Librarians Do Lady Gaga

CPL 2.0: The End.

We have come to the end of our CPL 2.0 training! I had a great time with this training project, and I particularly enjoyed making this blog. Our assignment for the last week was to fill in an evaluation on SurveyMonkey... but in order to do so I had to delete my computer's cookies as another staff member had already filled out the same survey on my terminal. So I learned how to do that! 327 of my fellow library workers also participated in this training, which is an amazing feat. Good work everyone!

CPL 2.0: Twitter

I've used Twitter for about three years now. I moved back to Calgary after finishing university, and almost all of my university friends joined the site. I found it really nice to join the site and get daily updates from my friends, who I'd moved away from. It is very similar to what Facebook's new news feed, but without the photos and videos and annoying Farmville/Pirate adventure/whatever updates.

Now, I still tweet from my personal account (http://twitter.com/kalo3,) and I also tweet for the library that I work at (http://twitter.com/fishcreeklib.) My personal account is protected so that I need to approve your account in order for you to see my tweets and get them in your list. The library's account is not protected, so anyone can follow me, and it's been interesting to see the kind of account that has started to follow me. Some of them are local people or organizations in the area, a few of them are library twitter pages, and a few of them are randoms who have started following me because they're interested in something I'm tweeting about.

So here is this week's question:

• What kind of information is being posted by the library accounts above? What kind of information should libraries post?

CPL's accounts are posting a real variety of information: information about contests, big events, library programs, volunteer opportunities, blog entries and other information from the CPL homepage, etc. And this is exactly the kind of information that we should be posting about. I also tweet from time to time about changes in the physical Fish Creek library itself - if we're moving some collections, or have new displays, and our big game boards. I try to tweet at least three times a day, to stay current and relevant (or re-tweet from another CPL twitter accounts.) If you aren't active about the account, and only have one tweet or so each week, it's not enough to build up your followers, or have them want to keep following your account.

I've also re-tweeted a few of KonaDawg's tweets. (http://twitter.com/KonaDawg.) Kona is one of the dogs that comes to Fish Creek's Story Pals program to help reluctant youth readers. Lee, who is Kona's owner, runs his twitter account for him, as Kona probably hasn't mastered typing quite yet, even though he's great to read to ;)

Cake Wrecks Book Cakes!

Look at that beautiful tree stump... err... cake? It's a cake! Made to look like the Giving Tree from the book of the same name, the Giving Tree is one of my most favourite children's books. The above cake was featured on Cake Wrecks, a blog about, well, ugly cakes. But they sometimes feature beautiful cakes like the one above.

Here is the post about "Sweet Reading Cakes"

http://ht.ly/1M7am

And here is Cake Wrecks main blog site:

http://cakewrecks.blogspot.com/

CPL 2.0: LibraryThing

I'd never used LibraryThing prior to today's exploration, but it wasn't difficult to navigate at all.

LibraryThing does have a number of very practical applications. I keep a list on my laptop at home of the books that I read. I've only been doing it for about two and a half years, but it's really neat to look back at the end of the year at everything you've read - I often forget about many books (particularly if they're library books and I'm not reminded of their existence by having them on my shelves at home.)

I also thought that the "local" area of the site was really neat, and could be excellent if the library and local bookstores added their events to the site.

In the end, although it's kind of neat, it's not a site that I need to join.

Also, if I can be nit-picky and critical for just one moment, I would say that they need to update their logo, because it looks very outdated.

__________________________________________________

So... we only have TWO MORE WEEKS of the CPL 2.0 project! I've decided already that I'm going to keep the blog, and I am excited about my future in blogging!

I am the library cat

From I can has cheezburger:

http://icanhascheezburger.com/2010/05/12/funny-pictures-i-am-the-library-cat/

CPL 2.0: Online Productivity Tools

I already use Google Docs and Google Calendar so this week's assignment was really simple for me! On the calendar, I have three personal calendars that I can choose to either see or not (one is for work, one for personal, and for my U of C classes.) I also share my calendar with three close friends, and I am part of a shared calendar for a project that I'm working on.

