Libran Librarian

I am really glad I participated in Learning 2.0@McMaster  - thanks Amanda, Kelly and all the ETG leaders for an interesting programme and great support.  I feel I gained at least a vague understanding of the latest tools and technologies that were covered in this programme.  I am amazed at how much is available on the web (a lot of it for free) and the amount of customization that is possible. 

Gaming was fun.  I found the introduction to online social networks very valuable as I now know more about one of the important ways our users are communicating.  I have a better understanding of the appeal of Firefox as you can really personalize your browser.  I now feel more comfortable with RSS as I never really knew how it worked - the biggest challenge is finding the time to regularly check the feeds.  Flickr is a great resource knowing how much users like things visual.  lastfm was a personal favourite as it provided the opportunity to discover new music. 

The biggest take-away for me was that I wanted to share my new found knowledge of some of these tools and technologies with non-library people, mostly my family.

 I really appreciated the drop-in sessions and having a designated leader for support.  The additional readings were also useful - they were there for those technologies you wanted to learn more about.

I found that the time required for some of the weekly assignments could have been expanded to two weeks.    Of course the catch-up weeks were much appreciated.

Yes, I would participate in a future discovery programme. 

As I didn’t have Firefox on my desktop, I downloaded it easily.  But when I initially attempted to install some add-ons, I wasn’t successful with any of the five I tried.   I retried and was able to install Adblock Plus, Click Weather (a favourite) and Colorful Tabs (another favorite as I can easily see how many sites I have opened).  I am amazed at the quantity and variety of add-ons  - so many options to customize your browser.  Being a novice to this, I don’t understand what many of them do and when you’d need them.   I have been comparing IE and Firefox for several searches over the last few days to see if I want to make Firefox my default browser.

I downloaded the  MORRIS ‘Journal Title’ bookmarklet and it worked.  This tool can certainly save a lot of clicks - just have to remember that it’s there. 

I’ve never been one to play electronic games so I wondered how I’d fare with this week’s assignment.  I started with the MSN games and tried a few (eg. Women in Films Trivia, Pop Culture Trivia, TextTwist) which were interesting but not rivetting.  I moved on to Web Sudoku and enjoyed the ease of changing numbers without wasting time erasing which I do a lot when I use a pencil.  I then tried Diner Dash, one of the recommended games and found it to be not only fun but addictive.  I kept saying to myself that surely I can do better than that!  That evening, I shared this game with my family.  I was intrigued to watch my eleven year old daughter play.  She caught on to the game faster than I and played it differently.  While I was trying to be very methodical, she let her eye-hand co-ordination take over.    I also tried Zuma and bejeweled which were also fun.   

I took a look at some of the MUSH games but wasn’t all that interested and certainly not enough to sign up.  The MMORPG sites such as FLYFF looked more interesting.  I was struck by the amount of collective creativity that must have been invested in developing these sites.

After all this playing and peaking, I wondered how gaming could be used in a meaningful way for library applications .  From my brief gaming experience, I found that games required me to:   1.  learn some rules, 2. test my knowledge, 3. consider the feedback, 4.  try to refine my newly learned skill or knowledge, and 5. increase the challenge once I felt that I had reached the required skill.  So it would seem to me that this series of events could be applied to teaching some library skills (eg. using the catalogue).

I believe that gaming has a variety of benefits:  keeps the mind active, improves memory, develops eye hand co-ordination, develops logical thinking, and enhances creativity.   But it can only go so far in terms of learning as defined in Wikipedia as follows:   Learning is the acquisition and development of memories and behaviors, including skills, knowledge, understanding, values, and wisdom

I’ve heard a lot about MySpace and Facebook and recently had my niece give me a quick tour of her Facebook account.  But it wasn’t until I set up my own Facebook account that I got a better idea of how it works.  So this weeks’ exercise has been useful for me in that I now have a better understanding of what many of our users especially the undergrads are doing in their social spaces. 

In Facebook, I tried to search for people I knew from university and high school but didn’t find anyone.  I then tried to search for the children of my friends and relatives and to my surprise I found most of them.  So Facebook definitely has appeal for the 14 to 25ish year olds.  I  also saw that most of them had limited access to their profiles which is probably a good thing for them in terms of their privacy.

After doing this exercise, I started to wonder what role the Library could have in these online social spaces.  The article by Meredith Farkas, “Libraries in Social Networking Software” was very thought provoking.   The author basically suggests that if libraries want to be in these social spaces they had better do it in a way that is really useful to their users.  Otherwise, it’s probably not worth doing it.  Hopefully there will be more information on the users perspective of the presence of libraries in these online social networks.   

During the past week, I took a look at a few of the web-based applications listed in the week 8 assignment.  I started with RedKid.net, the one “just for fun”.  And it is fun but I don’t expect to have a lot of use for it.   Basecamp sounded promising so I tried it out.  I set up an account (free one) and did a simple TO DO list after viewing the audio/video tutorial.  Although the site was a little less intuitive than I’d like, I hope to explore it further as I think it will be useful for me.  The application I spent the most time playing with was lastfm.  I’d heard about it at one of the OLA sessions I had attended in early February and had been wanting to check it out.  This assignment gave me that opportunity.  Initially I felt some frustration with this site as I could not navigate it easily - I couldn’t remember where things were that I had used on previous visits.  Although the site offers the advantage of connecting with people with similar musical interests as one’s own, I have been enjoying discovering artists similar to the one’s I like as suggested by lastfm.  The business of “scrobbling” and how it is done became clearer to me after I read the FAQ (which I didn’t find for a while).  I will definitely spend more time with this application.

I have spent considerable time playing with del.icio.us (which I had never used before this assignment) and comparing it to Google.   Overall, I found that for all topics I searched, there were considerably fewer hits in del.icio.us than in Google.  But I found that most of the websites in delicious were very relevant to my search topic.  An example of an unexpected result in del.icio.us was a search for information on the new ‘Canada Food Guide’.  One of the links took me to a site called ‘The Beer Hunter’ .  This site is  “a Google Maps mashup that shows you in real time retail outlets (including the LCBO, The Beer Store, etc.) where you can find booze in Ontario”!  Admittedly I still find Google a great source because it delivers tons of results very quickly.  And you can typically find lots of relevant stuff in the first page or two of searching.   I am glad I know about del.icio.us though as I will use it as another source to search for information.  And I also like the fact that now that I have set up an account on del.icio.us, I can access/add to it from any computer.  This assignment has been interesting for me as  I it has reminded me of how much information is available through the Web - one link leads to another and another.

Here is a link to a great shot I found in flickr.

After having played with wikis using wetpaint and PBWiki, and looking at some of the others (Wikispaces, StikiPad), I know that I know more about them than I did before.  But there certainly are a lot of features available if you care to delve more deeply.  Initally I thought PBWiki was easier to use (although adding my first page was not as straightforward as I thought it would be) but after having looked more closely at wetpaint, I think I like the way it is organized more.  I can now see how this tool could be used by a group of students working on a class assignment for example.

I decided to use Google Reader as my RSS aggregator.  I didn’t have any trouble setting up an account late Friday afternoon.  I  successfully added two feeds and thought hey, this is no big deal.  Then earlier today, I went back to add a few more feeds and didn’t seem to have any recall of what I had done on Friday!  I persevered and have now added a few more feeds.  Now I am interested to see how useful I will find this application.

What better way to find out more about blogging than to create a blog ?  That’s what I and several of my colleagues here at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada are doing.