Thing #19- YouTube

It's hard to believe YouTube has only been around for a year and a half- it seems like such an established part of modern popular culture these days.

I searched for "Japanese Calligraphy" on Yahoo!Video, MySpaceTV, MetaCafe, and Google Video, as well as YouTube. MetaCafe was disappointing- only two results, and one had nothing to do with shodo at all. Yahoo mainly contained more frivilous videos, rather than serious lessons or demonstrations. MySpace was surprisingly helpful- I found several good instructional videos there. Google and YouTube produced the best results, with mostly serious lessons on doing good Japanese Calligraphy.

The layouts for all the sites were pretty similar except Yahoo- the videos on that opened in a different window. MySpace had slightly "trendier" terms for rating videos, but for the most part, they all seemed to have the basic necessities.

I don't spend a lot of time looking at videos, but watching an occasional recommended one can be fun. And it's definitely a useful tool for talking about or sharing information on any topic!

Thing #18- Firefox Add-ons

Okay, adding the Cruzcat search engine was super easy. No problems there. I explored some other Firefox extensions and found a sort of interesting one called FoxLingo, a translating program that handles up to 60 different languages. So far, it works pretty well. This will come in handy when we're trying to catalog random things in Czech or Catalan or something!

more wiki editing

As a follow-up to last week's wiki exercise, I decided to test out my editing skills in Wikipedia. In the entry on John Cage, I added a small bit of content clarifying the location of his mycology collection and a link to the collection's finding aid. Not difficult at all, and now researchers will be able to find the mycology materials more quickly!

Thing #17- Online Applications

Creating the Zoho account and uploading documents was easy. However, my formatting didn't exactly import as I'd had it, and it was a little troublesome to edit my document. I may have to play around with that.

And I couldn't publish the document to my blog. It kept telling me my login and password were incorrect. I tried several times and carefully typed the correct info. So maybe this is a bug in the beta version?

Otherwise, this seems like a useful tool- it'd be easy for librarians and teachers to share documents with their students instead of emailing attachments!

Yay for Patti Smith!

Patti Smith is sooooooo awesome in concert! Just got back from a fantastic show downtown- really glad I've seen her live, now! She's got an amazing amount of energy, an absolutely magnetic stage presence, and one of the most incredible voices I've ever heard. It oscillates between low, husky and scratchy; strong, aggressive, powerful; and gentle, breathy, with a sweet tone. I really wish I could sing anywhere near that well!

She did lots of songs from her new album, which is all covers. They all suited her voice and personality so well: White Rabbit, Soul Kitchen, Perfect Day (encore), Smells Like Teen Spirit, Are You Experienced. She also sang a bunch of her own songs including two of my very favorites, Dancing Barefoot (1st song) and Because The Night. I'm really glad I noticed her name on the club sign one day- I'm usually out of the loop on cool concerts!

Just a random "fun things" post in between all the library exercises..... ^_^

Thing #16- Library 2.0

I agree with certain parts of all the perspectives on Library 2.0. From the more social, tech-savvy perspective, I do see the role of libraries and librarians changing and shifting to accommodate their patron base. There is a certain elite satisfaction in being THE source for information, as libraries once were, but the world has changed; the users have changed. The overall goal is now to at least get the users INTO the library and to use it for their research, and to do this, librarians should be flexible enough to adapt their teaching and techniques to the current resources and technologies available.

I also agree that we should do as much as we can to make resources available electronically, since that's where the world seems to be going. Improving online resources, as OCLC is doing, and increasing the amount and quality of metadata for items will be a crucial step in keeping libraries in the information loop.

I don't think "traditional" libraries will be replaced by virtual ones altogether. These are two groups of resources that can effectively augment each other, not entirely replace one another. Of course, this perspective may be ifluenced by my years of experience in a department that focuses on retaining and preserving original materials, items and collections, but archives aside, I think that people will always want to have "real" books around... with a slightly more modern packaging. ^_^

Thing #15- Custom Search Engines

This feature actually turned out to be more useful than I thought it would. I created a "Rare Books" search engine in Rollyo with a number of booksellers that I consult when trying to find specific titles. Instead of having to search for "The Winter of our Discontent" on eight separate sites, this search engine retrieved results from all of them with only one search. Of course, there may be some entries it missed that I could find by going to the ABAA site specifically, but in general, it seemed like a good start for a book search. This could be a useful tool for librarians or professors who want to quickly guide their students in the right direction. It can be frustrating to weed through tons of search results that have little relevance to the topic you're researching!

Thing #14- Online chatting

Just sent a message to the Library 2.0 team online. I've used IM programs before- they can be very effective and helpful if you want to quickly communicate with people. However, it's easy to get stuck online for a while, chatting and chatting.... so I prefer to send email. But a feature like this would be an excellent tool for reference staff!