Here is this week's question:

• Do you see free online tools like these eventually replacing expensive software like MS Office?

I think it would be fantastic for these free online tools to replace traditional software. Think, for example, about the iPad. Most owners of the iPad will probably not bother with downloading Pages or Word for Mac, if they need to create a doc they'll do it online.

One thing that I think is absolutely necessary is for these products to be compatible with each other. Not everyone will have the same software, and in order for them to be useful for collaborative work or any doc that will need to be shared, it's important that they work with each other.

Cutting libraries in a recession...

(Image: CuttingLibraries, a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from daniel_solis's photostream)

(The image on Daniel's Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/daniel_solis/4520024767/)

(via BoingBoing: http://www.boingboing.net/2010/05/05/cutting-libraries-in.html)

CPL 2.0: Flickr and YouTube

I am familiar with both of these sites. I have a Flickr account, but haven't used it for about a year now. I signed up for an account and posted some photos on Flickr instead of my usual Facebook so that people that I know without a Facebook account could easily view them (and yes, I know that you can share your Facebook albums with folks without an account.)

Here is the question for this week:

Comment on Flickr and YouTube. Were they user-friendly?

I find both of these sites very user friendly. I particularly appreciate the fact that even though they both have a lot to offer, neither of them have very cluttered designs. Or maybe I just really like websites that have white wallpaper backgrounds? I took the "Magical Feature Tour" on Flickr, and afterwards did a search for "greyhounds" as I'm thinking about adopting one. It's great that you can search photos, groups or people and then sort the results that you return. The only complaint that I have with Flickr are the giant advertisements, but I suppose they've got to make money some how.

Oh - another Flickr complaint (so I guess I have two compaints... so picky!) is that it's a Yahoo! venture. Why can't everything be under the Google umbrella? It's just so much more convenient.

YouTube is also very user friendly, and again, I think that it boils down to simplicity. It's a bit hard to look at these sites with fresh eyes and have a unbiased opinion. YouTube recently had a makeover to de-clutter the site and I think it was for the better.

Now go look at this picture of an adorable greyhound:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/courtneyjade/2253858599/

CPL 2.0: the home stretch

Can you believe that we're already half way through our Web 2.0 project? Let's give ourselves a pat on the back!

Here's what you can expect in the final five weeks:
- Flickr / YouTube
- Online Productivity Tools
- LibraryThing
- Twitter
- Wrap-Up

CPL 2.0: RSS

“Really Simple Syndication.” Humph. I understand the concept of RSS, I just don't think that I really need a Bloglines account. But I signed up for one, to do this week's assignment. Here are the websites that I tried to add to my RSS Bloglines feed:

- http://yyclibrary.blogspot.com/ (me!)
- http://cpl20.blogspot.com/ (the blog for the project that I've made this blog for!)
- http://dilbert.com/ (lols!)
- http://jezebel.com/ (a great feminist blog, which I read each and every day!)
- http://laineygossip.com/ ("advanced celebrity gossip")
- http://icanhascheezburger.com/ (more lols!)

The Dilbert comic strip was suggested by the Bloglines site, and the others are sites that I visit on a regular basis.

So... the questions:

• Were you able to successfully set up your RSS feed? If not, where did you run into problems? If you were successful, does this make information-gathering more convenient for you?

I did successfully set up the Bloglines account and subscribe to a few RSS feeds. I ran into problems with the last two (Lainey Gossip & I can has cheezburger) perhaps because those websites are not organized in a true blog fashion, and don't have the wee RSS buttons on their sites. Perhaps if I read 30 blogs on a regular basis, and those 30 didn't update frequently, I would find Bloglines useful. I have a MacBook at home, and my browser has a neat tool that when you open a new tab, a screen pops up with the sites that you frequent most. If the site has a new post, there will be a blue triangle in one corner with a star... so you know to click on it and read the new blog posting. I don't think that I read enough blogs to need RSS, but perhaps I will try Google Reader on my own at home. Another reason why Bloglines turns me off is the extremely dated logo, and cluttered appearance of the site.

