This is how you publish.

Library 2.0 summary

When I try to summarize library 2.0 two thoughts immediately come to mind: #1 Wow! What a great program. And #2 Wow! I'm going to have a lot more time to get my work done now.

I'll address #2 first. Thirty minutes an exercise was pretty unrealistic. Thirty minutes was reasonable for most of the exercises by themselves (most not all), but the blog portion pushed the time requirement well above 30 minutes. If I had a lot to say about a topic 30 minutes wasn't even enough for the blog portion.

However, time requirements aside, library 2.0 was great. I learned about all kinds of stuff. Podcasts, RSS feeds, blogging, you name it I did it. Highlights included LibraryThing and the Web 2.0 awards site (I ended up finding a great deal on a plane ticket from a travel site featured on there); lowlights included Technorati and Netlibrary.

I wish that the program would have included a firefox lesson. I feel like a lot of people could have benefited from that, especially a firefox add-ons lesson. As far as things the library could implement, I feel like pretty much everything. If you go thru library 2.0 point by point, pretty much everything should have a place on our website. For example we should have featured librarian blogs, which recommend books (those blogs should be supplemented w/ LibraryThing accounts) and advertise some of our programs here at the library. We already have implemented the wiki for staff (great work by the way), but we should make one for patrons as well, where they can include their insights about the library. We have a myspace page, that's a start, now we need to do something with it. We should allow user tagging on our catalog (I know Teenagers -- California -- Los Angeles -- Conduct of life -- Drama is what i think to search for when I want the karate kid collection, but I'm not sure that's what your average joe would guess). I could go on and on... but then I'd have to go over the thirty minute limit. ;)

Thanks library 2.0 I've learned a lot.

Net Library

Net Library is not good. Many moons ago I decided I would take advantage of a net library audiobook. I dutifully downloaded the file and then went on to figuring out how to stick it on my ipod. I soon discovered that I could not put it on my ipod because it was in wma format which ipods do not support. So I just went back to check out audiobooks on cd ripping them onto my computer and putting them on my ipod that way, not convenient, but do-able. So time later (but still several moons ago) I came into possession of a netlibrary compatible mp3 player. At last I can fully take advantage of netlibrary. So I dutifully downloaded and uploaded and finally sat down to listen and I listened and I listened and then when I'd heard enough. I turned off my mp3 player and went to bed. The next morning I decided to listen to my audiobook on my way into the library. Alas my cheap-o mp3 player had lost my place, oh well I'll just skip to the right chapter and resume from there. Wait, what's this? The whole audiofile is all one track? Oh lamentable day. That was the story of how I learned to hate Net Library. Today I browsed net library once more to refresh my memory about net library and I recalled one further problem w/ netlibrary. The selection is terrible. They actually have a descent number of titles (several hundred) but they have lots and lots of mediocre titles. I remember last time I downloaded an audiobook it took me much browsing before i found an acceptable title (Cod: A biography of the fish that changed the world) and even that was a bit of a stretch- I doubt I would have picked that book up if I'd seen it in a bookstore amongst other quality books. Another problem I encounter was that sometimes they'll have the second or third book in a series, but not the first. Honestly what gives net-library?

Podcasts

I checked out podcast alley to see what i could see. First I tried searching by genre (travel), but nothing jumped out at me (I really wish descriptions were included), so I prepped myself up to be all kinds of disappointed by podcasts. But then I did a search for "library" and third on the list I saw Salt Lake County Library, of course I had to watch it. So I went thru the steps of subscribing, then I watched a couple of podcasts of booktalks which aired on Local Matters (I guess that's a TV show). I also watched a podcast in which children were interviewed about what they thought of the storytime they had just attended. Genius! Why don't we do this? How expensive could it be to make this happen? As far as I can tell all we really need is a video camera and a little bit of know-how. Let's make it happen.

I present to you the greatest video ever posted to YouTube... ever. It's called "crab bite." Wow I could watch that 50 times and laugh just as hard every single time.

YouTube is genius. All it provides is a website and then it leaves everything else up to users. Users create the content, users rate the videos, users tag the videos, genius. It's like NBC providing a station and then making the viewers do all the work to create programming.

YouTube has all kinds of library applications too. A few I suggested earlier, post a video of you reading a book and video tours of the library, but that's not all. We could start posting storytimes or other programs we do to youtube, or even "commercials" for the library. All we would need is a video camera, beyond that it's free!