Thing #13- Editing Wikis

Okay, I added a URL link to our Spec Coll page and edited the text a bit. Actually editing wikis is not difficult.
I think complications tend to arise more with content in general, such as images, copyright, permissions, etc.

Thing #12- Wikis

The library wikis cited were okay. I can see why these libraries set up wikis to track book recommendations and conference happenings- these are helpful entries for participants to edit. It was a slightly different wiki experience from a broader compilation of knowledge like Wikipedia, though. I didn't have as great a searching experinence in the library wikis- their contents are thus far a little too specific and limited for broad searching. It was easier to just browse categories and topics, which makes me wonder if these groups had considered establishing an online forum instead of a wiki?

I think bibliographic instruction is one area where wikis could be successfully applied in a library setting. Wikis dedicated to specific topics (medieval manuscripts, reference tips and tools, etc.) could neatly organize a large amount of information in one place for users to access and add to.

Thing #11: LibraryThing

Okay, this exercise was kind of fun. I actually like LibraryThing a lot, but I'm a library geek like that... ^_^ It's a good idea to have a program that lets you organize and catalog your own library without having to own technical MARC software or have the cataloging skills to enter items. I've found that personally, this program helps me organize my massive library at home and prevents me from buying duplicates of books. And I like that it draws information from LOTS of OPACs and union catalogs. And I really like that it has a "manual cataloging" feature for items that won't appear in any of those databases. So, yeah- LibraryThing is very cool.

I did a search for "Saint Maybe" by Anne Tyler. I love all of her work, but particularly this one- the characters are especially endearing to me for many reasons. I retrieved the following recommendation list- I've put the ones I've read in bold and the ones I've at least heard of in italics:

1. A Patchwork Planet by Anne Tyler
2. Father Melancholy's Daughter by Gail Godwin
3. Object Lessons by Anna Quindlen
4. A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley
5. Searching for Caleb by Anne Tyler
6. The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields
7. Family Pictures : a novel by Sue Miller
8. The Book of Ruth by Jane Hamilton
9. The Kitchen God's Wife by Amy Tan
10. Turtle Moon by Alice Hoffman
11. Talk Before Sleep : a novel by Elizabeth Berg
12. The Good Husband by Gail Godwin
13. For Love by Sue Miller
14. Brief Lives by Anita Brookner
15. The Beet Queen : a novel by Louise Erdrich
16. Range of Motion by Elizabeth Berg
17. Cat's Eye by Margaret Atwood
18. Second Nature by Alice Hoffman
19. The All-true Travels and Adventures of Lidie Newton : a novel by Jane Smiley
20. Couples by John Updike

This list didn't surprise me too much. Of the ones I've read or heard of, they mostly deal with the trials and inner workings of families, each teaching social and interpersonal lessons of sorts. Of the others, they seem to follow a similar path. Many of these books would be aimed at women, I think, especially ones who are attached to their families and/or understand how families can fall apart in an instant. It's a much more complete list of recommendations than those you get from Borders or Amazon online. And this list seems to take subjects, interests, and actual content into consideration, instead of basing recommendations on publication or sales information.

I like the abundance of information gathered on LibraryThing: editions, publication information, the opportunity to discuss books, the chance to see what other people are reading... it's actually a nice mixture between traditional academic cataloging and information organization and modern search techniques and technologies.

Thing #10b- Tagging

Okay, I totally forgot to check the pings the day I did them, so I'm doing it now. I didn't see a specific time on my Dead Sea Scrolls entry on Technorati, but it said logged 3 days ago, which sounds about right. Blog.Ask.com also found my entry on 8/3. I'm liking that site more as I look at it- someone else on the search list also attended the lecture that evening, so it was nice to read his review of it. It seems like pinging works and does its job.

Thing #10a- Tagging-Technorati

Okay, just wrote a post to ping and did the pinging for the two search engine groups . I guess I can see how pinging would be helpful if you had an informational or news blog you needed indexed on a regular basis, but this seems like an awful lot of work for a personal blog. Maybe I'm just lazy... >_<

Dead Sea Scrolls

Last week, I saw the Dead Sea Scrolls on exhibit at the San Diego Natural History Museum. It was a great exhibit, full of interesting information about the area where the scrolls were discovered, their archaelogical history, and how historians have preserved them. The exhibit talked about the Bedouins who initially disovered the scrolls and fragments in subterranean caves in the Israeli desert, then showed pictures of the "scrollery" where eight full-time scholars spent about a decade grouping and identifying over 40,000 fragments of documents. After reading about the scrolls upstairs, we got to go downstairs to view actual specimens. These included both biblical and non-religious texts, as well as documents in Greek. Some of the fragments were fairly clear and easy to read; others had darkened to a near black, making it impossible to see the script. There was even one scroll written on a sheet of copper! It was a fascinating exhibit, and makes me thankful that the worst I have to deal with in MY archival work is crumbling Victoriana and vinegared films. ^_^