Changes in Facebook

One of the things that I really dislike about Facebook is the applications... Farmville/Garden/Pirate/whatever, I don't care for any of it. Months ago I blocked Farmville updates from appearing in my news feed, but no longer remember how I did it, and Farmville updates have been creeping back in, along with ones about fake gardens and hunting pirate booty. On the rare occasion that I check Facebook, I'd rather not see them.

If you're one of the 81 million (!) Facebook users that have the Farmville application, or any other application, and you're interested in dropping it, read this article:

http://ow.ly/1BRcW

CPL 2.0 Google & Fried Chicken

I am quite keen on Google, the subject of this week's assignment. I regularly use many of Google's products: News, Blog search, Images, Gmail for my personal email, Google Docs and Calendar for sharing information with a short film that I'm lending a hand too, Blogger for this here assignment, Video Chat to save on my long distance phone bill, Directory when teaching technology programs, Books and Scholar for reference at work, Google maps, etc.

This week's assignment: Try out one of the Google programs or services, and write a brief blog post reviewing it. What do you like about the Google product? What do you dislike? Would you recommend the product to friends and colleagues?

I decided to explore the Trends product since I'd never seen it before. Trends is a search and news volume index that after you plug in a search term, it gives you a graph that follows how popular that term has been in Internet searches for the past few years. It provides a bit of insight as to the fluctuations in an item's popularity, and also links spikes in popularity with news stories from that time. I did a search for "fried chicken" and the graphs are below:

The top blue line is represents the number of searches made for "fried chicken." As you can see, there was a big spike in popularity in early 2009, and the "E" links to a news story about KFC honouring Oprah's grilled chicken coupons...

Google Trends also ranks the search term by popularity of searching in Regions, Cities and Languages. Who knew that fried chicken was so popular in South Africa?

Even better, you can enter more than one search term into the box (which I love), and compare two different things, or perhaps track the popularity of similar things. For example, you could see if "high cholesterol, fast food" have anything to do with each other... or see just how popular something new is, like KFC's new Double Down sandwich, which features two pieces of fried chicken where the pieces of the bun would usually be.

Google Trends will only get better with age, because the longer we are using the Internet, the longer the search results will be in terms of date. Currently, we can only go back about six years, but in ten years from now we'll have data for sixteen years! I would definitely recommend this to folks interested in tracking the popularity of something, or even if they just had to do a bit of research on something specific.

Try it out for yourself: http://www.google.ca/trends

Three Weekends of Awesome

The most wonderful days of the year are coming up! It is a tragedy, but I have to work on two of these days and might be missing out on them completely.

First is Record Store Day. Independent stores and musicians come together for this really awesome day that celebrates music. Stores often host live performances and meet & greets AND, many, many amazing artists are supporting the cause, including some of my favourites: Neil Young, Modest Mouse, Phoenix, Great Lake Swimmers, Bruce Springsteen, Bon Iver, Wilco, Drive-by Truckers, and on & on. My favourite stores in Calgary are the Inner Sleeve in Marda Loop, Sloth Records on 17th Avenue, and Melodiya, which is also on 17th Ave but much further west. Also, if you're having your own record store day, be sure to go to Recordland in Inglewood. I don't think it's participating, but it would be a shame to leave Recordland out of your RSD.

http://www.recordstoreday.com/Home

Two weeks after Record Store Day, is Free Comic Book Day. Comic book shops across North America participate in this glorious day, in which you can get a free comic by JUST SHOWING UP. Five (and maybe more) stores in Calgary are participating, including my fave Another Dimension comics in Kensington. I'll be sneaking over during my lunch break to Great White Entertainment in South Centre Mall to see what they've got going on.

