Wrap-Up

• What do you think about social media in libraries?
  I think it’s vital to the survival of libraries as an institution.  Refusing to accept digital media and sweeping internet trends would be comparable to insisting 600 years ago that the only way to have a book is to have an illuminated one copied by a monk somewhere instead of having one made by a printing press.
• What do you wish FPL was (or wasn’t) doing? 
  I’m glad we’re moving into Facebook and Twitter!  This will really help with programming questions and keeping the public informed.  I am pleased as well that we are using YouTube as one method of having our Summer Reading video hosted.  A part of me would like to see staff use peer-edited documents more — it seems like it would cut down on the HEY WHO HAS THIS THING OPENED I CAN’ T EDIT IT GRRRRR factor, plus it would be easier to track changes in documents undergoing a series of revisions.  On the other hand, it’s nice to have everything all in one location.
• Have you learned anything from the program?  If so, what?
  I learned a lot about the ways many libraries are making good use of Web 2.0 applications!  It’s the future!

Choose Your Own

I chose CouchSurfing.org for my 22nd thing.  It’s neat, but it seems like a good idea to approach with caution.

The idea is this: couch surfing is an awesome, cheap way to travel, and affords you, the traveler, the opportunity to learn about the place you’re visiting from a native, rather than being holed up in a hotel or hostel somewhere.  Neat!  The problem is, how do you find people who will host you?  Enter Couchsurfing.org.  This is an NPO – although registration is $25, so I haven’t registered.  This is a utility that has been recommended to me by a number of people, and by several travel-related sites on the Internet.  It’s built on a system of reviews, like eBay or Amazon. 

Every user has a profile which clarifies whether he is traveling or looking to host, as well as various pertinent details – what language he speaks, accommodations, occupation, and most importantly, his list of references.

As to this organization’s link to libraries – I don’t see a direct one.  However, it would be nice if libraries were more connected to each other, in terms of job searches, resources (and lacking resources), etc.

Wikis

This is my Wiki page!

http://wiki23things.wiki.zoho.com/Go-Go-Burger.html

Podcasting

Podcasts would be an excellent thing for us to have.  They’re community-building tools, if nothing else.  Make a podcast (a good one), and with luck it will come with an audience.

Plus, any resource sharing a library does should probably be broadcast in some way or another anyway.  We have the technology!  And that’s the point of resource sharing.

Hulu

My past few posts have all been on a theme – it would appear that the surviving library will find a way to disperse its materials electronically rather than physically – of course this might, by the way, mean that what we call a LOCAL library will look incredibly different from our current idea of what that means.  If most of your material is hosted and distributed digitally, physical location begins to matter less. 

Anyway.  Hulu is pretty sweet.  Hip to the times and all that. 

I should point out, though – things on the internet are not currently free.  Unless you can obtain internet access without paying for it (at the library, for example – and even then, that’s tax supported, SOMEONE is paying Verizon or whoever a pretty hefty bill, I’m sure), you are paying for capacity to have information streaming into your face at your whim.

But yes, all THAT said – Hulu.  Sweet.  And all legal problems being equal, I don’t see any reason not to have a visual collection that works a lot like OverDrive does.

AND – I feel I should say again: I am aware that it’s only a fairly small segment of the developed population (and a TINY segment of the world population) that has access to the technology required to make these ideas feasible.  BUT, the technology is getting progessively cheaper, and costing less in extra-monetary ways as well.  Also, it’s important to remember that books used to be for only the unbelievably elite  – some pleb like me would never have been able to write these sentences, much less have access to anything that might clue me in on the world of the written word at all.

A Series of YouTubes

It’s my opinion that libraries should be paying extra special attention to YouTube and services like it. 

Broadly speaking, the library’s role is to connect the individual to the zeitgeist.  Traditionally, the best and most efficient way this is done is by purchasing published books and housing them in a building.  This method is a long way from exhausting its utility, but relying solely on books would be terrible folly.  

Enter YouTube as a communication tool.  Assuming everyone involved has the proper equipment, communicating by video proposes a much faster (and in some cases richer and more easily accessible) method for dispersing information.  In the same way that Twitter can now serve as an early-warning tool for earthquakes, YouTube stands as the mouthpiece for a people – it provides a kind of cross-section of the collective mind.   And what is a library meant to do but exactly that?

Here’s a video I like, that says what I’m saying better than I’m saying it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=asYUI0l6EtE&feature=related

Also, here is a video about two guys pretending to pass gas at a library, because hey, this is YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-W7_TeiHlE8&feature=fvw

Pandora and that

Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay!  I am so desperately fond of Pandora.  I can find half a dozen fab new artists in as many minutes, if I  play my cards right. 

