#15 Library 2.0 and Web 2.0

I think a lot of the 2.0 stuff is deceptive and assumes there is a giant leap from one concept to another. There has always been change and it is usually a gradual process that ticks along nicely in between obvious milestones - library 1.1, 1.2 etc. Librarians have adapted to change - technology has turned over many times in the library world and we have mostly adapted.

The other side of this is Library 1.0 - are we disenfranchising people who do not want or need technology? Replacing a book with an e-Book may make it available to more people at the same time, but it also restricts those who will use it. A book cannot be in two places at once but it doesn't need instruction, it always looks the same everytime you open it, it doesn't have errors, downtime or a blue screen of death.

While we need to look to the future, we should remind ourselves that some people do not want technology even if it is their right to have access to it. We should keep a touchstone to the past and the present, so that we can help all of our users, not just the ones who want the latest thing.

#14 Technorati

On July 31, 2006, Technorati tracked its 50 millionth blog.

50 million people have more timeto spare than me. I blog therefore I am?

#13 Tagging, folksonomies etc.

Is this serendipity via technology? What happens if folks are dumb where folksonomies come from?

I like standardization and order, not sure I'm ready for stream of consciousness categorization. I guess if you've made it through and understood all of Ulysess, I might care how you bookmark your sites or contribute to the word cloud, or then I might not.

I wonder if there will be a cultural divide in people's tagging. Do certain cultures or group put concepts together that are not considered in others?

Del.icio.us could be great for those who share computers to remember their own bookmarks but then so's a memory stick. Perhaps I'm just into antisocial bookmarking and privacy, rather than having to keep on remembering user names and passwords for every site.

#12 Roll your own search engine with Rollyo

Rollyo - a good idea to limit the amount of sources you are searching, especially if you usually search the same sites in succession.
http://www.rollyo.com/gelisblogger/trip_planning/

Rollyo seems to be very slow the few times I have tried it. The searches from your customized search rolls still include advertising, and I couldn't work out how the results were being displayed. As with all federated searches, you do not necessarily get the same results as you would going into each site separately.

We could use such subject sites in the library to highlight useful sites, but as with any collection of sites we would have to check them for changed content, dead links etc. Rollyo would have to stick around and prove it's worth before I would consider this option. It would be a pity to have a great set of subjects marked, and then lose the content when the site is sold, goes out of business etc. This would be the same for any non library controlled environment.

#11 All about Library Thing

Library Thing is very similar to Booktribes - both come up with scary suggestions and prove that I have very strange reading habits.

http://www.librarything.com/catalog/gelisblogger

The suggestions were not very helpful, mainly suggesting another book by an author I had listed. This is why we need librarians to suggest titles, not computers. The suggestions had a fixation with Harry Potter. I have not read any of the books or see the films. I may, but not because an algorithm tells me I should...

#10 Play around with image generators

The text based ones have more appeal to me that the image ones - they are all a great waste of time, but thoroughly enjoyable. When the Internet was new we knew of sites to generate your romance heroine's name, Hobbit name, Celtic warrior etc. Now they are just linked by blogs and searchable through Google.

I did like the random fortune generator and the complaint letter generator. My favourite text base one was Catbert's performance review generator - I suspect this site is well known...

http://www.dilbert.com/comics/dilbert/games/career/html/questions.html

I keep on getting negative emotions when I randomly generate images using Text collage generator. How random is this? Should I find an image generator for the paranoid?
http://www.languageisavirus.com/textcollage.html

And I couldn't resist:

Spelling with zombies, "librarian" works well. "Hungry" may be too close to the bone:

http://e-zombie.com/

#9 Finding Feeds

Finding feeds isn't the problem - working out which ones to follow and which ones to overlook is the wider issue.

Feedster is useful if you want to search by type of content, and you regularly switch between needing news or blogs, but the results are a bit obscure for some less popular topics.

Topix and Technorati both automatically show local news and popular topics, which gives you a head start or a chance to browse. Technorati arranges results under tabs for the type of material. This reminds me of some of our subscription databases.

They all do different things, but it usually boils down to the 'google factor'. Google may not be the best search engine for searching certain types of material but it is ubiquitous. People use it because it has a broad range of applications and often do not want to change for a specific search. With all of these technologies, familiarity breeds use. When searching for RSS feeds you would probably end up using the one with the broadest application or the one that becomes the field leader.

#8 Making life "really simple" with RSS

Oxymoroic, misnoma or literal truth? I can see how RSS feeds can simplify things, but do they just allow us to save time which we later use worrying that we are not keeping up with technology? They are really simple as opposed to importing raw XML but not as simple as picking up a newspaper, magazine or book.

Some sites have clear RSS feeds and some are more elusive.

RSS also takes away some of the stream of conscious or serendipity methods of searching - you never know what path the undisciplined mind may follow when looking for information.

RSS works best when you need to monitor a limited number of sites for new content - the straight line approach to information gathering.


http://www.bloglines.com/public/libraryluddite

#7 Blog about technology

The CD is dead! The DVD is dead! - these were the pronouncements at a recent Web 2.0 seminar. Tell that to my huge collection of CDs and DVDs that have not vanished just because they are no longer cutting edge. I still have a dinosaur VCR and would have to spend the rest of my life to watch all the videotapes I own. Yes I do have a PVR, a digital box and HDMI. No I don't have an iPod, but I do have the first model MP3 player which is the size and shape of a brick.

At what stage should we adopt or delete technology? There is so much out there and sometimes it is not clear what will survive and for how long. Does anyone remember digital audiotapes? How much should we learn about things that may not last long, or how many things should we know something about? The high definition war between BluRay and HD DVD is reminiscent of Beta and VHS. VHS won on the marketing, not the technology and largely because the adult entertainment industry supported it.

The next life changing technology is always just around the corner...

#6 More Flickr fun

Trip planner allows you to dream of the next trip or prolong the last one. It seems similar to some of the content on TripAdviser or any of the travel websites noticeboards. When I first started travelling it was difficult to get information except via travel agents. Now it is easy to get information, but there is often too much of it, or it's not accurate. I'd never plan a trip based only on information from blogs and web tools, just as I wouldn't rely on Wikipedia for a reference enquiry...

#5 Flickr

I've already had a good look at this site - it's often better than searching other image sites.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/awfulsara/11917149/

I do seem to already get an awful lot of baby photos sent in huge JPEGs to block up my email. The subtle difference of expression over a series of 100 photos taken on the same day usually escapes me. As the last of many children there are few photos of me in existence, and I was a much cuter baby that adult. I grew up in the age of black and white photos and the start of the polaroid. These eventually fade away to nothing - so perhaps flickr is Karma in action. Someone has the thousands of photographs that rightly belong to me?

Technology is good...sometimes. It's great when it makes your life easier, not so good when you can't get away from it. Blogging seems a bit like letting everyone reading your diary, or having loud conversations on your mobile phone in public. The diaries you would really like to read are usually still under lock and key, and many blogs seem akin to watching Big Brother where nothing much happens, but what does is examined to a level of detail it does not deserve. There are interesting people blogging, but I'd still prefer to read a book or talk to a person, in person. Choose the technology that works for you and leave the rest behind - someone else will always want it.