http://www.freecomicbookday.com/

Sandwiched in between those weekends on April 24 & 25th is the Calgary Comic & Entertainment Expo, which is basically Calgary's "Comic Con," and this is the one that I'll get to go to (YES!) It's located in one of the Round-up Centre buildings, on the Stampede grounds. Really, it has something for every kind of nerd out there, from the young "Twilight" kids, to fans of the original Star Trek series (Leonard Nimoy is going to be there!) The child in me is excited about seeing the Olympic mascots. And I am most excited about Jeffrey Brown. I've slowly found all of Jeffrey Brown's comics in stores here and there, and love them all. He'll be at some sort of Panel Spotlight on Sunday at 11:00 am. Now I just have to decide which of Brown's books I'll take for him to sign.

http://www.calgaryexpo.com/
http://www.jeffreybrowncomics.com/

CPL 2.0 Social Networking

This week's assignment is all about social networking. I've been a user of a few different social networking sites for quite a while now. I had a Friendster account in high school, migrated to Myspace in college and at some point in University switched to Facebook. Then, after moving back to Calgary after finishing University, the friends that I left behind convinced me to join Twitter. I currently use Twitter primarily, and I love that it keeps me up to date with friends who live in different parts of the country. I think we'll explore Twitter a bit more in a few weeks, so I won't go in to any more detail about it.

On to this week's question:

• For you, is Facebook useful or a time-waster?

For me, it is both of these things. I use Facebook more than I'd like. I should change the e-mail notifications that I get, so that I receive less. I tend to log in to the site after I've received a notification about something (an event invite, comment, or message.) I really don't need to be checking it more than once a week, and when I check it I tend to look over my whole news feed, which is a huge time-waster. Curiousity kills Katie's time... if a friend posts photos of something, I will look at them.

But Facebook can also be really useful, and it's my only social tie to a quite a number of people. I recently deleted a number of "friends" (I have 200 or so Facebook "friends") who I decided I wouldn't recognise if I saw them on the street, but the majority of my friends are people that I care about and Facebook is a great way of staying in contact with them.

Wikipedia Love

This week's assignment is all about Wikipedia! http://www.wikipedia.org/

I decided to create an account and write an article on something that hadn't been covered already... my friend Paul!

I met Paul when I was finishing up my BFA at the University of Lethbridge. If anyone I know deserves a Wikipedia entry, it's Paul. After all, he is an international recording artist. I could have written a lot more, but it took me quite a while to do what I did.

This is the page that I made: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_K_Lawton
I also added him to a List of people from Lethbridge: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_from_Lethbridge
(Dar Heatherington is also on that list, FYI.)

I would say that in general, it's difficult to find an entry that needs grammar or spelling help, and easy to find an entry that needs more content. I didn't come across anything that is factually wrong, but I wasn't really browsing to fact check.

So I did create the Paul K Lawton Wikipedia page, and I am awfully proud of myself. I edited the "List of people from Lethbridge" page, by adding him and by sorting the other entries a wee bit (some of the ones at the bottom, that I assume were the newest, weren't alphabetical by last name like the rest of the list.) Creating the PKL page took quite a while, and I really only mastered the easy things. Referencing took a few minutes to understand, because I don't speak Html... and I attempted to put a photo of Paul on the page but decided against it because it was just a bit too hard. I also added in a section of "External Links" twice, but they seem to disappear (?), so I guess it wasn't as successful as it should be.

Anyway, I had a lot of fun with this project.

Thanks to Paul for letting me do this!

PS - If you're interested in more Paul K, here is an interview with him from 2009: http://newcanadianmodern.org/2009/09/24/garage-rock-explosion-tmrw-night-%E2%99%A5flavour-of-the-week-paul-lawton%E2%99%A5/

PPS - Wikipedia has flagged my PKL article for "speedy deletion," noted by the large red box at the top of the page. I hope it doesn't get deleted! UPDATE: I just checked the PKL article, and it has been deleted, as has my addition to the "List of people from Lethbridge" page. Disappointing! Wikipedia apparently doesn't think that "my friend Paul" is of importance or significant.

