Montana Library 2.0 round 2 (for me)

Although I didn't actually make it through all of the lessons in the last round of Montana Library 2.0, I thought I'd try again. I've continued to use many of the tools we learned about last time, and am excited to see what new things we'll get to play with this time.

Some of the tools I've continued to use:

1) Flickr - I love Flickr. It's a great community of people overflowing with creativity on just about every subject imaginable. I've joined a lot of groups and met some wonderful people who've really helped me improve my photography. I use it mostly for my personal work, but you will find some pictures of good old Mansfield Library in my photostream. I've unfortunately not been very active on Flickr since I started graduate school this spring, but Spring Break is coming!!

2) RSS feeds - Best thing ever! I use Google Reader and love it. I tried Bloglines out for the purposes of the 2.0 assignment, but even though I'm sure it has some good features, it seemed like too much effort to switch over from something that was already working so well for me. I mostly use that to follow blogs that interest me personally (I have categories for singing, writing, organization, and photography, to name a few) as well as some comics that offer RSS feeds and even some photostreams on Flickr, but I do have a couple of library blogs in my feed as well. I also use the RSS feeder in Outlook to get feeds of the new books we've added in Mansfield in subject areas that interest me.

3) YouTube - I used to only use YouTube to watch funny videos my friends sent me, but I've started to discover that it can actually be a valid research tool. In musical theater, it can be very interesting to find videos of how someone else has staged something, musically interpreted a song, or choreographed a dance. When I was working on a ballet variation for a performance, I was actually able to find video footage of the same performance we watched in class when we were learning it to remind myself of the sequence of steps. I know many libraries have used YouTube for promotional videos and things, but the most exciting thing use of YouTube I've seen by a library is Iowa State University's posting of some of their video archives. My cousin sent me a link to a video series they'd posted about a debate in the little town of Cambridge on whether or not they should keep their high school. My grandfather was actually the spokesperson for one of the options, so to see him as a relatively young man, participating in his community government was really exciting for me. My dad and my uncle also briefly appeared in the video as small children. I think that's a GREAT application of YouTube for libraries - sharing with the public these little pieces of history that people might otherwise not even know were there or be unable to travel in person to see.

4) Delicious - Love it! I can categorize links in more than one way and don't have to remember which folder I put it in. I also love the ability to leave little notes to myself (or anybody else that looks at my links, I guess) as to why I saved a certain page. I haven't used the social aspect of it as much - I mostly like it for its accessibility from any computer - but I can certainly see where that would be a useful function, especially for teachers wanting to give students a certain set of links, or for colleagues working on a project. I'm thinking about creating a list of music cataloging resources using delicious.

5) Blogs - I think blogging is really cool. Obviously I haven't really kept up with it, since this is the first post since I failed to complete the last round of Montana Library 2.0. You'll also notice if you look at my blogger profile that I have another blog that I set up, but which has no posts. Maybe I would do it more often if I would learn to be more succinct. Hmmm.

Anyway, I'm sure you can tell if you've put up with reading this far that I'm pretty excited about 2.0 tools. I'm really looking forward to this next round!

New Score Shelving - Flickr lesson a

We finally got new shelving for our score collection! It has been a long time coming. It started with our previous Fine Arts librarian and what to do with the oversize scores. Here's a picture of the old shelving:



Not so bad for most of the collection - at least it's adjustable (since the typical score is a little larger than the typical book) and it has a back, so the little ones don't fall off. But the shelves are way too shallow for the oversize materials and didn't really provide enough support. Here's what we ended up doing with them in the old shelving:



I actually have quite a few in the back I haven't cataloged yet, just because there was no place for them to go.

But now we have shiny new shelving that will accommodate our collection in a respectful manner.

Here's the wide shot:



See how it has those nice dividers? Many scores are very narrow and fall over easily, so these will help give them extra support. And there's a wall in the back to keep them from sliding off. Yea!

And here, you can see we go a set of shelving with wider shelves, to support the really large scores (I think we have at least one that's 60 cm high!):



They haven't been moved up there yet, but we're very excited to see them in their new home. I'll have to take more pictures when they're all set up!

Too Good Not to Share

Okay, so I didn't find this video by searching YouTube, because technically, I haven't done the YouTube lesson yet. Hey, technically, I haven't finished the Flickr lessons yet (I really must get on that!). But I came across this video on one of the blogs I subscribe to, and it's just to funny not to share. (The blog is called Write Now Is Good, and you can find it here: http://writenowisgood.typepad.com/write_now_is_good, if you're interested.)

Here's the video:

Libraries - Cool Old Books, Cool New Tech

FI-309091 from minnie80
Originally uploaded by unfabulous_ena

I could spend hours with Flickr's interestingness feature! I found this great picture uploaded by unfabulous_ena using interestingness. It seems to be part of some kind of postcard exchange program. How cool is that!

