horribly sick all week, so I'm not sure how coherent this will be.)

Do RSS aggregators help or contribute too information overload?

The short answer is yes.

They help us to manage information. We can screen information so that the information we are most interested in comes to us. We don't have to go to each blog or news source separately which saves time. We also don't have to wade though a lot of irrelevant information to find the relevant information we want.

However, whenever I've been away for a few days and not checked my friends list on LJ (basically an aggregator of the journal posts of my 'LJ friends') I can have several pages of new posts to read. This can very quickly get overwhelming and lead to the feeling that one must check their blog readers every day or even multiple times a day to keep up. Because the information is coming to you there is more pressure to stay on top of it, rather then a more casual approach of checking a journal you enjoy when you have some free time.

RSS feeds can be very helpful or they can be overwhelming. I have found that the key is to be discerning. Instead of subscribing to any feed in which I have a passing interest, I try to only subscribe to feeds that I am strongly interested in or that I know are updated infrequently. Feeds that update multiple time a day, unless they are extremely relevant to the information I want, I probably wouldn't subscribe to but rather visit their site when I have the time to focus on what I want to get out of them. Other wise it is very easy for other smaller but possibly more important posts to get lost in all the clutter or for the reader to feel completely overloaded.

"Feed" ending

I turned on my computer, getting ready to write about "Feed" in this blog, and opened up iTunes in preparation to do the rest of my homework and this pops up in iTunes.

"iTunes 8 includes Genius, which makes playlists from songs in your library that go great together. Genius also includes Genius sidebar, which recommends music from the iTunes Store that you don't already have."

First off, who decides what songs go great together? Secondly, I really don't want iTunes constantly telling me, "oh you should buy this song." Just because I have a song on my computer does not mean I want more songs like it. I have a very eclectic collection of music and what's on my computer is even more so. I can't even imagine the type of profile iTunes would come up with based on what I have on my laptop, but I think it might look something like Violet's profile after her (non)shopping spree.

I downloaded iTunes for this class, but I really don't want iTunes/Apple knowing what music I listen too. Which leads into the main issue that stood out for me in "Feed". Privacy. In "Feed" no one has any privacy. When Titus first thinks something might happen between him and Violet this ad pops up with a web page of pick-up lines (for a small fee). At least now, if I don't want Amazon.com keeping track of my purchases, I can go to a bookstore and pay cash and avoid any electronic record that I bought a certain book. When I downloaded iTunes, it started going though and converting my music files. Having a program downloaded on your computer is more invasive then a web page that keeps track of what on its page you looked at. Moving the computer and all the profiling and tracking software into the human mind brings this to a level that makes my skin crawl. Any amount of privacy we have is utterly destroyed in the society of "Feed". And yet in some ways they are more alone then ever. When Violet fell, she was panicking. The feed knew this and gave her ads about deodorant. When Titus is feeling sad he gets ads for blue jeans.

While I can not say if we will ever have the feed implanted straight into our brains (I certainly hope not) many of the developments in technology are becoming more and more invasive in our lives all in the name of convenience. Slowly, we are losing our privacy and like many in "Feed" we are too distracted by all the new shinnies to notice just what we are losing.

As a non-tech related side note: At one point I wanted to throw the book down I was so disgusted with Titus.