Why?

I started this blog as part of Calgary Public Library's initiative to get staff more aware of some of the web 2.0 technologies out there. It's based on the "23 Things" program that the Charlotte Mecklenburg Library has, which in turn was based on a list of goals that a user created on the 43 Things web page. The "23 Things" program was very successful, and I hope that our program gets staff interested and excited by the things that they learn.

Are you interested in the 23 Things program?
http://plcmcl2-things.blogspot.com/

What about the original 43 Things list?
http://www.43things.com/person/hblowers

43 Things is actually a really neat website, "the world's largest goal setting community." I loved reading through some of the more common goals that users on the site have posted about: eat healthier, learn Spanish, learn French, learn Japanese, get a tattoo, etc. Some of the goals listed on the site I've already done: watch LOST Season 3 (LOVE this show,) shave my head, and learn to swim. And others, are just a bit weird: get off house arrest.

The 43 Things home page:
http://www.43things.com/

CPL 2.0: Delicious?

I think not! While I've learned how to navigate CPL's Delicious site to find websites for customers, I'm not generally enthusiastic about the site.

On to this week's question:

• How comfortable are you using Best Websites, after this practice? Do you have any tips for using Best Websites on Delicious?

I was already fairly comfortable with using CPL's Delicious-based Best Websites, and nothing changed after this practice. When I go to our Delicious site, I always click on our Tags link, to see the listing box of all of our tags. I then pick the grouping that I want (government, law, genealogy, etc,) and REVERSE sort the date, so that the earliest postings appear first. I find that the ones Best Websites I use most were the ones that our Best Websites/Delicious staff used most too, and added first to the Delicious site.

Another note: While I can see myself blogging more in the long-term, by using blogger or blogspot, etc., I find it hard to believe that I'd ever use Delicious for personal use. Googling a website (especially if we have a Google search box in our browsers) is far easier and faster way to find a website than it is for me to go to Delicious and find the link.

Fish Creek Twitter

http://twitter.com/fishcreeklib

I post Twitter updates on behalf of the Fish Creek branch of the Calgary Public Library. If you are interested in updates on free library programs, fun events and new features* in the library be sure to follow me!

*Like the giant Chess set and Snakes & Ladders games we have set up!

Charlotte Mecklenburg Library

In February, I was able to attend a leadership mini-conference at the central library and take in a presentation by Geri Lynn Sponaas of the Charlotte Mecklenburg Library http://www.plcmc.lib.nc.us/ . Geri Lynn is the supervisor of the Imagin On branch of that library system, which is a innovative branch that hosts library material and programming for youth in a building that they share with a local children's theatre company. Geri Lynn's presentation was inspiring and very interesting, and although she touched on how the downturn in the American economy had been effecting their library system I was sure that it would continue to be successful. So, I was very shocked to hear last week that due to budget cuts, they might be forced to close twelve libraries and lay-off dozens of staff. I don't think that the result will be quite as drastic as that and the library has already begun a grassroots campaign to raise the money (they've already received more than seventy thousand dollars!)

Good luck to CML! You'll be in my thoughts!

A library journal article on the budget cuts:
http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6723200.html?industryid=47101

CPL 2.0 (web)log 1

Which aspect of Web 2.0 am I the most intrigued (or scared) by?

I am most intrigued by two of the topics that we'll be exploring. The first is RSS. Despite having a number of blogs that I visit on a regular basis, I have so far shied away from RSS feeds, so it will be good for me to have a good reason to dive right in. The second is Online Productivity Tools. I'm not too sure what we'll be learning about but I think I'll find it useful. I have a tiny bit of experience using Google Wave and Google Buzz, but no one in my online circle has been either of them extensively and they've dropped off my radar.

I am excited about the next eleven weeks!