This photo reminds me of finding old leather bound reference books in the little volunteer library in my hometown. I've always thought old books were interesting, and finding them on some back shelf is a little bit like finding some kind of buried treasure. I hope that even though libraries keep working to be on the cutting edge, delivering information and services to our patrons with all this new technology, that we'll always have some old leather bound books hanging around waiting for people like me to discover them!

RSS feeds

When I first heard about RSS feeds, I thought "why would I want to do that? I already get my lists and things in my e-mail". Then I started reading several columns on this one website. Most of them didn't publish on a daily basis, but I never could remember when each one did publish so I checked every one of them every day - talk about a waste of time! Plus, I felt the need to read the other columns around them, even if I wasn't particularly interested, just because they were there, and I might miss something interesting if I didn't read them all (I know, I know, but I'm compulsive that way). Finding out that I could subscribe to them by RSS feed has been such a time-saver. Now I only subscribe read the ones I really like - the rest I didn't subscribe to, so they are out-of-sight, out-of-mind, and Google Reader tells me when each one has a new installment, so I don't have to check each one everyday. Now I'm all about the RSS feeder!

I use Google Reader, and I'm very happy with it - mostly because I love my iGoogle and my g-mail, so it's one stop shopping. However, in the interests of learning something new, I did sign up for a bloglines account, just to compare their features. I have to admit, bloglines is pretty snazzy. They have a lot of features - your own blog right with-in the system, forums and playlists (although I'm not actually sure what the "playlists" tab is for - there didn't seem to be an explanation in the tab itself, and no reference that I found in the FAQ. I didn't ask in the Forum). The clippings feature seems to be analogous to the starring feature in Google Reader, except that they'll actually let you categorize your clippings - my current annoyance in G-Reader is that I can't seem to sort my starred items in anyway, so I usually just save things I want to keep to del.icio.us, where I can tag them. I didn't spend a lot of time playing with Bloglines, and I could probably come to love it, given enough time. However, I don't think it will trump Google Reader just because of the sheer convenience of having all my toys (more or less) in one place.

Cool Web Site!

I am so far behind in this class and I meant to try and catch up this weekend, but as usual didn't get as much done as I'd hoped (on anything).

Anyway, even though it's not one of the lessons, per se, I had to share this website with you all. It's www.pandora.com. It's a streaming radio website, but it lets you build your own radio stations. You enter the name of a song or artist you like, and they go to their database and find other similar songs - based on the musical qualities of the song or artist you picked! I think it's really cool that it actually matches based on things like harmonies and rhythms, and not just the traditional "other users who like this song also like..." formula (which is good, but given the eclecticness of human taste, not necessarily going to find similar items). Anyway, you should check it out!

Update: I added a little widget to my blog that shows what songs I've bookmarked on Pandora. Way cool!

A Little Blog Frustration

So here's that whole viewing problems as challenges thing: when I signed up for the 2.0 challenge, I used a different e-mail address from my regular work and personal address. "This is sound advice," I thought. "Then all of my Montana Library 2.0 correspondence will be in one convenient location, and won't get mixed up with everything else. Plus, no new spam will be generated in my current accounts when I sign up for these new services. What a great idea!"

So I used my yahoo account - I automatically have one, because I've used some of yahoo's services (the Briefcase, before I go my AMAZING flash drive - death to the floppy disk!, Flickr, some groups, etc.), but I've never actually used it. All well and good.

Then, I went to set up my blog. Blogger, unfortunately, belongs to Google, so it wanted me to use my gmail account. No problem, they let you use a different account if you want to. Great! I sign up with my yahoo account, write my first post. All good.

And I went back to Google, where I have my iGoogle (which is really cool) set up with all these wonderful things I access on a regular basis. But, logging into a Google service (Blogger) with a different account logged me out of my iGoogle. Okkkaaay. Maybe I can change the address on my Blogger account. So I went back to Blogger. Nope. You can change everything but your login account. So I decided that my "problem" was actually a minor annoyance and that my solution would be to ignore it.

Yesterday, I decided to add all my classmates wonderful blogs to my Google Reader. And as I was doing that, I found a post I wanted to leave a comment on. But wait, to do that I have to log in with yahoo instead of gmail. Okay. I did that, left my comment and went back to adding blogs to Reader - except that I was still logged in under yahoo, so it saved them under that instead. Suddenly, my "minor annoyance" reverted back to "problem".

Anyway, long story - well, still long. I'm not sure I met it with the appropriate attitude of challenge versus problem, but I did find a solution. It involved inviting my gmail self to be a contributor on my yahoo self's blog, and then deleting my yahoo self as a contributor. There was much logging into this and out of that and vice versa, and much grumbling accompanied it, but I have now happily united all of my services under my gmail account, and no longer get logged out of my iGoogle.

What have I learned? Possibly that web 2.0 is meant to play together, and in attempting to separate things, I cause myself more trouble than anything else!