Twitter

Call me old, call me a Luddite, I don't get Twitter. Don't get me wrong - I really like what CPL has done with their Twitter accounts. The Teen Zone Twitter thing is really interesting and the Central one has information about programs- all the CPL ones are really good but when I searched for something (genealogy, since that's one of my things) I pulled up loads of gobbledegook. Either I'm not using this right or most people have nothing interesting to say and far too many ways to say it. I don't really have the time to sift through loads and loads of garbage to find a gem. There are other ways of staying on top of a subject.

Library Thing

I have looked at Library Thing before and found it to be very user friendly. I can see a use for it at work doing Readers' Advisory. Because of the tags and the fact that recommendations come from a wide variety of readers, this is probably a better source for recommendations than NovelList. NovelList has to use controlled vocabulary and descriptors that make recommendations rather objective. Many times the reason a customer loves a book can't be put down to subject or character occupation or stuff like that. Often what a customer is looking for is the feel of a book. They want a title that "feels" the same as the book they loved. Library Thing is much more subjective. I checked a title I loved and the list of recommendations contained exactly what I would have recommended. Often the subjects, characters, settings, etc. had nothing to do with the original title, but the reading experience, the "feel" was the same. I like this facet of Library Thing.

That said, I don't think I would use this in my personal life. While I really would like to have a list of all the books I own, including stuff about the authors and reviews and all, I would like to have it done by an employee. While I love cataloguing, I can see this could be a time vortex, allowing my obsessiveness to run away with me. I use Facebook's book application to keep track of what I have read and I can't see myself dedicating any more time than that to my book list.

Online Productivity Tools

There has been quite a buzz in the genealogical community about "cloud computing" which is usually interpreted by non-techies like myself to encompass such things a online data storage. This is especially pertinent to genealogists who generate and store huge amounts of data. The horror stories of data loss have prompted many to find online solutions which include things like Google Docs.



I like the idea of these online tools. The Google calendar, especially, would save me a great deal of worry about not having entered stuff from my work calendar into my home calendar and vice versa. I also like the idea of being able to access my presentations and documents from any computer. I could see myself using any of these applications.

My reservations are probably similar to those of many of my "generational cohort" to put it kindly. I am slightly concerned about putting data online. This is especially true of work related information but also, to an extent, to my personal information. I am certain that this will be overcome in time.

Flickr and YouTube

I have used both Flickr and YouTube for both personal and professional purposes. I store my personal photos on Flickr as backup and so I can share them with my family and friends. I have used Flickr Commons to find photos for the Community Heritage Blog and for other work-related projects. I think it is a great site and it is very, very simple to use. The quality of the photos is variable but you can always find something.

YouTube is also very good for professional use. I have watched seminars, classes, interviews, etc on YouTube as part of my professional development. The biggest problem with YouTube is that there is always something neat in the "suggested videos" link on the right side of the page and I find, invariably, that after a few minutes, I am watching some weird video that has nothing to do with what I originally was looking at. YouTube, for me, is the greatest time-waster in the world. The quality of the videos is widely variable but there is SO MUCH out there. Where else could you find videos of bad 70s rock bands, mean kitties, dramatic Hitler gophers (see, I went off on a tangent from "Dramatic Chipmunk") and lectures on historic preservation in Vancouver? Now, if we could figure out a way to make a 48 hour day - I'd have time to see it all.

CPL 2.0 RSS

I had no trouble signing up ith Bloglines. and no trouble adding feeds to it. It is going to be a very convenient way for me to keep track of the different blogs I like to follow. I subscribe via email to a number of genealogy blogs and I like that way of keeping track of them, but not all of the blogs I like have that option. Bloglines is going to allow me to keep track of all of those blogs and I will be able to check them from any computer I use. The inability to have my RSS feeds available at all the computers I use was what was keeping me from checking on my favourite blogs. Bloglines is going to be a great tool.

Google Universe

I used the Google books product. I have used this in the past to find titles for research for customers and in my genealogical research. I really like this application. Google books includes full text of some titles but it also includes citations for items that are not full text. It also has a link to find the title in a library and includes reviews, when they can be found.

Google books is very useful for finding references to obscure and unindexed information in books. Given that we answer some fairly obscure questions at the reference desk, I would most definitely recommend this to my colleagues.

The discovery of the Google books app has led some of our more intrepid customers to request titles not available in full-text through our interlibrary loan service.

The only thing I wish was different about Google books was that more of the titles were full text, but that opens up a whole new can of worms, so to speak.

CPL 2.0 Social Networking

I like Facebook. My sister lives in another province so I can keep up with her family, see pictures, and even chat with her if we both are online at the same time. I also use Facebook to record what I am reading and I find that I occasionally use it while I am at work when I do Readers' Advisory. It's a way of keeping track of the books I read (and also the books that my friends are reading) that is immediately accessible.

I can see the disadvantages of social networking as well. There are tons of ways to waste time on Facebook. Because your friends often share your interests you can find quizzes, websites, all kinds of things to distract you. For me, however, Facebook is a useful tool.

CPL 2.0 Wikis

The "corrections" I added were citations to two facts in the article about the Calgary Public Library. It was relatively easy to do but I didn't want to monkey too much with the page so the facts I cited are still showing [citation needed]. I understand from reading the editing help that these things are checked and we shouldn't worry too much about formatting. Most of the errors I found (and I didn't find many) were the same, lack of citations and some grammar/spelling changes. There weren't a lot of those though.

I didn't find too much stuff that needed edits but I certainly have found some very erroneous information in the past. Because I am a researcher, I know that an uncited fact is not a fact at all. What I do like to use Wikipedia for is for the citations. If an article contains references to books I will often consult those titles to double check the facts or to look for further information.

CPL 2.0 Delicious

There are great advantages to saving bookmarks online in a public space rather than on a private server. People who use Delicious will be exposed to our bookmarks and may become curious about other things the library offers. Delicious also offers us the ability to put many tags on a single entry.

The only drawback is that the vocabulary used to tag entries is not controlled - we need to make sure that we are consistent in our use of tags so that all sites related to a topic will file together. A personal user of Delicious may not care if everything comes up at once when they search "Genealogy" for example, but the way we use bookmarks requires that we be able to access all of our sites under one fairly specific term - as well as being able to search more broadly.

CPL 2.0

Being the author of the CHFH blog, I am intrigued by the possibilities offered to us by the use of blogs. As I see it, the blog offers an opportunity for us to promote our collections and services and also to put a personality to the organization or part of the organization in which we function. In a way, it is like having a very good conversation with our customers. It brings to technology those functions which we enjoy so much when we work at the desk; the ability to connect with people and the ability to draw attention to those things in our organization that we find neat or interesting.

I am not so sure about Twitter, so that might be the aspect of CPL 2.0 that most intimidates me. That is far too immediate ;-)

Christine