But that’s me.  As to libraries, CDs are fast going the way of the cassette tape.  Will we use more streaming media?  Probably – especially as the idea of ownership becomes more and more nebulous. 

I mean, okay – there’s a bit of a rant here.  There are audiophiles and there is everybody else.  While I am aware that the former is an outgroup, a small subset of the population, and not the primary focus of a public library, it’s (to me) worth noting that there is still much to be said for a music COLLECTION.  We go to shows and we buy the merch and we take it home and we upload it and we catalog it and we play it real loud in our cars and we hoard it away and we get SUPER EXCITED when we realize HEY YOU WOULD LOVE THIS BAND MAN, LISTEN.  But hey.  That’s not everybody.

With everybody, the norm seems to be increasingly that collaborative listening – maybe we can call it “cloud music appreciation” – is turning out to be pretty alright.  Radio may be dead, but Pandora is risen.  What does this mean for libraries?  My guess is that pretty soon we’ll see libraries with lots of cash in their licencing budgets offering something LIKE Pandora, if they can find a way to offer something that services like Pandora don’t.  I’m not sure what that would be, beyond being free of ads, although at this point the ads in Pandora are so unobtrusive I can’t see that being a very big selling point.  Plus, of course, a library wanting to stream music in the way Pandora does faces the added obstacle of being local rather than national, meaning that it has a MUCH smaller and thus less monetarily worthwhile potential user base.

Perhaps the library’s role in the future of streaming media will be something more like this: libraries begin to buy fewer physical discs (complete with a bunch of plastic and paper and great big factories blowing smog into the air making all of the parts and pieces, and then there’s the environmental costs of shipping, but I digress), and invest more in licenses to streaming media, which can be delivered to the patron base electronically.  Maybe the library creates something like a temporary podcast on the patron’s MP3 player (I recognize that this is not currently practical, in the way that ten years ago it was impractical to assume that everyone would have a CD player), which the patron can play at his leisure for the duration of the checkout time.

Google Docs

I use recommend Google Docs to patrons all the time  – especially as we near closing time, and computer users are looking for a way to save their work at public machines.  This eliminates the need to keep track of things like flash drives, you don’t have to worry about forgetting to actually attach the document when sending yourself an e-mail, and for that matter you don’t have to go sifting through days of e-mail just to find that one document you sent to yourself ten minutes before close at the library last week. 

At home, I sometimes use Google Docs to edit my friends’ papers and stuff.  They upload the paper, and I make corrections in bold, or in a different color.  That way, I can be helpful on my own time, and they can clearly tell what’s different about their papers for their own use.  On the rare occasions I’ve done collaborative writing work, I like to use Google Docs for the same reason.  Changes can be made remotely, alterations can be made obvious, and discussions aren’t lost.  (As a side note, it’s my opinion that after some tweaking, Google Wave will be much more handy for things like this, but who knows.)  I feel like this kind of operating might be something staff can get behind, especially since so much of our work is done both electronically and collaboratively.

Google Maps

I use Google Maps at work to give patrons directions, when they ask me where something is.  I’ve noticed, however, that many of them fall into similar categories, for instance municipal destinations, special events destinations, and certain retail destinations.  I’ve always thought it would maybe be handy to be able to link to a from the library website to custom Google Maps that show these destinations all in one. 

Here’s a small one!  http://bit.ly/9jOeYO

TinyURL and YouSendIt

My preferred URL shortener is bit.ly, mostly because it’s cute.  Also, it uses up fewer characters than TinyURL, although I’m not sure you can customize them.  The basic principle is the same: http://bit.ly/ceO1W9.  (By the way – have you ever done a Google search for “recursion”?)

The benefits here are pretty much applicable to everyone who uses the internet, especially social networking sites.  The downside about URL shorteners is, of course, that you have to take several extra steps to use them.  Bit.ly offers a toolbar you can install, but for heaven’s sake, if I installed every toolbar offered to me I wouldn’t really have a browser so much as a huge box of buttons.  I’m waiting for a browser plug-in (heya Firefox developers, busy?) that displays a little mini toolbar associated with key data entry fields, for instance on the status update fields on Facebook and Twitter.

I feel the same way about YouSendIt.  It’s a cool utility, but for some reason it often strikes me as easier to throw my files onto a flash drive and just hand them off.  But!  That’s not always possible.  Another option (sometimes a more reliable one) is temporary file HOSTING services, like http://www.filesavr.com/.  Upload your files to the site, and link it to your recipient.  Done!