Online Productivity - Truth or Oxymoron?

Google Docs do rock! If you don't have to worry about sharing private or sensitive information. I'm just saying.

Otherwise, I think it's just one more excellent tool of the many we've seen in this training. How fantastic to be able to collaborate with others from anywhere, anytime & not have to worry about who's got their thumb drive for the presentation. I'm also a big fan of using "alternative" & free software & services, so the idea of untethering my data from highly proprietary products (MS Office, I'm looking at you!) is very appealing. This is truly something I think the library should be behind, as it is just like us - providing free information & services to the masses, regardless of income, social status or technological savvy. Right now I am using it to do an inventory of our kitchen, because I am sick & tired of wondering if I have tomato paste or realizing that half my pantry expired a year ago! This way I can check my inventory via mobile device while I'm in the grocery store & shop accordingly.

Another really incredible tool for organizing yourself & your thoughts online is Evernote. It can be accessed via the web & mobile device (am I sounding like a broken record? C'mon, we have to admit there are millions of people using these devices.) & you can make notes on just about anything, it will even translate text from a photo! Want to remember how many calories were in that thing you ate from the convenience store? Take a picture of the nutritional info, upload it to Evernote & it will save the text in the picture as a note. "That's crazy talk!" you say? But wait, there's more! You can place Evernote on a thumb drive to use on different computers that don't have web access, email notes or even twitter them to your account. It can even help you remember where you parked. There are tons of uses for Evernote, check out some other user-suggested ideas, here & here.

Excuse me, your tag is showing

Oh, is that not the kind of "tag" you meant?

Tagging & social bookmarks have been on the scene for quite a while now (apparently I joined, and promptly forgot about, Delicious back in '06 & I think it was already old news by then!). They're supremely useful, especially due to the fact that you can make them work for you, using whatever quirky terms you like. For instance, you may have noticed I tag all my "Have You Seen This? Thursday" posts as "nonsense." I like having the "nonsense" tag to categorize posts that are just silly. This is also what can make social bookmarking a time-suck. Can you imagine what kinds of websites people might label as "nonsense?" As it turns out, Delicious has over 7800 sites tagged as such, including an Edward Lear page (we all know he was full of nonsense), a wikipedia entry for Jabberwocky & boingboing, which is definitely my favorite source for sense & nonsense. You could spend all day (and then some) trolling around looking at entries given a tag of interest to you, not that that's ever happened to me. No, definitely not.

Another social bookmarking-type site that I like to use is Clipmarks. Here you can save selected bits of a website, which you "clip" by highlighting. This clip is then saved to the Clipmarks site in your account. You can choose to share your clips or keep them private. You'll find all sorts of things being shared, I love to use it to keep track of recipes I want to try. It's very useful to not have to save an entire site, when what you need is only a paragraph or you want to remember a great idea, but don't want to scroll halfway down the page to get to it! You can title & tag your clips, so it is easy to remember why you saved something. I can see these tools being useful to the library, anything that can simplify searches & make them more member/patron/customer friendly is alright with me!

I like the idea of having a staff Delicious account, creating ones for the public to access (Adult/YA/kids?) could be great, too, as long as we have some sort of maintenance schedule set up so that old/bad links are removed & new ones are being added to keep the account up to date. I noticed that many of the libraries' Delicious accounts mentioned in the "Tags Make Libraries More Delicious" article (published in 09/2007) have not been updated in a year or more, with most adding to their account once a month.

Friendface

Such a good show & their episode on social networking is excellent.

I do have a Facebook account, which is for personal use, as well as ones at ravelry & The Green House, which uses Ning - an excellent & easy tool for anyone to create their own social networking site. These are fun ways to keep in touch with others, as well as useful for keeping myself organized.

ravelry lets me easily keep track of my knitting projects past, present & future, yarn stash & has excellent forums & ways to interact with others. The creators are very responsive to their audience & this enables them to have a truly unique & high-quality product.

The Green House is less polished than the other two, but has a great user base & the creator has a good sense of humor & passion for the subject of living "green." It's an excellent place to ask questions & share your own experiences - the good, the bad & the ugly (seriously, there are some ugly chickens out there, people!).

I enjoy visiting these sites, but as I said before, it's all or nothing with me. My ravelry stats won't be updated for a month or two & then suddenly I upload a ton. My Facebook status will say I can't wait for Spring in the middle of June. What keeps me more engaged is being able to access these sites on my mobile device. Since getting it, I have been more apt to stay on top of Facebook & twitter, thanks to apps being available for both that enable me to check in on the go.

Have You Seen This? Thursday-ish

A cautionary tale.


Although, I don't think we should let the general public in on the fact that we are telepathic.

*Tap, Tap* Is This Thing On?

Has it really been a month since my last post? Well, that is actually perfectly apropos for me & the topic of social networking. See, I like to be social & all, but it is terribly difficult to get me to stay engaged in something once the newness has worn off. Hence the month-long absence. This is very similar to my Facebook & Ravelry habits, one week you can't get me off the things, the next I forget all about them. Same with twitter. Although with twitter I find I can get overwhelmed by the feeling that I need to constantly keep up with the people I follow & then it becomes a chore & why do I want that, so I've calmed down about that in recent months. I still feel that I have to scroll through pages & pages of Facebook each time I get sucked back into it, making sure I don't commit some horrible faux pas, like asking how someone's boyfriend is doing, before realizing they've changed their status to "single."

That being said, I think the library needs to join in the fray & get its "face" out there! It seems like there should be very little time & energy needed to get a page up on Facebook & update it occasionally with events & it would be one more place to put links to our podcasts (coming any day now, right?), photos & items of interest, such as Sirsi being down on the 2nd!

That's all I have to say about that.

Have You Seen This? Thursday

Nancy Pearl, Cambodian hip hop, Ray Bradbury & male librarians...this video has got it all!

Would You Like To Play A Game?

Don't worry, I'm not going to suggest "Global Thermalnuclear War."

I think games in the library are a fantastic idea! We already use them with our youngest patrons (learning puzzles & other types of games in our early literacy kits), it just goes to reason that we continue to use games as a way of reaching & teaching patrons of all ages. We want to meet people where they feel comfortable, in some situations that means taking ourselves out of our own comfort zone. We've known for a long time that people enjoy using our public computers to play games, there is nothing wrong with that. We are not here to pass judgement on what is "right," "wrong" or "worthy." We are here to provide access. Access to ideas, to open discussions, to free speech. We are not here to restrict, deny or denigrate. (Who put that soapbox here?)

My point is: people like to play games. People like to go where they can play games (in person & virtually). We like people. We like people to come to us (in person & virtually). If we can provide what people need, they will come to us. If what they NEED is to come in & blow off some steam while blowing away zombies, collecting tokens or feeding baby dragons, who are we to judge? They might just pick up a James Patterson book on the way out!

I'm not a huge fan of Second Life, I think it's heyday has come & gone. But it can't hurt to have a small presence there. Really, I think HCPL has a big need for an Inernet Services librarian, whose job is to monitor most of these technologies we're discussing & be the one creating much of the content that will be sent out. They could "staff" the Second Life library, as well as send out twitter updates & notices ("Hot out there? Come cool off @ the library!"), maintain our Facebook page, create & edit podcasts, make sure our blogs are being posted to regularly, etc. etc.

And that's all I have to say about that.